It’s a cheap-rent street, so there are a lot of odd old businesses from the 1970s. I’ll go back and take pictures next week I think. I was on my way to buy some cigars at Maxamar, itself a funny sort of place, and passed something called the DELTA FORCE BUNKER or something (hope it’s just paintball) and various hobby stores that were weirder than usual, and then this place, which dates from the first wave of Lord of the Rings mania in 1972.

But where else in Orange County can you get a pint of Liver Mousse to go for $10? I ask you.

To: Bennett Clapp, Senior VP, Marketing
From: Staci Sauci, Director, Marketing Initiatives
Re: The Passion

Benn:

We have some real movement here and I wanted to touch base with you and let you know what our direction is. You’re going to be as excited as we are with these!

1. The console gaming contract is 90% firm. Chalice Games is our preferred partner for the XBox market and they have some really dynamic ideas. Both custom controller sellpoints look like a go (hammer and cross) and they have some really sharp Easter Egg ideas. We’ve been working with some of the Extreme Church groups for channel marketing and they are very receptive. I’ve attached some screenshots and a walkthrough movie that we had them do as a rough cut. Let me know what you think of the mix because we did have to adjust the story line a bit to work with this as a sidescroller.
2. The restaurant tie-ins are locked down. Currently we have Taco Bell’s “Don’t Let this Cup Pass” supersize instant win running through April with a Jerusalem trip Grand Prize and they’re cross promoting like crazy. In April we begin Long John Silver’s 30-piece Combo with collectible nail pendant. We did end up removing the standups from the Outback Steakhouse because they had issues with it impacting their entree sales. However, we have a lot of good response from the TGI Good Fridays “Crown of Thorny Onions” appetizer promo to fill the gap in that demographic.
3. I know you had concerns about our lack of sellthrough in the kids area so here’s what we have cooking. We have sent out Reenactment Study Guides to schoolteachers and we’ll have people following that up as well to get kids involved more directly. Providing the teachers with multimedia, props etc. is the next step on that ramp-up. We’re also proactively targeting the costume market for October which we are sure will fill a gap for spiritually oriented “Harvest Festival” dressup. I will let you know asap if the Bubble-Yum thing is a go.

This has been a really different campaign, Benn, and we’re all “Passionate” about making promotion happen. I haven’t been this excited about cross-selling and licensing since we did Triple-X together!

Staci

nickjb saw this thing, and maybe it isn’t a hoax. Ow.

CNN Hip Hop a lypse.

From October 2002. Hurrrrrrffffff

YAK CHEESE for great justice.

Saw Neko Case perform tonight at the Derby. I want to take her home with me, sit her on the couch, and hand her $5 every second to sing, until I run out of money. She is so good.

It was her, Kelly Hogan, and Carolyn Mark with a couple of backup guys. Not what I’d expected, not a full band or anything, but amazingly good. The three of them traded off.

The openers were a forgettably bland wommyn’s music acoustic guitar Lilith Fair boredom duo (the Indigo Girls have a lot to answer for) and a guy who had a sort of Tim Buckley/David Bowie/Big Star’s Third thing going on. He was good but not as good as he thinks. He needs to edit more.

It was good to meet jtemperance in person; I’m glad that worked out!

Neko and her friends have a way of making full-volume long-note heartrending country and gospel music sound effortless, as though they were flying around the club above our heads. It’s really breathtaking when a singer can achieve that.

I’m very sad tonight about things I can’t fix and shouldn’t talk about any more.

dadcat has it right here.

My mother’s letter to the editor in response to this column.

Go Mom.

genital/genital if you aren’t registered with the Times

My shrink thinks that EMDR (another link here may be useful for me. So, we’re going to play with it a bit since she has a colleague who is good at it.

It’s a bit frightening (hacking on the brain’s firmware seems like it could really trash things if done wrong) but also interesting. Certainly the kind of troubles I have resisted psychotherapy pretty darn well before and seem to be deeply rooted enough that something different is worth considering. I’ve got to the point where trepanning doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea.

Basically the theory is that my problems may well have resulted from some bullshit that occurred when I was preverbal and therefore aren’t necessarily accessible by verbal means. Sort of the psychotherapeutic equivalent of fixing the water pump when you have to remove the entire engine to get at it. Since removing the brain and running cold water through the spinal cord is not recommended, we’re going to try resetting the firmware.

If anyone sees me wandering about with a Borg apparatus on my head intoning “MUST.. DESTROY.. MANKIND.. BEFORE.. LUNCHTIME..” please shoot me.

How do I shot wasp?

Watch as mendel attempts to save various people from enwaspinating themselves to death.

One of the many problems with the Internet is that it has made it easier than ever for low-functioning individuals to encourage each others’ mistaken ideas.

Someone has discovered that corporate employees are often insane. Duh. I personally am only shooting for “grandiose narcissist” as a career goal but I always was a low achiever in hierarchies.