From the Bottom of Everything

Note: this is an official call for entries in the first ever Douchebag of the Year contest hosted here on justinmccammon.com. If you have a Douchebag you'd like to nominate please send a story stating the Douchebaggery committed by the person to justinmccammonblog [at] gmail [dot] com. Obviously this contest will run until the end of the year.

I was driving with my girlfriend to get some ice cream when I saw the first sign of the douchebag...a bumper sticker with too many words on it to read from a safe distance. Luckily, we were at a stoplight so I was able to pull forward and read it.
It said:

If it's worth dying for in the middle east, it's worth drilling for in the US.

So let's examine this a bit closer. The "it" being referred to is obviously oil. So this person (and I consider all bumper stickers to be representative of their owners) says oil is worth dying for. I don't really care where he thinks it's worth dying for, because we have a problem right here. Oil is not worth DYING for. Under such logic the US could just give some poor souls to [fill in your favorite oil producing country here], they could kill them, and then we could get a few barrels of oil, say 100 barrels per person. Does that sound fair (it's not too far off from the current conflict in Iraq)? Of course it doesn't, because there are very few of us outside prison walls that believe trading human life for anything, especially oil, is an OK thing to do.

Now that second part of the bumper sticker, about drilling in the US. First off, this was on a full size Chevy truck. Not the biggest, but not the smallest either. This truck also had some aggressively treaded "off-road" tires on it. One could assume this person likes to enjoy our wonderful national parks and forests and the "off road" experiences they provide. In the same breath of air, this person is also calling for such places to be overrun by drilling operations is search for that ever elusive gusher. But back to the truck; and this is the part that really gets me: If this person believes that oil is worth dying for why aren't they driving a Prius? What this person is saying with the bumper sticker and vehicle combination is that not only is oil worth dying for, but I'm going to use up more oil than really necessary to get my ass around and if more people need to die to get me that oil than so be it.

In the end, what I really wanted to do was to walk up to the guys window and remind him that the army is still looking for volunteers. I mean, if oil is worth dying for, why the hell is he still over here?

Counterpoint:
OK, so maybe this bumper sticker is really tongue in cheek and this person is a huge environmentalist who is actually running their truck on biofuel. Not likely. There are few other ways to interpret the bumper sticker other than the way I have above.

On Free Speech:
Just to be clear, I'm not saying this person shouldn't be allowed to say what they're saying, but rather I'm upset that such a mindset has been adopted by one (and probably lots more) of my fellow countrymen.

Labels: douchebag of the year, rants

Irony strikes again! Recently the Denver Egotist was busy bashing Colorado schools for not pumping out incredible students filled with natural talent (they don't believe talent can be taught, but would like schools to try harder at teaching students how to... wait I feel a headache coming on). At the same time CU students Eliot Nordstrom and Phil Van Buren were busy accepting their gold One Show Pencil for their Doritos work. CU's Austin O'Connor probably didn't get a chance to read the Egotist story either, he was busy getting the Patrick Kelly Scholarship from the One Show. (to it's credit, the Egotist did name CU's program the best in the area)

Actually, speaking of students, I'd bet a lot of them missed the Egotist story since the New Denver Ad Club was holding it's "Connect 2008" job fair on Friday. I made the trip down to the event and found a lot of agencies eager to help develop Denver's talent. I may have even landed myself a fall internship. Strangely enough I didn't see The Egotist at the job fair even though they claim to have "seen almost all the portfolios" of all of Denver's ad students (granted, I don't know who is behind the curtain at the Egotist, so maybe they were there, anyone care to share some insight?).

Here's my take on this: I think the Egotist might be getting at something, but they're a bit off target. Schools can only take you so far, the rest if up to the student. If you want to succeed and go the extra mile you will, regardless of what school you attend. Schools can only augment and support the effort (and talent) provided by the student. For example, UNC's marketing program is almost devoid of any advertising classes / support (two classes are offered specifically on advertising). That doesn't stop me from pushing for more and getting my hands on all the ad books I can, reading CA, CMYK, countless blogs, and attending creative workshops. I want it, and if UNC won't give it to me I'll get it elsewhere.

So maybe the problem isn't with schools so much as it is with students? What do you guys think? Let's hear it in the comments.

Labels: denver egotist, one show, rants, student work

One of my favorite bands, The Arcade Fire, has an impressive new site up for their single "Black Mirror" over at www.rorrimkcalb.com (look at the url in a mirror, I didn't get it right away). You can remix the song as it and the video plays by pressing 1-6 on your keyboard to take out / add in various tracks of the song. While I love the band and the song, I have to say the 3-4 minute load time is a bit out of control, especially since I have a pretty fast connection normally. Ultimately though, I feel like the content is cool enough to justify it, but like I said, I'm already a fan, YMMV.

Oh, a few other complaints, relatively on topic: 1976 productions did this site and I thought I'd go find their site and check out some of their other stuff. Nope, not a chance in hell. Try googling 1976 productions to see what I mean. Then try urls you think might make since (1976productions.com, 1976production.com, 1976.com, no, no and no.). So alas, I thought maybe I'd find it on Creativity's website since I read about it originally in their March dead-tree edition. Ha! You want to access an article more that a week old? Pay up buddy cause now you need a print AND an online subscription. You want to share Creativity's content with everyone on your blog? Forget it, we keep our content to ourselves, we're not going to share it with anyone, because, you know, then people might read it and check out our website and bring in some ad revenue or maybe subscribe and then we'd get some additional revenue and page hits and boy would that suck because we're Creativity magazine and we hate sharing our content with everyone, especially you.
End rant.

Labels: black mirror, cool sites, rants, the arcade fire