Podcasting for InstantAction

I did my first video podcast, InstantAction News!, for work.

You can follow further episodes on the InstantAction YouTube page or the IA blog.

Why I’m Voting for Obama

If I hear one more truss-wearing boomer media cretin slobber on about what a huge difference Obama’s race makes in an election that has yet to happen, I’m going to hunt him down and beat him to death with his own fucking lava lamp. I can’t count the number of times in the last month that I’ve actually heard a reporter (or what passes for one) ask a hapless, and usually baffled, would-be voter, “Do you think America is ready for a black president?”

The goal in asking this idiotic and bell-bottomed question is clearly twofold.

On one hand, it’s to create drama where there isn’t any. These folks seem to have come of age during a time when having a bong hit with a “black dude” turned you into a hip moral giant named “Not My Parents.” They can’t quite come to grips with the fact that there are people their age, like my parents, who never had the chemically-assisted self-awareness and family-funded leisure time necessary to congratulate themselves for sitting next to a black person without panicking. People like my father were helped to get over the very racism the boomers told each other they were fighting (well, you know, metaphorically speaking) by the tender ministrations of the US Military, in fruitful conjunction with the Vietnamese, who condescended to shoot at black and white both, with a refreshing lack of discrimination.

And of course there are those of us who came along much later and grew up together and so never hit on the idea that our lack of discomfort was a virtue when we, first, played together and, later, felt each other up and, in some cases, subsequently married each other. Neither of these two groups, see, and they are far more numerous, if less represented in the traditional media than the other group, make decisions, either pro or con based on race.

So, my point is, there are an awful lot of people, especially (though not exclusively) those my age and younger (and anymore, my age is no longer really young) who are going to vote for Obama, myself included, and the overwhelming majority of these people are not going to do so because he’s black. I mean, you know, good for him, that he is and everything? But we just didn’t get around to thinking about it until after we thought of things like, “Is this guy going to screw us to the fucking wall on another mid-life crisis of a war?” and “Is this guy smart enough to figure out the difference between the gross national product and the gross domestic product and if so, is he going to be able to do anything about either of them?” and “Is this guy going to nail some chick half his age on the desk in the Oval Office and make us all look like tools again?” and “Is this guy un-stupid enough to use the word ‘blog’ without following it with ‘pajamas’ thinking he’s going to get a big laugh and a knowing nod?”

We ask these questions, instead of “is America ready for a black president?” not because we’re moral giants. It’s because it never occurred to us to waste our vote on proving we’re broad-minded. That’s what fucking bumper stickers are for.

And guess what? There is also going to be a huge group of people who vote for others besides Obama, not because “the country isn’t ready for a black president,” but because they don’t think Obama can do what Clinton or McCain can do. (And a little “as if” I think would be salutary at this point.)

So, come on, you bunch of myopic temporally-compromised geezers. Both those of you whose salad days took place to the embarrassingly histrionic soundtrack of Jefferson Airplane and the gut-twirling smell of crappy weed and those of you who spent that same time shopping for horn-rimmed glasses and developing your “hard-headed realism” (you’re all hippies to me):

Cleanse yourself a little of those cheap, easy questions with their pre-fab answers that just so happen to make it easier to get your story in under deadline — and do your damned jobs.

No Embargoes

My point of view on embargoes is actually a stereoscope of two points.

First, I’ve done quite a bit of journalism, having written for Newsweek, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, CNET, Oregon Business and others. I have also worked as a corporate communications professional for Ask.com, Autoweb, Elance, Visa, PBwiki and more. Triangulating on embargoes from both these positions I have, I think, a very clear and distinct perspective. This perspective also happens to harmonizes very well with my gut feeling. Namely, embargoes suck. They’re bad for journalism, they’re bad for business, and they’re bad for the people that both disciplines ostensibly serve.

Here are the reasons why I believe we should dispense with them.

1. No decent journalist should have any trouble producing well-written, well-researched and complete initial news coverage (as opposed to analysis or enterprise work) on a deadline. Any journalist who needs days to write up initial coverage of say, a purchase or a new tech feature, is not going to do it right if they are given a month. Good coverage depends on experienced, hard-working, smart journalists and honest, convincing and passionate business people.

2. Embargoes discourage the cultivation of sources by journalists and of relationships with journalists by companies. Or, if relationships are created, they are of the logrolling variety, and of no use to readers and customers. Honest relationships between journalists and business people, providing again, that neither is in the other’s pocket, are the best way to create good public dialogue about a company. I don’t want to read a journalist who doesn’t know how to find and secure a source, while remaining independent of it. I’m probably only marginally interested in a company, however “important” they might be, who won’t deign to talk to a human being or two, or will only do so if that person agrees to cave in exchange for access. If they do not care enough about their products and the people who buy them to talk to journalists, you can rest assured they’re not going to care about someone as insignificant as you, the customer.

3. Embargoes indicate a company is trying to control not just its information, but how its information is received and reported upon and, therefor, how its customers and possible customers act. What’s wrong with this? It has nothing to do with business, with product, with service. It has everything to do with the belief that the goal of business is not to sell things to people, but to trick them into parting with their money. If that is what a business believes, fine. But as their customers and possible customers, we should vote with our wallets, and we should do so early and often. It is especially contemptible when the company is trying to capitalize on social media trends, even moreso if that company is itself part of that sphere of communications and information companies. Gaming social media for your company sends out a clear message of contempt for your customers. An embargo is a monument to that contempt.

To put it rather more colorfully, I’ll quote from a note I sent to Allen Stern in response to his post on the subject, occasioned in part by asking him how he felt about it. Although I enjoy Allen’s writing and respect the passion he brings to his work, I just didn’t agree with him on this.

Embargoes discourage competition among journalists and transparency among companies. Publications should take the time - and this includes blogs - to build relationships and build chops. The only “first” should be when you do it better than the other publication or writer. Companies should not take it for granted that they can punk every writer that comes along and continue to control the “message” while spinning the “We’re engaged in ‘conversations’ with our ‘community’” dreidel. And writers should not tie their blouse around their breastseses and turn their prison dungarees into hot-pants and get along to go along. That said, anyone who breaks an embargo without finding the capers necessary to say you won’t honor them beforehand, deserves a pingpong paddle across the yapper.

Embargoes are, in other words, trickery. And trickery is necessary only for those companies whose products cannot compete in the market. But it’s a habit, a bad habit, one many businesses, and many business journalists, have found hard to break.

Radio Reporting

Here are a selection of the radio stories I did over about six months at a National Public Radio affiliate.

• Non-profit ISP trouble
• Non-profit ISP deal
• American Monster #1
• American Monster #2
• American Monster #3
• No-spray Campaign
• Movie Strike
• Virutal Shipyard
• Pesticide Injunction
• Rock Rebirth
• Malheur Forest Suit
• Hospital Picket

A parallelogram with unequal adjacent sides

That reminds me.
What exactly is a rhomboid?
The word made me laugh inside.
Diamond shaped?
The big rock that rocked the doctor
Looked like a boxy parallelogram
Or a cardboard box that had been crushed sideways.

Have You Got Your Land Arms On?

The Dream Teens now have a Dream Teens MySpace page you can listen to and have the rock music be all BITCHIN’! and so forth. Seriously. It’s awesome?

It features songs from the prize-winning album, “Cry Havok and Let Slip the Dogs of Rock: the Dream Teens Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp” and one from “Home Shopping with the Hitler Monkeys.” You will enjoy it and become our “friends.”

Rod Steiger in the LA Times described the Dream Teens as “a cross-between the Bay City rollers and Laibach.” That’s stupid.

No! No! Fourtimes no! I am not your daughter.

We sleep in the same bed.

I directed The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco 7 years ago in Portland, where the reviewers were at a loss (though that did not stop them from writing). Well, I’ve decided to direct it every 7 years until I die, like Michael Apted’s “Seven Up” films. I’m going to do it next in Eugene, Oregon in May.

So far, I’ve cast Heather, who played the maid in my first production, who’s going to reprise her role. Kelvin is going to be my fire chief and Scott’s going to design the poster and program.

I have spent a very pleasant afternoon.

I do not deny it.

You can read about the background of the play here and here.

At the age of 40 he decided to learn English using the Assimil method, conscientiously copying whole sentences in order to memorize them. Re-reading them, he began to feel that he was not learning English, rather he was discovering some astonishing truths such as the fact that there are seven days in a week, that the ceiling is up and the floor is down; things which he already knew, but which suddenly struck him as being as stupefying as they were indisputably true.This feeling only intensified with the introduction in later lessons of the characters known as “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. To his astonishment, Mrs. Smith informed her husband that they had several children, that they lived in the vicinity of London, that their name was Smith, that Mr. Smith was a clerk, that they had a servant, Mary, who was English like themselves. What was remarkable about Mrs. Smith, he thought, was her eminently methodical procedure in her quest for truth. For Ionesco, the clichés and truisms of the conversation primer disintegrated into wild caricature and parody with language itself disintegrating into disjointed fragments of words. Ionesco set about translating this experience into a play.

Rhythm & Blooms Florist in Eugene, Oregon

Years ago, any time I stopped by Rhythm and Blooms in Eugene, Oregon to get flowers, it was packed full of people. Beautiful, fresh flowers, put together for you, or in bouquets, and reasonably priced. In the last few years, however, I never see anyone in there. I finally figured out why. I haven’t been in for a long time because the last time I did so, I was made to understand in no uncertain terms that my patronage was getting in the way of the staff doing other things that they clearly felt were more important.

Well, today I decided to try again and stopped by to get a small bouquet for the table. After telling the staff member quite clearly that I wanted to spend $10.00, I asked her to put together a bunch for me with some colorful Gerber daisies in the bouquet. She proceeded to insist I buy a $17.00 bunch with other flowers in it. I tried to direct her attention to my original request but she was not swayed. When I finally realized she wasn’t going to take the trouble to put together a special bouquet for $10.00, I told her I’d have to think about it, and left.

“Patronize local businesses”? Not when they’re patronizing to their customers. Local businesses go out of business most often not because of The Evil from Afar, but because of their own actions.

The fault, dear florist, is not in our stars but in our selves.

Complacency, self-regard and wretched customer service does more to shut down a “local business” than a thousand Wal-Marts. If your dream is to open a florist shop, I think you could do worse than Eugene, Oregon. It’s not like there’s a lot of competition.

Authentic Frontier Gibberish

Last year, I was out at a State Department conference at the Meridian House in D.C. When I went down the wrong set of stairs trying to find the bathroom, I tripped over a water-damaged cardboard document box. One of the documents I knocked out of the box was the following, written on a fax form marked with the seal of the Department of the Interior.

Bush chugs brews
and laughs at dying children
In Sheridan, Wyoming President Bush shoots Pabst “as prayer for the victims” of the hurricane in New Orleans.
President George Bush took a break from his vacation to address criticism of his administration’s actions. At a go-cart track outside of Sheridan, Wyoming, Bush drilled a small hole in a can of Pabst, gingerly fastened lips around and gave thumbs up sign. Vice President Dick Cheney cracked the tab and within a couple of seconds the cold frosty one had rocketed down the President’s gullet. He smacked his lips.

They should relax and have a sweet fucking brew — Bush
“That’s fuckin’ sweet,” he said.
When asked why he had called the press conference in the capital of this western state, several thousand miles from the devastation, he burped.
“Look, even this is too fucking close. Heh-heh. Fuckin’ A,” said Bush (Bush)
The President reached down his slacks and fetched up a handful of what appeared to be corned beef hash. Speaking as he ate, he indicated that everything negative that had ever been said about him, his cabinet, his administration, his political party, was nonsense.

The President was eating trouser hash. I think he’s fucking retarded.

Shambol Johnson
Emergency response head
“There’s never been a hurricane,” said Vice-President Cheney. “Certainly not in New Orleans. If you say there is one, the terrorists win.
“Also, we’ll kill you.”
“Heh-heh,” added the president.
Everyone from Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to the editorial pages of the conservative Washington Times have taken the President to task for his inaction.
“Everything is fine,” said the President. “You’re stupid.”

It is the light-bending frontier gibberish from H.P. Lovecraft’s “beyond.” Merely gazing on this hedgehog- fucking gnome will pull your soul out of your pants and stuff it in a talking pumpkin.

Pope Benedict
Now, everyone dies.

Anyone who’s dying is a fucking liar, according to the President

Like suns

They keep calling me… -Ian Curtis

Poetry’s more powerful than truth
And silence is more powerful than verse,
But silence breaks each time a poet sings
And every song a poet sings is true.

Other poets who have come before
Have sung more perfect songs, by far, than yours,
A sun that gathers planets in its train,
The monad that complexities obtain.

But everyone’s got to make their own chaos,
Scream, and bring the heavens down around you,
Sing, and angels rise up all around you:
Poetry’s more powerful than truth.