The GoYin Store: Buy GoYin Wholesale

We went to the 2007 UVSC Technology and Business Expo but really just because Preston and Jen’s new SEO company Vizad had a booth there so they had a bunch of free meal tickets. Costa Vida was one of the food choices and I picked up this menu.

What does it even mean? Did they write this using those word magnets you put together to make poems? Did they write a hundred sentences on seperate pieces of paper and just draw four out of a hat? Are they outsourcing their marketing to monkeys with typewriters?

Its also strange that anyone would describe eating their food as “the greatest risk.”

I’m quite a bit behind on posts, so this one is a little late.

For those of you that don’t live in Utah, there is the Macy’s that is a department store and one that is a grocery store that possesses the guise of having the lowest prices in town. They achieve this guise by not updating their look (which is good for those of us nostalgic of trickle-down economics and The Clash) and by displaying prices as 5 for $10 even though there isn’t really any quantity discount (in other words you can still buy 1 or $2). Anyway, at least the place is clean enough and they employ a lot of college students.

This last year’s Christmas decorations were a little more under budget than usual however. Back in December I was walking down the isle that has the mexican food (the one my friend calls the catholic isle) and saw the above decorations. I thought that it was thoughtful of Macy’s to make all of our Latino friends feel more at home by recreating their natural habitat. But then I realized that the entire store had a similar theme in decor.

So I guess Macy’s was cutting corners, breaking open the unsold Cinco de Mayo decorations that had some red and green on them (yes, Mexico’s colors are red, white, and green). The good news is, they pass the savings onto us! Here are a couple more pictures of Macy’s Holiday decorations:

Suddenly, a chalupa sounds really good right now for some reason.

And then I was really shocked when I guy approached me from the frozen pizza/novelty ice cream isle wanting to haggle for replica rolexes and cocaine! Anyway, nice try Macy’s.

Above is a copy of Tiger Direct’s print catalog we got in the snail mail here at Sewell Direct. Them and New Egg are probably our biggest competitors when it comes to connectivity and other products that Sewell Direct built its business on in the beginning.

Anyway, upon seeing the catalog my heart sank because I thought initially that Tiger Direct had bridged the Multi-Channeling marketing gap by putting add-to-cart buttons under every product in their print catalog. It was a brilliant idea, I thought. This way, they’d easily be able to track which conversions came from the print catalog which is something we haven’t figured out how to do with 100% accuracy. And then of course there are the advantages of the residual traffic for having 100s of direct links from a print catalog that will just sit on coffee tables and in waiting rooms around the world.

Imagine my relief when I tested the buttons and none of them worked. I pushed the buttons, and then walked over to my computer, checked my Tiger Direct shopping cart, and it is still empty. I also noticed that there are some select products without an add-to-cart button. It is unlike Tiger Direct to be so careless.

Thanks Sam.

Well, it is officially the time of year when the days become shorter and darker. Naturally, we turn to the warm glow of the malls which are airtight as not to let in any natural air made from plants, and without a single window, so as to disallow any natural luminescence to enter those souless confines. And we buy nifty gifties (nifty gifties!) which are offerings to the deity Sol Invictus. Since I am well aquainted with my readership and happen to know that I only have one loyal reader that is pagan, (and ex-pagan at that… hi lena) I can guess that most of you don’t know that the festival to commemorate the winter solstice starts on Dec. 17, so start buying enough gifts to fill the days.

Playstation 3 camp Summary

…Which leads me to talk about the most sought after holiday store-item and the sacrifices made by brave Americans at Playstation 3 Camp. You can read about Playstation 3 camp if you go several posts down.

As you know I visited these fearless crusaders of the American dream several times and gave them my card with my blog address so they can come comment on my posts which were bearish about their plans to sell their new Playstation 3s on ebay for a projected gross revenue of north of $3K (most were talking low $5Ks). That would be a rough gross profit of $2,400 with the most conservative projections, not taking into account the real and immeasurable costs of lost jobs, failed exams, freezing camping, and the opportunity costs of what could be done during the week. It might still be worth it though, and that’s why I gave them all business cards so they could remember afterwards gloat about how smart they were and how worth it it really was. But I haven’t gotten any comments yet.

Fatheads: the cornerstone of home/office decor.

This thought has been on my mind for pretty much my entire life.

I got this in the snail mail a couple weeks ago. Just another cheap trick by another dime-a-dozen fraudulent traffic monger. They sent this to me making it look like a bill complete with a “notice date” and a perforated pay stub. (I erased my address that was on the pay stub)

This really classy (and by classy I mean misleading) kind of advertising really makes me want to invest $65 in a service that will drive really classy (and by classy I mean fraudulent) traffic to my site. Good thinking, you marketing geniuses. You suck.

Anyone think the new M&M commercial called ‘kaleidescope’ is weird? Hard shell candies with goofy googly eyes get motion sickness and eventually eaten a la slapstick to the music of Iron and Wine, the independent, cerebral, transcendental, melancholy, folk band, covering the Postal Service song “Such Great Heights.”

Is this a clever ironic juxtaposition, or a lame transparent marketing trick, tossing a stone in the dark at hard-to-reach demographics? What a weird pair. Imagine if WBEZ (NPR) took This American Life away from Ira Glass and gave it to the late-late-night charlatan Carson Daly.

Public Announcement: Cover the Earth in toxic materials. (And used motor oil makes good fertilizer)

Is it just me or is Sherwin Williams throwing away their leftist demographic with their brilliant logo? If someone would like to find out who came up with that, I think I could come up with some sort of reward. But for now I’m going to just assume that someone named Dutch Boy won the Sherwin Williams logo design contest.

Update:

This Year’s Sherwin Williams Historical Logo Authorship Discovery Award (or the SWHLADA).

I was waiting for my friend in a waiting room when this January 2006 Time issue with All-American Narcissist Bode Miller on the cover caught my eye. The cover story is entitled American REBEL. Sub-copy states: “He speaks his mind– and apologizes later.”

Either Time is cutting corners on their cover-page copy writing budget, or American rebels have tip-toed-through-the-tulips down a couple notches since the rebel defining Dean/Brandoesque days.

Also noted, I appreciated this author’s romanticized support of sending athletes to the Olympics that don’t care about winning, although Bode’s performance this Winter Olympics has not proven this strategy to be successful.

I like how Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post puts it:

“There are few things less worthy of respect than the athlete who pretends not to care about the outcome. It’s a bail-out position, a protection and an excuse. If you pretend not to care, then no one can say you really lost. Miller never committed to these Olympics, never put his ante on the table. He sauntered around the Games as if he was just here to watch.”