fortune cookie marketing
I’m just getting really fed up with creative professionals online, and especially many within the Indy local scene. There are some really cool and genuine people, but some not so much so.
What brings all this on? Just I hit a limit on what some local Tweeters were going on and on about. There are so many marketing themselves as being far more knowledgeable than they really are. They are using marketing lingo to other marketing professionals to puff up what they perceive as their public standing. And some actually fall for it…
This is partially a Twitter problem. It’s too easy for information to make waves (no matter how small) around certain circles. This produced an obvious distaste of it becoming common for people to reuse the information of others without proper credit. Even when proper credit is given, it seems that many only recycle information without contributing anything.
I’m mostly just annoyed at the fortune cookie marketing lingo thing to other professionals. In Twitter, it like some profound saying that is meant to show just how wise the original posting person is…
Like fortunes and horoscopes, they are crafted to be such that everyone can get something out of it. A few seconds after reading things like this, the flaws take over and show me why 140 characters shouldn’t be used to expose your backside so often to people with half a brain.
Maybe I am growing tired of Twitter and such. I don’t think so… I’ve always been annoyed at certain aspects of marketing professionals being disingenuous through outward communications. But that’s the risk you run being part of the marketing profession I guess. I value honesty and transparency.
hair in funny places
yeah, once again my site is going through a change.
without the technical boring details, I’ve switched servers and I’m going through a whole bunch of foreign processes to get the thing back and running.
But I’m not sure I don’t want to do a complete reboot of my blogging and ditch a lot of the older content. who knows.
east and back
We got back from out jaunt to Maine. It was a much needed break for both of us.
The Cliff Notes… Drove out to Chamberlain, Maine (also near New Harbor and Pemaquid). Spent most time there. Spent a day in Rockland. Spend half day in Freeport – I didn’t buy a thing. Got to spend time with Mom, Wayne, Carrie, Rick, Noah, Charlotte, and Baxter (the new nephew). Stopped off in Cleveland on the way home to see a Gehry building and hit the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.
I’ll be posting pimctures soon on Flickr. So far, the only good ones are family and the Gehry building. I’ll definately be posting about the Rock ‘n Roll HOF. We talked about it a lot on our way home. Anyway, work time…
the big three of the moment
Whew, I feel like caca today. It’s like I’m in a coma, but at work and need to get things done. I’ll see if a second cup of coffee does anything, so hold on a minute… Ok, got it.
It’s been one hell of a last few weeks. There have been three big events: the arrival of a new nephew – my wife taking the bar exam – and a s-load of work.
The nephew was more than two weeks overdue, and the labor was quite the process. I’m looking forward to meeting Baxter here in a few weeks.
The bar exam thing is something we’ve all known about for awhile, but I’m still very proud of my wife for getting through it.
The work thing is just… I don’t know what word to place on it. It’s like I’ve been working much harder than usual on the type of things that really drain me (higher level creative concepting, brand concepting, market research, etc). Don’t get me wrong, I love having work. Especially after this year. It’s just that of all this work, I’ve yet to see any payoff in creative justification or from the business owner standpoint. It just hasn’t felt as rewarding as I hoped it would to this point. But things are definitely pointed in the right direction.
And the damn coffee isn’t working.
Identity Problem
I wouldn’t call it identity theft, but I’ve been having a problem online…
A few weeks ago I got an email welcoming me to Twitter, and I didn’t think anything of it until I started getting followers… Then I connected the dots. Someone had created a Twitter account using my personal email account.
I separate all my emails from personal matters and everything else. I have one to correspond with my friends, family, or really important things. There’s another email address that I use for purchases, blog stuff, bills, online accounts, all that other BS. I’f found this to be a very handy strategy… Until someone used my personal account email address probably by accident.
I let it go for about a week, hoping that the mope would realize his lack of notifications. Nope.
So I had to go and take control of an account using my email address. I went to the main Twitter page and requested to reset my password before going on and deleting the account. Then they tried to re-establish the account while not realizing that they weren’t getting any emails… So finally I had to go in and change all the account details.
Was I wrong in doing so? I don’t think so, but I do feel kinda bad that someone probably hates Twitter right now despite their own mistakes…
Fool me once
I thought for awhile yesterday about something to post on the fool-hearted day that is April 1, but nothing was moving me to really jump in with Tom Foolery.
But today I’m trying to think… I don’t know many who do any April Fool’s day things. I had a friend in college try and do it to me, but it didn’t work… I know I’ve done a couple of little things, but nothing that’s really stayed with me. Have any of you been fooled or the fooler?
I think I may have to start planning some balyhoo for 364 days from now. Who knows if it’ll happen, but we’ll see.
177 on 8
I golf a little now. I used to golf a lot, back in high school. This is an account of my hole in one and I felt compelled to do after taking a nice picture of the ball…
So yeah, I was on the golf team for three years in high school. A few things to note. First was that I was required to wear a hat during matches to cover up my non-standard hair color (purple was my favorite). Second was that I was kicked off the golf team for a practical joke involving Ex-Lax. That’s a blog for a different time…
Anyway, I went golfing after school with two of my best friends one fall/winter afternoon. It obviously wasn’t golf season. It was something to do. Because I haven’t head from either in a long time, I don’t want to use their names. So I’ll call my friends Mr. H and Mr. T.
Mr. H was on the golf team with me, and Mr. T was just a friend in common that liked to play for fun.
So we went to play at Saddle Brook which was just a nine-hole course at the time. Saddle Brook is on the west side of Indianapolis and I’d played there a lot since I had a brother that lived on the course. But it was just a round for fun, and we were playing like it. Not taking ourselves seriously and enjoying the activity.
I was playing about average for me. two thirds of the way through I was headed for my usual score of around 42-44. Mr. H was right there with me, and Mr. T was way up there. None of us really cared about our score because it was all about fun.
I found a ball on hole 7 (now hole 16), and laughed out loud because of the corporate logo. It was a Beanee Weenee logo golf ball.
When we got to 8 (now hole 17), I checked the yardage which it claimed as being 177 on the card, but I thought it was at least 10 yards short. It’s a cheeky little hole with an elevated, two tier green. I grabbed my 7-iron and threw a ball from my pocket onto the tee box. In my usual style, I just set up and hit it without teeing it up and with no practice swing.
Mr. H and Mr. T were both still getting their clubs and one of them asked where my shot was heading.
“Right for the green” I responded not thinking much of it. It looked like a good placement. One of them asked where it went. “I think it went in the hole” I responded.
Without them hitting their tee shots, we all ran up to the green and jumped up with celebration at finding the ball in the hole.
The Society of Mist
So I just watched “The Mist” which is a movie based on a Stephen Kind Novella. It has a lot of the standard suspense / SciFi / Horror elements you’d expect. But it also has a major plot component in common with another King book, The Stand. This plot component for the most part is, for me, one of the scariest things that comes to mind. It’s the breakdown of civilization as a result of catastrophic events.
I’m not sure where my fear came from. It may have been from watching the LA Riots as a kid. Maybe just observing the fear permeate everything in the aftermath of Oklahoma City and 9/11. Some of it I can trace back to studying sociology and the history of modern examples of such things happening. It’s the complete absence of civil behavior that results in the infringement of inherent human rights with no basis for doing so.
It’s just one of those things that I hope people have enough wits about themselves to keep their heads in the face of adversity, and it may be pessimism but don’t think most can overcome groupthink. It seems that there are too many little pockets of society that continue to thrive based on the notion of perpetuating fear within the populace.
But now I’m on the edge of getting into specifics, and I could go on for thousands of words in examples and analysis when it’s completely unnecessary in this forum. It’s just a small window into one of the few things that really scares me. I’ve never met an anarchist who really understood what it would really mean.
fun way to start the year
So yeah… Quite a way to start off the year… With a mystery illness.
It’s a little indescribable bug with no perceptible fever, but I’ve got sinus buildup, aching, and that o’ so wonderful disorientation just hanging around. Sorry if that was TMI.
It’s getting on my nerves, but there’s not much I can do about it according to the doctor until fever over 100 or perceptible infection.
I hope everyone else has a better start to their year.
cringe
This isn’t photoshopped, and it makes me cringe for the reasons you may or may not know…
Wouldn’t be surprised if this image goes bye-bye… If it does, so will the post…
