Atlanta, land of yuppie grocery stores. While here on business I've made the most of my time: learning streets, getting lost, getting found again, and snapping up tasty goodies from the local grocery shops.

If you looked closely, one could see the echoes of stubble tracing a faint shadow of pattern-baldness that meandered from ear, to crown, to ear. His eyes didn't always match the laughter in his voice, but when they did, the lines radiated, like spokes, from their corners.

When he told stories the words came out razor-sharp. Carnival patois, to match the oversized, indifferently polished black clown shoes he wore. I didn't know how much of his story to believe; after all, he was a balloon artist hustling tourists next to Café du Monde.

I never suspected that offering to host the greymatter hacks and mods site would lead to this…

"So just what HAVE you been doing?" you ask?

Jeff and I have a great amount of fun carping at stupid commercials. One of our favorites to harangue is a Rogaine commercial that says, "Does she want you to use Rogaine? Better ask!"

I sometimes wonder if we were dumb consumers to begin with, or if years and years of idiotic commercials like this have—well—brainwashed us into believing that this kind of thinking is all that we're capable of as adults. My year of doing marketing and PR work led me to believe the latter.

Design ads so that the company's message is conveyed even if the reader only sees it for a second or two. What a self-referential surprise that is! The MTV generation has been inundated with ads practically since birth (after all, no name-brand product was ever too good for baby!), and any advertising that is going to catch their collectively jaded eyes has to be subtly different. Most companies choose to go for flashier—faster, louder, harder, more colorful.

Geof reminded me today:

"Question: how do you eat an elephant?"
"Answer: one bite at a time."Thus, today, I've been nibbling away at the elephant that is the sum total of my old cat.net entries. I'm trying to get them moved into greymatter format and to make them play nicely with my new ones, but I have to be honest. It's just not happening, and I'm starting to get really frustrated.