I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke

Advertising provides the colorful strands of yarn that hold the fabric of our economy together. It is essential, it is a necessary evil. And in the case of the Budweiser frogs, advertising may not necessarily be evil.

When we think of advertising, most of us think of television commercials. Entertaining little pockets of manipulation that bring us the shows we like to watch on TV. Some would argue that television advertising is insidious and evil in the way that it attempts to control the minds of the public, particularly the weak and the ignorant (like children).

I think it’s interesting that the only persons who can afford to buy television advertising are those who are already rich. Their goal in doing so is to become even richer, why else would they bother?

Surprisingly, I have little problem with rich people paying for my television shows so they can slip me a message designed to get me to give my money to them. I find them pretty easy to ignore, especially since I rarely watch TV. Television advertising aimed at my children is a little more sensitive because it preys on our weaknesses: my children’s weakness in not having a mature BS filter with which to ignore advertising and not having learned the value of delayed gratification; and my own weakness in feeling guilty if I don’t give my children every blessed thing they see on TV.

Even so, I can live with commercials. I can take comfort in the fact that each ad has cost some rich person more money than I make in six months and that it will fail in its goal to convince me to buy what that rich person is selling. And that they will have to pay another seventy-five grand to run another ad next month to try again. Sometimes I even like commercials, they’re funny or nostalgic or creative. When I don’t like them, I can turn my attention to something else or change the channel.

The same is true for radio ads, although they are a lot less likely to have any redeeming entertainment value. But if hearing an obnoxious radio ad is the price I pay for listening to music I like or my favorite morning DJ while I work or drive, it’s a small sacrifice. Once again, quite easy to tune it out or turn it off.

Print ads, they’re okay too. They often provide useful consumer information, or they present interesting images for my eye to appreciate. They can certainly be ignored or avoided by a simple turning of the page.

But the rules are different for the most insidious and intrusive kinds of marketing. These are the ads that cost the advertiser next to nothing to circulate--telemarketing, email spam and fax marketing. Because it’s cheap, there’s no incentive to make the ad entertaining nor even any reason to believe the product or service is worth any more than the cost to market it in this way. This kind of marketing is nearly impossible to fight from a consumer point of view because even if only ONE person responds to it (out of a billion or so potential customers reached), it’s a pay-off.

Last year my home telephone number somehow found its way onto a fax marketing list. For months I dealt with beeep-beeeep-beeep calls at all hours of the day, and usually in the middle of the night. I spoke to the phone company and learned the only thing they could do about it was to change my number. I should change my home phone number so that I can avoid being blasted with beep-beep-beep electronic advertising in a language I can’t even understand.

I thought perhaps it was just one misguided person or company who had my number. I pictured some poor secretary growing more and more frantic as the days go by, wondering why she can’t get the darn fax to go through, even when she’s tried it at all hours of the day!

So I picked up a cheap fax machine at a pawn shop and plugged it in, anxious to see who had been trying so urgently to fax me. Must be a very important message.

Affordable interest rates, get a second mortgage on your house! Get Cheap Prescription Drugs! Enlarge your penis! (okay, not really that one, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that one come rolling off the ol’ fax machine any day.)

I politely called each company and informed them that they were faxing to a residential number and asked them to help me fix it by tracking down the source of the marketing list. I was assured by one and all, my number would be removed. I would never receive another fax from them.

Sometimes the ads come with an automatic "remove me" line, an 800 number you call and put in your fax number and it’s automatically removed. I called about a dozen of those--and the frequency of the faxes doubled, then tripled.

You see, when you call that number that appears on the fax you just received, and you enter in your fax number, you’ve just informed them that it’s a working fax and that a real live person is on the other end receiving the messages. Bonanza! That’s a good fax number to keep selling on that marketing list!

Unlike paid ads in other media, fax ads and telemarketing can not be ignored. Nor do you "get" anything back from your participation--no music, no tv show, no entertainment. It’s like a date with a man who takes you directly to his house and points to the bed and says "I’d like some sex now, please. How bout a blowjob?" without even bothering to offer dinner or conversation as an incentive.

It’s insulting and it’s rude. I hope to see some laws put in place to curb this terrible trend. Maybe now that the election’s over, our glorious president can make this his top priority, right after he finishes taking care of those filthy terrorists.

On Spam

"The problem’s all inside your head," she said to me.
It’s not the flavor so much as the consistency.
She turned her back and then I dropped it in my tea;
There must be fifty ways to hide your Spam.

You see, it’s really not my habit to be rude.
I hope my purpose won’t be lost or misconstrued,
But this meat tastes like it has been already chewed.
There must be fifty ways to hide your Spam.

Just open up your pants, Lance
Drop it down the back, Jack
Or put it in your shirt, Burt
Just listen to me

Don’t make a big fuss, Russ
You don’t have to discuss much
Pretend you have to go pee, Lee
And flush it hastily

She said, "It grieves me so to see you looking thin."
My stomach lurched, oh god she’s serving Spam again.
I tried to smile, but then my head began to spin
Thinkin’ about the fifty ways…

Feed it to the cat, Matt
Hide it in the plant, Grant
Stick it in your shoe, Lou
And set yourself free

Put it under the pan, Stan
Slip it in the crease, Reese
I don’t eat Spiced Ham, Sam
Don’t take it personally

This is lovingly dedicated to my mother, whose affection for "Spiced Ham" in the 1970’s caused me to develop these and other Spam-avoidance techniques. Of course it was always better if I could hide the cans whenever I found them in the pantry and pray that she would forget that she had bought any Spam at all. I was creative and resourceful, and I found excellent Spam-hiding-places all over the house. My brother, less creative and more courageous, preferred to just chunk it in the trash.

I have enjoyed now a blessedly Spam-free existence for more than twenty years.

San Antonio

San Antonio is an amazing city. It has a flavor, a texture, that resonates with my soul. I think my experiences and impressions of Texas might have been more positive if we'd come to San Antonio or Austin or Corpus Christi instead of Dallas.

I tend to find deep meaning in the mundane serendipities of daily life. For instance, I left my Cavalli sunglasses in a Texaco restroom somewhere outside of Waco. By the time I realized it, we'd gone too far down the road to turn back for them. I was certain they were gone, and I mentally blessed whoever found them, a gift from me to her--very expensive Italian shades. Enjoy.

But then we stopped at that Texaco on the way back the next day--and they were there! This had meaning for me. There is magick around me now.

When we stopped again for another potty break, all but one bathroom was out of order. There were three carloads of people ahead of me, and I resigned myself to standing in line doing the pee-pee dance in front of a dozen strangers. I really really needed to go. If a woman could gracefully go pee outside like a man without looking and feeling trashy, I'd have gone out behind the gas station and given my bladder sweet release. Instead, someone was kind enough to let me cut in line, and I was able to avoid an embarrassing accident.

I tried to sketch the riverwalk, but I wasn't pleased with the result. There was just so much detail, so much depth. I tried to let it talk to me, but people kept interrupting and talking to me as I drew, making it hard to concentrate on what the place was telling me. They were all so nice though; I showed everyone my sketches. A young couple sat across from me and I took their picture. They're in love, it's very sweet. I said, give me your email address and I'll send it to you.

Tomorrow I'm going home for a few days to see what kind of trouble my sisters can get me into. I stand firm in my conviction--no more tattoos! But who knows, maybe we'll all dye our hair black or shave our heads or something.

There is magick around me now, I can feel it, and I dreamed it last night. All is beautiful, and all manner of things will be beautiful. Just watch, you'll see.

Just a couple of random memories...

My parents were into rodeo in a big way when my brothers and sisters were young. My brother Bobby was a bull rider and his girlfriend was a barrel racer. She made a dress for me once, out of the same material that she wore when she rode. I wanted to be like her, so my first ambition was to ride horses in the rodeo.

We had to move to town when I was about six so my folks could take care of my grandmother, but we kept my horse (Peppy) and I continued to ride sometimes whenever I could talk someone into taking me out there and waiting around for me. It wasn't very often, especially after my dad died.

I was about 14 when my mom and my sister Alice and her kids all went out to the farm together. My boyfriend lived out there too, his name was Mike. He was nowhere around so I just saddled up Peppy and rode around the pasture for a while. At dusk we headed back up the gravel road toward the stables. My favorite thing to do at that time of evening was to gallop along the road in the quiet of the country, so I worked her up into a trot. That's the last thing I remember clearly. I don't know what happened, I don't remember getting thrown off, but the next thing I remember (vaguely) is walking along that country road in pain and seeing Peppy running far and fast up ahead away from me.

I was scraped bloody from chin to eyebrow on one side with bits of gravel embedded in my skin, so I know my face must have interacted quite harshly with the road. By the time our neighbor Mr. B drove by in his pick-up truck, I was starting to be hysterical. I kept saying "I don't know! I don't know where I'm going! I don't know what happened!"

He took me back down to our farmhouse where Mom and Alice were waiting for me. I don't remember much of that. Next thing, I remember being in the car and still freaking out. I kept saying, "Mom, I don't know! I don't know what happened! What happened?" I kept asking her what happened over and over again, until it started to freak her out too, and she said "I guess you got thrown off the horse! Shut up!"

I don't remember much about the hospital. Next thing I remember is being at home later talking to Mike on the phone. He must have been there at the house when Mr. B brought me back because he said, "You seemed alright. You were calm, just standing there." I kept asking him, "Is today Tuesday?" Funny, that's a very clear memory, asking over and over, "Is today Tuesday?" I don't recall now whether it was actually Tuesday or not.

The doctors at the hospital must have advised my mom to wake me up several times in the night to make sure I wasn't dead or in a coma or something because she came in more than once with a flashlight and shined it in my face. She asked me goofy questions like, "What school do you go to?" and "What's your middle name?"

And that's my traumatic horseback/amnesia story. I did try to ride a couple times after that, but I'll admit I was freaked out. Plus, I was way more into boys than horses at that point.

Speaking of boys, one of them took me to the county fair the next year, when I was 15. He was a goober and I didn't want to go but my mom made me. She liked him a lot. Since my friends were going to be there, I let him take me.

You know that ride with the big wheel that spins round and round, and hanging down from it are these long chains with seats attached? You sit in the seat and it spins you round and round up in the air. Really fast and really high.

Well usually, there's a little chain that you fasten up between your legs but this ride had only the chain that fastened across in front.

My friend Anita and I were messing around, leaning over to try and push against each other while the ride was in full swing. I was leaning waaay over, trying to grab her hand...when I came forward out of the chair. The "cross the front" chain caught me up under my tits and held me for a second as the chair slid up my back behind me. Anita started screaming at the ride operator dude to stop the ride, but he was chatting up some women and paying no attention. She yelled at me, "Hold on!" Instinctively, I tried to find something to grab with my hands but the only place to reach was up above my head. I grabbed the chains above me and tried to pull myself up, but you can imagine the G-force opposing me as I'm swinging around in a full horizontal arc. In fact, when I reached up to grab the chain, I slenderized myself to the point that I slipped right past the "cross the front" chain and flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

Yes, reader, I was a projectile. I clearly remember that moment--the adrenalin, the noises, the sight of the carnival lights against the black sky, and I clearly saw the grill of the carnival truck as I fast approached it, feet first.

I made contact in the fender area, right around the front tire.

Again, acting purely on instinct, I jumped up and took several steps before I realized my leg was broken. I stood there trying to decide whether to sit back down in the dirt or continue trying to walk over toward something I could sit down on. In a minute or two, Anita and my goober boy hero came running up and helped me over to the side. The ride operator came up and said, "You kids can't play around on these rides like that!"

In those days, the trend was tight tight jeans. I usually had to lie down to get mine zipped up. Yuck, I know, but we thought we were the shit back then. I had on my favorite pair of painted-on Sergio Valente jeans. When I stood up to head back to Goober's car, Anita said, "Oh my god, your jeans are ripped."

I felt my backside and discovered what an understatement she'd just uttered. My jeans were more than ripped, the whole ass was shredded right out of them and I was offering my sweet cheeks up for the whole world to see. Apparently, though they may look very hot, tight Valente jeans are not terribly durable when you smash them up against heavy machinery at high speeds.

Well Goober drove me home and carried me from the car into the house. It was the first time I was ever carried by a man. I discovered I kind of liked it. It's a shame I'm not petite, then I might have been carried more often since then.

And then I got to wear a cast for a while, and that was pretty cool. Especially since it got me out of 7am marching band practice.

So that's my traumatic carnival ride story. To this day, I'm not a fan of roller coasters or other whippity fast, fling-my-body-around-through-the-air kind of rides.

Cupid's Trick

Really love this song.

The vid made me curious about him. Guess what happened to him. He committed suicide in 2003--stabbed himself in the chest. Can you imagine? Reminds me of that scene in "Elizabethtown" when Orlando Bloom tries to rig the exercise bike to stab himself. Seems to me, if you wanna die, and death by stabbing is an acceptable way to go, it would be easy enough to get someone else to do it--you shouldn't have to do it yourself.

Once, when I was in college, I picked up a book from a table in the library and started to read it. It was a forensics book, specifically about how to examine wounds to determine if they're self-inflicted. Did you know that the way to tell if hatchet wounds to the head are self-inflicted is to measure the depth of the wounds. The first whack that you give yourself in the head with a hatchet will go pretty deep, but subsequent wounds will be more shallow--no doubt because that first one hurt a little bit!

Just baffles me that this happens often enough to lend itself to study. Who is out there whacking themselves in the head with hatchets? Is it the same tortured geniuses who are out there stabbing themselves in the chest like Elliott Smith, or overdosing on heroin like Bradley Nowell,

or shooting themselves with shotguns like Kurt Cobain?

Why do female geniuses not do this kind of shit? And then I recalled...Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven...Virginia Woolf walking into the swelling sea with rocks in her pockets...Sarah Kane hanging on the end of a rope.

I think the burden of artistic genius is its intensity. One can endure it only so long before finding some way to end it.

Hmm...deep thoughts today. I'm not really as morbid as I sound--I'm actually quite cheerful at the moment. Hope you are as well.

Our Father who art in heaven
Stay there
And we'll stay here on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty
With its mysteries of New York
And its mysteries of Paris
At least as good as that of the Trinity
With its little canal at Ourcq
Its great wall of China
Its river at Morlaix
Its candy canes
With its Pacific Ocean
And its two basins in the Tuileries
With its good children and bad people
With all the wonders of the world
Which are here
Simply on the earth
Offered to everyone
Strewn about
Wondering at the wonder of themselves
And daring not avow it
As a naked pretty girl dares not show herself
With the world's outrageous misfortunes
Which are legion
With legionaries
With torturers
With the masters of this world
The masters with their priests their traitors and their troops
With the seasons
With the years
With the pretty girls and with the old bastards
With the straw of misery rotting in the steel
of cannons.

--Jacques Prévert, tr. Lawrence Ferlinghetti

For ChaBongo

Sometime ago, I visited your blog and found you (understandably) freaking out about the difficulty you'd had in finding another job after getting laid off. I've been there, I know that panic feeling. Responsible folks like you and me, we hate being faced with the idea of becoming one of "those people"--you know, one of those people who are behind on all their bills, owe everybody money, scrambling to keep the utilities turned on while putting food on the table, robbing Peter to pay Paul (creative credit card management--until the credit runs out). Without a paycheck, it seems that becoming one of "those people" is inevitable--yikes!

I left you what I hope were encouraging words, and I hope that you weren't offended by my comments because I'm going to basically give the same advice here again now, only in a lot more detail. (If I recall, the theme was "Think Outside the Box.")

First of all, "those people" are born that way, they are not created from simple financial misfortunes like getting laid off. Even if you fall behind on your bills--even if your electric gets shut off, your creditors have developed the persistent desire to speak with you on the phone, and you have to visit a food bank for groceries--you're not one of those people. You're just broke, that's all. A temporary condition and not one to be ashamed of. I've been broke. It sucks, but it does make you appreciate not being broke when you finally unbreak yourself.

I hope I don't sound insincere or condescending to give advice in this regard, since I do have a job. Easy for me to say your glass is half full when my glass is running over. But, as I see it, your glass is no where near empty, and I believe in your ability to fill it up again.

You're not the only friend of mine struggling to find a job, I have a few. And I always have the strangest feeling of envy when I think of your circumstances. Envy, yeah. Weird, huh? Remember, I said I've been there--earlier this year, in fact, I was laid off right after buying a new house for which I had spent all my savings on the down payment. So not only did I have a house payment to make now (a rather big one--twice as much as my rent had been), I had no cushion to fall back on to tide me over to another job.

Yeah, okay, envy wasn't what I was feeling then--I was freaking out!

For a week or two. Then I caught my breath and started to put together an emergency plan. I came up with several ideas to bring in some cash and/or reduce expenses, and I implemented those. I began the job hunt.

Fortunately, my job field has an excellent market in this city, so I was unemployed only a month, then it was back to work, vacation over.

Or unfortunately.

See, I'm not kidding when I say I envy you the position you're in--unable to access the easy road back to the land of the regular paycheck. Being forced to turn to other roads you otherwise would not take. I believe if you're not getting job offers in your field after, I don't know, some reasonable length of time, some number of interviews, then you probably don't have the right combination of things that you bring to the table to successfully compete with whomever else is out there getting those jobs. Continued effort and failure will only frustrate you more. Take a break. Change direction.

Scary part is over--lost the job, can't get another one, oh hell, I'm broke, oh shit!

Now comes the exciting part! You have nothing to lose! You get to start over and point yourself in any direction that makes your willy wiggle. You are not limited to opportunities listed in certain search keywords on Monster.com. You're not married to your resume.

If I had been unable to get my job back this spring after maybe two months (maybe three) of interviewing, I would have flushed my technical resume and pointed myself at editing/writing full time. I would have reduced my standard of living down to dirt-poor college student levels--no spending, no cable TV, no luxuries, no free time, no travel, etc. and altered my budget in various ways, such as renting out my spare bedrooms, selling my sports car and getting a clunker, canceling my cell phone, taking a low-pay PT job, etc. Maybe I would have even defaulted on some credit card debt or filed bankruptcy.

You're wondering why it was "unfortunate" that this didn't happen? Because I would have been a full time editor and writer. I would have found new, exciting literary opportunities and projects that I can't pursue now because of my regular job. I would have made new contacts in the literary and publishing world. I would have finished my novel--and being broke would have been a hell of an incentive to get that sucker sold! By this time next year, I bet you I'd be a little less broke. And even less the year after that.

As much as I want those things, would it be worth consciously sacrificing what I have now to be broke? Well...no....I'm so fond of spoiling myself and having money is much more fun than not having money...I would only have the opportunity to do this with my life if I had no choice, nothing to lose, nothing to give up in order to get it.

Or--you know, another thing I've always wanted to do is open a bookstore. Maybe that's what I would have done. Throw my every resource into opening a store, and then work my ass off to sell books!

But, you see, I'm tied to the safety net of a chubby paycheck. I will never get to try something new. I'll never find out whether the heart of a natural born bookseller/shopkeeper beats in my chest...gods help me, I'll probably never even finish the damn novel because my financial survival doesn't depend on it.

So ask yourself--what would you do if you could? And then figure out a way to do it because--you could!

I leave you with a true story:

There was a young man who learned to juggle in high school because he correctly saw this as a way to impress chicks. Soon all the girlies wanted him to teach them how to juggle, and lots of fellows did too. Juggling became such a habit for him that he carried juggling items around with him (bean bags, balls, whatever) and juggled just about any time his hands were idle. In college, he'd pass the time waiting for the professor to arrive in class by juggling.

Well, it would tend to draw attention, wouldn't it? So quite often the professor would find his students all clustered around the juggler in the back of the room as he showed the basic moves--this is how you do it, it's real easy once you get the rhythm.

Not wanting his informal juggling lessons to disrupt his classes, he typed up the basic juggling lesson, drew some crude illustrations, made copies, and began handing them to those who approached him about learning his clever skill.

The rest of the story should seem obvious by now. Soon, demand for his little instruction manual made him pause to consider...is there a basic "how to juggle" manual out there in print? Because he was finding that just about everybody "always wanted to learn to do that!"

So, yeah, he polished up his little booklet, researched the market enough to realize that he'd have to add something more to it in order to charge an amount that would be profitable, and he packaged the book, Juggling for the Complete Klutz, together with a set of three beanbags so that people would have everything they'd need to get started (assuming they had two hands).

The company became Klutz, and they offer hundreds of clever books, activities, and crafts, sold in stores but especially marketed through schools in book fairs and catalogs.

In our home, we have at least ten Klutz products, including Juggling for the Complete Klutz, which I bought for myself. (No, damn it, I have not mastered the skill yet--that's probably something else I'd have had time to do if I'd stayed unemployed!)

So what have you got? If the corporate world keeps saying "no thank you" to what you bring, what else you got, and who can you offer it to? You have something someone wants. You're funny? Hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to break into stand-up comedy...might not be as hard as you think, and wouldn't it be exciting to try? Got a sexy voice? I bet you'd get a kick out of doing voice overs and radio spots. Are you really good at teaching aerobics class or yoga? What if you could turn that into--opening your own gym and tanning salon? Put a spin on it, make it clever, unique. What have you got?