Patricia?

Long ago, James Clarke cemented himself properly into the mosaic of my soul’s fountain when he advised (in his Stoep Talk column) on how to deal with telemarketers.

It goes like this: you gather up your best honeyed tones and say something along the lines of, Yes, how wonderful! Could you hold on just a moment while I let the dog in/close the door/turn the radio off? You leave the phone off the hook and go finish your supper. They will hold the line for absolutely ages, I’ve even tested it by going back after 5 minutes and saying, so sorry, don’t go away, be with you in a moment. They’re patient and determined. They will hold. These are genuine people just doing their job of course, at least (surely?) for the most part not the vivisectionists or kitten-drowners we suppose them to be. On a good day one could even imagine that they busy themselves on the other end with embroidery, or sudoku, or emery boards. Fzzzht fzzzht, yes I’m still here yes I’ll hold. It’s nice to be on the power end of that please-hold thing for once, you know? I have whiled away many a pleasant hour like this. If there’s no one else around then I draw the curtains and treat myself to a sort of tiptoe toyi-toyi crossed with an air guitar solo, complete with theatrical soundless guffawing and gesturing with fingers at the receiver, and that’s also quite nice although it isn’t ladylike.

Since I haven’t been able to get hold of Ms Lewis, and since today is supposed to be the day that we find out who the winner of the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition is, I must assume that for some terrible reason she might not be available after all. So if we don't have a winner by midnight tonight I’m going to to ask Mr Clarke to stand in for her, because 1. I don’t think anyone’s ever given him the chance to wear tumbling blonde tresses and nine inch nails before and that’s kind of unfair, 2. He needs to practice the Wearing of the Lycra for the upcoming Tour De Farce in Spain, 3. He knows Pomes and, 4. At worst he could only say no but if he did he’d do it very kindly because he knows who my dad is.

Wish me luck!

P.S. This will of course mean that we might have to wait a couple more days to find out who the winner is.

No Poem Here

Something funny happened on the way to the antiURL

What do you do
when you see this:

No Ad Here
This Ad
Intentionally Left
Blank
No URL here

nestled in a google ads column
with the other ads, looking
for all the world like a little lost piece
of no-ads-land in ad-central?

Do you feel sorry for it?
Do you feel like giving it your loose change?
Do you want to take it home
and give it a cup of tea and a bath?

Do you click on it?

Be honest.

Pop Quiz

Who said: “Do not debase yourself for worms. Of all sinners, the merchants of deception are the most vile. Their fate is sealed.”

Was it:
a)William Shakespeare
b)Robert Mugabe
c)Tom Eaton
d) Pope Benedict XVI

ANSWER: c) These are the words of a trigger-happy angel, referring to advertising execs, in Mr Eaton’s new novel ‘Texas’.


(Apologies to Hogarth)

Poetry is dead, long live Poetry

I often carry on about my computer getting dragged into black holes but this time it really did. Apart from trees falling down on phone lines and stuff… long story but the short of it is that I now have a new phone line and a new computer too. Not sure if I’m glad because I must admit that not having a computer or a phone line did free me up for other pursuits, like painting with real paint; reading real books; writing with real pens etc - not that I pursued any of them besides the reading but I did have good intentions. Anyhow, alas/alack, now I’m binary bound and shackled once more.

This laptop takes a little getting used to. It doesn’t have the patina that my old monster had. Doesn’t make the same comfortably familiar Cranking Victorian Machinery noises, like an old and rusty (but faithful) robot-dog called up out of its basket for a spot of reluctant cat-chasing. But it’s okay. It will do.

I was amazed to find that famous people have been leaving entertaining comments on this blog in my absence – ok, one semi-famous person anyhow. See “Poet as Hired Gun”. I had thought that this blog was fairly innocuous and a bit boring, with at most about five occasional readers, but it just goes to show. This month it was Mandy De Waal, she-poet who runs with wild horses (?) in the Magaliesberg, and still manages to hold up a well paid day-job too. Mandy doesn’t do garrets, and is ‘empowering’ other ‘poets’ to follow suit. There is a lot of Added Value in it.

Here is a comment posted by Gwen Watkins to Mandy’s original article about poetry and business, which can be found at http://www.biz-community.com/Article.aspx?c=18&l=196&ai=9575

“The concept of using poets to pursue a political agenda is hardly new, nor the idea of persuading workers that "imaginative" ideas will in any way set them free.

Many poets were used by the state or tacitly wrote to please. For as many freedom poets as you can find, I can find those that glorified the state. Even Shakespeare was not above twisting the truth so as not to annoy Queen Elizabeth I – the play Richard III is not in the least accurate but the truth did not set you free in those ‘enlightened’ times – it put you in the Tower of London.

Poetry is about the flight of imagination – it springs from deep and true emotions. It’s something I have done for forty years but never on command. Shaped poetry to achieve an end is no longer poetry and as for praise singing – its very name tells you exactly what its purpose is – propaganda set to rhythm.”

Which was very well said, I thought.

PAX

I've decided to put all my grudges aside and be more mature. So, forthwith, I will no longer be mean to Marketing People. I won't make sarcastic blog entries about Marketing People. I won't post any more irritating comments to Bizcommunity. I will live in peace, and let Marketing People live in peace too.

This I swear, so help me gods.

Just Brand Me

A triptych:

1
Kieron Dwyer is in big trouble. He subverted Starbucks. After he’s been sued to smithereens, no doubt he’s going straight to hell. Not many can parody a mindset so eloquently, and this thing is a work of art, so damn and sue me - I’m posting it. (For the full story go to http://www.cbldf.org/pr/001130-starbucks.shtml)

2
The people in charge of protecting the interests of the brand integrity of the film Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes™ sent Neil a letter threatening to sue if he does not remove a link to AOTKT’s official website. Not that Neil did ever actually link to that, um, illustrious entity in the first place. Initially, he was amused, thinking it might be some kind of prank by Dadaist Lawyers, but was disappointed to find that it was not. Anyhow, if you have nothing better to do (e.g., if you like watching lawyers make asses of themselves on behalf of people who think too much of themselves; and especially if you hate vegetables), you might want to scuttle off to these urls and be mildly entertained:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/03/mystery-dada-tomato-threats.html
http://www.tomatoesareevil.com/ (links page, although the Link That Caused All The Trouble doesn’t exist. Anymore.)

3
Authors and other artists often use cultural markers to help describe the particular ‘flavour’ of a scene. Some brands get so interwoven with a culture that they become like unto salt for the table. But a couple of the big guys are unhappy about the use of their marks in fiction; worried that overexposure will result in “trademark dilution”. If they get their way, you won’t be able to say the word “Harley” in a story about a biker anymore. And don’t use Nike’s name in vain ok? Or Else. No more free advertising, guys. If you want to advertise McDonalds in your story you’ll have to pay them for the honour.
So instead of writing something like, “In a fit of depressed defiance she ate an entire box of Quality Street,” you’ll have to write, “…she ate an entire box of those assorted toffees and chocolates in various brightly coloured foil and cellophane wrappers; you know - the kind often given by pupils to teachers at the end of a school year.”

Poet as Hired Gun

“Poets will no longer live outside the fringes of business, but will become increasingly commonplace within the heart of the corporation as cultural decoders, praise singers, mediators between management and labour and as a facilitator for forging a new paradigm for leadership.” - Mandy de Waal

She says this with a straight face. She believes it too, deliriously caught up as she is in the evangelism of Marketing. Mandy has in her trinity: the market as father, brand management as son and ‘poetry’ as holy ghost. One gets the feeling that her holy ghost is her wild card - ‘Poetry’ is just so hot right now.
Thankfully, we can trust genuine poets to evade this new career that Mandy is so excitedly marking out for them, because one of poetry’s many functions is to expose precisely the kind of speech she sells for what it has always been – rhetorical verbiage. Spin and praise-singing by their nature can never claim the edge of poetry’s diamond blade. No deal, Mandy. Whatever you put out in the name of Marketing Almighty won’t really be poetry, and those who devise it won’t be real poets. Deep down, you know this, Mandy.

(Besides, what corporation in its right mind would invite poverty and chaos by admitting a poet to the inner sanctum? And in any case, the vital elixir of attic dust wouldn’t settle well in gleaming boardrooms. You’d have allergic reactions all over the place)

An it harm none, do as ye will

I had wanted to be cheerful and blithe, but I’m not a good actress so I’ll just be morose, and retain some integrity. Marketers gleefully quoted Charles Bradlaugh today:

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."

In true marketing style, the quote is out of context. Bradlaugh lived in different times and was not talking about sales. He was campaigning for Irish Home Rule, the redistribution of land, birth control, and atheists being allowed into the House of Commons, among other things. These creatures are campaigning for the sale of everything, from our children to the planet; together with many other things we had imagined were not for sale. As with so many freedoms, the ‘right’ to do such-and-such becomes nothing more than an excuse for doing it, in this insane Ripley’s version of a world. The ‘truth’ as applied to contemporary life is a dire culture of entitlement; with gratification as its sole aim, and its war cry has nothing to do with any kind of real freedom or real truth. I can think of many current instances in which the abuse of certain ‘freedoms’ has not died in a day, and is of itself busily entombing the hope of the species. If everyone lived in a little bubble of their own, and their words and actions could not affect the whole, then wholesale freedom of speech would be a fine thing. And although most of us think that we do in fact live in such a bubble, in reality not one of us can or does. We’re either oversensitive or desensitised, and both positions play straight into marketing’s hand.

In my ideal world, no one gets absolute freedom of anything until we have learned - and can apply - compassion, respect and tolerance. Impossible things to measure and truly difficult to practise, but by the time we’re eighty, maybe freedom can be ours in some small way. In the meantime, of course we should feel free to speak – if we think first. Marketing people better batten down the hatches and lay in some supplies, because if they’re to evolve from seething pond scum to thinking person with earned rights, at least three million years must pass.

Nice Dream.

Long live Bradlaugh, and a pox on those who take his name in vain.


In the spirit of the season, here’s something by Ogden Nash:


A Carol for Children (Abridged)

God rest you, merry innocents,
Let nothing you dismay,
Let nothing wound an eager heart
Upon this Christmas day.

Yours be the genial holly wreaths,
The stockings and the tree;
An aged world to you bequeaths
Its own forgotten glee.

Soon, soon enough come crueller gifts,
The anger and the tears;
Between you now there sparsely drifts
A handful yet of years.

Oh dimly, dimly glows the star
Through the electric throng;
The bidding in temple and bazaar
Drowns out the silver song.

Two ultimate laws alone we know,
The ledger and the sword –
So far away, so long ago,
We lost the infant lord.

God rest you, merry innocents,
While innocence endures.
A sweeter Christmas than we to ours
May you bequeath to yours.

Billboards and Blogging: Nothing’s for Free

I’ve been wondering about free online-journal/blog services being so FREE, especially to us Joe Soaps. Here is my conspiracy theory:

There is a branch of organised crime called ‘Marketing’

Marketing would like us to believe that a giant photograph of a luxury all-terrain vehicle is better than the view of natural wonders which it is obscuring, and will go to great lengths, including chainsaws, dynamite and bribery of officials, to ensure that the view of the giant photograph itself is not obscured by any natural wonders, such as an annoying old tree, or a pesky rocky outcrop.

These are the people whose evangelistic mission is to get Stuff sold. They are fundamentalists, and their mantra goes, “Stuff is god, Stuff is happiness. Stuff is the measure of your success. In order to access god and happiness, and therefore to succeed, you must get more Stuff. Consumption is the key to your potential, which is as limitless as the happiness you will have access to, if you only consume.”

Now it’s all gone to seed…

‘Seeding’ is the big new thing in marketing circles. A Seed is nothing more and nothing less than a very carefully selected (and paid) peer. Someone who meets all the right criteria is inserted into a group, at school or in the workplace or anywhere else where peer acceptance might register on a success gauge. The Seed will do two things:
1) Hang out and become part of the group, then collect very subtle information from within, the type of information usually unavailable to those not in the group. He learns the group’s ‘code’, if you will, and brings it back to HQ (marketing company). HQ then uses this information to sort of re-encode the schpiel in order to sell Stuff to the group in ways it can positively identify with. The product now speaks the group’s language.
2) Bring ‘buzz’ back from HQ. This is word of mouth, viral chit-chat of the “look at this” or “have you tasted” kind, and if the Seed is worth his salt, ie cool enough in the group to be emulated, the product he’s buzzing about will show rocketing sales figures. Not very nice, but quite clever. Good old-fashioned espionage and propaganda. Yes, they are doing this to our kids and it isn’t illegal. And there we were, thinking the child actually needed this garment/beverage/gadget for some weird teenage reason.

It was only a matter of time before HQ found out about Blogs. What is a blogosphere if not a properly hierarchical peer group?

In 2000 there was an article that said something along the lines of “as Weblogging becomes more widespread among corporations, there's likely to be some resentment from the pioneers who see it as an anti-corporate concept.” Well I’m not exactly a pioneer but I can imagine...

So now there’s this explosion. Anyone can do it, you no longer have to know a hundred programming languages and be a member of Mensa. You don’t have to be the type of person who’d rather spend her spare cash on extra RAM than on that cute new pair of shoes anymore. Joe Soap can do this thing and what’s more, he can do it for FREE. Keep in touch with family and friends, have your say. And that’s not all! Engage with the global community, make new friends and influence people… All for free.

Well I’m not buying it. Which isn’t to say I’m not buying into it because, clearly, here I am. But when I put two and two together, based on my experience with marketing and on my observation of the metamorphosis - of the great worldwide web of shared information into Consumer Central - I get a definite four. Nothing’s for free.

I propose that there is a frenzy of excited marketing dogs sniffing around personal blogs at any given moment, pissing on tyres, picking up on hints people didn’t even know they’d dropped, all the better to target you with, my dear. Monsanto itself couldn’t make a herbicide apocalyptic enough to kill these weed Seeds before they sprout. You can be sure that those who offer free online journal type services (such as this one which is ‘ours’ to exploit) are not only in on this, but cashing in on it too. Mystery solved? Or conspiracy theory? You decide.

The only way to beat these Stuffing lunatics is to renounce life as we know it and find a cave somewhere. One without a billboard within a 50 kilometre radius, that is. If such a one still exists.


Meanwhile…

It turns out that this blog was hidden only to me. Thank you David, for the magic shift button! We all have one I’m sure, but I didn’t know that you could also use it to refresh stubborn webpages… of course, you have to hold it down for quite a while, which took me the best part of the past week to discover. It’s my new toy. I remind me of Eeyore, getting his Birthday Present from Pooh and Piglet, which amounts to a deflated balloon and an empty Hunny jar. Pooh and Piglet are concerned that something might have Gone Wrong with it all, but Eeyore just happily (as happily as Eeyore can at any rate) sits there putting the balloon in the jar and taking it out again.

:-)

Jangle Balls

For these few days, the hills are bright with cherry blossom. Longer, and we should not prize them so.

- Yamabe no Akahito

Which is why Xmas just isn't Christmas anymore. From October, jangle bells and Xmas ditties, three whole months of special specials, sweaty plastic-suited santas...