So here we stand, on the very edge of a cliff, looking into what appears to be an abyss... A man with a strange name has been president of the most powerful nation in the world for just over 100 days.  The Mayans thought that the end would come in 2012.  The minority party thinks it's already here.  And can we blame them?

Just think about all the horrific things that have already happened:

To start off on entirely the wrong foot, the man with a strange name said something or other about American arrogance.  He, in effect, apologized for the art of arrogance practiced here for the past 8 years.  How dare he.  After all, we are nothing if not arrogant, but we should embrace it, because god damn it, we are right, and we know it.  We have always been right, maybe just misunderstood a tad, like with the whole Vietnam thing, and the slavery and all, but all that aside, we are and always will be righter than the next guy or gal, because we are the greatest country on earth.

He then proceeds to shake hands with some other people with strange names, none of whom are hand-shake worthy.  We successfully ignored these same people for years, and now this man is squashing any notion we have grown accustomed to that those people simply don't exist. 

Shortly after the whole mess of apologizing, the man with a strange name has the audacity to release the memos dealing with us, the greatest country on Earth, torturing a bunch of horrible people from a bunch of horrible countries who want nothing more than to blow us up.  It's as if this used-to-be-attorney forgot that we are, indeed, unquestionably, undeniably the best country in the world, and anything at all we do must by definition be right.  We had every right to torture those good-for-nothing-assholes, stuck in their Stone Age beliefs, habits and laws. 

Who the heck does this guy think he is to tell us that we screwed up?  We are Americans, and we don't screw up. Ever.  It's not our fault that there are a whole bunch of people in the world who hate our guts - it's theirs, and we'll teach them to love us or become like us if it kills us!

These hundred days were also marked by blatant disregard for all things this great country was founded on.  We are apparently not a Christian Nation - craziest freaking thing I ever heard.  We are, supposedly, a nation of various religious beliefs, a diverse melting pot of sorts.  It's like saying we are all amoral mutts, who can do, say or believe anything they please. 

So here we are, on the brink of extinction, even if we don't realize it, and the only thing that can save us now is a new leader.  Someone who understands that the Bible is always more right than any Constitution, someone who knows that there is only one Right Way to live one's life, and that way was defined in the Good Book.  Someone who knows that no matter how wrong something seems, it's right if it's in the Bible.  Infidels of all creeds with their twisted morals need to be eradicated - or this whole empire will collapse.  This is the mission of this nation - to be the shining light, the city on the hill, the beacon of Freedom of Being the best freaking Christian Nation on earth.

If only Osama bin Laden weren't Muslim...

Copyright (C) 2008, inna hardison. please, don't steal from the starving artists, it's illegal and well, just plain freakin' wrong!
:-)

Inna Hardison is the owner of Ha Media Group, a full service small kick-ass ad agency.
For all your printing needs, visit www.hamediashop.com and get great quality Postcards, Business Cards, Flyers and more at awesome prices. For print and web design, see our design portfolio at www.teamhardison.com

The premise that the end justifies the means is a tricky one, philosophically speaking, as it can only be assessed in retrospect, and the victors tend to write history, or at least they used to.  Now, with our ability to access information in real time, our history as it will be written is less predictable than it's ever been.  So how will the first decade of the new century be looked at by the future generations?

I read the torture memos.  The question of legal defensibility aside, the idea that all we have to do is change the definition of a human being to something other than, something less than to be able to get away with what we did is a familiar one.  The same one we employed with slaves; the one Hitler employed with Jews - the one where the ones in power acknowledge that people feel compassion for people and it takes a definition change to make acts of brutality committed by men against men seem palatable to both, the jailers and the population at large, the executioners and the onlookers.

Did it really need to take hundreds of pages of legalese to dance around the simple fact that what made the memos necessary in the first place was largely the need of a post-factum justification for having done something illegal and immoral on behalf of the people?  One or two sentences would have sufficed: "we are America, and we can do whatever the fuck we please, with impunity.  Oh yeah, and we DO NOT, under any circumstances, apologize for any of it."

At least that would have been honest, but few cowboys in business suits with Ivy League degrees have the balls to be honest any more.  The debate over the virtues of the information we may have gotten via illegal means pales in comparison to the gaping hole between the beacon of light we were supposed to be and the caricature of freedom and democracy we've become.

I, for one, hang my head in shame and with humble apologies to anyone, no matter what ideology or circumstance who may have been wronged on my behalf.  Anyone, who may have been humiliated.  Anyone, who stood chained and shackled for seven and a half days in a diaper and without ability to sleep, to dream, to turn off the nightmare. The nightmare of America's ignoble reign.

Inna Hardison is the owner of Ha Media Group, a full service small kick-ass ad agency.
For all your printing needs, visit www.hamediashop.com and get great quality Postcards, Business Cards, Flyers and more at awesome prices. For pring and web design, see our design portfolio at www.teamhardison.com

Copyright (C) 2008, inna hardison. please, don't steal from the starving artists, it's illegal and well, just plain freakin' wrong!
:-)

They sat around my dining room table, eating barbeque chips by the handful, drinking Sprites and talking genetics and amoebas.  Some of them my son has known since middle school - a bunch of nerdish kids quite possibly bound for those coveted Ivy League schools in a year.  Quite possibly doing something grand with their lives.  My baby was turning 17 to the noise of academic chatter and crunching of the chips.

Later on that evening, they would play Rock Band, and some of the kids would sing their hearts out - some well, others, not so much.  We, the adults chaperoning the occasion, would laugh, play a few songs with the kiddos, and forgo the evening cleanup to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn.  Next year, my baby will probably not want to celebrate at home.  Next year, he'll be chaperone-free, surrounded by unruly teenagers, flirting with girls and looking for adventure.  That's just the way it is, and I wouldn't begrudge him any of it, but for now, I am tickled pink that he chose to celebrate at home, which left all sorts of room for public displays of affection on our parts, and sharing of those embarrassing little kid stories.

This was the last hurrah for the kiddo.  In June, he will take the dreaded SAT and the rest of the summer will be spent in filling out college applications, and in learning to say goodbye to people and places that defined him up till now.  He has no clue about what he wants to be when he grows up, but he knows who he is.  Unfortunately for his eventual pocketbook, the stuff he is good at and enjoys is all in the artsy-can't-make-a-living category.  He probably will not own the most expensive car, or ever flaunt a pair of Prada's.  Lucky for him, he seems entirely content with not having those things.  Chances are, he would succeed at anything he tried.  Chances are he will choose with his heart, and the decision will be less than pragmatic.  He is a dreamer.  He dreams in rhapsodies and snowflakes and flutter of monarch's wings.  Wherever his life's journey takes him I hope he never grows weary of his dreams...  After all everything else can be bought.  The only difference is the price tag.

Happy birthday sweet kiddo.  May you always be you.

Inna Hardison is the owner of Ha Media Group, a full service small kick-ass ad agency.
For all your printing needs, visit www.hamediashop.com and get great quality Postcards, Business Cards, Flyers and more at awesome prices. For pring and web design, see our design portfolio at www.teamhardison.com

Copyright (C) 2008, inna hardison. please, don't steal from the starving artists, it's illegal and well, just plain freakin' wrong!
:-)

Life, these last few years, has been a blur...  Days and weeks flew by leaving behind uneven tracks of a car going too fast around a serpentine curve.  The necessity of moving from New York post 9.11, forcing both, me and my husband, into the stormy seas of self-employment, left us crippled as parents to our two boys, with nary a bedtime story for the little one and only an occasional word of encouragement for the oldest.  Kids get used to things, and a goodnight kiss eventually suffices to let them know they are loved, or so we hope.

The kids learned that we only had time for emergencies and things of utmost importance, and those were shared during dinner conversations.  Last year, almost all things of utmost importance to our 16-year-old son revolved around his chemistry teacher, Sylvia Brady.  Every joke she shared in class, every cute nick name she gifted one of her students, every anecdote were excitedly passed around the dinner table, along with the inevitable request for us to meet with her.  The year ended with a rushed Christmas break, and the kiddo was through with chemistry.  We had not met Ms. Brady.  There was simply no time.

A few weeks ago, our son was helping Ms Brady fix some computer related issues in her classroom.  He came home that day with somewhat of a concern that we may not get to meet her after all, as she could retire.  "She is pretty old, you know, and she may not be at the school much longer..." 

Looking back on my own childhood and struggling to recall any teachers, but one,  who were more than dictators upon whose good graces depended the all important numbers on my transcript, I caved.  The one teacher I had who made all the difference for me also taught chemistry, a subject I loathed so deeply I was not above cheating if it spared me the embarrassment of always getting it wrong.  With her, I couldn't cheat.  It was a relationship she had with each student where we were not inferior little people who needed to be taught something or rather for their own good - we were treated as equals, as adults, capable of their own thoughts and conclusions, even if we were wrong.  That was a great year.

Last Thursday I went to see my son's old chemistry teacher at FPC, Ms. Sylvia Brady.  I had to shake her hand, at the very least, and tell her something about the difference she made for my son, and the fact that the kids are all raving about her, and that it was probably a bad idea for her to retire, because let's face it, chemistry is no fun, unless kids can blow stuff up, which they can't for safety reasons, and formulas are just boring.  She made kids love coming to class - she had a gift...

Sylvia Brady is 67 years old, so she tells me almost casually, as she towers over me and we shake hands.  She has a slight limp, a result of a recent trip and fall incident in her classroom.  She points to a scar on her forehead as forensic evidence of that fall.  I tell her that my son talks about her incessantly, trying to explain my reason for being there without appearing insane.  She nods.  We sit in a large empty classroom.  She graciously apologizes for the mess, pointing to a few stacks of paper lacking in symmetry on her desk, but the room is clean, and surprising devoid of any odors I recall from my days of chemistry classes.

I ask her why she chose to teach chemistry, or something to that effect.

We are interrupted by a knock on the door and an  unannounced appearance of a teenage girl.  In short order, I learn that Ms. Brady's classroom is home to any kid who has an extra five minutes to kill before their next class, or while waiting for a ride home.  Throughout the next 45 minutes that I spend in this room, the kids wander in an out, and I get used to being interrupted.  They come, give Ms. Brady a hug, and talk to her and each other.  Some, have not been her students for years, but still they come.  My son, it turns out, is one of those kids, a Ms. Brady groupie.

"If I won umpteen million dollars in a Florida Lottery - I would still teach this class," - she tells me.  "This is my passion, corny as it sounds, and I love my kids..."

It is corny, I concede, but the way she greets each of the kids wandering through her classroom tells me it's genuine.  She listens to each, with intense curiosity.  She knows what classes they take and how they are doing in them.  Sometimes, someone asks something or other chemistry related.  Then, the kids make themselves comfortable, and listen.

I am puzzled now why someone who is so obviously happy would want to retire, but I keep it to myself for now, dreading learning the answer to the nagging question.  Part of me already knows the obvious answer: "the schools are downsizing everywhere.  I know that, I've been reading the papers for years.  At least our district is not closing any schools.  They may simply not have the money to hold on to teachers who are of retirement age, or, to put it bluntly, more likely to get sick..."

Ms Brady has been teaching chemistry for 32 years, most of them at our local school district.  She had won numerous awards and accolades, none of which are displayed in her classroom - they don't matter in the grand scheme of things.  She picks up a smart board from her desk and tells me that the school's been very good to her by giving her all this new technology. 

Rebecca, one of the girls hanging out in the classroom at the moment, tells me that Ms. Brady had to rely on using a microphone after having thyroid surgery last year: "that's the kind of technology that makes her happy, the kind that allows her to continue teaching the subject she loves - a $30.00 microphone when her voice couldn't carry... Everything else, she can live without, gladly, as would the kids, so long as they have Ms. Brady."

There is no glimmer of understanding of economic woes facing the nation and the school district in the eyes of the teens in this classroom.  It's not subject to a mathematical formula, or an issue of a grade on some piece of paper. To these kids, and all the others Ms. Brady taught over the years, it's a simple matter of decency, and they are simply too young to understand that the good does not always triumph.  It's just part of the idealism they picked up from their mentor, Ms Sylvia Brady.

I hope you get to stay, Ms. Brady.  And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being there for all these kids.  Thank you, for being there for mine  -  he is a better person for having known you. 

Inna Hardison is the owner of Ha Media Group, a full service small kick-ass ad agency.
For all your printing needs, visit www.hamediashop.com and get grate quality Postcards, Business Cards, Flyers and more at awesome prices. For pring and web design, see our design portfolio at www.teamhardison.com

Copyright (C) 2008, inna hardison. please, don't steal from the starving artists, it's illegal and well, just plain freakin' wrong!
:-)

Since I haven't seen any recaps of the last episode, i figured I might as well throw in my two cents. Don't mistake this for an 'unofficial official recap' or anything:-)

From the get-go most of us knew that Shawn was most likely going to be a bad guy.  I wanted the 24 folks to find a nifty twist and prove my intuition wrong.  Outing him as the mole in the last episode was all too predictable for my taste.  If it was, indeed, that easy for all of us to spot him as the bad guy - wtf is FBI's problem?

Moving on: the overly emotional goodbye by Mareeka's sister, and the heart-felt warning to the befrekled FBI agent to keep her baby sis safe from harm was like screaming out loud that she was going to be a gonner... I already know she isn't making it, so why the heck would I rush to the tv next Monday? Thanks for ruining the suspense...again.

I think the only thing I am still not sure about is whether or not Henfy makes it, though my money right now is on him being just fine:-)

Your thoughts?

My dad did a blog recently on the dangers of borrowing from future generations, using a very sad-looking photo of his grandson, aka, my baby, Shane.  The blog in question can be found here.  Dad thinks that this stimulus package is going to rob his grandson of his financial future, or at least, that's how I read it.

I tend to think there are more than one ways of looking at most things, and if we are going to use kids to make our arguments for government's non-involvement, we might as well learn something about these kids' perspective on things.

A few weeks ago Shane came home from school bordering on tears.  He is an overly dramatic child, but hardly ever cries, so the tears tend to be genuine.  It turns out a girl named Jade who sat next to him since the beginning of the school year is going to be homeless.  She told Shane, because she wanted to share with someone.  The teachers and the administration of the school have no idea...  She was told not to tell anyone. 

Every day, Jade gets on the bus and goes to school and reads about elephants trouncing through the African plains, and tries to remind herself that it is, indeed, imperative for her to remember what 7X8 is at all cost.  The FCAT that all kids have to start taking in 3^rd grade is coming up, and if she fails any of the subjects on it, she'll be held back for a year.  She has always been a good student.  She is a smart kid.  She doesn't cry, but Shane knows that she is scared.  They lost their home to foreclosure, and now they are just waiting to be thrown out.  They have all their stuff in boxes, Jade's, her mom's and her little brother's.  Her mom works two jobs, both paying less combined than what they need to survive...

Yesterday, Shane and I were talking about school and stuff, and he told me he took some money to Jade.  See, Shane works, in a manner of speaking.  He does chores for an ailing older lady living across the street from us, and the lady pays him, at times, rather generously.  Shane uses the cash for gifts and trinkets, but doesn't really have a concept of saving it yet.   He didn't ask me for help for his friend.  He didn't need authorization of any kind to help someone he cares about.  What he did ask was why nobody seems to know or care that this family will be homeless....  He then told me that when he was sent to run an errand to the extended day program's room, there were cots on the floor with some kids sleeping on them....  He told me he was glad they had a safe place to sleep.

I don't live in the projects or some rundown dilapidated neighborhood.  I live in what most would deem to be quintessential middle class suburbia.  Up until a few years ago, it was one of the best places to move to.  It was also the fastest growing county in the country.  There were no homeless children in Palm Coast.  There was no need for my son to worry whether or not his friend is sleeping on the street. 

If Shane understood the intricacies of the economy; if he was able to analyze all the implications of the stimulus package, and even disagreed with some of the provisions, I think he would choose to pay it forward, so that some of the sadness and suffering he sees around him is alleviated.  Failure is indeed, both inevitable and necessary.  I'd rather my kids failed as economists than as people...  For allowing me to see my kids' reactions to injustice and indignity and their compassion for their fellow men - thank you Mr. Bush, cause god knows if it were not for the massive screw-ups on all levels, my kids may have been just normal kids, without a care in the world...

How much is a child's innocence worth?

Copyright (C) 2008, inna hardison. please, don't steal from the starving artists, it's illegal and well, just plain freakin' wrong!
:-)

I grew up without a computer.  The only way to get information on any subject was from books, and thankfully, my family had thousands of tomes on all subjects spanning the walls of the apartment.  If it was a word or an event date that I was unsure about, there were the few dozen burgundy coloured monsters, comprising the encyclopedia.  If you could put things in alphabetical order, you could find anything in those.  For all other inquiries, I could turn to various quotations from poetry and fiction, and, as a last resort, to my parents, who, I was convinced, were the smartest people in the world.  At times, watching the way my kids learn, makes me wonder what I would turn out like if instead of digging through the many pages of books I had Google, and Ask, and WebMD...this last one is the subject of this little bit of self-expression.

The last few days here were the coldest we've had in over a decade, and I don't respond well to temperature changes.  Throw some stress into the equation, and waking up with 3 humongous clusters of cold sores on my lips was almost to be expected.  Yes, I know it's herpes of sorts.  I also know it's incurable, once you get these pests, they'll keep coming back.  I also know that they tend to pop up at the most inopportune moment, such as a day or two before some public appearance (a humane society fundraiser tomorrow).  Looking very much as if I just had a botched lip injection procedure, and feeling icky, I resorted to my normal routine - a small and over-priced tube of Abreva.  The next morning my lips were even more swollen than before, only now I was also sporting a very prominent second chin - my glands, the ones I could find were swollen as well.  Hubby, concerned, went off to the pharmacy in search of a thermometer and advice, and I hit the Internet.

WebMD seemed like the most natural choice, so I went in, and answered honestly the check your own symptoms questions, and hit Continue button.  The window that popped up told me that I needed to call 911 immediately.  Spending a day at the hospital was not was I was hoping for, so I proceeded to Google "Cold Sores".  After reading a few articles on this pesky phenomenon, I learned that your lymph nodes can, indeed, swell, and it is normal.  So I no longer had to worry about going to the ER.  Now all I had to do was find a way of getting rid of these things in two days.

I read fast, very fast.  I browsed the first 10 or so pages of results, without finding anything that sounded legit or doable on short notice, and, indeed, most of those tried to sell me a magic recipe for Only $49.00.  But then, I hit a gold mine of advice on an unpretentious site, that appears to be a student project where people from around the world contribute home remedies that have worked for them.  Click here for the site.

There are probably over a 1000 entries under cold sores on the site.  Some of them required rather drastic measures involving needles and other things that I could never bring myself to use.  Others mentioned ingredients I had never heard of before. 

One ingredient that seemed to be recommended more than any of the others was acetone free nail polish remover.  I am a very skeptical person.  I am also not vain enough to risk death over looking ok for an evening, but towards the end of the day the pain alone was going to drive me insane, if I didn't do something.  Putting nail polish remover on my sore lips didn't sound logical, or make any sense, medically speaking, but so many people wrote fab testimonials to the miracle cure for cold sores, that desperation won over reason.  I put nail polish remover on my lips with q-tips over and over again, because a bunch of people who may or may not exist, scattered throughout the world, told me via a string of zeros and ones that it works, and I believed them.

Yes, it made me question my sanity... The good news - it didn't kill me, and it certainly seems to have sped up what would ordinarily be a 10 -day ordeal.  I might even be my normal self by tomorrow, thanks to the bizarre advice.  The larger question though remains: to what extent do we trust the information we find on the net, and do our circumstances at the moment of searching for that info overshadow our ability to be selective? 

Would you try a remedy found online, no matter how bizarre sounding, if you were desperate enough? 

Something to ponder, while I go an apply another layer of stuff to my lips...

I love to drive, I really really do.... So much so that I once drove by myself from Palm Coast, Florida to San Fran, and enjoyed every minute of it (well, I could have done without the hitch-hiker...)

Now, I am spending so much time behind my keyboard that I hardly ever leave the house, save for an occasional trip to see a client or to the store.  So when I was asked a few days ago to run an errand for a friend which involved taking off for an hour without feeling guilty about it, I was all for it.  It was a rather silly little favor that took me from 12 miles inland across the bridge to A1A.  For those of you who don't know, A1A is our scenic highway along the Atlantic coast, and is absolutely beautiful.  During tourist season, it's bustling with traffic of all kinds, from bikini-clad sun revelers to bikers in their leather gear, and everything in between...  Bob Marley blasting from car stereos, cause there is nothing better than the beach and Bob Marley; margaritas dripping condensation onto napkins with love notes scribbled on them at the beachside cafes, and the many fisherman casting for fish amidst a sea of pelicans and seagulls...

The last time I was at the beach was indeed during the summer, or so I realized upon crossing the bridge to an eerily quiet beach-side town.  No cars high- jacking the view of the ocean, no bikini-clad youths, and no Bob Marley.  I slowed down to a comfortable 30, just because I wanted to take it all in, slowly.  I needed so desperately to inhale enough oysters and seaweed to last me until it warms up enough to take the pups to the pink coquina sands...  I needed to have enough time to have the calm winter blue of the Atlantic remind me why I am here, and how glorious, indeed, this place is.  No matter what happens, this vast body of water will always beckon me.  I am, alas, a child of the sea, even in times when I don't need a compass to keep from getting lost...

 So, wherever in the Universe you happen to be, take a drive to a spot that beckons you... To a place where it's ok to laugh, cry, and be utterly alone and filled with magic... You know where it is - go find it. 

Mine is a skip and a hop away, and for that, I am eternally greatful...

Laura Monroe tagged me for this Christmas Meme that's been going around like a mini plague.  This may not seem to necessarily follow the rules, but this is exactly what I want for Christmas.  I am tagging no one. This one dies here. Here goes:

A few years ago, the Webkinz phenomena infiltrated my little son's imagination, and he just had to have one, or two, or three.  At the time, a little stuffed animal with the ability to be taken care of and played with virtually, in addition to just being squished and held, ran one about $22.00.  For those of you that don't know, once the cute furry thing was purchased, the child had to think of a name, go to webkinz.com and put the number from the label into the computer to officially adopt this animal.  One could then engage in all sorts of virtual activities, that would all give you points with which you could "buy" furniture, toys and food for the newly adopted pet.

Having a few non-virtual adopted pets in our home, we thought while pricey, the lessons learned in ‘taking care' of these pets would be invaluable for the little munchkin, so we figured we'd comply, and in short order, our son ended up with a total of 7 Webkinz.  He has been taking care of them religiously, at times insisting he had to run home from being out at a movie or visiting friends just so his Webkinz didn't go to bed hungry.  He has one of those over-active imaginations, so the line between the virtual and the real world is a very thin one.

A few months ago, there was a river of tears cried over the fact that four out of his seven Webkinz were "retired", and that meant he got absolutely no points for taking care of them.  They were suddenly no longer invited to activities, getting treats, or whatever else it is that the newer, non-retired pets got.  I thought of writing a letter to Webkinz then, but truthfully, was just so angry at the idea of taking something away from kids that didn't cost them a penny, all in an attempt to force more of their toys down people's throats... I let it go, until today.

This morning, my son logs in to check up on his pets, and gets the following message:

From your furry friends at Webkinz World:

Your Webkinz account is set to expire on December 25^th, 2008. You can avoid it by purchasing a new Webkinz before then..."

So here I am, facing a dilemma of sorts:  break my son's heart by explaining to him that whatever is going on in the prettily colored rooms of the virtual Webkinz universe is not in the least bit real, and that none of his pets exist outside of the soft and snuggly toys he goes to bed with every night.  I could tell him that Casey, the elephant, doesn't really care for the bananas he's been feeding him, or that Jeffrey the pug doesn't care for a virtual blanket and a new easy chair.  I could tell him that it's all a bunch of zeros and ones scavenging the caverns of parental wallets in the rather cruel attempt to extract more and more money from people...

Or, I could run out and buy yet another Webkinz, before Christmas, so that my son doesn't go to bed worrying about his pets every night, and hope that the one I pick out doesn't get ‘retired' too soon. 

What I really want to do though is to tell whoever is behind this whole Webkinz phenomena that they are a pack of jackasses who have found the most cruel and ingenious way of forcing their customers to remain with them for the duration of their children's childhoods.  The cost of doing otherwise would be too much to bear for most of us, parents.  So here is what I want for Christmas.  I want a Webkinz for every kid who's at risk of losing their account on Christmas, simply because their parents didn't not give this company any money in the last six months.

I want that, and I want Webkinz to go out of business with apologies to every kid they had taken an unfair advantage of.  I want the schmucks who run this company to wake up one day, preferably on Christmas and seriously think about where they went wrong.

They had a brilliant idea. Their games and educational activities are well done.  They had a loyal following...    Instead of promoting their new releases by paying for advertising, they chose the cruel and heartless tactics of extracting more money from customers they already have, by threatening the welfare of their adopted pets.  Wasn't the whole point of Webkinz to teach kids to take care of animals?  That our pets are indeed, irreplaceable, and that each one we have throughout our lives is unique and special? ..

I know it's in really bad taste to wish harm on someone for Christmas.  But then again, I am only returning the favor.

As some of you know, our company now offers full service offset printing, where orders can be placed online 24/7, files uploaded, and your nifty new shiny pieces of marketing collateral show up at your door within a week or so.  We invested quite a bit of time, money and soul into this addition to our suite of services, and are feeling pretty darn good about the whole thing.

Yesterday, we got the bright idea of sharing this bit of news with real estate and related industry professionals in Florida via a cute little email we drafted.  Let me backtrack here for a sec - my fault, I drafted it, the hubby just made it look all pretty.  We dropped it into a broadcast service, clicked send, and off it went - to a scarily large number of email addresses. 

Shortly thereafter, we get a VERY irate email from one Florida Realtor, who shall remain unnamed SCREAMING AT US IN ALL CAPS, and I quote: "WELL IM SURE NOT THE HELL FILLED WITH OPTIMISM ABOUT A NEW MUSLIM PRESIDENT THAT WENT TO A HATE FILLED CHURCH FOR 20 YEARS!  YOU OBVIOUSLY ARE - AND YOU SHOULD LEARN THE NUMBER ONE RULE IN BUSINESS -  DO NOT TALK POLITICS OR RELIGION!!  FOR THAT REASON I WOULD NEVER USE OR RECOMMEND YOUR COMPANY. TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST."

In the interest of full disclosure, here are a few paragraphs from the message she received:

"Season's Greetings from all of us at HaMediaShop.com.

There is something to be said for magic that is the Holiday Season in Florida.  Warm enough to wear shorts, golf or fish and still have the twinkling lights of Christmas gracing our palm trees and evergreens. 

For some, this Christmas Season is the toughest ever financially, but still most people are filled with the spirit of optimism and impatience for the New Year.  The promise of a fresh start, the new President, the new business plan - we all resolve to do better, to try harder.

With the warmest wishes this Season to all of our Florida Realtors, here are a few tips that should help you make 2009 a great year, and of course, a holiday gift from all of us at hamediashop.com"

The rest of the message included some free suggestions on keeping in touch with clients and prospects and a discount offer on postcards from our store. 

So I went back and read and re-read the message, and then it hit me: this person honestly and truly got this angry over two words: President, and Christmas.  So here is my little message to the disgruntled person who would like to teach me a lesson by not doing business with me:

I am not religious, but have always referred to the little lights that make the universe a magical place every December as Christmas lights - nothing else would do! I say Merry Christmas to people I know and love this time of year - not to the exclusion of anything else, but because it is to me more an issue of tradition, one that has emotional and historical value.  The email did include a few Happy Holidays references in addition to the one or two politically incorrect uses of "Christmas". 

The fake evergreen in my living room is also called a Christmas Tree, and it has Christmas ornaments all over it, you know, the ones with Santa, and Angels, and Ginger Houses.

As for my reference to the New President - anyone coming in after a two term presidency would be a New President, last I checked, and I was by no means making a political statement of any kind with addressing that fact.

So to anyone who may get this email from us and chooses to be offended, by all means Do Not Use our services.  Our first rule of business is to provide the best possible service for our clients.  Our second rule of business is to remain human.  If that means being politically incorrect and losing some business because of it, I can live with that.

Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah to all and Happy Festivus for the rest of us.

Copyright (C) 2008, inna hardison. please, don't steal from the starving artists, it's illegal and well, just plain freakin' wrong!
:-)

For AR only discounts on printing with hamediashop, see this blog, and save big bucks. Postcards, Business Cards, Flyers and more at awesome prices. Print, Design, Layout.  www.hamediashop.com
See our design portfolio at www.teamhardison.com