John Hambrock is a fellow cartoonist who creates The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee. I checked in on John’s site this morning, and he was doing some bragging in his blog. His fine comic strip launched in November of 2006, which led John to calculate that he has drawn over 3,000 daily and Sunday strips that, if laid end to end, would equal the height of three Sears Towers stacked on top of one another (about 4,500 ft.). Well, John’s calculations led me to some of my own. I have drawn over 10,700 A&J strips since 1985, not accounting for leap years, which if laid end to end would extend for 2.5 miles and closely resemble my office floor. Hey, Junior! Come back in a few years, and we’ll talk some more! I must say, I do admire the way he has copies of all his strips arranged in ring binders. And if you read John’s bio, you’ll learn he spent years developing his characters before Brilliant Mind was launched by King Features Syndicate. As evidenced by the above cartoon from the first month of A&J, it wouldn’t have hurt if I’d done a little of that.
434 responses to “A Long Long Time Ago”
Jackie, you mentioned yesterday seeing a pop-up ad for a brand of men’s underwear I’d never seen. About four hours later, I got a pop-up ad for the same brand. Wow, that’s what I call targeted marketing. I merely read the name of the company online and their ad finds me within hours.
Since underwear is one of the things I try to buy in the best quality I can afford (shoes, tires, mattresses, bourbon, condoms, etc.), I did check it out. Note above, I said “the best quality I can afford”. I don’t see myself buying any $20+ jockey shorts or $30+ undershirts, at least until I hit the lottery.
Our Tulsa station is predicting temps in high 50’s and 60’s for next few days to a week. I did however put on my red and white fleecy bottoms just in case. No flannel nightgowns for me, a la Janis. I switched to bottoms and tee shirt tops after mooning the neighbors, when we have any, in short tee shirts between knee and butt. It is normally pretty empty around here except some on weekends in summer. so it didn’t seem to matter what I gardened in.
I have seen more serious snow and ice in West Texas than I care to see in times past. The barren landscape made it a serious silk flower market as live didn’t seem to be do able. The obsession for high school and collegiate football made it a serious market for football mum ribbons, both products that paid some bills for us.
Love, Jackie
I am going to start paying more attention to these targeted ads too, simply for same reason you gave. Someone mentions without actually even clicking on a link and I will get ads too.
As I have boat designer friends and others in New Zealand and Australia, I get a lot of those for travel, ditto ads for Caribbean and Gulf coast. I am wondering if they are targeting from content and how? I bet Sand knows.
So, which bourbon do you favor? That seems innocent enough to ask.
Love, Jackie
jUst got an ad for HyundaI in Odessa, TX and a Home Depot ad for cabinetry and remodeling bathrooms when I read an article on Wooden Boat about custom built wooden tubs in homes and boats. Coincidence?
Jackie, Maker’s Mark is my everyday bourbon. Jim Beam Devil’s Cut is my current special-occasion drink.
Now I wonder how long before you or I get a pop-up ad for one or both…
This is a test, only a test. We will see!
Oh, the available women in my neighborhood think I am in Caddo Mills, which I think is in Texas unless it is your neighborhood in Mississippi?
Cookies, and not those the Girl Scouts sell. If your browser accepts cookies from websites you visit, these becomes a micro beacon. Without running ad blockers these cuties can be tripped by clever advertisers to display ads based on your browsing history. I am starting to see cookies used to gather email addresses for mass mailings.
Advertisers get paid fractions of pennies each time they place an ad in front of an eyeball. Click thrus pay pennies each, that is when you click on the ad and redirect to the advertiser website. Optimize your cookie bot right, those pennies start flowing like a loose Vegas slot and someone makes real money.
Learn to manage your browser settings for cookies.
Lol, one of my email accounts lives on a robo-advertising list for an upstate New York auto dealership. Have never figured where or what caused the link.
I have written for and will probably do so again for Small Craft Advisor magazine, a legitimate boating magazine. I just got a junk email to me as part of the staff of the magazine which I did not open of course, just minutes ago. I have never represented myself anywhere except on their masthead listing and blog site as a staff member, I just sometimes write articles or contribute. Wait a minute, Mike did more than I and I am using his email rather than my own!
Someone in China ? thinks I can make purchasing/financial decisions for the magazine? I need that computer geek right now!
Some day I’m going to see if I can browse Kindle Books in a way to make Amazon think I’m a middle-aged black woman in the UP who rides steeplechase and does home canning.
It was a dark and stormy night…
No, it really is.
Debbe 😉 You gotta have some artistic cojones to get on stage with Heart and make this song your own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ7ZmaL2480
GR6, that is a simple one. Buy a new laptop. Go to Starbucks. Buy a $3 coffee, add the free half & half. Log on to Starbucks wifi. Emulate a Marinette Michigan IP address. Go to Amazon and lookup the following products: canning supplies, horse tack, and Afro haircare products.
Now if you want to move a level and get an A&J tshirt ….
Wonder what they think I am?
Confused? Lost? Bi-sexual?
All of the above?
Jackie, I know you from more than just your browsing history, and I sure as hell couldn’t categorize you with much confidence I’d get it right. 🙂
That’s a good thing, by the way. Who wants to be predicable?
Speelchek tried to change “categorize you” to “catheterize you”. I’ll not comment on my chances of doing that correctly.
Harking back to an earlier question, I’m guessing “brass bed.” Although handcuffs would have likely made for much clanking. Clanking and danger of loss of key could have both been eliminated by the use of old nylons. (Not to mention danger of chaffing.) But perhaps Janis wanted to play “Naughty Shoplifter”.
“Naughty Shoplifter”. Sounds like a training program for certain classes of Federal employees.
That is what I think Sand because all this talk of cookies and tracking makes me realize they probably think I am a single person, and while I have always used the internet far more than Mike, I gave up trying to keep a number of separate accounts and just went to using the one.
There are peculiar ones like baby websites I did for daughter and grandson but in my name, all the boating and outdoor magazines and groups, blogs, women’s clothes, books, cooking, gardening, travel, lots of medical portal and patient information sites, just a hodge podge of things that in my opinion would confuse the trackers.
Lots of restaurants, department stores, sports and knives and coins and investments, lord, I can see where they’d be mixed up.
Love, Jackie
Ghost, do you remember the Secret Service a year or so back? The one where the advance agents for a Colombia visit were enjoying the local services? I saw a newspaper headline that combined that with “Secret Service needs more women”. And my mind made connections that the writer probably never intended.
sandcastler ™ I saw a Craigslist ad that was titled Underbed Restraints in the General category. When I clicked on it, they were something A&J could have used on that bed in place of handcuffs.
Silk scarves are better unless nylons were taken off and easily available.
OK, I chickened out and erased rest of comment. My children are unlikely to read this since I am not on Facebook but who knows?
Secret Service scandal, that is. I say, I say my fingers done got ahead of my brain, boy. Pay attention.
Erasure bad. Candor good.
Yes, silk scarves are better, if you don’t mind it appearing a bit calculated. Nylons give the impression of wild, spur-of-the-moment passion.
Mark, while some parts of the Gubment (DOJ, BATFE and Really Big Fires, etc) seem to be doing their best to keep legal firearms out of the hands of honest citizens, another (Secret Service) has still not located a full-auto M4 carbine stolen from an agent’s vehicle while he and his partner were in a hotel room making the beast with two backs. Go figure.