Homeschool Dad Blog

After reading a biography of John Michael Talbot (the singing monk) I have searched for years to find recordings from his old band, Mason Proffit.

Not only did I find one of the band’s CDs as a MP3 Album, but you can get it FREE with eMusic’s trial offer - and no, you won’t need a credit card, there’s no DRM, and your MP3s will play forever even after the trial is over.

Click here to sign up now and get 50 free songs, and don’t forget to search for “Mason Proffit” to get this old recording of JMT and his brother in their folk rock band. (They sound like Credence Clearwater Revival).

Got our weekly Buyer’s Guide today, and had to laugh at the cover:

The “cover girl” for the eyewear company is none other than Kat Herding.

You probably still don’t understand why I found this so funny. You see, Kat Herding is seen as kind of a marketing “inside joke.” I believe she has become quite the celebrity, if only to a very closed crowd. Movie makers have the Wilhelm Scream (interesting wikipedia article). Marketing and advertising teams these days have Kat Herding.

You see, Kat Herding isn’t a real person.

Chris Locke, marketing guru, writer, blogger, and author (among other things) used stock photos of a model whose real first name is Sophie to create a persona to both mock and highlight the internet culture, in particular social marketing and other “Web 2.0″ technologies. (This photo of Chris is one of my favorites from is blog/zine/group EGR, when he was playing with his camera to get it to read book barcodes).

Here is a collection of her photos from iStockPhoto.

He created a company’s website (Kat Herding Media) and a myriad of profiles, postings, comments, and articles around the web in Kat’s name. Where the web was hip, Kat was there.

Chris has some screenshots on his portfolio page.

Her very name was a spoof of the famous “Cat Hearding” Superbowl commercial done by EDS. Funny how everyone’s seen the commercial but many can’t recall who it was for or more importantly - what exactly the company does.

Now, the exposure did wonders for Sophie’s modeling career I can imagine. Some of her photos from iStockpohoto are among the most downloaded.

Unfortunately having a guy like Chris Locke running wild around the web with your picture can be unsettling, to say the least (after all, his other persona is “RageBoy” and he tends to be a bit manic or unstable at times). So apparently things were said, complaints were registered, and Kat Herding is now officially “dead.” However, Sophie has becoming a marketing/internet superstar, even if only underground. She’s popular where it matters for a model - among media buying companies, ad designers, and marketers.

I’ve seen her face on University of Phoenix ads, numerous ads in Entrepreneur magazine, and now on the weekly shopper’s guide in my mailbox.

And now you know the story behind the face. If you see her, post a link to the ad in the comments section of this post.

There have been times when we’ve had to live on very little - as little as $800 a month (with fewer kids, though.)

One of the ways we do this - one of our secrets, you might say - is a grocery store chain called Aldi’s.

Not including produce, we are able to shop for our family of seven for about $250 a month by shopping at Aldi’s.

Having been an Aldi’s shopper for years in NJ, I tried several times to develop a price book of prices of items at various stores, but the task proved too big. Now, Aldi’s has made it simple.

I discovered in our new Aldi’s a complete price list. I looked online and have not seen this, so I offer it up for my readers, in PDF format:

UPDATE: Available from this site, as my bandwidth usage went through the roof:

Link to Aldi’s List and discussion

Globaly speaking, Aldi’s could be a Wal-mart killer. BusinessWeek has an article on how Aldi’s trampled Wal-Mart in Germany.

Being the eldest of our family, my mom is still homeschooling some of my siblings. So once in a while I can report on something happening with them as well as our relatively young group.

My brother is representing Burlington County, NJ in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee - trip to Washington DC and all. As child #5 of 6, we’ve all participated but he’s the first to make it to DC. I’m not sur,e but I think all of us so far have made it to the county level.

Curious what we used for spelling? The Writing Road to Reading. This one book is a 8+ year curriculum, and it works. My wife is already using it for our children, and even her spelling has improved. She, unfortunately, went to a regular school where they didn’t think teaching phonics was important.

I have more curriculum and resource recommendations in my aStore.

My sister (currently in high school) is working with the local 4-H drama club to put on Shakespere’s As You Like It. She elected to do a presentation f the plot in the character of Rosalind, and is going onto the state-level competition.

This is making for a busy spring for my mom…