Amazing. This guy can’t tell the truth on any issues…

Dear Senator Obama,

Could you make up your mind?

Your Pal,
Vincenzo

About two months ago, I had a fight with a douchebag online. Scott from TUAW had asked how much a custom WordPress template should cost him, and I said a few hundred dollars. The douchebag chimed in with this:

@blankbaby you get what you pay for…. anything under 1000.00 is probably a little sketchy.

A little bit sketchy? A grand for a WordPress template? I called his ass out on it…

@macgasm $1000 for a fucking wordpress template? Stop it. You web designers crack me up.

Note the wink, btw. I said it in as good naturedly a way as possible, but you have to think that someone who would charge $1000 for a blog template is taking advantage of people who don’t know how to do something. The idea that someone can make a CSS sheet and call it a $1000 job is ridiculous.

Do I have the skills to do it? Nope. I certainly don’t, nor do I claim to. I don’t claim to have any design skills beyond tweaking a template that’s prefabbed for me. I’ve never done one from scratch, nor do I care to. I actually write / do video / take photos. I’ve always been a content guy and when it comes to appearances I either get templates from legit free sources or have someone who knows what they’re doing take care of that sort of thing for me.

Anyway, he starts in, and the conversation moves to the fact that, in his words, no designer worth his salt wouldn’t charge that much, and then he starts in on my site because, you know, it’s fun to poke fun at people who use free themes. Apparently the look of my site isn’t up to snuff for our professional designer.

Anyway, I was begging him to show me a thousand dollar template. After all, he claims to be a designer worth his salt, so it shouldn’t be hard to give me an example of what $1000 gets me. Here we go:

(Click here so you can experience its full beauty)

Yep. That stellar amazing design, that as of 2 months ago wasn’t even close to finished and, as far as I can tell still isn’t finished, is worth $1000. What you don’t know is that he’s going to do some amazing things with it very shortly. After all, he’s a designer worth his salt. Ask him. He’ll tell you.

So you’re probably wondering why this douchebag is even on the radar.

Well, from time to time I like to drop in on assholes and see if they’re still full of shit, so I ended up at Macgasm.net today. Macgasm used to be a podcast that produced an episode weekly and moved on to produce occasional episodes whenever the mood struck. I’m guessing they’re out of the podcasting biz because they haven’t produced an episode since May 22 (I’m sure it’s the host’s stellar design business blowing up that really put the kibosh on that one).

As I scrolled down, I realized that ole Super Designer is now using a free template of his own. Makes sense after the complete mess of a design his last one was (that one was custom). I guess it didn’t quite work out for him and he decided to let someone more experienced put the face on his brand. If I were a designer, you wouldn’t catch me dead using a free template, but then again, if I claimed to be a web designer, I’d probably have some skill in doing so and the homepage for my company would be centered on the page. Oh, and I’d proofread it so I didn’t end up with language like this:

“Alpha-one.ca is a professional Web design company in Ottawa, ON that supplies services of web design and development, web application development, professional ecommerce online shopping systems, Flash multimedia, VRML 3D solutions, website hosting, search engine promotion (SEO), software development and graphics design.

Supplies services of?

Nice english.

I would never shred someone for using a free template. Frankly, I think people spend entirely too much time worrying about the look of their site and not enough time on its actual content (or the fact that, like Josh, they spell like a fifth grader and use apostrophes all over the place whether they need to be there or not; good thing he graduated college. SUCCESS!). It’s the old argument of sizzle without steak and flash without fire.

@vincenzof if you want free… go to the wordpress site a look up a template… cause clear insignificantthoughts.com did…

But in this case, for someone who railed against “free templates” and for someone who claims to be a professional web designer, the path to whose door is being beaten by people hungering for innovative $1000 web designs, the idea of using a free template, particularly one that’s so widely used that I recognized it should be counter to everything he stands for.

That would imply, of course, that he stands for something, and hypocrisy makes no allowances for principles.

Frigging WOW

via Caroline

Wow…
Read More »

Anyone who has read this site for any length of time knows how fond I am of Paul Pots. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent has the single most amazing voice most of us have ever heard. He’s a superb talent in every respect.

So when I saw someone else was going to do Nessun Dorma, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I wasn’t expecting another Potsesque performance.

But we certainly got one…

Should be a great season.

Wifey forwarded this to me and it made me laugh pretty hard, so I decided to share…

We always hear ‘the rules’
From the female side.

Now here are the rules from the male side.

These are our rules! Please note.. these are all numbered ‘1′ ON PURPOSE!

1. Men are NOT mind readers.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports It’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become Null and void after 7 Days.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are. Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one

1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials..

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say ‘nothing,’ We will act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, Expect an answer you don’t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine… Really.

1. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball or golf.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!

1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight;

But did you know men really don’t mind that? It’s like camping.

I love A Hamburger Today. It’s a top notch food blog in every sense of the word, and because of them I found out about Five Guys, which I consider the Cadillac of burgers at the moment.

One thing I don’t get, though, is their love of rare burgers… Check this shot out…

To me, that burger looks gross, but that’s just me. What do you all think? Like your meat still mooing?

So this judge in the picture, who’s obviously an Obama sycophant (weird how so many Obama supporters love Che, no?) thinks the death penalty is cruel and unusual in its adminsitration in Ohio, and yet he proudly displays a picture of Che Guevara, a brutal murderer (often euphemised as a “revolutionary”) who didn’t give two shits about whether he was being cruel or unusual in his punishment of dissidents and opposition.

Hypocrite doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Just for the record, I’m also against the death penalty, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a picture of Che in my house. Anywhere.

The internet is awash with people lionizing the late Tim Russert. For me, I really don’t give two shits if he’s dead. I feel no remorse, pity, or even sadness, except for his family who has to live without him now.

Tim Russert, despite the glowing eulogies being given right now, was not a good person. He was not an honest stand-up guy. He was not a check and balance to the powerful.

If you’re a journalist, and a very senior White House official calls you up on the phone, what do you do? Do you try to get the official to address issues of urgent concern so that you can then relate that information to the public?

Not if you’re NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert.

When then-vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby called Russert on July 10, 2003, to complain that his name was being unfairly bandied about by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Russert apparently asked him nothing.

And get this: According to Russert’s testimony yesterday at Libby’s trial, when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record.

That’s not reporting, that’s enabling.

That’s how you treat your friends when you’re having an innocent chat, not the people you’re supposed to be holding accountable.

Russert’s lifetime low, however, was during the much ballyhooed Don Imus scandal. After years of Imus letting him on to promote his snoozy books about his father and what he apparently didn’t learn about friendship and loyalty from him, he turned on his longtime friend as he was going through one of the toughest times of his life and publicly came out against him.

And I think the discussion was not whether or not he said something terrible or offensive, but what should be the magnitude of his punishment, which I think is a fair discussion to have.

Way to defend your friend there, you spineless shit. You don’t question whether he did something wrong? Fuck you. I did. So did lots of other people, and we aren’t even his friend. You were. For a long time.

Friends have fights. Friends have arguments. Friends have disagreements, break paths, and never speak to each other again. It’s the way of the world. Sometimes friendship doesn’t last forever. However, when you’re a friend to someone in the public eye, and you’re in the public eye as well, your voice can be a calming one and may even diffuse a controversy. Instead of doing that, Tim Russert chose to dissociate himself with his longtime friend and let him swing in the wind like an old tee shirt.

That’s not what a friend does. Instead of defending his friend, he took sides with the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and everyone else who profits off the racism industry. With all due respect, this is not a man to be honored in death or in life, particularly since he learned nothing from “Big Russ” who he attributed all his life learnings to.

Good riddance, Tim.