Burgeon Verger

the killing of interactive and throwback viral

2011-04-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

13 million people shared a refreshed version of subservient chicken. But what made Tipp-Ex popular even amongst those of us who have already seen it all before?

The experience happens on youtube. Here's how it works : You load a video called Hunter Shoots Bear and in that video a hunter is about to shoot a bear, but before he does, he reaches outside of the video frame, grabs the Tipp-Ex Product (a liquid paper/white out style thing) and uses it on the title of the video to create blank space where the word Shoots used to be. Then you type a verb into the blank space to create a new title. Then the magic happens and you watch what you just typed come to life -as a video!!!! (Sound familiar?)

So that is the user experience. But.....

Here's why it works : It exploits your need to control and/or participate with the web. (Exploiting is not a bad word here.) That's how the web was sold. It was grass roots. It was by the people for the people. It was FREE. It used to be called interactive long before it was digital. Remember? It was new media. It was better than any other media because it was lean forward and not lean back. Finally! The medium that put the power back in your hands.

If you spent countless hours in front of a TV you were fat and lazy - a couch potato. But countless hours in front of a computer was ACTIVITY. Learning, surfing, sharing, blogging....all ACTIVE verbs. Doing more than watching. There is a certain status to being wired and wireless. There is no status to watching American Idol and Jersey Shore. If you admit to watching TV you need excuse your behaviour in some way...or counteract it by pulling the geek card : "I don't watch TV anymore....I download." As if that is different. Mad Men on TV and Mad Men from btjunkie is still Mad Men. Couch potatoes are not cool - web junkies are.

Experiences like Tipp-Ex (and Subservient Chicken and Old Spice) work because they give you the illusion of control over your medium and subsequently they perpetuate the underlying belief that the web is better than or different than TV.

And it is. Kind of.

But the difference no longer lies between active vs. passive. Ten years ago it did. Now, the web and TV are practically on even playing ground. TV producers are coming up with new ideas to get you involved with their programming and as of late the web has become about watching video. Just look at any award show and find the category called "online video" if you need proof. What was touted the lean forward medium is increasingly lean back.

Tipp-Ex Blank the Bear is a reminder of what the web used to be when it was born. What it was intended to be! Technically Blank the Bear is old-school. And there is nothing wrong with that. I say more power to them for refreshing throwback. It works because I expect to sit back and watch yet another video of yet another amazing circumstance of man vs nature and instead, I take a little control back by using my ACTIVE verbs. Blank the Bear is a very literal statement about what we've been slowly losing from our marketing efforts....INTERACTIVITY.

See it here.

Real Social

2011-03-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

What on the singular screen is real? Forget the existentialist angle here and just take a moment to look at your screen. With the birth of REALITY TV came the death of authenticity. There is no real.

Most people under 20 grew up watching all 16 (YES SIXTEEN) seasons of Survivor, 12 seasons of Big Brother and the nearly 10 years of America's search for an idol. America's penchant for video-taping trailor-trash and broadcasting it on the series COPS (1989) may have started it all but it has graduated. We used to see those social deviants get arrested. Now we see them get sponsorship deals and book deals and spin-offs and sequels. REAL deviant behaviour is rewarded.

After years of camera-in-your-face broadcasts and the ever-shrinking technologies we carry in our pockets we have created the "camera in perpetua".

Hey Andy Warhol, nice prediction but a more specific way to have put it is "In the future everyone will be famous because fame will become easy."

I have yet to find any real data regarding the impact RTV has on our culture but I can theorize.

It's killed fame on one hand but so what there's too much of that anyway. So let's say the good thing that came of RTV is "anyone can be famous so that makes the Tom Cruises of the world less famous". Kinda.

But a stranger impact of RTV is that it dulls our senses and regardless of how horrifying the content may be, we feel nothing. On one hand, we know what we see is untrue but, on the other, we are highly aware that we want to believe it's real and that we are allowing our suspension of disbelief to occur. Those are conflicting forces on the psyche and, as a culture, that has to have an impact on us.

What happens on Jersey Shore is not real. They are in front of a camera and the "characters" play up their own good and bad sides in order to gain popularity and ensure their place in the next season. Right? It's edited and somewhat prescriptive and, in that sense, unreal. Yes? But a highly charged argument at 6 AM after a night of heavy drinking cannot be saved by the omnipresence of the camera. That's real. The "scenes" between Sammi and Ronnie crossed the line and became "dangerous" on a number of occasions. These people need some serious help. Real help. They've lost control and even though we are watching it all happen, we don't accept that and it becomes just more entertainment. The ever present camera creates a dichotomy that numbs our common sense, our collective sense, our sense of reality.

These effects are compounded by the immediacy of web broadcasting. There are a plethora of insights we can gather from a film like We Live In Public but one thing is for certain. Something happens when we get lost in the world of voyeurism that we are becoming so fond of. We lose sight of the fact that what is happening on the screen is real and we lose the ability to respond.

As social marketing rears its head toward the use of more cameras to tell a story we need to ensure we maintain our integrity as advertisers otherwise, consumers will begin to doubt the validity of the message before they even engage with it and they will not respond. They might pass it to a friend and that might send your numbers through the roof and you can enter your work into an award show and brag about your trophy but it will do NOTHING to elevate the brand and you'll have to come up with something new every 8 months or so. Unless that brand is "The Situation" you don't want to be in a constant struggle trying to outdo yourself.

Creative Recipe

2011-03-30T11:48:00.001-07:00

Woudn't it be great if someone could give you the recipe for great creative? Wait a minute, would that be great or would that make the whole thing just another thing on your list of things made easier? That big easy button in that ad is a reflection of our continual spiral downward into the dark and lazy couch potato abyss that pervades our culture. Who needs it to be easy?

Bill Hicks was right. About a lot of things. But he spoke out of both sides of his mouth too. So meh. let's not talk about who is right and who is wrong. Let's talk about ideas and where they come from. There isn't a book and there isn't a mentor and there isn't a parent and there isn't a guru that can give you that answer but everyone has an opinion about good creative so why can't I?

Here's my opinion. Good creative comes from activity so rigorous you need Curious George bandages of all sizes for each finger. Good creative comes from teaching your ego how to dance. Not just regular dance, but ballroom. Maybe even paso doble. Good creative comes from being able to pick up someone else's sandwich, taking a bite and loving it as it goes down. Good creative comes from the corner of the room in the dream you can't remember. It has no form but it casts a shadow. If you cut it it bleeds. It stands on a corner twirling a string of beads and popping its gum so you can pull up along side it and ask "How much?" Good creative comes not from searching for the holy grail but falling down a flight of stairs and counting the number of posts on the way. Good creative is something you can bounce against a wall for someone else to catch. It comes from your desire to play with others.

When you really wrap your cranium around the fact that people want to play with you you will leave your cranium behind and discover the best creative thinking you will ever think.

MIT, tabasco sauce and facebook

2009-10-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

Okay I'm really glad it's so hard to get into places like MIT because if it weren't we wouldn't have a special place for geniuses like this to do their very special "thing".

You don't really have to spend too much time reading that article because what it says is that you can tell a man is gay by the company he keeps on facebook. Ok. I'll buy that for a dollar but do we need guys at MIT to be telling us this? Because you know who can tell us this? Facebook. No really, what was the assignment they were given? Find a mathematical equation to state the obvious and then publish your results? Really, MIT? REALLY?

I am so going to rant about this in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

First of all, "As part of the study the researchers Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree scanned the Facebook friends of more than 1,500 fellow students who indicated their sexual orientation – straight, gay or bisexual – on their profiles."

So wait, you go to MIT and your big idea is to identify who is gay on a social network by asking by asking them if they're gay. Then you facebook stalk their friends. Determine which of THOSE are gay. And then you publish your results as if they are correct and true.

So the results look something like this: "Out of 100 people who identified as gay and had a bunch of gay friends, we found 100 of them were gay. It follows that if you don't say you are gay and all of your friends are gay and they say they're gay on facebook, people might find out you are gay. Or think you are gay even if they don't find out you are gay. So don't friend any gays unless you want to be OUTED by a mathematical computation that THEN emails your mother with the subject line "Guess what, Mom, I have something to tell you." And ..... oh did we mention it's a facebook privacy issue?"

Well thank you, MIT, because you have now mathematically determined that "you don’t have control over your information." Even though everyone already knows that it's harder to open a fresh bottle of Tabasco sauce than it is to keep something private on facebook, now we have the power of Math, thank Apollo, to prove it.

Proof. Good word to focus on for a nanosecond. "Jernigan and Mistree say they are attempting to get their study, titled Gaydar, published in a scientific journal." But how do you prove your results because all I can see is that you proved people who say they are gay are, in fact, gay.

Call it scientific but let me ask you this: Once you do that, how do you prove that his friends are gay? So what if he has 10 gay friends? How do you know any of them are gay? Do you ask him? Do you ask them? How did you get that information? Is it facebook that has privacy issues or is it MIT?

what is worth your time?

2009-08-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hmm. Well let us agree that life is SHORT. If we can agree on that then we can agree that you need to be very prudent when it comes to your free time. Let's say that, hypothetically, you have a maximum of 5 hours of free time in one week. How do you use the time?

Hypothetically, you may play some video games, like Little Big Planet. That's worth your time. Let's say 1 hour. You might read a book like Pygmy by my man Chuck. K, 1 more hour. You might listen to some music like Kitsune. Although most people don't listen to music any more. They use it as filler. That's what most people do. 1 more hour. That leaves two but when you say you're going for a ride, you're left with

ONE HOUR.

And we all know that if you're playing video games, reading Chuck Pahlaniuk, listening to Kitsune and riding your HOG you MUST be watching some telly too. And what the hell are you supposed to watch?

OK here's the list:

Mad Men
That's right, I said it. And now that I've said it you're thinking how unoriginal I am because everyone is talking about Mad Men. But it wasn't always so. It took off like a rocket and now y'all need to catch up to those of us that have been loving the boys on Madison Avenue since the very start. BTW...this show is very popular with a lot of people, yes? And if you happen to be in marketing, but you have yet to see this show....you are on the proverbial crack-pipe. Tune in, turn off, drop lines....watching Don Draper pitch a line to a client is like a cobra watching the swaying movement of his tooter.

Don't tell me you are too good for TV. Watch it. Take two Drapers and call me in the morning.

True Blood
Can we hear even more about vampires nowadays? This one is a bucket of bloody fun and if you can handle the x-rated content, it's worth seeing. Best thing is, you only have 2 seasons to catch up on here so it won't take you forever to figure out what is going on down there in N'awlins L'isianna. Warning warning....the main character Bill is too short to be famous! I don't care what anyone says. He is just too short. Warning warning....the print ads for the show make you think it might be full of stupid puns but it's down home vamp stuff with a bloody twist.

Breaking Bad
Holy meth, this is one of the most amazing shows on tv. You've just missed the end of season two BUT THAT IS WHAT THE INTERNET IS FOR. Go download it because it's an edge of your seat, bad-ass what would happen if kind of program about a science teacher gone drug lord. Really, go for it...come on...try a little bit....just a little....not like you're going to get hooked or anything.

Shameless
And I quote: "Over the hills in a weird little land. Live fairies and goblins with more than two hands. Some gremlins they say, can come with four eyes. The dragons can scorch with the simplest of sighs. The scariest things to people like us, cos nothing can touch them, they're allergic to fuss. Until their mother appeared, started roaming their valley. Hiding and pouncing from damp, dark alleys. No noise, No chewing, No signs of a fight. Devouring the children with a plate of French fries. The ***** as she's called in the company of elves. Brought this tormenting curse upon herself. She'd been on a bender and staggered home pissed. Found an eighth and some Rizlas and rolled out a spliff. Got the munchies and reached for the handiest snack. She hate her own kids and then spat them straight back. Forgive me, my beauties, what a dreadful mistake! The children can't hear her they've gone it's too late."

Nurse Jackie
Yup. Seen enough emerg room dramas for a life time right? Not like this you haven't. Honest to god the character development in this program is out of this world. It's not the squirting emergencies and bloody scrubs that get your attention, it's how the characters react and respond to those situations that merits your time. This show is not about plot, it's about personality. Ouch it's so good you'll need gauze.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
No, really. It's Seinfeld if Seinfeld was on crack. Literally.

Go be fruitful and download. Or whatever it takes but at least if you're going to watch tv. Make it worth your hour.

in a blog's age

2009-08-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

Time is one of those things you just can't really wrap your head around so you just take it for granted. Granted it will pass. Granted it's 11:11. Granted you'll be "late" if you're stuck in traffic.

I think the only thing that really can and eventually will transcend time is the interweb. The tubes will transcend time.

Consider this: it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million people, tv 13 years, and the interweb 4 years. But when you add things like the ability for people to reach people, like on facebook, you reach 100 million in only 9 months.

If that's not bending time, I don't know what is.

I feel like so much time has passed since I last blogged and yet this morning I heard from a friend I hadn't spoken to in over a year. That doesn't seem as far away. There's no date stamp on that.

So I'd like to add a new phrase to our vernacular "A Blog's Age" to replace a dog's age. A dog is only 7:1. But if you do that math on the interweb, it's 700:1.

who will blog about michael jackson today?

2009-06-26T07:58:00.001-07:00

Everyone.

And everyone will have their reasons. Is his death blog worthy? Yes.

Regardless of his freakshow persona, Michael Jackson was a STAR. Anyone between the ages of 35 and 45 cannot disagree with that. In the 80s he was everywhere all the time. His performance of the moonwalk on the Motown anniversary special was extraordinary. No one had seen that move before. No one in mainstream North America, anyway. We were sure he was magic. There was no PVR instant replay and everyone jumped up off their "chesterfields" and shouted "What the hell was THAT?!" Based on that one thing MJ did the world of dance opened up. It's thanks to him that we have breakin, poppin, lockin, street, crump. And, if it weren't for MJ doing that one move on live TV we would NOT be seeing it on prime time television today.

The Thriller video premier was an EVENT. Everyone stayed in to watch it that night, like it was the Superbowl or the Royal Wedding. It changed the face of music video, which was like this before Michael Jackson came along and showed us how it could be done. Not only was Thriller a great song but there was a story attached to it, preceding it, wrapped around it.... and Michael was going to tell that story the best way possible. He wouldn't do it any other way. Sure, MTV shortened the video and played that regularly but he made history with the 14 minute version. 14 minutes!! Unheard of. John Landis? A cinematic director? Unheard of. Even wiki calls Landis' Triller Video a "short film". It was so popular MTV had to air it twice an hour. People wanted to see it but there was no way to show it without planning around it. It was just too long. How can you sell ads when you're taking up all your time showing content? Announce that you're showing it and make people wait. We sat and watched those ads because we couldn't stand the thought of missing even a moment of that video. The reaction was astounding. Everyone wanted to be like Michael. Everybody did their own version of the moonwalk in their paneled basements. Everybody was talking about it the next day.

Everyone.

People cried because they couldn't stand to see Michael looking so horrific. The special effects like that were unheard of in music video. The cinematography. No blue screens! The make up. His cat eyes. Holy shit, the dancing. The choreography was so sophisticated people are still inspired by it 25 years later. People like Wade Robson.

Every video was a song first and the Thriller album is still the best selling album of all time and if you were around to buy it on vinyl you remember how excited you were to open up the jacket and see Michael reclining in the white suit. (I still have the portrait of Michael Jackson I drew using that jacket as inspiration. And I still have my original copy of Thriller. Track number one is a different colour than all the others because it is so worn down. I will never give away that album. I've kept it for 25 years for a reason. It was special. But I might sell the portrait if the price is right ;)

I'm not discounting all the freakshow antics neither - the endless surgeries, the baby dangling, the allegations. That's not what this blog is about, though. This blog is about what made him a star right up until his death.......

Why will everyone blog about MJ? It was impossible to google his name when the news broke. Impossible.

A Google spokesperson confirmed: “Some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson.” This difficulty occurred between 10.40pm and 11.15pm UK time.

During this period Google News did not go down, but users searching for Michael Jackson related information were asked to verify they were indeed a human and not a computer attempting to launch a spam attack.

The last time there was such strain put on the web was in the aftermath of 9/11. However, despite certain individual sites being unable to cope with the pressure in 2001, most notably the BBC which went blank for a period, people could still surf the rest of the web.

(That's a snippet from here.)

Twitter tweets doubled. Facebook traffic tripled. Another first for Michael Jackson. Someone needs to add that to his wiki. He broke the Internet.

RIP Michael Jackson but this post is dedicated to Farrah Fawcett.

so you think you can blog

2009-06-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

There should be a reality show where all the up and coming amateur bloggers all over the great wide web compete in front of a live audience of millions to become the season's best blogger.

A panel of judges consisting of industry champs evaluate each competitor's ability to blog on the spot regarding a completely improvised subject. A word, please, any word. Give me a word and I will blog upon it.

And they'd have to blog in myriad styles. Like, this week is Shakespeare blog. Next week is Tommy Lee blog. Week after that is British Invasion blogging. Yeah, that's the ticket.

People would vote on the bloggers/blogs/blogging performances just like they do on Idol. MMMMMMM. Imagine. 88 million votes for l'il Jimmy Pohkipsie blogging about LEMONS. People liked him best because he whistled while he blogged. (The pucker was brilliant.) Coming in a close second is Margaret Hogart from Flommo, Indiana who blogged while she knit a lemon cozy. Both scoring multitasking points. Of course the cutest blogger would win after 13 weeks of sweaty, competitive blogging and behind the scenes action.

They'd be judged on their ability to link to exterior sites, insert images and video, use widgets. Et cetera. How exciting would that be? The whole of America tuned in on prime time television listening to celebrity judges high on pain killers give advice like "Your fingers need more flexibility! That's the kind of blogging I'd expect to see on a cruise ship. If you don't end up in the bottom three, I'll be surprised. People will forget that blog by tomorrow."

The show's opening imagery could be something like this with music like this. I'm sure if I pitched this to the networks they'd buy it. I'm just sure. The thought of that kind of programming gives me chills right up the very core of my spine.

to download or not to download

2009-06-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

that is the question.

Do I feel guilty? No. Should I? Maybe but thanks to the Roman Catholic upbringing I received I feel guilty about quite enough already. Thank you kindly.

I've spent my whole life paying for music and movies and music and movies. So much money. I have a huge collection of CDs and DVDs and I had a HUGE collection of ..... get this CASSETTE TAPES! And vinyl and now?

Now vinyl is back and it costs so much more money than it ever has. I'm not talking about some new hot DJ bootleg mix of some Lady GaGa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa poker face, neither. I'm talking about any vinyl you want to buy. If it's new it's on 180 gram press or something or other. Whatever it is it's thick and blac k and heavy and pricey. Not that floppy vinyl we used to buy in the 70s, yo.

I fully support vinyl coming back! I fully support the warmth of analog and the rich sound you can get from an integrated tube amp like this.

And I get that if you have a great system with wicked speakers and a turn table you want to pay for your sound cos you paid for your sound. And I support and love all you audiophiles out there. Because I love and support the audiophile in me.

But when it comes to the audiophile in me having a credit card I have to cool my heels, slow my low ride, get a gangster lean, swerve low. I can't come up with anything else so you get the idea. It's too expensive to be an addict! I have to have some freebies and I think that I am such a share-monkey that I'm walking advertising for people if I can just get access to their stuff. I pay for things I should pay for and I take some stuff for free. That is the way the world works.

I mean, Radiohead got tons of money for their last album when they asked us to PWYC. Or WYTIW. The fans will support their bands at any cost. But there is no way in hell I'm paying to TRIPLE REPLACE my Depeche Mode collection. I love Depeche Mode. I have been a fan since the early days when they were played only after 11PM on CFNY when CFNY was CFNY and not 102.1 THE EDGE. (Give me a break. I'm sure I stopped listening the moment they went from using call letters to THE EDGE. Yes, CFNY was cool at one point. That's where you heard New Wave and that was where I first heard the Violent Femmes Add It Up. I should say that is THE ONLY radio station that I have EVER heard play that song. The irony here is that they will not play that song today.)

But back to REPLACING music. No I won't pay for it. I had the entire DM collection on tape. I have since bought some DM on vinyl. I had the DM collection on CD. I STILL PAID FOR IT AGAIN WHEN I GOT MY FIRST I POD. But after that ipod kakked. After my hard drive fried itself like pop eats itsself I had to stop paying for DM. It's like quitting smoking. I mean, smoking is just stupid so if you're still smoking you know you're doing something really stupid. Paying for the same thing over and over is just stupid.

So I downloaded DM. That's right, all of it. (Okay not the new stuff cos I'm not interested but you get the idea.) Do you think I'm a "fan" or a "pirate"? Do you think their record company suffered? Are Dave Gahan's kids starving in the street? Selling their bodies to pay for mp3s?

I listen to everything. I love music. DM is ONE BAND on a list of x to the power of n. How many collections do I replace?

We haven't even started to talk about the DVDs. Soon, that technology will be poof gone. Am I going to buy all those movies and box sets again and again as the formats and players disappear? Two words - Blu Ray.

Some more words - avi mp4 mp3r kindle tamagatchi flac DTS ogg ATRAC AAC TTA AIFF WAV dolby reel to reel (which i used to edit with a grease pencil and a razor blade) DISCONTINUED HD DVD laserdisc high 8 super 8 polaroid look at this do you know how many people don't know what this is?

Really. Technology=uroboros. Download or .....

blogging in English

2009-03-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

A lot of people say technology is to blame for the English language becoming base, boring, monotonous and just plain old blah when compared to other languages.

I know you don't care and it's a miracle you're even seeing this but I say, "I emphatically disagree."

Technology isn't the problem. Excuse me, but technology makes it easier to write, share, publish, expose the masses to the word. Word is bond and technology is word so technology is bond. In this case I am on the side of technology. The reason people have stopped appreciating our very own tongue is "Scriptus Interruptus". Yeah I made that up. So what?

Scriptus Interruptus is a disease of excuses and what it amounts to is this -- as of late, people are terribly uninspired. They're uninspired because they can't read and they can't read because they are too busy typing with their opposable thumbs. Wow. What made us special has led to a real problem. Am I making any sense to you?

This is English:

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav'nly Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
And justifie the wayes of God to men.

It's by Milton. It's the first bit of Paradise Lost.

This is English:

This week the insomnia is back. Insomnia, and now the whole world figures to stop by and take a dump on my grave.

My boss is wearing his gray tie so today must be a Tuesday.

My boss brings a sheet of paper to my desk and asks if I’m looking for something. This paper was left in the copy machine, he says, and begins to read:

“The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

His eyes go side to side across the paper, and he giggles.

“The second rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

I hear Tyler’s words come out of my boss, Mister Boss with his midlife spread and family photo on his desk and his dreams about early retirement and winters spent at a trailer park hookup in some Arizona desert. My boss, with his extra-starched shirts and standing appointment for a haircut every Tuesday after lunch, he looks at me, and he says:

“I hope this isn’t yours.”

I am Joe’s Blood-Boiling Rage.

Tyler asked me to type up the fight club rules and make him ten copies. Not nine, not eleven. Tyler says, ten. Still I have the insomnia, and can’t remember sleeping since three nights ago. This must be the original I typed. I made ten copies, and forgot the original. The paparazzi flash of the copy machine in my face. The insomnia distance of everything, a copy of a copy of a copy. You can’t touch anything, and nothing can touch you.

My boss reads:

“The third rule of fight club is two men per fight.”

Neither of us blinks.

My boss reads:

“One fight at a time.”

I haven’t slept in three days unless I’m sleeping now. My boss shakes the paper under my nose. What about it, he says. Is this some little game I’m playing on company time? I’m paid for my full attention, not to waste time with little war games. And I’m not paid to abuse the copy machines.

What about it? He shakes the paper under my nose. What do I think, he asks, what should he do with an employee who spends company time in some little fantasy world. If I was in his shoes, what would I do?

What would I do?

The hole in my cheek, the blue-black swelling around my eyes, and the swollen red scar of Tyler's kiss on the back of my hand, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.

Speculation.

Why does Tyler want ten copies of the fight club rules?

Hindu cow.

What I would do, I say, is I’d be very careful who I talked to about this paper.

I say, it sounds like some dangerous psycho killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic.

My boss just looks at me.

The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your guy chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine.

My boss takes the paper out from under my nose.

Go ahead, I say, read some more.

No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind.

And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my check are the same blue-black of a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished.

My boss just looks at me.

Let me help you, I say.

I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time.

My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me.

I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight.

My boss looks at the rules and looks at me.

Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director.

Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person.

I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes.

The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds.

My boss just looks at me.

It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school.

This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring.

And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules?

What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles.

I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers star exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as “unknown.”

No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk.

Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.

That's from Fight Club.

Both Milton and Palahniuk wrote brilliant pieces. Both pieces are inspired. Both are a bit overwhelming. Both are inspiring despite the fact that they are overwhelming.

The problem is not technology. Palahniuk is gen X (pretty much) so he's "grown up" around the same technology the rest of us have and it hasn't had a negative effect on his writing. In fact, he's embraced all the aspects of technology in such a manner that it adds a wonderful flavour to his writing.

The real problem is multitasking. That's where the opposable thumbs come in. Due to multitasking we don't READ in the same way we used to. We don't JUST read. Who just reads anymore? If I need to be tweeting and blogging and updating my profile and texting and surfing and reading all at the same time......(gasp) how can I really take in the literature portion of my multitasking effort? How do I absorb the overwhelming Palahniuk and Milton? Neither are scanable reading. Neither are the type of reading you want to do when you're on the treadmill. Or watching LOST. I can blog and watch LOST but I'm not going to read and watch LOST. Not even pulp fiction. Not really. So what do I do? Fall behind on all the other stuff that takes up so much of my free time? Or read. How do you stay connected and read enough to learn from it?

Not sure. But maybe you're supposed to do different types of reading now that there are so many different types of things to read. Maybe you can use SCRIBE on your iPhone while you jog but make time for books on paper. They smell so good and it feels amazing to crack the spine of a new book. You can't get that anywhere.

Note to self : develop spine crack app for iPhone.

What was I saying?

multitasking real time LOST EMAIL SCOTCH

2009-03-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

I don't know has anyone ever blogged RIGHT WHEN THEY WERE MULTITASKING? And what would that blog look like? Like this, probably.

See.

I'm watching lost and checking email and blogging. Right now we're in flashback mode and Sayid is killing a chicken in his home land. Well he's killing a chicken cuz his fat older brother won't kill a chicken clearly and oh. Sayid even has a chicken catching strategy and here is a bad shot of little Sayid breaking its neck. Bah. Didn't look anywhere near real.

You gotta love lost in HD. Now there's a backwards ad for Joe, the clothing company. It's neat but it looks like backwards Gap ads. Pag. Or Old Navy BEFORE the mannequins campaign. What exactly should I think about that campaign? What do they want me to think?

Now we're in present day but there is no present day on LOST. Sayid is in leather killing someone in Europe. Oh god it's Ben again. Ben is in control.

Remember, I'm blogging while I'm multitasking so now I'm reading copy for a client. It's good stuff. And now Sayid is in prison and ooooh are they going to cut his finger off like he does to others? Nah. They're cutting his zip tie hand cuffs.

Sip of scotch.

Check a link I got via email. Interesting article. Delete.

Back to not really present day but really 3 years later on LOST. It's a new character I already DON'T CARRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEE about, Horace. He wants to know why that guy violated the truce. Sawyer is still pretending he doesn't know Sayid.

This is a cop out. It better get better. And now Sayid is being judgemental about Sawyer spending time with a 12 year old Ben in the past/present and Sawyer clocks Sayid and we're supposed to be surprised that he just punched that chicken killer in the eye.

Does Sayid really thing Sawyer will let him go? Come on. Why am I supposed to believe this. Wendy's ad about crispy chicken.

Lot's of chicken talk. Time to check my email again. Nothing there.

Wondering how fast I can type that Blue Ray was made for Bond with perfect sound and perfect picture. WTF? Oh here's an email.

This is an experiment you might think is stupid and boring but I really am wondering what a multitask blog might look like. Somebody loves their Escape, which is fuel efficient. If you ask me any escape should be fuel efficient. Otherwise, it's a vacation, not an escape. I think an escape has to happen in your head.

Back to lost and now Hugo is in the Dharma overalls serving pancakes. Yeah. They're so picky but they've recruited an obese dude and made him special overalls. Will we ever find out what the hell those lottery numbers mean? Seriously. Oh not another new character. And he has a broom. Great another character with no status that gives some cryptic and stupid advice and now he's challenging baby Ben for bringing Sayid a sandwich. Oh wait that's his kid. I get it cuz he said "You've never made me a sandwich in your whole life." and that establishes him as a dad but no...that's not enough. The writers need to tell us that is Ben's dad and oh. He is abusive too.

Well that explains everything.

Back to the past/present where Sayid is building for Habitat For Humanity. Yeah right. Ben delivers the news that John is dead. (But we know he killed him so .... oooooohhhh.... we're supposed to yell "Don't trust him, Sayid! He killed John!" Like we'd yell "Don't go in there!" in an old school horror film.

And now Ben is mentally manipulating Sayid, who, by ALL RIGHTS COULD NEVER BE MANIPULATED. But I'll buy it BECAUSE I'M DESPERATE FOR SOME ANSWERS HERE.

Can someone TIE UP ONE LOOSE END?

No. Sawyer is going to TAZE Sayid instead. Why do I watch this show again?

Sip of scotch. Check my email.

OH MY GOD IT'S DARRYL OR HIS OTHER BROTHER DARRYL FROM NEWHART. Guys, you've lost me on LOST. Wrong casting choice. It's not cute it's distracting. And now?

Check my email because this is just bull.

Respond to several emails and watch a weird ad for another movie where Russel Crowe plays yet another disheveled and intense character. Now an ad with Rick James music. No idea what it's for. Don't care. I should mention that I'm watching this episode on and HD American channel and so I get to see American ads. They're different. We're so different.

I don't know how long I can keep this up but it's exhausting. Tomorrow ABC delivers hilarious comedy with Sheryl Hines and Meghan Mullaly. Awwww...a show about dysfunctional moms, like we need that. (Still I'll give it a shot.)

Jesus now we're back to the past from 5 episodes ago when Sun pulls a gun on Ben. WTF do I really need to see this AGAIN? Do they think ANYONE who hasn't already watched this show will join NOW? Oh and look SAYID IS DRINKING SCOTCH TOO! What a bizarro coincidence. And the lady orders a bloody steak. Who orders a bloody steak? NOBODY, that's who.

Well she's good looking at least. But she is on the pull and that means she can't be trusted. Dollars to bloody steaks she's an assassin. This is a bad episode. BAD. Not slang bad=good. BAD. I don't buy this particular flirtation and SURPRISE back to the past/future where they've given Sayid TRUTH SERUM.

NOW I REALLY THINK THIS IS GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.

Check my email. Drink some scotch.

Officially give this up. Check my email. I'm laughing cuz I'm emailing with someone and we're comparing neurosis about public twalettes. And now Julia is belittling Kate cuz she ain't know nuthin bout no flat somaat engine. Whatever.

I'm bored of this episode.

liza minelli ring tone and the power of the Internet

2009-03-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Ok. I'll buy that you might want a ring tone of her version of New York, New York. You might even want her version of Use Me because it is so weird. You might want any of her cheesmo Broadway stuff because someone out there, beneath the pale moonlight might actually recognize the tune. But this ring tone?

It's Liza with a Z
Not Lisa with an S
'Cause Lisa with an S
Goes "sss" not "zzz"
It's Z instead of S
Li instead of Lee
It's simple as can be
See, Liza!
I'll do it again...

It's Liza with a Z
Not Lisa with an S
'Cause Lisa with an S
Goes "sss" not "zzz"
It's Z instead of S
Li instead of Lee
It's simple as can be
See, Liza!

Now - if my name were Ada,
I'd be Ada,
Even backwards I'd be Ada
Or if my name were Ruth,
Then I'd be Ruth,
Because with Ruth,
What can you do?
Or Sally, or Margaret, or Ginger or Faye
But when you're a Liza
You always have to say...

It's Liza with a Z
Not Lisa with an S
'Cause Lisa with an S
Goes "sss" not "zzz"
It's Z instead of S
Li instead of Lee
It's simple as can be
See, Liza!

Oh! And that is only half of it
There's another way
Fate treats me cruelly.
How often I remember someone saying
"There she goes, Lisa Minooli!"
Or Minoli, or Miniola, or Minili, or Minelie
So is it a wonder, I very often cry?

It's M-I-Double N,
then-E-Double L-I,
You double up the N, thats nn, not ll
Then E, double the L, end it with an I,
That's the way you say Minnelli...
Liza Minnelli,
It's Italian,
Blame it on papa,
What can I do?

Every Sandra
Who's a Sondra,
Every Mary who's really Marie
Every Joan
Who is a Joanne
Has got to agree with me
When I've announced
I don't mind being pommelled
Or trampled or trounced
But it does drive you bats
To be miss, Miss pronounced...

It's Liza with a Z
Not Lisa with an S
'Cause Lisa with an S
Goes "sss" not "zzz"
It's Z instead of S
Li instead of Lee
It's simple as can be
See, Liza!

Then M-I-Double N,
then-E-Double L-I,
You double up the N, thats "nn," not "ll,"
Then E, double the L, end it with an I,
That's the way you say...Minnelli...
Liza Minnelli!!
It's easy!
It's easy! See, it's Leezy!
No! Liza........!

Um. Can you tell me who would download this? Not even the biggest Liza drag queen impersonator on the third planet from the sun would bother. It's hard enough to recognize the most famous Beatles song once it's been reduced to a ring tone and this would be unrecognizable to anyone but the most obsessed fan. And yet it is here. This is why the internet is a wonderland.

Behold the power of the Internet! From now on, I shall speak of the Internet as though it were the impetus of He-Man. SHAZAM should have one more letter! SHAZAMI! Eventually the Internet will be so powerful it will feed Niagra Falls. It will reverse global warming and you will be able to see it from the other side of the rift in space that will be created when the LHC finally starts working again. In fact they'll use it to power up the LHC and bring back the El Camino when the Internet can rollerblade across parallel universes and go back in time but not really because time won't be linear because the Internet will have changed that!
The Internet is like Jesus. What would the internet do? The internet is the ultimate YES. There is no NO on the Internet. There is only NO in your heart. The Internet will kick Chuck Norris' ass.

No matter how obscure the fact, it resides somewhere on the web. No matter how useless the ringtone connected to the obscure fact, it too, resides somwhere on the web. Facts are knowledge is power!

Behold.

i take it back skins 3 is not a sell out

2009-03-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

It got really good. I can admit that I was quick to pull the trigger but is that my fault or did the producers purposely create the impression that this season would be nothing but fluff in order to entice the young'uns in and then give them some quality television? Because we all know that you can't lead a gen y horse to water unless you tell them it's Red Bull.

ode to the creative brainstorm

2009-03-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

This post isn't about poetry it's about the recent opining over the creative brainstorm. People are mourning it like it got hit by a car or something. But it hasn't. The opportunity to have a great brainstorm is right there in front of us but we can't see for looking cuz we're all too busy politicizing the process. Most of the time, even when we spot the opportunity to brainstorm proper, someone will murder it in the library with a candle stick before anyone even gets a chance to cop a feel. And when that happens, it's no accident.

Let's agree that whatever the brainstorm is supposed to look like, it has to happen. If you think it's useless altogether - stop reading. You're wasting your time. This post is not for you. If you agree that a brainstorm is like required reading a first-year sociology class, you may proceed.

A brainstorm is an event. You invite people. You can serve drinks. There can be entertainment. You can even include a raffle if you like. So you have to give it a location and then decide what form it will take. For example:

The knuckle buster:
Some folk say things just is what they is and a brainstorm has to be traditional. Don Draper style. That type of brainstorm consists of a glass of whiskey, a pack of Lucky Strikes and dame or a skirt. You could take this angle if you wanted to. There's nothing wrong with doing it missionary style. Old school. The way our parents used to do it. Lock yourselves in a room, pitch ideas and git at er pitter patter. Be forewarned. The traditional brainstorm often creates traditional results.

The bezzie mate:
Other people like to create a more "supportive" atmosphere wherein
no ideas are criticized
it's about quantity, not quality
wild thinking is encouraged
build on ideas put forward by others before exploring your own

How nice. If it works for you, go ahead and put that hop in your bunny.

The technological marvel complete with reports:
Some people even sell software...(which I happen to find a little scary) that can aggregate all the ideas the creative group comes up with. It will prioritize and rank those ideas and then...it creates reports! And SWOT’s and scenario building and it slices and dices too. Brainstorm and scenario building software. "No more hard copy sticky notes and flip-overs. Every participant creates, moves and groups ideas using his own mouse and/or keyboard on one screen at the same time. Vote for ideas and groups of ideas, create sub sessions, generate visual and textual reports on the fly. Twice as fast as traditional brainstorm and scenario building methods and very flexible." That's real copy I took from their site and, Sham-wow, this type of brainstorm is the opposite of what Don Draper would do.

But whatever, you get my point. A brainstorm can be a lot of things but it has to be SOMETHING and here's what it can't be:

The Sit and Surf:
If a bunch of you are in a room and you decide to launch a browser you're asking for trouble. I know it's tempting! But the sit and surf is just like a surf and turf. You order it because you think you want a little bit of this that compliments a little bit of that but in the end all you get on your plate is a bottom feeder and bite-sized piece of the protein. I am all for getting inspiration from the web, but unless you're going to interrupt your meeting to settle a bet about how leeches reproduce because you SIMPLY CANNOT CONTINUE TO BRAINSTORM WITHOUT THAT INFORMATION, you will inadvertently shut down your brainstorm. People get distracted. Death knell.

The Oh-no-you-di'int:
Don't tell people to shut up. Let them have their insanely rude, ridiculous, offensive way-off-brand thoughts. It will get you somewhere. It's easier to shave a bunch of hair off your face than to grow the perfect moustache. That being said...

The shovel:
Once your idea is on the table and you feel you've been heard, let it go. If it's worthy of further discussion, it will come back. Someone else will bring it back. Then you know it's a good idea. If you are so impassioned that you cannot let your idea go it's all about you and your ego. Leggo your ego.

There are so many dos and don'ts that this post could go on forever. What you need to have a successful brainstorm is the right people who all have open minds and one goal. The rest is just subjective. How you and your peeps get there is up to you. You want a white board? You want a bottle of scotch? You want a lot of sunlight? You want technology? Whatever works for you is great.

Pick someone to lead the meeting and have that person keep you on track. Don't waste time arguing about the merit of the product. Instead, know what the benefits of the product are. Don't waste time debating who the target is. Instead, have your personas at the ready. Don't waste time discussing advertising from an existentialist perspective. You're in advertising. You don't like advertising? Don't do advertising. Do something else. Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's not advertising. You can call a banner ad display but it's still a banner ad. Love what you're doing in that brainstorm or exclude yourself from it. Know what your role is. Know what your job is. Know where to find the integrity in what you do.

Once you're in that territory just start talking and the ideas will flow.

are you lost on lost?

2009-03-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

For those who are watching the ABC repeats with the pop-up video style information...you must be as dizzy as a whirling dervish.

Did you miss the Lost Experience? My sympathies. Really and truly.

But here's a quick summary of the entire show in case you don't have time to read the wiki entry:

The Ballad of ABCs LOST (*sung to the tune of - guess what - Gilligan's Island)

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from Australia
Aboard flying ship.

The nut was a lottery winner,
The doctor brave and sure.
Some passengers set flight that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The latitude was a mystery,
The metal ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the ABC crew
Oceanic would be lost, flight 183 was lost.

The ship hit ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With James Sawyer,
Jack Shepard too,
The Korean mafia dude and his wife,
The mental patient,
The British punk and Kate Freckles,
Here on ABCs LOST.

So this is the tale of the castways,
They're warping all through time,
They'll have to deal with string theory,
And the power of Jacob's mind.

The Smoke Monster and Benny too,
Will do their very best,
To make the others uncomfortable,
In the tropic island nest.

No babies, no raft, no rescue planes,
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
As primative as can be.

So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to pay the cost,
For watching Oceanic castways,
Here on "ABCs LOST."

(Yeah I'm not the only one making this parallel. So into the wormhole you go!)

denial ain't just a river in egypt

2009-02-04T09:09:00.000-08:00

Did you know that excommunication does not deny clergy the capacity to perform sacraments in THE CHURCH? So if you choose to excommunicate a member of your clergy all you're doing is giving him the silent treatment.

Gloria gave Archie the silent treatment All in the Family.

Maybe what is missing for the THE CHURCH is a laugh-track. A laugh-track would definitely help with its ratings because people will realize that this is all a joke. There's no other way to look at this is there? You can't rescind a punishment that isn't really a punishment in the first place. The silent treatment is not punishment. What if people just stopped talking to Conrad Black? Or Bonnie and Clyde. Or the Exxon Valdez? Or Starbucks?! Would anyone feel vindicated?

Imagine....

(The See and Me is filmed in front of a LIVE studio audience.)

Roll montage. Begin title track. The title track is played on an organ and sung to the tune of Those Were The Days from All in the Family:)

Boy, the way Vivaldi played. Songs that made the Easter Parade.

Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the holy days.

Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.

Gee, our old Mobile ran great. Those were the holy days.

And you know who you were then. Nuns were girls and priests were men.

Mister, we could use a man like Moussolini again.

People seemed to be content. Fifty dollars paid the rent.

Freaks were in a circus tent. Those were the holy days.

Take a little Sunday spin, go to watch A.S Roma win.

Have yourself a holy day that cost you under a fin.

Hair was short and skirts were long. Salieri really sold a song.

I don't know just what went wrong. Those Were The Holy Days.

Act 1: (the character of Archie Bunker is now being played by Bishop Williamson)
In our first segment Archie says something stupid and Gloria tells him he is an idiot. As punishment, Gloria kicks him out and locks the door not realizing that Archie doesn't really care because he can sleep at the lodge with his buddies, who are equally ignorant.

Commercial break for beer and militia.

Act 2: Edith wipes her hands of any blame on her apron. Michael reminds Gloria that everyone down at the lodge feels sorry for Archie because he was excommunicated and has no place to go. The silent treatment may have the opposite effect that she intended. People may rally around Archie and he will win NEW friends. Gloria cries. Wahhh.

Commercial break for fast food and freshness.

Act 3: Despite the fact that Archie has not apologized, Gloria tells him he can come back home and bring his new friends with him. Archie moves back in realizing that there are no real consequences to his behaviour as long as someone thinks he might be sorry. We find out he had the key to the back door the whole time. Everyone laughs.

Fade to black. Roll credits over choral music.

See? It's just that easy to make it Sweep-week ready.

Essentially, Bishop Williamson was reinstated because he can still ordain people into his highly traditional sect. He still has power even if he's excommunicated. The See wants to make certain BW doesn't continue to ordain priests in order to grow his clique like a Chia pet. He's keeping his enemies close by pardoning them. Not sure that is the best strategy if you want to be taken seriously. Or liked. If the Catholic church is going to get better Neilsens it's going to need a make-over. Sitcoms are a thing of the past. Reality TV is where it's at. So...

Here's an idea - instead of doling out bogus punishments like excommunication maybe THE CHURCH should start holding their ordained responsible for their actions. Use the same methods on the ordained that the ordained have used on others throughout history. Back in Medieval times punishments included the compression of the limbs by special instruments; injection of water, vinegar, or oil, into the body of the accused; application of hot pitch; placing hot eggs under armpits; tying lighted candles to the fingers, so that they might be consumed simultaneously with the wax; letting water trickle drop by drop from a great height on the stomach; or watering the feet with salt water and allowing goats to lick them.

What's that you say? THE CHURCH did no such things? Well, you could deny that too.

paraphenylenediamine rhymes with ...

2009-02-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

Each strand of your hair is made of shaft and a root, which is surrounded by a tube of tissue under there, called the hair follicle, which contains a certain number of pigment cells, which continuously produce a chemical, called melanin, that gives the growing shaft of hair its colour. That may be a run-on sentence but at least we got the basics over with.

The dark or light colour of someones hair depends on how much melanin you have going on. Melanin comes in TWO delicious flavours: eumelanin, which is dark brown or black, and pheomelanin, which is reddish yellow.

As we get older, the pigment cells gradually die, which means less melanin, which means gray. BTW plucking doesn't help because once the cells are dead and they aren't going to start producing melanin just because you pull them out. You can't yoink your cells back to life, just like you can't yell someone back to life. Stop screaming.

It's genetic so if you've got a gray parent, you'll go gray. Why your parent is gray and your neighbour's parent isn't gray is a mystery. With all the money required to sew ears on to the backs of mice who has budget to figure out what makes some people salt and pepper heads. From the time that a person notices the first gray strands, it can take ten years or more to complete the process of complete hoariness.

M'kay.

So I have at least 10 years.

So what about Marie Antoinette

You're right! She was sentenced and executed post-haste so what was up with Mary's coiff? Well...hair is dead no matter what and that means whiteness cannot travel back down the shaft - whiteness has to start at the root. This means that hair can only turn white as fast as it can grow. And there are no modern cases of anyone having a case of the overnight-whites due to stress. So when you look at it, the stress would have to be a stress caused by accidentally dropping a gallon of bleach on your head. That would be stressful. And it would turn your hair "white" but not really. Especially if you have dark hair. It goes yellow, not white. The yellow color you get from bleach is the natural colour of keratin, a protein in your hair.

So regular "going to get your head lopped off" kind of stress isn't enough to do it.

There are theories that Marie may have had a medical condition termed diffuse alopecia areata, which can result in sudden hair loss. (In maybe a few weeks.) For people who have a mix of dark and gray hair, the uncolored hair is less likely to fall out. So if she was salt and pepper to begin with it might have LOOKED like she went totally gray overnight. She was wearing a hat when they killed her anyway so WTF? It's probably just a rumor.

But if you ask me the stress of going gray is enough to make the process go faster. And unless you're THERE, unless you're finding more and more gray, you just don't know yet. You just don't know what it feels like. I say that because I've been there (back there in time) and said to someone who complained about gray hair "Oh, come on. It's distinguished." And now I can't get to the hair salon quickly enough.

How does that permanent colour thing work?

Most permanent hair colors use a two-step process (usually occurring simultaneously) which first removes the original color of the hair and then deposits a new color. You remove the colour with something like bleach or ammonia or hydrogen peroxide. It is an IRREVERSIBLE chemical reaction. That is why they call it permanent colour. The bleach oxidizes the melanin molecule rendering it colourless. Once the cuticle is opened with something like hydrogen peroxide, you can add colour. Because it's open. Pretty simple when you think about it. Alcohols and conditioners close the cuticle after coloring to seal in and protect the new color.

You'd have to wait for that to grow out so if you're sentenced to the guillotine, you can be certain you'll look your very best on d-day.

But why is gray hair wiry?

Hornification. Less antioxidants in there. Cell division. Increase in hair shaft diameter. Hair becomes wiry. Jesus, look it up. Do I have to explain everything?

Why am I blogging about this? Right. Paraphenylenediamine is supposed to be bad for you. But you know what? So is the stress of going gray.

Skins 3 a Sell Out?

2009-01-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Season 3. Stereotypes. Cliche. Banal TV for suburban tweens whose parents have too much dosh. Done.

The first episode sets the tone for the whole season and by the looks of it, the Brits too, can sell out. Download it if you must but be forewarned. It's like 90210 with ACTUAL teenagers as opposed to 40 year olds trying to look like 'em. It's like Degrassi with accents and pot. Oh I hate to say this out loud..... but it's bordering on Ready Or Not ......without the drums. You know what it is? It's Skins season 1 but without any of the good stuff. In fact, Effy, who WAS a great character who carried over onto the new seson, doesn't even seem like the same person. She's lost her dark and gothic silence. She's just a predictable slag. Do the writers expect us to believe she has to manipulate the boys just to get laid? It's high school and she's well fit. Plus, she was trained by the master, Tony, her big brother. She is smarter than that and if she's going through the trouble of manipulating a gaggle of boys it would be for something more useful.

The only other character introduced last season was Penelope - a fairly pathetic and naive young lady too innocent for her own good. Great sidekick for Effy, the dark horse. The possiblities there are endless and yet they've turned Penelope into a bumbling Six from Blossom!

As for the other characters I'm not even sure they're worth mentioning. The nerdy brainiac, (can't act), THE GUY WITH THE FEDORA (from Degrassi) who will inevitably fall for Effy and experience unrequited love, the drunken jock who has boobs on the brain (the biggest loser of all is the first to get lucky?!).

The one interesting character is the quiet-going-to-go-postal twin. Maybe that willl turn into something but her sister is so cliche I can barely watch. I mean, the good twin bad twin story is well over done and better suited to comedy or daytime soaps. It's like All My Children without Todd and Thad. Like Another World without Vicky and Marley.

Looks like season 3 will be a yard sale. Another one bites the dust. It was too good to be true.

Buzz off

2009-01-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

The urban dictionary defines the word buzz as such:

Anything that creates excitement or stimulus; The feeling experienced by someone in a stimulated state; Gossip.
The effect of getting high off of something, such as drugs or caffeine.
the feeling of being inebriated from alcohol or any mind-altering substance

The urban dictionary defines the word word like this:

A versatile declaration, originating (more or less) in hip-hop culture. "Word" has no single meaning, but is used to convey a casual sense of affirmation, acknowledgement, agreement, or to indicate that something has impressed you favorably. Its usage among young blacks has been parodied ad nausea among clueless suburban whites.
Word is the shortened form of the phrase: "my word is my bond" which was originated by inmates in U.S. prisons. The longer phrase was shortened to "word is bond" before becoming "word," which is most commonly used. It basically means "truth." Or "to speak the truth."
to concur; agree; well said

The urban dictionary defines the term buzzword as such:

(n.) Ambiguous word (often hyphenated) that is repeated over and over to win support for a cause. use of buzzwords is not exclusive to any side of the political spectrum, or any particular opinion on any matter.
A contemporary yet cliched word, saying or catchphrase, often used by incompetent managers in an attempt to motivate staff. Which fails.
A buzzword is a term or phrase that sounds good, but means nothing. Buzzwords are widely used in the media, advertising, politics and other sections of society.

Observation of the first: In popular culture English, as a language, is inconsistent.

Observation of the second: Buzzwords can also be defined as the same whiny moan you hear all night long when a mosquito is trying to get at your jugular. Know where this blog is going?

Buzzwords just won't go away.

Buzzwords:
Buzzwords are insects in the family Irritatidae. They have a pair of scaled wings, a pair of consonants, a vowel or two, a shallow body, and long legs. The females of most buzzword species suck blood (hematophagy) from your brain, which has made them the most deadly disease vector (OH MY GOD I LOVE THAT TERM) known, killing millions of people over thousands of years and continuing to kill millions per year by the spread of infectious parroting.

Most species are marketing feeders. During the heat of the day most buzzwords rest in a cool place and wait for someone with no original thought to come along. They may still bite if disturbed. Buzzwords are adept at infiltration and have been known to find their way into residences via deactivated inspiration.

Feeding habits:
In order for the buzzword to obtain a blood meal from your brain it must surmount the vertebrate physiological responses. The buzzword, as with all blood-feeding jargon, has evolved mechanisms to effectively block creativity with their overuse and meaninglessness.

Control of buzzwords:
There are many methods used for buzzword control. Some target the larval stage, while others are used to kill or repel full blown phenomena. Much of modern buzzword control is no longer dependent on marketers but specialized THINKERS that eat buzzwords, or infect them with a disease that kills them. However, outbreaks of human buzzword-borne ignorance may still result in fogging with products that are less toxic than those used in the past.

Natural predators:
The smart account person eats buzzwords at all stages of development and is quite effective in controlling populations by simply allowing them to pass through their digestive systems and leaving them where they belong - in the crapper. Although writers and art directors can be prodigious consumers of buzzwords, many of which are pests, less than 1% of their diet typically consists of buzzwords. However, they too exhibit cannibalistic behavior and as such can reduce the population of buzzwords by coming up with ideas and original thoughts - the most effective control known to all marketing kind.

Historical reference:
Ancient tomes assert that the Roman Emperor Titus, who destroyed a temple, was punished by God who sent a buzzword up Titus' nose, picking at his brain, ceaselessly buzzing, driving him crazy and eventually causing his death.

The moral of that story is so clear I won't even bother to state it. The moral of today's blog is this:

Get original! THINK. Have thoughts of your own. Get an opinion. You must stand out above all others because the competition is fierce. That competition will grow exponentially in the next year. Add the speed at which technology advances to that equation and you are going to see a colossal fight for power over the digital space.

It's coming soon to an industry near you.

(Thanks to Wikipedia for supplying me with linguistic inspiration.)

Forcing an outcome

2009-01-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

You can't do it.

Why radio won't die

2009-01-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

It's like the internet but with words.

Vive la Faust

2009-01-16T07:57:00.001-08:00

Okay so I gotta say that Canadian Robert Lepage is a bit of a frikkin' star and I am not ashamed to say that I am jealous of his talent. That's right, I wish I had that kind of talent.

What he's done with Faust at the Met is nothing short of genius. I'm not an opera fan but I'm a fan of the play, which I studied in my Renaissance English class back in the university days. You know the one, it's the story of the guy who sells his soul to el diablo in exchange for the knowledge of necromancy. The play with Mephistopheles who's famous for saying things like

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?"

because he really teed the lord off, who cast him out. He regrets doing what he did but it's now his job to recruit new souls and seeing as how Faust is a miserable old curmudgeon who tries to commit the sin of suicide, he's ripe for the pickin'.

Anyways...great play that is proceeded by a great story and someone named Berlioz wrote an opera about it. So I went to the opera. Just because of Marlowe's version. There's a great picture of Marlowe here. I should be more specific and say that I didn't go to the opera, I went to the live HD broadcast OF the opera because I don't live in NY and even if I did I would never get tickets because I'm sure that sold out long before I even heard it was happening. Why do I think that? Because the HD broadcast of the show sold out so fast they added a second theatre. I've never seen so many geriatrics in one place. Not even in a retirement home.

Anyways...let's get back to why I was blogging about this in the first place. Robert Lepage. You might know him from Cirque du Soleil, our most creative export ever. He designed one of the best interactive experiences I've ever seen. The technology he used allowed the singers’ motion and voices to trigger and affect video projected onto the stage. So when the music swells, the video is instantly changed. He used layers of projections and screens to create a 3D effect, which is pretty ingenious considering it's already in 3D. Imagine a giant scaffold and at the top is a rowboat and when someone falls into the "water" below, which is projected, it triggers an entire underwater experience live on stage. Using silhouettes of galloping horses and unlit actors on wires he was able to float a dozen horses and their jockeys above the stage. Just the scaffold itself was brilliant. At one point you actually experience a complete mind freak when the x and y axis of your field of vision are morphed. I can't even describe this without spending too much time on it and I'll not do it justice otherwise. Just know that it's quintessential Cirque du Soleil but without the lady singing in that fake language they use, which was cool once but y'all can cut it out now. Enough with the la fluuuutillle de nexxoooos bonnnapooo shannnaa shannnna. We get it. You're global. You're cross-cultural. Enough.

But that is an aside.

So look if you missed the Met Faust on HD you can see it again. TOMORROW. Saturday
January 17, 2009. 1:00 PM (EST). Look, I'm not telling you what to do but if you miss that you're a complete twatter. Just go to cineplex.com and get a ticket if you still can. Go. Trust me. Read more about it here if you're a geek . Go geek go.

METAL WEIRD SOLID 4

2009-01-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

*Beware stream of consciousness below. No grammar. Warning. Warning*

Yes, I'm late playing this game but you know what? I'm sick of buying games that every one says are great and then they don't turn out to be so great. And you waste your time and you're all excited about playing a new game and you get into it right at the beginning and then it all goes to complete shite.

Like Dead Space. It's listed as one of the best games of 2008 but can you say "repetitive" beyond all get out? Good then say it. As a matter of fact, you can say it over and over until the makers of Dead Space get really bored of you saying it. Just like I got really bored of killing the same HR Geiger Tony Scott Ridley Aliens 1 2 3 4 Resurrection 3D Jason Predator RIP OFF creature that is somehow supposed to .... I don't know what .... scare me? Gross me out? Surprise me? Whatever. The game had such promise! Promise, I tell you! But....

It's just a video game version of the very bad Bill Murray (blecccch) Andie MacDowell movie, Groundhog Day .... except it's in space! With no Sigourney Weaver to make it interesting. Bah! I gave up from sheer boredom by level 4 but wait....

I did go back for more.

That's right I gave that game it's second life! Second chance. And all that happened was exactly what I expected: A really big boss at the end of level fill in the blank who turns out to be "unbeatable" unless.... you hop to the top and hit him 3 times with a barrel....no wait...the barrel has to be on fire....no wait...you have to jump from the top corner to the bottom right corner to the left corner back to the top AND THEN throw a boomerang....no wait....flip him on his back and kill him that way....no wait...you throw a turtle at him and wait until Mario comes along with Princess Peach and .... no wait....you have to open an account with RBC and then write a story nominating your chef to get entered into the first draw where you sit in the doctor's office on flu shot day where you.....no wait...isn't this supposed to be a first person shooter? Isn't this supposed to be a game for grown ups? Why are we still using the same old platform big boss level garbage from 1983? Seriously? If I wanted to play a platform game with a big boss level I'd play NINTENDO MARIO FILL IN THE BLANK. I paid for a creepy horror deep space thriller kind of game where I expect to be really involved in a cool story with cool characters and cool stuff to do. What did I get for my money? Insanity. By definition I paid for insanity. Repetitive actions repeatedly where you repetitively repeat but expect a different result.

With all the money the video game industry makes.....yeah you....I'm talking to YOU, video game industry! You can't come up with something else for me to do at the end of a level? With all this money you're making you can't possibly conceive of something new, or interesting or clever or ANYTHING different? I have to flip the boss around and shoot him in the soft spot? THAT'S WHAT ONE OF THE BEST GAMES OF THE YEAR HAS TO OFFER? Fie. You should be ashamed. Hang thy head in shame, video game industry! Look! You're even making me use expletives!!

I sold Dead Space back to the shop. At a loss of $30. Of course.

Instead...Drake's Fortune. Now here's something interesting. Great characterization. All these different tasks and jungle and treachery and very .... ummm... Indiana Jones in terms of presentation. Cool! Hunting for treasure in an ancient city. Cool. Air, sea, desert, jungle...COOL. But wait ... what's this .... zombies? Killer fast zombies en masse? But wait a minute where the hell did these things come from. So far (albeit fantastic) it's a pretty believable plot.... But ... what are the zombies doing here? And what do you mean I have to KEEP STARTING THIS PARTICULAR LEVEL OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN? Why this level? I was able to save my game in all the previous levels that didn't have all these insane killer zombies coming at me!

It's not that I oppose zombie games...it's just that I DIDN'T BUY A ZOMBIE GAME. And I most certainly DID NOT buy a zombie game like this. Where I play 18 levels that have no zombies and the last few levels are zombie ridden. Infested. Why would I buy a zombie game like that?

So what happened, video game developers? Yeah, YOU! I'm talking to you, video game developers. Did your creative department take ill and you just couldn't wait to finish the story so you decided to toss in a gaggle of zombies that are as dumb as a bag of hammers and as ugly as a bag of monkeys' arseholes? Did zombies take over your studio and force you to include zombies by holding their arms out at you and biting things? Did a mysterious zombie plague (Like in World War Z) take over the planet and it just hasn't reached this neighbourhood yet so I don't know yet that you are all dead and now zombies and have taken up the cause to promote zombie-ism in our fair country? Did you just have a bad day and decide to take it out on us? By robbing us of our $60? WHAT HAPPENED? WHERE DID ALL THE ZOMBIES COME FROM?

I sold Drake's Fortune back to the shop. At a loss of $30. Of course.

So now we're on to Metal Gear Solid 4. Don't worry, I won't disrespect the game. I know it's game of the year and all. I didn't play any of the previous Gears so maybe I'm missing something in terms of plot but ... yeah it's pretty cool.

I love the stealth stuff cuz it's THRILLING....really gets the ticker going to be waiting around like that while there's a sniper on a roof. Uh-huh. The acting is pretty good and there are tons of weapons. Uh-huh. And I'm only just really getting into this game (I think. I don't even know how long the game is.) But I'm not going to keep silent about how stupid the Laughing Octopus scenario was. Really.

Love the fact that there are these killer chick soldiers and yabbady yabbada and I can even excuse how goofy the Octopus costume is because of the camo feature but I gotta say .... the laughing the whole time. Bad-acting, laughing, not good-acting laughing. Not scary, creepy laughing like "Dang, she's messed up!" laughing. Just weird bad laughing. Irritating. Didn't make any sense to me. I'm like "What the hell is that thing laughing at?" See, she looks like a machine so why she finds anything funny escapes me right off the bat. I know, I know. You're thinking "You don't even get it yet. You don't get that it's part human and there's a story there. You're just too critical." Uh-huh. Well, here's the thing. It was bad enough that the thing was laughing incessantly but then....when I found out why ... well ... I kind of had to drop the game down a notch or two because it's just a stupid back-story that is one of the most useless back-stories ever. It's an especially stupid and useless back-story because I learned the back story AFTER I killed the thing and then I didn't even care. In fact, Snake doesn't care, neither. He even says so after the back-story scene is over. So what the hell was that for? Why put that whole scene in the game? Kind of a waste of time, no?

And what's worse is that after you pull all the camo armour off her, she becomes Laughing Beauty and she's all blonde and gorgeous and her hair is flipping in the *wind* (why is it even windy inside all of a sudden?) and she just won't stop laughing until she ... I don't know ... is shot 100 times and then somehow feels a bit of .... what is that? Regret? We don't even know until 10 minutes later.

And wait there's more weirdness....she's a HUGGER. Yeah, you read that correctly. After her armour comes off. After she spends all that time laughing and trying to blow your head off. After you watch her pull other people apart, you shoot off her armour off and she tries to hug you. Repeatedly. And you have to escape her evil hug. The evil hug of a hot killer blonde octopus robot stripped of her robotness. Yep.

Well, I guess I can't complain because that's the BEST GAME OF THE YEAR solution to the platform big boss challenge - you can only defeat it when you pull of it's armour and let it hug you.

I can't complain.

World War Z - As True as Story as any Other

2008-12-26T06:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a short post cuz it's a holiday for me. And look...I've had time to READ.

If you haven't read it you simply must investigate a spectacular piece of literature called World War Z. No matter what your opinion of zombies or Armageddon or post-apocalyptic nightmares may be this book is most definitely worth your time. It's a 12 hour read, if you're hungry and how many episodes of fill in the blank can you watch in that amount of time, anyway?

Don't like to read? Read this.
Hate zombies cuz they're stupid? It's not about "zombies" .... it's an extended metaphor.
Don't like gore? This is more political than gory.
Can't afford it? Ask around and borrow it.
Think it's for geeks? Only geeks who like to study the human psyche and spirit.
Figure it's another bit of pulp some Hollywood dork will just turn into the next blockbuster starring some old fart like Bruce Willis? Not a chance. Well, not the first part. This is not pulp, despite the recent resurgence of zombie pulp covering the bookshelves. And here's hoping to the supreme light that Hollywood just leaves this one alone! (As if.)

Now, if the Brits got their hands on it and turned it into a mini-series, we could talk. They did such a stellar job with (WARNING GORY IMAGERY) Dead Set.

This book is a collection of interviews from around the globe after a 10 year pandemic destroys most of our planet. Billions of people dead. Some undead, some killed by their own governments, some killed in combat, some suicides. Grim stuff but brilliant stuff, nonetheless.

Max Brooks where have you been hiding? WTF that this is your first "novel"? WTF? That I should be so talented to come up with this! And, damn, it's smart. SMART. Thank the supreme blast of energy that you're at least 36 years of age because if you were any younger I'd lose my poo. That means I'm not too far off from accomplishing something significant like this book.

(I'm supposed to write a book, see? And I keep hearing that you have to write from your expereince. CLEARLY THAT IS A LOAD OF DUMP! It's not like this Max Brooks guy can have possibly lived any of THIS? Come on. So now I know I can write a book and it can be about anything. I wish I wrote this book. I do, I do!)

Er...yeah, the book.... eerily prophetic. And retrospective at the same time (I think those things go hand in had anyways). And proof that when it comes, whatever it is, whenever it is, we will not be prepared. We're too cocky to be prepared. We're kind of too sure we'd be prepared to be prepared. We're too busy navel gazing and spitting over the fence of our neighbours and shooting snuff films and buying stuff we don't need and watching Survivor and stuff....

This book scared the poo out of me. Not because there were zombies eating folk - whatever. Seen it a thousand times in a thousand movies and graphic novels and whatever. It was scary because every reaction, every proposed solution, every possible retaliation or evasion or ANYTHING we could come up with was mostly USELESS.

I'm so rambling in this post but who cares? You could be reading the book instead of reading this post, you know?

Max Brooks thought of everything! You don't think so? I dare you to read it and come up with a solution to the zombie problem that wasn't already covered. I don't care who you are or where you come from...Brooks has got you covered. It's like this guy went into a trance and transported himself to different places on Earth and envisioned a swarm of zombies coming at him. He transmogrified into a citizen of every country he could think of. Every region on our planet. The most remote locations. He's a soldier. He's a soccer mom. He's a sensei. He's a minister. He's in Chile. In Japan. In Slovakia. In Antarctica. In Canada. In North Korea. In France. He planned. He stragegy-ized. He armed. Every piece of technology he could think of. Small armies. Large armies. Traps. Dogs. Water. Trenches. Battle axes. Heavy metal.

Anything you can think of he covered.

And it's all for naught. The zombies just keep coming. Under water. Outer space. Under ground. Over hill and dale. In a Chippendales! (Okay not in a Chippendales.)

And let me tell you something else before you say "OUTER SPACE?! COME ON NOW YOU'RE TALKING PULP FICTION FOR SHIZZLE!...Before you say that, think about it...some government somewhere would eventually put a team out there so HUSH. The book is INSANELY realistic. So real it will scare the poo out of you too, Shmoo. The creepiest part about it is that it could happen. Oh, maybe not the walking dead but....it could happen. No matter what the military system, political system, cultural system....ANY SYSTEM any where on the planet....NO SYSTEMS....there's some poor schmuk telling his/her tale from that particular perspective. And it's terrifying.

But surely a country as populated as China can take on a mass of zombies? No.
But surely the Arctic is a safe haven? Nope.
But surely a country with nulcear weapons? LOL.
But surely people pulled together and strategy-ized and .... and.... not so much.

This is one of the most gripping, couldn't put it down, eerie, creepy books I have......Yeah yeah, you've heard this all before just read it already.

It's TONS OF FUN!

OH! Canada

2008-12-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

Previously, I wrote about our Canadian culture breeding boring TV and now I'm revisiting that. I feel like I want to stream about that.

And, oh...yeahhhhh....I'm not calling it blogging because I don't really edit much and I don't necessarily read this with a critical eye when I'm done. So I'm calling it streaming instead of blogging because it's so stream of consciousness-y and all.

Deal.

Anyway...what was I streaming? Oh yeah, that Canadian collective unconscious called NICE, is all well and good but it has direct repercussions on things like our television and our government and our syrup. That begs the question "What happens when we stop being NICE?"

Who's just nice anyway? There has to be more to it that just NICE. That's too vague. And the just nice guy never gets laid. And if he does guess what the review is - "It was nice." Great. Sounds like the perfect reason to waste some KY.

And since there's begging involved let's ask again - What if we stop being NICE? Do we get good TV? Yes.

What's good TV for NICE people who stop being nice???? PARLIAMENT TV! That's what. Good TV in Canada means Question Period - Prime Time. It's like COPS but without any running. It's a bunch of politicians saying "FREEZE or I'll vote your head off!"

You just know a bunch of these guys were sitting around at the cottage with a beer thinking "Hey....what's with that American election being so INTERESTING? An election can be interesting? People can get emotional and....and....CARE? How do we get Canadians to care? We could try a cous. I guess. Ok. Sure let's call the opposition and make sure we don't wear the same thing and then form a coup."

Yeah that's right I'm streaming about all those guys on the hill. You know we should call this drama THE PARLIAMENT HILLS. Cuz there's back talk and rumors and lying and he said and she said and no cool music but still....it's like Spencer and Heidi all of a sudden.

Except there is no all of a sudden. You don't just wake up one day and there's a tree on your front lawn ALL OF A SUDDEN. Somewhere, some time, someone had to plant a seed and day by day that tree has been a-growing so there's no all of a sudden.

Why should Americans have all the fun elections? Why do we get our measly in-and-out-like-the-wind October 14th? And they get THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ELECTION ever? We want our MTV too! THE PARLIAMENT HILLS coalition deal was inevitable. So quit your "WTF happened?" attitude, Prime Minister Harper. You knew they were going to elope. You knew that relationship might blossom and they'd come and to usurp the throne. It was inevitable.

All that being blogged...In good old fashioned Canadian tradition we canceled the entertaining TV before it even began and now parliament is suspended until we get distracted by something else. Thanks guv'ner. Now what are we going to watch? Well there's always the NEW Anne of Green Gables. Starring that great Canadian actress Shirley Maclaine. Oh wait she's not Canadian. Maybe she's part of that alliance that's trying to take down our country and burn our flag! She doesn't even look Canadian. I don't trust her. Vote her out!

Nah. Keep her in. Maybe she'll have an out of body experience on the show and something good will happen on that show. On the plains. In olden times. In the school house. Or on the path. Or in the barn. Or in town or something.

Maybe it will be like Skins.

Yeah.

Non, Je Regrette Rien!

2008-12-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

Yeah so yesterday I watched La Mome okay and WTF that has to be the most saddest life story I've ever heard! For real that is like the REAL version of Eddie Murphy's aunt Bunny falling down the stairs - but not funny. Edith Piaf lived one bad thing after another after another after another. It was like torture watching this movie. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret watching it, it was just harder to watch than I expected. It's like that cloud level in the Simpsons latest video game for DS. Or the first time you try the caves level in Little Big Planet.

Spoiler spoiler:

So little Edith....
Abandoned by her mother who left her with her mother
Abandoned by her grandmother and then rescued by her father
Abandoned by her father who left her to live with his mother in a whorehouse
Was finally taken to breast by a whore
She went blind
She went unblind
Was then torn from that relationship by her father who forced her to work in the circus (no, really)
Abandoned by her father again
Lived on the streets and sang for food
Became an alcoholic
Got discovered by a gay guy who put her on stage and became her surrogate father (WTF Gerard Depardieu of all people. Can anyone say whatever happened to???)
She gained some fame
He got murdered by the mob (???)
SHE WAS ACCUSED OF PARTICIPATING (???)
She got taken in by another “agent” who treated her like garbage but taught her to use her arms (and somehow that was crucial)
Somewhere in there she met a man, got pregnant, abandoned her own daughter who then died of menengitis
At some point Piaf became a super star singer and met Marlena Deitrich who named her the soul of Paris (probably not true....and LOL of all things NOT true in this film I bet this is the only one)
Meet a boxer and fell madly in love but he was married so when he won the championship of the world he abandoned her and went back to his family
.... but was so in love with her he decided to go back to her.....and died in a plane crash on the way
She was struck with horrible rheumatism that warped her spine
She became addicted to heroin to deal with the pain
She began to collapse on stage on a regular basis but
Her fans were so enamoured with her they just didn't accept that she couldn't perform
She got liver disease and
....as she was convinced she was nothing without her voice, she sang herself to death.

that's all based on fact. that's her story.

Marion Cotillard won the oscar for this role...like she had to try. (Meryl Streep couldn't have done a better job if she killed one of her own for x's sake! Honestly Cotillard's was one of the best frikkin' performances I've ever seen so if you can handle how tragic the thing is then go for it.)

So does that mean when XXXXX XXXXX plays me in my life story she'll win the oscar?

Exterior Scene: The playground at Venerable John Merlini Catholic School....1982...a 12 year old is contracted to do her first illustration job - a portrait of Judas Priest. She charges a mere $20 to her friend's big brother - a high school student. On the day she delivers the product....nay THE ARTISTIC MASTERPIECE THAT SHE POURED HER HEART AND VERY SOUL INTO!...he give's her two bucks, grabs the bristol board and drives away in his Camaro, never to be seen again!!!!!!!!!!

Eat your heart out Edith Piaf! That's drama! And the oscar goes to......XXXXXXX XXXXXX.

(I haven't decided who will play me yet. Suggestions are welcome.)

And she has to be hot.

Skins

2008-11-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

Here's a rant that might irk you but that's life, yeah?

TF is going on the UK that we don't got? Why is their TV so much better than ours? I'm not trying to be a hater here but, without even TRYING, I can list a number of UK productions that kick the arse of Canadian television.

Watch Skins. You'll have to download it because you'll not see it on your telly. Fat chance. Morbidly obese chance, as like. Basically, it's Degrassi meets Trainspotting meets Dangerous Liasons but wholly Bri'ish. And I flamin' love it.

Hold on just a minute before you go all "Yeah you probably watch Degrassi and 90210 redux." No. I don't. In fact, I never watched Degrassi. I never watched 90210. I never watched Dawson. No teen drama has ever caught my attention -- even when I was in my teens. Nope...no OC, no One Tree Hill. Nothing.

This one is for the books and if I didn't happen to hear about Skins from my friend Liz, who's married to a Brit and loves all things British....I NEVER WOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THIS SHOW. Why not? I have a 17 year old in my life. I see her once a week! We talk pop culture non-stop. (Keeps me in touch, sure but I'm also just a pop-junkie.) And believe you me, I'm going to ask her if she's ever heard of this show.

But then I stop and think...what if she downloads it? Is it appropriate for a 17 year old? And then I realize why it will never air on the CBC -- even I am second guessing the content. And I realize that I am such a product of my flamin' culture. Canadian culture.

The ever elusive Canadian Culture. What exactly is it besides politeness and friendliness? What is it beyond Anglo vs. French behind closed doors? BECAUSE WHAT EVER IT IS IT MAKES LOUSY TV.

YEAH I SAID IT. I'M SICK AND TIRED OF CBC PROGRAMMING BEING MONOTONOUS. HOMOGENEOUS. WHATEVER. WHY IS IT THAT THE ONLY PROGRAMMING WE SEE IS ABOUT THE PLAINS.

And then you get something like Twitch City, which was decent, at least. And it gets pulled. Cancelled. Whatever.

And in the UK they have Skins.

We have Anne of Green Gables, which may as well have been produced by an organized religion like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Not that I have a problem with the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I don't. But I don't want to watch CTS. (Okay they show re-runs of The Facts of Life so I do watch CTS. BUT I SWEAR IT'S THE ONLY TIME I DO.)

I swear.

We've got Emily of New Moon. Oh my god that could have been about werewolves eating people alive and turning the whole town into bloodthirsty werewolves one bite at a time. But no....and I quote from a website:

Based upon the trilogy by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Emily of New Moon follows the life of orphaned Emily Bryd Starr who is sent to live with her stern Aunt Elizabeth and kind Aunt Laura.

She becomes friends with Ilse Burnley, whose mother mysteriously vanished when she was a child.

Nearby lives Teddy Kent, whose mother is overbearing and to complete...

Do I even need to provide you with a link to that information? Do you need to read on? Anne of Green Gables. Emily of New Moon. The Beachcombers. Heartland.

I understand it caters to a particular audience. Ok. We have Corner Gas....

And the UK has Absolutely Fabulous.

Even when we try and go metro we get things like Train 48 and Metropia. Believe you me I gave both of those shows their shot. I give them all a shot. But if the whole set shakes when a door is slammed I get huffy. Oftentimes, Canadian production value is so POOR you can hardly expect our TV talent to stay north of the border.

We have North of 60. They have Prime Suspect.

It just plain SUCKS. (Did you get that double entendre there?) Pay attention cuz I'm going to weigh in on where the Americans fit in. JUST CUZ I FEEL LIKE TO.

All reality TV aside. All of it. It's a different category for another day.....

They got the money but they do a lot of copy cat work. Sometimes it's good (ie Three's Company). Sometimes it's bad (ie Absolutely Fabulous). Words: Paris Hilton BFF. Saved By the Bell. Beauty and the Beast.

Throwing good money after bad. Throwing good money after bad.

Their saving grace is cable. Two words. HBO and AMC. More words. Breaking Bad. Mad Men. The Sopranos. Damages. Californication.

We have Kattz and Dog.

'Nuff said.

the ONE says "There is no fold."

2008-11-14T06:37:00.000-08:00

There is no fold. Forget it. You know how I know there's no fold? You can't bend the Internet. Yet.

Here goes - a blog post after a night of bad, mad, wicked, cool insomnia.

You can't bend the Internet so there is no fold. Look, line three and I'm already repeating myself. There's nothing wrong with scrolling, neither. You know how I know? There are scroll bars on the Internet and you can grab them and use them. In fact, you can click and drag them. You can click and hold on an arrow. You can move up and down to see.

So there is no fold.

Resolution is only relevant in that we need to design for the lowest HORIZONTAL common denominator. Scrolling left to right is really only allowed when we are being "artistic". We aren't usually "artistic" when we're building dotcoms or ecoms or recons. So if you're building a website for frozen yogurt with a cute little animated girl who runs from side to side and floats around and make the world lovely then sure you can scroll side to side but for now, let's assume you should avoid that. Why? Usually there's some kind of dock or some controls and stuff at the bottom of your screen and side scrolling can be irritating as a result. Usually there's enough junk at the top and bottom of your screen so you don't want to add more. Blah blah blah. But as far as a fold is concerned. I defy you to find one. I defy you to tell me the x and y coords that people are people stretching and shrinking their browsers to these days.

Oh sure there are stats. There will always be stats. There have always been stats. And stats are better than they used to be. Have you ever been part of an old-school survey? Taken the call? Filled out the papers? Kept track of your viewing habits with a pen? Yeah. Stats are better now because Google "knows". Google sees. Google measures and that is great and I love that stuff cuz it's just sick how Google has a third eye. Kind of. But until Google knows what mood I'm in when I fall out of bed and haven't slept a wink, there is no fold.

Maybe it's because I'm tired but I'm very pleased with the Matrix-spoon-fold-bend-quantum big idea here. Am I the only one that sees it? People who have been sleep deprived begin to hallucinate within the first few days. Let's look that up.....(time passes)

Research subjects who have undergone sleep deprivation experiments typically begin to hallucinate after 72–96 hours without sleep. It is thought that these hallucinations result from the malfunctioning of nerve cells within the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This area of the brain is associated with judgment, impulse, control, attention, and visual association, and is refreshed during the early stages of sleep. When a person is sleep-deprived, the nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex must work harder than usual without an opportunity to recover. The hallucinations that develop on the third day of wakefulness are thought to be hypnagogic hallucinations that occur during "microsleeps or short periods of light sleep lasting about one to ten seconds.**

Back to the present.

Gone are the days when people surfed with their browsers full screen. Gone are the days where a 14" monitor at 8x6 was our stake in the ground. There are too many computers and too many browsers and too many users to determine where the fold is any more. It's over. Let's stop talking about the fold and just agree that we'd like to have as much RELEVANT content at the top of our page as possible. That being said we should stop trying to jam in 3 levels of navigation. Stop trying to force leaderboards and bboxes and second bboxes and all that above the fold. You can't say where the fold is so let's just agree that as much content RELEVANT content that we can have within the first 750 VERTICAL pixels and keep it about 900 pixels wide and call it a day. Are those ads relevant? Yes. Then we have to accomodate for them. Is 3 levels of nav relevant? That's another post altogether.

What we need to do if we're going to push forward is just take a breath and think. If we just keep relying on what the next best resolution is, we'll keep talking about the Internet like our experience of it doesn't change with

technology
how many apps we have open
what we're surfing for at that moment
who just jumped on and off our computers
whether the phone just rang
whether i just got distracted by an "allow window to be opened?" prompt
if i'm on my laptop and connected to an external monitor
if that changes my settings
if it's sunny and there's a glare on my screen
what browser i'm using based on what OS i'm using
based on what works in safari vs. explorer vs. firefox vs. the next new thing
based on what awful site resized my browser in the first place
how many pop up windows just took over my screen because that's not in my prefs
or someone turned that off without telling me
cuz my kids are using my computer
or how i had to change my prefs for my grandfather who is half legally blind
and he wants to play poker
or i didn't sleep last night

So how can we be sure and how much time do we spend talking about the content below the fold when really we should be developing strategies regarding what's at the top of the page and WHY it needs to be there and what we're trying to communicate and what technology can we best put to use in order to ensure that what we're trying to communicate is communicated?

(Scroll down.)

Th'end.

** I took that information from here.

(Now scroll sideways...kidding.)

Snap, Crackle, Blog

2008-10-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

Use it or lose it.

Blog every day for 20 minutes no matter what you blog about and you're technically fit. Finger fit. Tirade fit. Non sequitur fit. Yammer fit.

What am I talking about? The ability to express yourself. The means by which to hone thy skills of yakkity yakk!

Don't blog and you turn into a heaping mound of blubber. But listen up...you can't just blog for 20 minutes a day. You have to make blogging part of a BALANCED DIET. It's like the box says...you're gonna get a pow pow powerful good good feeling if you combine your Cheerios with other stuff. Don't just eat them out of the box! What are you, an infant? You afraid you're going to choke?

Just do it. Commit.

Sure, I'm talking to myself here. But you'd only know that if you bother to check. And I'm talking to you too. Not just about blogging but about making blogging part of your balanced diet.

The diet has to include other stuff.

The list of other stuff that makes you a well rounded citizen of the web:

1. You have to read. I don't care what else you decide to do you had better read. Don't give me that sob story you're just about to give me. Pick up a BOOK and read. Not articles on line. (Sure, read those too but I'm talking about paper here.) Read a book. You can't work your brain if you don't read a book. You know what? Maybe I'm a snob but I don't care WHAT you think about A Clockwork Orange if you haven't read the book. What is the origin of the inspiration? Do you think Kubrik pulled the movie out of his hole? He read the book. It struck him in the cortex and he saw god. God told him how to tell the story another way. (Sure I'm making that up but so what? That's just how I describe a process. Call it what you will.)

2. You have to research. That's why the web is belong to us. The porn is for them. The research should be for YOU. Does this make any sense? Is it too non-sequitur for you? Try and follow along. Pretend you're reading Ulysses. Or listening to Kate Bush sing The Sensual World. Don't know what I'm talking about? Then here's the perfect opportunity for you to find out. You can look it up. But that's just Googling. What I mean by research is ... GO LEARN. OMG it's at your fingertips. Literally. It's like your biggest wish has come true and you act as though you're sitting 'neath the Sword. You've got this gift you mustn't squander.

3. Put your pride aside and consume all programming on digital cable even if it's only 2 minutes of every show. (Satellite for those of you who are within eyeshot of the CN Tower. Ooooooh I've now given away my geographical location. Oh no!)

Okay enough with the telling you what to do besides blogging. But I will reiterate that your blog will be horribly boring if you don't do things like DOING THINGS SO THAT YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO BLOG ABOUT. Otherwise you're just writing in your diary and um....yeah....no don't do that.

Start thinking about blogging like this. Go back in time and find a long copy ad and replace whatever the hell product you see with words like web and click and tech and blog and user and surf. Just like this:

You're the master of the liveliest and most luxurious technology ever offered at a low price when you sit at your desk and surf the web.

You can step ahead of all other low-priced forms of infotainment, for you have at your command the fastest accelerating medium in the field.

You can zoom over the crest of a steep hill in high with greater power and ease than can the suser of any other low-priced technology.

You can click more swiftly and effortlessly- blog over smooth or rough roads with a greater degree of analytics luxury - thanks to the web's exclusive CLICK here technology. Blog royal.

Something's telling you, "better eye it, try it, buy it" and enjoy the thrill of using a medium that out-values and out-performs all others - a blog!

(The copy is re purposed courtesy of this ad right here)

And then read it and believe it! Trust it is the truth. Count backwards from 10 until you make it true. You have to believe in the power of greyskull. If you believe that it makes a difference then it does. You may reach someone.

The problem is no one has ever said that blogging is something special. We like to distract ourselves with shiny objects and this is something we've defined MISTAKENLY as a shiny object and we need to start accepting that blogging is crucial and exceptional and powerful. We need to stop taking it for granted. Okay so start thinking about it like it's a product you can't live without. Or a product that will improve your life. Or get you laid. Or get you a job. Or get you that raise. Or whatever....just start thinking about it like it's the best new THING like all the other new THINGS that have come before it but have stuck around and become a part of our every day lives. Just do it. Pretend it's a clothes washer:

NEW BLOGGING SOFTWARE DOES EVERYTHING BUT IRON FOR YOU!
New Blogging Freeware saves as well as spellchecks....blog while you surf....sleep....or just play!
Here's the only app unite ever developed to save as well as spellcheck your stuff...AUTOMATICALLY...in one continuous operation. A single setting of the Blog prefs and your ideas are thoroughly published, then completely ignored....while you're waiting....while you're working.....while you sleep. No wondering, no worrying. You're feed burner will tell you who and who is buying your thinking in seconds.

The Blog works in warm or hot weather...indents paragraphs, creates numbered lists, bullets safely....and allows for BOLD and ITALIC accents - all automatically. In addition, you have an automatic spell check that takes only a few seconds to tell you you forgot everything you ever learned in elementary school english class.

Before you even consider twitter or facebook, you owe it to yourself to try Blogging. See a free demonstration right here.

Hey by the look on your grill I can see that you think that last one was repetitive but all I did was modify some long copy from an old ad so don't shoot the messenger.

Look how easy it is to apply blog as a verb, adjective, ingredient, toenail, death of a disco dancer.....blog blog blog blog anything and everything is blog:

Do you believe in blog?
In the name of blog what are you talking about?
Blogerati
Tubbs and Crockett on Miami Blog
Blogdogs and hamburgers
Blog blog blog the man down

Nike: Just Blog It
Apple: Blog Different
Amex: Don't Blog Home Without It
Burger King: Blog It Your Way
GE: We Blog Good Things To Life
Fisher-Price: Play. Laugh. Grow. Blog.
Milk: It Blogs A Body Good
Macdonalds: We Love To See You Blog
Rice Crispies: Snap, Crackle, Blog

And on the 7th day blog rested.

get your hands of my teats, ben and jerry!

2008-09-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

Okay finally something INTERESTING happened in the media! Elections what elections? No no I mean INTERESTING in that it was enough to really make me wanna jump up and BLOG. Throw open my window and yell "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!"

What is up with PETA? They want Ben & Jerry's to stop using cow's milk and start using human breast milk to make their ice cream? WTF? Who is running that place? Hugh Hefner? Larry Flynt? Raquel Welch? Seriously. That's just gross. The only people that should drink breast milk are babies and new age parents who want to tell all their goofy new age friends "Of course I TRIED it. There's nothing wrong with it. It's....sweet."

Barf.

With all the unethical treatment of animals all over this planet THIS is what you're brainstorming on, PETA? You can't save a bunny from being tested with a shot of hair spray to the eyes? Or a rat from having a human ear sewn to it's back? You have to focus on dairy cows who probably have nothing better to do than milked all day anyway? It's not like they're cute or anything and it's not like they don't WANT to be milked. They're gaggin' for it, as my friends on Coronation Street say.

Okay, while I agree that cow's milk is not meant for human consumption WE DRINK AND EAT IT ANYWAY. I know we don't really have the enzymes required to break down the lactose. I get it. We shouldn't smoke. We should exercise. Fine. But I don't see how I'll get healthier by eating someone stranger's breast milk. I don't know WHERE SHE'S BEEN! I don't want a stranger's breast milk in my ice cream. Not in my cheese. Not in my roux. Not in my birthday cake. Not in my STARBUCK'S frapplattamochaccinasloppa.

Never mind the health. THINK ABOUT THE MENU! Even on a really basic level you totally RUIN the Ben and Jerry's list of flavours. No matter how you look at it these basic items are never going to be the same:

Coconut Seven Layer Bar (Now with Breast Milk!)
Everything But The...(Now with Breast Milk!)
Oatmeal Cookie CHUNK (Now with Breast Milk!)
Karamel Sutra (Now with Breast Milk!)
Berried Treasure (Now with Breast Milk!)
Berry N'ice (Now with Breast Milk!)
Oh My! Apple Pie! (Now with Breast Milk!)

So fine. The old list is RUINED. What do you do? Rename stuff? That's even worse. I DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS LIST OF FLAVOURS ANYWHERE. EVER.

Boob Batter
Triple Ariola Chunk
Bananas on the Mum
Chocolate Chip Boobie Dough
Boober Pecan
Chunkey Mummy
Cinnamom Buns

I have to believe this is some kind of joke. Some kind of mistake. Some kind of sick prank that PETA is playing on the whole www. Are they suggesting we herd a bunch of mommies and feed them grass all day and wait 'til they moo for relief? Hey, let's herd them in the farthest reaches of Alaska to save time. It's pretty cold up there. That's animal friendly AND cost efficient. Supply meets demand. Frozen t(r)eats. "Is it just you or is it cold in here?" "No, it's a bit nippy."

Yarf and barf.

Go home PETA. Go home and sleep it off because you must have been wasted to come up with this idea. Too many shrooms while you dance your ritualistic purple circle of healing dance in the forest. Back to the Shire with you! Shut 'er down before it's too late. Know your limits. You're going to embarrass yourselves and puke in the cab. This is taking the milk of human kindness way too far! Don't make us bust out any more puns!

Game Shows, Television and the effect on your BRAIN

2008-09-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

I was at lunch with a colleague the other day and I was ACCUSED of watching what he labelled MINDLESS game shows. Sir, to that I say pistols at dawn. Pistols, I say!

First of all let's start by addressing television as a technology. M'kay.

Though very few studies have been done, we do know that while watching TV your brain goes into an alpha wave state, which is relaxing and is similar to a hypnotic state. You become more passive, less alert. The feelings of passivity do not end when you turn off your TV. Back in the day that was because your TV had cathode ray tubes, which produced a flicker that the conscious mind does not detect. Kind of like the flicker from a campfire. Theory suggests that because HDTV involves staring at a more detailed picture the alpha state will be even more pronounced. You will be even more entranced.

This ain't no joke, kids. Human beings "habituate" to repetitive light-stimuli light flickering light. If habituation occurs, then the brain has essentially decided that there is nothing of interest going on. The left half of your brain is in such an alpha state it's like being asleep. The left half is for logical thought and analysis. The right half of the brain, which deals with dream images, fantasy and intuition continues to receive TV images but because the bridge between the right and left brains has been "turned off" due to habituation, all the processing of the information is "turned off". You're not learning anything you'll be able to recall. In a nutshell the neurophysiology of watching television amouts to this: you space out.

Even if you're watching a documentary on sharks, the technology of TV and the inherent nature of the viewing experience actually inhibit learning. Very little cognitive, thought-based learning takes place while you're watching. Very little recall. Very little analytical thought. So that means when you watch any TV program you're doomed to numbness. That includes documentary television, people. That includes Mutual of Omaha's National Geographic. That includes Polkadot Door. That includes Flip my Frikkin House or whatever.

You know what that mean? The more that political issues are confined to television, the less knowledgeable the public is about them. The voter cannot process information he or she is receiving. And you wonder why they keep voting republican. They're not learning!

Love the sinner and not the sin, Gladys because all of it, ALL OF IT is an OPIATE for the masses. That's not a cliche, it's a fact. And from now on I'm not calling it traditional or mass advertising. If it goes on the telly then I'm calling it opiate.

Now that we've got that everwith -- UP WITH OPIATES!

TOP SEVEN GAME SHOW OPIATES THAT I AM NOT ASHAMED TO SAY I SUBSCRIBE TO VIA THE GAME SHOW NETWORK:

1. Match Game
I don't need to tell you why this is great. See for yourself and imagine this episode if it starred people like Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Fox, and whoever else your little heart desires. You may not recognize them but these folks were real celebrities who stepped down off their pedestals to play with the common man, matching punch line for punch line. Rim shots welcome. They were film actors, broadway stars, TV celebs. You name it.

2. Jeopardy!
Staying power people, staying power. This is a tough game for folks with METTLE. Jennings anyone?

3. The Price is Right
If it wasn't for the other two shows this would be right on top. What a concept! It's brilliant. An hour-long TV ad that people watched daily for decades. You can't measure the ROI. Remember to spay or neuter your pets!

4. Password
Hey this is a hard game, people. Try it for yourselves. The one word clue is not an easy thing to master. Some people were really good at this and some people were terrible, which is why you switched partners. When you got stuck with a lemon, it cost you.

5. Let's Make a Deal
Canadian Monty Hall. Really. If this guy isn't the love child of a magician and a car salesman I don't know who is. No matter how silly it might look now, there are countless websites and videos devoted to the mathematical explanation of what has come to be known as the Monty Hall paradox. Come on.

6. Pyramid
Uh uh. Well if it isn't a winner then explain this.

7. Hollywood Squares
You know why this show was amazing? These are celebrities. No, like famous ones. A list celebs. The ones in the tabloids. And they didn't mind looking like dorks. And they were smart enough to be funny. And they were accessible and they didn't make 15mil just to show up and wipe their arses. You couldn't recreate this if you tried. No one would bite and if they did it would suck because the biters would be has-beens. Er...take Whoopie's version of Hollywood Squares. Sucked. New password. Sucks. 1. Because they made it FAST and EASY for their fast food nation. 2. Because (with the exception of Betty White, the queen of game shows) WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE? I can't tell the difference (with the exception of Betty White, the queen of game shows) between the contestant and the celebrity. Alfonso Ribero? Give me a break. He ain't no A lister. The show is based on B listers (with the exception of Betty White, the queen of game shows).

So what does this all boil down to? Why am I even blogging about this?

You can't put someone in a BOX because they watch reality TV vs. game shows vs. sitcoms vs. documentaries. It's all the same flicker.

the good, the bad and the oh no you didn't

2008-09-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

***Warning. You might find sarcasm on this page.****

What is up with this?

http://www.phenomenalview.com/

Is it phenomenal because they've broken the laws of physics with that type size? Is it phenomenal because they had enough insight to code it in 1992 and beam it into the future? Like, is this the first cryogenic site? Has it been dormant for 15 years and now it's come to life because the Internet is "hot"? Is it like a colony of termites that has been resurrected? Is there wood to ground contact? Or is it phenomenal because the projections on the number of people attending versus the pittance they've spent on the site will put the ROI through the roof? In that sense, it may very well be phenomenal.

But that's not what they mean by phenomenal. I have seen these two speak and they're smart and successful. Fine. But if they're offering up phenomenal in my life, your life, people's lives, why does their site look like it was designed in very dim light by a student who is taking maths (plural intentional), who just got dumped by his girlfriend, and has a huge paper cut and who's in the hold of a tall ship in the middle of a hurricane and is being gnawed at by plague-ridden rats that look like Liza Minelli?

One word to consider before you hit the PUBLISH button on your site is brand promise.

What is so phenomenal about using the EXTRUDE filter in Photoshop to make the price seem PHENOMENAL? Does that extrude filter make you feel you can trust these people? Who wrote the badge on the left that says you can get "Two inspirational speakers for the price of one!" Does that inspire you? Did they trawl the dregs of infomercial writers to find the only one left wearing a button down sweater and a fedora? The one whose pants ride up to the top of his rib cage? The one smoking that stank-pipe who calls the woman in his life (read, receptionist) "little girl" as he stares at her "bosom"? Did they find that one writer? Is he cryogenic too? Is he a George Romero corpse? Because nobody writes that stuff unless they're looking to sell unwanted hair removal systems or knives that cut ripe tomatoes or things that make the beef jerky. Does this type size make what I'm saying more phenomenal? What if I add !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and ?!?!?!?!?!?!? and some NEW NEW NEW NEW. What if I show ACORNS? That's a good metaphor for...for growing and...saving up....and falling far not from the tree and....um....nuts and gum - together at last!

"Have you seen the burgeonverger!?!?!?!?!?!? It's phenomenal."

One word to consider before you hit the PUBLISH button on your site is credibility.

So this blog is rather a stream of consciousness and it's sometimes hard to get through as a result. I know. I know. But it's supposed to be. And I'm not selling anything other than thinking and ranting and violins. (See previous posts.) The grammar on that site is absolutely hideous. Just read the first paragraph. It's not good. It doesn't really make sense. Not really. It's a self-improvement site! How am I supposed to believe I'll self-improve when what I'm reading is so badly written? The conference is a few hundred bucks and the folks running it will be selling those who've paid their few hundred bucks another few hundred bucks worth of material they can't live without! Confused? Don't be. If you go they'll try and sell you a bunch of stuff they've written. More of what you already heard and paid for - but chocked full of daily exercises so you can put your learning into practice ... and blank paper so you can take notes in the blank paper book you just paid $30 for. Some of their products will be priced in the HUNDREDS.

But if that's the kind of writing I'm seeing on the site, why would I pay for more? No one has taken the time to edit it. I wouldn't even buy a thong that isn't stamped INSPECTOR 35 and that only costs a coupl'a bucks.

One word to consider before you hit the PUBLISH button on your site is integrity of your product.

I have no problem with this "self-improvement makes good business for the common man" business that's surfaced due to the consciousness raising of Umrricah and all that. Fine. But the least you can do is have someone edit your sh!t so I don't feel like I have to turn my head and cough when I sign up. Leave me some semblance of dignity when I write you the cheque.

See you at the conference! Be there or be an acorn!

LHC ate my homework

2008-09-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

I will officially be using LHC as my excuse for anything that can go right or wrong in the next 10 years. This is an amazing opportunity because just about anything can happen as a result of that beam of proton smashing zingdiddlything they fired 'round the planet.

Sample excuses:

"I was on my way to work when LHC activated my dyscalcula and I lost my sense of direction so I'm going to be a bit late. Where am I NOW? Vegas, yeah. I got turned around on the 401."
"I know I told you the house was termite free but the colony has jumped from one part of the string to another and in a parallel universe, they're eating your home. LHC treatment is $15000."
"Yes we agreed the deadline for layouts was this week but what you need to understand is the space time continuum has been warped by LHC so the workback sched is now a workforward sched. I'll need you to sign off on that, by the way."
"Are you there LHC, it's me, Margaret."

Et cetera.

For those of you who aren't interested in LHC and what's been happening take a look at any news feed on Earth and ask yourself "Why?" This is important stuff, people.

Samples of who it might be important to:

If you're a creationist, it's important because you can argue that this whole experiment is as blasphemous as the island of Dr. Moreau. Didn't he get what he deserved that wicked, hubris sucking freak?
If you're a contrarian, you argue that it's a waste of taxpayer dollars or whatever. Just fill in the blanks here.
If you're a Kabbalist, you can argue that you knew this experiment would happen 4000 years ago and "So what? You want I should I lie down and die, already? I own houses in each of the 10 dimensions."
If you're Morrisey from the Smiths you can say "Some Protons are bigger than others and some Protons Mothers are bigger than other Protons Mothers. Regardless, the sun shines out of their behinds."

Just form an opinion about this. If you don't know what it's about, find out. How you'll see the world around you will change. People say that and you're so used to seeing things the way you see them that you don't get what a big deal that is. It's COLOSSAL. LHC should stand for LONGTIMELOVEYOULONGTIME HOLY CRAPCOLOSSAL. I'll say it again: It will change the way we all see the world. No, really. THE WAY WE SEE THE WORLD WILL CHANGE. Did I mention you might gain a different perspective on things? Or more like, your world will change whether you like it or not. "What is she on about?" you say? Um, birth canal, anyone?

It will be like being born except you'll be aware of it this time and you'll have to deal. Your birth was a shock you repressed. YOUR BRAIN WON'T LET YOU REMEMBER CUZ IT'S TOO BIG BIG BIG. You can't hide this time, man! You're going to have to deal with the stupendous impact it will have on your life. Not because it proves or disproves the big bang. That's only one aspect of the conversation. It will change your life because it's quantum, man. It's like, acid but for realz. It's about parallel dimensions, man. Like, Jumper and Memento and stuff.

From WIKI:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons with very high kinetic energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model, and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.

The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The LHC is already operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October.

Although a few individuals questioned the safety of the Large Hadron Collider in the media and through the courts, the consensus in the scientific community is that there is no conceivable threat from the LHC particle collisions.

Okay so what has LHC done for me lately? What do I care from collisions?

Scientists figure that if micro-black holes, which are smaller than the nucleus of an atom, exist, they can be used to determine the number of extra dimensions in our world. If scientists smash two high energy protons together they could theoretically make a micro-black hole. They can try that with the LHC. Once created, the micro-black hole decays quickly and emits over a dozen different kinds of particles such as electrons, neutrinos and photons, which are easy to detect. Using the predicted decay properties of the black hole into neutrinos, scientists then do complex equations and determine if our universe has 10, 11, or more dimensions, which is even too many dimensions for conventional (irony here) string theory. People, this is a big deal.

All that being said some major science dude that's kind of in charge says that even if there's a black hole created it will be, like, mosquitoes colliding. I don't buy that. And who on Earth put that guy in charge? WTF with the mosquitoes colliding thing? Bad example, Scientist Sir. Everyone knows how annoying one mosquito can be, let alone two so you might want to pick another creature for your metaphor. Make it like two bunnies colliding. We love bunnies. Who doesn't love a bunny? Where was I?

So science dude is trying to allay our fears telling mosquito metaphors because people are screaming "Don't go into the woods!" at the screen right now. Science gets a bum rap if it gets a rap at all and here is the first time science ain't got a bum rap and you just can't ignore this can you? And speaking of bum raps...holy mother of all that is good and pure what the eff is this all about:

LCH Rap Video by some white girl science student...oh no you didn't...

Did that freak you out? It was meant to put your mind at ease. You want to talk Armageddon? That video has a squillion hits on yoube. That is something to be a'skeert of.

Integration in the Ad World

2008-09-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

Picture it...

There's a corner in BigCity, North America. Walking down one side is Lady Tradagency, in a suit, carrying a briefcase, chattering on her PDA about Bigclient and their TV ads and media buys and placement and deadlines and budgets like 6 mil.

Around the other side is Boy Digitalshop, on his roller skates, wearing an iPod, listening to Radiohead, thinking about updating his blog and following Don Draper on twitter and deadlines and budgets 60K.

Neither of them is paying attention to their surroundings and BLAM! they collide at the corner and her chocolate bar goes flying up into the air, spinning, somersaulting whooosh whooosh until PLOP it lands right in his open jar of peanut butter.

"Hey you got your digital in my Mass!"
"Hey you got your TV on my web!"

Integration is born!

That's how random things can feel when you try and integrate "new media and old media" or "interactive and traditional" or "chocolate and peanut butter" or "hohan and ronson". What's the plan, Stanley? What is the plan for integration? Will it work if there's no plan or is integration supposed to be a randomly successful accident. Some people are allergic to peanuts. What about them?

I just had lunch with someone in the biz and we had a long chat about people and how to staff up a shop that's integrated. The irony is, you can't staff up a shop that's integrated because they're already staffed up. Up to here. Up to there. With people that don't necessarily know what the plan is. With people who don't necessarily care. With people who don't know "where to start" because they think the web is about technology and they don't know how to "program".

I'm not being critical. I'm pointing at the big pink elephant. Look there it is.

Integration is the big pink elephant. I'm sorry but it has yet to work the way everyone says it's going to work and it's been nigh on 10 year that people have been aiming toward it. It's the ever elusive bull's eye, the v.gasm, the Yeti, the Easter Bunny, you name it. It amounts to a promise that cannot be fulfilled. Sorry. Get rid of it. Don't use the word. Try ANYTHING else but you'll not staff up a shop with the promise of integration because it doesn't exist. It can't exist because the whole idea of it is wrapped in MYTH. I don't mean falsehood. Look up the meaning of MYTH. Ask Northrop Frye. I mean integration is fraught with beliefs that someone just poof created out of thin air because they needed to believe. Not lies. Beliefs. Myths about integration. The myths you create around integration are the myths that negate it. Now what? We can dispel a few of they myths to start.

Mythbusting 101 point oh:

As in "Oh! I didn't know that." As in " Oh! crap we just blew our budget." As in "Oh, God. Save us from webmaggedon."

If you don't know how to program a website, you don't know how to think for the web. (Bust: The web is more than a website. Cut it out.)
Advertising on the web is putting a banner ad on line so the creative teams can just think "tv ad but smaller". (Bust: Is wearing make-up equal to plastic surgery?)
Creative web folk don't understand TV. (Bust: Most people who work on the web did nothing but watch TV, do nothing but watch TV, eat drink man woman TV. We get it. We just don't work in that head space.)
Web is the same as TV because you see it on a screen. So you should use it the same way. (Bust: Come on.)
Creative folk that work on MASS hate people who work on the web because they are trying to steal their jobs, budgets, awards. (Bust: You put your job at risk the moment you become afraid you'll lose your job. It hinders your performance. Clients are moving the budgets. There are plenty of award categories that have been NEWLY created for newer media. When did they stop giving out awards for TV? MASS folk are not haters, they're just new at this web stuff. Stop thinking they're afraid of you, webbies!)
Teams of 3 or more multi-disciplinary creative people won't get anything done and they can't meet deadlines. (Bust: The only reason they don't get anything done is because they're afraid to share ideas and lose the credit they oh so deserve because their egos are too big. Nothing to do with interactive folk vs. MASS folk. Same happens with two competitive teams who specialize in TV. Same happens when two competitive interactive teams work on interactive. Creative people are competitive. We have big egos and that is not a criticism. It's an observation, an elephant of a different colour. Look up the definition of the ego, it's the voice in your head that tells you you're not good enough and that you need to get credit for every little thing that comes out of your mouth because if you don't bad things will happen. Like....that OTHER guy will get the credit and lawdy forbid...the coveted AWARD.)
Buying a web shop and making them sit in your office makes integration easier. (Bust: This is obvious. No it doesn't. Just because you get staff that knows web doesn't mean everyone will play nice. Or even know how to play nice. What are they supposed to do?)
Integration means adding interactive to a MASS campaign. (Bust: Try this on for size: Force your team to come back with an idea that is born on and lives on the web and THEN after they sell that idea....only THEN can they come back with TV and print. I dare you to get your teams to do that from now on. By your team, I mean your whole team, including account folk. Keep telling people integration is about Flash on the web to extend a MASS thought and see how strong your results are. Back to the Easter bunny and the banner ad.)
If you build it they will come. (Bust: Just because you say the team is integrated doesn't mean you'll get to hire that all-star. It's been a while. People are moving around. The secret is out that integration is not as easy as it seems.)
Winning web awards when you didn't win them before means you're integrated. (Bust: What are your results? What is the purpose of the award? What did it do for the brand? There are 100+ questions I could ask here that makes this a MYTH of epic proportions.)

Is anybody seeing integration is a snake eating it's own tail?

Solution? If I had the answer, I'd be RICH. We can only try something else at this point but I'd start by asking people what they really think. Sure, I'm on the interactive side so I have my opinion but I have yet to meet someone who says integration has worked. Or is working. Ask anyone whose worked at an Agency that's integrated if they're really satisfied with what is happening around them. If they feel they're standing in a place they can identify.

Maybe changing the language is the place to start. Try calling it something else. Integration is not a good word because we've tainted it. Once you stop telling the world that you've got an integrated shop, you have a clean slate. Tabula rasa. You know....

NOTHING

Call it an existentialist shop, I don't know. Just try something else and let it come from THERE.

E.L.O, RICH MEDIA and GROPIES

2008-08-27T12:45:00.000-07:00

Electric Light Orchestra. That is a very cool name for a band.

Also, I'm going to say that beyond how cool the name is is how cool the music is - in that holy crap someone had an idea way as opposed to that hey they dropped acid and used a MOOG way.

That's what is missing from the series of tubes, the web, things ON THE WEB - an idea. Where's the idea? What's the idea? I keep harping on this because it's so important to have one. I don't care how good an album is, it's better if it's a concept album. Even if I don't get it. I don't need to get it. Tell me what the idea is and I'll give you kudos for having one that you wrote about/around. Now I'm not talking about an idea based around a fantasy novel you happen to have read, although there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that by now, they've all been read and sung about, if you know what I mean.

Seriously, if one more song is written about Mordor and Sauron I think I'm going to barf up a Hobbit. No more LOTR concept albums, people. It's gone and done. Past. You're not going to top one you're not going to bottom one. Don't do that any more. And calling your song My Precious doesn't count so don't tell me you have a great techno ballad you want me to hear called Go Ask Samwise or Merry Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I ain't listening. (Okay I'll listen but I might LOL and then what will you do? Hmmm? GHCTM?)

So the reason we're talking about ideas is that I think I finally figured out what it is from the 70s that we need to bring to the www. Are you ready for this? Violins, man. It's violins. We need to bring 70s violins to the www. Build me sites that have the same qualities that violins added to concept albums from the 70s and I'll show you AWARDS BABY. Better than that, I'll show you sites that people love. Sticky ones. With eyeballs. That people want to make out with!

So how do we bring 70s violins to the sites we build? That is such a tough question but the answer is simple, which then makes the question simple too. Circles. I'm going in circles. That's code and if you don't know what it means that is okay because I'll put it another way. Go download the first E.L.O album. Listen to it. It doesn't matter if you like it. It's one of their best and that is general consensus amongst people who know. Some people know more than you do so go on and take their suggestions. (I'm not talking about me, here. I did research before I downloaded a bunch of E.L.O today and that is that. I took some albums and not others based on research.) I happen to love their first album and I'm sure I'll love the others as well and I'm hearing violins. A lot of them. And E.L.O has a very distinctive sound that I've never forgotten. That many have never forgotten. We've already talked about staying power so I don't need to remind you why it's important what people don't forget.

Here's another thing. The ENTIRE discography downloaded in only a few hours while it's taken me many many days to wait for one or two Japan lps. So there are a ton of peers seeders and bottom feeders offering up the E.L.O and not very many offering up the Japan. Japan is great but Japan did not make concept albums so I don't think they have the same staying power and their best stuff sounds a lot like Roxy Music anyway so whatever.

Back to violins. It's a metaphor. Listen to the album and see what the violins do for the album. What they do is what you need to replicate on line. So if it's real violins KNOCK YOURSELF OUT AND SEND ME THAT URL CUZ YOU'RE A GENIUS. If it's the equivalent of violins and you figure that out DITTO. What you're looking for is something to fill out your content. Something that makes your site RICH. I am looking for the truth in RICH MEDIA. The violins. It's not RICH just because you add audio. It's not RICH just because it has video. That's so yesterday, people. I'm not being facetious.

When banners were animated gifs that barely did anything at all some people were really good at making them "sing". Those people had a kick ass idea and put it to work with that little something extra. Then flash banners came along and some people got good at making flash really work, not just punch the monkey. Then expandos with rolling point stuff and measurability and ROI and ROOIBOS and Captain KangaROO and blah blah blah blah blah. And now EVERYTHING IS RICH MEDIA AND IT'S BORING VIDEO SLAPPED ON THE WEB AND THAT IS NOT RICH.

VIOLINS ARE RICH. GIMME PROG ROCK CONCEPT WEB SITES AND I'LL GIVE YOU DEVOTEES. I'LL GIVE YOU THE WEB VERSION OF GROUPIES. They're called GROPIES. They'll grope your site until advertisers are begging to buy space. They will grope your site so voraciously you'll have to call the cops. They will grope your site for so many consecutive minutes they'll add a new category to Cannes called LONGEST GROPE and you'll win the GOLD GROPE for 2 years in a row. That's rich.

mad men too real

2008-08-24T19:51:00.001-07:00

I'll admit it I absolutely love AMC's Mad Men. It's just dirty. (Raw and buck, as Mia Michaels from SYTYCD is wont to spew.) But the gritty qualities are disguised ever so delicately by it's oh-so-frikkin-perfect for HD spic and span art direction. Yum, it's like doing the tasting menu at George. You want each segment of the program to come with its own glass of wine. It's eerie how the AMC people manage to keep it simultaneously viscous and crunchy. Oh how one does need to thoroughly masticate each episode. Slowly. Savour the dialogue. Sample the cigarettes. Swish the scotch. There's no throwing it down your neck, Battersby. You have to take your time. They make you take your time. And I love that. I'm impressed. I'm also mortified. Mad Men is just too accurate. It's too real. Things are being said. Things are being shown. Civilians can't handle the truth about our back-stage shenanigans and hoot-nannys and debacles and strangeways here we come! What goes on should back there should be on a NTK basis for anyone with tender ears and innocent eyes. We must protect the innocents. We cannot let them see us for what we are:

Human.

What I like is that everyone is portrayed as horribly and fallibly human. That's right, even though the characters are shady and despicable some of the time, each and every last one of them is still human. That's why it's eerie. It's not the truths being told that freak me out. It's the fact that I can see why each and every one of those beeyaches has done what they've done and that puts me in a place where I need to re-evaluate my own methods by which I process the politics engrained in agency culture. Or couture. Hoax couture. (I won't take credit for that play on woids...it used to be and maybe still is a shop down in the fashion district. However, I will take credit for applying it as a descriptor for the kind of agency depicted on Mad Men.) Back to the future:

Mister Marshall Mcluhan was correct. So was Anthony Burgess. There are two writers who were correct. They didn't even know they were writing about the same thing - Narrowcasting and Subculture. Narrowcasting is really podcasting but even better because it's roots are in the grass. And that's the basis of any subculture, right? Here's a stream of consciousness equasion that may mean nothing to you but something to someone, which is what qualifies this as a REAL BLOG. (Little thoughts typed into text boxes and expanded and expounded upon grow up to be REAL BLOGS. They don't need to be truthful. Pinochhio wasn't truthful. So there.)

Ahem. Podcasting=narrowcasting=mcluhan was right=mad men is such a specific thing isn't it? And it is too real. That means it's appealing to 1. ad folk 2. people who like too real 3. people who like Grace Kelly and if you don't watch the show you don't know what I mean.

But what does it have to do with Burgess? The language born from subculture. That's what I say. Because podcasting is narrowcasting and if you're not a webnerati you don't understand any of the language around podcasting and you are just SOOL because all this stuff is TGTBT anyway. Does your gulliver hurt? Exactly.

what's next?

2008-08-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

So my niece, who is 16 years of age, was telling me that there is an educator out there, Mister Ken Smith, has taken a rather unusual position on spelling words incorrectly. He suggests we label those misspellings as variant, not wrong. Here's a snippet from the article in Time Magazine:

Most teachers expect to correct their students' spelling mistakes once in a while. But Ken Smith has had enough. The senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University in Buckinghamshire, England, sees so many misspellings in papers submitted by first-year students that he says we'd be better off letting the perpetrators off the hook and doing away with certain spelling rules altogether.

Okay. Sleeves up. Gloves off. Here's a rant I'll ne'er be ashamed of.

Are you on crack, sir? What possible benefit is there in letting your students spell words incorrectly? Is this some kind of lefty, pinko, liberalist ISM? Is you so fixed on being inclusive that we support the lack interest in learning one of the basic Rs? Or are you just looking for solutions because your pupils don't seem to be learning? What's next? Letting them skip class? Letting them write on their desks? Are you looking for an earlier flight to Armageddon?

Admittedly, in advertising, we pulverize most of the rules of grammar and sprinkle them on our Corn Flakes but that's obviously wrong and goofy and everybody knows that you don't turn to a billboard for edumacation. We do those horrible things to our language in the interest of sales! But good god man, in the name of all that is true and pure, are you suggesting that because your students can't be bothered TO USE SPELL CHECK they should be rewarded with a degree?

(In fact, you should penalize them doubly for being so stupid as to ignore the spell check function that is what makes them bad spellers in the first place. Fail them for showing such a lack of intelligence. That's what I say.)

Come on, professor Ken, we're not talking about memorizing the entirety of the Yongle Dadian, written during the Ming Dynasty, when at least 3 000 scholars spent 4 years to write all 11 095 volumes with 22 877 chapters. We're not talking about having to memorize all 370 million Chinese characters. We're talking about the letter R in February. What's that? February has a silent R? Well I suppose you make a good argume...hey wait a minute. February doesn't have a silent R. We pronounce it as though it does. Oh, your students spell twelfth twelth? Because the F is silent? That's not silent neither.

You're fed up having to correct spelling errors? It's tiring? Let me get this straight : You're a criminologist and the biggest trauma you experience is using a red pen on a paper titled "Strategys Four Righting Effecsively."

As an educator, I would glorify the uniqueness of the inconsistencies in the English language. Glorify them, I say! You know, English is one of the most drab and monotone languages on the planet. We don't have any throat clicking. We don't have any sing-song inflections. All we have is trough and plough and draught and quay and queue! You can't take that away from us, Mister Ken. Does anybody see a freakish coincidence here?Ken Smith=Ken Lee.

IT'S A CONSPIRACY. A CONSPIRACY I TELL YOU.

Here's the TIME article
Here's another

frozen dinner and Betty Crocker

2008-08-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

LOL people were really harshing my buzz with the "your blog is in boxes" critique. Okay. I hear you but it's a template, after all. I don't have many to choose from and who has time to build one from scratch? My mother is a great cook but when it comes to baking she will call the Sweet Talker for a birthday cake. When I'm in a hurry, I am not ashamed to use the microwave on a frozen entree. But I'm not going to do that for guests, now am I?

What I'm getting at is that boxes are only evil when you have control over your site. Boxes are only evil when you are selling a brand, creating an experience, designing for a box maker. (How cheesmo would that be? A box site in boxes. I bet $500 that exists somewhere.)

Boxes on your blog are OK. It's predominantly text. Tons of text we all need to sort through. Archives. Links. Gadgets. Videos. You post it daily and you are in rather a hurry, yes? Furthermore, you get what you get when you get something free. "Hey I know this service is GRATIS but I demand fluid templates and experiential blogging!" That don't fly.

So there are exceptions to every rule, like speaking in colloquialisms to emphasize a point. Like saying "Yatta Yatta" and "Meow Meow" instead of "Blah Blah". Like petting your cat in the opposite direction of its' fur to give it a mohawk. Whatever puts the hop in your bunny. UNLESS A CLIENT IS PAYING FOR YOU TO SOLVE A DESIGN ISSUE OR BUILD THEIR LOVELY BRAND ON LINE. THEN YOU DON'T USE BOXES. NO BOXES. BOX BAD. BREATHING SPACE GOOD.

So enough with the hateratin' while you're waitin'...gimme some wiggle room. That being said I chose a new template as I was due for a refresh. But...I think if you stretch this page wide enough you'll see boxes anyway. From a distance. But you don't surf like that. SO THE OTHER RULE IS SHOW YOUR DIGITAL WORK DIGITALLY ON A BIG SCREEN TO REPLICATE THE USER EXPERIENCE IF YOU'RE IN A BIG ROOM. SAVE A TREE. DON'T BOARD IT.

AND ANOTHER RULE IS DON'T TYPE IN ALL CAPS UNLESS YOU WANT SOMEONE TO THINK THAT YOU'RE "TEXT YELLING". YEXTING. AND THAT IS BAD. IT CAUSES MUCH CONFUSION AND MISINTERPRETATION OF INTENTIONS.

So no all caps. Unless you're shortening things like VIP, RIP, PMS, ADD, DTs (oh that's a combo job) and SWAT.

THE END.

are you missing anything like a metaphor?

2008-08-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

A friend and I were at lunch the other day and it occurred to me that metaphor is most important when doing creative work. A strong metaphor can save you a great deal of circumlocution in your busy day. I'm guessing you're one of the masses who feels you're getting older just as the time between sunrise and sunset seems to be getting shorter. Which amounts to -- tired by 9PM. So if you're in the biz of being creative all the live long day and you have what we call "deadlines" then you might find this helpful at some point. Or not.

During lunch, Dave Allen at Large came to mind. Do you remember that show? Do you remember him? That's right, I am bringing up the 70s again. (See previous post.) But the 70s were chock full of wonderment so why Dave Allen? His finger came to mind. He was missing half a finger. Maybe your creative is missing metaphor. See? It's a lateral thought but a thought that lead to this thought...He was a story teller. His stories were rich with metaphor. And they were insightful so that made them funny and memorable and relevant.

If we agree that A = B and B = C then A = C and that metaphor = insightful, insightful is what makes your brand and your consumer jibe. Tango. Knock boots. Static cling. Whatever you want to call it. It's what you need to ensure a connection between your brand and the consumer. Buyer. User. Disco dancer, for all I care. Where is this going? Get an insight and you have a key. Use a metaphor to bring that key to life and you have CREATIVE. That's right, my children, without the metaphor you have ... well...just an insight. Which is also a driver for a strategy. Is strategy your creative product? No. Is insight your creative product? No. So now you get where I'm going.

What's the big deal about metaphor? Metaphors are part of a collective unconscious. Ask Carl Jung - although he might have articulated that differently. And probably in German. If you don't speak German, ask Northrop Frye. They're both long gone but they'd likely agree that a metaphor is something that can act like a endoscopic exam for all of humankind. It's the same for anyone - you swallow a scope and it and it reaches down down down into the core of your being! So you instinctively know, understand, comprehend, relate to something. You acknowledge your humanity if you've ever had a scope done. Am I right people? Metaphor is human and real.

(Aside: I'm aware that saying a metaphor is like a endoscopic is a simile. Not a metaphor.)

So what is a metaphor and not a simile? I can tell you PUNS ARE NOT METAPHORS. DON'T USE PUNS IN YOUR CREATIVE. Back to Dave Allen. He was very smart. He GOT metaphor the way you need to GET metaphor. Here's an excellent example of metaphor that I never forgot even though I saw this ONCE over 20 years ago. That's staying power.

Watch this: Funeral

That was funny, right? And insightful. Pretend his set up for the video is your brief. (Only in a perfect world would the client be something like So and So Sons Funeral Homes. That would never happen so forget who the client is and try to think outside the box. Did you catch that joke? Coffin? Box? That was a pun. How hard did you laugh? did that change your life? Don't use puns.) Aside...under no circumstances should you EVER use the term outside the box unless you're poking fun at boxes. No boxes.

Now I'm not going to explain the use of metaphor in that video because you don't need me to.
Besides, there's so many levels to that skit I don't want this post to scroll from here to eternity. But after 20 years that metaphor stands solid. The insight you get from it is solid. That is a rock solid ad for the Dave Allen brand. People didn't foget about Dave Allen's funeral skit and while everything on Earth seems to be on youtube.com...everything on Earth is not. That 20 year old metaphor was posted more than once for a reason. Some stuff on youtube is there for a reason, even though that is hard to believe.

Dave Allen at Large - not an ad dude but on a subconscious-collective unconscious-smoking-drinking -archetype level - he was a stand up bloke nonetheless. More importantly, he reminded me that metaphor=insight=commitment=brands we understand=brands we love=brands we eat drink man woman=timeless=relevant after 20 years. RIP Dave Allen.

the 1970s

2008-08-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

You're going to have to deal with reading things like "Of course, (_____insert thing here______) is brilliant! It came out of the 1970s," on a regular basis if you're going to read this blog. You know why? Because I know if this blog came out of the 1970s it would be brilliant, that's why. Now, that's unpossible but a Verger can dream. Oh, how a Verger can dream.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to throw some things out there and see if your puppy can catch them. It might not be that easy for your puppy to do. Might just throw a drift out there and hope your puppy can catch that. Might be a Frisbee. I'm not trying to be condescending here. I am warning you that what I throw out there regarding the 70s might be challenging for your bad self. I'm not talking questionable content. (It's the web. You want I should have to point you in the direction of peep shows? You must be new to this.) I'm talking about stuff that is very obviously dated held up as an example of brilliance. It's easy to do with an ad. You hold up a Volkswagon piece and say "See? This perfect." Easy. No one will argue with the LEMON print piece. I'm talking about ... never mind what I'm talking about I'll show you. Here's how it will go sometimes:

1974. Brian DePalma. The Phantom of the Paradise.

That's right I said it. This one is a must. Why? Here's an idea (from Wiki) of what the film is about. There's no argument here. This movie would never be made today. Never. No matter what. And yet, now is time time to be making movies like this because now we have the technology to support the plot. Now we have the Hellboys and Constantines and all the other Hollywood Marvel rip-offs to support this launch. But no one would make this today. And yet...Brian DePalma did make it. Over 20 years ago. Please take a moment to peruse the plot. And then take a moment to view the trailer on the yube.

Oh did I mention I'm making it my mission to have the entire planet shorten facebook to fboo and youtube to yube? Spread the word. It's organic!

Plot taken (and abridged, come on people this is too long) from Wiki:

The story follows a music composer and singer named Winslow Leach who works as a back-up act to the no-talent nostalgia band The Juicy Fruits, who are produced by Satanic record producer, Swan (played by Paul Williams). Swan is deeply moved by Winslow's pop cantata "Faust", and has his right-hand man Philbin steal it.

When Winslow arrives at Swan's record label, Death Records, he is thrown out. When he tries to find out what's going on, he meets Phoenix, an aspiring singer whom he deems perfect for his music, and the two quickly fall for one another. Swan orders his minions to frame Winslow for drug dealing.

Winslow is given a life sentence in Sing-Sing Prison. In prison, Winslow's teeth are removed and replaced with shiny metal ones. When he hears that The Juicy Fruits, who he hates, have made a record of his music, Winslow goes berserk, escapes and tries to destroy Swan's record factory. His vocal chords are damaged when a security guard shoots him in the throat, and his face is mutilated in a record press accident. Fleeing, he leaps into New York's East River and is presumed dead.

Winslow sneaks into the Paradise, makes up his face and dons an owl-like mask and black leather costume, becoming The Phantom of the Paradise so he can terrorize Swan and his musicians. Swan attaches a voice-box to the Phantom's vocal chords, enabling him to speak and sing (voice of Paul Williams). Swan asks the Phantom to rewrite his cantata for Phoenix. The Phantom reluctantly agrees, on the condition that Phoenix is the lead singer, signing a contract in blood.

Okay so that's the plot but did you catch who plays Swan? Paul Williams. As the Devil. As a villain. Like, a bad guy. He's pretty little and kind of well proper and stuff to play the Devil. Now you have to see the movie, right? Not yet? Check it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n5qVJEg3qA

Did I mention Brian DePalma directed this? Brian DePalma. Yeah, you'll hear more about that guy if you don't know who he is. But you should know who he is. How did it perform at the box office? What do you think? It failed. Horribly. Terribly. Wickedly. Flop. Poo. People wouldn't pay to see it.

Except for CANADIANS IN WINNIPEG!

From the Wiki:

The film was a box-office bomb the year of its initial showings. Curiously, the film's major market during its theatrical release was in Winnipeg, Canada where it stayed in local cinemas over four months continuously and over one year non-continuously until 1976. Relatedly, the soundtrack sold 20,000 copies in Winnipeg alone, and it got Gold status in Canada.

Explain that, Mythbusters! Explain that, Sister Wendy! Explain that, MISTER PEABODY and SHERMAN! Get in your wayback machine and figure that one out because we never will.

If you consider yourself ANY KIND OF WEB GEEK see this movie. It's your duty to spread the word, make it viral and resurrect the presence of this film in pop culture. YOUR DUTY.

Annnnnnnd. I'm done.

gloves are off in the boxing ring

2008-08-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well I'm going to sound like I'm complaining but I'm sharing and that is what the interweb is about, right? Did we agree on that in a previous post? Let's pretend we did even if we didn't.

I'd like to toss my hat into the ring, on the issue of BOXES. What is up with all these boxes on line? What makes a site with BOXES more navigable that one without BOXES? Why do we think that putting a BOX around something and then putting another BOX right next to that with something else in it is the best way to design a site? Who died and made the BOX king?

The problem is not the BOXES themselves. BOXES are nice and good and if you love them and pet them and feed them they will grow into healthy corrugated recyclable companions. My issue is how many sites use BOXES and how we've become accustomed to seeing them. So accustomed that we don't really need to think about seeing content in any other form. It's disconcerting, to say the least. Why?

We are only a few steps away from turning our "lean forward" medium to a "lean back" medium just because we are getting lazy. BOXES are the lazy-man's answer to a site with a lot of content. I don't mean to insult anyone here. I know how easy it is to slip into a groove when you have so many big builds and so little time. But we have stopped solving our problems creatively. We are resorting back to the same old layouts for no particular reason. Am I wrong or did www 1.0 go out with New Kids on the Block? Oh wait, some of you are still dreaming about hanging with Donnie.

You know, when I was still gushing over a Donny it was an Osmond. Back then the cars could seat 4 portly aunties across the back bench and you still had room to sit 4 kids on their laps on the way home from a family picnic. And that was legal. No seat belts required or even recommended. Back then you had to opt for power steering and take 12 minutes to roll down your window if you wanted to let some air in when you left your kids in the car while you sat in a bar for a quick snap. Back then everybody smoked Rothmans and Export A. Back then you pushed hard on a button to change the AM dial. Back then things were mono. Back then Jack Nicholson was hot and Tony Manero was cool and Cher was fresh off one of the Allman Brothers and Canadian Club was a luxury. Now I feel old.

But you know what else makes me feel old? BOXES. BOXES make me feel old because they are so throw back I can actually reminisce about a 14.4 modem when I see them. Enough with the boxes already.

Unless we challenge people to actually look at a page and roll their mouse over something and think while they use the navigation we might as well forget the notion of user experience altogether. Forget content. Just take your TV ad and put it on a page with a logo. Hope that if you build it they will come. Wait. We covered that already.

I'm not recommending we make it difficult to navigate a particular site but I am advocating that we start challenging ourselves to challenge our users. Isn't that the spirit of fresh marketing? Mr. Whipple =BOXES. Stop squeezing the Charmin and start treating your users like they have the ability to learn and change with the technology they're using every day.

Down with complacency up with clickers!

lather rinse repeat

2008-08-12T19:50:00.001-07:00

banners don't work unless

: you spend a lot of time thinking them through
: you spend a lot of budget relatively speaking
: you spend a lot of time developing a really strategic and painstakingly sophisticated and targeted media buy that is somehow reflected in the creative thought

they are costly.

because banners:
1. are the single most difficult objects to execute properly
2. are way too general or way too specific no matter who writes the brief
3. travel in packs (ever see one alone?)

not to mention that:

most web pages are so over saturated with ads of all sorts that expecting your message is going to cut through that clutter is like expecting

to snag an aphid with a set of chopsticks so you'd better hope your average www user has a keen eye and hands like a lizard's tongue.

think about the average www user. think about click through rates. think about really successful banner campaigns that exceeded all expectations regarding click throughs. think about all the steps you took to ensure you had killer ROI, killer creative.

share your stories with others so they know how much work went into one of those success stories because banners don't work unless

: you spend a lot of time thinking them through
: you spend a lot of budget relatively speaking
: you spend a lot of time developing a really strategic and painstakingly sophisticated and targeted media buy that is somehow reflected in the creative thought

they are costly.

because banners:
1. are the single most difficult objects to execute properly
2. are way too general or way too specific no matter who writes the brief
3. travel in packs (ever see one alone?)

not to mention that:

most web pages are so over saturated with ads of all sorts that expecting your message is going to cut through that clutter is like expecting

to snag an aphid with a set of chopsticks so you'd better hope your average www user has a keen eye and hands like a lizard's tongue.

think about the average www user. think about click through rates. think about really successful banner campaigns that exceeded all expectations regarding click throughs. think about all the steps you took to ensure you had killer ROI, killer creative.

share your stories with others so they know how much work went into one of those success stories because banners don't work unless

: you spend a lot of time thinking them through
: you spend a lot of budget relatively speaking
: you spend a lot of time developing a really strategic and painstakingly sophisticated and targeted media buy that is somehow reflected in the creative thought

they are costly.

because banners:
1. are the single most difficult objects to execute properly
2. are way too general or way too specific no matter who writes the brief
3. travel in packs (ever see one alone?)

not to mention that:

most web pages are so over saturated with ads of all sorts that expecting your message is going to cut through that clutter is like expecting

to snag an aphid with a set of chopsticks so you'd better hope your average www user has a keen eye and hands like a lizard's tongue.

think about the average www user. think about click through rates. think about really successful banner campaigns that exceeded all expectations regarding click throughs. think about all the steps you took to ensure you had killer ROI, killer creative.

share your stories with others so they know how much work went into one of those success stories because banners don't work unless

if you build it they will come

2008-08-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Not so much. Not so much Mister Man character whose name I can't remember who said that in that movie Field of Dreams. That may apply to a bunch of ghostly baseball players but it doesn't apply to the masses on the www.

Just because you build a site doesn't mean they'll come. Just because you brand it, doesn't mean they'll come. Just because you choose not brand it, doesn't mean they'll come. Doesn't mean they'll sign up for your newsletter. Doesn't mean they'll suck up your RSS feed. Doesn't mean they'll tell their friends. That's like saying just because he buys you a drink you owe him a pajama party. That's like saying just because she promised she'd buy clotted cream she'd bake the pie from scratch. That's like saying just because it rained last week you're going to learn how to play the Star Spangled Banner on a harmonica while simultaneously playing God Save the Queen on a kazoo hanging out of your left nostril. Stop expecting that. Your expectations are too high. You don't get eyeballs just because you think you deserve them. And you most certainly do not get eyeballs just because you learned the buzz-word-term "eyeballs" ... but THAT is an aside we'll save for another day. Back to expectations. Stop that. Stop having them.

You know why you should stop expecting magic from your web site?

You don't deserve the magic. Not really. If you think you deserve it, you'd better take a look around the www and start making lists. Try this at home: get a sheet of lined paper. Draw a line, vertically down the centre. Now you have two columns (row span TBD for all you web geeks out there). At the top of one column put the heading SITES WITH TONS OF COMMITTED TRAFFIC and at the top of the other column write SITES NO ONE VISITS. Ready, set, surf!

First, applaud yourself for finding the sites that no one visits. Second, fill in the columns. Take a yellow highlighter and highlight the sites that deserve their fate. What does the first column look like? Yellow? Or is the second column yellow? If this was a balance scale that measured the heaviness of yellow, which side would it tip toward? If you had on glasses with blue tinted lenses, which side would turn green? If you had a clay pot full of buttercups, which side would camouflage the flowers? The left, or the right?

Now ask yourself why you just wasted all that time.

The only way to have committed traffic is to give people a reason to be there. The reason is not your unique selling proposition for your brand new product. That's not enough to engage a user. We're talking committed traffic, not just traffic. What's committed traffic? Users who are willing to and wanting to engage with your brand on line. Not just sign up for the contest. Not just write on your wall and bam thank you ma'am. People who want to be there because they have found an extension to what they already know and respect. Your brand. The purpose of the www in relation to your brand is to stretch it out wide....like...like...a NET. A net that....works. So that it becomes something huge. Something that grows in an organic manner. Your brand can grow like that. Like ivy. Moss. Create Coverage. Wide. Web. Net. Works.

Digital. Yep. That's where it's @

SON OF BLOG : the Blog that Ate the previous Blog

2008-08-11T18:29:00.001-07:00

So this is the second coming.
The reincarnation.
The what in tarnation?
The SON OF BLOG.

A colleague of mine, MJ ( I don't want to name drop), who has one of the most popular Blogs in the land, referred me to a book titled Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by, Luke Sullivan. It's quite marvellous and I am quite enjoying it. It's relevant to this post and there's more on that below.

I deleted the previous Burgeon Verger for a reason.
It was OLD. Sunset Manor OLD. Shady Pines OLD. Last year OLD.
It doesn't take much to make anything so 5 minutes ago and that, my children, is the real impact of this series of tubes we call our INTERNET. It is ours, after all and what makes it ours is our ability to SHARE what matters.

"Technology" has created extreme and exceptional circumstances wherein we are able to remain connected 24/7. Extreme, you ask? Yeah verily. My children, think upon what you were doing at 2AM approximately 20 years ago. I guarantee that whatever you were doing then you aren't doing TONIGHT. Tonight you are connected. But it's an addictive connectedness (I berry in my sleep. Thumbs akimbo and warning warning a simile approacheth...) like the urge to chew that spot on the inside of your cheek that you accidentally bit when you sneezed. "Technology" - as wonderful as it is, it's impact on our lives is extreme and sometimes we furrow our brows and sigh a nostalgic breath in memory of rotary phones long forgotten. (For those of you who don't know, it took so long to dial a number you'd just get in the LeSabre and drive there instead.)

But the INTERWEB...now that's a side of tech that you just have to love because it's more than just a tool that ensures connectedness, it's about SHARING. In a world where post-apocalyptic "you'll die a horrible and graphic death due to a scratch you got while selflessly breaking into an animal testing lab and freeing simians infected with a rage inducing virus" prevails...the word SHARE is a welcome motif.

The only place we, as growed-ups, see the prompt SHARE on a regular basis is on-line. (Unless you are in catechism class. But how many of you are in catechism class? What great word, catechism. That's what I'm calling my next kitten. I digress.) Yes, sharing is the new opposable thumb. Did the missing link share? Only a tad. Did cro-magnon man share? Barely a whit. But medieval man...now THAT was sharing. "Plague, anyone?" It is civilized MAN that shares his collection of Peter Pan outfits, parasitic tapeworms and disdain for David Blaine. The series of tubes is but a conduit for MAN'S innermost thought.

The Internet is to SHARING as KRAFTWERK is to RADIOHEAD. That's right, I said it.

Remember back in the day when when we called the Internet cyberspace? (Then it was pronounced sssssssyyyyyyybrrrrrrsppppaaaaaaasssssse in a whisper. It was cool and full of mystery, subversivness and all your bombs are belong to us!) Remember how NEW MEDIA companies were being radical by calling themselves CYBERsomethingorother? Remember that? No? How could you forget it was only 5 minutes ago?

Speaking of remembering...do you remember Mr. Peabody and the WayBack Machine? No don't Google that, Twitchy Finger. Leave that track pad alone and concentrate. Does that moniker mean anything to you? If it means something to you, you'll Blog about it tonight because you'll say "Oh yeah! I forgot about that show. I loved that show". If it doesn't you'll look it up and embed the wrong link on your page like so:

http://www.archive.org/index.php

To some of us, Mr. Peabody and Jay Ward meant something. We want to SHARE what it meant. And then we want you to SHARE what our sharing means to you. It's therapeutic. It's a circle of chairs and there's coffee and cigarettes and stories and bad muffins. The interweb is therapy. That's exactly what it is.

Except when it's social experimentation. Social labs. Beaker, Blogger. Test tube, Youtube. The list goes on...and here's some proof ...I have that fakebook page and you probably got here from there. That's not even me but it's my picture and those are my friends (you're on of them) and I made it a goal to have over 100 people accept my invitation to join my list of fakebook friends within 48 hours and it happened. Right across the planet it happened. And I asked each and every one of you to accept me and my nom de plume into your bosoms and you did. And I thank you for that. I really do and that is the irony in the whole thing. Except that there's even more irony because if those are all of my friends then that is me? Am I a new me now that my fakebook profile is populated by my friends and pictures of me? Even if that's not what I wanted in the first place? And why do I all of a sudden feel like SHARING? Now that you're part of my fboo group, all I want to do is SHARE. I never would have written this if you hadn't accepted my invitation.

All that being said SHARING is so 5 minutes ago. So let's change the topic because I'm bored. The purpose of this blog is to THINK ABOUT BRANDS AND THEIR MANIFESTATION ON THE INTERWEB. WHAT HAPPENS TO A BRAND IN A DIGITAL SPACE? ALL THAT BRILLIANT WRITING I'VE BEEN READING ON STRATEGY AND CREATIVE STRATEGY AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS AND ALL OF IT...(THANKS MB) IT'S BRILLIANT BUT HOW DO YOU APPLY THAT KNOWLEDGE HERE? IN THIS SPACE? CAN YOU? CAN WE? THAT'S WHY SON OF BLOG WAS BORNDED. WHAT DO WE DO NOW? NOW THAT WE HAVE ALL THE ACCUMULATED KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ADVERTISING WHAT DO WE DO WITH IT HERE? THE OLD RULES DON'T APPLY. AT LEAST NOT THE WAY THEY USED TO APPLY. HOW DO WE APPLY THE RULES AND MAKE THIS RELEVANT WHEN RELEVANCE IS SO 5 MINUTES AGO?

Check back. Find out. Gimme 5.