Practicalmadness

My girlfriend works with kids with autism, and one of her charges likes to burst into the room and shout “I’m baaaaack!”, complete with jazz hands. It is quite possibly the cutest-sounding thing ever. And so it is with my own virtual jazz hands that I say unto you, Readers: I’m baaaaaaack!

Sigh. You’re looking at my photo, aren’t you. See, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking like ohmigod there’s something new on this blog and it’s made of sack-cloth for some reason and what is it what is it what is it?!!!

I got my first package ‘o Valleyschwag today, and in case anyone has been wondering how many promotional decals from Technorati are too many, I have the answer for you: three.

Valleyschwag is a service that mails out care packages of random shit from dot-coms, to provide those of us who are in the web business but not in Silicon Valley — you know, in the industry but not soaking in it — a little taste of how ridiculous it is for our brothers and sisters in code out west.

My package contained:

• A cool t-shirt, button and emery board from Yelp.

• Technorati stickers, see above.

• A couple of decals from the EFF, including one that says “FAIR USE HAS A POSSE.”

• A button and bookmark from Design Public, which sells furniture or something and has a lovely green bird logo.

• A sticker from Songbird, a company that makes a media player/web browser based on the Firefox code, and who also have a cute bird logo.

• Stickers from Laughing Squid and Riya, both of whom have ugly logos and have thus failed to make me interested in their products.

The buttons are all now living on my messenger bag, and the t-shirt will make its debut tonight. Because Web 2.0 is totally the new indie rock.