Today in History -- Bomber crashes into Empire State Building

At 9:40 a.m. on Saturday, July 28, 1945,  a B-25 Mitchell bomber piloted in thick fog by Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith, Jr., accidentally crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building, between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. One engine shot through the side opposite the impact and fell on a nearby building; the other plummeted down an elevator shaft. The resulting fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. Fourteen people were killed in the incident. Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator, which still stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall recorded. Despite the damage and loss of life, the building was open for business on many floors on the following Monday.

Why Chrysler Sucks -- Update: WAIT!! They Don't!**

 Snatching victory from the jaws etc etc -- Chrysler finds a way for the high school to keep its logo!

Lake Mary high school, 3,000 students strong, is located in Seminole County, Florida, about 30 miles from Orlando. Their mascot is a ram (see statue in pic), and when they designed their logo, it looked remarkably like Chrysler's Dodge Ram.


Technically, it's copyright infringement. There's a little wiggle room -- Cadillac dog food doesn't infringe, for example; it's in a completely different and non-competing market -- but the law is the law.


The LMHS transgression went unnoticed for years, time enough for the logo to appear on the backs of chairs, on the gymnasium floor, on book covers, stationery, and the rear windows of cars. Apparently, no harm no foul. But then some anonymous ASS (America is full of them) sent off a letter to Chrysler exposing the high school's advertising sin, even including photographic evidence. Now that the school had been officially outed, Chrysler was duty bound to react.


What to do? Several courses of action lay open. The easiest: ignore it. Chrysler has bigger fish to fry, and the LMHS Ram logo probably helped sell cars in Seminole County.
Next in the easy line: Contact the school and give them a lesson in good corporate PR. Point out the violation, and charge the school some nominal fee for the use of the logo, something like 20 bucks. Wanna be hard ass? Give them an instruction sheet on the 'proper' use of the logo, stuff like you can't put it on toilet paper, or make it a dartboard target, etc.

If Chrysler wanted to be creative, if they wanted to get a whole bunch of good, free publicity and a local sales spike, they could've adopted the school, gave them heavily discounted Ram vehicles for school use and whipped up 3,000 t-shirts that said LRHS and Chrysler LUV the RAMS!

Nah! Chrysler actually SUED THE SCHOOL and is forcing them to remove the logo from everywhere by June! Replacing the gym floor alone is estimated at $15,000!

It goes without saying that not a whole lot of Chrysler products are going to be sold in Seminole County this year, and about 3,000 impressionable youngsters will probably never buy a Chrysler product.

What does Chrysler gain from this? It's really difficult to conjure up any pluses -- they come away looking like nasty and ornery bullies who just don't care about Seminole County.

Jaxonia has a suggestion for this dippy corporation to salvage some respect from this fiasco. Help the school design a new, non-infringing ram, and then donate a new gym floor!


Originally published 2/17/10

Is this cool, or what?**

This was published more than two years ago, and this handy-dandy gadget is still going strong; forget all those liquid drain cleaners -- this does the job better and faster. (Keep a supply of CO2 cartridges on hand -- they're not easy to find.)

Check out the video. They call this little puppy 'Kleer Drain' and while Jaxonia doesn't promote products (or get a DIME from featuring one!)this handy little drain unclogger is something special. Kleer Drain works off a CO2 cartridge, costs between $20 and $40 (depending on how smart a shopper you are), and is exponentially better than the standard rubber plunger or Kurt Vonnegut's favorite suicide literary device, Drain-O. All those highway mega hardware stores carry this, but check out your neighborhood guy first -- he needs the money.


** Previously published 5/13/08

The Prez -- he sounds tired, but he's still workin' -- are you?