RumblinFumblinStumblin.com

So I’m watching basketball all weekend, and I’m watching the USC-Kansas game tonight, and I just can’t help but repeatedly thinking

“Am I going crazy, or are there a hell of lot more commercials hawking diamonds this year than any other year I can remember?”

That’s when I put 2 and 2 together. Today is December 4th, and what happens this weekend?

Blood Diamond - coming to a theater near you, December 8th!

I guess the diamond industry is trying to be proactive and get guys off their procrastinating butts to buy the jewelry now, before a couple million of them end up in theaters with their wives, watching a probable Academy Award contender showing the dark underbelly of the diamond trade.

Of course I have no evidence of this marketing blitz, but from observation it appears to be the case. Maybe they ramp it up further to try to counteract the negative publicity from the movie, or maybe they pack it in and wait a full two months for America’s attention span to completely recycle.

Random trivia:

1. As you probably know, diamonds are nearly worthless and can be manufactured.

2. De Beers is a fun little outfit. For most of the 20th century they controlled the worldwide diamond trade and kept prices high by (1) creating an artificial scarcity of diamonds, and (2) by implementing a highly effective marketing campaign.

With any other product - medicine, gas, twinkies, toilet plungers… they probably would have been drawn and quartered. But since this America… where marketing is king…

3. … they were given an award. In a year 2000 survey, the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” was chosen as the greatest marketing slogan of the 20th century. Now, I happen to think this is roughly equivalent to casinos using “best customer” trophies to reward the guys who drop 6 months of mortgage payments playing Caribbean Stud, and that anyone who buys into it should feel like a complete boob, but…

4. … as you’re probably guessing by now, RFS his ownself has never actually had the conversation where he tries to convince a future Mrs. RFS that

“I love you so much that instead of some stupid rock I want to give you these AAA municipal bonds… IN YOUR VERY OWN BROKERAGE ACCOUNT! Isn’t that fantastic?!?!”

“I’m just gonna head to the mall for a little while.”

Popularity: 6% [?]

1. That my familiarity with publishing on the web is roughly equivalent to David Hasselhoff’s familiarity with great acting.

“I hate the stupid InterWeb”

2. That having a person who can serve as a “jungle guide” (or “help desk”) like Derrich is highly advisable.

3. *Correction*- #2 should read “a jungle guide willing to stay on the phone for hours saying things like ‘no, that’s a forward slash’, ‘press shift and the comma key’, and ‘g-o-o-g-l-e-dot-c-o-m’”

4. That the comprehensibility of HTML does not change if it is viewed upside down, in a mirror, or translated to Farsi.

5. That - ironically - despite the incomprehensible nature of HTML, just one “/” or “<" in the wrong place can do any or all of the following:

a) Create completely new ways to justify text ("one character vertical" was my favorite)

b) Convert text to obscure Arabic forms used only by Saudi mimes to blog about sand

c) Make every third word on your website disappear

6. That a truly accurate acronym would be FHTML, since I usually end up muttering a particular word immediately before I have to use or say “HTML”.

7. That the reward for (a) reading a lengthy book called The Golden Spruce, and (b) writing and posting a somewhat lengthy review on said book in an effort to actually put some content on your website is (c) Google Adsense making 98% of the ads they place on your website related to “Sustainable Forestry”.

I mean, seriously - who the hell is going to click on that? John Muir himself would just point and laugh. Is there some large, untapped market of ignorant conservationists and activist lumberjacks that I’m not aware of? Because I’m pretty sure that the CEO of Weyerhaeuser isn’t cruising the blogosphere, waiting to have a moment of clarity induced by a Google text advertisement:

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“Susie, get me the SVP of Raw Materials. Hello, Bob? It’s Bob. No, Bob the CEO. Listen, I just saw a Google text ad on RumblinFumblinStumblin.com. Apparently the kid’s bonkers for trees because he’s got about 500 damn ads on his website for something called sustainable forestry. Are we on that sustenance idea? Well why not? Get a pen - I’ll give you the website. Ready?”

“Okay then. I want a report on it by next week… and make sure Google Adsense sends the BubbleStubble kid a check for two cents.”
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On second thought, maybe it’s just Google’s Trojan Horse method of policing the “no clicking on your own ads” policy, since any click on that ad would clearly be fraudulent. Anyway, I digress. Back to the countdown.

8. That the appropriate acronym for sustainable forestry is FSF (see #6). Okay, seriously, I will digress.

9. That there is no feeling of exhilaration quite like logging in to your Google Analytics account, discovering the “Absolute Unique Visitors” report, seeing the number “2″, and realizing that someone else - perhaps someone from Africa or Mongolia or even Berlin (!) - has taken the time to read the fruits of your labor, and maybe it made them laugh or think or otherwise enjoy themselves…

10. … until you realize that the other unique visitor was Derrich, trying to figure out how to remove the sustainable forestry code that he was certain was embedded in your website.

Sonuva… !!!!!

Popularity: 8% [?]

The coolest thing I saw today was this picture of Saturn eclipsing the sun. So incredible that it seems like it would have to be computer generated. Two additional things are extremely interesting:

1. This picture was taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which orbits Saturn and therefore has a unique pespective from which to photograph.

2. Move your mouse to the bottom right of photograph and click on the zoom icon to magnify the photo. Imagining Saturn as a clock face, look closely at the area between 9 and 10 o’clock (as if they were extended in straight lines from the clock face), in between the colorful inner rings and the outer ring. Locate the small, light colored dot/ball.

You’re looking at Earth.

I can not even begin to imagine the look on Gailileo’s face if he were able to see that.

Popularity: 9% [?]

If you’re a runner but have never heard of ultramarathoning or Dean Karnazes, I highly recommend his book Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner.

I won’t spoil the book, but suffice it to say that I bought it after I saw a piece about him on 60 Minutes in which he talked about going blind while running, running for 24 hours straight, running an ultramarathon during the summer in Death Valley (where you have to run on the white line on the road, otherwise your shoes will melt), etc. You know, stuff we all do from time to time.

To summarize, he’s either (1) a freak of nature, or (2) crazier than a shithouse rat. Maybe both.

Anyway, he’s in the news today because he’s about to accomplish his goal of running 50 marathons in 50 states… in 50 days. Yes, you read that correctly.

As I’ve already noted, these guys (and women) are crazy. To prove it, here’s an excerpt from that story:

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Death by treadmill — almost

With eight minutes to go Bergland collapsed. He got up and stumbled his way to the record — 153.76 miles. Then he went straight to the hospital. He says the doctors were furious and he wasn’t released for four days.
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The alternate title for this post is: If He Was in Mexico, It Would Have Been Gazpacho

Popularity: 8% [?]

Nordic attitude comes to the trading floor in this commercial for the Oslo Stock Exchange. Note the alternate use of the keyboard. Beautiful.

Popularity: 6% [?]