It infuriates me that BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars have been authorized to bailout a piece of crap company like GMC/Chrysler. Let the free market put them out of their misery for Pete’s sake! Stop giving my hard earned money to incompetent Ivy League jackasses who are bilking the system with their multi-million dollar salaries and god-awful decision making!

If you agree with me and echo similar frustrations leave a comment. You can further show your support and voice your opinion by pre-ordering a shirt. Just mention that you’d like to pre-order a shirt along with your comment (don’t forget to include your size). Once 100 people pre-order a shirt I’ll email individual PayPal invoices to each supporter, verify your order and size, get them printed, then ship them out.

May the free-market force be with you!

Update: Oops, I forgot to mention the price. I’m suggesting a price of $15 per shirt which INCLUDES shipping (within US.) If times are tough and you can’t afford that much just say what you can pay in the comments and we’ll see if we can work something out.

Update 2:Leaving a comment DOES NOT obligate you to buy a shirt. It just shows your support for opposing government bailouts. If you want to pre-order a shirt you have to explicitly state it in your comment. So in all likelihood there will be more comments than there will be shirt orders and that’s OK. I hope that clarifies. A couple of you were confused.

Check out the pictures of us having fun trying to look mad.

Er, I mean Mr. President (and the rest of Washington.) Why do you propose this when we already have this? Is it so we can bury ourselves in more debt and so you and your Washington colleagues can appear to be solving problems when all you’re doing is making them worse? Here’s an idea. How about you start with making the first Consumer Protection Agency do it’s job instead of wasting money creating another one that will inevitably fail at protecting us.

I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it a thousand times more, this is not about political parties. It is about common sense. As someone very close to me says, “A good idea has the strength to stand on it’s own” - irrespective of the person’s ethnicity, religion, sexual preference (admit it, some of you just swallowed hard), political party, gender, etc.

And to be clear, this idea, to create another consumer protection agency as proposed by the President, is not a good one. If you need further convincing please consider:

1) Three acronyms: SEC (fail), DHS (ginormous bureaucracy), and FEMA (uber fail).
2) If government organizations already in place can’t do their job (NPR says their “oversight was exposed as lax”) why should anyone conclude that another organization will perform better? If Washington must keep flushing money down the toilet, why not use it trying to improve the orgs already in place? This addiction to creating new federal agencies to make up for the failures of their predecessors is a costly and scary practice. Costly because it bankrupts our treasury, scary because it expands the reach of the federal government beyond already historic levels.

Fellow citizens, I know we’re not this stupid. I know, because I interact with several of you on a daily basis. I see you working hard, achieving goals, obtaining degrees, loving your families, and doing your best to improve your personal lot in life. May I implore you to consider government in a similar light? Let’s once again apply the same principles we practice daily - common sense, industry, frugality, hard work, reason, good decision making - to our system of self-governance. After all it is the foundation that made our country so wonderful in the first place.

Update
Just in case you think I’m picking on Democrats, the Wall Street Journal reports that Republican Mitt Romney’s universal health care plan for Massachusetts is “annihilating the Massachusetts fisc” with actual costs 33% higher than originally estimated.

Update 2
Barney Frank is a douche. And belongs in jail. At least that’s how I interpreted this WSJ article.

I’m currently working on a Premium WordPress theme (for those not inside nerdy web land on a daily basis, that means you can buy it - when it’s available of course.) The theme will also be available for Blogger so all you cats blowing up the blogosphere with Google’s tool set can enjoy the nice design too.

To the wallpaper. In the process of designing the theme this evening a wallpaper appeared out of one of the design elements. I’m calling it “Just Clouds” and I’m giving it away TOTALLY FREE! Hooray. Simply leave a comment and I’ll email it to you in a jiffy (unless I’m sleeping, in which case you’ll have to wait until my iPhone alarm (or house fire) wakes me). I set it up for my 17″ MBP at 1680 x 1050. I must say it looks pretty sharp at full size. So much so that I got a single, solitary goose bump after I clicked the “set as Desktop background” in Firefox, slid the cursor to the top right corner of the screen and observed it for the first time. Preview is below. I hope you enjoy.

The mass flocking to Twitter over the last few months has led to inordinate amounts of Twitter spam and opportunistic chums trying to make the use of Twitter all about QUANTITY (for ANNOYING examples click here, here, here, here, and here. If you clicked the third “here” you understand the caps for ANNOYING.) If you use these, sorry to offend you, but, seriously, get a life and stop paying a robot to make “friends” for you.

Anywho, I’ve become so annoyed with all this hype and hoopla I decided to make a limited edition poster representing how these types of people view Twitter.

The poster measures 22.5” x 15” and is printed on 120lb. glossy card stock. As a little extra treat, I have added a small thank you to my Twitter friends (which you can see below) who provide interesting, useful content as well as short, engaging dialog throughout the day. Thanks guys! I hope you all enjoy the poster!

$20/ea + shipping

Meryl Evens over at Web Worker Daily “asked some web working colleagues what it takes to make a successful web worker” and posted thoughts from 23 web professionals. My contribution, filed under “Venturing Out of the Computer Box,” read:

“Pith, humor and the real life people skills to turn off their computer, stop tweeting and actually have face-to-face interaction with humans on a daily basis. Without these qualities you can quickly turn into an insulated, isolated weirdo who doesn’t offer much benefit to society, other than the ability to inundate us with more tweets than we could ever digest and bore us to tears about your latest late night experiment with some lame new plugin.”

View article.

Quite possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.

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With the exception of The Cathedral of Christ the Light, I have no idea what denominations these churches are affiliated with (if any) but I found the architecture to be very unique, if not inspiring. I’m not making any endorsements for their beliefs so don’t blow me up in the comments. Just try to enjoy the architecture. Even though I am not Catholic, I am very impressed with the extent to which the Cathedral of Christ the Light went to unite symbolism and function, both in terms of belief and usefulness to the community. Could not mainstream Evangelicalism glean a few things from this particular example? If you have a few minutes you should watch their explanatory video.

The Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, California

You can watch a very informative video about the cathedral. As I said above, I am amazed at the degree of thought that went into all aspects of this building.

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This poster represents my passion for design and theology. As a result it is one of my favorite projects I have ever worked on. I set out to create something that was aesthetically pleasing but had more depth to it than just shapes. I’ll never grow tired of the surprise people display when they get close to the poster and discover the copy for the first time! It’s a great response and has sparked some entertaining conversations. I spent hours formatting the text, which is just over 2 point in size. Please allow up to 3 weeks for shipping. I will personally coordinate shipping costs and options with you after your order is placed.

$45/ea + shipping

Strichpunkt is a design and branding agency in Stuttgart, Germany. With a staff of 40, they have produced some spectacular work for Mercedes-Benz, the Art Directors Club, and Air Berlin. They have won numerous awards including Red Dot Agency of the Year for 2008. Browse their work (or “Kunden”) to get a taste of solid European design that will brighten your day.

3,287 days. 78,888 hours. 4,733,280 minutes. 283,996,800 seconds. However, you divide it I have tremendously enjoyed the time spent with the love of my life. Given the sobering constant uncertainty of when and how it (life) will all end I’m resolved to continue to relish each moment as best and as fully as I can. Love you babe!