I was wondering which of my friends would write the first Dear John letter to facebook. Today, I wonder no more.

I received the following in a mass e-mail from an good friend. It is posted below with his permission — though I changed his name — and deleted the last line of his email for, well, content the general public needn’t be privy to.

From:     ***********
Subject:     Facebook
Date:     November 7, 2008 8:43:26 PM EST
To:     Undisclosed recipients: ;

Friends, neighbors and relatives:

I’ve found Facebook to be a strange and wonderful thing.

Strange because people I hardly remember, know or like have made contact with me through the site and asked to be my friend.

Wonderful because it’s a great way to stay in contact with people I actually consider friends.

So, I am going to disengage from Facebook as [NAME] and re-engage at a later time under a less common name (for me). Ha ha

If you see an invite from someone you’ve never heard of in the future, it might be me, so don’t ignore it.

Until then, you have my email for any miscellaneous statuses or rants.

[last part deleted for content]

So how are you feeling about facebook? Like it? Hate it? Lukewarm? Have you defriended someone? Feel free to share.

Hope you’re well, and thanks for stopping in.

We label emails as normal low, normal, and high priority. Physicians deem patients in stable or critical condition. So why can’t we have the same labels on the economy that trigger certain actions in order to protect something so elemental to us as a lifetime of savings?

We all know the STOP LOSS option triggers a share sell-off once they dip below a certain level. Considering, however, that the term “loss” has been newly defined by the current crisis, why not safeguard the common non-investor type who doesn’t stop-loss his or her investments by automatically selling a percentage of shares of stock after the economy has been deemed “in crisis?” The sell-off would then occur once said investor’s losses reach 10, 15, 25%  — or whatever the investor is comfortable with — from the point at which the economy was deemed to be “in crisis.” Make it a mandatory part of the investment agreement. The toughest part, I imagine, would be trusting the team of mathematicians who develop the equations necessary to flag the economy as “in crisis” and trigger the sell-off.

Whatever the case, what’s happening right now can never happen again. Not only has this debacle obliterated retirements, they’ve erased inheritances. Now we’ve all got to start over, so that by the time our children or grandchildren retire, things may be back to “normal” — whatever its new definition may be.

Thoughts? Opinions? Gripes? Tirades? Bring ‘em on.

Thanks for stopping in, and I hope you’re doing well.

It’s always both inspiring and humbling to see what advertising students can do before they get all jaded by clients and their lawyers.

Kudos to these students for pushing their thinking, and the teachers who guided the work. My favorite is the piece for Doritos. Creative placement is tough to do well without the work appearing forced. This piece, and a few others, take great advantage of the medium, while delivering a simple, and more importantly, singular message.

Now that I have 2 year old, I’m often relegated to “viewing buddy” status when Mickey Mouse comes on. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is big here, and she’s not afraid to yell out the magic words at random times throughout the day:

Meeska! Mooska! Mickeeeeeey Mouse!

Next time you see any of the shows, keep your eyes on Mickey’s ears. They’re drawn (or “rendered” for all you techno-sticklers) as if they’re always facing the camera. Mickey will turn his head this way and that, but the ears never move in the proper perspective with Mickey — it’s like he’s wearing a floating scalp.

It’s just an example of how far a company will go to protect their brand.

Now I guess I’ll just sit back and wait for a call from their lawyers.

Today, while chasing after my Boston Terrier and showing off for my two and a half year old daughter, I stepped in a small hole and twisted my right ankle. Immediately, I began hobbling and sucking in short breaths through gritted teeth. My daughter came running.

She said, “Daddy! Daddy! What happened?”

I said, “Daddy’ll be okay, I just twisted my ankle.”

She immediately knelt down and rubbed my foot. She looked up and said, “Well, twist it back twist it back!”

Never thought of that. Smart. Pure. And she’s all mine.

It’s not particularly pleasing when something you rely on doesn’t work, but it’s great when a company customizes their apology rather than slam us head on with a typical “Site down for maintenance,” or a canned “server not responding” message. Here’s what flickr did today. I don’t know what the problem is but I know they’re at least working on it (maybe they’re not, who cares as long as it’s back soon) and had the good sense to make light of it. No big deal. I’ll check again shortly. Thanks flickr. You’re seem pretty like, nice or something.

The term “pork barrel spending” has been so prevalent in the debates that I did a little digging to find out about its origins, and it seems we’ve spent so much time focusing on what the term represents that we’ve forgotten where the term originated.

From the US History Encyclopedia: “Pork barrel” originally referred to American slaves’ rushed attempts to obtain some of the pork given to them as a group in large barrels. The term entered the political vocabulary after the Civil War.

From Wikipedia: The term originated early in American history, when slaves were sometimes given a barrel of salt pork as a reward and had to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout.

So, now I’ve got one more reason to hate pork barrel spending.

This morning I drove by a commercial printing business whose very prominent signage advertises desktop publishing and typesetting services, terms that haven’t been used in 20 odd years except for people reminiscing about how heavy those letters were and how tough it was to make a dot matrix printout look professional. A business’ unwillingness to evolve will lead to its eventual expulsion from the modern economy with only itself to blame. How much business do you think it could this be costing them? Think about it. Would you even get out of my car after seeing the signage advertising services as old as the Flock of Seagulls? Well maybe you would if you couldn’t find a place to print the files from your 5 1/4″ floppy drive.

Using the project management term, “the cone of uncertainty”, to describe the area within which a hurricane may travel has proven a gem in my eyes; however, I’m surprised meteorologists didn’t take this further. Why not the Terror Triangle? Death Alley? Panic Pendulum? As if a storm the size of the Gulf of Mexico weren’t enough to brown some pants. The mass media has the power to alleviate fears as well as create them; we just have to be wise enough to question the degree of exaggeration to which they will go for ratings — otherwise known as the B.S. Bell Curve.

My aunt just sent me an invitation to check out her page on facebook. I won’t mention her age because she’d kick my ass, but I will say that I’m 38. So, the fact that I have chosen not to “facebook” either makes me a dinosaur, or so cool that I can’t even connect with people who think like me. I’ll probably give in to the pressures of social marketing soon, but I will NEVER EVER EVER watch James Cameron’s Titanic.