is technology enough?

the infamous pop song

this is ryan-- he and i have the same hair


i had a request, even though the video is available on youtube ; )

savin' up to quit my job

Change is good. So if you’re at the point at work where another paper cut might just lead to slitting your wrists, then maybe it is time to start saving up to quit your job. Imagine…if you skip just one double espresso latte Monday through Friday for a month, you’d probably have enough money saved to hire someone to write your resume.

$9 via Spoon Sisters

how to break up

i <3 allison weiss

allison weiss is on tour-- if you are in nyc, join me at one of her shows!

12/17: 4P - The Port Authority (part of Tunes in the Tunnel)

12/18: 11P - Arlene's Grocery

long distance

i'm in the airport-- going to nyc today and i'm literally counting down the seconds

my friend works at Vimeo which is a video-sharing site similar to YouTube, but you have to create your own content. i recently re-discovered Jake And Amir and HAVE to share. literally the funniest thing ever...

here's my favorite : ) (and perfectly suited for a plane trip...)

Long Distance from Amir on Vimeo.

become a fan on facebook

here are their favorites

txt

80% of all text messages are sent by 13 to 29 year olds. Over 66 billion text messages have been sent in the first half of 2007.

did AOL actually do something funny??

Via AdRants

you, too, can shit gold

if you know someone who has too much money, and wants their crap to glitter (literally), this gold pill is for them. the instructions? digest & consume.

apparently it increases your self worth as well ; )

$425 from Ju$t Another Rich Kid

i hate the grammy's, but...

Tim was nominated for 4!!!!

Best Male Country Vocal Performance
• If You're Reading This; Tim McGraw; Track from: Let It Go
[Curb Records]


Best Country Collaboration With Vocals
• I Need You; Tim McGraw & Faith Hill; Track from: Let It Go
[Curb Records]


Best Country Song
• I Need You; Tony Lane & David Lee, songwriters (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill); Track from: Let It Go
[Curb Records; Publishers: Careers-BMG Music Publishing/Nervous Worm Music/Famous Music/Ed And Lucille)

• If You're Reading This; Tim McGraw, Brad Warren & Brett Warren, songwriters (Tim McGraw); Track from: Let It Go
[Curb Records; Publishers: Bucky And Clyde Music, Stylesonic Music]


Best Country Album
• Let It Go; Tim McGraw
[Curb Records]

portable turntable

if only it looked more old-school.
Via TURNTABLE LAB

a (not so) happily ever after

since when did disney think that a line of "fairy-tale inspired" wedding dresses was a good idea?

apparently this one is supposed to be inspired by the little mermaid:

yikes....
(Ariel is so much hotter)

the deets

looks like a couple things got left out of the article from the star tribune...

thanks to ed kohler for covering the story on his blog, the deets.

target coverage

more coverage from the target rounders stuff:

Thanks to my PR Research teacher, Dr. Sweetser, a bunch of people got wind of the Target Rounders stuff and covered it. I recently did two interviews-- One for an AP writer, and another for a Minneapolis newspaper writer, so we'll see what becomes of that!

Here is the post by Dr. Sweetser. Here are my original posts about Target Rounders: Target & Target Update

AdRants covered it!!! (I'm literally obsessed with AdRants and AdGabber)
Get Mad! Target and Drillteam's Ethics Lapse Much Worse Than a Faux Pas
Vaspers the Grate: Corporate Use of Social Media
Parents For Ethical Marketing
The Double Standard: Does Target Get a Social Media Pass?
(same post, new comments)
Andy Sernovitz's Damn, I Wish I Thought of That (<-- This is actually really cool because I accused Target of not abiding by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Code of Ethics and A. Sernovitz actually wrote the original code of ethics!)
Dutch Evans
Target Hit with Flak About Its Facebook Marketing
Ignite Social Media: Target's "Off Target" Social Media

Have you written anything about this? Do you know of any other blogs that are writing about it? I'd love to hear... Comment, or e-mail me: rosiesiman[at]gmail.com

iconoclasps

Via PureModern

you don't know what you don't know

my new obession

chuck palahniuk

i recently finished Choke and passed it on to a friend. i loved Lullaby and Fight Club. anyone wanna lend me Survivor or Stranger Than Fiction??

midomi

http://www.midomi.com/

sing, whistle, or hum a couple notes of a song and midomi can "name that tune".

it's only in the beta version, and i didn't have a microphone to test it out, but it seems to good to be true. anyone tried it?

virtual jam!!!1

my friend Allison Weiss and I are hosting a Virtual Jam in Second Life. she'll be playing along with another awesome band, Blue Flashing Light as part of a project with the and the music business program at UGA.

see the press release i wrote, published on Grady's homepage.

come join us!

a weak dollar

...means more expensive imports.

according to the Washington Post, the price of cocaine has risen 44% (exception: in NYC, it has risen 50%)

luke bryan + dallas davidson

dallas and luke came to talk to the UGA music business class thursday. i met them at a BMI party i was asked to speak at so i decided to sit in on the class.


dallas wrote 'honky tonk badonkadonk' in addition to songs recorded by tim, chris cagle, josh gracin, rhett akins, and keith anderson.


luke wrote 'good directions' which billy currington recorded, and recently released "we rode in trucks" as a single.

they played some new stuff for us and i was pretty impressed.

pink hair

i now have pink hair. i tried telling my friends i was going to do it, but no one believed me. alas... here it is.

more street art

maglite

patrick moberg is the shit

my friend patrick moberg is pretty much one of the biggest rockstars out there.

in addition to taking care of my cats in middle school, and being an sushi expert, he is also an amazing graphic designer...

the other day he saw the girl of his dreams on the subway, and now he is on a quest to find her... here is the drawing that appeared on his blog, linking to http://www.nygirlofmydreams.com :

i told my mom about his endeavor, because, you gotta give it to him... it's pretty romantic. and she told me that a bunch of other websites were covering it, such as...
"Prince Charming Searches For NY Girl of My Dreams or Just One of the Million Other Sucker Girls Who Saw This and Were Like Awww"
"Help Patrick Moberg Find The NY Girl of His Dreams"
"Awww"
"NY Dream Girl Search Continues-- It Is Authentic"

and while this could border stalker-ish behavior, i can totally vouch for the guy--- so sweet, a little shy, and def. not a creeper.


(i mean look at how cute n' innocent he looks!)

the funniest thing is all these people keep claiming it's a "viral marketing campaign"... so i'm starting to think that a lot of people really don't understand viral marketing.

new media douchebags... explained

what the f happened to halloween

a pumpkin. a witch. nancy drew. a flapper girl. tinkerbell. those were my halloween costumes growing up. dressing up as a flapper may seem a little off, but i assure you, my costume was extremely conservative.

but these days all these little ones are trading their fairy wands for fishnets.

from the washington post:

Gabby Cirenza wanted to be a referee for Halloween. The outfit she liked had a micro-mini black skirt and a form-fitting black and white-striped spandex top held together with black laces running up the flesh-exposing sides. She looked admiringly at the thigh-high black go-go boots that could be bought as an accessory. And she thought the little bunny on the chest was cute.

"Absolutely not," said her mother, Cheryl. "That is so not happening."

secret squirrel

last night i went to see my friend allison weiss play a show at the secret squirrel and it was freakin' awesome.

i would tell you more about the secret squirrel, but, well, it's a pretty well kept secret and i don't want to be the one to spoil the underground hipster hangout.

cut & paste

much like radiohead's album debut of "In Rainbows", Paste Magazine is offering you a chance to pick your subscription price.



because they want to count your subscription legally, you have to pay at least $1, but that's it-- no other catch!

with music, i think the concept is fairly easy-- once you have the file, to copy it digitally is free. but i'm confused how this will work. i mean, they have to pay printing costs and shipping costs.

the only things i could think of were:
1. the price of advertising will increase to paste advertisers and they will take the cost
or
2. maybe paste is going downhill and they're just really really desperate for more readers.

anyway, it's a great magazine and who knows how long it will last.

thanks, kevin for the inside scoop ; )

augme

I heard about a t-shirt retailer whose shirts come custom-printed with a unique text message keyword and phone number-- Anyone who wants to contact the t-shirt's wearer can contact the wearer via text messaging.

Now, Augme has taken it a step further-- On their website, you can create a 2D barcode that, when scanned by a cell phone, links up the user to your myspace or facebook or whatever other website you choose.



interesting, eh?

clouding minds, cleaning streets

who says the advertising market is saturated?

just last week when i went to boston, i saw an ad on the back of my tray table on the plane... that's new. but there's always room for improvement-- i think that companies should put logos on ziplock baggies and offer those to consumers for free.

but here's a great example of an even better way to advertise. this company, based out of the UK, i think, creates a stencil of the advertisement you want to use, lays it on the ground, and then pressure washes the ground through the stencil. the result? a cleaner sidewalk, and your ad.



so far, there are no laws against this.

also note: i really like how all the projects they work on they refer to as missions.
here are some past missions.

any bigger and i'd have to join the circus

i came across this the other day, and now i really want to turn my spam mail into other forms of art.

this illustrator, linzie hunter, has been taking spam one-liners and turning them into art.

here are all of the ones she's done so far, via Flickr

shenis

so some (read: crazy) lady developed this thing, a shenis, so that girls can be like guys and pee standing up. the funny thing is, it's a plastic penis, hollowed out with a funnel at the top. and it looks funny as anything. and here's my question: what do you do with it after you use it? just slip it back in your purse?

The Shenis (yes, sounds like "penis"!) is a hollowed out, 12-inch long fake penis intended for women to use as a tool to pee while standing up. As its creator Kiki Curry states in the video clip above, it's great for hiking, boating, peeing outdoors, and intimidating men! And while we don't like doing physical activities in nature, we'd love to try this out while drunk on the streets of New York. P.S. Kiki Curry is our new fave kook.

there should be disposable sheni (i'm guessing that's the plural)

ps. check out the lady who invented it:

boston

i went to visit my sister at Tufts University in Boston and was reminded again how much i love the North. so the people keep to themselves a little more, but the culture seems so much more immense.

she told me a really cool story about their mascot, this elephant, Jumbo. When PT Barnum (a Tufts alum or something) was touring with the circus, this little elephant stepped into the middle of a train track. Jumbo, seeing the little one about to get hit by an oncoming train, pushed him off the track. the little guy was saved, but Jumbo died. PT Barnum donated the stuffed remains to Tufts/the Medford campus and eventually the Univ. adopted Jumbo as the official mascot.

so for 86 years, the stuffed elephant was on campus and people would come place a penny in his trunk before exams for good luck and the football players would pull on his tail before the games. well eventually the tail fell off and was stored somewhere else. shortly after that, a fire destroyed the building where jumbo was housed. luckily, the real tail was somewhere else (i think)

the ashes were saved and have been passed on to each new athletic coach in a peanut butter jar.

besides this neato story, i also found out my sister is a DJ, makes good grades, has boys pining for her, is super cute, and is very wellspoken.

art meets science

art meets science

easy, tiger

i saw ryan adams at the fox last night, and honestly... i was kind-of unimpressed. he played 14 songs, without talking, and then walked off stage.

i know, he's a diva. but really??

he came back and played 6 more songs and was a little more chatty, but i just expected more. a total of 20 songs??

the biggest disappointment for me was the fact that he never once brought out his acoustic guitar. and he played piano ONCE. for having such folky roots, it seems strange to me that he would only play electric guitar during the show.

and despite all this, he still remains one of my favorite artists...

slowly grind away the innocence

Day two of my Nashville trip started with a Georgia win over Vanderbilt (yay!) and ended with one of the best live shows I've been to in a while.

Jay Clifford (lead singer of Jump, Little Children when they were together) let us in on his solo project at one of the best Nashville venues-- The Mercy Lounge (Cannery Ballroom).

I loved how Jump was really able to grow through their fans with their music. When you listen to Dancing Virginia and then Body Parts or Vertigo and then Rains In Asia, you know it's still them, but they keep transforming.

Some of Jay's stuff sounded folky like The Early Years, but my favorite was a more poppy tune, Know When To Walk Away:


know when to walk away from rosie siman on Vimeo.

HARDeR. BeTTeR. FASTeR. STRONGeR.

i saw kanye west last night at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym, and i have to say, it was one of the most entertaining shows i've been to.

i was a little confused when he came out sporting a bandana around his neck and a jet pack, but he made up for it with the extended version of 'stronger'.

the best part of the show was the fact that suite passes aren't stamped, torn, or really even checked. we started with 8 passes, and kept going out and retrieving all our friends at the door. we ended up with at least 20 people in our suite...

guster opened and was a little disappointing, but i'll forgive them because when i saw them at the Ryman, it was freakin' amazing.

here's the review from The Tennessean

my pics from the show

Target Update

I got an e-mail from 'Laura' the site administrator for Target Rounders. As I was reading her e-mail, I got a call from an agency in NYC that operates Target Rounders. The girl who sent me an e-mail and some VP were on the phone... They wanted to explain that the whole thing was a miscommunication.... But they did admit that it was unethical. They wanted me to know that this was their fault and not something from Target. They didn't send out another e-mail to clarify, but they did update a message on their website. They also deleted my facebook posts.


Here was the e-mail "apology" they sent to me:

Hi Rosie,


You are absolutely right, and your concerns are completely founded. The message in last week's newsletter was the result of a miscommunication and in fact, was not endorsed by Target. If you notice the Team Message on the Rounders' homepage, we have changed it. Target Rounders is a program designed for Target enthusiasts to help spread the word about Target and its products. We encourage honesty and transparency in these communications.


The message in last week's newsletter was merely intended to remind the Rounders not to dominate Target's facebook page or seem like an exclusive club that other Target fans are excluded from. Sorry for the miscommunication and confusion. Please let me know if you still have concerns, because your opinions are important to us, and we obviously want you to be proud to be a Rounder. Please let me know if this addresses your concerns.

Sincerely,
Laura

The original newsletter said this:

Target Rounders


Issue 107

TARGET ROUNDERS NEWSLETTER LOVES FACEBOOK!!


Your mission: try not to let on in the Facebook group that you are a Rounder. We love your enthusiasm for the Rounders, and I know it can be hard not to want to sing it from the mountaintops (and the shower, and on the bus...). However, we want to get other members of the Facebook group excited about Target, too! And we don't want the Rounders program to steal the show from the real star here: Target and Target's rockin' Facebook group! So keep it like a secret!

The updated version said this:

Thank you for your enthusiasm for the Rounders! We love it! If you want to spread the word about how to be a part of the Rounders program please let your friends know that they can visit www.targetrounders.com to get information and fill out a quick application to get accepted. Also remember that we do not want others to feel excluded from the Rounders program, so keep that in mind when chatting about it with your friends online.

target

i posted a message about how target had acted unethically on the wall of their Facebook group. not even twenty minutes after posting this, someone from their Ad/Interactive Agency (AKQA) contacted me via facebook:

Yiming Roberts
Today at 1:46pm
Report Message
Hi Rosie,

I just saw your post about the Target Rounders newsletter. Can you explain a little bit more about this? I work in advertising and I'm always interested to hear what consumers thing about brands, especially with regards to social networking.

Thanks,
Yiming

interesting...

nashville

i always loved going to shows in high school- that's what we did. go to shows.

and then i came to college in Athens and everyone talked about how Rolling Stones ranked it as one of the top college music scenes.. but no one ever went to shows. and when we did go, they sucked for the most part.

after re-living the nashville music scene i realize the main reason i'm partial to nashville. not only are there better musicians overall, but the VENUES actually have great sound, good sound guy, and have great acoustics.

(friday night i saw Kennedy at The Rutledge)

electric prom

i found this image puzzle created by hyper happen (with viral seeding by rubber republic) for bbc's electric proms.

apparently there are 80 artists "hidden" within it. someone else has done this before, but i can't remember who. i know it had smashing pumpkins though.


http://www.newmusicexperience.com/

onslaught

Yet again, Dove does it.

paris hilton gets torn apart

this is david letterman's best work in forever...

ad of the day

motivation

i went running and on my way home, it started to rain.

i felt like it was nature motivating me.

hangover

# The resonance which continues in a loudspeaker cone after the input signal has stopped. See also damping factor, impulse response, ringing.
www.dilettantesdictionary.com/index.php

# The wrath of grapes.


# A tendency for reproduced sounds to last longer than they should. Most noticeable at low frequencies, where it obscures detail.
stereophile.com/reference/50/index4.html

# disagreeable aftereffects from the use of drugs (especially alcohol)
# holdover: an official who remains in office after his term
# something that has survived from the past; "a holdover from the sixties"; "hangovers from the 19th century"


# A hangover, medically termed veisalgia, is the after-effect following the consumption of large amounts of one drug or another. In particular, it is most commonly associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages.This article deals mainly with hangovers caused by alcohol consumption. See also withdrawal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangover

blue balls

i want them.

here's the info. you know you want them, too.

they soften your fabric, reduce dryer time, and get rid of wrinkles in your clothes.

laundry has never been so much fun!

rip off

i can name the people i know that don't know themselves
without talking to nobody
i can count the people i know that want to fix themselves
without taking my hands out of my pocket

my goal in life is to live intentionally.

and it seems so simple and you could write it off easily,
but the more i go about my day,
the more i realize how humans are so habitual.

live.
live intentionally.
live.

racer

i went for a hike today that ended up being about 8 miles.
i ran mile 6. kind-of unintentionally. (long story involving boardwalks and a puppy)

i kept hearing things throughout the hike but one time when i looked back, a huge snake, about 4 ft. long, was behind me. it looked like the picture above.

apparently, it's a black racer. the one i saw was bigger than the one in the picture. i'm glad it didn't chase me because for a second i was thinking it might eat me.

(i wish i had gotten a picture myself)

shilo

the first week when i was in nyc for the summer, a friend put me on the guest list to a shilo party. an open bar and free t-shirts... what more could i ask for?

i liked what i saw and had been meaning to look up the company for a while now.

here's my favorite from what i stumbled upon: astor place cube

i love little kids

genius

where i wish i was

i think this pretty much sums up where i wish i was in life right now...

http://www.intothewild.com/

freedom, wilderness, no expectations, no regrets...

We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all; but we cannot have freedom without wilderness.
- Edward Abbey.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse. The differences in the product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity. In the wilds that gave them birth.
- Aldo Lepold

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
- Sir John Lubbock

The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask.
- Nancy Newhall

In wildness is the preservation of the world.
-Thoreau

and it's ironic, because really, i want to be in nyc. i think i just know i have to wait for ny, so i've moved on to wanting something in the mean time that is more attainable. (like living in the woods...?)

; )

no end in sight

I went and saw No End In Sight, a documentary directed by Charles Ferguson at Athens Cine. It won an award for a documentary at Sundance and

They shot over 200 hours of footage to tell the story from Fall 2003 when we started occupying Baghdad. We planned the occupation of Germany for 2 years before executing anything. We planned the Iraq occupation for 58 days.

The movie surprised me because many of the insiders seemed to be confused along the way... Richard Armitage, former Secretary of State was talking about when the US decided to disband the Iraq army saying "I think this decision came as a surprise to most of us." and then "I thought we had just created a problem. We had a lot of out of work [Iraqi] soldiers.

Overall, it provided a lot of insight into what we did, what we didn't do, but it was missing what we could have done. I left with a sense of hopelessness and felt ashamed to be an American.

Here are some reviews:
Roger Ebert
Entertainment Weekly

Nobody has managed to poke any real holes in Ferguson's work, perhaps because its most damning moments come directly from the mouths of one former Bush official after another, explaining with long-overdue sobriety what went wrong and how

the truth will surface

i'm really intrigued....

http://www.sharkwater.com/

are you smarter than a miss teen contestant?

so everyone probably saw the numerous versions of miss teen south carolina's response to "why 1/5th of americans can't locate the US on a map"... which is just sad, by the way. it included references to "US Americans" and "South Africa" and "the Iraq". Hmm.

this is my favorite thing that has come out of it: Maps For Us . the best by far is the map of Sparta.

please. just go there.

NYC

oh how i love new york city.

i love...
the big buildings that tower over you

people watching... and how it's easy to walk down the street, rock out on air guitar, and go completely unnoticed by most

s'mac and the other niche restaurants in the east village

azuki and all you can drink wine with sushi

walking everywhere

conversations with homeless people in Union Square

iPhone Unlocked

First off... If you don't know me, I'm a pretty big Apple fan. If you do know me, this is pretty obvious by the way I talk about Apple and about my love for my MacBook Pro.

I came across this article the other day about a kid who logged about 500 hours trying to "unlock" the iPhone so that he could use it on his own service provider.

Who didn't see this one coming?? I just didn't think it would happen so soon after the release.

While I love Apple, and I totally understand why they would make it available on only one provider, I think this goes to show that when there's a will, there's a way. I know that sounds cliche, but really... when you don't make something readily available to the mass, there's usually someone who will go above and beyond what is normal to make it work (whether it's for money or personal reasons...)

So what does this mean?

First of all, it means you can buy the code on ebay for about $3,000 and unlock the phone yourself if you want to use the iPhone with Verizon.

But what it really means is that you can bet iPhone 2.0 will probably have extra security measures built in so that it is more difficult for a (not so typical) consumer to "break the code".

Why

I have a couple blogs for various New Media classes, and a funny thing happened. Once I started writing for those, I realized I had so much more to write about.

So here I am... not a blogger... just your (a)typical sorority girl who enjoys rock climbing, pop culture, and long walks on the beach. Half the time, I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm really good at pretending I do. The other half of the time, I like to think I'm pretty on top of my shit.

I'm not really doing this to share myself with the world, or even to share my inner most thoughts and turn all emo. I just think it would be cool to look back in a couple years and see what I was thinking my Senior year of college and what was going on in pop culture.