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Dear Local Businesses,

I have noticed some practices you currently employ under the guise of “urban marketing” or “guerilla advertising” that have forced me to come to the conclusion that I will no longer be giving you my business. I dare not speak on behalf of all of your customers, but your current methods worry me. Seeing your poor sap standing on the corner holding an arrow-shaped sign above his head swaying back and forth fighting the urge to slip into unconsciousness has at no time in my impulse-buying-consumer adulthood caused me to think to myself: Hey, wait a minute, I DO need a house from the low $499’s! Man, if that lady with the conical hat on her head hadn’t been standing there drenched in sweat I’d’ve totally missed this once in a lifetime real estate opportunity!

Or: Wow, can you believe it? Milkshakes at Chick-Fil-A! I’m so glad cow costume man standing there in 105-degree-heat-index-82%-humidity let me know with his sign that says ‘Drink More Milkshakez, Pleez don’t eatz beefz.’

Now, I know your initial reaction will be to say, “Hey, but we’re giving this person a job!” Maybe, but I’ll go ahead and say that (1) nothing will compensate this person for the wasted hours let alone the future medical cost incurred due to the high probability of melanoma onset in later life or instant onset of heat stroke, and (2) I cannot imagine the death of an employee will be worth the three or four more impressions you will get from the cars that speed by. You might have a two-fold second reaction (also the most likely): You are an idiot, Mr. Grubbs, we don’t need your business anyway, and this gives our low-level employees time to perfect their pop-and-lock dance skillz. Touche.

But the CPMs are so cheap, Jonathan; a sign and dude holding it at $5.75 an hour! Can’t be beat!

Yes, but I’ll posit a sign post stuck in the ground will give you the same number of impressions for your ad with far less overhead! (Not to mention the legal entanglement that accompanies the death of an employee during work hours!) Of course I know what you’re thinking. There’s no way people will notice a sign stuck to a post! It doesn’t wave the arrow, welcoming people to our store! Indeed, but it does do more than the unconscious teenager slumped into the grass by the roadside.

Basically, I asking you to pull your workers in from the intense heat. Save this ad scheme for the fall or spring; not winter, however, because then you’ll have the converse problem: death by lack of hot chocolate or tongues freezing to ad signs via the triple dog dare.

Until I see that you have followed my guidelines, you will no longer have my dollars.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Grubbs

I didn’t mean to change the world,
But I might have. In some
Small way every word
I speak, write, read or hear changes
Reality around me.
Or changes me.

(more…)

Among the several joys we have discovered upon moving back to Texas—closeness to family, lower overhead in most life activities, rain!—I have discovered another something I love about the place in which we live. Stars. The Texas sky over our heads is like a giant sieve for heavenly glory. It’s almost as if God placed the stars, and made the universe so unfathomably vast simply in order to remind us of how small we are. But not that said smallness is a bad thing.

I don’t want to write a cliche, but it’s true: Having a baby changes everything. Every day I am astounded at how wonderful it is to have been a small part of bringing such a beautiful girl into the world. My baby girl is growing quickly, and I’m constantly amazed at how she sees the world. Her eyes are taking it all in, and it’s fantastic to watch her make new discoveries with her movements. “Hey I have a tongue, and I can make it go in and out!” “Ouch, when I make this hand hit my face, that hurts.” “Wow, look at that fan!”

She is a wonderful salve for my seemingly neverending cynicism. They prayed a blessing over her at our church. It began with the following sentence:

With each new child comes the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

That phrase gives me hope, even amongst the smallness I feel among the backdrop of the wide open sky full of stars.