ALL ABOARD FOR FUNTIME. Sorry for the paucity of posts over the past several days. It has been a holiday, of course, whereby we celebrate our fallen men with a short parade and a long weekend. But my standards should stay above those of the common herd. I owe you, the dozens who regularly graze this little patch of internet, nothing less.

Despite my indolence I found something you might like, though: ADCANDY, where enterprising young mind-controllers invite the hoi polloi to enter advertising "slogan contests" for small prizes, and offer the submissions they have collected as consumer data to actual advertisers -- or, as they put it, "ADCANDY provides companies with the opportunity to view original ideas and consumer opinions at a fraction of the cost charged by traditional advertising agencies, market research companies, and focus groups."

This inspired me to submit several slogans to ADCANDY, including the following:

(for a coffee-company competition:)
CINNABON: The only good thing at the airport.
STARBUCKS: Go ahead, smash our windows. A hundred others will take our place!
DUNKIN' DONUTS: Breakfast and a bribe for the cops in every box.
KRISPY KREME: Why wait till noon to go off your diet?
PEET'S COFFEE: Starbucks has enough of your money.

I was particularly excited by their "non-profit" competition:

PBS: You owe us five cents for every Monty Python quote you ever used.
THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY: Brilliant, bad-smelling males of the world, unite!
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: In lieu of balls, some money would be nice.
ACLU: Join -- when the World Court convicts Jenna Bush, your children might get a few bucks.
THE PEACE CORPS: Justify a lifetime of money-grubbing with a few months feeding little black kids.

But I expect you can do better. So go ahead! They ask for your personal information, but the data-miners with whom they work probably have that already. The least you can get out of it is a frisson of creative non-compliance. And isn't that why we're here in the first place?