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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True® - the First For-Profit E-mail Publication (and Still Going Strong). |
Winning is Everything
A good friend of mine was inspired to create this video and post it to YouTube yesterday:
Men and Balloons
What is it with men who want to fly under balloons? I don't mean hot air balloons, I mean toy balloons. This one's a priest -- he just wanted to get closer to God, I guess. From True's 27 April 2008 edition:
Two Teen Tales
Two stories this week have photos to go with them. First, the dangerous desperado and the dual damsels:
Beauty and the Beast
Two stories this week have photos: the sexy mayor of Arlington, Ore., and the idiot robber using a bottle of cologne as a weapon.
First, the moron.
Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
Hey, look at this! Only 14 years after I put it into practice, WIRED magazine's Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) has fully grasped my business model: making money by giving away something of value for free.
His article, Free: Why $0.00 is the Future of Business, looks at the economics of giving things away (starting with the granddaddy of the concept, King Gillette and his razors), and how it's fundamentally changing business -- and enabled mine.
A Lingering Image
Another one of those stories that just begs for a photo. From True's 9 March 2008 issue:
G. Gordon Stella
I had an interesting experience on Wednesday: I got a phone call from the producer of G. Gordon Liddy's radio show, asking if I could be on their show -- in five minutes. I was just sitting at my desk, so I said sure. He asked me to pull up my Stella Awards archives so I could talk about pretty much any story during the half-hour segment. No problem, I said.
Verizon: We Know Better than You
Verizon subscribers have had quite the go of it the past few weeks. Three weeks ago their spam filter tripped on a single word in the issue, so the Premium edition was blocked from everyone at Verizon (and their subsidiaries, like GTE.net) -- even if you had followed my recommendation and put thisistrue.com and lyris.net in your personal "whitelist".
Verizon decided that one word was "bad" and bounced every issue. Since there are quite a few Premium subscribers at Verizon, that meant quite a few bounces. That, in turn, "proved" the issues you paid to get are spam, and thus the next week, they bounced it again. And then the third week, last week, again. So many of you complained to them that they called me that second week, and promised they'd fix it. (You saw how well they did!) Last week, I jumped through their stupid "Please unblock me, I'm not a spammer" hoop, and this week's issue will supposedly get through; they insist they're no longer blocking. We'll see.
Barbecued Biker
A tagline on a story this week is a homage to a popular subtype of humor e-mail I get from friends from time to time: photos of (usually) Chinese people carrying impossibly huge loads on little motorbikes.
First the story, then some examples of the genre.
Lolita Midsleeper Combi
I thought many readers would like to see the photos that go with a story from this week's issue, and maybe you will have examples of other "inappropriate" products, especially for children. First, the story:
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