Sunday, December 31, 2006

7 Hours to the New Year and Here's What I'm Gonna Do

My New Year's Resolutions - I Make 'em often and now I'll try and make 'em true

This year I resolve to do at least one thing: take Jeffrey Hopkin's example and develop compassion for others through meditation and other techniques he explains in his book Cultivating Compassion.

We'll see how far I get in developing equanimity for all sentient beings, including those fuckers who do nasty things in this world (see earlier posts). We'll see whether or not comtemplating the fragility of life and the imminence of death will bring me closer to having kindness for all.

Certainly the first 50 or so pages of the book rid me of a day long headache and gave me a sense of purpose for the coming months: meditating on the idea that all beings want happiness and don't want suffering.

If successful, it'll be my Christmas gift to me.

Namaste!

M

Saturday, December 30, 2006

It Takes My Breath Away When They Do Things Like That

Ode to Joy, Joy to the World, Peace on Earth, and all the other meaningless Yadda Yadda Yadda

I spent Christmas wrapped in the warmth of the past watching hour after hour of classic Christmas fare (White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Meet Me in St. Louis, etc) tuned into Turner Classic Movies. It reminded me over and over how simple life appeared to be forty to sixty years ago.

But as it turns out it's not as simple as all of that, is it? Poor Danny Kaye living a lie. Poor Judy Garland a prisoner of her handlers. Poor Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and socialists forced into slavery and then murdered during the Second World War (all the returning soldiers in White Christmas didn't mention that part, did they? The retards were lucky - they were just murdered without having to work for their masters first).

I bought, intentionally, Al Franken's latest paperback The Truth (with jokes). Franken never ceases to crack me up even when he's telling me about how seriously flawed the world around me actually is. In The Truth (with jokes), Franken examines the 2004 US Presidential elections and challenges the assertion that G.W.Bush received a landslide of approval, which Bush termed political capital and said he intended to spend. Politics in the US of A has always been a nasty business, filled with deceit, lies and fraud. Tammany Hall, The Tea Dome Scandal, The Pentagon Papers, Watergate. Just ask Coke Stevenson about electoral fraud (Stevenson ran against Lyndon Johnston for a federal Senate seat in Texas, 1948).

L. Fletcher Prouty wrote a book called JFK. Prouty isn't a person whose life is beyond reproach. He's a man who probably did more good than harm and probaby was more coherent than not. I like him because he wrote the book JFK. Especially the first few chapters of that book.

Prouty explains world events don't just happen. They are caused to happen. This is a basic principle that needs to be understood by everyone on this planet. Wars don't erupt whole cloth; they are created and armed and executed. Political movements have an unseen hand behind them, sometimes many. I still believe accidents occur. After all, Columbus shot for India and found an entirely different continent. But nevertheless, on the whole, things happen because they are caused to happen. By who and why are another set of questions.

Prouty explains that the ordnances and supplies stockpiled in the Pacific for the invasion of Japan weren't routed back to America after Japan's surrender in 1945 but sent on to Korea in preparation for a war there, which they envisioned would take place a few years later. Who envisioned? Well there the story gets a little complex with a long list of bit players and main players. Winston Churchill called them The Cabal. In fact, the players don't change as much from generation to generation as it appears. For instance, do you know who Herman and George Brown are? Well, according to Robert Caro, they had a constuction company that built a hydroelectric dam on land they did not own and stood to lose millions unless a junior congressman from Texas could swing a deal in the back rooms for them. That man, even then, was a past master of deal making named Lyndon Johnston. Brown & Root went on to become major figures in military and corporate construction (receiving massive government contracts), oil, and Texas politics. They were bought by Haliburton in 1962 and were merged with Kellogg in the 1990s. Brown and Root of Texas and Haliburton are doing pretty much today what they did in 1936, comingling money, politics and bribery to create a world of profit and power for themselves and their people.

Which now brings me to the depressing part of my so-called holidays. I've just finished reading The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man which didn't do much for me except remind me of Antonia Juhasz' The Bush Agenda and Greg Grandin's Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. And I'm almost finished Franken's book.

So, you see, my mindset was slipping away from the nostalgic Christmas warmth that Turner Classic Movies had spun for me. I had read myself away from the warmth of friends working for the benefit of other friends, where problems were solved with a wink and where families really did care about each other.

But I wasn't prepared for this morning. I wasn't prepared for an idea so massively obnoxious, so vile in its intentions that I actually shut off the computer, cracked open a (union-made) beer and put some music on rather than think about the consequences of it being true.

It can be found at the website called, Project Censor. Project Censor was launched in 1976 at Sonoma University as a communications project. According to its website it "is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media.". I've been reading it since 1996, usually as a cooling effect on my natural spirited joy.

Item #18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story. This is past the story of the hijacking of the Internet's Net neutrality by major corporations. Past the story of the US preparing to start manufactoring landmines (there's an international treaty that the US refuses to sign), past the story of the death of the ocean, past the story of proof of the dangers of genetically modified foods. Yes, keep going.

A conspiracy is defined by my Webster's as a secrect plan by a group of people to do something unlawful or harmful. It comes from the latin root meaning "to breath together". If my understanding of the law (derived from uncounted hours watching Law & Order) is correct, it is not legally necessary that all parties contributing to an illegal outcome be aware of all other parties, their plans or their contributions for them to be a party to the conspiracy. If Person A sells a gun that they know will be used in a crime (because they've erased its serial number and sold it to someone who wants a 'cold, untraceable' weapon) it doesn't matter that Person A didn't know in detail it was going to be used in the assasination of the President of the United States of America while he was in Dallas. Person A is effectively and legally part of that conspiracy.

So, read Item #18 and tell me whether or not you think this is more crazy talk from crazy people who don't know the world is actually unfolding as it should, just like God planned it, and that heaven is on its way (fucking physicists). If this story is true then everything is wrong.

And we are seriously fucked.

xoxo

M

Sunday, December 10, 2006

The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR

Al Ries' and Laura Ries' National Bestseller

On Friday I escaped from my workplace and headed downtown Vancouver to collect my cousin who arrived from her hometown of Sydney, Australia. She'd been in flight for seventeen hours and up for 48 hours at the time and I had had four hours of sleep (worked late and worked early). But neither of our conditions prevented us from grabbing a beer with BadMark at a local watering hole. Four pitchers of Sleeman's Honey Lager later we dropped off her bags at home and went dancing at The Plaza. By 5AM her 48 hours of sleeplessness had turned into 59 hours and I had turned into a drunk and tired 43 year-old zombie.

Luckily, I had a date to keep me from oversleeping this morning. After spending a couple of hours brunching with You Jane, I wandered into the local used-bookshop and bought Al Ries' and Laura Ries' The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, which I had been eyeing since its paperback publication in 2004.

Al Ries is well-known for his work in the 1970s popularizing the concept of positioning. He is also the co-author (with Jack Trout or Laura Ries) of other books on marketing and branding, several of which I own (22 Immutable Laws of Branding, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding). The books are all very easy reading and proof of this is that I spent the remainder of the afternoon, tired and hungover, reading and finishing The Fall of Advertising.

The gist of the books' argument is that no one believes advertising, that advertising agencies focus on being clever and witting but rarely on actually selling products or services or getting bigger market share. The Got Milk? campaign is well-known, highly awarded, has a high recognition with the public, is endlessly spoofed but hasn't done anything to increase sales of milk, of which consumption keeps falling in the US. PR is more cost-effective for promoting brand awareness and gaining market share because it's more believed by the public. When Oprah Winfrey says a book is 'worth reading' it becomes a national bestseller; when a book is advertised in a magazine it rarely earns back the cost of the space. The more effective marketing solution for corporations is to focus on generating ideas that feature their products or services positively in the media. Focus on PR and publicity rather than on advertising, they say.

The book is example rich and the marketing suggestions are viable, at least at first glance. Some of the solutions are extremely provocative to be sure: change the name of Guatamala to Guatamaya to encourage tourism of its Mayan culture and sites, for instance. The name change would help establish the public perception that Guatamala was the centre of Mayan culture and would generate thousands of inches of publicity and articles in the press and media.

The Fall of Advertising fits in well with an essay I'm working on for this blog (and may never finish) about media and the role of newspapers in a community. A community is well served by a working press or news media; information is critical in making decisions and understanding issues.

But as a sometimes writer I am aware that news stories are not always written with critical integrity. A local film magazine that relies on advertising subscriptions to its services catalogue can't write articles critical of its subscribers; since everyone in the local film industry are either subscribers or potential subscribers its editorial content is often regurgitated press releases or puff pieces about local productions and their filmmakers. There are all kinds of wonky and newsworthy items in this industry that go unreported because no one wants to offend their advertisers.

Now as a manager of a pub, however, the suggestions in The Fall of Advertising have been duly noted, as they say. I've already started jotting down potential news stories, rumour-mongering ideas, and promotional ideas that will feature the pub in its community (it's a campus pub at a post-secondary technical school). So, by end of week, I should be able to come up with a half dozen or more of good 'word of mouth' campaigns and realize the difference between marketing directed towards the BOGs (Board of Governors) and the actual pub clientele, the students.

But first I may need some more sleep.

'I drink, therefore I am,' said Rene Descarte. 'Beer proves your existence is worthwhile,' said the Buddha.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

O Lord, deliver us from evil - the petitionary prayer

And while you're up - can you tidy up my house and build me some more book shelves?

I’m reading a couple of books with varying degrees of attentiveness: Andrew Linzey’s Animal Rites, Liturgies of Animal Care and Theodore Klauser’s A Short History of Western Liturgy. I will unlikely pass either of these excellent books on to friends - mostly because my friends tend to have genuinely interesting lives and are excited by subjects less arcane than the liturgies of the Christian Churches and the niceties of worship. BadMark, for instance, is gripping his beer stein a little more tightly as we approach the NFL play-offs. His team can be checked out here.

Andrew Linzey is an Anglican priest and a member of the faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford; he is the author of several books related to Christianity and animals, specifically examining the scriptures as they guide us to care for animals in our faith. His two most famous works are Animal Theology (1994) and Animal Gospel (1998).

A quick summary of Animal Rites can be read in this paragraph from the introduction (entitled When a Sparrow Falls: Reclaiming Animal-Friendly Spirituality). Linzey writes:
Our prayers - or lack of them - say something about ourselves: our hopes, our concerns, our dreams for a better world, and most obviously the things we really care about. Do Christians then not really care about animals? Have they not seen the world of God’s creation all around them teeming with millions of different forms of life?
We are not the first Christians to be concerned for animals and all of life's teeming millions. In Luke 12.6 Jesus says, "Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God's sight". Many of our Saints (St. John Chrysostom, St Basil the Great, and, famously St. Francis of Assisi) wrote and preached compassion for animals as an integral part of the teaching of Jesus Christ. Andrew Linzey culls, from the hundreds of years of church writings, their prayers and forms from them elements of a liturgy that says something of our concerns for better world for all of God's creation. Or at least acknowledges our lack of compassion, our lack of repentance and the hardness of our hearts.

Klauser's Short History is one hundred fifty pages of tightly worded prose. Klauser quickly herds the elements of the current liturgy (which means 'form or formulary according to which public religious worship is conducted', or basically: 'first you say this and then you do that and then you pray here'), separates the different elements according to their origins, and takes a moment to reflect here and there on different meanings. The Christian Liturgy is far from being static but it is rooted in religious services that are several thousand years old. As the early Church grew different practices and prayers were codified and standardized and 'rogue' elements were eliminated from worship. Prayers were no longer extempore, freeing the Bishops and priests from having to be inventive while maintaining high standards and staying 'on message'.

Klauser's book is interesting in pulling apart the history of each element of worship and allowing the reader to understand more clearly why our Church worship is as it is and to read meaning into its form. It also frees us to think about adding and subtracting different elements, to find the form of worship in our daily lives outside of limited Church schedules.

And if the Seahawks do make it to the Superbowl this year it will certainly be because of BadMark's incessant petitions to Our Creator.

xoxo

M