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I've been exploring YouTube a bit more lately and just thought I'd point to some of the videos I've found that amuse me...

• Crazy Cat Pinky - the cat in this video wigs out and I actually laughed out loud.
• This Place Sucks - Superfriends - the classic Superfriends/Office Space mashup.
• Deadwood Swearing - nothing but two and a half minutes of swearing edited together... even if you know Deadwood, this might be kind of surprising...
• Ryan vs Dorkman - A really well-done lightsaber duel between two goofy looking guys... really good amateur choreography and great lightsaber effects.

No, I haven't posted much on any of my sites this week. My aunt died on Monday, and I just haven't felt like writing much. There's really not any more to say; the funeral is on Saturday. In the meantime, I hope everyone's having a good week, what with the first day of summer and the hot weather and all.

Okay, tell me this guy doesn't look totally cool:

Photo thanks to Simone at Emerald Bay Photography

This guy was with the fire dancer troup that performed Saturday night at the Bite of Bend. We decided he looked like Willy Wonka, though now I'm also thinking the Mad Hatter. Watching him, I also think he had a Johnny Depp thing going on. Anyway, I begged and pleaded with Simone for a picture of him so I could post it... how could I not? That guy rocks. Seriously.

Top hats are cool.

When I started writing this post, the video in question actually existed... but now the link they had goes to the Visitor and Convention Bureau site... hmmmmmm.

The title of this post might as well be "How not to do viral marketing." It concerns a new animated ad campaign, detailed in excruciating detail in this Bulletin article, launched by the Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau... I'm actually at a loss for words.

Okay, I'm not really. Nor will I mince words: at best, this video makes me embarrassed for Bend.

My wife sent me the link in the morning, without explanation. First of all, it took forever to load, which is not a good sign. Finally, it started, and I was immediately sorry it did; my first impulse was to turn it off. When I first glimpsed something that sort of resembled Pilot Butte in the background, I thought, Is this supposed to be about Bend? It couldn't be, it doesn't even make any sense. But lo and behold, it turned out to be about Bend after all.

My next thought was that somebody had gone out of their way—poorly, I might add—to make fun of Bend. It's certainly not something that would ever entice me to visit.

Finally I saw the Bulletin article, and things started to make a perverse sense. Here's a clip:

The Bend Visitor & Convention Bureau has launched an edgy, animated online marketing campaign featuring a video the bureau hopes is so entertaining that viewers will e-mail it to friends, family and colleagues.

The video is sort of like Bend meets The Simpsons.

Locals will recognize scenes in the lighthearted production and presumably chuckle at the characters and lyrics.
...
"The video is funny and entertaining," Glover said. "But, there's also a message that shows what we have here - the river, rafting, skiing, etc. We hope that people will be entertained, then watch it again or pass it along via e-mail."

Ultimately, the video's goal is to interest more people in visiting Bend.

According to Glover, the video is the first of its kind to market a destination such as Bend through an emerging form of advertising known as viral marketing.
...
Glover already considers the campaign a winner, thanks to a marketing coup that will allow friendster.com, a video downloading site popular among iPod owners, to send links to the video with endorsements to more than 1.25 million of its subscribers.

"Just through that, the campaign is a success," Glover said.

Are you kidding me?

There's nothing "edgy" or Simpsons-like anywhere in that video. In fact, it's some seriously shoddy art and animation work happening there. (I know—well, I hope—the people behind it can do better.) And being a local, trust me when I say there's no chuckling going on, and the "recognizable" scenes are barely even that.

Here's a hint about viral marketing: it tends to work best when it's not directed. Don't hold it out there and proclaim it a success; either it'll happen on its own or it won't. You have no real control over the matter.

And they think hooking up with Friendster is a marketing coup? Really? Friendster is on the wane in a big way. They would have been far better off leveraging MySpace (with 86 million users) and YouTube. Then you'd see some real numbers.

Oh and by the way, pick a better domain name next time... "where-the-hell-are-we.com" just lacks that, how would you say, convenience and ease of use in passing around a link.

I will concede that this video is viral in an avian flu sense—it's spreading around the local blogosphere and everybody I've shown it to hates it. But that's not the kind of viral you'd hope for.

Postscript: And it's gone... I wonder if that was intentional, or there was too much backlash?

Post-postscript: Yes, you'll notice I didn't actually link to the video directly... I debated it. But since it appears to be gone anyway, oh well.

Go and check out today's Pearls Before Swine comic strip. It's the good stuff.

Deadwood is back (as of last Sunday)! I loves me my Deadwood!

I just had to point that out. That, and say, it's about time somebody beat Farnum to a bloody pulp...

I saw the third X-Men movie on Saturday, and while I don't think it's as good as the previous two movies, I rather liked it. It won't classify as a great movie, but it was certainly enjoyable.

So what follows is my review... although it's less of a "review" than just a general geeking-out about things. And there are definitely Spoilers ahead so be warned.

More...

So can you hear this ringtone? It's supposed to be too high-pitched in frequency for the ears of people over 30 to hear... but I can hear it. It's via Shannon, who seems to be alternating between thinking she's too old to hear it, or she's just been exposed to too much loud music over the years.

...she also wants me to use this quote for her quote of the week: "next thing ya know, i'll be wearing depends and drooling." I don't know, that seems too easy to me. We'll see.

This post is really to supplement my Water in the Desert post from yesterday; I wanted to include some pictures of the cistern we used to play on, because that was one of my favorite parts from that post. So while we were out at my parents' place today, I snapped a few pictures.

Here's a view of the thing. The concrete's a little worse for the wear after 20+ years, but you can see it's shaped like a box, and has those weird steel blade-looking things sticking out of it. Like rebar, only sharper. And sideways. Plus, you can get a sense of its height; I was standing on an elevated spot, and the top was still over my head a bit, and I'm six feet tall.

Holding the camera over my head and shooting blindly... here's the top of the cistern. Nice and flat. The pumphouse is adjoining; from the cistern you could wander around on top the pumphouse. That wasn't as much fun though.

Nice view along the side, closeup on the blade thingy. Yes, we would climb on those. They're what, maybe an eighth of an inch thick.

This is part of an ongoing series of articles that I'm writing on Central Oregon and growing up here; you can view the introduction here.

Growing up on the desert, water takes on a special, almost symbolic, significance. You are constantly surrounded by sand, sagebrush, juniper trees, dry vegetation like bunchgrass and cheat grass, all of it broken up by undulating mounds or ridges of dark lava rock... and not a drop of water in sight.

...I was going to write some pithy metaphor about how the mind grows to reflect the desert environment around it and consequently understands water to be as precious as it is to the ecosystem, but you know what? I'm not that high-fallutin'.

More...

Just thought I'd post a quick note on my quick-and-easy (and preferred) method for cooking salmon. Salmon is probably my favorite fish, and nothing beats it when it's fresh... anyway, here's how I've been fixing it lately:

• Turn the broiler on high. Move the oven rack up accordingly.
• Line your broiler pan (or similar) with a sheet of aluminum foil. Turn the edges up to minimize the mess.
• Spritz the foil with non-stick cooking spray. It makes things infinitely easier.
• Prepare the salmon: I season it with seasoning salt, lemon pepper (if I have it), and dill. Simple.
• Place it on the foil, and drizzle with olive oil.
• Put it in the oven, cook for 4-5 minutes (depending on the thickness of the cut). Flip it, and cook for another 4-5 minutes.
• Remove it to your plate, and eat.

Simple, quick, and easy. And so good.

The sixth day of the sixth month of...

Yeah, are we really doing this?

I got nothin'.

I'd seen this before, floating around the net, and should've linked to it then; but now is as good a time as any: People over 30 should be dead.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

You have to go read it all. Love it! :)