I’ve noticed over the last 10 years or so my favorite sauce Tabasco has been branching out from their well known brand. They have released several different versions of their traditional red sauce including a milder green sauce, a hotter habanero sauce, garlic, barbecue, steak sauce, bloody mary mix and more. While paging through a magazine this morning I saw they even have Tabasco branded Spicy Tequila.

Via TabascoTequila.com they offer a wide variety of Tabasco Spicy Tequila alcohol drink recipes with names that harken back to their McIlhenny Company roots like, well, Avery Island. The drink has the name of the place in Louisiana where they have been growing the seeds for peppers since 1868.

Since I’m not a hard liquor drinker – not really a drinker at all, per se – I will be unlikely be tasting (m)any of these Tabasco Tequila fueled drinks but I think it’s smart seeing McIlhenny not resting on their laurels and trying to brand Tabasco well beyond their tried and true red sauce.

McIlhenny is a company that clearly wants to continue to expand into new markets. Now if only they were equally progressive technology-wise. The Tabasco.com website doesn’t have a blog (despite me suggesting they should have one for like five years now) – still using an archaic newsletter-only approach - and has a cluttered navigation and style. Is their website powered by Cold Fusion, really? Come on Bent Media, get with the program. If you need a diehard fan to send along a few blog posts here and there, drop me a line.

Last night we were sitting with some other self-employed folks and the subject of business came up. We were sharing that this month so far has been extremely busy and we’re putting in 12+ hour days. I’m loving how busy things are but at the same time am feeling a number of other things are being neglected.  We pointed out that when the iron was hot in a sales-oriented business you need to act and then someone said:

“God first, family second, business third.”

Been thinking about the whole God first thing ever since. Why must God be first – for anybody? Is God going to pay your bills so your family can keep the roof over their heads? Does God put food on the table? I suppose if you pray for your garden and believe that God will provide a bigger crop than someone who doesn’t pray, then maybe God could help. I don’t recall some God bank account that we could withdraw funds from to pay for everything.

In the practical, real world sense, forget how religious or not you are, how can any reasonable person truly put God first? The way I see it, unless I’m missing something huge here, putting God first puts nearly everything that follows at risk.

I could see putting your family first, and work second. If you pull together as a family and work together you can take care of the real world bills. Putting work first all the time is not that wise unless you have no family. Some jobs don’t allow you to have much other life. For me the order of life works as follows:

1. *Family
2. *work
3. friends
4. other

This month in particular, #2 is #1. At times the first two are interchangeable. Since we are rebooting our business in 2009 and our children are all teenagers we are spending more time working at the moment. Once/if/when we get things stable again financially, we can go back to the preferred order above.

You might note that God isn’t named on my list.

This blog is down in the “other” column, BTW. If a friend or work or family member needs me for something, my blogging duties will have to wait. Where would God fit? The other column.

Don’t get me wrong, in the spiritual sense, I understand completely why God must be first. He could be your guiding force, energy, and provide that needed lift when everything seems to be falling apart. Those who need or desire something or Someone to believe in to live more full lives, hey, God being #1 on that list is logical.  But even on my spiritual list, God wouldn’t always be first. He’d be in the top three.

Let’s say you get a call to go write a piece of business tonight that is a one time only deal or you can eat dinner with your family or head to the church to pray, which would you choose? Sorry God, I’m going with #1. Now if one of our kids was having a once in a lifetime event versus a once in a lifetime business deal I’m taking our child’s event every time and hoping that the business deal would understand that I have to put family first in scheduling conflicts like these. I’m not sure I could sleep at night putting business ahead of family every day. Some times in some situations, yes, but every time?

And God? Not even in the top three for me. A friend in need would come first. Just saying that in the real world putting God first doesn’t make sense to me. Does it to you? What am I missing here? I guess maybe if your church is a part of or is your business say as a pastor or preacher, but for those who don’t work in the church?

Cultism is creepy

Religion and cultism are two separate things, but sometimes their paths cross. Like what we’re seeing on the web right now with Steve Jobs medical condition and his job at Apple. Cultism creeps me out.

There are way too many people who have a cult-like following of Steve Jobs. I feel sorry for Mr. Jobs that there is this much cultism surrounding him. Lots of stories about him taking a medical leave of absence from Apple and the price of the stock and people wanting to know a bunch of things about his personal health and life. What Steve Jobs wants to share with us about his health and his personal life is up to him. If he needs to take a medical leave of absence, then people should accept that and move on.

All this weird speculation, conspiracy theories and demands that he tell the world his health for the sake of shareholders is nonsense. I’m an Apple (AAPL) shareholder and I didn’t invest in AAPL because of Steve Jobs. I invested because I liked what the company was doing and saw promise in the future. The stock is down from it’s high of around $200, but hey, I still think there are positive signs for the company and these are hard economic times for many, many companies. I’m not selling my AAPL stock because Steve Jobs isn’t piloting the ship any more for health reasons.

And yet I can’t help wondering if Steve Jobs is putting God first? I know nothing about the man’s spiritual guide but I’m guessing from a real world practical sense, he’s looking at his family and health first, his job second and God is down the line.

It’s not about atheism or being anti-religion

I’d like for the discussion that follows, if any, not descend into a religion vs. anti-religion discussion. I’m not trying to stoke or promote some anti-religion agenda by wondering aloud why God must be first. I respect people’s religious beliefs I’m simply asking about the practical, real world side of life. How can one put God ahead of family, work and friends? I wanted to ask this question last night but this came up as we were leaving and time wasn’t there to get into it plus I didn’t know the people well enough to make the discussion about practicality and not faith. They are two separate things to me, but that’s not the case for everyone.

Is it healthy to be afraid? A little bit, yes. In fact, when I start writing fiction novels again, I’ll be embracing my favorite genre: horror. I think conquering fear is an important life and business skill and one doesn’t live as healthy a life if fear isn’t recognized and confronted. Let’s tackle the business elements of fear today.

Before sharing the following video (embedded RSS readers, you might need to clickthru) of daredevil Robbie Maddison’s New Year’s Eve jump up and down a building, Allan asks: “how do you confront your fears?”

Among the many items in my RSS reader today, Allan’s question got me thinking more than the rest, thank you Allan. His question is especially relevant considering we are rebooting our nearly 15 year established small business in 2009 and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t somewhat fearful of failure starting (almost) over.

I’d like to take a daredevil’s approach to conquering our fears by doing the following:

1. cut excess spending, if any, from our budget. There isn’t much to cut, but we need to preserve capital for spending on marketing our business, not on some gadget or toy. Yeah, sorry, Best Buy, you’re getting the backseat in 2009.
2. plan to succeed but recognize failure as an option. Despite pulling off both stunts successfully, Robbie gashed his hand pretty deep. It wasn’t exactly as he had designed the stunts, I’m certain. The ideal result would have been no injury at all, but I doubt this will prevent Robbie from taking more chances.
3. success won’t happen without action. If Robbie hadn’t climbed aboard his bike he never would have had any chance at success. Sitting back and waiting for more business to come to us than we wrote in 2009 isn’t going to make that happen. We have to go out and get it. Be proactive. We need to stick to our plan when we have one, tweak if necessary, and take action on that plan as designed.
4. take reasonable risks. One might argue that Robbie didn’t take reasonable risk in his two jumps, but I know he and his team meticulously planned those jumps, evaluating the angles and the proper speed and many more details which only took seconds for the actual stunts to see pulled off. We’re going to have to take some risky moves in 2009. We already have by going down this independent path. Can we reboot our business within 18-24 months? I think so, but we’re not going to do it without taking risks along the way. My wife is less risk tolerant than I, which means I’m going to have to sell her first on why we should take risks along the way. If they aren’t reasonable risks she won’t buy off on them and that means we’re less likely to succeed.
5. if knocked down, get back up again. I’ll admit not having the stones to do any daredevil stunts, but I am more than happy to fail at cold calling prospects in our business and having them shut me down again. And again. And again. It happens. I also realize that not every one of our marketing plans will be a success. Some will fail. Miserably. Health willing, I can get up again to try another day.
6. reinforce strong business ties, don’t belabor losing weaker ones. We’re going to lose clients here and there, it happens. I don’t like losing any clients but realize that there are some cases where we do everything right and still lose. Instead of focusing too much on negative energy (why oh why did we lose client ABC?), instead we’re going to focus more energy on strengthening strong business relationships. This doesn’t mean not trying to learn from mistakes made and grow from them, just don’t spend too much dwelling on the negative.

Can you think of additional tips for confronting fears from either brand new small businesses or those starting over? Please share and let’s discuss.

As I sit tapping away at the keyboard, listening to ZZ Top belt out “Legs” it is a couple legs past 10pm PST on New Year’s Eve and time to reflect on the big changes in our professional lives starting, well, pretty much now. Before this post is done and published we’re going to cross into a new year.

I don’t write here about our offline business very much other than to refer to it as our “offline business” – in fact the number of times I’ve mentioned specifically what this business does and/or how it might be related is in at best a scattered few posts. Nowhere in the site about page or my bio at TD Scripts does it indicate what our offline business is about either. Is there some reason I’ve kept this business a bit mysterious?

Yes, a couple reasons.

But before we get to those reasons, let me tell you briefly about the business. My wife and I have owned and operated an insurance agency since 1994. I am licensed to do business in both Washington and Oregon (non-resident). It’s mostly our gig together, although we have had some hired help, mostly part time over the years. I’m not one of those in your face, let me quote you ASAP insurance agents and thus haven’t written about this here because there isn’t much internet-related stuff we’ve done to talk about. What the business is and what we do is not that relevant to the vast majority of post topics I write and publish here. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid promoting or even mentioning our offline business or anything, it’s that we just aren’t doing that much online where it makes sense to bring it up here. Also, without going through the site demographics (but I do intend to do that), I’m not sure exactly what percentage of readers here are locals which is where we’re doing the bulk of our insurance business. I know a few readers are nearby like Sterling but even he’s not exactly in our backyard. He’s still a good 45 minute drive or so away.

I’m also careful, very careful, that my clients might not perceive that this blog – if any of them have ever connected the dots (to my knowledge, not yet) — in any way has anything to do with them and/or our business with them. This site, even the pen name you all are used to me using online, only has my heart, energy and passion in common. Almost nothing else online has anything to do with our offline business. Conversely what happens online is very rarely mentioned to our insurance clients offline.

Client’s lives are very private and confidential between us and them and it’s wrong to write about our business with them in any way that is other than very, very generic without their knowledge or consent. If you happened to be one of our clients the last thing I’d want for you to do is go online and Google your name and find something here at MakeYouGoHmm (or our other online properties) about you without your knowledge and consent. I’ve been very careful about making sure this doesn’t happen. It’s part of demonstrating our trust level with clients that what we know about them stays with us and companies that have a need to know basis to conduct business.

It’s our client’s business how little or how much they want their names to be used online. I have and will continue to respect that immensely. I haven’t even used my own name online to date very much, so why should I not treat clients the same? The answer is I should give them even more consideration than given myself – and will continue to do so in 2009 and beyond.

But there are some times when businesses we insure might want us to provide a little spotlight on them and what their business is and does. Sort of promotional and personal. Especially in these economic times. So we might be able to use our business website to help from time to time promote some of the businesses we do business with.

Now back to those reasons for me keeping the offline business away from this blog.

For one, this is a business where we have barely used the internet to establish and foster client relationships since 1994. This doesn’t mean we’re behind on technology or anything, quite the opposite. We were among the first in representing our primary insurer (company) that started capturing and using email in the nineties for communication. At the time this was so controversial that I actually received a cease and desist order from the company threatening to terminate our agency appointment if we continued. A couple years later I was at a meeting when myself and other similar business owners were told by a company executive that we were “behind the times” if we didn’t have a program for collecting email addresses.

Smile, I did. I still have that letter and have thought about framing it and putting it inside the foyer of our office. I may do that in light of the big 2009 changes upon us. I think some clients would get a kick out of it. It’s one of those stories I’ll probably never tire of telling.

We did have a business presence website on our own domain – basically a one page deal – for several years. I also own and operate the city’s domain where we are located for over 10 years now. Our original business website and domain has since been deactivated because I hated the domain name and fact that we were handcuffed as to what we could do there without jumping through a bunch of company hoops. The domain was way too long to remember and type. It wasn’t the type of thing that clients were going to remember easily – and thus we didn’t even bother telling many clients about it, much less use it as any sort of marketing.

Big change #1: we’re going totally independent

After almost 15 years our agency is going totally independent in 2009. What does this mean when we already have been an independent contractor? That word independent in the insurance world can have an asterisk depending on the type of companies the agent is appointed to do business with and the contracts they sign.

An independent agent has one major difference from an agent who is captive or as was our case for many years: semi-captive. State Farm and Allstate insurance agents, for example, are captive agents. These agents cannot place business “outside” with other carriers by contractual obligation. Yes, even if the best premium price with an equally stable financial company involving their client’s risk is elsewhere.

The contract with our primary carrier has been semi-captive in that it required us to place all business that qualified with them, regardless of price (premium). I’ve never liked this aspect of the contract. That we were forced by contract to place business with a single company when we could find a less expensive rate from an equally respected company elsewhere.

Now we can do what other independent agents have been used to doing: match client needs with the best companies and rates in their area. So if you reside in the state of Washington or Oregon and are looking for an online-savvy independent insurance agent – hey, a softball pitch here - who has this as a guiding principle drop me an email and we’ll see if we can find a good match for your insurance needs.

This is nearly a complete reboot of our offline business.

We are starting almost, almost completely over. This means we’re going from a very comfortable monthly income (in our offline business) to almost $0/month since the primary carrier we’re separating from is keeping all the client files. We have always been commission only, but the longer you are in business the more renewals you tend to amass. We aren’t going to have those renewals any more from that carrier. The carrier even get our primary business phone number, by contract, that we’ve used since 1994. The contract also allowed for them an option on our physical office location but they aren’t executing that right (yet). If they do, there is a spot right next door and we’ll lease that in a heartbeat.

So our main business phone line is changing, our signage, business cards, logos, etc, but not our office location. This should be a very interesting year. We could fail with this change. Badly. As mentioned earlier in this piece, the economy is not stellar. We’re gambling that by going independent and helping clients find the best companies with great rates, we’ll be better positioned in the future. Ask me in a year or two if this was a smart move and I’ll be better able to answer.

Scary? You bet. But exciting too.

The disadvantage of being an independent agency – and to be fair, I have to bring this up - is one of company loyalty from both sides: agent and client (insured). Clients who move their business around more frequently will lose loyalty discounts for companies that offer them. Agents who have less profitable books of business seem to tend to receive less leeway by non-captive companies and the fewer number of clients with each company means less premium in the pool for the agency to draw from to establish overall profitability (one big claim can devastate a smaller agency’s profitability). Since we’re still very new to the independent side, this is partly based on how much emphasis is being placed on profitability with the carriers we’ve started talking to.

Add to the above that insurance carrier underwriters at renewal periods tend to treat accounts a little better who have longer history versus those who are newer and less established when it comes to deciding to non-renew over increases in claim activity. It’s not a risk-free proposition to switch insurance companies only over price if that happens to be when bad times fall upon you and a few claims roll in.

So just because we will be able to find clients the best possible price we’re still going to do our due diligence making sure that the company with the good rates is highly rated and a good about paying claims in a timely and fair manner. We aren’t going to go with some fly by night outfit just to get clients the absolute lowest price.

As an independent we’ll try to measure risk, price, company and individual client needs against this principle. It may be in a client’s best interest to stay with an insurance carrier that has a higher premium for this loyalty factor even though our agency would not be contractually obligated to keep this business with said company. This is a major procedural business change for us and will be interesting to see how we balance this with each client individually.

I suspect from experience that customers will tell us that they want the lowest rate coupled with our established, personalized agency service over company loyalty discounts, as that’s what we’ve been hearing. The decision, of course as always, will be up to them.

Big change #2: increase offline business internet presence

This brings us to our second big change and one of the reasons I’m writing about this here and now: a (much) bigger internet presence. We’re working on a separate, brand new website, one which I’m building mostly myself from the ground up, including all the backend scripting for our agency related functions. I am planning a business blog on this new site and am hoping it won’t suck like a lot of the business blogs I’ve seen. I notice a lot of our local area insurance agents don’t even have blogs, so am hoping to capitalize on that inequity somewhat.

I would like our blog to be both professional but also personal because that reflects our service level. And it should be informative and comment on insurance-related issues. I would also like to use this blog as a platform for communicating how our independent agency gig is going with our clients.

Where in the past I wouldn’t have done so here, I might also meta comment on a few posts like I’ve done with the group blog I contribute to at VTOR. It won’t be every other post or annoyingly frequent as I believe strongly that a little goes a long way on the web. Those who are interested in following in greater detail my virtual world happenings should know by now that VTOR is the best place to do that, not here, and likewise those who want to follow our independent insurance related experiences will do it at the new blog (and it’s not live as of this writing, so no link).

That brings us to big change #3. Well, big change if you read this blog and for some reason decide to start reading the insurance agency blog too.

Big change #3: hi, my name is Todd, nice to meet you

The biggest change at our new business blog for readers of Hmm will be my name. And forgive the liberal use of the third person in this section, it’s awkward for me too, but readers here that visit/read the new business blog will not see me writing under the pen name of ‘TDavid’ – ever. It will be my first name which I’ve rarely used here or anywhere else online. In fact, I’ve demanded that ‘TDavid’ or ‘TD’ be used and not my legal name when it has anything to do with our online business ventures to date.

When it involves insurance-related matters things will be different going forward.

It goes beyond the business blog and website though, I’ll also be signing up for services that ‘TDavid’ may also be signed up for and some that ‘TDavid’ doesn’t use (either at all or very often) like Facebook which requires your real name. LinkedIn is another. Not sure about MySpace. Twitter? Maybe. Friendfeed? Doubtful at the start.

The thing is that there is going to be some crossover here and there and it will be interesting to see how to deal with essentially three online personalities: ‘TDavid’ that most people know me as online is still going to be around, TD Goodliffe and various other virtual world identities and the introduction and promotion for our offline business under my legal first name.

I’m going to try to avoid having a personality disorder in 2009, but in some ways I’m concerned that might happen, which is another reason I’ve been ‘TDavid’ online. Just to be clear, I’ll still be writing as ‘TDavid’ here and anywhere that doesn’t have to do directly with our insurance business but since my picture is going to appear from time to time under my legal name, I want to be sure to disclose why this will be happening and that I’m not trying to be two completely different people or anything, I’m just trying to keep different businesses separated.

You might see some overlap between the same entity under different names, just as there have been with my virtual world adventures, I guess is the one sentence way to describe this change.

With that in mind, I’d still appreciate if you would continue to refer to me as TD or TDavid on this blog, BTW – and please not the hatcheted name without the ‘T’ in front. Let’s save the Todd stuff for the business site/blog and the TD Goodliffe (or other virtual name) for the virtual world side. If you were playing Everquest II with me as my character Humosorf and we were role-playing, that’s the name I’d expect to be used there as well. This will all be much easier to explain in this business than our insurance business which I’m not sure how or when I’m going to try and do so. Little steps first and too many other priorities ahead of that.

Anyway, I’m hearing fireworks outside. Woohoo, 2009 is here! Change has arrived. Are you ready? Let’s seize those golden 2009 opportunities and make the best of them. If you can help other people even more in 2009 like I’m excited that we’re going to be able to do, then go for it.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!

Can’t resist breaking from my holiday blogging break to both share one of my favorite humorous pictures from 2004 and comment on the current Facebook breastfeeding drama:

The social networking site has, over the past year, asked some woman users to remove their breastfeeding pictures from the site, saying that they are obscene, and violate the Terms of Use of the site. According to Facebook, the pictures of breasting, which reveals the ‘areola’ - the dark skin around the nipple - violates the site’s policy on “obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit” material.

Anybody who thinks breastfeeding photos are ‘obscene’ is being silly. Strike that, they are being stupid. What’s obscene about babies eating? Sustenance. Staying alive. Now if these women are breastfeeding adults, well, then maybe you have something there that some people might find obscene – but I don’t even think that’s ‘obscene.’

I’ll take this even further: people thinking naked breasts are obscene are being silly too. I never understood the whole flap over Janet Jackson’s nip slip at the Super Bowl. A fine of $930,000 for an accidental shot at her naked breast for a half second?

I’m not some big nudist advocate or anything but think clothes are best for keeping the elements out and showing your personality through style, not for covering up how we came into the world.

But people do get weird about this for some reason and it’s almost never men (why is that?) from the stories I’ve read. Back in 2005 Barbara Walters said women breastfeeding in public made her uncomfortable prompting me to opine that there were far more important things in the world to discuss than breastfeeding. And I couldn’t resist repeating the catchphrase that should be my mantra on the subject: “Let the breasts fly!” I’m happy to update readers that despite being in my 40s, my opinion on breasts hasn’t changed one iota:

I respectfully request that any women who are breastfeeding in my vicinity that they not be uncomfortable if I see their breast. I’m not going to go all spycam or over-hormonal male on the situation but if a breast is brought into broad daylight then the woman in question better not get all uncomfortable about the exposure. If someone is that sensitive about being exposed then go somewhere private to feed your child.

In case you didn’t know – I didn’t (at least don’t remember) – there is a US Right to Breastfeed Act, HR 1848 that became law in 1999 allowing women to breastfeed on federal property. Despite agreeing with women’s right to breastfeed in public, I’m not sure a law was necessary. There are too many laws out there that could be replaced by common sense. Breastfeeding in public should be common sense and not a big deal.

Facebook is fine disallowing breastfeeding pictures

Now back to Facebook. What about websites who don’t want to have pictures of naked breasts up to and including breastfeeding on them? Hey, that’s their call. Sorry lactivist groupies, you can bash them for having a site policy you disagree with but they have a right to have a site policy that prevents these pictures. Calling them obscene goes too far, yes, but that doesn’t change their right to do it.

If Facebook doesn’t want pictures of ducks in hats on their sites, that’s cool. I am all for websites being able to make their own calls on content posted to their websites as long as it’s legal. I’m not aware of any bare breast websites – including breastfeeding sites – ever being taken down for obscenity violations, are you?

I wonder how many Hmm readers know that there has been at least one naked breast picture (gasp!) on MakeYouGoHmm before? Yes, in fact we had a photoshop it post to cover Janet Jackson’s naked breast in 2004. Nobody (sniff, sniff) took the challenge and shared back their twisted creations, but if you want to see that uncensored version of the Janet Jackson nip slip picture above, just follow that link and photoshop until your heart content. Would be nice to see some Fark style mashups there. Just don’t go making truly obscene artwork with that picture.

MakeYouGoHmm naked breast policy

Hey, did you know you can include a picture in comments made here? This has been a secret feature for awhile now that I’ve slipped pictures into comments here and there. Shhh, don’t tell anybody but you can and in context, well, you’re welcome to do so. Just use BB-style code - e.g [img=url] - to include pictures. You’ll have to hotlink though, no upload (just use Flickr or your own web hosting), so make sure that’s a cool. Images will be removed that violate the comment rules (no spam basically), but non-erotic naked breast pictures are just fine. Breast art? No problem. Who decides what is spam, what is erotic, etc? As always, we do.

The MakeYouGoHmm naked breast policy: not for erotica, not for sensationalism, not for pleasure. We will have the absolute opposite policy for our sister site planned for launch in 2009: NakedYouGoHmm.

Really, seriously, why shouldn’t non-erotica naked breasts be posted here? If you have good reasons then list them in the comments but I was able to think of any good ones in 2004.

By this blog censoring breast photos (unless for dramatic purposes) we’d be continuing to fuel a silly problem. So, no, I think the breasts – non-erotica, mind you - will continue to fly at MakeYouGoHmm.com as long as I have anything to do with this website. Readers could change my mind on this, but it will be challenging. Feel free to try below, if you like.

The Black Friday Wal-Mart trampling incident of security guard Jdimytai Damour has predictably led to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the victim’s sister. Police indicate in this AP video (embed below) that they are still scanning the Wal-Mart security videos looking if they can find people in the crowd criminally responsible.

Geek sidenote: YouTube has started prominently pushing their search as 10% of the size of their video window placed at the top. It’s too bad they aren’t using some of that space to show me related videos.

I can’t be the only one impatient that six days have passed by and the police are still scanning security video? How long does it take to say "we scanned the video and we have suspects in our sights?" Get some CSI types to analyze that footage frame by frame and get the still pictures out America’s Most Wanted style so these people tramplers can be brought in and charged accordingly.

Where are these people anyway?

If you were in the front of the line of a crowd that went crazy when the doors opened what would you have done? Tried to help the security guards maintain order or rushed in for some stupid thing that will never come close to measure human life? A switch would have gone off in my brain that went quickly from personal satisfaction (getting a good deal) to preserving human life (helping) in a nanosecond. I know that there were some people helping, but where are these people who didn’t? Where are these people who mashed through, stomping this helpless security guard to death?

I’m all about getting a good deal but this horrible incident shows how scary big crowds can be. It’s one thing to be part of a big crowd at say a rock concert or peaceful demonstration but seeing this happen especially at a time when we’re supposed to be thinking about others is mind-boggling.

President of Wal-Mart Northeast Division Hank Mullany gave a statement that didn’t directly address the lawsuit or allegations made (emphasis mine):

"We consider Mr. Damour part of the Wal-Mart family, and are saddened by his death," Mullany said. "We have been in communication with members of his family to do what we can to help them through this difficult time. Our associates know that when incidents like this occur, we take care of our own."

If Wal-Mart takes care of its own then there should be no need to ever see this lawsuit end up in a courtroom.

While I have no idea if Mr. Damour’s sister was contacted and/or coerced into this by friends, other family members or lawyers sniffing an obvious lawsuit, I hope a fair settlement is provided that isn’t forced by the courts. Wal-Mart should give the family whatever they want as long as it isn’t something equally insane like hundreds of millions of dollars.

A few times I’ve written referencing videogame reviews in Penthouse magazine at VTOR (the group blog I contribute to) and have received some feedback questioning who reads adult magazines for videogame coverage. This might have been a fair criticism 10 years ago, maybe even five, but not so much any more.

Fact: the videogame audience is getting older.

If you wanted more proof that videogames are attracting an older audience check out the November 2008 Penthouse magazine.

The top story is adult movie actress Tera Patrick talking videogames with a Saints Row 2 full page advertisement on the back cover.

We still are seeing plenty of violent R rated video game content, but how far off are the days of X-rated videogame content on console systems like Xbox 360 and PS3? No way Nintendo breaks the ground first.

Since adult-oriented games like these would carry an AO (Adults Only) rating that means no major retailer like Best Buy would stock the title. This decreases likelihood of seeing any major adult titles any time soon, but I think we’ll see this activity breaking in the user-created content areas first a la Spore.

If adult gamers are allowed to make their own content and levels, it shouldn’t be surprising that some are going to make and share adult content.

Some readers might remember my dismay over what I felt was a frivolous lawsuit: a complaint against the site eHarmony for not offering same sex dating services at their website.

In a court ruling where eHarmony has admitted doing no wrong, it has agreeed to start — yep, you guessed it — a same sex website.

It’s not going to be at eHarmony though (puzzling to say the least) which means the courts didn’t do anything except force eHarmony to start a niche site for same sex partners and give someone $$$ for crying foul.

The new same sex site eHarmony is creating is available at compatiblepartners.net. Now let’s see what the guy who complained, Eric McKinley, says about eHarmony (emphasis mine):

McKinley, 46, said he was shocked when he tried to sign up for the dating site but couldn’t get past the first screen because there was no option for men seeking men.

"It’s very frustrating and it’s very humiliating to think that other people can do it and I can’t," he said. "And the only reason I can’t is because I’m a gay man. That’s very hurtful."

Did he just use the word ‘humilating’ to describe a website that didn’t cater to him? Seriously? I can’t believe Mr. McKinley didn’t just use his browser of choice and choose a different website. Why did he feel it was important to force eHarmony to create a separate niche site so he could find other men to date?

This is not a gay vs. straight issue

Just so I’m not misunderstood, this is not a gay vs. straight issue. I have no problem with gay people being able to find dates online. No problem with bisexual people dating men and women. This isn’t about sexual preference at all to me. This is about a business online that has chosen to only cater to hetero dating being forced to create a site for same sex couples.

I can’t believe the court didn’t just throw this out. It’s not discrimination. Discrimination would be telling gays and lesbians that they can’t use the site to search for the other sex to date. eHarmony did no such thing, did they? Or did I miss that?

At the end of the day all this lawsuit did was give publicity to eHarmony to start a niche site that caters to same sex couples, joining a sea of others that already offer the service online. Mr. McKinley and Ms. Carlson who I wrote about originally could have found plenty of dates at other online dating sites. They were no more discriminated against than I would be if I want to exchange science fiction books at some website that only allows exchanging romance.

Outrageous. The courts got this one wrong. Agree/disagree?

No, really, I’m serious. PracticeSafePolicy.com (warning: when you click that, you’ll hear Obama say: "Fired up. Ready to go!") is selling Obama, McCain and Palin condoms. $12.95 for a tri-pack as of this writing.

Gottal love the taglines for McCain "Old but not expired" and "When abortion is not an option." You can watch a video about the 2008 president/vice president condoms below:

What, no Joe Biden condoms? What would be jolting Joe’s condom tagline? I’m voting for: "There will be a test within 9 months if you don’t put these on." You?

Can’t miss mentioning the sad passing of author Michael Crichton, claimed by cancer, who if you don’t know the man by name like Stephen King, you have to know at least one of his works:

The consistent themes of his work are the consequences of man’s own hubris and a thoroughgoing paranoia. Someone is always coming up with a brilliant notion in Crichton, and it always goes hideously kablooey. Bring dinosaurs back to life? Okay, but they’ll escape and gobble you up. Organ transplants? Fine until the medical establishment starts harvesting them for profit. Robots? Forget about the robots: they’ll shoot you down ("Westworld") or come after you with knives ("Runaway"

Crichton (pronounced "cry-tun") is responsible for some fantastic fiction and movies (Westworld is one of my favorites of all time) over the years including dinodrama Jurassic Park. Although the title of my post suggests there won’t be any posthumous works, I’m hoping he had some more stories in the pipeline or a book of ideas that could be given to somebody else to continue his work.

That’s what the great ones do.

He was that kind of quality writer that you want to see their work continue. They’ve done it with the James Bond novels, so why not do it with Crichton.

Although some of his book to movie adaptions were lackluster (e.g Congo, Sphere), he had very few bad books. Sphere remains one of my favorite books. The first Jurassic Park movie was great, but it was downhill from there. Not to mention the guy was behind the hit TV series ER.

We’ve lost a good one at age 66. Think I’ll go on a Crichtonthon this weekend in his honor and re-watch some of his great movies over the years.