Churbuck.com

Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR.

I love this line, an indictment of PR consultants and social media gurus who “know” how to handle the mob.

“I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR.  First of all, who cares?  Second of all, what kind of business are you in?  I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company?  One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach.  That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer”

The mime was working the crowd next to the loggia and the entrance to the Uffizi Gallery. White-faced and in an orange jumpsuit with the helpful word “Jailbird” stenciled on the back. He wore a single green glove – a sanitation worker down on his luck – furtively  hamming around behind the backs of unsuspecting tourist girls, whose hand he would grab and as they turned to see who hadaccosted them he would shout, “HA!” and give them a terrible fright.

“Stay away from him, he’s a f#$%^r,” said my daughter, wise to the ways of the Florentine alleys after a term across the Arno. I was tired – having just surmounted the 450 plus steps (and my severe acrophobia) to climb to the top of Bruneschelli’s dome of the Duomo – and I was in no mood for any mime bullshit. Too late. Five people between me and the crazed white faced garbage man and he locks eyes on me – as Quint said in Jaws, he had a doll’s eyes, dilated crazed Siberian husky eyes. There was nothing I could do but shrug and endure.

First we embraced like long lost brothers and I understood what did me in – I was wearing an ancient orange Orvis polo shirt which made me look like a large tangerine. He in his orange jumpsuit … it all made sense but then it made no sense. Lesson learned, wear orange at one’s own peril.

Then we danced a little and the mob of people sitting on the stairs along the loggia started to laugh. The laughter was like mime fuel. He smelled poorly.

We stopped. He dropped to one knee and put his ear to my stomach. He held up one finger to the crowd. They laughed. He held up two fingers to the crowd. Twins. They laughed louder. I thought of Alec Baldwin playing Junior in Miami Blues and how he casually snapped and broke the finger of a Hari Krishna in an orange robe who had bothered him at the airport, the surprise causing the Krishna to die of a heart attack on the spot. There were too many witnesses for me to maim the mime, so I continued to smile while inwardly counting down the moments until the mime assault would end.

Finished with establishing that my paunch meant that I was pregnant – go ahead, laugh at the fat man – the final indignity involved lifting my shirt, baring said paunch to the mob (and the astonished, apoleptic, laughter-oxygen-deprived faces of my wife and daughter) and then planting his face on my abdomen and doing the mime equivalent of the 14^th century letterpress – aka The Motorboat – leaving behind a bas relief of his white makeup with two eyeholes, my navel as a nose and below, two horizontal black lines from his lipstick.

The crowd went insane. Truly insane. I turned, showed them the greasepaint on my chiseled six-pack, saluted and walked on. A beaten man.

Thx to Mark Hopkins for the post title.

DecoDen is currently a popular trend amongst young Japanese women. They enjoy decorating their phones lavishly with bright objects like beads, and enjoy having a truly one-of-a-kind portable phone. Deco comes from the word “Decorative” and Den is an abbreviation of “Keitai Denwa” which means portable phone in Japanese.Here is where a PC like the IdeaPad S10-2 comes in. Check out what happened when we told our decorator “you can do whatever you like.” It’s a sight to behold.

via Yamato Thinking » Blog Archive » Ultra DecoPad.

Found on Popular Science, a nice moaning robot mouth.

Fred in the comments of yesterday’s post noted that his wife foraged 24 of these suckers during her perambulations of Cotuit. Today, expecting a minor haul of litter, I set out down the same walk as yesterday and found 47 of the little bottles of fun, most strewn in a single spot near Loop Beach, others scattered randomly around Main Street and Oceanview.

Here’s the scenario behind the evidence in my Sherlock Holmesian mind:

• The perp is an alcoholic.  (Durrr. No way!) As a former bartender I know serious vodka drinkers are the real deal.
• It’s two people. Maybe three, but most of these belong to the vodka man
• The vodka man likes flavored vodka. Primarily cranberry and orange flavors
• The cranberry preference points to a local who wants to be a localvore and drink the native fruit
• The second perp likes Jim Beam
• The third is an occasional schnapps drinker, though I suspect Schnapps Man and Vodka Man are the same
• The perp drinks these at Loop Beach while parked and looking out at Nantucket Sound
• He is a he
• He has a drunk driving arrest on his record which is why he tosses the empties as he drives away, as he doesn’t want to be nailed under the open container law
• He may do this during the day, preferring to drink the more economical version from a bottle at home.
• It wouldn’t make sense for him to do this in the evening, unless he is concealing his drinking from his wife or girlfriend.
• He does not live in Cotuit.
• I bet he buys these at the Coop.
• I bet he drinks two, maybe four at a time.

Via Clay Shirky – YouTube claims that Viacom was uploading its content to the video hosting service via several “marketing agencies” while beefing in public that its rights were being violated.  If true, then Sumner Redstone and friends are jerks of the first degree, giving further proof of the mainstream media’s guaranteed penchant for doing the wrong thing digitally whenever given the opportunity.
From the YouTube blog:

“For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.”

via YouTube Blog: Broadcast Yourself.

You know the theory that if you are in a plunging elevator you should jump into the air at the last moment before impact? First of all — take a physics class. Second of all, don’t try it in a Turkish elevator because it doesn’t work in one of those either.

Here’s the setup. Turkish elevators are pretty small by American standards. Four people are cozy. Six intimate. Four of us climbed into one on the Asian side for an appointment on the sixth floor with an agency. It was the style with the door that swings — not slides — open. We climbed aboard, I made my obligatory “little Turkish elevator”  remark and pressed “6″.

We go up three floors, watching them roll by the doorway which I am standing against. Then we stop. We are not there yet. Have I pressed the wrong button?

We start to descend. More like: we start to slip. Then the lights go out.

Then we plunge.

[insert whistling sound here]

We hit. Major bang. I keep my feet but that sucked and we land three feet under the first floor. Pitch black darkness.

I declare: “I have a flashlight” and I unzip my most awesome Patagonia bag and pull out the Qualcomm combo-laser pointer LED flashlight.

My colleagues are very upset. Thank heavens no one broke wind or worse. I turn on the laser dot and that gets a laugh. then the light. Light is good. Then I find the alarm button and I push it a couple times.

I hear muffled Turkish sounds like “copchik?” I don’t even try to reply. I hit the alarm again for good measure.

And then the claustrophobia strikes. Will we be there for 30 seconds? 30 minutes? 30 hours?  A couple minutes go by, we make little jokes but none of us are excited. Then the door opens and up we climb to fresh air and I immediately think about those poor souls stuck under collapsed buildings in Haiti.

I guess the guy on the roof with the crank was tired. If we were in North Carolina Cherie Berry, the lady who’s face is on the elevator inspection certificate would have saved us. There’s even a song about her.

Thanks to CNET and Technically Incorrect. Just too much weirdness to do anything but admire.

Thanks to Nano

I’m a food snob with the best of them — but I am not necessarily an organo-phobe who demands to know whether my steak died happy and fed on grass. I am also a customer of D’Artagnan, the specialty butcher supply house that can provide everything from armagnac duck sausage to wild boar. Being an occasional customer I receive their email offers.

I just had to ask, who would pay $178 for a turkey? I mean, turkey unto itself is not up there with Kobe beef and Bluefin tuna as one of life’s essential delicacies. What’an equivalent Butterball cost? $40?

I’d expect this thing to play the accordion and entertain me.

“Enjoy the natural goodness and delicious flavor of a traditional Heritage Turkey at your holiday meal.”

via Thanksgiving Turkeys, Buy Fresh and Natural Turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner Online.

“I will tell you this about iLiver 2.0: It’s nanoengineered, and it kicks ass. I wake up every morning feeling like Shaft, Superfly, James Bond and Kung Fu all put together. I’m bench-pressing twice my body weight”

Life is better again. Dan Lyons brought back Steve Jobs, this time with half of David Pogue’s liver.

via The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

College roommate and professor of pre-columbian archaeology at the University of Kansas, John Hoopes, writes me on Facebook about the mounting online lunacy of the end-of-the-world movement that is based on some Aztec Mayan calendar saying 2012 is when it all goes down.

Professor Hoopes sent me a link to a profile of a new age end of world visionary named Pinchbeck — the new Timothy Leary — who in a Rolling Stone article was described as preparing for a forthcoming drug trip thusly:

Pinchbeck wore Depends and a blindfold, and kept a plastic vomit bucket by his head.

Classic! Reminds me of a college drinking game called “The 100″ — where the aim was to drink four cases of Budweiser (and four singles) between 6 pm on Friday and 6 pm on Sunday. This looks easy on paper, but is nearly impossible as it requres two beers per hour (assuming zero sleep). Whatever, I was never in the same league as Pinchbeck, though I did know some guys who donned hockey helmets before opening a bottle of surgical ether in their room in the event of unconsciousness and head injuries.

Update: It is midnight Thursday to midnight Sunday according to drinkwap.com. I recall it was 48 hours, not 72.

Good luck John with dispelling the end of world stuff. We’re all counting on you.

Okay, I won’t talk about the last month’s nasal experience. Let’s just say the septoplasty thing is pretty much over — I still don’t have any feeling in the tip of my nose, aliens come out of my nostrils every morning, and the black eyes have sort of faded away.  I would not recommend contracting a cold in the week following a nose job. No.

Anyway, in nasal distress, I decided to buy a “neti pot” — a teapot one sticks in one’s nose and then pours saline solution into one’s nasal cavity, which floods and drains out the opposite nostril. Very holistic. Just the ticket. It sort of works. It sort of doesn’t. Well, it mostly doesn’t, but it does loosen up the aforementioned “aliens” and produces some jetsam that brings to mind ancient honeycombs.

Then I found this wonderful demonstration of what to do and what not to do courtesy of toothpastefordinner.com

On the Southpark website today, while searching for a dimly remembered episode, I failed and received this encouragement

via Entropy Gradient Reversals – Would You Like Fries With That?.

So Facebook changes its terms of service to basically say “all your base belong to us” and the mob goes mental, so Facebook backs off.

Basically they tried to pull a Burger King and claim anything put on their service belonged to them and not the author.

Hit the rewind button to Rageboy, aka “Chris Locke” — who took Burger King’s early “Have It Your Way” web site to a fine-print extreme by uploading all of Project Gutenberg into their text entry box. I suggest someone do the same to Zuckerberg if his lawyers regain the upper hand.

“Sure we like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Who doesn’t? But to get our vital juices really flowing, there’s still nothing quite like a hot lick from Foreigner. And it seems that Dave@Burger_King.com feels much the same way. Although the band’s hit single Double Vision was initially an ode to psychedelic drugs (“I never do more than I really need…”), BK must figure that the generation who intrinsically understood this message must have long ago either OD’d or gone into advertising themselves. Thus their use of the Double Vision sound clip to hawk their double cheeseburger. Are we talking blinding marketing brilliance here or what? But never mind what we think. Thanks to the Miracle of Interactivity, you can let Burger King know what you think directly by clicking on their tasteful animated graphic.

Having suggested such feedback, however, we feel duty-bound to pass along the following notice. It’s at http://www.burgerking.com:80/legal.htm, but you know, sometimes a link just isn’t the same as the Real Thing.

All remarks, suggestions, ideas, graphics, data, questions or other information communicated to Burger King Corporation through this site or through electronic mail (together, the “Submission”) will forever be the property of Burger King Corporation. Burger King Corporation will not treat any Submission as confidential, or proprietary and will not be liable for the use of any ideas for its business (including without limitation, product or advertising ideas) and will not incur any liability as a result of any similarities that may appear in future Burger King Corporation operations. Without limitation, Burger King Corporation will have exclusive ownership of all present and future existing rights to the Submission of every kind and nature everywhere. Burger King Corporation will be entitled to use the Submission for any commercial or other purpose whatsoever, without compensation to you or any other person sending the Submission. You acknowledge that you are responsible for whatever material you submit, and you, not Burger King Corporation, have full responsibility for the message, including its legality, reliability, appropriateness, originality, and copyright.

Fill my eyes with that Double Indemnity. When you get right down to it, isn’t this what the Web is really all about? (Our own contribution to the furtherance of responsible Copyright Protection consisted in feeding the entire collected corpora of Project Gutenberg through the Burger King form, thus ending Literature As We Know It.)”

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit | vanityfair.com.

Last weekend, in Seattle, the topic turned to McKinsey and did I know the story of Clark Rockefeller and his wife, a McKinsey partner and Seattle native ….

I had lunch with Clark Rockefeller in the fall of 2000 in a little outdoor cafe on Park Avenue. We talked about the perils of raccoons nesting in fireplaces.

Now he is in jail.

“While the alleged kidnapper’s prints were being analyzed, the bureau, in hopes that someone might recognize him, released pictures to the media, and soon a lifetime of carefully constructed identities began emerging. Some people knew him as Chris Gerhart, a University of Wisconsin film student. Others said he was Christopher Chichester, a descendant of British royalty, who had charmed the residents of a wealthy Los Angeles suburb in the 1980s, only to vanish after being sought for questioning in the disappearance of a California couple and their possible murder. Still others remembered him as Christopher C. Crowe, a TV producer, who had worked for at least three Wall Street investment firms in the late 1980s before suddenly vanishing. Scores of people knew him as Clark Rockefeller, a Boston Brahmin and scion of industry whose friends included important artists, writers, producers, physicians, financiers, and members of prestigious private clubs.”

Freaky. There’s talk of him being tried in a court on Cape Cod.

I use TweetDeck to follow mentions of ThinkPad and Lenovo on Twitter.  For the past few weeks a new phenomenon has popped up, one that confuses me to no end.

So we have a user @moon, who tweets, fairly frequently, variations on the following message:

” On Monday Groundhog Day I’m giving away a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 RT @moon 3 times and be the first to RT a selected Tweet on GHD”

Then he posts variations of that promotion by inserting the name of a well known “A-list” blogger or Twitterer — like @chrisbrogan or @scoble.

1. I don’t know what GHD is. [duh: GHD=Ground Hog Day]

2. I have no clue who Paul Mooney is. He has a website http://www.neuronspark.com but I can’t figure out what the business is. There are tons of affiliate marketing links on the right sidebar.

3. Why would he give away a $400 netbook? Is this an example of a grassroots promotion and by running his own contest he hopes to get more attention to his twitter ID and hence more followers?

4. Why is he inserting the names of @twitter celebrities?

It is very effective — @moon has dominated the Lenovo brand name in Twitter for a month, has induced tons of people to “RT” his giveaway, and in the end, got my attention, for I am writing this blog post, and sent him a direct ping asking “what is compelling you to give away the S10″ and observing:  “moon: Why do you retweet your giveaway to every social media person like chrisheuer, jowyang, etc? Seems like spam at this point”

He replied: “I know chrisheuer and jowyang so I was hoping they would reTweet the giveaway.”

And I said:  “moon: just concerned because of Dec. KMART incident with XXXXXX and Izea/Payperpost people. Don’t want lenovo associated with that”

To which he replied he wanted to do the promo with Lenovo.

So here’s the observation. If you manage a brand online, get ready for people to leverage it — both professional and personal — for their own gain.The big question is whether to grease the skids and enable it, stand by and watch it happen, or send in the clowns and get all legal.

The question is this: should I be giving product to bloggers and twitter users to activate this sort of self-managed promotion/contest or am I on shaky legal/ethical ground? I did rip into the “Blog Slut” phenomenon and don’t want to demean the Lenovo brand name by getting into any kind of payola arrangements. That aside, @moon has pounded the word Lenovo and gotten other people to Tweet it far more than the usual organic flow of the conversation would have. So should I shut up and be happy for the free branding?

Brands run into this with affiliate marketing programs all the time. If you give people an incentive to market on your behalf you may not be happy with their techniques they use to do it. This one just has me perplexed.

As one twitter user just said to my ardeht Lenovo promoter: “@moon This is a very clever promotion you’re running. Bet you’ll get lots of new followers and interest in what you do.”

Randall Stross writes today in the Sunday New York Times about the fine line between camp and hell when it comes to corporate video.

In it he calls attention to the wonderful internal video made by some Microsoft researchers for a product technology called Songsmith — apparently a “song generator” that one sings into and which then infers from the lyrics what the electro-synth soundtrack should be.  It is indeed awesome in its awfulness. Watch the first 30 seconds, get the idea, and skip to the video at the end of this post for its real contribution to society.

The payoff on Stross’ story is the pointer to what some clever souls have done with the Songsmith technology, feeding into it well known head bangers such as Metallica, and my personal favorite, Van Halen. This has made my day, almost as much as the discovery earlier this week of what the acronyms SIaS and FIaT mean in conjunction with Yankee’s owner, George Steinbrenner.

Fake Barack is in operation. Sample:

“For example, last night, in bed, I let out a little sheet creeper, totally silent but absolutely deadly. Then I waited. Took a while but finally Michelle goes, Goddammit, Barack, please tell me you didn’t just lay down a fart in my bed. And I said, Actually, I prefer to call it a “hope bomb.” She said I can call it whatever I want but I’ll be calling it that to myself because she’s going to the guest room and if I really think I can start pulling stuff like this just because I’m president then it’s going to be a long, long eight years.”

Obama Journal.