Social Baggage

Ever wonder what a movie poster for War Kittens would look like? Yeah, me too. So I made one. Thanks a lot, Capital One!
Click the image for a 1280×1024 desktop.

Rinspeed has made what might be the coolest car ever! It actually drives under water. Dude, what else do I have to say? Just watch the video.

Go to Rinspeed.com for more info, photos and hi-rez downloads.

Have you ever seen a soldier out in public and wanted say thanks, but felt like an idiot walking up to a stranger? The Gratitude Campaign has a solution for it. Just do the simple sign for “Thank You” whenever you pass by a soldier.

BTW, it also works as a quick way to say thanks to anyone who deserves it.

Find out more and watch a nifty video here.

So what was Alicia Silverstone doing nude in a PETA ad they knew would never get to air? Creating a buzz, that’s what.

After reaching the pinnacle of her acting abilities in Batman & Robin, Alicia’s career came to a screeching halt. Now she’s 30 and off the radar. What’s a girl to do? Get in shape and do a controversial advertisement that no one would air but everyone will watch. The fact that going veg helped create her amazingly hot body doesn’t hurt either. Almost makes me want to stop eating tasty animals.. but not quite.

This is the marketing genius behind PETA, Hardees and MoveOn.org. Create something that will get conservatives all hot and bothered. Air it a few times (or not at all) and do some press releases about Paris Hilton washing a car, teachers doing a pole dance or Alicia Silverstone taking a swim. Some horny nerd puts it on YouTube, O’Reilly starts yapping and bam! You get buzz for millions of dollars less than actually running the ad.

What about outrage? What about decent people standing up for what is right? Where’s the voice of the common man in all this?

You know as well as I do that the common man is busy Googling “alicia silverstone peta ad” so he can catch a glimpse of her naked behind.  Viral marketing succeeds again.

Holy Lack of Inclusion, Batman!
In my exhaustive research of superhero literature (ability to read comic books), I noticed that there are virtually no masked vigilantes from south of the Mason-Dixon line. There’s plenty of crime in the South. Wouldn’t there naturally be individuals infused with preternatural powers who would stand up to injustice? Or is there some reason the mutant gene doesn’t effect southerners?

After further study further (eating lunch and wasting company time), here’s what I came up with…

Too hard to hide the costume under a sweaty t-shirt.

“It’ll git done when it gits done” is not a very motivational catch phrase.

Moving in slow motion is not generally considered a super-power. Neither is the ability to use duct tape.

Nobody wants to be saved by an overweight, unshaven white guy with no shirt.

A steady diet of BBQ and cheese biscuits tends to slow you down.

Rusted-out pickup trucks from the early 70s aren’t particularly suited for hunting down bad-guys… especially when they’ve been on blocks for 12 years.

Building a cave full of high-tech gadgets in the swamp just doesn’t work.

Big white guys in masks would be easily mistaken for Klansmen.

Big black guys in masks would be easily mistaken for burglars (or it’s a good enough excuse to put ‘em in jail if you’re a big white guy in a mask).

Wearing spandex on the street will get you killed in the South.

Stars and Bars on your spandex will get you killed anywhere else.

Your dog, Bubba, can’t even get off his sorry butt to kill a possum, much less act as a faithful sidekick.

Living with a sinewy young guy and running around wearing underwear on the outside gives you feelings you’re not ready to explore.

Cheers to Danica McKellar, who played Winnie on The Wonder Years, for her new book, Math Doesn’t Suck. The 32 year old Danica told Newsweek that when girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible. “I want to show them that being smart is cool,” she said. “Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life.”

The book includes tips to avoid mistakes on homework, ways to overcome test-day anxiety and profiles of three beautiful mathematicians.

Danica said that she wrote the book “to tell girls that cute and dumb isn’t as good as cute and smart.”

It’s a noble effort. We need more positive examples for our kids to follow. My only concern is that the type of people who want to act like Lindsay and Brittney aren’t the type of girls to pick up a book on their own.

It would be nice to see Danica in the supermarket checkout replacing the Weekly World News, which has called it quits for print circulation. I’m sure the spandex-laden Stuff-mart shoppers will find some other brand of 6th-grade-reading-level pop-tart mag to fill the void.

Give Your Best

Betty told us all the story of when her house burned down and they lost everything. She said the thing they missed most was all the photographs they had taken. That Christmas, her family gathered together all the photographs she had given them over the years and presented them to her in an album.

As she marveled at the beauty of the gift, she also noticed something else. Every time she had photos made, she had always kept the best ones for herself and given the leftovers away. Now all she had left was an album of second-best photos.

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” — Luke 6:38

The same thing should apply to charitable donations. People who have just suffered a tragedy don’t need your leftover garbage. If the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there were mountains and mountains of donated clothes that had to be burned because even the hardest hit victims didn’t want them. In Lakeshore’s distribution warehouse, I saw pallets full of donated winter clothes that did nothing but create a storage problem. Did I mention this was the Gulf Coast where it gets cold about 2 days a year?

This is what really irritates me about the modern array of home organization shows. They have 3 bins: keep, sell and donate. If it’s not worth keeping or selling, throw it out! You’re not doing anyone a favor.

If you really want to help someone, go out and buy something new or just send money to a reputable organization. Remember God’s own version of Karma from above. The way you give will eventually come back to either haunt you or bless you. The choice is yours.