Archive for December, 2006

So says this Jim Putz character in a commentary at WorldNetDaily. What might this devil food be? Brace yourselves, you vegans. It’s soy.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

He cites tons of scientific evidence, only without actual citations. But he’s a self-avowed health food nut, so you can trust him.

Luckily for me, I’ve never been any good at cooking tofu (it always crumbles to dust on me), and I’m too cheap to eat out, so I’m pretty safe.

This theory explains a lot. The Japanese eat lots of soy, so that’s probably the reason their population is dwindling down to nothing — they’ve all turned gay! Tokyo is a ghost town, and it’s not because of a group of teens attempting to communicate with the dead. A great and ancient culture, sentenced to extinction by bean curd. Tragic.

Here are a few lessons for all you marketers who think you can create a viral marketing campaign.

1. Don’t Pretend to be Mr. Consumer Dude
Both Adfreak and Adrants (who know their shit) point out that Sony’s attempt at a viral campaign for the PSP — all i want for xmas is a psp — blows. Why?

Now take fake blogs. You’ve heard of them. Edelman knows all about them. They are the things marketers seem to think are the holy grail of this new social media thing. Let’s get down with our customers. Let’s “join the conversation.” Trouble is, a fake blog - one that pretends (badly) to be all hip hop on our ass - is like an idiot that shows up at a black tie event wearing American Eagle cargo shorts and a t-shirt. The natural reaction to that is, “Who the fuck is that idiot?”

So now we have social media idiot Sony with help from idiot agency Zipatoni throwing a fake blog at us called All I Want For Christmas is a PSP. On the blog, some guy “Charlie” is apparently helping his friend Jeremy get a PSP for Christmas. As AdFreak points out, the blog commenters are not amused and “Charlie’s” defense of the blog is even less amusing. In reaction to commenter’s complaints, “Charlie” writes, “yo where all u hatas com from… juz cuz you aint feelin the flow of PSP dun mean its sum mad faek website or summ… youall be trippin.” Oh for fuck’s sake. Is anyone at Sony awake? Do you know how stupid this makes you look? And once you’ve been found out, the least you can do is own up to it rather than spew fake hip hop speak.

2. Don’t Roll Over From the Start
The Thumb-vertising site is a great idea, and both Adrants and the MIT Advertising Lab comment on it. It’s a funny concept that does a fine job of both mocking marketing itself and promoting a product. But, despite the fact that the MIT folks either don’t notice this or choose not to give it away (”Don’t know if these people are for real but they must be all thumbs”), the site tells you it’s fake:

This is a SPOOF website owned and managed by Douwe Egberts. It has been created to market Douwe Egberts Café Switch.

Well, of course it’s a spoof. Don’t tell us. That’s no fun at all.

As we’re currently in the midst of the festival of Zappadan, I thought I’d slap together a few of my personal memories of Frank.

When I was in high school, I mostly just listened to electronic stuff like Kraftwerk, Walter/Wendy Carlos, Isao Tomita and Synergy, and pseudojazz, aka “fusion,” such as Weather Report, Return to Forever, Spyro-stinking-gyra and that wizard of the electric jazz violin, Jean-Luc Ponty. Kinda sad, I know, but at least it meant I didn’t have to go along when my friends would go on their annual pilgrimage to Nassau Coliseum to see (ulp) Styx.

However, there were a few exceptions to the no-rock rule for me: Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and yes, Frank Zappa

I had to be careful who I told about that, though. For the most part, if you told people in my high school that you liked Frank, you could expect them to start quoting some of Moon’s lines from Valley Girl — their favorite track from the only Zappa album they’d ever listened to, Sheik Yerbouti. Gag me with a spoon.

Every year I’d see a few kids with t-shirts indicating that they’d been to Zappa’s annual Halloweenie concert at the Palladium in New York (die heißeste stadt), but I’d heard scary stories about that place (before it turned into a giant disco) and I never went, stupid kid that I was.

I did finally get to see Zappa live my freshman year of college, which would have been in 1981 or 1982, at the hockey arena on the campus of Boston University. It was a pretty damn cool show, but I have to admit that the most memorable part of the evening came at the end. After a few encores, the lights came up and for some reason everyone ran out of the arena as if someone had just thrown a grenade into the room. The exit my friend and I took wasn’t exactly an exit. Once we were outside, we found ourselves stuck behind a rather high chain link fence, and we and about twenty other fans had to climb over the damn thing. Chaos can be fun, kids.

Check out the videos below. It’s Zappa on the old Steve Allen show in 1963, demonstrating ways to create music with a bicycle. In between dumb jokes, Allen actually attempts to relate this to free jazz and other experimental forms.

Part 1
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGPPBwDBJDs]

Part 2

Why do I have a problem with Christmas? The obvious reason is that I’m not a Christian, and I have no desire to celebrate the supposed birthday of the supposed messiah.

When I mention that to people, I usually get the response that Christmas isn’t about religion. It’s completely secular, and it’s just about giving, sharing and fun. It’s just a celebration in the dead of Winter intended to perk us all up. Banks are closed, there’s no mail picked up or delivered, no government work is done. It’s a national holiday, not a religious holiday. Sure, it started as a religious holiday, but that’s pretty much been filtered out of it, so it’s not a valid point to refuse to celebrate it on the grounds that you’re not a Christian.

Even observant Jews celebrate it, putting up “Chanukah bushes” in their yards so they won’t miss out. Chanukah itself is a nothing holiday, but American Jews chose to give it more importance just so their kids wouldn’t feel left out of the celebration. Add in Kwanzaa and Diwali and just about everybody in the country has something to do around this time of year so that they can participate, and it all gets mushed together into this obviously-no-longer Christian national holiday.

Well, in my view, that fits in quite nicely with how the holiday came about in the first place. Early Christians, looking to increase their numbers, made little alterations in their religion’s story in order to get it to fit in with traditions that were already in place among other groups. Of course Jesus wasn’t born in December; we all know that. But the Winter Solstice was a big enough deal to enough people that the Christians knew they’d be better able to proselytize folks by pointing out their faith’s similarities with the beliefs and traditions people already had.

No matter how secular, how all-inclusive Christmas may become, no matter how many people say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas,” it’s still a religious holiday in my book.

On top of that, the fact that it’s been as secularized as it has allows the Christians to have it both ways. They’ve got just about everybody celebrating the birth of Jesus, whether they’re Christian or not, and they always get to turn around and preach that this national holiday, this secular celebration has a “true meaning.” That gives them the opportunity to give us all their messianic miraculous claptrap about the birth of the one and only true savior.

Well, if that’s what they want, that’s what they should insist upon. If Christmas is about the birth of the son of god, the man who is the personification of the Christian faith, then it’s not for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, or members of any other religions, and it’s certainly not for atheists. And if that’s the case, then it’s not a reason to shut down the whole country. And you absolutely should not expect anyone who isn’t a practicing member of your religion to participate in it, promote it, decorate for it, or wish you a happy it. It’s yours, not ours.

Hell, if I were a member of your little club and someone who I knew disagreed with our tenets wished me a merry Christmas, I’d probably thank them, but the question “what do you know about it?” would be echoing in my head. Christians cheapen their faith when they expect non-believers to play along.

So please, Christians, pick one or the other. If you want Christmas to be about Jesus, then dump Santa Claus, get serious about this messiah of yours, and leave the rest of us out of it. If you want the day to be a celebration for everyone, Christian and infidel alike, then shut up about its “true meaning” because we don’t want to hear it. You can celebrate Jesus’ birth on his real birthday, whenever that is.

It’s true, you boys. I have been given the great honor of joining the team at In Search of Stuff, that beloved blog of search marketing wisdom that all the cool kids read.

I didn’t see this on any political sites this morning, so for those of you who aren’t regular readers of geek literature, Endgadget offers the following:

Remember that recommendation that we expected to see come out of the National Institute of Standards and Technology pretty soon — you know, the one that would de-certify all those fundamentally flawed direct record electronic voting machines? Well, we apparently spoke too soon, as The Washington Post now reports that the recommendation didn’t even make it out of committee. The Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a section within NIST that advises the US Election Assistance Committee, failed to reach the 8 votes necessary to pass the decertification measure. Seriously. Why didn’t this blindingly obvious recommendation pass? Well, it’s not entirely clear, but committee member Brit Williams, a computer scientist who certified Georgia’s electronic voting system (we all know how well that went), said “You are talking about basically a re-installation of the entire voting system hardware.” Um, dude, last we checked, if something’s broke, you gotta fix it. Seriously, when was the last time you heard about a computer scientist that went out of his or her way to avoid fixing a system they installed? Don’t answer that.

WTF??

You’re probably familiar with the story about Google’s concern that their name — their trademarked name — was being genericized, like Band-Aid, Xerox, Rollerblade and many others before it. That is, the name was turning into a general term that wasn’t limited to Google itself. Both Merriam-Webster and the OED view the word as a verb.

Google’s response to this was initially to complain vociferously. I believe they sent out a few cease and desist letters, but that was before the word got added to the dictionary. Now they’re being a bit more conciliatory, asking us all, “Do You Google?“

Here are some hopefully helpful examples.

Usage: ‘Google’ as noun referring to, well, us.
Example: “I just love Google, they’re soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!”
Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There’s no question here that you’re referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.
Example: “I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting.”
Our lawyers say: Well, we’re happy at least that it’s clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to “Google” means “to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: “I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting.”
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only “Google” on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to “search” on Yahoo or any other search engine.

OK, fair’s fair. It happened, and they realized that they really couldn’t stop it, so they’re playing along, but hoping you’ll only use it as a verb when you’re talking about them.

You know about all those Apple products: iPod, iMac, iTunes, iLife (which includes iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and even iWeb — “Internet Web”?) and soon (pleeeeeease) the iPhone. Apple says the i stands for “internet”, or at least that’s what they said when the iMac was released. I don’t have an iPod, but I’m pretty sure they don’t go online.

Apple’s not the only iCompany out there. In fact, somebody else is already using the name iPhone, and they’re using the i the way Apple supposedly intended to in the first place — this iPhone is a VoIP company. Internet phone. Get it? And of course there’s that women’s web portal, iVillage. Internet Village. Perfectly sensible. And I’ve no doubt that it takes an iVillage to raise an iChild.

Getting back to that Google-as-a-verb business, what about when a company makes it clear they want you to use their trademark as a verb? Have a look at this:

Isn’t that cute? I village, you village, he she or it villages. Come on everybody, let’s village!

Now I’m waiting for people to start to pod, mac, tunes, life, phone, etc. Yeah, yeah, I know they already phone. You get the idea.

Do you remember the episode of The Flintstones in which Fred becomes a scout master — the one where he goes to the big jubilee (or jamboree, or whatever it is scouts have) in Shangra-la-di-da Valley? No, this post is not about how the scouts treated prehistoric atheists and homosexuals. You’ll see where I’m going in just a moment.

Fred has been named the new leader of the Saber Tooth Tiger Patrol. He comes home wearing his usual schmatta, but with a difference: his tie is absent, and he’s got a hat, a kerchief, and a stick. Wilma sees him and asks, “Fred, what happened? Is there a war?” Fred chuckles and says, “No, this is a boy scout uniform.” Wilma makes some comment about how she’d thought maybe the army had gotten desperate and was scraping the bottom of the barrel, then does a double-take (or to be more accurate, her hair does a double-take) and exclaims, “A boy scout uniform???” You can see the scene here, and you’ll hear how Wilma stresses the word “scout.” You’re likely to notice that it sounds a little odd.

That’s because, under normal circumstances, the phrase “boy scout” has the stress on the “boy” (ouch). I’m sure you’ve all heard numerous examples of this phenomenon. Every now and then, someone says something like “probably,” and it just rubs you the wrong way. It doesn’t feel right. It’s just not the way you’d expect it to sound. Whenever someone puts the stress on the wrong syllable (ahem — syllable), it’s called a Wilma, in honor of that modern stone age lady.

You’ll hear quite a lot of Wilmas if you watch shows on the eye of hell in which people are reading from cue cards or prompters, because they often don’t see a full sentence while they’re reading it, so they’re not always sure of where to put that little punch. Wolf Blitzer is the undisputed king of the Wilma:

A dozen years ago Republicans took control of the House and the Senate in mid-term elections.

So, what is the proper response to a Wilma? There are two, the more common being to shout “Wilmaaaaaa” the way Fred did in the closing credits of the show. My favorite, however, is to quote Wilma herself. I just love to say, “a boy scout uniform???” I say it rather a lot actually, especially when I’m in the Situation Room with Wolfie and the gang.

Anderson Cooper, he of Anderson Cooper 360° — the show that always tries to show both sides of every issue, hence the name — has been a bad übercool news dude.

He’s doing his show from Istanbul (the town so nice they named it three times — or quite a few more times than that, apparently) where he’s reporting on the visit of B-B-B-B-B-Benedict XVI and his mission to prove he doesn’t really hate every single Muslim.

As this, the most even-handed of news programs begins, the announcer’s voice gives us a tease of one of tonight’s stories, this one about a house where Mary (yeah, that Mary) is said to have lived her last days. The location is a popular place of prayer for Christians and Muslims alike. The voice caps off the tease by labeling it “a true miracle.”

What?? A miracle? Is he referring to "an event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God"? This is a “true miracle”? Is that supposed to be funny? Someone should have reminded the announcer to put a little whimsy, or at least some sarcasm in his voice, because he sounds completely serious to me.

Bad, bad Anderson Cooper. He’s the managing editor of the show, as I understand it. I blame him. This was a stupid thing to say for numerous reasons. Is it really their intention to tell us that it’s so unusual for Christians and Muslims to agree on something that it should be called a miracle? Jesus is honored as a prophet in Islam, so it doesn’t surprise me that his mom would get a decent amount of respect too. Even if we drop the “true” in “true miracle” and allow that maybe “miracle” was just a cute turn of phrase for a show that was going to deal with religion, I think it’s just wrong to imply that one should consider it weird that members of these two religious groups could agree on anything.

If we don’t give them the quasi-journalistic license to play with the concept and assume they meant it (I know, not all that likely, but you never know with these folks) then it’s just disgusting.

As it turns out, the actual story is fairly even-handed. So why do they find it necessary to promote it with “a true miracle”?