Superman's Pal, Jerry Seinfeld

OK, I'm posting this because I'm a comics goob, and because I was timing online animation at the office (no, really, it was work related!). I came across this new American Express Commercial - its a shade under five minutes long, requires speakers or headphones, and I think Supe's voice is Patrick Warburton, from The Tick and The Emperor's New Groove. Go check it out.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

About a month or two ago, Wizards of the Coast shut down its message boards dedicated to discussing WotC novels. They were very definite about the reason for the shut down. The boards were being shut down because people were getting online and trashing the heck out of the authors. This made the authors upset. This made the editors upset. This made the managers upset. The short version is - who needs this heartache? Why set up a bunch of message boards if you're going to get slammed? The choices were to shut it down, put up with it, or patrol the boards to the point that people felt inhibitted about any venting at all. They chose the first, and told the fans effectively that. I think it was pretty brave and straightforward of WotC to be upfront about it, and no, I don't think it was censorship - if you want to praise or yell at them (or at me), you can always go to amazon.com. Or you can grab me at a convention, buy me a beer, and yell at me there (that way I get a beer).

The reason I mention this is because of another bit of Internet bad-thinking - the Sloganator. This was the brainchild of some poor, now-unemployed webperson, a great idea for the Bush/Cheney Website. You get a graphic of the Bush/Cheney lawn sign, and you can personalize it with your own greeting, like "Renton Supports America" or "I Like Cheese". And then they went live with the site, giving people the chance to put in their own slogans.

Yeah, you just knew this would end badly.

The campaign tried to limit what words could be used ("miserable failure" quickly made the banned list"), but then wisely shut it down. Being the net, though, stuff like this never REALLY goes away. So here is a musical tribute (some of them cruel, some of them very cruel) to the Sloganator. It died so future campaigns could learn.

More later,