Somewhere, somehow society has forgot civility. I know it is hard to believe, it’s not like we have young girls being molested by the TSA. It’s not like when your driving down the freeway and put your blinker on people speed up and cut you off. I’m certain America would never go to war killing people over oil. Those kind of things never happen. Not in the Grand Ole U.S. of A! Never Ever!
Obviously I’m being sarcastic. All of those things happen, and much worse. In some ways I’m talking about the little things, but really this post is concerning the really big things. I was outside working on the yard this evening contemplating what to do next, and just how amazing it was outside. The perfect balmy weather and a gorgeous 
sunset, hummingbirds zipping to and fro, a small dove nesting protecting her eggs in the tree, beautiful bird calls ringing in the air. The only thing that could have made it better would be sharing it with my wife, and friends.
Along walks a lady with a dog. I noticed them because the dog looked a little odd to me. Can’t quite put it into words just a little off. As they turn the corner in front of our house the lady stops. Reaches down, and grabs something. I’ve seen many people discarding their trash into our yard, but never anyone pick something up. The lady proceeds to check out what she picked up, as it turns out a lighter. She flicks the wheel and sparks shower off it, she tries a few more times, then shakes and looks at the lighter.
What comes next is truly astonishing to me. She decides the lighter is of no use to her and without a though, as careless as can be, throws it back down knowing I’m standing at most thirty feet away to her right. From the unmitigated audacity I can’t help but laugh. She doesn’t even miss a step, just trucks her fat ass down the road with the odd looking mutt.
I’ve been all over this ball we call a planet and never before have I seen someone pick something up and not take it to the trash. You’ve already expended the energy to pick it up. Holding it to the trashcan is minor in comparison.
Honestly dear reader I’m certain their is an allegory here if you were to think about it. It certainly sums up America, and that is something I’m not proud of. I’m embarrassed to be associated with people who carelessly toss their garbage in my yard, and even more embarrassed to be associated with a careless excuse of humanity that would pick something up and toss it back where it was. While this story is true, my yard is a metaphor for whats going on in this country.
We need to make 2012 count. It is time we started cleaning up the damn mess we’ve made of things, and holding those trashing our yards accountable metaphorically speaking. If we don’t start enforcing civility people throwing trash in our yards will be the least of our worries. Go meet with your elected officials and send this message “We don’t care the trash was here before you got here, you picked up the trash now go throw it away!”
I came across an advertisement that might be something my sister would be interested in earlier today. I clicked the Ad and was directed to the Knott’s Berry Farm site and landing page. I was dismayed a site trying to sell us a very social experience without a way to share it with our friends!
It is amazing how often I find large companies and small mom and pop stores that don’t have a way to share a find with others. Guerrilla Marketing 101’s first rule is make it easy for others to share a promotion. You end up with 2 or more people in most circumstances with knowledge of your promotion but only paying for one impression.
Take the time this minute to check your businesses site and promotional material, make certain it has a way to share your material. A quick checklist of items to look for:
Print Material
Web Based Material
The list is obviously not comprehensive, but it covers probably 80-90% of most use cases. By making certain that your site and marketing material cover these few items you can avoid mistakes like Knott’s Berry Farms made. Now I’m off to manually share the information with my sister.
This would be so much easier if instead of politically correct euphemisms the TSA Agents called the choices what they are:
@obama, @google, @hulu is this the future of the net? News Corp has laid down the gauntlet and thrust a dagger into the heart of Net Neutrality! According to the story at Gizmodo News Corp is banning all Cable Vision customers from viewing Fox shows on Hulu.
It’s a curse we love ‘em and hate ‘em. Temporary backup files can be real life savers. The problem often is that by enabling them on every application you end up with lots of extraneous files littering your hard drive. One application is a particularly bad litterer; Gedit!
This happens to me quite often. Sometimes I just need to move some large data files such as all the video that is getting shot with my Droid to my external storage. Other times I need the files I am working on but still need some extra space. What can I do?
Every blog needs an obligatory 1st post that introduces the author and blogs subject matter to the reading audience. http://markfinch.info is the weblog for…
Many blogs reported that today April 12th would be the launch. Yet it is already after business hours and the phone did not materialize. A quick look shows that some have already revised those estimates and are reporting the 29th.