They say Don't forget my bag discount. Sure, it's only five cents [per bag], but, if you're doing your part, you deserve it.

They're here.

There are also pins. Because I could.

It's another series of round-things -- pins, magnets, those stickers that apparently only come in a multi-pack. A whole 'ask me about' theme, some serious, most not-so-serious.

I should probably just include a partial list, or something.

Ask me about...
...the bodies
...this thing
...this pin
...my delicious candy
...my electronic cigarette [also, e-cig]
...my nondisclosure agreement
...my issues
...my constitutional rights
...my restraining order
...my antidrug
...ignoring you
...human sacrifice
...exciting opportunities in homelessness
...chlamydia
...syphilis
...herpes
...my suppurating sores
...my raging infection
...atheism
...god

And there seems to be one missing. Because I just added 'ask me about my evil empire'. Must be another one of those that I showed that they hid on me again. That better be a bug, because if they're doing this deliberately, I'm going to start focusing on zazzle.

You can find them here if you're interested.

The swine flu was created and released by Cafepress, to divert everyone's attention from the godawful mess they've made.

It's not exactly a public trainwreck, since you have to have an account to view it, but getting an account is as easy as opening a store – you don't even need to put anything in your store. Just having the store gives you access to the 2009 Marketplace Announcement Discussion. This forum was started...I'm going to guess less than five days ago...and it's already got 4,026 posts. I think it's over five pages of posts – I don't know for sure right now, because the forum just crashed.

...and it's back.

Five pages. In under a week. Five pages of people being very upset about the change.

What change? Oh, nothing major. Just a complete reversal of their usual [somewhat trite] 'unique expression of you' line.

What they're going to do is make it so that each individual type of product – no matter the design – has a set, flat price in the marketplace. You'll still have your own markup in your regular store, but in the marketplace? Not anymore. And you'll only get...I think the quoted rate was 10%.

I guess their new line [instead of that 'unique/you' shit] is 'the customer is too stupid'.

There's a lot of shit in that forum. A lot of people saying they're leaving. And a lot of things that really shouldn't be there – like the story about one shopkeeper calling in to ask what the hell was going on, and getting told 'you don't do shit' by the person on the phone.

As someone with a shop there, this...bugs me. I've spent hours just setting up the sections and getting the images right, not counting the time spent on my drawings. My iguana took months to draw. Telling someone who does this that they 'don't do shit' is just...not right.

I hope CP records their calls, and that this person was fired.

At this point, I don't really care what their reasoning is anymore. And I'm starting to not care about the other side, either. Because, seriously, whining on a messageboard about how you're going to tell the media? Not helpful.

Actually telling the media might be helpful, but you might want to do it in a non-petulant sort of way.

One might also consider just blogging about it. Since most of this is contained within a private forum [not too private, but private enough that most people won't go to the trouble to see it], you might want to be sharing the information with the general public.

Also an idea: if you want to get your attention, you should do what those people in Texas did to Yahoo back when Yahoo ditched the user rooms. They called a Troubleshooter type news person to report 'pedophile rooms', and the troubleshooter person got in touch with the various companies that advertise with Yahoo. CP has certain special account-holders that might not be aware of this. I think one of them sells Peanuts products [y'know, Snoopy?]. Those groups might be interested in hearing about this, and they – even though they're an extreme minority among shopkeepers – might have a little more pull, if you really don't want this to happen.

I know I don't want it to happen. I'm rather fond of not having to put any work into my shop, and occasionally getting sales from the marketplace. I won't much like it if my rather modest markup suddenly becomes even less because of this. But I don't do shit, right?

Yeah. I don't.

Especially right now. I'm not really in the mood to continue with this post. Maybe I'll say something else about it later. Maybe I'll get around to talking about ways this wouldn't annoy me. Or maybe it'll go the way of my common-law marriage post.

This one is a variant of this design that Gremlin made for me because I happened to like it a little better than the yellow version.

And this is one of mine. It was a sort of...strange response to some of the weird 'green' designs I've seen. Apparently, the planet is very angry, and capable of thinking about things.

It's nice to finally see how it turned out.

They're both the tiny pins...whatever size that may be.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I ended up looking at my store.

That's what I saw. Naturally, I was a little concerned. I didn't know why the image wasn't showing up -- I thought maybe it was some sort of problem that I was going to have to fix when we got home. The white BeanBagBunny was doing the same thing for a while, and I had to go through and re-apply a bunch of shit again.

Thinking it couldn't hurt to try, I clicked 'open image' -- or tried to. It was greyed out. So I copied the image address, and tried getting to it that way.

This site has been blocked by our content filter.
Reason for restriction: Forbidden category: "Pornography."

So, Village Inn's little...thingy thinks that the Constitution of the United States is pornography.

...and it's even funnier, because the product next to it is the same thing.

Unfortunately, they really only work as posters. I'll have to mess around with them to get them on anything else rectangular, and I'm really not up to that right now. It took forever just to get that shit uploaded. I'm even too lazy to provide a link. Just click on the 'store' thing up there, and you'll see them.

Also, I added a product to the store. Pro-Life (until it's born). Because I felt like I had to....

I feel I'm done enough to unhide it as I go along, though. So, here it is. Little text emoticon stuff on round things. The stuff with the black background is done [for now]. The stuff with the white, I'm still working on. This shit's seriously tedious. CP should really do something about all the clicking and saving I have to do.

Why, exactly, can't I set a specific product image as the section image without saving it, and then uploading it again? And why can't I use the stuff in 'section info' to name and describe the products currently in there?

...and why the hell can't I take a whole section and globally set the sizes for a specific product within that section, and apply that to all subsections?

As of right now, some of the descriptions are the same on the shirt sections, but the images are all different and properly in place.

And I know stuff looks pretty small on some of those. Maybe I shouldn't be announcing them before I'm 100% sure everything's properly sized and everything, but...I'm pretty sure it's all going to work. And I'm not actually expecting to get any sales through this post, anyway. As if anyone reads this shit....

Knowing about the embroidery [and the new hats] kinda makes me wish that the Zombie EatFlesh design hadn't been pulled for not violating anyone's trademark at all....

I guess I'll have to look into these new things....