Letter from Ireland about US elections

So, its time for the US elections and everybody has something to say about it. And that voice is not limited to the United States. Here is a letter from a buddy in Ireland.

an e-mail from Ireland

An email from Ireland to all of their brethren in the States...a point to ponder despite your political affiliation:

'We, in Ireland, can't figure out why you people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States.

On one side, you had a pants wearing female lawyer, married to another lawyer who can't seem to keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer, who goes to the wrong church, who is married to yet another lawyer, who doesn't even like the country her husband wants to run !

Now...On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate 'Mc' terminology, married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship !!

What in God's name are ya lads thinkin over in the colonies !

Obama Irish T-Shirt by choice2008 Design a Custom T-Shirt At www.Zazzle.com See more Politics T-Shirts

McCain t-shirt by choice2008 Design a Customized T-Shirt At zazzle More Politics T-Shirts

Zazzle - PG-13 and up need not apply

I'm going to take a break from jokes to talk about a weird adventure I had with Zazzle, the online POD t-shirt company. I started a new election store called Choice2008 and I added this design called "Screw Hillary" . I never though it would be a problem because I have seen plenty of more strongly worded designs on Zazzle and every place else.


The big stuff hit the fan and FAST. Whew! The fallout was fast. First I got some angry comments, but then Zazzle sent me a strongly worded message that this design violates their terms of service and the only way I could have it is if I rated it PG-13 or ABOVE.

OK... .fine.... UNTIL I found out.... (drum roll) that if a design isn't rated "G", it not only isn't displayed in the Zazzle marketplace, NOBODY, but NOBODY can see the design in my shop unless they are logged into Zazzle.

Now wait a minute folks. How many members of the public, when they find my shop via Google are logged in? How many members of the public who find my shop via my blog or somebody else's blog are logged in? That tells me I effectively cannot promote this design because if I display it and you click on the designs, its Sorry Charlie, you aren't logged in. People aren't going to bother making a new account, they are going to move on to the next selection in Google.

Zazzle could easily remedy this market place issue by instituting what Google Images does. Google permits the end user to set search preferences for images to something they call Safe Search which permits you to set Strict Search or moderately strict search, or do not filter.

Anyway, I hope this gets resolved soon. I have heard from other Shopkeepers who have stores at Cafepress that they don't bother putting any more energy into their shops at Zazzle because their designs are PG-13 or above and they can't promote them.

And by the way, if you want to buy the Screw Hilliary design, its HERE

Cheers y'all. Tomorrow, back to some better jokes.