A cool shirt.

I got a cool shirt yesterday. At work.

It's from the Truth campaign, which has been one of my favorite ad campaigns for a while. It's the anti-smoking one... encouraging kids to not start smoking. It's cool stuff. And it comes from CP+B.


The shirt is a "secondhand shirt," meaning that it's actually an old shirt that they've turned inside out and printed on. On the front it lists the names of some poisonous chemicals. And on the back it says, "All of the chemicals on this secondhand shirt are also in secondhand smoke." There's your concept.



But only focusing on the concept means ignoring the extreme coolness of this shirt. For one thing, it's an inside-out t-shirt, which is terrific. I'm including a detail picture of a seam, and as you can see, there's even a big string hanging off. Awesome.


But it's also definitely just an old shirt, and you can see the original printing through it (look closely at the second picture above). This one was for "Malibu Caribbean Rum with natural coconut flavor." Could there be a cooler shirt than this? Maybe. But I won't know until I've turned many more shirts inside out and printed on them.

One year older, and wiser too.

My blog is one year old today. Woohoo.


This is the 86th post, creating a mean of 7.167 posts per month, or one post every 4.24 days.

Stats for number of posts, by month:
Mean = 7.167
Median = 5
Modes = 3, 4, 5, 8, 10
Min = 1 (November)
Max = 14 (January)
Standard Deviation = 3.609
Variance = 13.026

My first post was the story about the big black man yelling at me on the subway. And it's still one of the better ones.

Things Britons say.

This is an account of an actual conversation between me and my British roommate last night. I promise.

My roommate, who I'll call Dave, was thinking of things we needed to get from the store. "Oh," he said, "we need more liquid."

"All right..." I paused. "What kind of liquid?"

"Oh, you know, washing up liquid."

This was a term I'd never heard before, and as he wrote "washing up liquid" on the dry-erase board I had a good chuckle to myself.

"You mean soap?" I asked finally.

"You just call that soap? For washing up?" He gestured to the dishes in the sink.

"Yeah. Or dish soap, at most."

He seemed a bit bothered by the number of things we call soap—from hand soap to dish soap to normal bars of soap, which is the only soap that he calls soap. But "washing up liquid"? Wow. Wow wow wow.

In my own defense, he got a kick out of when I called a portable stereo a "boombox." I'll concede that "boombox" (box go boom!) is about as cool a name as "washing up liquid."

A question, for everyone.

Would you wear pants with a velcro fly?

PROS:
Your fly would NEVER be open. In the act of buttoning the top button, your fly would just close. And the button would keep it from accidentally pulling open, or anything. No stuck zippers, no series of buttons to button, just pure fly-related confidence.

CONS:
- The sound, when you open it.
- Velcro has to be topstitched, but they could cover up the stitches. I'm not too worried about that.
- The lint accumulation problem. I've never personally had this problem, but it would seriously damage my fly-is-never-open argument.
- It would have to be very flexible velcro, so that it wouldn't be too stiff in such a crucial area. But jeans are fairly stiff anyway, so maybe it's a moot point.

So? Would you?

Bullet points again.

These aren't all of general interest. Sorry.

• Last week I touched the Titanium Grand Prix and Interactive Agency of the Year trophies from the Cannes Lions.
• Yesterday in Sacrament Meeting a guy talked about how he took an Astrology class in college that made him feel closer to God. Pretty sure he meant Astronomy.
• This was in an email from Jeff, about the Ad Lab: "...and still have a ton of Ad Council work. They tell us we are their largest agency."
• Saw the Harry Potter movie on Saturday. Bellatrix is awesome. They should do a whole series of movies about her.
• This is the coolest website ever: www.simpsonizeme.com. You upload a picture of yourself, and it makes you look like you would on The Simpsons.
• I saw somebody wearing a Goorin hat at work last week.
  
• The snogging in the HP movie wasn't as bad as it could have been. That said, there's a billion times more of it in book 6. So I'm sure we'll get an eyeful before these movies are done.
• We've been piggybacking on somebody's unsecured wireless network and home. Except now they've secured it. Dang.
  
• I can not, and will not, live without internet at home. And if that means paying for it, well... so be it.
• I'm about halfway done with my internship, I think. And the prospect of having to get a real job scares the lights out of me.
  

It was like... magic.

I went to the library a few days ago. I'd just finished Catch-22, which was tremendous, and I needed another book to read.

I decided, on a whim, to see if they had a copy of Harry Potter, book 6. I knew it would be fruitless, though. I'm pretty sure that every copy in the world is checked out, so people can reread it before the 7th book comes out (which is exactly what I had in mind). When I looked it up on the library computer, all the copies were indeed checked out, except for one—which indicated it was in a section called "Basement Children."

There were no stairs, so I got in the elevator to go down to the basement. Only it didn't go down to a basement.

After looking around a little bit, I consulted the librarian at the front desk. She told me there wasn't a way that I could get to "Basement Children," but that she could go get the book for me. This is where it gets interesting.

She took a set of keys out of her desk, and walked to the wall. Neatly disguised by the wood paneling on the wall, was a hidden door. She opened the door in the wall and disappeared down a flight of stairs. She came back up a few minutes later, indicating that luckily the book had just barely been checked back in, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to find it.

I was pleased to get the book, for sure. But what's the deal with "Basement Children"? And the hidden door? Is there a vault down there? What else is in it?

So many questions.

Pam Pong. Lyrics and chords.

I'm obsessed with The Office. Like, actually obsessed. And there's a pretty good chance that you are too, if I have any idea who reads my blog.

It turns out there's a great fan-created song about Pam, called Pam Pong, by Sweet Diss and the Comebacks. Most fan-created content is crap. But this song is well-written and well-performed. Do you think I'm allowed to put an mp3 here? Regardless, I can email it to you if you want to hear it. And you probably do.

The mere existence of the song doesn't prove that I'm obsessed with The Office. But the fact that I transcribed the chords, and am posting them here, does.

Verse:
A Fmaj7 A Fmaj7 G (4x)

Chorus:
C Fmaj7 C Fmaj7
C Fmaj7 C Fmaj7 G

The other part:
C Dm Am D G (4x)

And here are the episode-reference-laden lyrics. They're actually quite charming:

She will make up her hair, but she can’t make up her own mind
She will answer the phones, but she can’t answer her own heart
She’s the kind of girl you see, whose smile could light The Electric City
She’s the kind of girl you know that you could marry just to show you care

So, how are you Beesly? Who’s getting you down?
You know that you tease me when no one’s around everyday.

Catherine Zeta flirts, Bobblehead Joe has fireworks
The boss is already out, he’ll Schrute it up, I have no doubt.
She’s the kind of girl you’d adore, that you could make your famous cheese sandwich for.
And dance until the music stops; Look into her eyes, tell her how you feel.

So, how are you Beesly? Who’s getting you down?
You know that you tease me when no one’s around everyday.

She said ‘Swaying isn’t dancing’ and any idiot could tell you that
I was crushed and what I said to her was so mean and then, I walked away from
the girl I love, the girl I need, the girl I deeply care about;
the girl I want, the girl I desire, the girl I simply can’t live without

We hiked Garden of the Gods.

Isn't it about... time?

I haven't really taken it upon myself to put ads up here in the past. But I thought this one was worth sharing.


The site, as you were probably wondering, is Thesaurus.com. I'm not sure who decided that thesaurus users are the most likely to have severe underarm sweating, but oh well.

Also, I hope the lady in the picture gets her big break from doing this.

Feliz Cuarto de Julio.

A few thoughts from the last few days.

As of July 3rd, it's been five years since I went into the MTC. Five years. I can't believe I've even been alive that long.

I just spent the last day or two in the company of an extremely pregnant woman, and she was really, really hard to be around. I'm sure not all women are so unpleasant before childbirth, but this particular one was worthy of a certain appellation I've never felt comfortable saying. Wow.

I hope everybody had a good 4th of July. We made pupusas and chili rellenos. It was great, albeit not entirely American.

I like pop music. Not necessarily everything that's on the radio, and in fact I'm a bit behind in popular music, but I like the lack of pretension that comes with pop. Most performers don't take themselves too seriously. And it's refreshing.

I really like my job. And by job I mean internship.

That's all, really.