Election Day Dance of Relief

It's November 7, 2006. We've been surrounded by hope on the one hand, and on the other, brutal ugliness that would have had my grandad looking for a switch.

Politicians, by nature, have abundant egos. They invest so much in these campaigns, and their everything (or so they think) rides on getting the most votes.

Their desperation means increasingly "creative" methods of slandering an opponent with ridiculous distortions, outright lies, selective and dubious "facts," and a kind of moral absolutism that is nothing but un-thinking. The worst deliberately appeal to the darkest, most ignorant, reptilian vestiges in the human brain. And, too often it works.

Still, voting is all we've got unless you're a lobbyist, and I'm sure you're not. It's the single most patriotic thing we can do. Flags, yellow ribbons, "God Bless America," and country songs are nothing but faint echoes of the real deal.

So, gentle readers, I know you've voted today, because you're that way. In case you know someone who might not bother, bother them till they do.

This might not restore your faith in humanity, but its beauty encouraged me.




The Boddisatva Dance of the Thousand Hands

Tractors, Advertising and Friends

My status has risen exponentially with my nephew, Andrew. He loves him a good tractor and has an encyclopedic knowledge of all manner of farm implements.

This is apropos as Cambium Creative has recently added a good-sized tractor account to our portfolio, thanks to our old buddy, Michael Turley, another alumnus from Osborn & Barr. Michael is Montana Tractor's new Communications Director, which is our first indication of this company's innate good sense.

Michael's one account guy who's a creative team's dream. Unlike too many account people whose primary purpose is to quash any idea that's remotely interesting. Michael knows great creative when he sees it. That means work that will actually, well, work.

If you had to use one word to describe this company, it's authentic. Buy a tractor and get a thank-you note directly from the CEO. Folks actually answer their own phones. No voice mail. No filters. Real people doing good business.

In short, they're the kind of client worth putting your heart and soul into.

We know from tractors, but there's always the "unknown unknowns." We're not above the most complimentary kind of larceny, so consider yourself invited to tell us anything you might know about reaching the 5-acre tractor buyer.

And Andrew, consider yourself Cambium Creative's newest marketing consultant. Not everyone has a lifelong love of tractors, or an eight-year-old's passion. You're my ace in the hole, buddy.

"Note to Future Despairing Self" by Dr. Charles

I have nothing to add except admiration and awe. The Examining Room of Dr. Charles.

You once looked under a microscope at the spindly cells of cancer, with their dark and jagged nuclei, and thought to yourself how poetic, these living things killed by their own quest for immortality.

You passed an entire day on a beach in the Caribbean. Your eyes couldn't quite capture the totality of the scene - the lush green mountains, the tropical forest swaying lazily with the sultry ocean breeze, the eight squid that rode the underwater current with you, their eyes behind tentacles, their bodies propelled by some translucent undulation. It was like floating with intelligence from another planet.

You lived many lifetimes within the one.

The boy that blackened your face, the woman that humiliated you as a doctor, they were but a squawking distraction.

The rain on the sheet metal roof. The brilliant stitch of a meteor in the dissolving night sky. The smell of jasmine on the streets of Sevilla or within the rising steam from a cup of tea. The warm dog licking your face. The minor notes of Chopin from the piano. A plate of cheese, onion, and saltines, with Light and Dark ale at McSorley's.

And above all these were the good people. The friends that danced like stones skipping on water, the family who loved you, who loved you, and the girl who promised to carry your heart (i carry it in my heart).

For along the way you learned that love is greatest.

It runs deeply, silently, as an underground spring whose waters are pure, nurturing, and ever present beneath our daily concerns. It is a tie stronger than life, proven by our own existence. We exist as living incarnations of a love which preceded us. We are sustained by that love. And when we share it with others we can perhaps feel the face of eternity shining down upon us.

So know just this - you did enjoy the world. You were carried by an army of cells, risen from the sea, and all who crossed your path were brothers and sisters.

You'll dissolve into that night sky, you'll rise fragrant from the petals of jasmine, Chopin will break through your very substance, and the Light and the Dark will pour you smoothly, bitterly, beautifully into the belly of creation.

Governmental Travesty in Missouri

Jonathan and I have been deeply involved in a local campaign for state house rep. We're trying to unseat the current rep whose only successful legislation has been to name the chanterelle "Missouri's Official State Mushroom."

By all that is holy, how can that be? I've walked in the woods mushroom hunting since I was a kid, looking for this magical sight:


photo via pfly on flickr

Furthermore, I've lived in Missouri my entire life, majored in horticulture at one point, and still, I wouldn't know a chanterelle if it sliced itself up under a flashing neon grocery sign and sang "Blue Suede Shoes." But I've hiked for hours, with a cranky toddler, a migraine and a stone bruise, for a plate of morels.

I am not alone. From The Missourian:

… three mushroom-hunting legislators on the Tourism Committee questioned the proposal, which was expected to be noncontroversial. “To make this the state mushroom when everyone in this room has heard of the morel would be a travesty,” said Rep. J.C. Kuessner, D-Eminence. “I just can’t believe that we’d do something like that to our public citizens of the state of Missouri.”

It was a travesty, and I, too, can't believe what's been done to the public citizens of the state of Missouri. With life and times as they are, the travesty is that anyone had time for any of this nonsense.

Important things are at stake. Be sure to vote Tuesday.

The Cure to Unhappiness

I know something about depression. I won't go into it, but it's been a companion often enough that I recognize its voice immediately. Dilbert cures all. Exercise, eat protein, drink water, be happy.

I wouldn't mind putting the pharmaceutical companies into Chapter 11 with such a simple cure for depresion.

Don't kill me softly, do it hard, or don't bother

Two things that consistently kill creativity. Succinct, and oh so true. Fear is the enemy, and what Seth Godin calls a lack of imagination.

Imagination is part of who we are, and fear is, too. But we are too often stamped down, turned down, discouraged, and made fun of for imagination. It takes courage to use your imagination past the age of eight.

Using imagination has inherent risks. Sometimes you will go too far. Be what some call "inappropriate." Other times, you'll have the room in your palm. It's about having the courage to fail, because with that in hand, you can give yourself permission to take the risks that make for greatness.

It's been said elsewhere, but if a client isn't uncomfortable with the work they're seeing, they're not seeing good work. Work that will work.

One of the most courageous work I ever did was a jewel in my tiara. From somewhere, I got the guts to write a totally avant garde, stream of consciousness poem moonlighting as an ad. It was for an art fair program in one of St. Louis' toniest suburbs. But it was such a hit, that it ran two years. Ad folks either love it or hate it. That better than a sock drawer full of awards. Kathy Sierra will back me up on that.

To see it up close, click on the image you'll find here.

White people dancing

that's how we do, originally uploaded by Word Maven.

This has nothing to do with anything other than I gave birth to the guy making the white-guy-dancing face. Couldn't be prouder. We're not a funky family, though we wish we were.

We're not stuck with what we've got-aha!

Life coaches sounds so, well, phony. Then I ran across Life Coaches Blog. We all have things we'd like to change. We all want to help people effectively. We all want to be the best person we can be, and the hurdles on the way can be arduous. Check it out.

"Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved."
--Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Borat, from the interviewee's perspective

Not all are as duped as they may appear. I have new hope and will manage to get up in the morning after all.

Borat Reveals Seamy Underside of Greatest Nation on Earth

People are so, well, human.

Exhibit A: Borat. A character created by Sacha Baron Cohen, complete with awe-inspiring mustache, has gone from sea-to-shining-sea posing as a "journalist" from Kazakhstan. (He's got an HBO show titled after another character, Ali G, an English hip-hop doing the same schtick.)

Borat is unbelievably crude. An over-the-top anti-Semitic. Offensive to any civilized person. There's too good to be true, and then there's too bad to be true. But, Borat has traveled the U.S. talking to real Americans. People who took him seriously.

There was one bit with a couple good ol' boy wine tasters in the South. Cohen managed to get one of them to say out loud that he lamented the end of slavery. And then, there was a performance of "In My Country There Is Problem," a song so awful, so disgraceful, so stupid, that no one would . . . but they did. The whole bar sang the chorus of "throw the Jew down the well."

I mourn for my country. Dumb as a dirty box full of rocks.

Here are the first four minutes of his feature film, Borat. NSFW, be warned, but geez, it sums up a character no one would take seriously. The schtick is too thick, the irony palpable. They do, though. And not just here. The government of Kazakhstan has waged a complaint against Borat.



And so it goes. Gullibility is one thing, but joining in this kind of stuff doesn't come from nowhere. Mel Gibson?

Mediocrity Can Be Cured

It's been a while since I've blogged about Kathy Sierra and her stellar blog, Creating Passionate Users, and it hasn't been because she's fallen off, not one little bit.

This piece explains how to achieve, or not achieve, according to discretion, mediocrity. Go away from this place and visit Kathy. To quote Dan Rather, "Courage."

Honesty in Advertising : an Oxymoron or Best Practices?

WARNING: Especially long post, especially important, pack a lunch if need be.

Honesty is an alien concept to many. Just as good as I need to be is the motto. So this post on honesty (I come out for it), I'm heading with the most honestly weird photoshop montage I've ever done.

Here's the real deal. The best advertising technique is to tell the truth. The best business advantage goes to those who take ethics seriously. The best stories about people show them as they really are, warts and all. We all love a bit of a wart on an otherwise perfect person. Tell it. Make it real.

We've seen enough slimey practices in the seats of power to convince anyone that crime may pay quite well, it won't pay for much in the pen.

If you already know this, skip right to Shel Horowitz's inspiring and validating Business Ethics Pledge. Savor it, sign it and share it.

Your better revolutions have a generous supply of indisputable truth that gets superglued to your brain quite pleasantly, you feel a lot better about yourself, then you pull others along with the glue, who bring others still. It takes on a life of its own. And it begins to change the world. One good brain to another, an exponential spread, and Shel Horowitz may well take over the world one solemn vow of ethics and honor at a time. Huzzah, Shel.

Ethics certainly isn't only a concern to ad folks, this pledge is greatly needed in government, big business, manufacturing, making cars, lightbulbs and Twizzlers. Ethical business practices is a universally applicable concept, a universally successful practice and it applies to every job at every level.

I know the ad biz, and how easy it is to use some ill-fitting verbal vavoom to add pizzazz to a lackluster product. Just a bit of overstatement--that's not so bad. But like anything built on horse dung, it isn't going to work.

An honest, creative alternative might be to be absolutely up front with how boring your product is. It does a couple things, so that's all right. But it's wrapped in kraft paper with black ink. Antiquated hints for the garden a la Farmer's Almanac, cleaning tips by Miss Cleidofern, it's boringness becomes its beacon. The truth wins. It gains a bit of camp sachet along with it, sales explode. When the truth is the only thing people buy (more than once), it's the only thing you've got to sell.

The least-respected, best-paid form of advertising is direct marketing. That crowd has every semicolon down to a scientific variable that increases or decreases response. If you realized how much went into the stuff you throw away every day, you might move to Zanzibar without a forwarding address. It's easily the most manipulative subgenre of advertising there is. What they lack in elegance, they make up with hard, cold statistics.

The idea is that if you get them inside the envelope, then they'll read your killer copy and convert. I did a letter package that got enormous results (and an Arrow Award). It beguiled the reader with a million ways of saying money, i.e.,"wampum, greenbacks, filthy lucre, coin of the realm, legal tender," etc. The real money cardholders get? A paltry refund of the total money they'd charge every year. WhooHoo! $12.00 American, once a year--alert the media!

What do you do when the product you're asked to sell is dangerous to small children, kittens and Aunt Bee? You quit. Some things cannot be gotten around, and endangering humanity is at the top. I gave up my biggest client. In return, I slept better knowing I wasn't furthering the sale of a fatal poison. Now found in groundwater all over Southern Illinois (and pretty much all over), where crops are routinely sprayed with chemical cocktails of seven, ten, 14 different products, including atrazine. Atrazine lurks silently in every well, draining into every river, until Sister finds a lump, or Joe gets a brain tumor. It's legal. It's effective. It's where I drew the line. Hope you never have to. It hurt, but it hurt good, if you know what I mean.


Talking to clients? Tell the truth. If you don't, you will have to confess on Sunday, and you won't give the client the benefit of your years of experience (the only thing you have to sell, after all). And, they're not going to be as successful as if they'd taken your counsel. Clients may bristle, but handled gently, they can be brought around to your way of thinking, because it's based on experience hard won. That's why you're being paid. Don't cower before a client apologetically, mincing words, allowing the very soul of your work be deleted to assuage unknown fears. Tell her the difficult truth. If she's worthy of her job, she'll see the light and you'll become the agency that made her look fabulous. The truth is so rare, but it absolutely delivers the very best results.

Shel brings it home how broad a swath an ethical business MO could make across all kinds of concerns:

• Businesses are more likely to succeed when they base themselves in ethics: honesty, integrity, and quality.
• Businesses must look at the "triple bottom line": financial, environmental, and social impacts [emphasis mine] (and this will require major pressure: currently, US public corporations are required by law to focus only on the economic bottom line, to the exclusion of other objectives and stakeholders)
• Amazing things can happen when all stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, neighborhood residents, even competitors) become your active champions-but that only happens if your business specifically empowers each of these groups and addresses their different needs and desires
• Line employees, managers, and even CEOs need support to show that ethical principles will help their businesses succeed, and that they won't be penalized by the marketplace for taking an ethical stand

Here's Shel's goal:

Eventually, this movement will reach critical mass. And some crooked "entrepreneur" will come along and try to cheat employees and customers while leaving a big, expensive mess for the public to clean up. But that crooked business owner won't find the people who will carry out this dirty work. Instead, good people will stand up for what's right, for ethics, for justice, and for honoring the company's real mission, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because they understand that it works better.

Free advice: cultivate a few good honor stories. Tell 'em to your kids. They'll become family lore and their internal compass. I know, I had a few myself. I'll post some later, but now, I have the best sum-it-up quote I'm likely to find today:

My favorite Doc:

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. --Dr. Suess

Go HERE:

Shel Horowitz's inspiring and validating Business Ethics Pledge

Sign it today and send to as many as you think have ears to hear, probably the unindicted, but you be the judge.

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.