Ignore this ancient blog...

I simply don't use this Blogger platform, haven't for years. So, if you stumble upon it - I'm sorry, I just don't care to update it. If I have anything to say to anyone, I'll use Twitter or Facebook.

Swearing off PDA

I'm almost three weeks now without a PDA, and so far I'm ok.

It started when I bought myself the new Treo 700, thinking it was time to upgrade from my old 600. It was such an awful investment, plus at the same time my incoming emails and workload seemed to come to a crescendo, combined with a heavy spam attack for Christmas (eluded two layers of spam filtering), and I said, "That's it!"

I realized that having an "always on" life at some point loses efficiency. Especially if all your friends and colleagues have PDAs too, then you're just passing work back and forth faster and faster and there's sort of a diminishing return in terms of sanity.

So I'm "off the grid" - I now have to check my email on a computer like everyone else. I can't peruse my daily newsletters on the subway. I will have to get back to your request in a day, not five minutes.

I'm thinking this was a good move. I'll let you know later how long I hold out.

Another Sunday...

Totally ignoring what I'm supposed to do today. Read a book instead, drank a bunch of coffee, ate random things from the fridge.

My year in NY is coming to a close quickly. Can't believe how fast it's gone. I still have so much to do! I wonder if I'll really ever come back. I want to, but I know it'll be different. Every time I move it's different. Maybe my next place is something else altogether.

My mom is so cool to talk with sometimes. Yeah she's totally self-centered and caught up in her own shit, but she knows really amazing things and loves to drill into the introspective every day. I can't do that all the time, but it's good for a Sunday chat. We talked about 2007 as being a pretty important year for me. She says that there's some neato numerology around the year...2 is for relationships, and 7 is for growth, and they add up to 9 which is fruits or something like that. Essentially, it's a year to work hard and enrich my personal relationships as well, and that it'll be a rewarding year.

She could be lying or making it up, but I don't care. I choose to take it for a hopeful sign that this year will be worth it and I won't burn out like I fear. I've been cutting so close to insanity on the work thing, and pushing way too hard in some ways but not really getting anything accomplished. So frustrating. I am hoping that I can reconnect with my team more and build those relationships back again. I've been Miss Invisible for a year, and I'm sure it bothers them. Or maybe it doesn't - maybe they don't care at all, which might be even worse. So my coming back will just piss them off.

Went dancing last night at Club Love - great DJs mixing, and a super dancy crowd. Was so impressed with some of the moves I saw. There was a little breakdancing and lots of big jumpin' and groovin'. Love it when people just let it go and have a fun time like that. I'll totally miss it going back to San Diego where they're afraid to be freaks. Such a lame club scene there, and so posey and awful. Rich kids from North County driving downtown to meet other rich kids from North County, hook up over an appletini and go off to create enough kids to fill the minivan and give them a reason to keep working their deadend jobs. Bitter? Me? Naw. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough for the underground scene. Maybe the Casbah really isn't as boring and full of attitude as I remember.

I think that's what I'll miss most about NY. No, not the clubs; the fact that people here don't think twice about being themselves, being out there, saying their mind, expressing emotion (good or bad), confronting each other. Such balls this city has. I love that I can walk down the street and people will talk to me, guys will whistle or say "Hey Red" and old ladies at the supermarket chide me for overpaying on gourmet jelly. I like that I have a nightly chat with the night crew guy at the Roxy diner on my way from the subway. My cubicle mates at work bring me chocolate and come by to gossip, and the girl at the coffee shop sometimes gives me a free cookie. I feel so connected to my neighborhoods in such a short time. I like that I know how to yell at a cabbie and feel justified cuz I know the bastard is not obeying the cabbie rules. I can also be very quiet and just watch the interactions between street vendors and tourists, the homeless guys having an intellectual conversation about the value of siblings, the huge rats in the alley by my apartment scurrying away as I walk past at night - gorging themselves and scoffing at me knowing they'll live longer than I will. Fuckers have been here since the Dutch settled probably.

My friends back home in SD think I'm getting more confrontational, and that's probably good. All that timidity gets you nowhere if you just hold it in. I'm not saying you have to be a prick all the time, just don't let things fester. I usually like to get things off my chest quickly, but now I'm practicing doing it even sooner.

Looking back, I've lost a lot this year. I lost my way a little bit with the company leadership, my vision faltered, and I lost a really good friend. I don't think I can fully regain any of those things the way they were, but I can find a new and better vision, and I can at least try to repair the damage with my friend so it won't be on my karmic headstone.

Had a run-in with another "old friend" this week which just really made me question why I bother to pretend that I like her anymore. She's really gone bonkers. So bitter and angry and uptight, such a fucking victim, and so incapable of being real and just getting dirty with life. I'm pissed because she won't fight like a man, which I simply can't fathom. Girls fighting always confused me...they really fight dirty. Have you noticed how much longer the pain lasts from a lost friendship or a fight with a girlfriend, than from a boyfriend?

I just hate it when people won't say what's really in their hearts, even when you tell them that it's totally ok to vent and be honest. Lord, if someone gave me carte blanche to unload on them, you can believe I'd take the opportunity! Especially if I was mad at them...

I can't believe I just posted for like an hour. I gotta go find some food that's more substantial than olives and peanut butter. Missed the sun today, but I like the night just as well.

Technorate claim tag...

So I guess I have to put this on here for Technorati to know I exist.

Technorati Profile

Can't believe what a noob I am at this stuff. And my mom thinks I'm "great at computers". ha ha.

Direct Marketers just don't get Search Marketing

In keeping with my habit of posting once a year, I finally have something to say again...
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So, I had high hopes for the DMA 2006 because they had all kinds of lip service to interactive and search marketing and such forth. They had a whole Expo hall of interactive technologies and vendors. They had sessions galore on convergence, search, email, and more. I was lulled momentarily into believing that the icons of DM were truly grasping the cross-channel possibilities.

Then I started checking out the follow-through on the campaigns that won ECHO Awards.

Top slot: The Diamond ECHO award went to OgilvyOne for their Friskies "milkaholic" campaign. Sounded cool - Here's how it's described on the DMA site:

"Friskies, once the leader in the dry cat food category, had been steadily loosing market share. A new product innovation, Milk Essentials, was developed that combined the taste of milk that cats love without the lactose that can give them digestive problems. OgilvyOne designed a campaign to shine a light on feline lactose-intolerance and offer Friskies with Milk Essentials as the solution in a unique, hard-hitting way that reflected this fun and spirited brand. By creating a fictional “holism” – feline milkaholism – a humorous platform was established for a successful and memorable campaign roll-out."

Great! Let's see what they did online to support it.

Search "milkaholic" on Google. Nada on the paid or organic listings. Just baby things, a WordSpy page that had nothing to do with Friskies, and random crap from Yahoo:


So why was this the top winner? I don't have a clue. I should probably have attended the awards ceremony and then maybe I'd see how truly innovative it was. Secretly I think it's just cuz cute animal campaigns always win (usually involving monkeys).

I also tried [milkaholic Friskies] and [milkaholic campaign] and couldn't find a shred of info.
Hm. Well, maybe they had something up there while the campaign was running, right? And they forgot that online there is no end to campaigns. Campaigns run around and return occasionally into public memory, so you always need to have some sort of web presence to tie it back. Derivative recall possibilities, you know.

Let's try another. This time, a UK promotion for a product called "Flash" for cleaning. They had a contest and a direct mail promo called "Flash Hunk" where they invented a sort of Brawny guy virtual hottie:

"Flash Hunk, a cheeky Chippendale cleaning man dressed only in an apron and boxer shorts who demonstrated how easily the Flash Brand products can be used – even by a man. Users were given control of the cleaning man, using flash and video clips. They could type in the word for what they wanted cleaned, and then sit back and enjoy watching the Flash Hunk get to work. It’s not easy to excite women about cleaning, but making the brand engaging while providing product information generated significant traffic as well as positive word of mouth."

Let's journey to Google.co.uk and see what they have running:

Ok, so at least we're seeing things in the organic listings that have to do with the campaign. A little rooting around (down to the third link) finally gets us to this site with the campaign still running:



Very cute. Unfortunately, they had it hosted at an IP address instead of a domain (217.169.41.147/flashhunk) but what the heck. I had a good time playing with the dude in his underwear. He doesn't clean house very well though. Typical.




Final score: one up, one down. I'd have rather them give the top award to the Yahoo!/Apprentice "Solstice" campaign, which won the A. Eicoff award but was a really excellent cross-channel campaign. I'm betting it cost less than the Friskies campaign and probably sold more total dollar volume of merchandise. It helped sell 1000 vehicles in the first 41 minutes of them being available! Calculated out at approximately $10k per car to the mfr, that's $10,000,000. Not a bad return. Hella more interesting to me than some freakin' cat food.

Maybe they should have put some kittens in the campaign.

Boring Men...

I have a dating account at nerve.com. To date, I have not managed to find a single guy worth dating more than once. Why? They're either too weird or not weird enough.

How to describe the perfect guy I want? It's obviously harder than I thought. I really don't want a guy who feels more comfortable in a polo shirt than an an industrial rock t-shirt. I keep seeing these really boring guys, "long walks on the beach" types, who seem to only want a Desperate Housewife type of person. Why do men and women both need to go with the grain so easily? Is it impossible to find a reformed bad boy who isn't also a reformed alcoholic? I just want someone who has great manners, a great body, and an incredibly large...brain.

I give up. I should try girls, but I'm sure I'd get just as frustrated with that too.

Passover Bag of Plagues - fun for the whole family!

Um, so ok...it's been over a year since I posted last. I guess I didn't really have a lot to say. Not surprising - I'm more of a verbal person with my comedic ramblings, not so much on the written word. Which totally goes against the fact that I was a professional writer for 10 years. But not a funny writer. So this isn't a comedy column. So stop laughing.

I just got the best present today for Easter: A Passover Bag of Plagues - http://www.riteliteltd.com/detail.cfm?Group_ID=13&Product_ID=127
My friends Chris and Sandra brought them over, since today is Easter Sunday. They know how I like to collect religious shit.

The crazy part is it's completely legit, and not intended as a joke. But it's definitely the most hilarious thing I've seen in years. No offense to Jewish people out there, but this is a truly fucked up toy to celebrate what is most likely the sickest holiday ever.

Here's what's inside:

• Blood, to celebrate surviving the waters of the land turning to blood. The kit contains red powder disappearing ink that you add water to, and I guess take turns hosing each other down with the stuff, using the handy squirting device included.
• A toy frog with squeezy bulb, to make it jump. Frogs apparently covered the land of Egypt. I'm not sure why that was a bad thing, but then I'm from the South where we consider frogs a food source. I'd be fryin' up me a mess 'o frogs legs.
• Lice. Yes, lice. No, it's not real lice, but a plastic louse. Wrong number of legs, since I'm pretty sure lice are arachnid. This fat little black louse is round and has six legs. But I like him anyway. I'll call him George. The dust in Egypt turned into lice and got all over everyone. This is my least favorite plague. Makes my head itch just to think about it. Itch, itch, itch.
• A little leopard mask, to represent the wild animals that came into their homes and wreaked havoc. Again, I'm thinking food source, but probably they didn't have guns then.
• My favorite: the cattle plague. The bag includes a little plastic cow that's full of that gack-like goo stuff that's super sticky and gross. His eyes are cut out, so when you squeeze him nasty shit comes out of his eye sockets, as if his eyes are exploding. There's also a notch on his ass, so I guess you have the option of cutting a hole there if you want to see snot come out his ass too. OMG, I just fell out screaming and laughing at this one. How sick is that for little Johnny: "Look, Johnny - God has sent a plague upon this cow. Squish him to see his eyes come out, just like the Hebrews of old experienced."
• Boils, represented by one of those sticky sling-a-hand slapper thingies, with three white pustules painted on it for fun.
• Two styrofoam balls to represent the hail that came down. Why two? I have no idea, but they look like testicles. "A plague of testicles on you!" My friends and I took turns tea-bagging each other with these.
• Locust, represented by what appears to actually be a praying mantis or walking stick. Couldn't find a decent locust manufacturer, no doubt.
• Darling little kid-sunglasses, for the darkness that settled over Egypt. I think this would have been a pretty interesting plague, since there was no electricity, and maybe they thought the sun would never come back and the world would end. Definitely a creep-out fear factor there.
• A small puzzle with a dead child on it, to represent the death of the firstborn of each Egyptian family. F*ed up, man. Can you imagine giving a non-Jewish child a puzzle with a picture of a corpse on it? What the hell? And they say Christians have some nutty violence issues, what with all the crucifixion and stuff.

So I'm off to do laundry, and then call my dad. I hope every Easter is as fun as this one.