90 Miles to Cooooba

An article in yesterday's Washington Post suggests that, as per his call to change the general attitude/policies toward Cuba, Barack Obama may relax the ban on travel to the country in the near future.  When I was in Costa Rica a few weeks ago, I stayed in hostels with various other international travelers, many of whom were Canadian, or Danish, or, well, anything but American and nearly all of them had spent some time in Cuba during their Central/South American travels.  Of course, being American and, therefore, being unable to go to Cuba, my travel companions and I were curious to hear about their experiences in Cuba, to hear about their opinions on why Americans are not allowed to go to the country.  We talked at length about how, if you flew into Canada or Mexico, bought a ticket to Cuba with cash and paid for everything in Cuba with cash, it would be relatively easy to dupe the government and just hang out in a place where very few Americans have had the chance to visit.  

Still, it didn't seem worth it to me, and I argued that I'd never feel comfortable carrying around that much cash on my person in a foreign country, especially since one of the guys we talked to about this had had his wallet (including all his credit cards and cash) stolen in Cuba.  But, there's definitely something intriguing about pulling off a stunt such as this.  You know, the whole, skirting danger and visiting forbidden places excitement.  And so I wonder, how many non Cuban-Americans will travel to Cuba if and once they are finally allowed to?  Will there be an immediate and gigantic travel wave to the country by all the people who have always felt a certain call to the island, or, will people no longer have any interest in going if, suddenly, they can?  For me, I think I would go, but I would wait a while until the novelty of the new permission wore off and fewer (maybe?) Americans were traveling there.  After all, it could be a quick weekend trip from one of my favorite places in the continental United States, the 

Florida Keys, the southernmost island of which (Key West) is just 90 miles from Cuba.

The Bird and the Bee

This band has long been one of my go-to bands when I'm feeling especially stressed out or anxious, so it's no surprise that I've been listening to their newest album Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future a lot this week.  See, we've been getting ready for our sales conference at work and have been having multi-hour, stressful meetings most days, but when I finally come back to my desk, I just turn on this album and the mix of Inara George's melodic voice and the upbeat dance-y feel immediately make me happier.  Also, we've been fed a lot of pizza and cookies this week which, I'm sure, helps.  Being sort of sugar high and listening to this song is immediate pop music bliss.

I don't know what you did this AM

via Stereogum

Probably something productive and work-related.  As for me, well, I answered some emails and then watched this video which made me want to squeal with glee, except then it would give away the fact that I sometimes watch videos at work.  So instead, I just sort of swayed around in my chair with a huge grin on my face:

Is it May 26th yet?

The Things You Can Learn Doing Your Laundry

This weekend I spent some time in the laundry mat a block away from my apartment, which has CNN constantly playing on the TV.  Actually, there are two TVs, one on the "public" side of the laundry mat that airs CNN and one on the other side where the drop off service machines are that plays Telemundo.  But, I digress.  Anyway, there was obviously a lot of talk about AIG and the police shootings in Oakland, but the one bit of news that really stuck with me was a story reporting on just how serious the AIDS epidemic is in Washington, DC.  Apparently, more than 3% of the entire nation's capital's population is infected with this disease, though it seems likely that the number is much higher, around 5%, since many people who are infected haven't been tested.  The rate of infection was likened to Uganda, with nearly as many people there reporting having the disease.   

Gah!  How in the hell is this happening?  It seems so shocking to me that we live in a country where it's possible for this to be happening to our fellow citizens.  What is going on in DC?  Is no one educating these people about AIDS/safer sex practices/the necessity of using clean and sterilized needles?  It seems as though the answer is no.  However, one specialist reported to CNN that she felt the problem was due to the fact that 70% of the people infected are African-American, and that most African-Americans think of AIDS as a primarily white, gay man's disease and, therefore, one of the few diseases that they don't have to worry about.  I don't really know how that's possible unless you live under a rock and think it's still 1980, but okay.  I don't know, it really saddens me to know that this is going on in 2009, when AIDS has been on the scene for so many years and there's been so much awareness raised in other places.  For me, this is a problem that is so serious it deserves to be treated in a similar way to our current economic recession.  I mean, this is a problem that, much like a recession, will take years to overcome and is all about empowering people with the materials and education they need to make it through.  Someone, get thee to Washington and start to clean this mess up!

WWRD: What Would Riggins Do?

In season 2 of the NBC high school football drama, Friday Night Lights, one of the characters explains that the best way to deal with a situation is to ask WWRD: What Would Riggins Do?  Why, because Riggins makes horrible decisions that always seem to work out for him, and because he can get any lady he wants.  It is moments like this that make the show an absolute pleasure to watch every week.  I cannot tell you how much I love this show, but I can share with you some of the  the main reasons why I love it.

1. Tami Taylor (and, by extension, her marriage to Coach Eric Taylor).  This review from the New York Times sums up pretty nicely why their relationship is so admirable: "they never say an insensitive thing to each other."  And it's true, they are a couple that is not without their own issues and disagreements, but it's the way they are able to handle these situations that makes them so perfect.  Rarely do they ever walk away from an argument without coming together to reach a reasonable solution and, when they do, it is always followed by a very heart-felt apology scene in which Eric never fails to admit that his beautiful wife is "always right."  Additionally, she is endlessly loving and supportive both of her bratty daughter, Julie and complete shit show of a student, Tyra.  She gives them both all the rope they need to hang themselves because she knows she's approachable enough that they will always come back to her after they realize just how wrong their decisions are, and that they will, like Eric, admit that she was right all along.  She's just an amazingly confident and smart woman who shines even brighter next to the other deeply flawed female characters of the show.

2. Tim Riggins.  In an interview with actor Taylor Kitsch in New York magazine a few months ago, the writer declared that "Riggins IS sex," and good lord she couldn't have hit the nail more on the head.  In previous seasons, I often had difficulty determining which football player I loved most: Jason (aka "6", aka Street) who is paralyzed in the first episode of the series and struggles with life after this devastating injury and the realization that he has to rethink his entire life now that Lyla has cheated on him (with Riggins, obvi) and he will never be able to play football again.  Or, Saracen (aka "7" aka QB1), the scrawny, unlikely star quarterback whose father is in Iraq, mother is not in the picture and who has to take care of his sort of demented grandmother on his own.  He has so much to overcome and handles his burden with such grace and love it's really amazing.  Or, and usually, Riggins.  Riggins shows up to practice drunk, never really does any work for school (the rally girls do it for him) and uses sex as a means to deal with any of his real problems.  He is a man of few words, but just exudes such an intense masculinity and sex appeal that you can't not love him, even when he's just completely fucking up.  This season, however, he's back with Lyla and turning into a man who is taking real responsibility for himself and showing his full capacity to love, all while still being just oh so sexy.  He's turned into the full package, and I love every second that he's on screen.

3. Eric Taylor.  First of all, there's something about him that reminds me of my father, and I think it's all in the way he disciplines his daughter, Julie.  He is also a man who finds it hard to really be strict and all about business when it comes to his daddy's girl, but it's impossible to ignore when he's mad: he always chews on the inside of his lips and his face becomes very stoic and oddly calm.  Perhaps the calm before the storm?  Anyway, that's exactly how my own father is.  I always know when I've disappointed him and that's often all it takes to make me feel any remorse.  Plus, he's Coach Taylor, and when it comes to his players he always takes a specific interest in their lives both on and off the field, often serving both as a father figure as well as a football inspiration. 

4. Buddy Garity.  Because he never makes excuses for himself, is always trying to learn how to be a better person and once said "It's beer-thirty!" 

5. Dillion, TX.  This show makes me sort of want to move to the middle of nowhere, to a place where there is a true sense of community, where football does reign supreme and where nothing else in the entire world really seems to matter or exist.  While I know that this is not actually the sort of life I want to lead (I mean, I moved from a small-ish town in the South to NYC), it also doesn't make me despise the people who do led that life.  

Please, everyone start watching it.  It's good and is always on the verge of being cancelled even though it's arguably one of the better teen dramas on TV (it's certainly better than The OC or 90210 ever was).

Has the New Facebook Killed Its Marketing Potential?

As I'm sure we've all noticed, Facebook has recently undergone a redesign–the second in under a year, I think–which has caused (as it did the first go-round) a sort of backlash amongst its most faithful users.  There are stories about this change everywhere: people's status updates, people's tweets, and countless blogs including the LA Times' blog.  At first, I didn't really have any sort of intense reaction to the change.  I thought "oh, here we go again, there will be 500 groups created to take a stand against the 'New Facebook Layout,'" and I have to say, I rather enjoy how all the thumbnails of pictures have rounded edges.  It's a nice aesthetic touch that I wish had been made consistent throughout all pictures, thumbnail-ed or otherwise.  But it wasn't until I read this article (which had been re-tweeted by a colleague of mine) that started to really get me thinking about what this means for Facebook in terms of its potential beyond social networking.

A few weeks ago, my company hosted an online marketing brown bag lunch, where many of my sort of digitally-minded coworkers and I met in a conference room to hear the online marketing team talk about what they've been doing on the Internet and how it's been successful or, on occasion, unsuccessful.  Of course, they discussed at length the marketing potential of Facebook.  Between creating fan pages for books, authors and/or book characters as well as groups based around books and specific aspects of books, it seemed as though the possibilities were endless.  And, since most of us who use Facebook are younger (or, at least, I would suspect this is the sort of target demo for marketing things on the social networking site, even though the medium age is slightly higher than that of people who use MySpace), it seemed like a perfect outlet to try to get "buzz" going about a book among a specific peer group.

Since I often have to do marketing for my job that is targeted towards teens, I've been reading a lot of articles recently about how this age group is increasingly less and less influenced by advertising or branding of a product.  Instead, they spend their time online, reading reviews on blogs from people their own age, who have similar interests and who they "trust" to give them their unbiased opinion about something, and it is exactly this mentality that made marketing on Facebook such a great tool.  If you could get people to become "fans" or members of groups about your product, it would (unless the privacy settings were very high) show up in their newsfeed, which would go out to all of their friends–and there are members who have thousands of friends in their exact same demo–therefore exposing these people to your product, which is great whether or not they, too, take the leap and give it their stamp of approval by becoming fans or members of a group.  This is exactly the aim of marketing, to at the very least make people aware of what you're trying to sell.

However, the new Facebook's newsfeed is more aligned with Twitter (though, it should be noted, not nearly as awesome), in that it only feeds you news about status updates or the addition of photos to a person's profile.  Now, I have no idea what sorts of things my friends are becoming fans of, or what groups they're choosing to become members of unless I specifically go into their page and view their Recent Activity, a feature which I also find to get completely lost in the new layout.  Unless companies aim to buy ads, which, again is a feature that is not reaching nearly it's fullest potential, the effectiveness of any sort of marketing initiative happening on Facebook seems as though it will be pretty null and void.  It is true that the Highlights side bar on the right side of the homepage alerts you to what some friends are doing (a lot of mine seem to be becoming fans of F My Life), but it's such a weird jumble of mess that is totally lost, at least for now, on the side of the page where no one is conditioned to look for that sort of information.

I can't help but wonder if this will completely change the way that people use Facebook in the coming months: will it revert back to what it was for me when I first joined in college when only a handful of Ivy or wanna be Ivy League schools were given access to a Facebook membership, or will we marketers, again, be forced to adapt to this change and attempt to make marketing gold out of what currently seems like poop?  I'm not entirely sure I'm opposed to it being just a social networking tool–then, at least, I don't have to worry about professional colleagues scorning my photos or status updates–but it just seems like a waste to Facebook's potential to really connect people, not just to each other but to common interests, tastes and trends. 

Also, and this is entirely unrelated, why has everyone suddenly started taking lame quizzes?  Are we all in High School again?

Oh, and hey I just realized there was a pretty egregious typo in the headline. I'm now looking for a copy editor. Will compensate with baked goods.

Dancin'!

Katelyn made me (and, I guess, Caroline) a blinky!  I love it!  I am sexy!  I have the coolest glasses ever!  I'm a little jealous Caroline got the crown, but, whateves.

Also, if you can't read along the bottom here it says "Are we working or eating?" which is a quote from The Simple Life.  Paris and Nicole are, of course, neither working nor eating.  They're DANCIN'!

My Mind Is Set on You

Shit man, I haven't been so in love with a song since that new Pheonix jam made its way onto the Interwebs.  Handsome Furs' new album, Face Control, is pretty all around awesome and this song makes me want to just jump up on my desk at work and walk across the cubicles, dancing like a maniac and not unlike this dude did to Bon Jovi at a basketball game.  Not gonna lie, the black bile that starts to flow from peoples' mouths sorta makes me want to vom, and while I'm feeling a little confused about some things right now, I'm certainly not confused as to whether or not this song and its video rocks (they do).

Dinner Club!

Sometimes, some of my most dear and flakey friends and I are able to get our schedules together and have a meeting of our dinner club.  There is only one rule of dinner club:

1. Host on a weekend because we all get too drunk to be able to functi

on the next day.

We sort of broke this rule yesterday when I hosted Tiffany (freshly back from Seattle!), Joe, Colleen and Scott at my apartment for a Southern inspired brunch which included: pimento cheese and crackers as a starter, collard greens, macaroni & cheese, fried chicken and corn bread.  Also, Joe brought cupcakes so we could sing Happy Birthday to Colleen, we thought up a pretty hilarious and ridiculous idea for a short film, and I managed to make everyone a fan of M83.  Anyway, it was the perfect Sunday, and today was the perfection continued when I logged onto Facebook and saw this:

It's a little tiny and hard to read, but, basically Colleen loves me!  My grandma would be so proud!

Real Housewives of New York

This reality show is amazing.  Don't believe me?  Well, then I urge you to head over to my good and hilarious friend, Katelyn's, blog and read her recap and look at her sort of culturally insensitive blinky.  It's like MySpace meets Gawker and it's hysterical.

Reason 872 to get an iPhone

via Caroline via Thrillist

"That's What She Said" app with thirteen different male voices.  Effing genius.

Dear Readers

Please buy me this dress and mail it to me so that I can wear it to the very precious and super exclusive Easter brunch that I just decided to plan after seeing it:

And why not throw in these shoes for good measure?

exes and hos,

Radio

Update on the Dik Dik

Recently, my father has made it very clearly known that he is a reader and fan of this blog.  I know this because he sometimes calls me in the morning to tell me how hilarious he thinks a recent post is, and I've realized how glad I am to have a dad who is proud both of all the more standard successes I've had in my life as well as the more trite things that make me happy and make him laugh.  Really, I'm quite lucky.

Anyway, yesterday my dad called TWICE—once in the morning when I didn't pick up because I was at work (Daddy, everyone in my office can hear our conversations when we talk on the phone and sometimes I don't want them to know that it's okay for me to say "fuck" to you) and then once later in the evening when I'd just gotten home and the first words out of his mouth were: What in the hell is Mark Peterson doing on Radiocain?!  

Turns out, my dad, who knows every one within a 500 mile radius of Bluffton, South Carolina, knows the man who has the horny Jack Russell and an apparent affinity for shooting cute little animals in Africa whose picture I posted in last week's entry about Dik Diks.  They run in the same hunting circles in South Carolina (don't worry readers, my dad does not shoot cute tiny animals!) and my dad described him as a being a sort of douchebag.  (Ed. note: I've gotten in trouble before when I've said some less than glowing things about people on this blog, but I'm fairly confident that Shooter Peterson doesn't know what a Google Alert is, plus, he does appear to be a douche).  So I googled Mark, found his trophy photos on the Safari Club International Low Country site and realized that not only does he like to shoot miniature deer, he also likes to kill baboons, zebras and leopards, which naturally horrified me.  Why would you shoot those animals?  Can you even transport dead animals on an airplane even if they have gone through the taxidermy process?  The whole thing makes me want to cry, especially because it appears as though his cute little puppy also gets off on these sorts of hunts.  I hope to hell he doesn't have children because he doesn't appear to have half the compassion that my wonderful father has.