I spent a few hours last night trying to find out why the web server log files on the new he.net servers don't like to be parsed properly by Webalizer or AWStats, and I came across this entry:
12.148.209.198 - - [30/Sep/2003:22:12:05 -0700] "GET /wee/news/archives/2003_09.html HTTP/1.1" 200 49685 "-" "NPBot (http://www.nameprotect.com/botinfo.html)"
Apparently, it's a little web spider, and it comes by every other day and grabs all our pages. They very nicely provide a link to the FAQ about their spider in the bot's user-agent string. So I went looking to see what it was all about.
According to the link above, this NameProtect company's mission is "Digital Brand Asset Management", and they "engage in crawling activity in search of a wide range of brand and other intellectual property violations that may be of interest to our clients." Is it just me, or is it starting to smell a lot like bullshit in here? No, I'm definfitely picking up faint whiffs of it. Most certainly. It's the smell of sales, of marketing. It's the smell of people who talk of " comprehensive digital brand protection" and "Intellectual Property challenges of the digital era" with a straight face. It's the smell of people who over-use words like 'paradigm' and 'solution' and 'brand' even in non-business conversation. It's big, bangly Omega watch-wearing, Callaway club-using golf playing types who wear enough Calvin Klein cologne to choke even those annoying perfume ladies at the entrances of stores like Macy's.
Oops. I used brand names just then. And with no little ® tags, either. My bad. The sales weasels will be after me for sure now.
Disney. Mickey Mouse. Whoops. Microsoft. Windows. Uh, I mean, "Nothing." Coke, Pentium, Dickies, Zerox, Lego, T-Mobile. Big Mac. Strike all that, wasn't me. Kleenex.
Damn this Tourette's Brand Illness! Damn it, I say!
"bangly"?
Posted by suz at October 2, 2003 7:12 PMYes. It's my trademarked term for (usually egregiously large, usually very shiny) watches not properly fastened about the wrist in the mistaken belief that it's somehow classy. The watches bangle around, hence they are "bangly". Think bangle bracelets from the 80's. Now pretend it's a big gold diver's watch instead of a piece of rubber and you're smelling Aramis. That's what I was after.
Some people shouldn't ought to read GQ.
Posted by wee at October 2, 2003 7:21 PMI will immediately set out to ge that word out into the general public. (I do live in a town full of African American athletes, yo.)
Unless- it's trademarked....