Stupid Cheap Graphic Design Stuff

Because I'm generally always broke, I tend to sniff out super good deals wherever I can. Whether it's musical gear, web design software, etc., I always try to find - if not something totally free - then something that is so cheap that NOT buying it will make me feel guilty.

Anyway, here I found a website that offers a few eBooks, graphics tools and web scripts for stupid cheap...each one is under $15 and most are just $7. Most of the stuff is geared toward the eCommerce / Affiliate sales market, but I'm into this and figure a lot of you kids are too, so here's the link:

Cheap graphics stuff!

This site also a ton of other cheap products geared toward many other interests, so here's a link directly to the home page as well:

$7 Dollar Offers

I've already downloaded a couple a few days ago; one from the graphics area and one from the music category. Maybe I'll write up a review once I get a chance to check them out. Then again, maybe not...I'm kinda lazy and unreliable like that sometimes...haha.

The Fake Diary of Clif Haley

The wife and I were going through a bunch of old papers that were boxed up in the garage last weekend so we could shred all the personal account stuff and then toss the shit out. I did manage to find a few interesting bits of writing I'd done a few years ago. What follows are totally fake diary entries I came up with for my own amusement...the dates are fabricated, I think it was all written on the same day around 2003...

The Daily Journal of Clifton Michael Haley Esq. - June 16, 1998

The itch is getting really, really bad now but I'm too embarrassed to go to the doctor! I will DEFINITELY wash the next pair of underwear I buy from a guy on the street! I guess I've learned a few things, though. Namely, A) 'Fruit of the LOAM' is NOT a major brand, B) if a pair of underwear appear to be made out of attic insulation then they probably are, C) if the phrase "please send help America, I am twelve and supporting a family of nineteen on 52 cents a day and am not making enough money to buy dogs for food" is stitched into the waistband, I should probably ask for a discount, D) most legitimate underwear dealers do not also specialize in Three Card Monte, E) when you open a brand new three pack of underwear the only things in the pack should be underwear and NOT toenail clippings, band-aids, spent bullet casings, chewing gum, or fishhooks. Oh well, I gotta go. I just heard about this guy who sells what I'm told is "the best sushi in town" out of his van. I'll let you know!

The Daily Journal of Clifton Michael Haley Esq. - October 9, 1999

God I hate Ryan! The first thing I'm going to do when the band makes it big is kill him. I'm sooooo sick of the way he looks at me and transmits via telepathic rays "You're just a big ol' baby! Baby wanna go poo, poo? Baby wanna ride the magic Wheelbarrow of Happiness to The Land of Happy Happy Bouncy Shiny Things? Baby wanna DIE!" He acts like he's not doing it, but I know he is. I mean, when I see him he's all "Hey dude, what's up?" but his eyes are saying "Hey you big fat baby, where's your big fat pacifier, dumbhead?!" I don't know...maybe it's just me.

The Daily Journal of Clifton Michael Haley Esq. - February 2, 2000

I checked out this great band last night called WarehouseLarry. They sounded like a rocket powered freight train full of Black Sabbath crashing into a nuclear power plant at the speed of light. Awesome show. If I ever start another band I'm going to call it WarehouseHarry, and we're going to play songs that sound exactly like WarehouseLarry's but have different words that say pretty much the same thing. for instance: WarehouseLARRY has a song called "I Love You Baby" but WarehouseHARRY will have a song called "You Know, I Really Like You a Lot, I Mean, No, Really I Do, It's Just That I'm in a Really Weird Place Right Now (Hey, Where You Going?)" I think that would be cool. Something else I think would be cool are shoes that look like feet. Or maybe just tiny, individual shoes for each toe. Damn, those are both pretty cool.

The Daily Journal of Clifton Michael Haley Esq. - April 15, 2000

Well, it's official: I like corn. It's taken me years to do it, but I can honestly say now that I like corn. Corn on the cob. Creamed corn. Whole kernel corn. I don't know why I didn't like corn for so long. It's sort of sad, really. All those years I've missed enjoying corn. I'll never get those years back. And to think there are people out there, lost people, who STILL don't like corn! Maybe I'll rent a corn shaped suit and hand out pamphlets praising the glory of corn tomorrow. Nah, I think I'll just sit home, watch some TV, and partake in a little bit of corn eatin'!


The Daily Journal of Clifton Michael Haley Esq. - January 7, 2001

I've been trying to write poetry lately, but I just can't seem to do it. I'm too happy and content with life. The only things I can seem to write are Hallmark cards or inspirational posters for first grade special ed classrooms. You know, stuff like "Roses are Red, violets are Blue, I know you love me, and I love you too!" or "Being retarded ain't so bad. At least you're not blind!" I'm sure that kind of stuff could make me a hell of a lot of money, but it wouldn't really fill me up inside. Good poetry only comes from the tragedies in life, and I currently have none. Oh well, I better get Dad to the hospital for his chemo. Later!

The Daily Journal of Clifton Michael Haley Esq. - March 25, 2001

I met this great girl at the strip club the other night. She's just like mom except for the stripping and the cocaine and bi-sexuality and the piercings and the mustache and the "big time debt" from the "operation" that she won't tell me about. she gave me her phone number for ten bucks (what a flirt!), but I must have written it down wrong, because every time I call it I get Fong Wu's Chinese Bistro. We really hit it off, though. She sat on my lap and asked me what my hobbies were and (get ready for this!) she ALSO likes building ships in bottles and covering them with rare, misprinted stamps from countries that no longer exist! I mean, what are the odds of that?! I bought her a ring today. Nothing fancy, just a two karat diamond set in a platinum band. Guess that whole "higher education" thing is going to have to wait a little bit! Ah, love. It's a wonderful think.

There you have it...I hope that didn't take up too much of your time.

My Dog Wears a Diaper

Warning! The following blog post involves graphic and horribly vivid details about canine menstruation! Enjoy!

I get a lot of emails from people who visit my online t-shirt shop asking me about the dog in a diaper design, especially since the image is also prominently dispalayed on the website's banner. People also want to know if that is actually my dog or just a stock photo. Well, here's the scoop:

Yes, that is my dog. Her name is "Witashnah" which is a Native American word meaning "virgin" and which is also what she will always remain. My wife and I took her in as a puppy about 5 years ago. She had been - in true cartoon style - stuffed into a sack with the rest of her litter and thrown into a river. Luckily, the sack just happened to be found by a couple who - no joke - breed dogs for a living. So, not only were the pups taken very good care of, they were given all of their necessary shots.

Witashnah the dog and Yule the cat.

A year later things were very busy for the wife and I. We were building a new house so we could finally get out of the city and we were both in career transistions. At last the house was built and we moved in. Soon after that we realized, in our frantic busy state, we had never taken the time to have Witashnah fixed. We realized this because she went into heat and started spotting our brand new white carpet with bright red...stuff. So, in a panic we quickly wrapped her hind end in a pair of boxer shorts. These immediately fell off and we had to opt for a white t-shirt large enough to tie around her waist.

It was also around this time that I was setting up the WarehouseLarry t-shirt store. I had made a lot of progress on the site design, but hadn't actually come up with any shirt designs...and then Witashnah came prancing into my office with her saggy little homemade diaper and - BAM! - inspiration hit. I snapped a picture and 15 minutes later had the first shirt design done. As you can see, she even smiled for the camera.

A Lot of My Friends are Musical Geniuses: Part 2

Here's part 2 of my friends who are musical geniuses. Now, keep in mind that this is not just biased assessment I present here. I'm not simply noting these folks because they are "my friends" or because I "owe them money" or anything. I am blogging about these folks because they are...musical geniuses. They are the Einsteins of music, the Ben Franklins of music, and the Orville Redenbacher's of music! These guys can split the atom with a single note!


Michael Swanson - We used to call Michael "Bobbo" back when he first joined Plow Monday...when he was a nice, quiet guy who didn't rock the boat but only rocked the bass. Now we call him "Michael" because he's so goddamn ripped and so goddamn good on the bass - light years from where's ever been - that, well, we fear him! Plow Monday had a little spur-of-the-moment reunion gig a couple of weeks ago and it's only thanks to Michael that my head didn't burst into flames...I was so lost playing some of these old songs I barely remember that only Michael's thumping, steady, consistent bassline kept me on target!


Brobdingnagian Bards - Brobdingnagian Bards are, by far, the coolest traditional Celtic duo around. Yeah, that's saying a hell of a lot, but these guys are on the ball like no other traditional Celtic duo around. And they have a sense of humor! It's not all bog mummies and plagues with them. They have an entire album called "Irish Drinking songs for Cat Lovers"...!!!! How, oh HOW, can you NOT love that shit?! Check out Brobdingnagian Bards and I swear by the next day you will be carving crop circles into your neighbor's lawn that very night and walking nine times widdershins 'round the nearest faerie mound hoping the little buggers have drinks ready!

A Lot of my Friends are Musical Geniuses: Part 1

So am I , of course, but this has been well documented and spoken about, especially by my wife. Sometimes I'll write some bit of music that I'm sure totally sucks donkey taint and my wife will reassure me that, no, it's complete and utter musical genius and the lawn really needs a good mowing! And as I'm mowing the lawn I'm thinking, "my wife must be right...surely she wouldn't marry a talentless hack!" It's usually at this point that I inadvertently mow over a lump of dried dog doo and find myself in a thick haze of gray poop powder.

At any rate, I thought I would dedicate this post to a few of my musical genius friends:



Jon English - Jon is a one man musical dynamo, and much like a real dynamo he can produce electricity if he's wrapped in copper wire and spun around in a giant magnet. Not only does Jon write and perform some of the greatest music this side of the mason dixon line (wherever that is) he is also a fantastic recording engineer. What's really impressive about Jon's ability to produce very good quality recordings from his little home studio, is that the equipment and software in his home studio is all cheap or free. In some cases he literally just jams a guitar cable into a picture of a piece of equipment torn from a magazine. We were in a band together once called Plow Monday.



Litany for the Departed - This is my buddy Mike's band. They are what the kids call "heavy metal". They are angry all the time. Sure, if you talk to them individually you'll see that they are very nice people who would likely do anything to help a guy out, but when you get them together they tend to set things on fire and suddenly there are battle axes jutting from people's skulls. Mike and I were in a two man acoustic extravaganza for the senses...well, the hearing sense...called Always the Fall. We were angry too, but being acoustic, we were generally subdued about it. We wielded Nerf battle axes.



The Wartime Social - My old pal Ryan is the front man of this band. We were in a band together once called Plow Monday. Ryan is not only a really good guitar player and songwriter, but he is an astoundingly good singer. This does not go unnoticed by the females of our species who tend to clamor over him like flies on a Ugandan infant. Ryan's the third guy from the front in the photo...kind of an odd place for a FRONT man.

The Internet: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

The Internet is the most marvelous of mankind’s technological achievements. It has managed to shrink the world down into a single networked neighborhood of millions of humans all sharing ideas, information, cultural and social values, history, countless years of wisdom, and video of two girls eating each other’s poop.

If you haven’t yet seen the 2 Girls 1 Cup video I’m sure as hell not going to give you the link. I don’t want to be responsible for whatever happens to you after you see it. I will not be to blame when you run from the computer screaming and clawing your eyes out. I will however give you this video clip, which shows other people reacting to 2 Girls 1 Cup:

This could be you.

It seems like people can find a porno use for almost any invention, no matter how noble its actual purpose. I don’t think Thomas Edison gazed proudly at the first light bulb and said, “’Tis a feat of science, indeed, this light bulb I have created! It shall illuminate this great nation from shore to shore and surely be put up some guy’s butt one day!” and yet weirdos are always sticking light bulbs up their butts. Among other things.

Some sicko even made this 2 Girls 1 Cup t-shirt! Sheesh!

Some Photography

I like to take pictures of stuff. I wouldn't say that I'm a good photographer in an artistic sense, only that I can aim a camera at something and press a button and for some reason I really dig doing that. I think a photographic artist can take a picture of anything, no matter how mundane, and bring out meaning. My friend Rob is one of these guys. He could take a picture of a piece of string cheese that would somehow explain the meaning of life. My pictures only look cool if what I'm taking a picture of is already cool of its own accord. That being said, here's some pics I took at an old abandoned mill in Wimberly, Texas. Unfortunately, it was locked up, so I couldn't get inside.

Nostalgic PBS Kid Show Intros

I was a little beer battered the other night and decided to go on a nostalgic romp through YouTube for the intros to all the live action PBS kid shows I watched when I was but a wee boy. I've omitted Sesame Street, because I think that one's a bit obvious. Here they are in no particular order:

The Electric Company - Hey you guys! Man, I used to love this show. Mainly because it had a live action Spider-Man bit.



Reading Rainbow - I hated to read as a kid, but I sure loved to watch this TV show about how much fun reading is!




3-2-1 Contact - Ah, science for kids. I think just about 99% of the experiments they did on this show have been band from schools now days.




Mystery! - I'll admit that I never actually watched Mystery!, but I always thought this intro was one of the coolest damn things in the universe.

Cool Free Internet Crap

I spend a lot of time on the internet for both work and play. Here's a list of some of the cool net freebies I use to make surfing and working a much smoother ride:

meebo.com - Meebo.com is a handy online utility that allows you to automatically sign into all of your IM clients at once and then IM through all of them via the meebo.com interface. This is great because you don't have to download and install every damn IM client out there and then have them all choking your computer on start up. Plus, it allows you to IM from anywhere, whether the IM clients are installed on the machine or not.

iloggo.com - This thing is the shit. I just discovered this one over the weekend and I dig the hell out of it. Basically, it allows you to ceate a homebase of links to all of the websites you visit most. I used to do this "by hand" by creating a hidden page on one of my websites with simple text links to all of the fun and work related sites I visit. Iloggo.com takes this a step further. You go to a website that you want a link to in your homebase and Iloggo.com not only lets you add the link, but it lets you crop the logo out of a screenshot of the site. Awesome!

statcounter.com - A free and very lightweight tool for tracking traffic to your websites. Very simple to install and gives very good and detailed stats.

findsounds.com - I like to do a little home recording when I have the time, and this site is invaluable for finding sound effects and, even better, tons and tons of great drum samples.

dynamicdrive.com - A bunch of free to use scripts for enhancing your website. Great for designers and developers who don't really know jack shit about javascript but want to be able to implement drop down menus or other slick dynamic effects.

addthis.com - Great for bloggers. Addthis.com generates a button for your bog that lets your readers easily bookmark your articles to all the most popular social bookmarking sites. Check it out at the end of this artcile, in fact.

pingomatic.com - Pingomatic.com lets you automatically ping several blogging search engines when your site has been updated. I use pingomatic.com every time I update this blog.

Well that Gig Sucked

Actually only I sucked. Last night really taught me a lesson. Mainly, never try to play a gig if you don't really know how to play the songs. The first half of the show we played Jon's stuff and I had no clue how any of it went. Sure, I'd been to a 2 hour practice earlier in the week where I mastered it, but then I never had a chance to practice the stuff again...and I forgot it all.

Jon even made cheat sheets and I fucked it all up...HOWEVER, and I'm not shifting blame here - I mean, if this was the Maury Povitch show and we were revealing the results of a DNA test I would indeed, by 99.9% accuracy, be the baby's daddy of suck - two of my songs were marked wrong...essentially one song that did not need a capo said it did, and one song that did need a capo said it didn't. But, even when Jon told me on stage "Dude, this song has a capo!" and I put the capo on...I still had no goddamn idea what to play. I may as well have been trying to fart Carmina Burana into a kazoo.

Finally, after playing Jon's songs that I didn't know for what seemed like 15 hours we got to the last half of the set, which was all old school Plow Monday stuff. YES! Something I know how to play!! Nope. Even as I write this I'm trying to remember the chords to the chorus of "Joke" and I have no idea what they are.

Well, if there's one thing I've learned from this debacle it's this: Practice makes perfect, unless you only practice once for 2 hours...in that case, practice makes suck.

Thank God everyone else in the band is a complete badass! And at least I had a cool hat on.

Gotsa Gig Tonight

That's not really such a big deal, except that I haven't played any stand-up, on-stage, electric rock and roll for a live audience in over a year. It's at a pretty hip place in downtown Austin called MoMo's. Been there a few times, but never as a performer. It's a cool joint.

You see, my old band Plow Monday broke up about 4 years ago. We've managed to have a reunion show in some form every year since. But the last two reunions were small acoustic sets. Our singer Jon still performs as a one man singing, songwriting extravaganza, which is great for him, because he's incredibly badass at it. So this is really his gig, but he asked us to get together to back him up as a full band, and for the last half of the show, we'll play some old Plow Monday stuff. Very cool! It will be fun to rock again!