So, like… Vote Texas? Okay?

I've been watching quite a bit of television this week. It's “National Stay At Home Week”, so I pretty much had a gun to my head. Maybe that's why I'm just now starting to see the adverts for Votexas.org (a URL so clever that my well-trained fingers find it difficult to type). So far, I've seen half a dozen of the TV spots and heard a couple on the radio. Of these, one depicted a male quadriplegic in a motorized wheelchair, urging people with special needs to visit Votexas.org where they can learn about their voting options. Good advice. Well done.

With that one exception, all the rest of the spots have featured young women who, based on what they say and how they say it, seem to have the intellectual horsepower of a mango. I keep expecting one of them to blurt, “Like, omigawwd! That Baraahk Obaahma is so. Sexay.” None of them does, of course; I'm pretty sure that “omigod” as an expletive is, like, totally 20^th century.

All of this leads me to wonder: Are these really the people we should be encouraging to vote? With so much on the line for our next president and the country he will lead, wouldn't it make more sense to let the clueless and the uninformed quietly sit this one out?

Meanwhile...

I'm intrigued by the design of the Votexas.org (Gah! Mistyped it again!) site. The web designers among you may find it interesting to ponder how the image map navigation bar has been designed so that a drop-shadowed check mark appears over the last campaign button clicked. Clean, minimalist, and effective – just the way I like it.

And now, the segue

Speaking of politics and web design, I found a real doozy of a post at Design View, the personal site of Plano web designer Andy Rutledge. I consistently enjoy reading the web site design makeover articles there, but the makeover of the USA.gov is, as John Cleese often said, “something completely different.”

Never reticent about making his opinion known – whether in the realm of web design or life in general – Rutledge has really outdone himself this time. The design analysis is informative, as usual, but is kicked to the curb by some pretty caustic political satire. Based on the couple of Rutledge's favorite comments following the article, it has succeeded in infuriating some readers – which, I'm pretty sure, is exactly what he was after.

I wonder if the young women in the Votexas.org adverts would get the point?

Now playing: Soundgarden, Down On The Upside

The flip side of Mac & PC

No matter which side of the issue you come down on—or if you're like me and don't really care—you've got to admit that as spoofs go, these have the originals dead to rights.

Now playing: Spock's Beard, The Kindness of Strangers

Great Scott! That's trivia!

Not long ago, one of you wrote about the TV ad for a major credit card's check card. Two things before I get on with it:

1. I apologize for not being able to remember which of you it was. Believe me, I searched.
2. Does it strike anyone else as ironic? A credit card company plugging a card that sucks funds directly from one's checking account. Pretty much the anti-credit, as I see it.

Anyway, after reading about this bit of anti-cash propaganda (as one of you so aptly observerd), I started noticing the ad when it played—and not so much for its intended meaning as because of its soundtrack.

Have you ever watched a [suppressing gag reflex] Warner Brothers cartoon involving the operation of an assembly line and wondered what that peppy, industriously familiar tune was? Have you ever listened to Rush's "La Villa Strangiato" and wondered why that one passage reminded you of Looney Toons?

I have, so this morning I gave my trivial-minded, obsessive evil twin his head and came up with the answer. The tune? "Powerhouse". The composer? Raymond Scott. Ah... there's the real story. It turns out that the composer was a one of those little-known artists who thought out of the box and mostly labored in obscurity because of it.

I never was much good at reading articles in the encyclopedia and restating their content in my own words. If you're interested in learning about Scott, I encourage you to check out the Wikipedia article about him.

Now playing: Cake, Fashion Nugget