A world of opportunity

---

While in France, we were stuck (of course) with French TV. This is not so bad: they have game shows, and variety shows, and talk shows, and comedies, and dramas.

 

 

 

Since neither my nor Partner’s French is completely fluent, however, we pretty much stuck to CNN.

 

 

 

The news was – odd. They do a strange mélange overseas: American stories (GIANT EYEBALL FOUND ON FLORIDA BEACH!) to global-interest stories (the saxophone industry in Taiwan, for example).

 

 

 

(I’m not kidding. They did a story on the saxophone industry in Taiwan. We saw it at least six times, on six different days.)

 

 

 

All this is fine. But what really captured my attention were the commercials.

 

 

 

No more commercials for The Scooter Store or the Jitterbug! These were commercials for countries.

 

 

 

For example: every ten minutes (it seemed), CNN / France showed an edited version of this video, which portrays “the unforgettable energy of freedom” in the nation of Georgia. Behold!:

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I like the music, and the dancing. I was not, however, aware that there were Georgian Ninjas.)

 

 

 

Speaking of former USSR republics, here’s Azerbaijan:

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of factories and oil wells and fast cars, and a decent-looking restaurant. Okay! I will definitely build my saccharin factory there!

 

 

 

Many other countries were represented. There was a Taiwanese ad with a nice-looking man doing Chinese calligraphy with a mop. There was Kazakhstan (not so memorable). There was Morocco (all factories and factory workers, but with a nice Moroccan-music background). There was Montenegro (part tourism, part business).

 

 

 

But I will leave you with my very favorite, for eastern Poland.

 

 

 

And I ask you: why haven’t you invested in eastern Poland?

 

 

 

---

 

 

The Church of the SubGenius

---

I am pleased to say that I own a tattered first-edition (paperback) copy of “The Book of the SubGenius.”

 

 

This is a bunch of stories / collages / imaginings created in the 1970s and 1980s by a group of creative nuts who made up their own religion using 1950s advertising iconography, UFO lore, some William Blake, some Star Trek, a dash of H. P. Lovecraft, and lots of memories of Sunday School.

 

 

It’s impossible to explain their theology. Let it suffice to say that their messiah is a grinning pipe-smoker named J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, who appears as the daddy in every 1950s print ad (see the above image for an example). "Bob" was sent to warn us against the coming Weird Times. According to SubGenius belief, the world is a bad experiment created by a renegade entity called Jehovah-1, or Ra, or Wotan; we’re expecting some aliens called the Xists anytime now (actually, they were supposed to arrive in 1998).

 

 

The creepy thing about this book is that some of their lunatic comedy prophecies actually came true. They predicted global warming, and the fall of the USSR. They also predicted that, in the early 1990s, teenagers would begin wearing broomsticks up their asses, so they didn’t get everything right.

 

 

One of my favorite SubGenius concepts was the ShorDurPerSav: the Short Duration Personal Savior. If you ever encounter someone (or something) you like, that person / thing becomes your ShorDurPerSav. It can be a bowl of ice cream; it can be a friendly dog. I feel no shame in telling you that I have adopted this concept into my life. The cute little UPS man can be my ShorDurPerSav for five minutes, before I move on to something else.

 

 

I also like the titles the SubGenii made up for themselves: HellSwami, Rev. Dr. Dr. Pope, BurnMartyr, Dominatrix. (And I haven’t even mentioned the magical drug Habafropzipulops, or the Fightin’ Jesus, or the plant-based Xist computer MWOWM.)

 

 

I’m not a SubGenius myself. But maybe I should convert.

---

 

Etsy

---

Etsy is an interesting website on which craftsy people sell craftsy things: soap, jewelry, clothing, ceramics, jewelry, homegrown herbs, jewelry.

 

 

I like that the Internet has brought back a kind of corner-store mentality to the world.  I like seeing that people are making artisanal candles and selling them on the Web.

 

 

I only wish those craftsy people were getting rich. 

 

 

But most of them are not.

 

 

Back in the faraway 1990s, I used to sell lots of stuff on eBay: vintage phonograph records, books, memorabilia.  It did not make me rich, and it was often a pain in the keester.  Finally I gave it up.

 

 

A eFriend of mine crafts beautiful little accessory items and sells them on Etsy.  She spends hours making the items, and more hours photographing / describing / posting them.  She is not yet independently wealthy, however.  (Do yourself a favor and check out her things.  They are very pretty.  I myself have purchased two of her handcrafted necklaces, to give as gifts, and they were both very pretty.)

 

 

One of the other things I like about Etsy is that, when you join, it gives you a “taste test,” to see what kinds of things you like.  Kind of like being at the optician: this, or this? Except that it’s: chair, or necklace?  Pottery, or scarf?

 

 

Afterward, it gives you a list of things you might like.

 

 

The first time I took it, it recommended two basic categories of things to me: French Provincial furniture, and silver skull jewelry.

 

 

Go figure.

 

 

The Etsy algorithm knows my inner soul!

---

 

 

Verizon FIOS

---

We got an email about a month ago from our landlords, informing us that there would be a Verizon FIOS meet-and-greet in our apartment courtyard at the end of May.

 

 

Our longtime internet / phone / TV carrier (which began with C and ended with OX) had excellent customer service, but had been getting progressively more expensive over the past few years. So, we thought, why not go have some punch and pie, and hear what the nice FIOS man has to say?

 

 

As it turned out, we were pretty much the only people who turned up at the meet-and-greet. (I had a very small Italian cold-cuts sandwich.) It was hosted by a cute young salesman, who talked us into switching from C + OX to FIOS. (He also offered us a whole boatload of gift cards, which very much sweetened the deal for Partner and me. We love gift cards.)

 

 

The actual conversion happened about a week ago. Poor Partner: he was home alone when the Verizon installer came. It took the installer forty-five minutes to find the place where the cabling enters our apartment. (It was in my clothes closet, incidentally.) Then it took another four hours for the installer to set everything up.

 

 

Then it took us another three hours in the evening after the installer left to get everything up and working.

 

 

The process wasn’t perfect, but then: what is? I got the master account working, and then started creating email accounts. I bogged down for a while, but finally figured it out.

 

 

Conclusions:

 

 

·       The FIOS network is faster (slightly).

·       The TV service (especially in HD) is clearer and has less interference.

·       We get more features (like caller ID and voice mail) for less money (at least for the next two years).

·       I vaguely recollect that, ten years ago when we went from ATT to C+OX, we went through the same kind of hell week.

 

 

More than a week has passed. I’m getting pretty much the same amount of email I was getting before; everyone has found me, even some of the spammers. I’m getting used to typing my much longer (but very descriptive) email address. And did I mention how much faster the Net is?

 

 

Shop around, kids. Shop around.

 

 

There’s gift cards in them thar hills.

---

 

Logos Quiz

---

I was browsing drearily on my iPad the other day, looking for some new diversion, and found something called the “Logos Quiz.” Stupidly I assumed (for various reasons) that this was a Bible quiz. And I’m just a fool for Bible games and such.

 

 

But the game is far more insidious than any Bible quiz.

 

 

You are presented with a table of several dozen advertising logos: images, typography, color schemes. None is complete. You must identify them.

 

 

At first I was sniffingly scornful. Some ad agency put this together, I thought; product placement as a game.   Hmm. Starbucks, of course. Firefox. Barbie . . .

 

 

Then: goodness, I thought. This is harder than it looks.

 

 

There are (I think) eight levels; I’ve only made it to Level Five. The brands aren’t just American, but worldwide. Some are achingly familiar; others are almost-but-not-quite obvious.  (Quick, describe the insignia on a Saab!) Sometimes it’s just a font, or a combination of colors.

 

 

I was amazed when I opened the Financial Times on Monday and found that the redoubtable Lucy Kellaway had  written this week's column on the Logos Quiz! (I was angry, a little, because I’d already made up my mind to write about it, and Lucy stole most of my thunder by making most of my points before I could. But she writes so much better than I do, so there’s no real harm done on the cosmic scale.)

 

 

Here are some of her points, and mine:

 

 

Point One: Advertising / logos are insidious. They dig into your brain and nest there. You will be amazed at what you recognize viscerally. (Quick! Sketch me the Nike logo! I know you can!)

 

 

Point Two: Things that are obvious to me as a fifty-four-year-old are not obvious to a twenty-year-old, and vice versa. (Lucy, close to my age, recognized the Kodak logo right away, but her young son didn’t; he recognized the Xbox logo right away, but was scandalized that his mother didn’t.)

 

 

Point Three (Which Lucy Didn’t Make In Her FT Article): The companies must be giggling about how this game is working in their favor. People are actually Googling their logos and corporate branding!  (My first thought, when I saw the game, was that it was somehow sponsored by a corporation or group of corporations.  I still think that this might be true. Who knows?)

 

 

Postscript: I don’t know if you read Thomas Gibson. He’s a little too FutureWorld even for me. But I read one of his novels, “Pattern Recognition,” a few years ago, and it made a little impression on me, mostly because its main character is a media consultant who reacts to corporate logos on an instinctive level.  You know the Michelin Man? She has a reaction to him that resembles anaphylactic shock.

 

 

I think I understand that. I used to feel the same way about Speedy Alka-Seltzer.

 

 

(Now: can someone explain to me the logo with the letter “N” shooting a laser beam off into space?)

---

 

 

Rocking the boat

 

---

I was never one to rock the boat. 

 

 

 

So you order a bran muffin, and they give you blueberry.  Does it matter?  Don’t you like blueberry muffins?  (Well, not as much as bran muffins.  Besides, as I said recently, we all need the fiber.)  If you complained, how long would it take the waitress to rectify her mistake?  And would she spit on your bran muffin while “correcting her error”?

 

 

But sometimes it’s good, and refreshing, to blow one’s stack.

 

 

I ordered some cheese pizzas for an office party a while back. People were bringing their kids, so we wanted the pizza cut into child-sized pieces.  See?  Simple.  I even dug out a previous order and read it over the phone to the catering lady.  And when we picked it up –

 

 

Well, hm. 

 

 

They had it ready an hour early, so it had an extra-long time to cool down. 

 

 

They cut it in Jurassic Park-sized slices.

 

 

I ordered four pizzas; they gave me five.  In eight boxes.  Figure that out.

 

 

Last year they charged me $12 per pizza; this year, $25 apiece.  No explanation for the price increase.

 

 

I lost it at the catering lady.  I mostly lost it because she had the nerve to tell me I was getting an excellent deal.

 

 

I had to explain to her that, if I order a thing and get something else, it is not a good deal.  It is, in fact, a crappy deal.

 

 

I get all quotational when I get mad.  I found myself saying, apropos the botched order, “It is wrong from beginning to end.”  I will give you, dear reader, a gigantic slice of ice-cold cheese pizza if you know what work of literature that line comes from.  (No Googling, please!)

 

 

So you see?  I do rock the boat from time to time.

 

 

I’m sure it was very ineffective; I’m sure that catering lady will botch someone else’s order tomorrow. (I saw her in the store a while back. It took me a moment to recognize her, but she recognized me all right; she ran away from my vicinity like a cobra from a mongoose.)

 

 

I like being angry from time to time.  It's like that Chimney Sweeping Log that's advertised on TV.  Anger burns all the soot off my soul, and I feel much cleaner and clearer afterward, and far more serene.

 

 

Until someone messes up my pizza order again.

 

 

And then: KABOOM!

 

 

Good florists and bad florists

---

This is another cranky-old-man story.  Please stop reading now if you’re sick of these.

 

 

Still with me?  Okay.  Here we go:

 

 

I wanted to buy flowers for a memorial service that took place on Friday, November 11: Veterans’ Day.  I called my favorite local florist, A New Leaf, a not-for-profit which employs people with psychiatric disabilities; they do lovely arrangements and are generally very fairly priced, but sadly they were closed on Veterans’ Day and couldn’t deliver the flowers.

 

 

I hung up and thought briefly.  There’s another local florist, whom I shall not name – he has a creepily twisted beard, and his shop is on a street which rhymes with Schmickenden, for all you locals – and whom I do not normally use, as I think he is a grimy little gnome.  (Some years ago I was standing behind him in line at a local coffee shop, and he went on and on to someone about his staff, blah blah blah, they weren’t trustworthy, he had to do everything himself, blah blah blah.  I wanted to bludgeon him to death on the spot, on behalf of his staff.)  But, I thought, he’s nearby, and my crazy friend Patricia thinks he’s wonderful, and he can certainly execute a simple commission like this. 

 

 

So I call Grimy Little Gnome and describe what I need.  “And,” I said, “I’d like the flowers delivered tomorrow, noonish.”

 

 

“The flowers,” Gnome said in his haughtiest voice, “will be delivered today.”

 

 

This caught me offguard.  “Beg pardon?” I wheezed.

 

 

“We are closed tomorrow,” he said loftily.  “We will deliver the flowers today.”

 

 

“That’s not appropriate,” I said.  “I don’t want them delivered today.  I want them delivered tomorrow.”

 

 

“That’s simply impossible,” he said coolly.

 

 

“Ah,” I said.  “Let me get back to you.”

 

 

And – click! – down I go with the receiver.

 

 

So I call my third florist – Jephry, on Broadway – who was charming on the telephone, and very sweet.  When I got to the memorial service the next day, the flowers were there, and they were spectacular. I will also say that he didn’t overcharge me at all.

 

 

Moral: when someone gets all diva on you, you should go all diva on them right back. 

 

 

That’ll show ‘em! 

---

 

CEOs are not like the rest of us

---

The death of Steve Jobs brought forth a spate of worshipful obits, didn’t it?  I honestly had no idea.  I mean, rest in peace and so forth, but as a businessman, he was - hmm – brilliant but a little monomaniacal.  But I heard people quoting the most inane Jobisms, and odd little reminiscences – his (very substanceless) Zen meditations, his quick temper . . .

 

 

I am seeing, under all of this, a creepy renascence of the Victorian figure of the Captain of Industry.  For one thing, there’s that repugnant CBS show “Undercover Boss,” in which CEOs dress up in bad wigs and goatees and take front-line jobs in their own stores; it always turns into a Cinderella story, and the boss turns out to be Just A Guy After All, and Not So Bad.  He hands out gifts and bonuses and so forth at the end of the show, and pledges Never To Forget The Little People Again.

 

 

Phooey.  I bet.

 

 

I never said CEOs were bad.  I simply assume that they are, like the rest of us, greedy and venal.  The main differences between CEOs and the rest of us is that they have gotten their hands on some boodle, and have now shifted their focus to hanging on to what they’ve got.

 

 

They have also generally convinced themselves that they are somehow magical high priests of the material world.  There are large segments of the media (CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, even my beloved Financial Times) which constantly assure CEOs that they are very smart. 

 

 

The FT interviews a famous person every week over lunch; they even include the menu and the bill.  A few weeks ago, it was the pianist Mitsuko Uchida, who had some insightful things to say.  The following week, however, it was the CEO of J. Crew, a nonentity named Mickey Drexler, who was incredibly full of himself, running around being very cute, telling everyone very loudly that he knew everything. (He predicted that the restaurant's best-selling pizza would be margarita, and was delighted with himself when he turned out to be right; then he ranked the most popular cookies: chocolate chip, right?  Then oatmeal.  Maybe oatmeal raisin.  Then sugar.)

 

 

Genius, right?

 

 

The FT often asks CEO questions like: “Describe your work ethic in ten words.”  You can imagine the answers; I won’t reproduce them here.  But the column often also asks them: Do you deserve your salary?

 

 

And, do you know, every single one of them so far has said “yes.”

 

 

No demurral at all; no “Well, I hope so.” 

 

 

Aarggh!

 

 

As Archy the Cockroach said almost a hundred years ago: "Yours for red rum, ruin, revolt, and rapine."

 

---

 

Body wash

 

“I'm going to CVS,” I announced to Partner, throwing on my boa and mounting my camel.  “Do you need anything?”

 

 

He ruminated briefly.  “If you think of it, some body wash,” he said finally.

 

 

“What kind?”

 

 

“Oh, anything,” he said.  “You know what I like.  Something nice.  Not that cheap stuff.  And something that lathers up really well.  Some of the cheap stuff – you have to use half a bottle to get any lather out of it.”

 

 

“AOK,” I chirped.

 

 

A few minutes later I was in the BATH & BODY aisle of CVS, in deep meditation.

 

 

Okay.  There are well over a dozen brands, ranging from the familiar to the bizarre.   Some are very cheap; others cost five times as much.  One brand – I think Axe – has an “attraction enhancing” version, which contains pheromones.  (It didn't say they were human pheromones.  I had a sudden vision of Partner galloping down the street being chased by a moose, or maybe a raccoon or a possum, and decided that this was not a good idea.  On the other hand, it might be very funny.)  The most beautiful container was easily the Old Spice Fiji Scent; sadly, the contents smelled like a fruitcake frosted with Tide.  One brand was bright orange, and also powerfully orange-scented.  I almost bought it, but then I thought: how much orange is too much orange?  And how quickly would we both tire of this?

 

 

And, incidentally, how was I supposed to tell if any of them lathered up?  I tentatively poured a few drops of one of them at random onto my fingers, and it felt sticky and thick, as you'd expect liquid soap to feel.

 

 

Some of the bottles are mock-silver, in interesting futuristic shapes.  I realized later that they're shaped like remote controls, or Wii devices.  Clever marketing to a male customer base, eh?

 

 

So I ended up buying the Right Guard Total Defense Five-in-One Hair and Body Wash.

 

 

And do you know why?

 

 

Because I got a dollar coupon for buying it.

 

 

Hallelujah!

 

---

 

Toucan Sam and the military-industrial complex

---

I recently read that Kellogg's, the cereal giant, is suing a group called the Maya Archaeology Initiative, because the MAI is using a toucan as part of its logo.

 

 

No lie.

 

 

The MAI is fighting back very shrewdly. They point out that the toucan in their logo (see the image at the head of this column) is modeled on a real toucan, whereas Toucan Sam is, well, a cartoon character.

 

 

Also, there is this charmingly insensitive commercial, using vaguely Mesoamerican tropes like step pyramids and feather-wearing witch doctors with high shrieky voices.

 

 

I point this out to Partner, and he grunts. “Corporations are the new nations,” he said. “Haven't you noticed? They'll probably win their lawsuit. They can get whatever they want.”

 

 

“Like 'Rollerball,'” I said, catching on.

 

 

“Exactly,” he said.

 

 

I have been musing on this ever since. The other evening I was catching up on back issues of the Financial Times when I came across, on one single page, companies called Rotork, Spectris, Petrofac, Essar, and (best of all) Astorg.

 

 

What are they, daleks?

 

 

I am not frightened of corporations in general, any more than I'm frightened of nations in general. They're abstractions, run by groups of rather silly people, no more intelligent than you or me.

 

 

But I think Partner is right. Nations are beginning to seem a little – hm – twentieth-century. Look at Libya! Look at Afghanistan! Borders are really meaningless. All that matters – from a global point of view, anyway – is what can be gotten out of a given geographical area: natural resources, manpower, strategic advantage. And corporations – oil companies, drug companies, mining companies, agricultural companies – can extract these things easily.

 

 

Mitt Romney, you may know, recently told someone at one of his campaign appearances that “corporations are people too, my friend.”

 

 

No, Mitt, they are not. They are legal entities created by people, for the benefit of a few people – owners, shareholders – through the employment of the labor of some other people. All the nice folks at Hewlett-Packard don't get together at the end of the day and roll around in the vault; only a few people at the top get to do that. The rest of us – well, read this little tract by my friends Karl and Friedrich, if you haven't already. Almost 200 years later, I still find it refreshing.

 

 

From Robert Bly's “Those Being Eaten By America”:

 

 

The world will soon break up into small colonies of the saved

 

 

Soon, I hope. Soon.

 

---

 

Groupon

---

Only a few months ago, Groupon sent me interesting offers. Good restaurants. Nice things. Things I actually bought into from time to time.

 

 

Now I get Groupon offers for helicopter tours and photo montages and day-spas. These are things I will never spend money on.

 

 

The Groupon business model, so far as I am concerned, has collapsed, in something like record time (and certainly much faster than Tulipomania). And just in time for their initial public offering, which will be mega-brilliant!

 

 

The Times saw it coming. Groupon mostly focused on restaurants at first, but even then, the restaurants realized they were losing money on Groupon customers. It was money that would have been spent on advertising – but most restaurants do very little advertising anyway. (Think about it. Where do they usually advertise? High-school yearbooks! The Penny Saver!)

 

 

Then there is the whole issue of the Groupon Voice: the nastily “funny” mode in which the Groupon emails are written. They joke around, they make stuff up. (They talk about the riding stable that's “closed on Horse Christmas.” They talk about the “meat surgeons” at the steak restaurant. Haw haw!) This is hipsterishly amusing, but can backfire when one lives in a non-hipster world, i.e., this world right here.

 

 

Last February, Groupon splashed some television commercials, in one of which Timothy Hutton spoke of the plight of the people of Tibet – and then of its delicious cuisine. Segue to Groupon logo.

 

 

Funny, right?

 

 

Lots of people thought not.

 

 

Groupon gives a quiz to writers to determine if they understand the “Groupon Voice.” You should take it. It's all wrong. For example: which of the following is the most interesting description of a 4700-pound chandelier? Choose one:

 

 

• A: Really big and shiny

• B: More brilliant than a studious Christmas tree

• C: A death trap

• D: Blinged out

   

 

For me, the funniest answers are C, D, and A, in that order. B has too many words, and is too labored.

 

 

The official Groupon answer is B.

 

 

I understand Groupon's unwillingness to call something they're advertising a “death trap.” But there's a little thing called “litotes,” which is furiously at work in both A and D, and which makes them both very funny. B is stuffy. B has too many words. Shorter is always funnier, Groupon people!

 

 

Groupon will be dead soon. Other (and cleverer) companies will have analyzed their business model, found work-arounds for its flaws, and taken over Groupon's territory. Groupon will join AOL and MySpace soon, no matter what happens with their IPO, which (I'm sure) will be more brilliant than a studious Christmas tree.

 

 

You just wait and see.

 

---

 

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: the franchise

---

Partner and I saw the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise while we were on the Cape. In two words: Ho Hum.

 

 

Why did we go? you may ask. Well, as Partner said, we'll go see pretty much anything with Johnny Depp in it, and this is pretty much true, damn it. Also, the producers usually manage to squeeze some fun out of the concept (which, given that the whole thing started with a pretty damp and dismal Disneyland ride, is amazing in itself).

 

 

But there's nothing new here. Swordfight after swordfight; fracas after fracas; scurvy rascal after scurvy rascal. One may also ask how Penelope Cruz manages to stay so clean when the rest of the cast look like they've been rolling in a litterbox.  I suppose this qualifies as a “joke” in the movie, but I didn't get much of a chuckle out of it.

 

 

I had sort-of-high hopes during the first fifteen minutes, when we were treated to nice cameos by Richard Griffiths (as a repulsive King George II, pullulating on his throne like Jabba the Hutt) and Judi Dench (far too brief, as a Henry Fieldingish matron in a carriage, with a nice but withered decolletage, being bounced upon – and propositioned! - by Johnny Depp). Then Keith Richards comes oozing out of an alley, and I think: well, this is fun. Kind of like a Muppet movie.

 

 

But – alas! - no. No more cameos, for the rest of the movie.

 

 

Apart from Ian MacShane (who does most of the real acting in the movie, as a purringly malevolent Blackbeard), everyone is pretty much phoning this one in. Johnny Depp's drunken wobble is uninspired. Even Geoffrey Rush seems bored.

 

 

But this, kiddos, is the secret of the blockbuster franchise: so long as it makes money, it will go on forever.

 

 

(That doesn't mean it can't be fun. We saw Fast Five a month or so ago, and it was perfectly acceptable: lots of stolen cars, lots of perfectly unbelievable situations – and why were we in Brazil again? - and how do you drag a huge bank safe down the street with a car? - but a good time was had by all.)

 

 

But so long as the Pirates people can keep selling tickets (well, Partner and I fell for it, kaching! kaching!), they'll keep wasting celluloid in this way.

 

 

And in case you wonder how many sequels there will be: check out this lovely Onion News interview with the writer of the new Fast & Furious movie.

 

 

In a word:

 

 

There is no end to it, the voiceless wailing,

No end to the withering of withered flowers . . .

 

 

Yo ho ho!

 

---

 

 

The secret recipe for Coca-Cola

---

Last week, Ira Glass of NPR's “This American Life” broke one of the great secrets of our time: the formula for Coca-Cola.

Coke was invented back in the late 19^th century, when druggists all over the United States were formulating their own counter beverages. It had real cocaine in it, by the way, which explains the name. (Back in those days, cocaine was considered a harmless stimulant, like caffeine. Sigmund Freud was a cocaine user in his youth, and warned a girlfriend in a letter: “I hope you're ready to fight off a big wild man full of cocaine!”)

The Coca-Cola Company denies that this is the real recipe. Naturally they do. They are also obviously enjoying this very much, as it draws attention to the uniqueness and mystery of their brand. They also know that, if anyone is crazy enough to make this stuff at home, it will taste more like Windex than Coca-Cola.

I love this recipe, though. If I had lots of time and a couple of hundred dollars to throw away on a completely pointless enterprise, I'd make a batch myself. Since I don't keep neroli oil and Fluid Extract of Coca around the house, I would probably have to make a couple of purchases, and possibly break the law a few times. (Neroli oil is a perfumery ingredient, by the way. Maybe I can substitute some cologne. As for Fluid Extract of Coca, I am informed that I can buy whole-leaf coca tea and make my own. I'm off to the local Whole Foods right this second!)

Cookery is just throwing things in a skillet any old way. Baking is more like chemistry: if you don't combine the right things in the right proportions, you'll end up with bowling balls and hockey pucks instead of cakes and cookies. Candy-making is like nuclear physics: precise amounts, precise timing, precise temperatures.

But, evidently, creating a new soft drink is more like science fiction, or the laboratory of Doctor Frankenstein.

I'm perfectly happy to accept the recipe as correct. It looks crazy and random and highly caffeinated, like something a druggist would throw together. I'm sure it's been modified over the years – well, of course it has, they took out the cocaine, didn't they? But it's a starting point.

Now: what in the hell do they put in Dr Pepper?

---

Better jerkitude through technology

 

Have you seen these television commercials?:

 

 

• An obnoxious neighbor taunts his neighbor's holiday decorations, using text, email, and phone.

• A guy in a car pool receives an emailed joke seconds before his coworkers receive it. He reads it, laughs shrilly, and puts his phone away. When his coworkers catch up with him a few seconds later and try to share the joke with him, he feigns boredom.

• An obnoxious girlfriend (see example #1 above) breaks up with her boyfriend via text, email, and phone, while sitting at a restaurant table with him.

   

 

What is the subtext here?

 

 

Evidently that technology is a great way for jerks to enhance and improve the quality of their jerkiness.

 

 

It reminds me of a incident in Graham Greene's “Travels With My Aunt.” Henry, the narrator, is treated very rudely over the intercom by his aunt's live-in lover Wordsworth. Later, in person, Wordsworth is surprised that Henry is miffed at him. “'Man, it's jus that little mike there,'” Wordsworth explains. “'Ar wan to make it say all kind of rude things. There ar am up there, and down there ma voice is, popping out into the street where no one sees it's only old Wordsworth. It's a sort of power, man. Like the burning bush when he spoke to old Moses.'”

 

 

Anonymity allows people to be stupidly mean. Go check out the messageboards on the New York Times or New York magazine sometime; they're trolled regularly by a few anonymous people who say things they know will be inflammatory, who enjoy getting people riled up.

 

 

It's a sort of power, man.

 

 

And apparently the vendors of smartphones and such are now encouraging you to get in touch with your inner jerk, using their new technology to be an even bigger and better jerk than you already are!

 

 

As commercials go, I much prefer those Allstate ads with Dean Winters as Mayhem. He's very cute in his suit, and he has the perfect smile/snarl for someone representing a chaotic force of nature, and he winks as he leaves the scene of the crime.

 

 

If you have to be a jerk, you should at least be a sexy jerk.

 

 

 

 

Ironic America

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Partner and I take turns in the bathroom getting ready for work every morning.  If anything scandalous happens on TV while I’m in the bathroom, Partner says “OH MY GOD!” in a loud voice, and I come running out to see what it is.

Yesterday morning it was the new series of All-American Chia Pets.  Washington, the Statue of Liberty, Lincoln – hmm – Obama.

“I notice they didn’t do a George W. Bush,” Partner said snappily.

“I think George W. Bush already has stuff growing out of his head,” I said, quick as a flash.

The wit fairly flies around here.

I pondered this new product all day.  On the one hand, I bet President Obama might think this is pretty funny.  It goes without saying that he has the perfect head for a Chia Pet; only Elmer Fudd has a more symmetrical cranium.  Obama might take it as sort of an ironic tribute.

Or someone could buy one as a mean gag gift for the entrenched Republican on his gift list.

Either way, whether you buy the thing ironically or sincerely, the company makes out like a bandit.

We are drowning in irony these days.  One of the NBC junior executives on “30 Rock” referenced his “ironic kickball league” last week.  New York Magazine wrote an article on the death of hipster culture, which brought out lots of bitter (and deeply ironic) commentary from both pro-hipster and anti-hipster partisans.  New York Magazine also keeps track of trends with the “Undulating Curve of Shifting Expectations,” charting “pre-buzz” trends, “saturation-point” trends, “backlash” trends, and – here we go – “backlash to the backlash” trends.   Apparently these last are things that are so tired, so ridiculous, so overplayed, that they’re worthwhile again.  


Or maybe they really were worthwhile in the first place, and we just got tired of them because we hipsters are so jaded.


Real-life examples:

• Designers are sending handbags to Jersey Shore's Snooki. Not their own handbags, though. They want Snooki to be seen with their competitors' handbags, since Snooki is Ms. Bad Taste. Snooki is probably completely unaware of this; she only knows that she gets a lot of free handbags. (What do you suppose she likes best about a handbag? Separate pockets for pickles, lip gloss, and bronzer?)

• There was a snarky little article in the New York Times dissing the pretentiousness of the foodie movement. This was followed by a snarky little New York Magazine article dissing the pretentiousness of the New York Times article.

• And one last local example of unconscious irony: the night before Halloween, I heard a student talking on her cellphone.  “MU-thaw!” she bellowed.  (I’m trying to give you an impression of how completely unbearable her voice was.)  “I’m GOING? To a PARTY?  And I need something – like, some Seventies dress – something REALLY AW-ful and UGLY – you know, like you probably still HAVE, like in your CLO-set?”

Imagine you're that girl’s mother.  What would you have said to her?


And keep it unironic, please.

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Nothing succeeds like success

 

I've always thought that, although I know almost nothing about sports, I could be a sports announcer. They mostly just spout arcane statistics, punctuated with truisms like “The team with the most points is the winner at the end of the day” and “Even a good team can play a bad game.”

Same for business commentators. They have all their own arcana – quadruple-witching days, P/E ratios, derivatives – but they always end with something like “At the end of the day, the company that makes the most money is the best investment.” I swear. If you don't believe me, tune into CNBC almost any time of day.

There was an odd little piece in the Times today about success and failure on the Internet – why Netflix and Amazon have succeeded, and Blockbuster and Barnes & Noble have failed. Turns out that this particular commentator wrote a little piece in 1997 saying that, now that Barnes & Noble was going to move onto the Internet, Amazon was doomed. We know how that story came out, right? He was a good sport about it, though, along the lines I described above - “You never know,” “Sometimes there are hidden variables,” yak yak yak.

But he mostly talks about Netflix and Blockbuster. Remember when Blockbuster was going to move into the mail-order DVD business and take all of Netflix's business away? Blockbuster was slightly cheaper, as I recall, and you could rent and return DVDs at the store locations as well as through the mail. All in all, it looked like Blockbuster had the business all sewed up.

But they failed. They're now selling for seven cents a share, by the way (I just checked).

Mister Business Analyst has all kinds of Monday-morning quarterback theories about this. (These guys are always great about explaining why things happened the way they did. Not so great at predictions, though.) Netflix had secret bar-code reading machines that were more efficient. They had a better business plan. They focused on the home-delivery business more intensively, without worrying about building brick-and-mortar stores. They made less management mistakes.

Perhaps.

Let's try looking at our own anecdotal evidence – what we do as individuals, to see if that gives us clues about general behavior.

We have been Netflix subscribers for at least seven or eight years. (We gave it up for a year or so – we found we weren't keeping up with the three-at-a-time delivery – and resubscribed with a slightly cheaper one-at-a-time plan, with which we are still very happy.)

I remember when Blockbuster came out with their mail-order plans. The ads were all over TV. “No late fees ever!” Slightly lower price than Netflix, as I said. And we had a Blockbuster store about two blocks away.

So why didn't we switch?

• One: brand loyalty. Netflix had been very reliable and easy to use: in the whole time we've used them, we've gotten maybe two or three bad disks and one wrong movie (it was Police Academy 5, and I was so bemused that I watched it anyway).

• Two: being able to rent/return from the Blockbuster store was not an appealing prospect. Video stores were fun for about ten minutes when they were new in the 1990s. After a while, I found that it was more like a death march around the store, desperately trying to find something good, being followed by the blank stare of the teenager behind the counter. Much easier, much more pleasant, to set up your queue on line.

• Three: corporate snottiness. When I told Partner what I was writing about this evening, he said very angrily, “You can say that I still have a bad taste in my mouth about all those late fees I paid over the years.” Blockbuster actually thought that people would be grateful for their discontinuation of their nasty little late fees. Instead, people thumbed their nose at the company and said, “We'll stay with Netflix, thanks.”

For a while, I saw the yellow-and-blue Blockbuster envelopes in the mailbin at work, along with the red Netflix envelopes. I wondered if Blockbuster would actually take over.

After a while, the yellow-and-blue envelopes disappeared.

At the end of the day, the more successful company succeeds.

See? I could be a business commentator too. Move over, Maria Bartiromo.