Lindsey, one of my employees, sent out her latest design to me and fellow manager Nick asking for feedback. I gave her some feedback, including this:

I think the users need something they can connect with on the form. I’m thinking a penguin. Could you make a penguin holding a little pennant that says, “College is cool”? I think this will speak well to the young, hip generation. The pennant should be red.

Nick came back with this:

Brandon, not sure on the penguin – but if you have any supporting data that penguins indeed drive lead volume, then I will relent.

To which I replied:

Here’s the supporting data. So you can imagine what we could do with the pennant!

I’m waiting for the perfect opportunity to use this image.

I’m getting ready to leave the following note on Liz’s desk:

Dear Liz –

The Kingdom of PPC Development hereby grants you this designer paper clip and tiny pad of Post-It notes as a peace offering in light of the events that transpired during Friday’s webinar. Curtis Hornbuckle, our court jester, has been flogged for this offense. We sincerely hope that our gift of one designer paper clip and tiny pad of Post-It notes will ensure a friendship between our two kingdoms for years to come.

Give my regards to Duchess Erica! [Liz's manager]

Brandon Gregory
The Duke of PPC Dev

We’ve been doing webinars lately to help our affiliates transition over to the new system. I was light on work today, and I found out that my dear friend Liz was going to be leading the webinar, so I couldn’t resist logging in as Curtis Hornbuckle and having a little fun. This happened in the chat window:

Curtis Hornbuckle
I am qwrite for the getting leadforms in xml. is this posible?
If I in xml format the leadform acciedentally?
API is ready yes yes?

Host
This is not something available right now but it could be in the future.

Curtis Hornbuckle
The future of leadforms?

Host
No no it is not ready.

Curtis Hornbuckle
leadforms are not ready?
Put a shoe on head

Host
Put a shoe in your mouth!

Curtis Hornbuckle
Put shoe on head and I will get you the leads!

Host
Looks like you need more work.

Curtis Hornbuckle
Oh, uhhh… What are you talking about?
I will go get you some leads!

Let me tell you a little story about a man named George P. Burdell. George was born in 1910 and lived a pretty normal life. He went to college. He was a bomber crew member in the army. He sat on the board of directors for MAD magazine from 1969 to 1981.

But there’s just one problem: George is not a real person.

The whole thing started back in 1927. An applicant to Georgia Tech by the name of William Edgar Smith was accidentally sent two copies of the school’s enrollment form. Rather than throw it away, William filled it out with the fictitious name George P. Burdell. When George was accepted, William signed him up for all the same classes as him.

For William’s entire college career, he did twice the classwork and took tests in half the time, because he kept up the facade of George P. Burdell. He used different wording on assignments and even altered his handwriting to cover for him.

By the end of his fourth year, William was getting pretty tired of doing twice the work, so he decided to retire George. But not before he earned his Bachelor’s degree. That’s right—Georgia Tech actually awarded a four-year degree to a fictitious person.

So that’s the end of William’s story. But it’s not the end of George’s. By the time he earned his Bachelor’s, George was legendary at Georgia Tech. Other students kept turning in work for him and he eventually earned his Master’s as well.

George had officially graduated twice, but he remained on the active student roll for years. In 1969, Georgia Tech switched out their paper enrollment system for a computerized one, hoping that would stop other students from enrolling him in classes. Hackers worked their way into the new system and registered George for every single class offered at the college that semester—over 3,000 credit hours.

Word of the gag spread far and wide, and fast. And people just wouldn’t let him die. During WWII, the military listed him as a crew member on one of their B-17 bombers. He flew twelve missions over Europe as part of the 8th Air Force in England. In 1958, his engagement to another fictitious student, Ramona Cartwright from Agnes Scott College, was announced in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2000, he was declared the alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Georgia. He’s been credited as a musician on a number of albums, and a good number of checks from Kraft Foods are signed by him.

In 2001, he was actually set to win the online poll for Time magazine’s Person of the Year, holding at least 57% of the votes, before they pulled him from the running.

This kind of makes my elevator-rewiring stunt look pretty, well, pathetic. I’m going to have to take it up a few notches. Any ideas?

Those of you who know me have probably realized that I can be kind of a snob at times. (Ask my boss about my recent behavior in book club.) (And if you don’t think I’m a snob, it’s probably because you are too.) But I think everyone would agree that these commercials are some of the best worst commercials ever made.

As you’ve probably gathered from the increasing levels of hilarity in these cartoons, they were not intended to be entirely serious. But these aren’t entirely jokes either. All of these are real, actual businesses, and each of them stood behind these commercials. All of these commercials were made by these two guys (whom you might recognize from some of the commercials). They’ll make commercials for free as long as they get total creative control of the commercials.

You can also nominate a local business for a free commercial, if you can think of one that (a) deserves a little more attention, and (b) has a sense of humor.

I didn’t post all of them, so if you liked these, you can check out the rest of their commercials on their website.

Fun with legal ads

If you don’t know, king cake is a Mardi Grad tradition. It’s a dough wrapped around a filling of fruit, sweetened cream cheese, and some cinnamon. Janelle and I tried making our own using a recipe that we found online. Apparently, it’s not as easy as it looks.

We loaded all the ingredients up and realized that we had forgotten to sweeten the cream cheese. That’s when we realized that this is probably something we should document, so we took some pictures then:

Key lime
Raspberry

We rolled them the best we could and baked them as directed to. Baking certainly didn’t help.

Key lime
Raspberry

I didn’t mention that this was for a party tonight. Luckily, HyVee saved the day. We might bring our abominations to the party anyway, but we needed to give guests the option of a decent king cake.

The moral of the story: making king cake is harder than it looks.

I thought hard about posting something this stupid on my blog. I mean, I have this smart guy image to uphold. But I’ve watched this three times now and I keep laughing at it, so I feel I owe it to you, my readers, to post it here.

In the spirit of my original Dennis the Menace comics with Hannibal Lecter quotes, I bring you Lockhorns comics with quotes from Twilight. Same concept. Different content. Here are some of my favorites:

• Comic 1
• Comic 2
• Comic 3
• Comic 4
• Comic 5

This is a random generator, so if you don’t like one that you land on, you can hit the refresh link to get a new one.

Sometimes Yahoo Answers amazes me. Here is an actual question from Yahoo Answers:

Can your baby get pregnant if you have sex while pregnant? like if you are pregnant with a baby girl, and you have sex while you are pregnant, can the sperm go up in there and impregnate the baby?

Yes, someone actually asked that question. And people actually answered. Here are some of my favorite responses:

(winning answer) The baby can get pregnant only if it’s a female. If you suspect that your baby is pregnant, try not to have sex again. You run the risk of getting your baby’s baby pregnant and that can lead to complications like an infinite loop.

The answer is yes. Also, if you’re pregnant with a baby boy and a baby girl, then they too can copulate and impregnate each other. If you’re pregnant with a baby boy, it’s highly likely that the baby boy will impregnate you again and you’ll have babies at different stages in the womb…semi fraternal twins. Careful though, if the baby boy fathers a fetal girl, he will try to impregnate her as well.

Don’t listen to these people – they’re trying to set you up. The answer is yes, it can get pregnant. When this happens – the baby doesn’t get born the natural way. It will eject out of your stomach (or sometimes out of your chest). This is because there is not enough room for 2 babies to be born the natural way (when one baby is inside another). With twins/triplets its ok. Giving birth this way is extremely painful, and is usually fatal. If you’ve ever seen the movie Aliens – its a bit like that. Its called a cesarean gastro birth. Ask your doctor about it. That’s why you sometimes see women with huge scars up their stomachs. Its where the skin split and the baby ejected from.

YES!!!! It so happens that I am pregnant at the moment and me an my partner had sex on a few occasions, now my baby is pregnant with twins and is only 3 weeks behind me for the birth we are all very excited , some more great news is as I have been eating alot of sushi all 3 babies have a high chance of speaking fluent Japanese.

IT ABSOLUTELY CAN! I am a baby. I’m 7 months old and 6 months pregnant. My father is the baby’s daddy and my mom is going to be a grandma 10 months having her first kid. Do you understand what kind of strain this puts on me? I’m going to have to bypass my whole education! I’ve been working drive-thru @ Burger King since I was 3 months old! WTF FML.

Not only that, but if the baby is male, he will be made gay if you have sex with a man while you are pregnant with him.

How old are you? Do not reproduce.

Yes… but ONLY if you’re having sex with Chuck Norris.