Be a part of the book trailer

Ever been in a book trailer? Do you wanna be?

Email me a short (5-10 seconds) video clip of you checking the tag of your favorite item of clothing and I’ll put you in the trailer.

It should go something like this:

1. Look into the camera and say, “Check the tag”
2. You check the tag on your item of clothing say, “Made in _____”
3. End with “Where are you wearing?”

Or some version of that. Feel free to get creative.

My goal is to have the movie done by early next week, so try to get the clips to me before Tuesday. Email them to Kelsey@travelin-light.com.

Insult yourself like no one is listening

This morning I caught a glimpse of the fella dancing in the mirror when an inspirational phrase popped into my head:

Dance like no one is watching.

The thought was followed by a somewhat less fuzzy one:

No one is watching because you can’t dance…and you’re ugly.

The man in the mirror laughed.

—-

When’s the last time you danced in the mirror? Were you any good?

Update: The Proud Father of a Vegetable Contest

Janelle “guessed” correctly. At 31 weeks the email update said that our little girl is the size of “four navel oranges.”

The fact that she guessed exactly this and that she works with Annie, makes me think that Janelle had some type of inside information. We’ll call her the contest winner, but I’m going to brand an asterisk on the front cover of the book I send her.

Given the controversial nature of her win, we’ll continue the contest for another week or two. If you’ve guessed already, your guess will stand for weeks 32 and 33.

Go here to see what others have guessed already.

Here’s the produce she has been compared to in the last few weeks:

33 weeks – ????
32 weeks – ????
31 weeks – four navel oranges
30 weeks – head of cabbage
29 weeks – butternut squash
28 weeks – Chinese cabbage
27 weeks – head of cauliflower
26 weeks – an English hothouse cucumber
25 weeks – an “average” rutabaga

Voted!

I voted against casinos and payday lending @ 380% interest.

I voted for the environment, fire trucks, and Change.

Me and karma should be pretty sweet for awhile.

On Politics: I Dream of Johnny

Thank the lord the election is almost over. I care about who wins, but at this point in time I care more for the darn thing to end. My sanity is at stake.

The other night I had a dream starring both presidential candidates. It went something like this…

I’m standing in an entrance to a building with John McCain and others that I don’t know when I see two Volkswagen-sized disco balls float down the street. I run outside to take a look, but don’t see them anymore. I dismiss them as I’m apt to do with floating disco balls and return into the building.

Someone, perhaps a McCain aide, rushes in through the front door, breathless. He tries to shut the door behind him, but an overly large man and woman push their way in. They aren’t quite right. And it doesn’t take long for us to realize that they are aliens from the floating disco balls.

Somehow they manage to manipulate us and we’re all about to commit mass suicide with some kind of pills. That’s when John McCain springs to action, overcoming their alien mind control techniques. He grabs a baseball bat and splits open the head of the nearest obese alien in human form. It doesn’t phase him. Chaos, ensues.

I escape deeper into the building, where I encounter Obama with an army of machine-gun-carrying secret service – Men in Black, if you will.

The dream then inexplicably cuts to later in the day – post-alien crisis.

I’m standing at concession stand inside a movie theater with John McCain. Apparently, we’re great buddies in my dream, even though I tend to be more of an Obama guy in real life. McCain orders a pizza.

While we’re waiting, we watch the TV above the entrance to the theater. Obama is giving his acceptance speech and it is the first time McCain hears that he lost the election.

(This is the weird part…)

I give McCain a hug. It’s an awkward hug because we’re really not the kind of pals that hug in public and McCain’s war injuries make him a pretty crappy hugger. I pat his back. He pats mine.

Once we unembrace, we quickly change the topic to the pizza. Where is it? It should be done by now.

I ask the girl working the concession counter and she tells me that she forgot about it. She asks McCain what his name is so she can place a new order. I tell her that he is Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for President, and that he has had a rough day between the alien thing and losing the election.

“Just my luck,” McCain says laughing and shrugging his shoulders, as only McCain can, “I can’t even get a pizza! It’s been some day, huh?”

We all laugh. Not your average laugh, but like Scooby and the gang at the end of an episode. It’s a group laugh.

I’m not a big believer in dreams meaning anything. But feel free to interpret.

I’ll get you started…

Does my subconscious embrace McCain or pity him? Does it think that McCain is quick to action, but lacks results? Does it think Obama surrounds himself with guys who can get the job done?

Or maybe I’ve predicted the coming of our new alien overlords that will descend from the heavens in disco balls. If so, will it even matter who is President then? The scary thing is that if the elections of our alien overlords are shorter than two years, I think I might welcome their arrival.

Where Am I Wearing? The book trailer

Because we live in a whacky age where every book should have a movie-like trailer, I tinkered around with a book trailer this weekend. Have any thoughts? Good or bad, I welcome criticism.

I really don’t get kicks out of putting shots of myself in boxers on YouTube, but once again I have. It’s just that I find my Jingle These underwear hilarious and I want to show them to everybody, which isn’t the kind of thing you can do in public.

An Economy Great for An Economist

This is really getting my goat. (And nobody should be getting my goat. I prefer my goat remains right where I left him.)

Economists didn’t predict, or at least do something about, the craptastic fashion in which our economy is spiraling into the crapper. YET – and this is a big yet – they are all over our TV’s, magazines, newspapers, and radios talking about the economy, why we are where we are, and how best to get out of this.

While the current state of the economy – which most economists didn’t predict – stinks, business is moving along quite swimmingly for economists.

In conclusion: Bad economy for us = Good economy for economists

A conspiracy theory: Economists saw the global financial crises coming and, instead of speaking out about how to prevent the problem, they went to get their teeth whitened.

Fruit of Whose Loom? Where our T-shirts come from

The U.S. imported 1.7 billion T-shirts in 2007, and only produced 244 million. The majority of which were produced by American Apparel. That’s right, 90% of our T-shirts are imported.

This month I contributed to Conde Nast Portfolio magazine. Mainly I gathered data for them to include a map with a feature story they were doing on American Apparel’s founder Dov Charney.

Check out the interactive version of the map of U.S. T-shirt imports.

I also wrote a small bit of text that accompanies the map in the magazine, out now. Basically I wrote a 300 word version of: We used to make shirts. Now we don’t. Here’s why.

The Proud Father of a Vegetable

Lately, Annie is asleep when I go to bed. This gives me the opportunity to be alone with our daughter growing in her belly.

I put my arm around Annie’s belly and quickly receive a short, yet forceful, uppercut or roundhouse (who can tell?) from within.

Each night my daughter kicks me goodnight. I hope that this changes over the years. According to the email updates we receive, she’s only the size of head of cabbage, so it doesn’t hurt much…now. But as she develops into larger produce – a pumpkin and eventually walking talking, soccer-playing stalk of corn – I hope this tradition comes to an end.

But for now it’s my favorite part of the day.

–————————————————————————————

How about a little pea-sized contest in honor of our baby? The first person who guesses the next vegetable or fruit that our daughter will be compared to, I’ll send an advanced copy of WAIW? And if you’ve won one of these already, I’ll send you a first edition hardcover (I should get my copies in the next few weeks).

Here’s the produce she has been compared to in the last few weeks:

31 weeks – ??????
30 weeks – head of cabbage
29 weeks – butternut squash
28 weeks – Chinese cabbage
27 weeks – head of cauliflower
26 weeks – an English hothouse cucumber
25 weeks – an “average” rutabaga

I’m not sure these comparisons are very helpful. I couldn’t identify any of these items in the grocery store.

A rant: Peeing Calvin

Allow me to go off.

Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame IS a rambunctious boy with an overactive imagination.

He IS NOT, nor has ever been depicted as, someone who urinates on things that rednecks don’t like.

Calvin never peed on a floating Chevy or Ford or John Deere or Case symbol, nor a floating (pick a Nascar number). The only thing I could imagine Calvin actually peeing on is a snowman, in an effort to slowly kill it. But everyone knows that rednecks like snowmen. If they didn’t they would surely have an adhesive on the back of their pickup truck of Calvin peeing on one.

So, if you want to piss me off put one of them there stickers on the back of your vehicle.

Yesterday I pulled up behind a truck with a demonic, grimacing Calvin peeing on the words “Anti-hunters” and “Animal Rights.” (Surprisingly these words were spelled correctly.) First, I never knew that there was an anti-hunting movement organized enough to be pee-worthy.

Look, just because you’re a hunter doesn’t mean you have to be against anti-hunters. From deerhunting.ws:

Why do we support anti-hunters?

The true anti-hunter has passed the litmus test that one must take not be a hypocrite.

They are one that can take the pulpit with a true conviction and transparency in their total life and environment. They take no life of any sort in their daily survival or existence. They do not judge which life is worth saving and which may die for their needs. Their protection of “life” extends to all living creatures regardless of them being “in the wild” or on a farm.

Example: If a preacher was to give a sermon on Sunday morning and then leave the church with his crack whores, we would call him a hypocrite.
Don’t know about you, but I’m anti-hypocrite and anti-crack whore just like these fellers.

Second, Animal Rights!?

Most hunters that I know aren’t against animal rights. They find sport in the game while connecting with nature. It’s not like they grab their rifle and holler to their wife, “Honey, I’ll be back this evening. Just going out to torture some animals.”

But this guy in this truck, he wanted nothing to do with animals having any of the rights. He doesn’t use any cleaning product or makeup unless it has been extensively tested on and resulted in the death of litters of animals. He doesn’t buy firecrackers larger around than a cat’s butt. He plucks the wings off of flies. He makes his coon dog watch him shower. When he watches those gnarly scenes filmed at slaughterhouses with madcows being slaughtered, he laughs so hard that he farts in his cat’s face.

And yes, he does have a cat and a dog, in fact, he has five of each. He likes being surrounded by living, breathing beings that aren’t twice as smart as him.

There I sat at the stop sign seething, with my meanest if-I-only-had-a-gun scour. After 10 seconds he turned right, a moose-sized plastic scrotum dangling from his hitch.

Don’t even get me started on moose nuts!

I turned left.