Tag Archives: wtf

I’m Sorry. Do I Make You Look Bad?

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So I got an interesting email this morning.

Hi Michael ,

I am the owner of the website www.costumes4less.com. I would  request you to remove my post/link from your website at your earliest , as the same is affecting our website’s reputation in Search Engine. Please see the below link where my link has been placed:

https://michaelcmcgreevy.com/2010/10/31/playing-dressup/

Waiting for your positive response.

Thanks & Regards

Now when I first read this, I thought he/she was actually talking about my Sexy Halloween History post. I knew I had written about sexy Halloween costumes at one point in the past, and I figured the owner of this site didn’t want me linking to something on his where I was bagging on said costumes. Fair enough, I suppose. I mean, I’m generally under the impression that traffic is traffic, but whatever. If I was bagging on one of his costumes and he didn’t want the link, so be it. I can take that down.

But, no. This was not a post about sexy costumes at all. This was a post about how my Mother had cobbled together a Zorro costume for me when I was a kid. It’s a post about my low self-esteem and how I love Halloween and wish I had the confidence in my physical appearance to actually dress up for it.

And THAT is bad for the reputation of his site? Really?

So, ok. I decided to do a little research. Maybe my SEO is just so damned incredible that I rank higher for people looking for hats than the site that actually sells them.

googleHat

Hrm. Nope. I even dug through several pages. I don’t show up anywhere.

So the only thing I can think is that, at some point, someone has read my post and clicked on the link, and that showed up in their analytic reports. This, somehow, is bad for their reputation.

Well, I’m sorry that www.costumes4less.com isn’t interested in traffic from my site. I’m sorry that www.costumes4less.com feels that I’m bad for their image. But mostly? I’m sorry that www.costumes4less.com is run by someone who apparently can’t even put together an intelligible email or actually do some research into the posts he is claiming are so very bad for his “website reputation in Search Engine.”

I’m also sorry, but he won’t be getting any business from me in the future.

Edit – The company has reached out to me at this point and offered up a pretty sincere sounding apology.

Accomplishment

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What did you DO today?

I want to ask that question so often.

Of myself.

Of those around me.

I know what you “did”.

I read all about it on Facebook.

But I want to know what you DID.

What did you accomplish?

What positive things did you do?

What did you CREATE?

How did you leave a mark?

I fear that, in many cases, the answer is “not much.”

More often than not, in fact, the answer is “nothing.”

The sad thing is that we are at a point in history when creativity should be at a peak.

Instead we spend most of our time simply commenting on what others have created.

Or, even worse, expecting people to find us interesting just because we’re prolific in social media.

You talk all day long.

Do you actually SAY anything, or do you just expect us to bask in the awesomeness that is you?

These are the questions I ask myself.

These are the questions that I want to scream in all caps from the top of the Twitter-sphere.

There is so much potential out there today.

So many opportunities for us to create wonderful, beautiful things.

And we’re wasting them.

In 140 characters or less.

National Security : It’s what’s for lunch

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Image by chidorian via flickr

I have many fond memories of my school days. I remember my friends and some of the teachers I had that really made a difference in my life. I remember all of the awesome things that I got to experience at the arts focused high school that I went to. I remember how fun my senior prom was, and how thankful I was that my date for the evening had convinced me to go. I even remember how much I just enjoyed learning new things, but that may be a case of me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. If my grades were any indicator learning was the last thing on my mind in school.

What I do not have fond memories of, however, were the school lunches. In fact, I distinctly remember hating the cafeteria so much that I never set foot in it once after my Freshman year in high school.  (My friends and I would either brown bag it or go without and hang out in the theater or a sympathetic teacher’s classroom.) Not only was the threat of bullying higher in the loosely supervised cafeteria, but the food was horrible. Our school’s gastronomical oddities included strange, pinkish meat on rectangular slices of pizza, spaghetti with thick, rubbery noodles coated in disgustingly sweet sauce, and cheeseburgers made from some kind of textured vegetable protein that were often dotted with a slimy gray substance.

The school cafeteria was a pit of doom that smelled of death and sadness. It was my version of Hell, and a few years ago when I sent to my son’s school to have lunch with him I confirmed that nothing has changed. In fact, there were a few items there even more disturbing than I recalled.

What I didn’t know, though, was that the food being served in our schools was not just a threat to the emotional and physical well being of the poor children who actually have to eat it. The problem, it turns out, is far more acute than bad taste.

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Quit smoking, get diabetes

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Image courtesy of m.a.r.c. on flickr

Ok, seriously…Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up in the air and give in to the inevitable tide of “nothing you do is good for you anymore.” Seems like every time we get our heads around the right way towards healthy living someone has to come along and throw a monkey wrench in the works. It seems as though the list of food and drink you should or should not consume fluctuates wildly week to week, and sometimes the exercise du jour turns out to be more damaging to your body than beneficial. It’s maddening!

One thing we can all agree on, though, is that smoking is bad for you and that if you smoke quitting the habit is probably the best thing you can do for your health.

Right?

Not so fast, sparky.

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Crazy Cupcake Lady is crazy

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the evil cupcakeThere’s nothing quite like the crazy of an extremist to make a movement look really bad.  From politics to religion and everything in between we are constantly bombarded with examples of people who take hold of an idea so fiercely that they actually do more harm than good for the cause they are trying to prop up.  These kind of people make great headlines and are, unfortunately, usually more interesting to read about than those of us who are trying to make rational arguments.

The proponents of healthy living are not immune from this phenomenon.

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Umm….What?

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So I have a Cafe Press store.  I got to playing around with it today because Summer said something really funny that sounded T-Shirt worthy.  In doing so I cam across the following product that was in my shop –

The reason I find this noteworthy is because I have NO IDEA WHAT THIS BUMPER STICKER MEANS.

Seriously.  None.

I can only assume that it came about during my days hanging out with the ladies on the Bad Girl Swirl.  Perhaps it was something Anais said.  That’s as close as I get to an explanation.

My life is weird.

Namco/Bandai Is Weird

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You will never unsee this. Ever.

You will never un-see this. Ever.

I’ve been writing a lot about the whole fitness gaming genre recently.  I’m doing so because I think the genre has a tremendous amount of potential to really push video games as something good in our lives instead of the common misconception that gaming is bad for you (a misconception that, unfortunately, our current President seems to share).

As with anything that becomes a hit in popular culture, though, there will inevitably be a flood of cheap imitators that simply wish to capitalize on the success of those who came before them.  Airplane! was brilliant.  Meet The Spartans? Not so much.  Creativity and innovation have a tendency to get watered down in pursuit of the all mighty dollar in the long run.

I don’t think we’ve gotten quite to that point when it comes to the exergame genre yet, but I know we have at least one entry that’s causing me to react with a hearty WTF?

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