Today's News

I had an hour-long meeting with Jeremy Walker from OFA/DNC this morning at 11 to discuss the upcoming meeting on Tuesday with the OFA volunteers I've been calling. It's coming together quite nicely. I'm looking forward to it.

After that I drove about five miles to have lunch with Mary Jane Cooper. She was up in arms about the oil spill and the oil companies who assure everybody that everything is just fine and that they can contain an oil spill and then... KAPOW... the Gulf Coast becomes uninhabitable by land and sea.  She said, "We deserve what happened because no one is paying any attention to the risks; most Ameicans believe the hype about how unlikely it is that oil companies' fail safe systems will fail... and then they do."

As a birder, she's got her finger on the pulse of the wild world and is just livid at what has happened there and what is happening everywhere.  I concur.  That's why I don't think we can just blindly trust any company that tells us, "Don't worry... if there's a problem, we can handle it."  That's why nuclear power scares me, why offshore drilling scares me, why coal mining scares me (and miners, for good cause)... We need to get going on alternative sources of energy that don't pollute the seas and skies. NOW.  With all deliberate speed.  Because what we're doing right now to the globe and to each other in our quest for oil is insane.

I think I'll be busy all weekend with Elance projects, thank God! Last month was really slow, but things are looking up again now.  I've still had plenty of time to make OFA calls, though.  At least I'm staying busy when I'm not writing or bidding on work.

Yesterday I rewrote the website of an insurance agent who got taken royally by a foreign copywriter whose knowledge of English was so slight that he should have been sued for malpractice. It was painful to read. I felt so sorry for the agent!  

Buyer beware!  You may think you can get a real deal by going offshore to get a writer, but in so many instances, the copy just has to be rewritten by an American to redeem it (and your company's reputation), so you may as well pay decent wages up front and save some money.  It's heartbreaking to see what is being foisted off as copywriting.  It's copy mangling, is what it is: sentences that amble off in clunky, ungrammatical ways, sentences that a good copywriter can't even make sense of in order to rewrite it at times!

Look at the copywriter's portfolio before you make your choice. It just takes a few minutes to separate the wheat from the chaff. A little research goes a long, long way.