i just thought i would get a jump on this weeks coming white board discussion and just tell you my opinion on spiderman.

plain and simple, HE RULES!!!

he is just a regular guy (as regular as you can be with a genius level IQ and a bite from a radioactive spider) that has to deal with as much real life stuff as with super villain stuff. Bruce Wayne/Batman is a GA-ZILLIONAIRE so he doesn’t really need to worry about money or anything like that. Superman/Clark Kent doesn’t need to eat, he never has to worry about a sunburn, or traffic. Captain America, well, he has a government job, we all know how cushy those are. The X-MEN, the live in some old guys mansion, they don’t pay rent, their job IS to be a super hero. Iron Man/Tony Stark is another one of those GA-ZILLIONAIRES that doesn’t really have to worry about money or anything, fighting crime is like a hobby for him, like golf or something….

i totally identify with spiderman, he is just a normal guy with problems that i can identify with, plus how cool would it be to walk on walls, swing from rooftops and be able to shut some one up from across the room with a bit of webbing over their mouth!!!

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recently we have had a bit of increased activity in the office (new business is the life blood of the PR world as someone brilliant often says) and i have noticed a decrease in the number of posts. so i wanted to make sure that our little blog keeps chugging along and i wanted to put something up for us to read about.

Today while taking a lunch trip to do some business we had to stop by the gas station (and by gas station i mean the blood and money sucking place that we all have to go to to be able to continue to go to work and the grocery store and anywhere else we need to go) and Matt made a purchase in the amount of $73 DOLLARS to fill his nissan with gas.

RIDICULOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So we had a bit of a discussion about that and i wanted to put up a few links that might help people realize that we are getting forked at the pump by oil companies and speculators. I will do this in a question and answer format for the ease of conveyance.

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i was listening to the radio today and heard about a great program that is being promoted by the World Food Program to help feed hungry people all over the world. a website has been created called freerice.com and it is a simple vocabulary test that a programmer created to help his kids study for the SATs. He then gave it to the world food program and they partnered with advertisers to work out a deal, whereby each time you get a correct answer 20 grains of rice are donated to hungry people.

to date over 35 BILLION grains of rice have been donated! i hope everyone takes a little bit of time and expands their brain and does some good for the world.

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yesterday was the first in this years “Merlot Summer Series” where we all get around for a few appetizers and libations after a hard day of work and less than 5 minutes into the event and i noticed a large difference between myself and the rest of the crew here at Merlot. here is how it went…

the waitress came up and asked everyone what they would like to drink, and as every one was ordering the typical questions came up “what do you have on draft?”, “would you like that blended or on the rocks?”, “are you sure you want to drink Coors Light?”, etc… then when it was my turn i told the waitress that i would like a classic margarita on the rocks and she responded with what size. my reply was to hold my hands out in front of me slight less than shoulder width apart. the waitress understood and moved on to the next person.

after she left everyone laughed at my answer to how big i wanted my drink. it made me realize that the difference between spoken/read language and visual language is the major difference between the rest of the Merlot team and myself. i am sure they will have a lot to say about that and i have just one response…

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1971-1987

1987-1992

1992-2008

2008

we are all familiar with starbucks, so much so that it has become a coloquialism. how many times have you heard (or said) the phrase “wanna go grab a starbucks?” starbucks just recently redesigned their popular mermaid logo, which is very similar to their original logo.

Now for the controversy.

a conservative christian group has decided that the news starbucks logo is in “extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.” i figured i would put it out there for our little merlot family to discuss…

i personally think that this is a HUGE overreaction to a tiny little thing. a proverbial mountain out of a molehill. honestly, the state of sensitivity in the country…i will never understand. the logo comes from an old woodcut illustration and is a parallel that the company is trying to draw. namely that the image of the siren (who would lure sailors to their deaths with their seductive voices) implys that the coffee is so seductive that no mere mortal could resist. and judging by how successful the company is, it is a fitting correlation.

ok, those are my thoughts, so everyone else have at it!

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so as the lonely little guy over in the creative cube. (i like to think of myself as a designer) i often ponder the meaning of design, how it should function in society, and how it should be used. the phrase that ends up in my head most often is “form follows function.”

the phrase was popularized by Louis Sullivan who is considered the father of the modern movement in design. it is a simple statement that makes sense. i can’t think of an argument that would disprove it. the look and feel of an object (or its form) should be directly informed by its purpose (or function).

that being said, take a look at this.

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jana’s category names. for those of you that didn’t see, she previous category name was “Say my name, say my name, Jana = John-uh” now if you look up and to the left you will see that it is “aka Jana “My name’s pronounced ‘John-uh’” Sanders Perry”!!!!

apparently she is competing for the title of longest blog category (and not telling anyone else that there is such a contest. so! i will play “police officer” (or maybe more accurately “hall monitor”) and keep a running tally of jana’s category names and their character count and maybe a few other things. here we go:

i wonder what the next one is gonna be? maybe “jana, jana, bo-bana, banana fana fo-fana, fee fie mo mana, jana” which would be 53 characters long.

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i have a new theory about mondays, it is in NO WAY scientific, it is purely anecdotal and possibly only applicable to the rock star party people  i work with. but here it is:

the weekends activities and level of intensity is inversely proportional to the level of noise/conversation heard on monday morning.

anyone want to take a stab at the veracity of the theory? or perhaps propose your own?

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so mothers day is coming up on sunday, and i just wanted to put a little education out into the world for whomever stumbles across our blog…

The United States celebrates Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother’s Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

-sourced from wikipedia.org

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so a friend of mine checked out our website when i told him it was up and in addition to the myriad of comments he made about all of our idiosyncrasies he mentioned that jana had it backwards. she put her shoes on in the wrong order. it should be right before left, not left before right.

he then regaled me with a tale of a week in junior high when a “highly scientific experiment” was conducted in which he put his left shoe on first every day that week and received detention every day!

not that i am sane by any account, i constantly babble on about things that make my friends eyes glaze over (mostly fonts and design/coding terms), but two people being so adamant about which order to put their shoes on just makes me wonder who else is out there in the world. and in case you hadn’t noticed, one of my little quirks is my utter loathing of capital letters.

later.

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