Daily Dancer

Need a bit of pure, unadulterated exuberance? Some unabashed joy? Spend a few minutes with Daily Dancer. He's got a gift, a vision, and a digital camcorder.

Success Rules--Bob Parsons

Bob Parsons has lost more money than most people ever make. He's also a serial entrepreneur with a net worth greater than the entire treasury of some countries, I'm sure. (Also notice he blogs--there really is something to this). When asked to speak at a business breakfast about what advice he would give someone just starting a business, he gave it some quality thought and developed the following list of rules by which he lives and succeeds. They are both concrete and philosophical, as encouraging as they are challenging.

Here are the 16 rules I try to live by:

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone. I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security." My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."

2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted. Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn't have an opportunity.

3. When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think. There's an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: "The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."

4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of "undefined consequences." My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, "Well, Robert, if it doesn't work, they can't eat you."

5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, "As you think, so shall you be."

6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don't look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

8. Be quick to decide. Remember what the Union Civil War general, Tecumseh Sherman said: "A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don't know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven't examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you're doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.

12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you're doing as anyone else, provided that what you're doing is legal.

13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn't fair. You make your own breaks. You'll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).

14. Solve your own problems. You'll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you'll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: "You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others." There's also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: "A wise man keeps his own counsel."

15. Don't take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.

16. There's always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you're really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: "We're not here for a long time; we're here for a good time."

The preceding excerpt is included with the permission of Bob Parsons (http://www.bobparsons.com) and is Copyright 2005 by Bob Parsons. All rights reserved.

50 Top Words of 2005

When you write for a living like I do, you had better like your words. I pay close attention to the latest breaking world word news.

Beyond that, this blog can help me fulfill a civic duty by keeping you, my loyal reader, up to date on the latest linquistic developments. To wit, let me introduce you to Cambridge Dictionaries Online's faithfully updated list of the 50 Top Words of 2005. These 50 words are the most often requested online during the year, the list constantly changing to reflect our dynamic language.

Number one is "advice." Imagine the legions of people confused about the difference between advice and advise? Advise is what you do, advice is what you give. One little letter can make a big difference, which I suspect is at the root of this word's popularity.

Number two is "liase." As in liason. Now I like to liase as well as the next person, but frankly, I'm a bit surprised at its popularity. I don't think I've ever heard that word in casual conversation. Then again, I've noticed an odd phenomenon. Once I've run into an unusual or new word, I begin to see and hear it everywhere. This recently happened to me with the word "bespoke." I'd never heard it before six months ago, and now I see it everywhere.

Number three is "effect." I'm glad to see people concerning themselves with this little word. There's an enormous difference between "effect" and "affect" that is too often the victim of confusion, an effect which affects too many.

Let me advise you with this bit of bespoke advice: liase as often as necessary with Cambridge and the like until its effect has affected you. (I'm so sorry, I put my tongue in my cheek and I can't get it out.)

The Future Is Here: AutoBlogger

Blogging can get to be a real drag. You know, every day, coming up with some new thing to keep the masses of faithful readers satisfied. Believe it or not, it takes a minute or two every day for me to come up with the clever bits of effluvia I share with you on a regular basis. That's a minute or two I don't get back. Not ever.

It's becoming quite a sacrifice on my part, so that's why I'm considering switching to AutoBlogger.

For a fee, AutoBlogger will scan your blog and assess the nature of your content and get a handle on your unique writing style. Then, when you (read I) don't feel like coming up with some clever bon mot for the aforementioned masses' edification and education, you (again, I) can just plug in AutoBlogger, and voila. A blog entry. Written as if by your (my, again) own pretty princess self (or prince, if you're estrogen challenged).

Click the link above to see a touching and seductively convincing streaming video commercial in the testimonial style. Look around the site a bit and you'll find testimonials from some of www's preeminent bloggers. It's made a believer of me.

I wish I could find an outfit that could do the same thing for writing copy. That can get pretty draining too, you know. Coming up with brilliant new ideas and translating them into actionable, memorable, endearing, enduring words. Frankly, it can wear a body out.

If I could submit my portfolio to (as yet non-existent) AutoCopywriter, I could get more work done without any of that tiring concepting, writing and editing and editing and editing. Isn't that the American way? I'd firmly place myself in the ranks of "Management" and leave behind even the slightest taint of "Labor." I like the sound of that. I mean, with the process entirely automated, I could retire, eat bon bons and read trashy novels all day long. No one would ever know it. My clients would be delighted with endless streams of snappy copy, and I wouldn't even have to tell Jonathan. My only work would be cashing enormous checks and picking up the awards. This concept has legs.

Yes, Small IS the New Big

I've blogged on this subject before, but Seth Godin, marketing guru, explains it beautifully in his blog, excerpted below:

Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.

Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.

Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

Small means that you can answer email from your customers.

Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.

A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.

With today's technology, the independent, small shop is more viable than ever before. Something else? A small company appreciates every bit of business. Every Last Little Bit.

Why blog?

I don't know how many times I've been asked the following questions:

1. What's a blog?
2. What are you trying to accomplish with it?
3. Isn't your blog too corporate and kind of goofy, all the stuff you have posted?

Tom Peters, marketing guru says,

Blog As If Your Life Depended On It!
Blogging, I firmly believe, is the premier emergent marketing-brandbuilding-lovemarkcreating tool of our times! It is the premier way to have intimate-engaging-informative-WOWing "conversations" with Clients and prospects! This all goes double for small enterprises and niche enterprises; and goes triple for the Professional Services; and works wonders in the Public Sector as well.

Good blogs are supposed to be conversational, personal and timely. They're the antithesis of most corporate communcations in their informality.

Apart from the time involved, they're a cheap way to get your name out there (this one is free). What better way for a new business to begin to establish a presence and personality (a.k.a. brand) than the daily blogging? It's also a wonderful discipline for sorting out where you stand when it comes to issues like marketing, approaching commerce, business ethics and other important issues. Forcing yourself to write about these things helps defines them in your own head and commits you to doing business a certain way.

It's a great thing. That's why I blog.

Cambium Creative Website: Client History

Loyal readers haven't had much new lately. Jonathan and I have been putting the finishing touches on our website. In the spirit of keeping you aprised of our doings, here are three sample pages.

Notice the botanical drawings? Those are Dorie Draper's. She's committed to drawing what she sees, bug holes and all. What she proves is perfection isn't nearly as interesting as reality.

By the way, Dorie Draper is a dear friend. I like that in a mom.

, .

Cambium Creative Website: Contact Page

CC_Contact Us, .

Cambium Creative Website: Portfolio Intro

CC_Portfolio, .

Joy at Work

This is a radical concept that's actually worked when put into practice. It ties into some of the themes we've been exploring on these pages.

Populuxe advertising at its zenith: 1956

This incredible nine-minute short film

features a Leslie-Caron-esque gamine of a dreamer getting downright surreal at General Motors' Motorama and Frigidaire's "Kitchen of the Future." Download or streaming video. The dance sequences alone are worth the click through.

Via BoingBoing,

Andy Warhol was so 20th century

Is Hitler the new famous?

Don't trust? Take a whiff of this.

From today's Washington Post. Also reported on NPR.

Hormone Spray Is Found To Bolster Trust in Others

Scientists have found the chemical equivalent of the perfect sales pitch: a hormone that makes us more trusting than we normally are.

Volunteers in a study were told they were participating in a decision-making experiment. Those who inhaled the hormone, which occurs naturally in the brain, were more likely to entrust others with large sums of money than were volunteers who inhaled no hormone.

This has terrifying implications. Here's the full story from the WaPo.

Philosophy

We are pregnant with website and due any day now. It will have a "Philosophy" section as follows:

At Cambium Creative, we're committed to being committed. We’re not interested in getting by or making do, but in working with passion. Working with passion is more than self-satisfaction, because passion inevitably shows in the quality of the work.

Integrity is non-negotiable in matters large and small.

We are committed to creating a culture that nurtures growth of all kinds in a climate of mutual respect and tolerance. While money can be made without compassion and humor, a good life cannot. Our goal is to make Cambium Creative a joyful enterprise for everyone connected to it.

When we accept a client, we are being entrusted with nurturing someone else’s dream. This is no small matter. Unless their challenges become our own, and their success every bit as important as our own, we will have failed. As humans, we will have failures, but on this point, we will consistently excel.

And finally, may we always remember that bottom lines are not numbers, but people.

Chief Among Them

Today's New York Times (registration required) has an article about the latest fashion in job titles. Falling out of favor is that old chestnut, vice president. It's no longer happening to be a partner. Director? That's so first quarter. To really display alpha dog status, one must now be chief.

When we started Cambium Creative, Jon and I decided to be partners first, art director and writer, second. How pedestrian of us. We should have been chiefs. In fact, it's not too late. In lieu of giving ourselves raises, we could just give ourselves multiple chiefdoms.

I think we're missing the boat, however, if we don't get a bit colorful with it. Shouldn't we give a nod to the tribal origins of the title? As long as we're inflating, let's go Fredericks-of-Hollywood inflated.

I could be Chief Runs-With-Pencils and Chief Blog-A-Lot. Jonathan could be Chief Paints-With-Running-Nose-Whiskers and Chief Web-He-Weaves.

What about Chief Run-Amok? We could run out of room on the business card.

Here's what vice-presidents look like when they don't get made chief-anything. It's enough to break your heart.

Slick as snot marketing got you down? Clear the air with Charisma!

I just discovered Michael D. Pollock's smallbusinessbranding.com.

Targeted at what he calls the "solopreneur," it's a wonderful collection of thoughts and insights celebrating the oh- boy-howdiness of a well-conceived tiny business.

Our world views would play nicely together during circle time. The link above travels to a well-researched riff deconstructing the vagaries of charm and charisma along with some pointers on cultivating your particular own brand of it.

One of life's little thrills is happening upon a like mind. Michael's article about charisma echoed a refrain or two from my one of my recent diatribes, "I am not, nor will I ever be, Rumplestiltskin."

In short, it's a call to drop the business guise in favor of the truth. The authentic self is inherently more attractive, rewarding, and just plain useful, than even your most brilliantly conceived made-for-tv-movie of you. Yes. Even in business that concerns important people in positions of authority. Even then. Maybe even especially then.

Since I've been writing this blog, I've spent a lot of time with other people's bloggy thoughts. And I gotta tell you, the emerging picture is pleasingly refreshing. Cutthroat, big-agency, killer-instinct creative-types have stopped their slouch toward Bethlehem, performed a bit of personal feng shui, and gotten down to the bones of what matters. The cynicism that for so long masqueraded as weary wisdom has been rejected. It's no longer cool to be cool in the cold old way.

Every tectonic upheaval has to begin somewhere. Just like a few of these well-spoken visionaries hunkered over keyboards, dressed for success in varying stages of dishevelment, tapping out the manifestos of a revolution where no guns are fired, but heads will roll because, as karma reminds us, what goes around, comes around.

In a related note, I've been having a weird, deja-vu-ish feeling lately. It's been pleasant in a quiet way, reminding me of the smell of sugar cookies from my granny's kitchen. I've had the hardest time nailing it down.

But I've finally figured it out. It's hope. Now, that's a revolution in the making.

After much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair

A few days ago, I posted a diatribe on writing the proper business bio. It's a subject about which I have strong opinions, well-justified by fact, reason, taste and refined sensibilities. That set me up for a difficult conundrum, however, because my very next task was to write my own bio for our forthcoming website. Any criticism is genuinely welcomed.

Jill is creative because, well, frankly, she has no choice in the matter. She would starve in a world where linear thinking and quantifying standard deviations were the coin of the realm. Luckily, the world needs creative thinkers, because like we said, the girl would go hungry.

Following an early and abiding love, Jill earned a degree in horticulture. She followed an equally abiding love with a degree in Literature and Language. Together, they prepared her to use her way with words for the advancement of a free and enlightened society. If you hear of anything, let her know.

In the meantime, Jill cut her teeth at Brighton Agency, applying her botanical background to promote the wholesale slaughter of roaches, mole crickets, fire ants, white flies and other maladies. Agricultural accounts followed, mixed with work for Saint Louis Art Fair, KWMU Radio, Sofa & Chair Company and others. After a sojourn of dedicated agricultural work at Osborn & Barr, Jill learned the weirdly effective science of direct marketing at Dimac, working on accounts like NationsBank and American Family Insurance. She later became creative director at a small, now-defunct agency, twofortysevendirect, specializing in letter packages selling auto insurance and home equity loans.

Prior to forming Cambium Creative with Jonathan Lehmann, Jill headed up Words That Work. In addition to performing some pyrotechnic copywriting in which no one was harmed, Jill followed her passion by helping develop a series of community outreach programs with Deb Shurn at Marketing Works that culminated in the passage of a measure that created the first-ever dedicated children’s services fund for the City of St. Louis.

Her client roster at Words That Work included her old friends at Monsanto, St. Louis Mental Health Board of Trustees, New Mississippi River Bridge Project and United States Centers for Disease Control (via Marketing Works, Inc.), Mallinckrodt Medical and Star Manufacturing with Stobie Group, among others.

An accomplished strategic thinker, Jill is comfortable with words in whatever form they take. Her expertise runs the gamut from print, web and broadcast advertising, strategic market planning, branding, public relations, and everything in between.

She has won many awards (or, as this week's bfd insists, the companies for whom she worked have won many awards for work she performed when in their employ), but not for her best work. If you ever want to hear a passionate little diatribe, just say "Account Executive Portfolio" in her presence. She's like Pavlov's copywriter.

Call Jill today at 314.983.0048 or 314.732.5715. or e-mail draperj@cambiumcreative.com.
Smoke signals, morse code and communications via avian couriers will be answered within the fortnight.

On Naked Cows, French Kissing, Passion and the Suchness of Nurturance, Excitement & Experience

The picture above is aprapos of nothing. In our business, it's called borrowed interest. We're hoping our readers see the big breasted cow and stay long enough to read this stuff. It's not a great technique, but it has its place.

Jonathan came over tonight and we were talking about what we want to say on our website about our philosophy. Following is a somewhat disjointed, stream-of-consciousness account of our discussion.

Do good work. Have happy clients.

Well, yeah. What else?

What about the passion we bring to it? The others will politely peck you, we will look into your lipid pools and kiss deeeeply, with Parisian passionnnnnnnn, oo oo la la.

Gotta have the passion. We don't want this second act to be like the first. Put out to pasture and become one of the bottom feeders? No thank you. The world is ripe for new thinking. We're ripe for it, too. Shakespeare said "Ripeness is all."

Circular thinking follows. How about a foundation of red-hot enthusiasm? A suchness of love and nurturance and excitement and experience. An experiment only we can perform? An experiment of the Jon and Jill Show--the Jew and the Gentile Making Peace in the Middle West. Sow passion. Reap [to be announced]

Blogging a brain storm. Yes it can be done.

Watch this space for further developments.

Holy Cow

Spanky's Bar Stools, originally uploaded by Jill.y.

It takes someone who's driven the herd to market to know how to deliver the beef

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Big agencies are going the way of the dinosaur and it isn't pretty. Lots of good people are out on the street with nothing more than a book and a big mortgage to keep them company.

But why are these behemoths dying so rapidly? They may well have outlived their usefulness. Part of it has to be karma coming back to bite them in the butt. Huge agecies used cutthroat HR practices that discriminated against seasoned pros in favor of $30K kids loaded with ambition and potential. Don't get me wrong, We need these kids like fresh air, but the lack of loyalty to more senior employees* is coming back like Marley's ghost. Frankly, it takes someone who's driven the herd to market to know how to deliver the beef. Experienced matters. It just does and that is fact.

The very people they "right-sized," ahem, have gone out on their own. Because it doesn't take $150 or $200 an hour if you don't have marble lobbies and Serra sculptures, clients get top-drawer creative thinking without the big agency runaround. They like it. It works for them.

Small outfits can be nimble in ways a behemoth never could. We can beat the clock and beat the competition, and tailor the message like a glove, because we know what we're about. In brain chemistry, neural pathways are developed that create a kind of shorthand that takes years to acquire. By the same token, if a project needs entirely new ground, we plumb those depths without breaking a sweat. (Okay, that's a lie. We do sweat. It's hard work to do it well..)

The term "relationship marketing" has become a tired old warhorse, bandied about cynically until it's become meaningless and hackneyed . But that's what we do. We nurture relationships between companies and users, with open dialogue, and interesting personalities at every turn.

It's the only way to do business, or life, for that matter.


*The pall of seniority can descend even in the mid-thirties, and is firmly in place after 40. At 50 and 60 and 70? I've witnessed the subtle lack of visibility that comes with age, and have seen some very intelligent people be patronized like team mascots..

Tone it up

The most stifling voice against creativity can be your own. How many times have you censored yourself, talked yourself out of taking a risk, gone the safe way?

P.S. Remember, every time I say you, I mean me, too, probably loudest of all.

Hugh Macleod tells a wonderful story:

One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray!

So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it.

Imagine the worst, cheesiest "I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme" vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.

The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn't think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn't doing much for him.

"Well, the target market are middle class houswives," I rambled. "They're quite conservative, so I thought I'd better tone it down..."

"You can tone it down once you've gotten the job and once the client comes after your ass with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down," he laughed. "Till then, show me the toned-up version."

This story doesn't just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.

Don't Boil the Ocean, Woot for Vocabularians

I love language. I love to paint with it. Play with it. I especially like making it up as I go along. So it is with absolute delight that I give you a choice selection of new words and idioms not currently found in the dictionary, but maybe well on their way.

For instance, you've heard 50 is the new 40; but have you heard that good enough is the new perfect? I'd always thought good enough wasn't; but since I am perfectly copacetic with holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time, I've also thought done is better than perfect. The new perfect refers to people who write elegant computer code when plain vanilla would work just fine, but I think it has legs. Et tu?

Also heard, the MFA is the new MBA. I'm all over that one.

The geek gods are an incredibly creative bunch. Jeffrey Veen channels Susan Price with these bon mots:

• Boil the Ocean (v) Trying to solve too many problems with an overambitious project, typically resulting in a complete failure.
• SME (n) Acronym for "Subject Matter Expert." Pronounced "smee".
• S2BU (n) Acronym for "Sucks To Be You." In this context, a page with an error message but with a multitude of inherent possibilities.

And, from the linguists at Merriam-Webster comes the following:

• vocabularians (n) persons who make up new words
• lasterday (n) refers to any day before today
• squinched (v) action required to fit something into a space that is slightly too small
• flusterpated (adj) a state of being flustered that's so intense, one's actions and words become bound up
• ginormous (adj): bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous
• confuzzled (adj): confused and puzzled at the same time
• woot (interj): an exclamation of joy or excitement
• chillax (v): chill out/relax, hang with friends
• cognitive displaysia (n): the feeling you have before you even leave the house that you are going to forget something and not remember it until you're on the highway
• gription (n): the purchase gained by friction: "My car needs new tires because the old ones have lost their gription."
• phonecrastinate (v): to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number.
• slickery (adj): having a surface that is wet and icy (As an aside, when my daughter was little, she did a science project to prove Pantene Pro V would make cat hair more silkery than Suave. I only mention it because I think it's etymologically related to slickery.)
• snirt (n): snow that is dirty, often seen by the side of roads and parking lots that have been plowed

I suppose I am an aspiring SME vocabularian who woots for new words.

Pithify or perish

Oh, okay. Geez. Now I get it. Facts don't matter anymore at all. It's what can be told quickly, concisely, and re-told quickly and concisely. I get e-mails from folks proudly calling themselves members of the "Reality Based Community." But they really aren't getting it, are they?

Reality has a way of being messy and murky. Not the brand mantra's Adjective-Noun-Noun. That's why facts don't matter anymore. It's because they're difficult to tell. Now, if you boil those facts down into an essence, then we're talking turkey.

Help me out here. Authenticity? Doesn't that have something to do with being real? I'm not being snide here. Really. Is public discourse just so much blah-blah-blah unless it can be summed up in a few pithy statements that can be easily remembered and retold? I think you're right.

I am ashamed for all of us.

Going out on a limb

How often, as a creative professional, have you gone out on a limb only to have it break off?

How often, as a creative professional, have you gone out on a limb and have it not break off?

How often, as a creative professional have you gone out on a limb?

It doesn't take a genius to kill a good idea.

I am not, nor will I ever be, Rumplestiltskin.

Over the years, I've written a lot of bios. You know, those self-serving bits of prose outlining accomplishments, usually in connection with landing new business? In case you're not familiar with the form, they often describe a beacon of natural-born leadership just chock-a-block with core competencies that proactively shift the paradigm with standard-issue 30-hour workdays, serving 24/7 to deliver optimum benefits while maximizing productivity for the end user (whose needs are paramount, and also primary, top-of-mind and our single highest priority). Maybe this beacon plays golf, but only for business purposes. Maybe he has children, but again, only for business purposes.

Crap like that isn't worth the zeroes and ones that get thrown into the ether. Value is in direct proportion to truth. I'm always amazed at how intimidated people can be when I suggest this. "But I won't sound professional." or "People won't take me seriously."

But no matter how exalted the potential reader's position, well-chosen and authentic details beat shopworn platitudes every time. There's no reason to hide behind language. Unless, of course, you are a filthy reprobate with no moral center, then lying is probably the way to go.

For the rest of us, our Maker's authentic version beats the best bullshit money can buy. You are not, nor will you ever be, Rapunzel. That goes double for me.

So now it's my turn. We're down to the wire on our website (coming soon! www.cambiumcreative.com) and apart from our philosophy, the only thing left to write is my bio.

I will tell the truth and only the truth, so help me Gosh. But oy shiite, to put religious allusions where they should never go again, it's a trapeze act with false modesty on one side and ugly naked conceit on the other. I'd rather discuss parliamentary politics with a two-year old.

Watch this space for further developments.

"Short Order Feng Shui"

One of my favorite professors was, and still is, a poet named David Clewell. His poetry is like a landscape reflected in a soap bubble: certainly recognizable, but skewed and unusually colorful.

"Short Order Feng Shui" is from his latest collection of poems, The Low End of Higher Things

One more venerable tradition so thoroughly sacked
co-opted by the spirit
of a New Age that seems to mean business --
more genuine, practical wisdom reduced
to the practically ridiculous. But part of me is thinking
what could it hurt, maybe
I should widen the footpath between my piles of Who-
Killed-JFK books. Have the 1950s
Atomic Age ashtrays somehow turned into negative
clutter or do they still speak
energetically to me? Should my Pogo figurines stay put
for the rest of their days,
knee-deep in the box of Guaranteed-Authentic Roswell
Saucer Crash-Site Soil?
Do Charlie the Tuna hi-ball glasses work wtih Richard
Nixon commemorative flatware?

I found a slew of other fun poems at Poetry Daily. A few favorites include: Ellen Bass' "When I Die," Carl Dennis' "Our Generation," and William Greenway's, "Canterbury Tale."

Dirty Little Secrets

I guess we're all human.

Ithaka by C.P. Cavafy, 1896

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon — don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon — you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind —
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Parental Neglect

Will someone please give this poor child a name?

Their baby is 18 months old and they still haven't named her. They were waiting to see "if she had a personality." For the love of Pete, if you can't figure that out in 18 months, will you ever? I hate to be judgmental, but this is just wrong.

We've heard that sex sells, but . . .

Would you buy a house from this woman?