But it's reassuring to know that it'll always be Spring Break '99.

Just sayin.

I've been getting the Barack Obama propaganda emails for probably close to a year now.  I don't read many of them carefully.  But sometimes they catch me at the right time or with the right title, and I read and learn a little bit or click a link and read and learn a bit there.

A few days ago, I got a message titled:

Urgent Message from President Obama

And I opened it.  And read.  And realized what had happened.  And lost some respect for the Obama Community people.

The message wasn't urgent.  It was a link to a video blog post that the president had just made.  Yeah, sure, there was some urgency in the message.  It was a stimulus package related message, and the Obama people obviously think it's hugely important that they get their package through Congress.

But, in my opinion, that's not urgent enough to be titled or marked or tagged urgent.

Literary inflation we can call it maybe?  Dictflation? 

Regardless, it's a bummer.  I want to love the Obama Community people.  I want them to treat us right.  And it hurts me when they don't.

Well, it's Monday night, but here are two things I probably would have
shared if some of your were here on Tuesday in Beijing. Both via Andrew Sullivan.

 1. Will Ferrell imagining Bush's first State of the Union Address. It's
amazing how much stuff sorta-kinda came true.

 2. A devastating, fairly personal attack on Tom Friedman. I actually
agree with Friedman a lot of the time (although he does tend to state
the obvious and/or be overly anecdote-y), but I had fun reading this
article.

When public information about controversial action gets dropped into a mapping application, you get a serious topic for 7pm Tuesday discussion.

I'm now following @karlrove on Twitter.  Looks like it might be the real thing.  Or close to it anyway.

I figure this is as good a place as any to post a link to an article about atheism and advertising.

My favorite is the fact that the ad had to include the word probably because "the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines."

I've asked all of you for advice about The Carrot Project.  That Wudaokou Yunnan table might not have been the birthplace of this little company, but, at the very least, it was a changing table for the infant idea.

So, keeping that in mind as you watch this video, do you think Gary Vee would think I'm totally crazy?

I was going to write my weekly 24 hour late post to the 7pm Tuesday group about Christmas in China and whether it's catching on because Chinese people want to adopt it or because the Chinese (and multinational) businesses are pushing it.

But then I read this.  Can't let the beginnings of a conspiracy theory slip past this group unmentioned.

I've been on the Tom Friedman bandwagon lately.  I waver on him.  I think he has a strange and irrational faith in the Chinese economy long term.  But I also think he cares about the right things.

Anyway, that's not the point.  The point is that Friedman's December 17 Op Ed is a weird one that involves banking, China, state owned enterprise, competition, and communism.

It strikes me as a bit over the top, surface level observation rather than committed digging for root causes.

Am I crazy?

There is no question in my mind that Mr. X's mind is racing about this Blagojevich madness.  How could he possibly have thought he could get away with that?  I'm going to go ahead and posit that he did not think he could get away with it, that he pulled this bullshit and got caught on purpose, and that something bigger is brewing.  For the record.