I bought bagels in a bag this morning for the kids to eat for breakfast. The bag says they are “pre-sliced.”

Happy Thanksgiving!! This week’s links are just a collection of things we’ve found interesting or funny, though not necessarily related to media, PR, and communications. Enjoy your holiday. Best wishes from us to you and yours.

• How to make money by giving things away online.
• The New York Times Sunday Magazine asked four “multiscreen madmen” about the impact of all the “screens” (TV, movie, mobile, ipod, computer….) on advertising. (very interesting)
• An interesting article on the hunt for unexploded ordinance from World War II.
• What might the existence of high energy electrons over antarctica mean?
• The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History is reopened… to mixed reviews.
• Disposable e-mail with rss service can really come in handy for all those sites where you just register once or, for whatever reason, don’t want to give out your actual e-mail address.
• Monty Python launched an official YouTube channel.
• Seth Godin’s take on what should happen to the Big 3 Automakers.
• The designer of President-elect Obama’s logo talks with the New York Times’ Campaign Stops blog.

I’ve come to realize there are two questions that every business owner better be able to answer real fast — like your life depended on it fast. First, why the hell do you own a business? Second, what is your business’ core competency?

If you can’t answer both of these very fast, close up your business now. If you can’t offer a simple answer to both, close up your business now. You’re wasting your time and money.

I’m in business for two reasons: make money and have fun. Making money is obvious. Having fun, perhaps that’s not so obvious. But I structure as much of my business dealings as possible so that I have fun. I write Blogenberg because it’s fun. I’ve been approached about doing an Internet talk radio show — I might do it, if I’m convinced it would be fun and not get in the way of business. I write memos with lines like, “some of the themes of this memo will be familiar; others will be as fresh as oyster stuffing on Thanksgiving afternoon!” That’s a really goofy statement to put in a professional memo — but, one, I’m the boss, and two, it’s fun to write inanity such as that!

I make money and have fun (and God willing, will continue to do so) by creating a business that puts together creative packages that allow clients to build relationships with target audiences. That’s our core competency.

I’m surprised by how many business owners I come across who can’t answer those two questions very quickly — they must not realize that their lives depend on it.

Friday night, I picked up my daughter and a friend from another friend’s house. We had to kill an hour before picking up my son. They actually talked to me. Even more, I was allowed to talk. Usually, I am relegated to being the don’t-talk-chauffeur.

This, I learned, was a Friday night out purposefully devoid of boys. They wanted a break from boys. So I got to be a pretty teenage girl, hanging without boys.

We went to Target and tried on goofy lumberjack hats. We read magazines in Borders. We got grossed out together by a radio ad for male enhancement (apparently, according to the ad, it’s thickness that matters).

We giggled a lot. I learned that being a pretty teenage girl, at least at 14 and 15, is for the most part and for most of them, pretty joyous, even though boys clearly muck the joy up.

Maybe my daughter will conclude that weekend nights without boys would be a good thing for a while — maybe like five years.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg:

• Motrin messed up with its recent release of an ad that questioned the ways that many mothers carry their babies by using a Baby Bjorn or sling. Boy, did it hear some criticism (big time) from “Mommy Bloggers” and Twitter. Needless to say, Motrin pulled the ads.
• A day for lessons—take a short and simple lesson from Chris Brogan’s experience at the Sheraton.
• A notorious guerilla marketer discusses the future of marketing – honesty.
• If you’re in any way a Bill Cosby fan you’ll love his appearance on Letterman last Friday. (three parts to the video)

And, of course, a few Thanksgiving links…

• Just in time to save those of us who can’t be bothered to open a cookbook for our annual turkey tragedy, the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line has gone Web 2.0.
• Tips on celebrating the holiday despite going through stressful times.
• Frying a turkey. (if you haven’t done it before, well then you haven’t really had turkey yet)
• Finding good wine for reasonable prices: here and here. (hint: use vinquire to find some of these wines locally)

Like most business owners, I give some money away at the end of each year (rather than give it all to the government.) My biggest gift this year will be to the high school my two youngest kids go to. Yesterday, I met with a woman who works in development at the school. She had read Blogenberg, and discovered that I like skim lattes from Starbucks. Prior to our meeting she had driven up the road to Starbucks to get me one, which she had waiting for me, piping hot, when I walked into her office. That’s what I call perfect pitch.

That’s the kind of care and feeding that the Blogenberg animal likes. That’s the kind of care and feeding that I expect my shop to give our clients.
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I am amazed at how many business owners worry about big things but don’t obsess over little things. Every little thing communicates — and every communication is marketing. That’s why I scream when e-mail goes down (maybe that’s why it rarely happens), hate, viscerally hate, typos, and expect any memo to a client to be formatted correctly, no matter how many years we’ve worked for that client. We just finished a complete migration from PC to Mac. My biggest concern was that there not be any down time. Not because we couldn’t survive an hour without computers but because if a client calls during that one hour and we can’t locate a file because our computers aren’t up, that looks bad. The migration was handled perfectly. The vendor made sure the little things were taken care of. That’s why I mention their name here: MacMedics Washington.
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Speaking of Mac, it’s the simplest equation in all of business. Apple has placed its primary emphasis on user interface. Microsoft has placed its primary emphasis on marketing. As a result, Mac marketing is better because the user interface is incomparable.

I have no doubt this is a true story, rather than simply apocryphal, as the source is somebody I’ve known and trusted for years. My friend worked tirelessly for the Obama campaign. On the last weekend of the campaign, a colleague was calling voters in a southern state. Obama volunteer on phone: Have you decided who you will be voting for? Elderly woman on other end of the phone, yelling to her husband: Honey, who are we voting for? Husband, yelling back, overhead by the Obama volunteer: We’re voting for the n—–.

The most offensive marketing letter in history: I received a letter from a consulting firm. It starts, “Dear Mr. Rosenberg, How do you stop incest at Rosenberg Communications?”

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be caricatures: I was at a gas station in Chevy Chase, MD. A Land Rover pulls up next to me. Out steps a 40-year-old-or-so guy wearing a tan Land’s End coat, jeans that cost way too much for jeans, and Crocs on his feet. If a cartoonist had drawn the stereotype of a man and his vehicle from the wealthy enclave of Chevy Chase, MD, that cartoon had just pulled up next to me. Here’s a tip for all men, and aspiring men — don’t be a caricature.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg.

• A theme we’ve hit on before: a case study in how twitter is improving customer service.
• Some tips on how to market your blog like the big boys do.
• Entrepreneur and Social Media guru Gary Vaynerchuk analyzes (i.e. completely discredits) a rant on social media by Howard Stern. (disclaimer: unsurprisingly, this link contains some offensive language.)
• Is Dave Balter’s form of radical transparency for you?
• Don’t waste a reporter’s or blogger’s (or boss’s or client’s or customer’s…) time by “saying a lot without saying much.”
• It’s like “West Wing” but in real life: Newsweek’s Secrets of the 2008 Campaign.
• Very helpful free e-book - Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business.

I want my children to grow up to be Gilbert Goldsboro. Gilbert shines shoes at a stand in the men’s shoe section at the Nordstrom’s in Bethesda, Maryland.

I will let nobody else touch my shoes. Gilbert is the best shoe shiner in the Washington, DC area. It is a craft and he is proud that he is very good at it. Gilbert has taught me to always clean my shoes with white vinegar — it kills anything that gets on the shoes and removes crud that can get into the leather — and to only use shoe cream, never polish. He taught me to put three coats of cream on new shoes to protect them. He told me never use water or a damp cloth to clean shoes. And to never, never let a shoe shiner “snap” a cloth across my shoes.

Gilbert’s a good conversationalist but has a knack for recognizing when a customer wants to talk or would rather sit quietly, perhaps reading one of the many newspapers or magazines Gilbert provides at his stand. He loves work. He loves being good at it. He loves the high-end electric buffer he uses, which the store gave him when he was on the verge of forced retirement because of a developing case of carpal tunnel syndrome — he’s not ready to retire.

Works hard and believes in doing it well — I want my children to grow up to be Gilbert Goldsboro.

That’s part of the problem today — too many parents are not willing to be jerks.

Blogenheads know that the bane of my existence is my 14-year-old daughter — I love her dearly and am very proud of her, but she’s too beautiful, head strong, and popular for her own good.

This morning, me, my daughter, and a friend of hers were walking into Dunkin Donuts. My daughter and I had been doing battle since last night. She decided to get rude. I told her to give me her cell phone. She had the temerity to respond, “No.” I said, in a loud, not-yelling-but-clearly-I-mean-what-I-say voice, “Give me the phone or I will physically take it away from you.”

Everybody in the Dunkin Donuts looked at me. Ask me if I care. I was being a jerk — for a reason.