Sex, Addiction, Satan, Congress. The World is Coming to an End

My name is Jill and I'm an internet addict.

I am powerless over broadband and my life has become unmanageable.

I've never really been convinced of satanic power. Then I heard about this I beseech you, do not click that link.

If you do, your time as a productive member of society will come to an abrupt end, just as decidedly as if you took up heroin and meth simultaneously. The Timothy Leary behind this life-wasting altered state? Jonhs. I don't know if he can't spell John, or what, but he's a pusher.

Click and you'll be lost to the power of carefully crafted zeroes and ones, the digital age will finally have taken over society. Your babies will have persistent diaper rash from sodden Huggies. The refrigerator will turn into a sparse collection of oddly shaped mold. The trash will not get to the curb on Thursdays, your well-tended grass will become a prairie, and some, I've heard, have catheterized themselves so as not to miss a moment.

What pernicious force is at work?

It sounds so innocent. So beguiling. I'll watch just one.

That's how it starts. That link will take you to a list of movies you can watch for free, right there on your computer screen. FREE. Classics, B-movies, talkies, you name it. These are the movies you've always loved (okay, not all of them), but they're now in the public domain for God and everyone to see.


If you have the fortitude to resist such classics as The Wild Women of Wongo, then you must lead a sad and frigid life, an appallingly spartan existence, devoid of human pleasure, eating only generic dog food because you couldn't care less about anything pleasurable.

While I pity you, you'll be the only one taking over for the rest of us. Only the most bland and lifeless shell of a human organism could resist cinema classics with a story line like this:

On the tropical island of Wongo, a tribe of beautiful women discover that the other side of the island is inhabited by a tribe of handsome men. They also discover that a tribe of evil ape men live on the island, too, and the ape men are planning a raid on the tribe in order to capture mates.

It's got it all. Scantily clad buxom women in their sexual prime, muscle-bound men over-run with testosterone, and a marauding band of monkeys who want the women for themselves (sex and more sex, and maybe even a hint of sex with monkeys, just perfect for titillating the more salacious members of Congress).

Joho for Prezn't

Joho the Blog, aka David Weinberger, boy genius. Thanks for the heads up, Jeneane.

My platform:

Let's lower our national expectations to something a little more reasonable.

Declare victory in Phase One of the war on terrorism (Operation Big Wounded Bear Swinging Its Arms) and begin Phase Two (Operation Being Smart About It).

End the current superstitious rituals at airport security that any fifteen year old could figure out how to get around. Instead, require every passenger to rub a lucky rabbit foot.

Pass SHANANA: Stop the Hilarious Absurdity: No Acronyms Naming Anything act.

Resuscitate humility.

Stop asking G-d to bless us after every speech. He doesn't like needy people.

Put the "pro-life" back into "nuclear non-proliferation" by unilaterally scrapping all of our nuclear weapons.

New high priority task for the Army Corps of Engineers: Build drive-in movies. Everyone loves drive-ins.

New policy about gays in the military: "Don't Ask, Don't Care. Be Fabulous."

Start a distributed Peace Corps. Step two: Figure out what that means.

All test drives of SUVs must contain a segment in which they drive under water. (Playing the taped message from Al Gore is optional.)

Tough new copyright law provides works with a full fifteen years of protection...one more than our Founding Parental Units intended.

Printed newspapers by law will have to backdate themselves one day.

Increase national curiosity.

Government offices will use open source software unless they're being punished.

I'm tired of tough justice. Let's get some tender-hearted judges on the bench.

Since we're not trying to turn out standard kids, why do we educate them to pass standardized tests? New option: To get a high school diploma, either pass a standardized test or be a wiseass in public.

I'd be wrong in public. A lot. I'm good at that!

Any senior government official who does not blog has "[bureaucrat]" appended to her title.

Marijuana would be as legal as alcohol, but only until you're 35. Frankly, after that it's time to grow up.

Lawrence Lessig gets to work out with Susan Crawford which one heads the FCC and which goes on the Supreme Court.

Secretary of the Internet becomes the first wiki-based cabinet post.

Dick Cheney goes to jail, even if we have to plant something on him.

I will never ever clear brush on vacation. That is my solemn pledge to you, my fellow Americans.

[Tags: politics humor]

Posted by D. Weinberger at October 6, 2006 10:54 AM

The Media and the Average American

I heard something on, I'm not sure, probably NPR. that made sense. It didn't reassure me of our future, but it helped explain some of the more inexplicable American trends.

The story was about the process by which people make up their minds on political and social issues. Here's how it works:

1. Depending upon the opinions of those around them and what "serious" media stories they hear, they take a position.
2. They know that to really know if that position is backed up by the facts, they'd have to read at least ten related things.
3. They don't have the time, nor the inclination, so they don't really know how to back up their stance.
4. People who decide on serious issues in this manner hold onto them with a fierceness that people who are more research-oriented.

This makes so much sense to me, and gives me much more sympathy for so many people whose strong ideas are contraindicated by available documentation.

In a related story first published in The New Republic and excerpted in Science Blogs--Pure Pedantry (definitely worth a visit for insights you don't normally run across) is a concept related to my thesis:

Is there something intrinsically reductive or fatalistic in connecting political values to brain functioning? No more so than ascribing them to race or economic background, which we happily do without second thought. Isn't it more dehumanizing to attribute your beliefs to economic conditions outside your control? At least your brain is inalienably yours -- it's where the whole category ''you'' originates. No one denies that social conditions shape political values. But the link between the brain and the polis is still uncharted terrain. Prozac showed us that the slightest tinkering with brain chemistry could have transformative effects on a person's worldview. Who is to say those effects don't travel all the way to the voting booth?

This makes sense. We're hardwired for so many things, down to how many rings we like to wear that it seems entirely logical that our political inclinations would be hardwired too, regardless of the facts on the ground, or the airwaves.

Another post on the same blog supports the "political" brain:

Do liberals ''think'' with their limbic system more than conservatives do? As it happens, some early research suggests that Armey might have been on to something after all. As The Times reported not long ago, a team of U.C.L.A. researchers analyzed the neural activity of Republicans and Democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous ''Daisy'' ad from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 campaign that ends with a mushroom cloud. Such brain activity indicates a kind of gut response, operating below the level of conscious control.

You can read the entire column in the New York Times.

If this knowledge were widespread, I wonder if we'd be gentler or harsher on those with whom we disagree. I wonder.

I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up.

I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up., originally uploaded by Carla216.

Remember how those beigey pulp hardbacks from the school library used to smell? My nose was always in books, so it was a nice smell to have around.

Nancy Drew was the Katherine Hepburn of girl sleuths. A class act. Thanks to Carla216 on flickr for a great image.

Courage and Fear and Penzey's Spice

In advertising, as in life, so many more possibilities present themselves when you're not being afraid all the ding-dang day. Courage, on the other hand, is what we all admire. It's what we respond to emotionally for better or worse.

Haven't we all managed to ignore the plain vanilla? Unless is Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla, then you've got Penzey's Spice. Ever gone in one of their stores? It's all wood and natural looking, but it's the smell. The smells. Each section assaults your senses. Never before have I been willing to spend so much money on spices. But Penzey's does something very interesting. It turns bottles of ground up plants into objects of desire. Spices strike a chord in the reptilian part of our brains. Just how many people set off into the great unknown in search of a Spice Route to the Far East? And why would they risk falling off the edge of earth but stuff like this:

Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon
The highest quality, strongest cinnamon available in America today. Extremely sweet and flavorful. Use 2 /3 what recipe calls for. Since the trade embargo with Vietnam has been lifted, this wonderful cassia has become available. Very high 6% grade. Ground, from Vietnam.

Penzey's is intent upon delighting its customers. For instance, they give away tasty recipes for nothing. Every big spice group has at least one free recipe.

Then there's their magazine-cum-catalog-cum-cookbook-cum-brilliantmarketing piece that's new each season. Delighting customers. That's the ticket.

Their people are good, too. Service, they've got down pat. No wonder, though, when their applications ask questions like, "What's your favorite spice or seasoning and how do you use it?" Which job that made the biggest impact on your life?

Think of the insightful, telling responses they get to this question in the "Education" secion:

Penzeys [sic] Spices is a growing company with an emphasis on comunications and visual arts. Tell us about your own background and experiences with the fine and performing arts.

Get outta town!

Here's another one:

Have you ever been convicted of a crime? (do not list minor traffic violations). If yes, please explain.

Here's a big ol' big business taking the risks involved to retain its humanity, actually presenting a willingness to listen to what really happened. Watched the news lately? They need a bit of the Gospel According to Penzey's.

Take the time to tell the truth. It's that truth that is the best thing you've got. Be bold and blunt. Show emotion, get personal, take risks. TAKE RISKS!

How else is anyone going to see your gorgeous self, let alone give you a chance at their business?

The thought process for clients is pretty predictable at this point. They freak out, and those little hairs on the back of their necks stands up, all the while they're bobbing their heads up and down in faux agreement.

Here's where everything clever gets cut. Like 500 units of Thorazine, right in the hip. It's been bought and paid for, but it's not doing its job.

Jim Asacker tells a story about the most common answer his favorite question, "What would you really like to do before you die." Skydiving. That's the most popular response. But how many people ever wind up skydiving? I call it Thorazine, he calls it awfulizing, but it's the same thing.

. . . Our brain thought about the skydiving scenario, awfulized the situation, made up the worst case scenario, believed it to be true, and then responded to what it believed to be true, as opposed to objective reality, which says that you probably won’t die as a result of skydiving. So the cost of what our brain made up, that we’d die, was greater than the benefit of feeling that incredibly free feeling of flying through the air, so therefore, we just decided not to do it, based purely on what our brain made up, as opposed to what was reality. So ask yourself this. What is the cost of changing? Remember to judge the cost of changing using objective reality, as opposed to what your brain is making up and awfulizing about the potential results of making this change. More often than not, when we take out all of the stuff our brain is making up, it’s much easier to see that the benefit of making the change far outweighs the cost.

So, what this really comes down to is people are weird. They don't always pay any attention at all to things like facts. We're emotional creatures. We are comforted by the status quo when that quo's bus has already left the station. As emotional creatures, though, we intuit great care, compassion and concern. We respond to authenticity, and that's what advertising should deliver.

The best worst ad ever

The last year of the dot com boom was big for Madison Avenue. That year's Super Bowl had one creative standout, one of the most innovative and sweetly funny ads ever conceived. Everybody who saw it remembers it for its pure brilliance. Watch:



So why is this the best worst ad ever? It did nothing for sales. It was brilliant creatively, but the client is subsumed within its genius. It's a high-minded concept, the kind that wins the creme de la creme of the creative awards. But we're in the business of growing our client's business, not our own glory. On that count, this is an abject failure.

I still love to watch it, though.

Solla Solla Enna Perumai

Bollywood's version of sex-drenched song-and-dance combines a combo-zetigest that's a bit of Annette Funicello with a Puckish lead singer who, at least from the filmmaker's pov, oozes raw sexual appeal. Truly weird and wonderful.



Another song and dance number with a cult following. Straight from Bollywood, hips-a-shaking and an animation not seen in our popular culture since Lawrence Welk.



The staff at Salon.com can recreate this entire scene flawlessly. Makes me with I were that young and dedicated to the pursuit of the out-there.

George Carlin on Religion

Sacred cow for dinner, folks!

Poetry in Motion

I can't get enough of this guy's lyrical dance juggling. Chris Bliss:

Brilliant Writing Puts Faces to Abstract Numbers

From Altercation. Tore me up. What power the pen can wield in the right hands.

Mayada Salihi: Red hair, raised in Baghdad, divorced mother of two adorable kids, herself the daughter of a divorced Shia mother and Sunni father. A scrapper. A Baghdadi through and through. Not always factual, but usually a truthteller. Devout fan of cheesy 1980’s American music, particularly Air Supply. Mayada was my translator through much of last year. You knew her too, albeit indirectly. It was because of May, and through her, that we found the schools which you so generously supplied and supported last year. Those who sent donations usually received a letter and pictures from me of the deliveries. May is in some of those photos. She was my friend.

She was well traveled for an Iraqi, having visited Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan in her 20s, but after her children, and Iraq, there is nothing which May loved more than a country to which she had never been, America. Her father was a comfortable government functionary and in those days she lived a life of moderate privilege. She had seen much of the Arab world, but for whatever reason, call it cultural penetration or just internationalism, May grew up fascinated by and adoring America. She started teaching herself English through that most classic of methods, singing along with American albums. As I recall, she told me that it was the Foreigner 4 album at first, and only a little later did she discover the obscenely sugar-coated songs of Air Supply. Eventually, in college, she majored in English.

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Life in a Middle Eastern nation being what it is, however, she had a lot of pressure to marry. Eventually she settled on the wrong guy. He cheated, a lot, and so in a quintessentially American move, so did she. That ended it. Cuckolding publicly reduced her husband and they divorced. She got the kids.

Then we invaded.

A month after the fall of Baghdad May was volunteering, working as a translator for a succession of US and Iraqi forces…too many it seems. Living in Baghdad she got one warning note, ignored it, and was gunned down and left for dead by masked men in the alley beside her house just two days later. That was in the Spring of 2004. But May would not die.

Whisked to a hospital where her identity as an American translator was revealed, she was declared dead back in her neighborhood for the safety of her family, while in reality she went into hiding. Ultimately she recovered in Jordan, but the recovery took months. She could have stayed in Jordan, but in the end, she found that her heart would not let her. The two nations she loved most were now fused in a death-love struggle, she could not leave them alone. Besides, working for us paid better than just about anything else a divorced woman could legally do in Baghdad, and that allowed her to support “H” (her son), “M” (her daughter) and her mother. So she came back.

Working for the same unit again, we kept her out of the city, doing good work elsewhere in Iraq. But the draw of motherhood, and her city, brought her back to Baghdad. It was at that time that we met, in April of last year.

Living now in another neighborhood, May thought she was safe. But as any New Yorker will tell you, even seven million people can make for a small town in some ways. By late summer they had found her again. A note at her home, I have a copy of it which she gave me, told her to stop working with the Americans or she would be killed. But May would not, and I now think perhaps could not, stop. A few nights later she slipped her mother and kids into the Green Zone, buying off another family who had themselves received an eviction notice from the Iraqi government.

In Iraq, as it is in many other countries, its all about who you know. May thought that she could work her personal connections…this person knows that person whose second cousin is a deputy minister of agriculture…to pull the right strings and keep the apartment, and her family, together. I had a hand in that, while I was there. It was a distraction from the work I was supposed to do, but in some ways you could say that it was also the work that needed to be done. I left in February. Apparently, not long after I left, she was evicted.

May couldn’t live outside the Green Zone anymore. To do so would be to invite risk to her kids and her mother. So the kids went to live with her Ex, and her mother went to her sister. May found a small place for herself, a single room apparently, inside the Green Zone.

Motherhood is a strong pull though. May would leave the Green Zone fairly often, alone in her car, to go see her children for a few precious hours.

At the end of the month of May, just after returning from my pre-wedding honeymoon, I found an e-mail in my inbox from one of my friends back in Baghdad. Nobody had wanted to tell me, at least initially, but now they felt they should. Two weeks earlier, while driving through the city to see her kids, May was intercepted and kidnapped by Ansar Al Sunna. Their standard tools are the AK-47, rape, and the power drill (with which they torture their captives, drilling holes through body parts until finishing them off with a drill-bit to the head). The day before the e-mail, the police found the husk of my friend’s body in downtown Baghdad. Ansar Al Sunna had taken full credit. Now I understand hate.

Mayada Salihi, 1970-2006. (Link) Please remember.

Crying yet?

The enormous implications of design, brilliantly told

My new brain crush. While he's no Ze Frank, then, Ze Frank no him either. Similar brilliance, entirely different delivery, sui generis thought. Big words can be our friends too, now.

Enjoy.

It's a backwards world, friend

From the mouths of babes and a portable camera. Did you know that China's putting the whole cha-cha-cha on us? I learned much watching this short film.

Ze Frank, Boy Genius Stuck in Grown Man's Body

Sigh. What genius lurks behind those saffron eyes?

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

Two excerpts from Frederick Douglass's powerful Independence Day speech from 1852. Read the whole thing and long for the days when oration had real power.

From the website History is a Weapon, via a brilliant post on Metafilter.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

and

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have "Abraham to our father," when they had long lost Abraham's faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham's great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchers of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout-"We have Washington to our father."-Alas! that it should be so; yet it is.

The evil, that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.

BTW, the House failed to reauthorize Voting Rights Act, and President Bush says he doesn't know a thing about it, while claiming, "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

History needs to kick us in the butt.

Rise Above the Snarking Snarkers Who Would Malign You For Sport

Life makes some people cynical. Looking for the worst? You'll find it.

Some would have you believe their negativity and cynicism are actually hard-won wisdom, a kind of advanced degree in critical thinking. But in fact, cynicism and negativity do not add up to wisdom; rather, they add up to negative patterns of thought that can be habit-forming and destructive.


It takes minimal cleverness and maybe seven facial muscles to produce a smirk sufficiently smirkly to paralyze creativity. We've all had ideas, work, art, children, partners, etc., all victims of murder by smirk. It's an awful feeling. Even a non-lethal injection of scorn has the power to shut down many people once and for all.

Someone recently told me a significant percentage would rather be hit by a bus than speak in public. Imagine willing to risk such physical damage just to forgo public speaking, a very rewarding skill to develop with all sorts of fringe benefits. The fear of being publicly scorned is so deeply ingrained that we might not even figure out the core fear.

The smirk murderer gets a cheap (and fleeting) sense of superiority from their generous disdain. "Look how clever I am to have seen this thing for the drek that it is." Negativity is not a philosophy, it doesn't uplift anyone, it teaches nothing constructive, and it hurts people in more ways than we'll ever know.

One thing is for sure, a life spent avoiding the risk of falling prety to smirk murderers can become a kind of prison. Expecting the worst can attract it.

The reverse is true, too. When you face the world with honest expectations of basic human goodness, people respond in kind. There's a kindness and guilelessness people with optimistic expectations exude. People, young, old and in between, all respond to someone who's actively ready to believe the very best of them.

I've been running an experiment. I generally do expect goodness from people, but I've been making a concerted effort to make that more obvious.

I get a lot more smiles. I have chats with interesting sptrangers all over the city. It lifts us both up to a nicer place where we can begin to conceive of brotherly love.

Plus, I'm happier. Life feels less fearful, my relationships deepen, and my prospects become more abundant. Once in a while, I actually notice that I've had a long spell of being pleased, grateful and content.

Have I ever been fooled by expecting the best? You bet. I've got a couple of BeeEffDee stories on that subject. Have I been cheated? Once or twice. Has it been worth it? Absolutely.

Crossposted at the ,/a>. Here's the new location: 100 Bloggers

Target Audience: Crazy People

This is just too weird. Coming from an old-school outfit like Folgers, I'm wondering about the long term effects of coffee consumption. See for yourself, it's practically hallucinatory:

Coudal Partners

"Copy Goes Here" is a short film created for no good reason, serving no perceivable purpose, there's no morality play in the subtext. It's just useless and wonderful. This is the kind of weirdness one can expect when creative and energetic people are allowed to play in their spare time rather than look busy.

They got a nifty little absurd film that says really nice things about the corporate culture at Coudal Partners . They take risks, and there are people who won't like them for it. But they've given other people reason to like them quite a lot.

Great alternatives in brand development.




$50 for the first person who deciphers a link between post and picture.

Sex and violence? Not all that useful a tool after all.

Cognitive Daily is one of life's sweet pleasures. It's like a themepark for the eclectic mind.

The brain is an interesting place to explore, one full of surprising revelations. Turns out, ads appearing in programming heavy on heaving bosoms and murder and mayhem don't perform as well as when appearing in more wholesome fare.

This ought to have huge implications for agencies, their clients and media buying decisions. We all love our sex and, well, sex. Some like violence--whatever--between consenting adults in the privacy of their own planet--just don't let me see it. I have tender sensibilities.


One thing is for sure, if anyone's agency is buying ads on those prurient dating shows, or during gore and guts shoot-em-ups, or the likes of Jerry Springer, it might be a good time to look for a new agency.

Here's the story:

[Published in the prestigious journal Psychological Science] . . . Bushman studied 336 adults in central Iowa by showing them violent, sexy, or neutral TV programming (some of the programs included 24 and Cops [violent], Sex in the City and Will and Grace [sexy], and America's Funniest Animals and Trading Spaces [neutral]). Each program contained the same 12 commercials. The commercials were chosen from a selection of products that were relatively unfamiliar to the study group: "Senokot Natural Vegetable Laxative," "Nutra Nails," and so on.

[snip]

Is that the sound of the world becoming less seduced by titilation? Naw. That was my stomach. Time for lunch.


Bushman sees some refreshing consequences if advertisers catch on to the failure of titilation and savagery:

. . . if advertisers would refuse to buy advertising on shows with sexual/violent content, they could help their own bottom lines because the ads on these shows don't sell as well. Society would be helped because violent/sexy shows would soon be removed from the air due to financial insolvency -- and violent programming is associated with aggressive behavior while sexually explicit shows can lead to anti-social sexual attitudes.

If this kind of programming is neutralized as a viable commercial vehicles, sex and violence might just return to their natural place in the human experience.

Seth Godin

Nearly an hour of Godin goodness.

For all you graphics folks

Why is it so hard to talk to each other?

MMODERNISTA! Gets Cadillac: Pearls Before Swine?

Photo by Porbem via Flickr.

After decades with Leo Burnett, GM is taking its Cadillac account to a brash upstart in Boston, the five-year-old ad agency, MODERNISTA!

Make no mistake about it. MODERNISTA! is not your father's ad agency. They seem painfully polished, and are as avant garde as can be and still touch filthy lucre.

Their grunge-ish website is stylish past the point of cool. Past James Dean, past the Sex Pistols and well into Lilith Crane territory. Not so much cool as frigid. Was there a heart there or did I just miss it?

But that's just me. I like rainbows and kittens and duckies and unicorns, taking walks in the rain and rootbeer floats. Their kind of cool generally is rare in St. Louis, but if you're in Boston, you might want to keep a cardigan handy. These guys are chill.

And Here's MODERNISTA!

Their graphics are stained, dirty-looking, reminiscent of the legendary $1 million idea on the back of a bar napkin, with an all-too-intentional non-chalance. They've got a sad-sack, heroin-addicted, weaving mascot reminiscent of Edward Gorley's pen and ink drawings, but without the wit. A witless Gorley is just beastly drawing and weird for weirdness' sake. Unless informed by a certain amount of self-awareness and cleverness, weirdness like this just wastes pixels.

But what do I know? GM is giving them the $22 million account, not Cambium Creative. But I think GM is making the same mistake it always does. Pyrotechnics are no substitute for insight into human character (and don't be fooled, that's the business), fake messiness doesn't make you creative, and just because you call it a big idea doesn't mean it's a big idea.

What Are Big Ideas?

I honked at this line, "At their best, big ideas tell you how to behave as a business--they're not simply an advertising tagline but a living, breathing business idea." Do these directional arrows have an ego issue? The hubris in that statement is kind of admirable, in its own deluded, twisted fashion. Even for advertising.

Big ideas don't tell people what to do. Really great Big Ideas tell something so true and compelling about who and what the company is at its core, that it's obvious. And not stupid obvious. But that brilliant kind of obvious that takes enormous insight to recognize and is hard to come up with because of its renegade elegance.

If a client of ours were looking for a tagline to be the basic behavioral instruction for the company, I would have to look hard at taking such a fool for a client. Now, if we get the Big Idea that succinctly describes the motivation, the ethic, the motor that keeps people passionate, then wonderful. But cart first. Then Big Idea.

Among Modernista!'s claims to fame has been their work for Hummer, a.k.a., the global warming 3-ton phalllus whose fading fortunes are tied topeak oil. The tv spot they showcase consists of a distorted shiny Hummer grill on a distorted dusty road to a driving techno beat. Copy reads: "Giddyap."

What a mild cleverness. In a world full of language so rich and descriptive, it's really empty. What does this so-called Big Idea really say? That you're a coyboy? You like to play? You can't wait your turn. Even though you're driving an $80,000 ozone depletion machine, you're just a little boy at heart. Giddyap puts no foie in my gras.

In truth, the Hummer brand relies on anything but boyish charm. It's bigger and meaner than anything on the road. Losers driving small cars would be decapitated if they rear-ended you--poor bastards. It's the testosteroni-cholestoral deep dish pizza of tank-cum-troop mover. It costs a fucking fortune, but you're rich enough not to care about anything but your immediate earthly pleasures. You might be Napoleonic in stature or might just be a small man, either way, but all those sweaty cowboy dreams make you hate queers. Your wife won't touch you, but your hemmoroid cream would turn into battery acid if you ever got the chance to nail the kids' sitter.

So you drive your ersatz-military phallus to display your masculinity. Like the little red sportscar of yesteryear, the Hummer is a big honkin' combover.

Meanwhile, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for Leo Burnett. With $225 million less in revenue, the cuts will be deep. And while there's not much sympathy for out-of-work advertising folks, I assure you, when cut, we bleed. (Although it doesn't show so much on the black clothes.)

What were they thinking with that pricey Super Bowl ad? Even with all those beautiful women, it wasn't even pleasant to behold. All black and white and hard people and cold metal. Whatever they were paid (airplane hangars and supermodels were involved), it was too much. Here's the the spot if you're so compelled.

It's almost as if the fine folks at Leo Burnett lost their way and when they should have been concepting, somehow managed to order gin and sushi . . . maybe some not-too-good hallucinogens--and cranked out this drivel.

MODERNISTA!, if they're smart, will build on Cadillac's truly golden, dusty rose image, which I'd argue still has incredible value to translate into new car sales. It would be time to put away the frightfully, dangerously cool bit, though. Getting down to the bones of a brand has nothing to do with cool and everything to do with feeling.

A good revival takes heart. I'd suggest a thoroughly contemporary approach at a retro-revival of the enduring meme that Cadillac is the best and most luxurious car money can buy. I think there's meat on them brand bones, but tarting it up, as I'm afraid they will do, to make an elegant lady shake her salt shaker like Brittany Spears in hopes a little hip will rub off? That would make as much sense as socks on a rooster. You wouldn't put Aunt Eugenie in a bustier and roller blades.

And just one more thing. I guess I'm on a bit of a rant, but these guys are just so emblematic of everything I was happy to leave behind at some of my worse big agency jobs that I am just going to indulge myself one last little bit.

That name, MODERNISTA!, with that exclamation point every damn time it's spelled, strikes me as that tortured ersatz fun found at boozeless office parties during which people laugh too loud, and merriment is mandatory. aIf you must CAP your NAME then INSIST on EXCITEMENT, isn't that pressing the point?

I'm being pretty rough on them, I know. It's hard to develop a site worthy of the exes and ohs that sacrifice their short digits for the greater good. But we ad folks need to learn something. Tell the truth, don't try spin gold out of straw. We never were any good at it anyway. All we got was a bunch of brassy sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I implore our entire industry. Let's once and for all get over being the cool kids. We're too old to be cool, and if we're not, we ought to be. There are many better things than cool. Cool has jumped the shark. Let's think of something else to aspire to. I'm leaning toward honest, warm, real and human.

A Musical Interlude

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street.

From an Indian nightclub

Effective use of advertising.

Russian Life in 50s and 60s

This collection of urban life in Soviet Russia during the 50s and 60s are brilliantly evocative.


via BoingBoing

Political Bloggers Are Pandered to Like Fat Cats

Blogging has seriously come of age. DailyKos, a leading progressive blog, hosts a convention of bloggers--I think this is the third year. The article below is ample evidence that what once was considered self-serving emotional claptrap has now tipped to the point of significant influence. In fact, some say the power of progressive bloggers is equal to that of right-wing radio. And to think, we knew it when . . . . Thanks to Suburban Guerilla.

Warner was not the only potential presidential hopeful to glad-hand at YearlyKos. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a 2004 White House contender, threw an after-hours party Thursday night in a packed bar at the Hard Rock Hotel, though the open bar only included a limited supply of bottled beer and cheap red wine. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson showed up Friday morning with breakfast pastries, along with praise for the blogging community and his endorsement of Democrats becoming “the party of [outer] space.” Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack appeared for an education panel before meeting privately with a small pre-selected group of bloggers, without offering so much as a stick of gum.

But no one could compete with Warner, who chose to treat the emerging and ill-defined world of liberal blogging like a major union or corporate trade group. He brought nearly a dozen staffers, including his political action committee’s five-person “Internet team,” and a camera crew to follow his movements throughout the Riviera Hotel, for later online broadcast. When conventioneers checked in, they were given a goodie bag with a laminated invitation to the Warner party conspicuously swinging from the handle. At Saturday’s lunch, where Warner showed his standard slick biographical video and delivered his entrepreneur-turned-Virginia-governor stump speech, each attendee got a black T-shirt, emblazoned with Warner’s digitally enhanced mug and the words “YearlyKos,” as if he had sponsored the event.

“You know when I look around this room I have rarely seen such energy, such optimism, such hope in one place,” Warner told the crowd. “And I am not just talking about those of you I saw at the Blackjack table at the Stratosphere.” His stump speech was light on specific proposals, and heavy with applause lines about the divisiveness of the Bush administration and the need for Democrats to take back the country.

When he was done, about two-thirds of the audience gave him a standing ovation, many of them clearly impressed with his biography as a red state Democrat and high-tech executive. But dissension was also not far under the surface. Minutes after Warner stepped outside of the convention hall to answer questions from reporters and bloggers, Edward Anderson, a Connecticut blogger whose screen name is DeanFan84, confronted him with a broad-based concern. “Do you understand that a lot of us in the grass roots feel that the money could have been spent better?” Anderson asked the former governor, referring to the Friday night Warner party at the Stratosphere. “We don’t want to join the consultant class. I don’t want our guys getting used to shrimp and martinis.”

2006 Best-of-the-Best Marketing Sites

KnowThis.com has compiled a valuable list of internet marketing sites. Many I knew about, but there are a few new gems there. Check it out.

The Crack Cocaine of Internet Surfing

I have something to confess. A new addiction. YouTube, Google Video, PistolWimp, the list goes on and on. These streaming video sites are the crack cocaine of internet surfing.

Much of it is pure druck, but there's gold there, too.

For instance, last night I watched an incredible monologue "The History of Oil," by British satirist, Robert Newman. He explains how World War I was an invasion of Iraq, something I didn't know. Quality programming.

Then there are all the clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report--I'll never have to buy basic cable to see those titans of political humor again.

In fact, I don't have to leave the comfort of my desk to watch television, with sites like Peekvid, I caught up on Gray's Anatomy on my own schedule.

This has everything to do with marketing. With an expanding Internet, and independent, citizen-provided content, 30- and 60-second commercials are of dwindling efficacy. Ads in the sidebar may get some traffic, but I know I ignore them completely.

If ever there was a need for creativity and authenticity in marketing it's today. The competition is fiercer and getting more ferocious with every click.

Spring went to assertiveness training, can you tell?

Green and Pink. Spring is Wet., originally uploaded by ancawonka.

photoshopping without a license

cottage montage, originally uploaded by Wordswinker.