Shocked, Shocked! (The market never lies.)

NY Daily News:

With thousands of Republicans set to invade the city this summer, high-priced escorts and strippers are preparing for one grand old party.

Agencies are flying in extra call girls from around the globe to meet the expected demand during the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 gathering at Madison Square Garden.

"We have girls from London, Seattle, California, all coming in for that week," said a madam at a Manhattan escort service. "It's the week everyone wants to work."

"It's going to be big," agreed one operator at a midtown escort service...

Political conventions [Republican and Democrat] have long been a boon for the sex industry....

The players on the legal end of the city's sex industry ... strip club owners are salivating at the prospect of crowds equipped with bunches of big bills. Clubs have started booking private parties for delegates anxious to ogle topless beauties after a day of watching fully clothed politicians boast about family values....

Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.

Calling all historians!

[Above is previous work -- client is not these guys.]

Are you, or do you know, an accomplished Colonial-era and Revolutionary War historian or writer? Great. Are you interested in participating/consulting in a fairly (okay, very) high-profile retool and reinvigoration of a significant piece of American history--it's site, museum and living history presentation? Do you have something that's not been said about the period, or has not been said well? What do you think is wrong with history as traditionally presented? Have you worked on museum projects before but dislike dusty, musty, inert presentations of history and it's players? Do you like to swing for the fences?

Double-Great.

This is an opportunity we've just yesterday been asked to participate in the bidding for. The preliminary bids are due in just over two weeks. Much of the conceptual framework can be developed over the summer months, with intermittent contributions leading into and through the fall. Design development commencing in Feb 2005.

Interested? Contact Mark, mnb@alchemysite.com ASAP

Thanks!

Washington Monthly

How is it that the same economy that gives us bland fodder like Vin Diesel, Evanescence, and "According To Jim" can sometimes suddenly produce the sort of wonderful, bizarre material that we see on Adult Swim? It's because the good stuff tends to come when nobody's looking--created by those on the fringes of the studio system, occupying marginal creative real estate with minimal supervision. In the natural world, punctuated evolution occurs when small groups find themselves geographically isolated and free from natural predators, allowing creatures with rare mutations to thrive and develop into entirely new species. So it is in entertainment: The best material has often come from the back alleys of the studio system.

Yes. It's precisely because "the good stuff tends to come when nobody's looking--created by those on the fringes of the studio system, occupying marginal creative real estate with minimal supervision."

Ever seen Space Ghost, Coast-to-Coast? Do you have Brak's Greatest Hits on CD and mp3? If you have and do, then this Washington Monthly article is not for you. It may make you cry. It may even be a sign of Armageddon, or at least a jump-the-shark moment for Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's post-modern, post-primetime adult cartoon slot. Nah. If you don't know Adult Swim, go read it. For a comparative, Adult Swim is to Sponge Bob, what Jon Stewart is to Larry King. The fact that it comes out of Time-Warner is reason to belive there's a God.

(A politcal mag doing a piece on edgy cartoons? Maybe we can presume the writer, Justin Peters, is the son of founder Charlie Peters. Helps to have pull, I guess. Or maybe they're just tired of giving wedgies to neocons.)

Anyway, it's yet another fine example of when the cat's away the mice will play. Hoorah! Gee, yet more synchronicity: In the post previous to this one, I'd scribbled some on the growing realization that design and sensibility are replacing the old corporatized feature-advantage-benefit formulation comfortable to Spreadsheet Cowboys in nice pressed suits. Well, using Adult Swim's sardonic superhero fast food entrees and a winged avenger attorney as their anti-mush, Washington Monthly shows how corporate-induced mush syndrome applies to entertainment just like any other category.

[Other category? Go here and scroll down a few posts to "Climb ev'ry mountain" for how the off-the-suit's-radar model aided Chrysler's reemergence from the dead-pool.]

Saturday rambling. Or: Gamma Girls. Beta Testers. Alpha Consumers.

MSN MobileTech:

These so-called "alpha consumers" are like alpha wolves; they lead the pack. What they wear, use, listen to, watch, eat, drink and think today sets the pattern for what the rest of us will be doing and consuming tomorrow....

So it's no surprise that [American] geography informs cool hunting's core principle: Cool begins at the edges and moves to the middle. No matter. The inhabitants of the middle won't know that; it's their fate always to be a few beats behind.

Or at least it was.... [Thanks to the internet,] these days, the migration of cool from alpha to follower can happen almost instantaneously, and it's the cool hunter who risks being a few beats behind.

Hence the profession's latest axiom: The edges are the middle.

Of course. It wouldn't be a trend without an axiom. The writer notes something resulting that to me seems a stretch because it's already occurring... like yesterday, dude.

Tyranny of Cool

If it's conceded that technology — in this case the Internet — has fundamentally altered cool's equation, the question arises: Can technology be similarly affected by the tyranny of cool? In other words, can a utility and the way it develops be driven by an esthetic?

Well, yea-uhh. From here, the article devolves into platitudes about brave new paradigmatic seachanging breakthroughs. Fine, we're done with this guy. On to...



Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things.
by Don Norman

From Publishers Weekly
Techno author Norman, a professor of computer science and cofounder of a consulting firm that promotes human-centered products, extends the range of his earlier work, The Design of Everyday Things, to include the role emotion plays in consumer purchases. According to Norman, human decision making is dependent on both conscious cognition and affect (conscious or subconscious emotion). This combination is why, for example, a beautiful set of old mechanical drawing instruments greatly appealed to Norman and a colleague: they evoked nostalgia (emotion), even though they both knew the tools were not practical to use (cognition). Human reaction to design exists on three levels: visceral (appearance), behavioral (how the item performs) and reflective. The reflective dimension is what the product evokes in the user in terms of self-image or individual satisfaction. Norman's analysis of the design elements in products such as automobiles, watches and computers will pique the interest of many readers, not just those in the design or technology fields. He explores how music and sound both contribute negatively or positively to the design of electronic equipment, like the ring of a cell phone or beeps ("Engineers wanted to signal that some operation had been done.... The result is that all of our equipment beeps at us")....

I don't have this, but have spent 30-minutes with a friend's copy. To me, as a business guy who wears a creative hat as well, many of the precepts Norman talks about are no-brainers. Since I have very little brain, maybe that's as it should be. But the reason Coke's original bottle or Gibson's Les Paul remain in the pantheon is because of their complementary style and substance adding up to a sum more than their parts--their design gives the feelings they evoke uniquely memorable "handles." But speaking of such things? Uggh. "I design for Me," goes the saying.

In this way, with this admission, comes a similar challenge to right-brain sensitivities that left-brainers feel when "touchy-feely" gets invoked in conversations about, I dunno, 960 nanometer fiber optic light pumps and their implications for the future of knowledge: Don't go there. This is "science," idiot.

Design (okay, the mysterious "they" really think Art here) is supposed to be removed from something as crass as convincing others to pry open their wallets. Ick! Money! Put it away! Alright, maybe designers don't mind money. But, gee, couldn't it be accompanied by the appropriate moment of silence for the craft and toil that went into the work? (Gotta amortize the pain and anguish of all those lectures on the Baroque Period and Dada.) Anyway, this mental/emotional tug of war makes me remember a huge fuss back in 1989, when I was just a salesman with a Communication Arts magazine subscription: Leading lights Joe Duffy and Michael Peters had merged their shops. They decided to take out an ad--GASP--in the Wall Street Journal. The headline, if I remember right, was:

Here's why two guys with design degrees can do more for your company than a conference room full of MBAs.

Outrage ensued, probably similar to when the first Breast Augmentation surgeons decided to advertise because no woman understood what a Boob Job meant for them. Now we have Pamela Anderson. Michael Beirut, on the group blog Design Observer recalls 1989's AIGA conference and a mock fight, partly prompted by the ad, between Duffy and Tibor Kalman over the meaning of design: Should art meet commerce? Are they allowed to get along? Can we say it out loud?

Beirut, in his post has a beauty recollection of the conundrum in those early schism years of Good design's burgeoning embrace of "the machine"--he directed it to Kalman and Duffy:

“It seems to me that both of you do the same thing, except Tibor feels guilty about it.”

Pariah! Burn the witch! It's a very good post, go read it. Just remember, if you count numbers for a living, or pride yourself on reigning in all the "fuzzy" thinkers in your shop: You may think it's all about business and process; they think you wouldn't have anything to count if it weren't for Good design and the mighty struggle. You're both right. And you're both probably just a little too righteous in your certitude and fencebuilding. But hey, that's part of the art. Of the deal.

Hmmm. I seem to recall some ads from long ago, similar dynamic--INSERT WAVY FLASHBACK LINES HERE....



Phew. I am old, not even a www yet.

Where somebody wants to work:

• A place that's home to exploration and belief in the possibility of a different, better way.

• Permission to ask honest informed questions to yield answers beyond the trite, the casual, the ineffective.

• An explicit agreement to commit as passionately to the aspirations of a client as you do to your own dreams.

• A promise to provide great minds with opportunities and challenges that are the conduit to realizing those dreams.

• An understanding that work is only work if you don't believe in what you're doing; and that life is too short to work with those who don't share your excitement at the opportunity before you.

• The courage of the organization to exert these beliefs inside and outside these walls, come what may.

Some notes, food for thought, from a re-organization white paper we're scribbling.

Ooohh, Snap!


Aaahmm, I'm tellin' Mom. The Washington Post just published the "F"-word, no asterisks, no hyphensWaPo

A brief argument between Vice President Cheney and a senior Democratic senator led Cheney to utter a big-time obscenity on the Senate floor this week....

"[Go] Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.

Leahy's spokesman, David Carle, yesterday confirmed the brief but fierce exchange. "The vice president seemed to be taking personally the criticism that Senator Leahy and others have leveled against Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq," Carle said.

As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1...

Mommmmm!!

Clear and Present, soon to be past, Danger. The Sum of all Fears? $30 million down a failed campaign rathole.

AP

GOP Sources: Ryan to Abandon Senate Bid

... Ryan conducted an overnight poll to gauge his support in the wake of the allegations made by his ex-wife in divorce records unsealed earlier this week. Aides said in advance his only options were to withdraw or to redouble his campaign efforts with a massive infusion of money from his personal wealth.

Smart move to protect your capital, Jack. You don't make a bazillion dollars at Goldman by betting on dog stocks, do ya? Of course not. You make a bazillion dollars by getting other people to bet on dog stocks.

VPOTUS has a POTTY MOUTHUS and a HISSY FITUS

CNN:

Cheney curses senator over Halliburton criticism.

...Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was on the receiving end of Cheney's ire, confirmed that the Vice President used profanity during Tuesday's [Senate] class photo.

A spokesman for Cheney confirmed there was a "frank exchange of views."More

It starts with "F" but he didn't tell Leahy to "Go Frank yourself." A simple "I know you are but what am I?" would have worked just as well--easier on the pacemaker.

Cargo Cult

Orion Online:

Cargo Karma - We got what we asked for.
James Howard Kunstler

In 1973, when the first shopping mall opened on the outskirts of my town, Saratoga Springs, the local paper ran a special Sunday supplement touting its wonders and marvels. The advertisers who paid for it were all downtown merchants; and within ten years virtually all of them were out of business...

But for all the tears shed over the ruins of Main Street America, there is no question that we got exactly what we wanted. The local merchants who touted the new mall in Saratoga back in 1973 all believed in the righteousness of American business through and through, and they believed in land development as an unequivocal good -- no matter what form it took or where it was allowed to occur on the landscape. They were all members of the various local business booster clubs, sodalities for reinforcing the groupthink of the day...

Those local merchants were led into a very fundamental error in thinking that everybody in business -- mall builder and main street shop-owner alike -- wanted the same thing. "We mall builders are pro-business, and you Main Streeters are pro-business, so get behind this mall idea and there will be more business for everybody!" Plus, that thing they all wanted would be good for their country. What was that thing they wanted, anyway? A bright future, I suppose. The mall promised it in the way that a visit from an unusually benevolent UFO might signify shining gifts from on high, the perfect set-up for a "cargo cult."

The interesting sociological phenomenon of the cargo cult is best illustrated by the encounters between the tribal peoples of the South Pacific and European explorers, soldiers, and traders. The Europeans first arrived on the scene in the 1500s in sailing ships so big and strange they might as well have been UFOs. They brought with them wonders that had never been seen before, even on bountiful and idyllic South Pacific islands: guns, mirrors, iron cooking pots, bolts of cloth, crosscut saws, you name it. They left a lot of these goodies behind in exchange for food and other fresh necessities. The Europeans would then sail away and their ships would not return to a particular island for a long time -- years, decades, even generations. Their visits, therefore, entered into the mythology of the island peoples.

The wish to induce the return of the mythic ships led the islanders to such crypto-religious behavior as building big cane or rattan effigies of the ships, and placing them along the shore as sort of cosmic lures to attract real ships bearing goodie cargo. Well, sure enough, because exploration and trade were on the increase, sooner or later another ship would swing by and more goodies would be dispensed, reinforcing the cult behavior. Important in this whole dynamic is the fact that the islanders had no idea how the goods got made, or what kind of economy and society were necessary to enable the making of them. They just appeared.

...

Americans thought that discount shopping would make their lives better, that saving seven dollars on a hair dryer would make America a better country. They were quite wrong. The Wal-Marts, Targets, and Best Buys landed like the Martian mother ships from The War of the Worlds, and in thirty years they have transformed the American terrain into a desolate wilderness of free parking and sodium vapor lamps. The existing infrastructure of our towns was left to rot, and local networks of economic interdependence were systematically dismantled. The local businessmen forced to close up shop had made up much of the middle class across America, filling both economic and social roles. They were the caretakers of the local institutions. They sat on the hospital and library boards. They paid for the little league. They employed people they knew intimately, and were held accountable for their treatment of them...

A very coherent read on where we find ourselves today: last gasp, bubble-like economic and foreign policy scrambles and quick-fixes to secure the most of a rapidly peaking oil producing infrastructure. An infrasructure prodicing gasoline that is only going to get more costly and will inexorably do so as demand keeps rising. (Urban sprawl is defined by automobile-necessitating distances further and further away from city cores.) Add in a public and private decision-making few, willfully or naively watching the diversity of both economic- and tax bases Strangle and consolidate away to distant headquarters. (HQ's unconcerned with any one particular locality's continued viability beyond a few years.)

To many big-box retail businesses, the phrase "built to flip" now applies, but in a perverse new way. Built to flip once meant you ride and harvest a company to a point where you palm it off on someone else. In often was a sucker's deal, the proverbial used car wth it's unresolved and unhealthy problems. In the eyes of Walmart, Home Depot and others, built to flip now means their stores and our towns. Once the money's been squeezed out they move on, leaving a shell. The shell of their predominantly (83%) leased buildings and of the retail areas they've denuded of small business, cultural worth, memory and vitality.

In many ways, the country's path today tracks amazingly well with corporate America's flirtation in the 50s and 60s with Conglomeration. Conglomerates were command economies, mumbling the words of capitalism, much the way Sam's Walmart has to wear a Smiley Face today. And they are both symbolic of the centralization of finance, influence and decision-making in the hands of a vaguely knowledgeable few, unaware and unconcerned with the nuances and implications of what was happening in the hinterlands, but intensely focused on squeezing blood from the money-stone.

Then, as now, as worker, consumer and taxpayer, you are the money-stone. Even if you're not old enough to have lived through them, we know from Penn Central, Litton, LTV, Gulf & Western, ITT and others what a spectacular implosion that "smart-guy" boardroom brainchild was.

Boom!² The pattern is the same this time round.

Buy a helmet. Or learn and speak up and fight from within. Or attend a zoning meeting about that new mall. Either way, it's your long-term survival, your 10-15 square mile personal daily living environment and future (or, your kids') that's being cargoed and embargoed.

Self Knowledge Brings Happiness
Yuan Lee

Self Knowledge Brings Happiness?

The above statements, a chinese aphorism, repesented by Yuan Lee catch some people off guard...

...or lead them into answering the wrong question: Who should I be?

That's a shame, but not an irretrievable disaster. When people misinterpret a thought like Lee's, it's fairly easy to point out--often with an accompanying "Phew!"--that the question isn't "how are you inadequate?" but, rather, "What is it you really want?"

Their answers, thoughtfully arrived at, often lead to a cathartic experience--the kind of thing that leads a person like Ann Fudge to climb the ladder at Kraft/Maxwell House, rebuild a few brands, make a name for herself, and, within view of The Hall of Fame, decide she'd rather jump on a bike and shamble across Europe for a few months to recalibrate her bearings. As BusinessWeek put it,

she simply wanted to define herself by more than her professional status, considerable as it was, and financial rewards, sizable as they were. "It was definitely not dissatisfaction," says Fudge, now 52. "It was more about life."

She wanted to get reconnected with life. With what matters to people who don't spend their days tapdancing sematically through mahogany panelled rooms and playing "hide the agenda" from comfy leather chairs. Fudge now has the reins and the challenge of turning around Martin Sorrell's ailing Young & Rubicam--one of the grand brands of Advertising's own Hall of Fame.

Imagine: The leader of an organization charged with helping companies to get closer to their consumers. Their task? To put a metaphorical arm around the shoulder of those consumers and ask the questions: "Who are you?" "How are you doing?" "How can we help? What do you need?"

And that leader is greeted with this, again from BusinessWeek:

A surprising number doubt -- quietly for now, anyway -- that a woman who openly hugs fellow execs and values her life beyond the workplace can raise Y&R to new creative and financial heights. As one senior executive puts it: "I just don't know if someone who can spend months on a bicycle has the 24/7 drive we need."

Months on a bicycle. 24/7 drive. Hmmm. Perhaps he should ask Lance Armstrong that question.

Amazingly, that guy gets paid hundreds of thousands a year to be that obtuse. And so you see the challenge of Lee's misinterpreted question... Self-knowledge requires REAL exploration. Exploration makes many mediocrities nervous. Self-knowledge leads to self assurance and, more often than not, precludes one from so ridiculously inserting foot in one's mouth. Self-knowledge requires a willingness to admit what you REALLY want and are and will sacrifce for, not some executive locker room-speak that means nothing once the echo of the words have faded. It's also a syndrome of the vacuousness common to companies in search of their identity. They ask: Who do we want people (consumers and employees) to think we are? rather than, Who are are we really, and who else outside these walls shares our care?

I posted here recently about the "playing doctor" aspect that many marketers bring to their work...

...And that's just it. "My" bullet points are mine. You have to craft your own. From what you know and believe to be true: What you want, what you can do, who else wants it, and why they should care. We refine our own ideas about the way things ought to be. And then, we each help our customer discover their own unique set of bullet points, a process made easier thanks to the knowledge we gained in searching out and refining our own. We repeat for others what we've legitimately done for ourselves. Otherwise, we're just playing doctor, aren't we?

Well?

Yes. We are. And we know it. And our clients know it. Therefore, given that choice, if somebody's going to practice without a license, they trust themselves with their own health more than they trust us. So they opt to self-diagnose and ask us to execute or perhaps tinker with their already half-formed idea of who they think they should be--because they don't trust us to tell them who they really are.

Sufficiently depressed? Don't be. The same turf we all explore between a client company and its customers to find common ground and future purpose simply needs to be tilled between ourselves and the clients we serve too. Naturally, we start with ourselves and then go searching for mates. So, without futher ado, what are the kinds of questions and answers that allow us to know US better?

• What do you still believe in but have given up fighting for?
• What are you still willing to fight for?
• Name the 5 most significant events in your life so far.
• Describe your most recent customer service experience, with you as the customer.
• Name one piece of advice somebody gave you that regret not taking.
• Name one risk you took that you're glad you did.
• Name the last election you voted in.
• Describe the last advertisement you remember. The first.
• Name your hero(es). Why?
• Tell us your favorite joke.
• Name of 1st love?
• In the 5th grade, what did you want to be when you grew up?
• In the 11th grade, what do you put in the space "Career: ______" on your SAT form?
• 2 years into your first "real" job what had you learned about "work"? Unlearned?
• If your specific industry disappeared tomorrow, what else would you be able to do or work at?
• If a rich aunt left you $100,000,000 tomorrow, what would you be doing a year from now?

Now, from those answers you begin to get a snaphot of where you end, where your consumers begin, and where you can leverage and increase the common ground between.

This is "Brand US" territory. It's a good place to be.

Bad moon a-rising...

Understanding Abu Ghraib...

Failure to understand, manage, anticipate, leads to failure of doctrine.

• A1. WMDs?

• A2. Rescue oppressed nationals from "madman" brutal dictator?

• A3. Liberation, Democracy, 1000 Middle East Flowers bloom?

B. Strategy fog. Mission creep. [Acceptable] Rules of Engagement Envelope - TBA

C. Yields failure to focus, understand, limit, plan, assign, assert, adjust, finesse, coopt

D. Growing insurgency

E. Physical coercion, sexual humiliation

A1 and/or A2 and/or A3, rather than a single A-squared gets you to E. You don't want to go there, "it's not who you are." But "loser" is not who you are either.

ROE (Rules of Engagement) becomes fluid, subjective.

"Reacting/Not losing," instead of "proacting/winning" substitutes in your OODA loop.

Judgement fails. Turbocharged entropy results. Mania, shrapnel ensue as the system flies apart.

The opponent is now inside your loop.

Absent a gross and counter-intuitive compensatory axis shift of the combat and cultural landscape, mission over.

Your goals are out of reach given your current operational stance and situational awareness.

Your loop is cut. You're dead.

[/John Boyd-mode]

I feel shitty. My job is to forecast what I see and to Intuit from what I know... If you don't like what I think or if you want to argue about what I discern politcally, I'll put some poltical links here later, you can judge for you self how accurate I am. (On this topic, very.) [update October 28 - Scroll down]

Guess what? I hate the stupid strategy my country and my miltiary finds itself in, thanks to the current "smart-guy", "CEO-Administration".

I'm not impressed. I'm singularly not impressed. I'm shareholder-pissed, ready-to-sell, burn-down-the-headquatrers-not impressed.

I have never in 42 years and 5 presidential voting cycles been presented with a candidate whom I dislike and distrust more to carry through sensible policies relative to my country's health than I do this one. George W. Bush is Wrong. So wrong. And he is NO Commander in Chief.

"The Buck Stops Here."

Loyalty is a fetish for this man, observation is a luxury. This man is an abomination and an insult. And his people compound his fuzzy thinking. You ain't seen military doctrine twisted into words and deeds that miltary people wouldn't recognize. Rather, you ain't seen them yet.

You ain't seen Abu Ghraib. Yet.

The worst is yet to come.

Rush: I predict a highly visible and emotional religious conversion, immediately after the election.

Sooner, if Bush's numbers keep trending.

AP

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh announced Friday that he and his wife, Marta, were divorcing...

It was the third marriage for both Limbaugh, 53, and his 44-year-old wife...The past several months have been difficult for Limbaugh, who announced in October that he was entering a drug rehabilitation program because he was addicted to painkillers.

See what I mean about synchronicity? It's not correlation I'm creating here. Two serious hits to credibility and sta-bility in one calendar year. (Three if you count the Abu Ghraib "it-was-just frat-boy hijinks" fiasco.)

Rush Limbaugh is a persona, a brand, in serious maturity country as product lifetimes go. As the odds increase that Kerry will be elected in November, Rush now finds himself facing a new target. But thanks to self-inflicted quality issues, many of the traditional arrows he'd sling at "decadent, disingenuous, self-centered and morally inconsistent" Democrats are bent. Hell, they're not bent, they're broke. They won't fly. Increasingly, every criticism of his will be quoted with an accompanying asterisk the size of your foot:

"...Limbaugh, currently awaiting his third divorce, remains under a legal cloud resulting from his 2003 admission of illegal precription drug use and addiction."

His lifeblood, or at least half of it, is his base of "Values Conservatives." The personal self-image wiggle room we all like to have (and tend to expand and inflate by denegrating the value decisions of others) is fast being squeezed by the blowhard from Cape Girardeau. Tipping Point city.

Limbaugh has 2 choices:

1. Back away from political commentary, reinventing himself as a more austere Springer or Maury type TV Show Host. (Although his TVQ wasn't so hot the first time around. Maybe a sidekick this time because "Juggies" are out.)

2. If he wants to do politics still--and who believes he doesn't?--he will need an abject and overwrought public cleansing in order to maintain a credible moral persona in the mind's eyes and real ears of his audience.

Six months, give or take. Cue God.


(P.S. God, again. See what I mean?)

My country tis of thee. Thou? Thine?

It's funny, but I'll start a post then store it in drafts, forgetting about it, or wonder if or when I'll hit send. Then something will happen. I'll bump into a corroborating bit of absurdity, just like the goofy telemarketing call I received this afternoon selling church attendance . Does this happen to you? Bet it does. Synchronicity is alive and well. And God is, indeed, a comedian. Certainly a satirist.

This, from Tuesday -- AP:

WASHINGTON - Churches that mistakenly mix religious and political activity would face reduced fines but keep their tax exempt status under a provision in a corporate tax bill the House is to consider this week.

The proposal, which could invalidate the strict separation of religion and politics in current tax laws, was introduced by House Republicans the same week President Bush's re-election campaign targeted 1,600 Pennsylvania congregations to recruit voters.....

[Reverend Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:] "I don't think it's any coincidence that this is being fast-tracked in Congress just days after the Bush campaign announced its outreach in churches."

Last week, the Bush campaign e-mailed Pennsylvania churchgoers to target 1,600 "Friendly Congregations" where people can register to vote and pick up political information as the election nears. But the campaign said the missive was intended only to be passed from "individual to individual" — and not from preacher to congregation.

Campaign officials said Monday they were unaware of the church provision. But spokesman Steve Schmidt accused Lynn of "an extreme position — he wants to exclude people of faith from America's civic life."

"Not only is that misguided, it's dangerous," Schmidt said. "You don't want to exclude people from the electoral process, from the democratic process. You want to include people."

"People of faith have as much right to participate in the political process as anyone else," Schmidt said.

Pennsylvania is a key political swing state that offers 21 electoral votes. Bush lost the state in 2000 by a mere 204,000 votes.

Indeed, people of faith can and do participate in the political process. Citizens tend do that kind of thing. Oddly, the majority of them want politics to stay far away from polluting their scriptural lives. Truly spiritual people tend to feel that way when virtue-neutral industries like politics want to sponsor the pew they're sitting on. What can one say, except maybe that fidelity to Constitutional founding principle is now operationally inconvenient in this country. And factually naive. What would Jesus do? Knock some heads, that's what.

Now, I am late and my children are home waiting for their dinner. Speed limits be damned and jaywalkers beware. After all, children need regular meals to grow big and strong.

One for the Telemarketing Hall of Lame

SCENE: An office

TIME: 4 Minutes ago

PHONE RINGS.

PICKUP

RECORDED MESSAGE BEGINS: "If you'd like to have a more personal relationship with your Saviour, Jesus Christ -- Press 1. If you are interested in new churches in your area..."

What if business conversations paralleled 2004 political discourse?

1. Mr. Chairman, our market share is declining and margins are slipping.
2. Damn your mouth, TRAITOR!

1. Members of the Board, Dynetron's Executive Commitee has refused our tender offer.
2. Why?
1. Umm, says here: "'Say yes, or we mount a global PR campaign to brand you as smelly cowards.' is not negotiation."

1. Bob, we have serious QA issues with the line. You promised you had it fixed.
2. No, Frank. I have serious issues with you. Why do you hate the Chairman?

1. Sir, we lost another Plant Manager in Iowa.
2. Why do you hate the company, Smithers?

1. Mary, I don't think the cheaper coffee service is going over well.
2. Dammit Sue! Freedom has costs, don't they know that?

1. Ernie, you said Taradigm was rolling out new product that was going to flatten our Schnitzen 2000 by Q3 latest. Where the hell is it?
2. Well, that could have been misinformation. We got it from an ex-Taradigm EVP.
1. What?
2. On the upside, he now hears they're cutting back on free bagels in the breakroom, the new coffee sucks and Taradigm's people are really pissed.

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Several readers have asked me to switch site feed to full. Done. It's at the right. (Atom) Also many have asked for RSS. Still working on that.

NYT:

Mr. Bush announced the resignation of the 51-year-old Mr. Tenet in a way that was almost bizarre. He had just addressed reporters and photographers in a fairly innocuous Rose Garden session with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. Then the session was adjourned....

He then goes inside and mentions to Cheney, Powell, Rice, Andy Card and communications director, Dan Bartlett, all, I presume, assembled in the Oval Office for a game of Pictionary, that "Oh yeah, did I tell you Tenet gave me his resignation last nite? No? Sorry, must've slipped my mind."

NYT again:

Minutes later, Mr. Bush reappeared on the White House lawn to make the short walk to Marine One, the presidential helicopter. En route, he stopped to make the statement about Mr. Tenet's resignation to a group of reporters.

MSNBC:

Deborah Norville: What's your impression of Paul Wolfowitz?

Tom Clancy: Is he working for our side?

---

Jeebus Light.

I nominate this guy for Director, CIA and/or Chief Asskicker and Nametaker:



Absence of Malice, 1981

Asst. A.G., Wells:

At the end of today two things are gonna be true that ain't true now. One is we're going to know what in the good Christ has been going on down here, and two is I'm going to have somebody's ass in my briefcase....

Tom Friedman: Okay, I was way-way-goofy wrong about Iraq. But trust me, this outsourcing thing's gonna be grreeat!

3 Pulitzer Prizes. For what? I guess for his Really? How neat!! analytical reporting. Incisive. Layered. Like a junior high AV geek interviewing the Varsity Cheerleaders....

Oh hell, I don' t have it in me. This evening's ouvre, Tom Friedman Reports: The Other Side of Outsourcing was that campy-bad. They say it will repeat Mon nite on Discovery. I may have stopped laughing enough by then to actually post more. Maybe. If you're lucky, maybe not.

In the meantime, here's The Onion's Shorter-Tom-Friedman-if-Tom-Friedman-had-human-DNA:



And here'sCFO Magazine's current take on the subject. They seem to have human DNA and, unlike Friedman, they actually can be funny when they try to be. Sometimes.

Links stolen from Drezner and other people much smarter than me.

Dispatches from the Metaphor in Motion Department


[ring binder birds fly - click large]

Corporate Drone #1178:

"...like I was sayin', Work. Eat. Sleep. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Whoa! Where the hell did that come from?"

Bet you think you know your office like the back of your hand, yes? Sure. Bet whenever corporate changes are imminent, you hear them coming over the hill with all the subtlety of a kids' pots and pans drum corps. Yes? The above was one of numerous unannounced appearances of sculpture and media surprises [we] created to soften up a client's culture for big changes; necessary, long overdue changes. No explanations. No fuss. Just Poof!, "hey, another one!" Not like clockwork. Give it a lull. Then, a different day, you round another corner, a different Poof-Poof! "Hey! Two more!" Still no answers. Just wondering. And maybe a teeny bit of nervous imbalance.

There's a method to the madness.

---

Non-drone, Seth Godin, notes on Page 20 of Purple Cow:

The reason it's so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken -- it's no longer remarkable when you do it.

Leadership is two things.

1. Creating change.

2. Guiding others through change.

Funny thing about change. People hate the idea of it, resist the challenges of it, then bask in the glory of it. It's that thing about success having a thousand fathers and failure being an orphan. Change equals the chance of failure. Well then, make change the baby left on their doorstep. Lot's of babies. Incremental but remarkable babies. Keep 'em coming.

People don't remark on what they know is coming. For this reason, leadership that heralds "change" sets itself up for a fall.

People slighly off balance--for the right reasons--are more aware and more alive. Because life is more interesting. That ain't a bad sensation whether you're a consumer or an employee. It doesn't mean dumptrucks of cash either. Just the opposite. You just have to be, must be, brilliant in your poverty. Or find someone to do it for you.

Don't ask. Just do. And keep doing.

Keep, um, you know.... Leading.