Calling a Spade a Piece of Earth Moving Equipment

Disclosures: 1. I cannot remember the last time I spent money on a product or service due to its advertising impact (exclusive or marginal). 2. I am not most people in that I am brand agnostic. Most people must succumb to the constant barrage of advertising that surrounds them not unlike the captives that come to sympathize with their kidnapper during a long ordeal. This is perhaps the trick that large and small brands use in today's brand crowded marketplace to move their wares. If you really think hard you realize that 99.9 % of stuff sold on this planet is a commodity. There is a lot of it and it can be bought and sold at any time of day through multiple channels. So stand out in the insane crowd major corporations to small businesses spend serious change on making a smarter (or so they think) megaphone to yell the loudest. Be it by way of outdoor (ads that adorn variety of billboards to urinals) to print to airtime on radio and TV and the internet. Then there is the pop ups that adorn all manners of electronic interaction services from game consoles or game interfaces to the fast expanding social networking websites. The fact that people tend to use these nuggets of wisdom to influence their buying behavior must tell us one thing - either people are seriously affected in their duramatter or the corporations that peddle their goods are wasting good money. The truth most likely is somewhere in the middle - that is a safe way of saying no one really knows. Think of the cliches in modern advertising and you will see why I say what I say - 1. Zero to Sixty in 3 seconds - really? I mean unless I was buying the next fleet for the Indy 500 or Nascar 800 how does this gem of intelligence coerce me to do anything? 2. Kills 99.99% of germs - ahem - only those that you counted (or could count) you dolt. If this was true then how come all the kids in my child's class still take home the sniffling and occassional stomach bug every winter? Given all the moms that drive up to pick their ward are boasting your product like a prize catch in their car dashboard? 3. 64 acres of pristine beachfront - really? Am I going to stay at this resort or develop a golf course? I am not sure if hectares would make it more attractive to the next idiot walking off the street? 4. Blazing fast 89G - first it sounded like a new space capsule that would hurtle me out of this moronic rock - but wait its nothing as dramatic - its merely the local phone company's newest offering allowing uninterrupted wallet draining feature to yak away with my facebook friends of whom I now have 8,999 of them thanks in part to my 89G connections.. 5. Winner of 26 Dufus awards - substitute dufus with JD Powers or any other Powers that be - now you really need to buy this contraption since it is 24x7; peels on its own; makes coffee and also wipes your butt when you are done with using it....and now its only 9.99 for a limited time of 895 days. Oh and did we say its a limited edition (we are making north of just under a million)? Now I wonder if Caterpillar ads call a Spade a Spade?

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language. Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds. The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic. Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'. This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music. Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'. Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac. Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'. Well I will be damned. I thought I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...

Brown Motion

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