Dave's Blog
Apr 04, 2012
A Super Fan Sends His Love
Self-described hardcore fan Kenny Bass writes:
Hello!
Ive been a fan of your products for some time now. My girlfriends best friend had the zombie set and made this poem and i loved it so much i got it tattooed on me! Im waiting to be able to buy my zombie set now! Thank you so much for your creativity!
A hardcore fan,
Kenny Bass
Dude, Kenny... first of all, dang, even I don't have a MagPo tattoo! I now know what they mean when they say "I'm truly humbled by this honor." Second,... well, there is no second. I'm speechless. I'll just let your photo do the talking.
Apr 04, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Mar 30, 2012
New Game!
If you click on either the "play" or "kids area" tiles on our home page, you'll be led to our new online game. Try it out; it's really fun. You can write a poem, email it to a friend (or yourself), and they can change and/or add to it and send it back (and forth, and back and forth). Or they can send it on to someone else for them to alter. The poem could potentially go through thousands of iterations and travel around the world several times! All for the modest price of... free!
Mar 30, 2012 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sep 28, 2011
Magnetic Poetry On Colbert Report!
Yes! Another dream come true...
Sep 28, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1051)
Sep 28, 2011
I Am Unicorn
Glee did a unicorn episode by the name above last night that I heard was pretty dang funny. So check that out, and also let it be known that our brand-new Unicorn Lover Kit makes the perfect gift (imagine using it as a songwriting tool!) for that especially unicorny person in your life. We've all got at least one of those...
Sep 28, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Sep 26, 2011
Submission From A Music Lover
A young woman from the University of Tennessee Knoxville sent this. She's in the marching band. And as you can see at the bottom of the picture (I'm not sure she intended to include it in the shot), she was able to get naughty with our Music Lover Kit. So... our kits have got a perfect record so far in the all-important Ability To Make Dirty "Poems" category!
Sep 26, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sep 22, 2011
What, Exactly, is "Martinizing"?
Admit it, you've always wondered. We at Magnetic Poetry finally solved the age-old mystery. The answer was found on a strange-sounding website called "Wikipedia":
Martinizing Dry Cleaning is a dry cleaning franchise founded in 1949. Martin Franchises, Inc., the parent company, is the largest dry cleaning franchise in the United States, with over 600 franchised stores worldwide. The family-owned company is based in Loveland, Ohio. The concept of One Hour Martinizing was pioneered by a New York chemist named Henry Martin in 1949. At the time, drycleaning was done with flammable solvents, so the plants were located remotely from the storefronts. A customer would drop off their cleaning "in town", the garments would travel to the production facility to be cleaned and pressed, then they would return to the store several days later for pickup. But, by using a non-flammable solvent, the use of which was discovered by Mr. Martin, drycleaning plants could now be located much more conveniently, and the process could be carried out in a much more timely manner. The use of this non-flammable solvent was adopted throughout the industry and revolutionized the business in that facilities could better serve their customers and provide much faster turn-around on the orders, if need be. Operationally this has been termed "on-site cleaning" (as opposed to the "remote" cleaning of the past).
Sep 22, 2011 | Permalink | Comment (1)
Sep 07, 2011
The Fair Is Done; Long Live The Fair!
I love the Minnesota State Fair more every year. This year I went twice. Watching farm kids tend to their animals is one of my favorite parts; in this age of electronic media and slick commercialism it's comforting to see kids growing up squarely connected to the earth and circle of life (though they wouldn't put it in that touchy-feely liberal treehugger way). I'm glad that they live among us.
Sep 07, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (151)
Aug 25, 2011
This Just In!
These four new kits literally just arrived at our loading dock, and I really love them all! Especially Moustache Poet, because I admire the moustache lifestyle. We've pre-sold a ton of all four of these, so get them while they're hot... if they sell out, we won't be getting more before Christmas!
Aug 25, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Aug 09, 2011
On The TeeVee
Our local NBC affiliate, KARE 11, did a story on me and Magnetic Poetry last night. Please, pay no attention to my sopping wet armpits.
Aug 09, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (10528)
Aug 02, 2011
RAGBRAI
I took last week off to ride RAGBRAI, or the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. 460 miles in seven days. Thirty thousand riders. It was like the State Fair on wheels. And it was just magical, and epic, and grueling, and inspiring, and joyful, and fascinating, and hilarious. Huge in every way. If you like people and riding your bike, you should put this one on your bucket list. It's the biggest group ride in the world, and I can't wait to do it again next year!
Aug 02, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (22)
Jul 18, 2011
This Photo Signifies Nothing...
...except for the fact that I went for a bike ride this weekend and brought my camera with a new lens to test out. Zoom seems to work well, eh? Seems to capture the astonishing amount of steel and concrete we devote to moving people and things around in this country. Which leads one to do a little research, revealing that one lane-mile of freeway costs on average 2.3 million bucks (so a mile of what you see here probably cost around 14 million dollars), as opposed to a mile of 12-foot-wide bike lane, which costs an average of 128 THOUSAND bucks, or 1/18th the cost of one mile of one lane of freeway, or less than 1/100th the cost of the six lanes of freeway that you see here.
So please, if you want to complain about all the money being spent on bike paths and lanes in this country, keep those figures in mind. Not that any of you dear readers would complain about that sort of thing...
Jul 18, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (10469)
Jun 23, 2011
Notice Anything?
We've got a new website! And part of the change is that my blog is now part of the site, not hosted by Typepad any more (though I'll probably keep that one and post a message redirecting folks over here). I'm sure there is a bug or two crawling around on this shiny new thing, but in the long run the site (and especially our new shopper) is going to be safer, stabler, easier-to-use and faster than the old one. Try it out and see what you think!
Jun 23, 2011 | Permalink | Comment (1)
May 31, 2011
Lil' Cuties
As seen recently in the basement of an antique store that was once my dad's elementary school in Antioch, Illinois. Eli wanted to buy them all, but they were five bucks apiece and stinky.