Things I've Found by Mark Rose

by Mark Rose

Ah, the joys of baseball, of hearing Bret Boone smack an RBI into centerfield, to see the grace of Ichiro as he calmly swats another single, Pete Rose-style, hitting them where they ain’t, the snickering when knowledgeable Seattle fans booed lying sack of buttwash Commissioner Bud Selig as he was introduced, the tears as we said goodbye to class act Jay Buhner. Sigh. Now there’s only 160 more games left to the season. And on that note . . .

Idiots: Hacker attempts to defend himself; claims court is trying wrong man because he spells his name with capital and lower-case letters and not all capitals as is shown on court papers; also wants to bring entire population of United States of America into courtroom. Must . . .control . . .fist.

http://online.securityfocus.com/news/356

Coolness: An entire site devoted to Defunct Amusement Parks. Sad and beautiful at the same time:

http://www.defunctparks.com/

Food: First there was green ketchup, then purple, and now it will be either Orange, Pink or Teal. Teal??!! Oh, and you won’t know what color it is until you splooge it all over your food. Another reminder that children should not be the economic tyrants that they are:

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020329/3982604s.htm

Sports: University of Northern Colorado Fightin’ Whities hold true to form. Can’t run, jump or shoot baskets, apparently.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1056957,00.html [OK, I couldn’t stand it. I had to find their official website since all news reports are down. Here they are: http://www.fightingwhites.org/index.aspx]

(Worse yet, I think I picked them to win my overall NCAA Final Four bracket.)

We Are What We Market: An interesting demographics Web site. No, that’s not an oxymoron. Basically, enter your ZIP code and you’ll find what marketers think of who you are based on where you live. Yeah, that’s all they need. Of course, it’s all completely wrong, but do marketers care? Absolutely not. For instance, my particular ZIP Code is ranked highly in the “Money & Brains“ group. OK, no problem there. But supposedly, people who live in my code are:

1) “Most likely to shop at Nordstrom” (no thank you, not me);

2) “Own a passport” (ok, got me on that one);

3) “Have bonds” (presumably this does not mean Barry Bonds but I do own multiple James Bond books if that’s what they mean. If they mean bearer bonds, uh no, I learned my lesson after watching the movie “Heat”.)

4) “Watch the X-Files” (I can’t stand the X-Files)

5) “Read Byte” (sheesh, is that magazine even still published? I thought it went out of business in the early 90s)

So basically, 1 out of 5. Yep, that’s about how accurate marketing demographics is. Enjoy.

Nuts: Does anyone think that this quote from Barry Diller about the future of media contradicts itself from one sentence to the next?

“Media is going to continue its trend of consolidation, which mirrors the ongoing globalization. This is a natural law. It is inevitable. The other development is fractionalization. More options for consumers, more choice, smaller audience counts.”

- Barry Diller in “The New Barry Diller,” <http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/cotown/la-000021331mar24.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dbusiness%2Denter > Los Angeles Times, 03/24/02. (Methinks Barry better stop smoking his own belly button lint.) [Link is down.]