I went over to DadLabs.com the other day to check out their wares, and I happened upon a DVD video called Due Dads: The Man’s Survival Guide to Pregnancy. Let me give you an excerpt from the description text, so that I might make a point:

Even though expecting a baby has nothing to do with football playoffs, grilling excellent steaks, margin calls, fuel injection, or cold brewskis, this DVD will teach you the skills that will get you safely and happily to that big 0th birthday.

Let’s review that for a second, shall we? These are the things dads are into, or at least know a lot about:

• Football playoffs
• Grilling excellent steaks
• Margin calls
• Fuel injection
• Cold brewskis

If you know me well, this list will strike you in one important way: I score a zero out of five on this list. (I don’t know what the frick a margin call is.) Lists like this make me stop and ask what kind of “man” I am. I seem to have a hard time fitting into the stereotypical man mold. I don’t know why that is. I’ve always been generally disinterested in sports. Grilling bores me. Cooking in general bores me, actually. And… having looked up “margin call” on Wikipedia, I’m only lightly into investment and stocks. I’ve traded some stocks, but I’ve never spoken to anyone who would call themselves a broker. Finishing off the list, I’ve never liked muscle cars (although I do know a beautiful ride when I see one). I pretty much only drink alcohol when it would be rude of me not to.

When I read the list to Steph, she knew what I was getting at immediately. Her answer: “You’re a geek. Of course you don’t like any of those things.” So she suggested I rewrite the sentence. Here you go:

Even though expecting a baby has nothing to do with playing World of Warcraft, coding excellent CSS-based layouts, margins and padding, DOM injection, or Cold Fusion, this DVD will teach you the skills that will get you safely and happily to that big 0th birthday.

Yeah. Now I’m ready to not buy that DVD.

Steph and I have been buying (and receiving generous gifts of) baby clothing lately, preparing for the imminent September arrival of our own progeny. As we were sorting the clothing into size bins (which, for the first year, goes in groups of three-month chunks! Interesting.) I came upon a tiny shirt with the tag you see here: McBaby. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s a fine shirt. My son will wear it, and I’m sure it’ll serve its purpose well. But the brand begs a question.

What in the world could McDonald’s be thinking? If there’s one thing I know about business, it’s this: inefficient diversifying is death. What you say “no” to as a business is far more important than what you say “yes” to. Put another less interesting way, “Do very few things, and do them well.”

I’m trying to put the ideas of fast food and baby clothing together. I understand that McDonald’s occasionally strays off the path of fast food to invest in more noble pursuits, but that doesn’t logically include the fashion industry. This clothing is a for-profit deal.

You can’t argue that they’re doing it to expose babies to the McDonald’s brand and logo as early as possible, because the logo is on a tag inside the shirt, behind the baby’s head. Perhaps this is for poltergeist babies? Either way, it’s not exactly eye-catching for a kid who’s already busy contemplating the ceiling fan, and wondering what his hands are.

Is it branding for mind share of the parents, then? Or whoever dresses the kid? Perhaps, but again, why not just be direct and advertise your food if you’re a restaurant? Why get into an entirely new business model, new outlets, new partners, new strategies, just for one more logo that only new parents will see, and only occasionally at that? Their brand isn’t that saturated, is it?

It can’t be the cool factor. McDonald’s restaurants aren’t nearly as rare as Hard Rock, for instance, so the shirt doesn’t have that “traveller” appeal. I think everyone assumes I’ve been at least 2 miles from home. Nothing to brag about, you know? McDonald’s brand by itself isn’t really so “cool” as it is “fat and lazy”, so I doubt they’re just trying to do this on brand strength alone.

I’m absolutely perplexed. Help me out here. Why was McBaby a good idea? How could a company with this much experience in brand recognition throw effort away like that?

(I understand that in the big picture it doesn’t matter. I’m honestly just trying to see if there’s a lesson in here somewhere that I’m totally missing.)

Yet another great band name I thought of this weekend: Steam Weasel. Major bonus points if you can name the inspiration.

(I’m considering making an entirely separate section of my blog for these things. Then again, it breaks up the flow of the entries nicely, so maybe it’s OK to keep it here.)

Sometimes I like to start my car in second gear. I don’t know why, it’s just how I roll.

My YouTube video, Making an LED Throwie just passed the 42,000 viewer mark. That’s over 100 people every day since the video was posted. I’m kinda proud of that, although I really wish I had spent just a bit more time making the video suck less than it does.

The editing is OK, but I didn’t plan out what I was going to say at all, and that shows. It’s all just one-take blabber. The lighting is bad too (especially in the first shot), and the list of negatives goes on. I honestly never thought 42,000 people would see it, so I didn’t care about that stuff when I posted it. But then the eyeballs started rolling in.

So, lesson learned: if you’re putting something up for general consumption, take an extra day or two to put some polish on it and make it really good. Your thousands of unsuspecting viewers won’t notice the delay, but they will notice the higher quality in the video.

Another interesting thing I’ve found is how widely the comments vary. I’ve never been viciously insulted or attacked so much in my life as I have been in the comments of that video. I know the Internet can be a pretty nasty place (I’d contend that I know that better than almost anyone), but I’m still surprised at the vitriol some people will spew at me that has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the video. If you don’t like the video, that’s fine, but please don’t tell me where to shove it. It’s sorta like they had a bad day and just had to yell at someone. I’ve removed most of those comments from the comment log on YouTube’s page, so you won’t find them there anymore. I figure that I don’t want to encourage such talk by letting would-be insulters see how common their impulses really are.

My personal favorite comment? The simple, “I Love You Moby.” Excellent.