I just came across this video. Titled Please Don’t Vote – Tell 5 Friends, its content is clever, funny, urgent and–best of all–relevant. It also contains no fewer than three calls to action.
It is the definition of viral marketing.
October, 2008
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Viral Marketing – Don’t Vote
October 22, 2008 by Michelle O'Hagan
Category Media | Tags: Politics,voting | No Comments
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So. Wrong.
October 20, 2008 by Michelle O'Hagan
A really, really pregnant Amy Pohler raps with the best. And shoots a moose.
All the mavericks in the house, put your hands up.
All the plumbers in the house, pull your pants up.http://www.hulu.com/watch/39808/saturday-night-live-update-palin-rap
Category Media | Tags: amy pohler,sarah palin,saturday night live | No Comments
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From Wrigleyville to Logan Square
October 17, 2008 by Michelle O'Hagan
The second-to-last sentence of my last post, Mister Manners, may have given you the idea that I don’t enjoy living in Chicago. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
In fact, when I met Patrick, I was one of those Chicago transplants who was still–five years after moving here–giddy-infatuated with our fair city. I did what most young(ish) people do when they move here: I got an apartment in Wrigleyville, bought a bicycle to ride by the lake, left my car parked on the street and rode the el to my job downtown. At the time it all was very exotic: City Life.
I’m a big fan of city life, probably because I grew up in the south, where big cities still are viewed with suspicion by a lot of folks who think it’s weird that so many people would want to be in such close physical proximity to other people who don’t look or act anything like them. And I always thought they were weird for wanting to live on giant pieces of land with so much space between them and other people who looked and acted exactly like them.
You can keep Los Angeles; San Francisco is beautiful; St. Louis is nondescript; and Miami is too humid. But more than once in my life, I thought I’d move to New York. I thought New York was my favorite city until I moved to Chicago.
Like most new residents, and all the tourists, I marveled at how clean Chicago is, how efficient it is, how it “works.” And that is true much of the time … if you’re downtown, or near downtown. However, if you venture a little further west and north away from the tourists, you’ll discover neighborhoods of people, residents who’ve lived in Chicago their entire lives.
And guess what? Everything is not shiny and clean. Lifetime residents of Chicago know that many things don’t really “work” they way they’re supposed to. Corruption in city government is rampant and–worse–incompetence is standard operating procedure. I have friends (also transplants) who defend this situation by way of explaining that corruption is a fact of life in every city government and incompetence is a way of life for some people. That may be true to a certain extent. But in Chicago, the corruption and the incompetence are in, your, face.
And this causes lifetime residents to view the rest of us (“blow-ins” is how Patrick refers to us) as a giant pain-in-the-ass. Lakefront liberals who are so damned impressed with the flower-boxes and wrought iron fences downtown that we enable and even promote the current corrupted condition by continuing to vote for the very people who are doing the corrupting. And after nine years here, I’m coming around to that line of thought.
I still love Chicago for all the reasons I loved it when I moved here nine years ago. The architecture. The lake. The neighborhoods. The food. The culture. The shopping. The attitude. The people. And I absolutely wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But my enthusiasm now is tempered by the fact that I’m a permanent resident, with a family to raise and property taxes to pay. I see things I didn’t see before, when securing a parking space in Wrigleyville on game-days was my biggest concern.
To be continued. :-)
Category Chicago | Tags: | No Comments
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Mister Manners
October 16, 2008 by Michelle O'Hagan
It’s been really difficult to keep my political thoughts to myself this election year; but for the most part, I have.
First: My husband and I agree to disagree on many things political, and that’s O.K. Interesting, even. And 99% of the time, we are polite and civil about it.
Second: The older I get, and the more my own life changes (having a couple of kids will do that to you), the more my own views–about politics and what’s important–evolve. And that’s a good thing, I think.
Third: I came really, really close this year to wanting to vote for a Republican.
Mike Huckabee, to be exact. I’m from Arkansas, and so is he and, for me, he’s a known quantity. He’s not Baptist-scary to me at all (and those people really freak me out) and I actually think he’s quite funny. But mostly, I found him to be a thoughtful, measured speaker, a moderate, centrist-Republican who can speak and behave like a grown-up (as opposed to a smart-aleck, with-us-or-against-us frat boy). Ahem.
And that is exactly the same quality I admire and like about Mr. Obama. Sure, I’ve lived in Chicago for the last nine years, but that doesn’t really color my views about him because, honestly, I knew very little about him before this election season.
I’m just tired of angry and snippy and snide and sarcastic. All around. We have enough problems as a country and as individuals, and we don’t need a leader who comes in on day-one angry at half the world. I’m just tired of it.
I want to be inspired. I want someone who makes me want to follow him. I want someone optimistic about our country and our future. And I want someone who can disagree with others in a civilized, even gentlemanly, way. I want someone with manners.
In this age of dust-ups and bared souls and hearts-on-sleeves, manners may seem quaint; but we forget the real purpose of manners.
We use good manners in order to make other people feel comfortable, not to make ourselves look good. Therefore, people who don’t use manners in their language or their actions really don’t show any consideration for others around them. They make people uncomfortable. And I’ve had enough of that. It hasn’t gotten us anywhere and it’s time to try something else.
I’m ready to take a chance and trust someone that perhaps I know little about. What I do know about Mr. Obama doesn’t scare me. It inspires me and makes me feel like someone in this world is worth getting excited about.
There, I did it. It’s very doubtful I’ll speak of national politics again in this space.
But the City of Chicago pisses me off almost every week. Stay tuned.
Category Chicago, Media | Tags: manners,obama | 2 Comments
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Promises
October 14, 2008 by Michelle O'Hagan
Right behind Patrick and my kids and my job, chocolate is one of my favorite things. Especially dark chocolate. Or semi-sweet chocolate. Especially chocolate made by Dove.Dove chocolate has a smooth, creamy consistency; almost like eating a stick of real butter (nope, I haven’t done that). Dove makes these little, harmless lumps of chocolate called “Promises.” When I need a fix, I can just pop one or five into my mouth and feel satisfied.
The only interesting thing about Promises is that when you unwrap each lump of silky-smooth chocolate, there is a pithy saying written on the inside of the foil. Something meant to assuage any guilt you may feel for indulging in such a practice as eating chocolate all day at work.
Recent pithy sayings:
“Make the most of today.”
“Put your feet up and unwind.”And my favorite:
“Don’t judge others or yourself.”
What a load of CRAP. I’ll never stop eating Promises, never, unless the doc tells me they cause some dread disease, and then it’s probably too late anyway. But, seriously: “Don’t judge others or yourself”???
Shame needs to make a comeback, people. Watch 10 minutes of daytime television (Maury Povich, Jerry Springer, The View) and you’ll know I’m right. For wa-a-ay too long, everybody’s been telling everybody else that anything anyone does is OK.
And it’s not.
Category Random | Tags: dove chocolate | No Comments
