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Archive for March, 2010
I got New Mooned last night…
2Last night I performed my expected duties as a husband. Normally, saying that you might think one of the following:
- Sex with the wife.
- Fixed something around the house.
- Repaired something on a car.
Nope: I watched Twilight: New Moon. I had recently dogged Jingoro about turning in his “man card” for the mere mention of attending a midnight DVD release party of the film. This morning, though, I sit before you having had to suffer the same torture as many boyfriends and husbands before me. (I should note, though, that I DID skip the films in theaters helping me retain some sense of masculinity.)
That said: the film was as weak as the first film. I feel no attachment to the main characters and even kind of despise the two primaries. If I WERE geigh enough to give a shit about the love triangle, I’d had to proclaim myself Team Jacob. His character actually has some depth besides the six pack of abs – and he’s much less of an emo-douche than Edward.
This morning at work I was talking to a friend who is both a.) female and b.) a friend of my wife’s about the torture I endured last night when I was reminded of a great article I read last year about Bella’s relationship with Edward. You can read the full article here on io9.com. Here, though, is the meat of it:
According to the National Domestic Violence hotline, these are some signs that you may be in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship.
Does your partner:
* Look at you or act in ways that scare you?
Check.* Control what you do, who you see or talk to or where you go?
“Stay away from the werewolves. I love you.”* Make all of the decisions?
Check.* Act like the abuse is no big deal, it’s your fault, or even deny doing it?
“If I wasn’t so attracted to you, I wouldn’t have to break up with you.“* Threaten to commit suicide?
“I just can’t live without you. In fact, I’ll run to Italy and try suicide by vampire if anything happens to you.”* Threaten to kill you?
On their first date.These are some more signs of an abusive relationship. Has your partner…
* Tried to isolate you from family or friends.
Bella doesn’t have time for anyone else!* Damaged property when angry (thrown objects, punched walls, kicked doors, etc.).
Check.* Pushed, slapped, bitten, kicked or choked you.
Does tossing her through a glass table count?* Abandoned you in a dangerous or unfamiliar place.
“We’re breaking up. And I’m leaving you in the forest.”* Scared you by driving recklessly.
Check.* Forced you to leave your home.
She had to run away with him to flee from the other vampires in the first movie, and she had to drop everything and run to Italy in the second.* Prevented you from calling police or seeking medical attention.
Check. Even in the hospital, nothing is a big deal.* Views women as objects and believes in rigid gender roles.
Well, they are Mormon… (I know, I know, cheap shot.)* Accuses you of cheating or is often jealous of your outside relationships.
Check, wolf-boy.Now I’m pissed. According to the NDVH, “If you answered ‘yes’ to even one of these questions, you may be in an abusive relationship.” This list is fifteen.
A FAIRly good time this weekend…
0Last weekend was the third annual “Wasabi & Friends” trip to the Indian River County Firefighter’s Fair (www.firefightersfair.org). The tradition started three years ago as a random act of fun by friends of mine, many of whom have are current and former theme park employees. You see, if you work in a theme park you become used to the idea of being able to ride a thrill ride at any time and, because you see things behind the scenes, you know that you’re safe because of the amount of maintenence done to these rides.
That last fact is the main reason theme park employees (that I know) LOVE local fair rides… the thrill is real since, you know, you could actually die on those rickety contraptions. The look of fear on the video below is FOR REALZ PEOPLES:
Pure fear.
You can watch videos from the fair here and check out the photos of AWESOME fair artwork and my friends here.
Thanks to Angie, Chris, John, Lyn, Kaleb, Kim, Tracy, and Troy for coming down to join Shannon and I again this year. Zaniness Ensued.
Special thanks to Anime Sushi (& Megacon!)
83 years ago
by Tom
in Conventions
Yes – the title of this blog post is tongue in cheek. That said, I did hear that Megacon was well attended and a good time was had by those who went. Kudos to Beth and her team on another successful year.
So why the obviously sarcastic title since (as many of you know) I am not a fan of Anime Sushi nor are they fans of me? It all has to do with this Twitter post:
http://twitter.com/TomCroom/status/7113327753
To get the full impact of the tweet, though, you need the complete story…
WAY BACK IN DECEMBER OF 2008
Everyone makes mistakes. Ask the Wasabi Anime staff and many of us will chuckle about some of our favorite typos and blunders when producing ads/flyers for our events. The one that most immediately comes to mind is the mystical month of “Devember”. We accidentally misspelled December when 5000 flyers were printed for an event we were working with about three or four years ago. The Wasabi Anime team passed all the flyers out at local conventions and giggled about it the whole time. It has since become our unofficial thirteenth month. As a matter of fact, it is still the year 2009 according to the Wasabi Anime Staff Calendar.
The point being, even we know when to laugh at ourselves.
Well, in December of 2008 I got my Megacon advertising book that gets mailed out each year to everyone on their previous attendee list. While looking to see if there were any guests of interest, I came across the two page spread for Anime Sushi’s anime events. I read through their descriptions and noticed that whoever had produced the ad had misspelled Anime Sushi’s website without the “e” – so it read www.animsushi.com.
Not once. Twice.
Seriously.
I (and many of the Wasabi Anime team) have misspelled some pretty funny things in our time, but if there’s ONE THING we’ve always made sure to get right it’s our website address – especially in print.
After some thought on the matter, I decided to give GoDaddy.com ten dollars and secure www.animsushi.com. I set up a one page website that told folks that there was a typo, and directed visitors to the correct address for Anime Sushi’s website. (After about 30 seconds the web page auto forwarded to the correct Anime Sushi site even if you didn’t click the link.)
Problem solved… or so you’d think.
GRAB YOUR TIN FOIL HAT, FOLKS!
Well, it seems that the fine folks at Anime Sushi took this action as an affront to their club and it turned into an OMGDRAMAZ. I heard this (of course) third hand when it blew up with someone who I had regarded, up until that point, as a casual friend acting like a total douchebag and calling my best friend to bitch about the website, me and Wasabi Anime while said best friend was driving hundreds of miles so see both of us and other friends for a Christmas party. It was that single “winner” move that pretty much put that person onto my ”don’t talk to me – you fucking annoy me” list.
It should also be noted that this wasn’t the first time I contacted Anime Sushi regarding a mistake. You know that 468 by 60 Megacon costume contest banner they use? It’s the same one they’ve used for a few years now. The first time they posted it, it had the misspelled word CUSTOME instead of COSTUME. I emailed one of Anime Sushi’s officers (whom I knew) to let them know strictly out of courtesy since I would hope someone would do the same for me in a similar circumstance.
Again – I (and others at Wasabi Anime) have gotten emails about typos in the past. We giggle at ourselves and correct the problem… and move on. We also try to avoid the same mistake twice.
WAY BACK IN DECEMBER OF 2009
Last December I got an email from GoDaddy.com letting me know that www.animsushi.com was about to expire. I had completely forgotten about the domain and seeing no use for it, I chose not to renew.
A week later, I was exploring the Megacon website and took the time to read the anime events page. While hovering over the hyper links for Anime Sushi’s website, I noticed something that left me completely dumbfounded: while the correct address was in the text of the site, the hyper link address for Anime Sushi’s website was spelled incorrectly. Whoever had coded the page had gotten it wrong. How was it spelled? You guessed it:
www.animsushi.com
This bring us back to my Twitter post. I noticed the website mistake on December 28th – and after some thought, I went back and coughed up another ten dollars to buy back the domain. My initial thought was to try and contact Anime Sushi and offer to transfer the domain to them and tell them of the error. They obviously just needed to keep it around for (what was appearing to be) a pretty consistent typo. I then thought about how the key members of Anime Sushi have always reacted to these things in the past… and I decided to save myself the headache of dealing with them. Instead, I just forward the domain to the Wasabi Anime website.
Only three others shared this secret — my friends the Sorceress, Man-at-Arms, and Orko. I eventually shared it with a fourth person – but all of them have, at my request, kept this private. There was debate as to whether or not to go public with it right before or right after Megacon. There was even discussion about whether or not to go public at all.
It seems, though, that the error WAS finally discovered by SOMEONE. Last Thursday (the day before Megacon) we tracked our final hits to the Wasabi Anime website from Megacon’s site:
So from December 28th, 2009 to March 11th, 2010 – Anime Sushi and Megacon have been supplying GreenMustard.com with a steady flow of website traffic.
After two years in a row, it’s safe to say that keeping an annual $10 investment for a regular traffic bump for first quarter of the year is probably worth it.
So it goes.
No – I still don’t have my @Ford Mustang back, but I did talk to…
0More specifically, I got a call last week from Lynn Buckman from the executive offices of Ford in Michigan. She followed up with me regarding my blog post that had been passed on to her. Here’s are the results of that interaction:
THE GOOD: Lynn said the one thing that I had trying to get ANY Ford employee to say, “I’m sorry and it could have been handled better.” Up until speaking with her, the only answer from any Ford representative had been, in one form or another, “that’s the dealer’s problem, not ours.” This was the thing bothering me the most… that Ford wasn’t supportive of its owners once they sold the vehicle. No need to rehash it all – but you can read it here and here.
THE NICE: Ford offered to pay for my next two oil changes which was very nice on their part. I asked if the oil changes worked in Georgia so I wouldn’t have to deal with Florida dealers anymore. Even Lynn chuckled at that one.
THE BAD: We dropped the Mustang off to get repaired in Royal Palm Beach on Tuesday, February 25th. Tomorrow will make two full weeks (read: 14 days) without the car because it still isn’t repaired. I have been trying to get the shop on the phone for the past 45 minutes and all I get is a busy signal. Once I’m done writing this – I will probably call the manager at the dealership since (I am assuming) he CAN’T be too thrilled with paying a rental car for this long.
Run Forrest… er, “Princess!”
0
My princess and Katie McAwesome ran the Disney’s Princess Half Marathon this past weekend. They both did the run in less than three and a half hours – and this included time to stop and take photos of characters along the way! (The rest of the photos are here.)
Needless to say, I am VERY proud of my “princess”
So that thought provoking blog post you were expecting read…
0ISN’T this one. The good news is, though, that I am feeling much better after sleeping a full solid day and night yesterday. I was sluggish at the office today – but I hope to be back at 100% by tomorrow…
and maybe even hear something regarding my Mustang from Al Packer Ford West.
Keep your fingers crossed.
I have a cold…
0That’s the short version. The longer version:
- Yes, I spoke to Ford on Friday.
- No, I don’t have my car back yet.
- Yes, I was out of town for five different business meetings for Green Mustard Entertainment over the weekend.
I am going home and going to sleep soon… if I feel better, I should be able to punch out a post giving some closure to the Ford situation. Thanks for your patience.
