Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

In this post, I’m going to ramble quite a bit about things that I’ve been enjoying recently. Books, music, movies, TV, etc. If you want something that may actually be relevant to your own life, then... well, why are you even here? This will be a long post, so you can click below for the full post.

Books
My good friend Lee gave me Robin McKinley’s Sunshine for Christmas and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s a vampire fantasy novel – No wait! Stay with me! – with a bit of a new spin. It takes place in a sort of unspecified near future extrapolated from our own current technology, only there are a few differences. First, vampires, weres, demons, sorcerers, etc. have always existed and everybody knows about them. It would be hard not to know, because some years prior to the events of the novel, the “Voodoo Wars” took place, where more than half of the world’s population was wiped out by all sorts of nasty creatures. The reduced population actually relieved some of the pressure between the ‘races’ and so since then, some people have been able to rebuild some semblance of a normal life, albeit one where you have to buy wards and charms for your house, where your neighbor may be a demon part-blood, (the only notable impact of which is that whenever she pours coffee, it’s always hot,) and when one of your employees always calls in sick around the full moon, it may be because he’s a were-chicken.

The story follows Rae, a.k.a. Sunshine, a young woman who works in a Coffee-Shop Bakery, and who has started to wonder if there’s something missing in her life. She quickly discovers what it is, but also that she was happier when she didn’t know. All this leads to kidnappings by vampires, magic transmutations, goddesses of pain, and cinnamon rolls as big as your head. The story is told in a very informal first-person pov that really puts you in the head of the protagonist. The book is very clever and a lot of fun throughout, even when poor Sunshine is having a truly awful time. It drags a tiny bit in a middle section, and the end has a little less resolution than I wanted, but those are very minor complaints about a book that I really enjoyed a great deal. Thumbs up.

Currently Reading: State of Fear by Michael Crichton
Haven’t gotten far enough yet to have much of an opinion, but I’ll keep you all posted.

Music
My brother David gave me a nice mix CD with a lot of great songs on it, and there is also a nice gradually evolving mood. Each song goes nicely with the ones adjacent to it, but it shifts over the course of the album. Here are the tracks, in case anyone feels like recreating it.

KXMAS – Studio Dave Remix
1. Photograph / The Verve Pipe
2. Hotel California / Eagles
3. Play that Funky Music / Wild Cherry
4. Get Ready / Sublime
5. Californication / Red Hot Chili Peppers
6. Stripsearch / Faith No More
7. In the Cold Cold Night / The White Stripes
8. Wastin’ My Time / Eagles of Death Metal
9. No Rain / Blind Melon
10. Could You Be Loved / Bob Marley and the Wailers
11. Crazy Game of Poker / Oar
12. Sugar Magnolia / Grateful Dead
13. Karma Police / Radiohead
14. Release / Pearl Jam

Recent CD Purchases:
The Garden State Soundtrack
Perfectly suited to the film itself, wistful, melancholy, touching. Features some great songs by bands that I otherwise never would have heard of, like The Shins or Zero 7.

Never Mind the Bollocks – The Sex Pistols
American Idiot – Green Day
For whatever reason, I’ve been on a punk kick lately. There are, however, reasons for these particular albums. For the first, I’ve been watching Gilmore Girls re-runs on ABC Family recently (great show, btw) and the Sex Pistols have been referenced more than once, including this particular album. Besides, how can you not love that album title! For the second, I’ve never followed Green Day all that closely, but I own and still enjoy their first album, “Dookie”, and Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly Column “The Pop of King” rated their newest effort his number one favorite album of the year, so I thought I’d check it out. I’m not enough of a music expert to really analyze them in any detail, but I’m really enjoying them both.

Movies
Of course, I’ve been putting up reviews of most of the movies I see, but in other news, I’m really happy that a local theater has re-opened. A Madstone Theater had been there previously, showing a lot of Indie and Foreign films, which was great, because it gave me the chance to see a lot of movies that wouldn’t be able to see in the local multiplex, but they closed a while back and I was very disappointed. The new owners have called it Galaxy Cinema, but they are apparently still committed to foreign and indie films! Hooray! Saw a Japanese / Thai film there last night called “The Last Life in the Universe”. A beautiful, touching little piece about lonely strangers finding solace in each other.

DVDs
Got a number of good ones for Christmas. Return of the King Extended Edition, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Spiderman 2. A bit of a side note, I actually received the Full Screen version of Spiderman, so I went to Circuit City (had a gift card from there too) to exchange it. It was a brand new, unopened, still shrink-wrapped DVD identical to one that I found on their shelf. All I wanted was to exchange it for the widescreen version, which they also had. The two were the same price, but they told me that I had to provide proof that the one I had was purchased at a Circuit City! Since I didn’t have it, they wouldn’t exchange it for me. Now to me, that’s some pretty crappy customer service. I had been planning to buy another DVD or two, as well as browsing for a new receiver, but frankly, their refusal to exchange my movie has put me off of Circuit City a bit. Maybe it’s petty of me, but I went to Suncoast and they exchanged it no questions asked... You know it occurs to me that, if my story were to have a real point, I would say that I then shopped at Suncoast instead of Circuit City, but I didn’t because their prices are absurd. *shrug*

In other DVD news, I’ve been watching the past seasons of Alias on DVD from Netflix. I never caught the show when it was new, but because I’m enjoying Lost so much, I thought I’d check out J.J. Abrams other show. It’s a great show, with interesting characters, good action and complex, intriguing plots. As such, I’ve been trying to get completely caught up before the new season starts next week.

Also, if you haven’t already seen it, I recommend you check out Shaun of the Dead on DVD. It’s not really like any other movie you’ll see. It’s a British “Rom-Zom-Com” or Romantic-Zombie-Comedy. Very funny, but actually kinda scary in parts too. On the strength of that movie, I sought out the British sitcom done by the same people: “Spaced”. I caught a couple of episodes on Cable, and loved it, but it turned out that those few were all they were showing, and they were heavily edited to boot. Because the DVD’s were only available in Britain, and because my existing DVD player kind of sucked, I started looking into purchasing a Region-Free DVD Player. Turned out I didn’t have to buy it myself as I got it for Christmas as well. (Thank you, Mike!) That made it possible for me to import the British Region 2 DVDs of the entire series. It’s a great show and I highly recommend you check it out if you ever have the opportunity.

Finally, on New Years Day, I’m going to a Lord of the Rings movie marathon with some friends. Starting at 9AM we’re going to do all three Extended Editions back-to-back. It’s gonna be awesome!

Video Games
Also for Christmas, I got Viewtiful Joe 2 and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for my Gamecube. Great games both, the first a quirky movie-themed platform fighter, the second a Mario-themed comedy RPG. Lots of fun to be had, and of course, more and more time spent not doing anything productive. Boy, do I need more time-wasters, I’ve been far too efficient recently.

So, anyway, I suppose you can see that I live my life entirely through media. Not a bad way to live really. At least it keeps me entertained.

Kevin Kibelstis pointed me to a cool geography test where you attempt to place the states on a blank map. Pretty neat. My score was 88% in 300 seconds with an average error of 29 miles.

The NY Times has a quiz up with questions about news events in 2004. Pretty good quiz, I thought. Hard. I got 15 of 27 right, which lists me as "Pretty well informed." Check it out! How many can you get?

A seventh-grader dressed as Santa Claus was told that he could not enter his Junior High School dance because he might offend people.

Principal Fred Muscara said he told the boy he couldn’t get into the dance because he was wearing the costume.

"It was a holiday party," said Muscara. "It was not a Christmas party. There is a separation of church and state. We have a lot of students that go to Hampton Academy Junior High that have different religions. We have to be sensitive to that."

You know, I think it's important to be sensitive to people's different beliefs, but sometimes it just gets silly. Anyone who is going to be offended by a student dressing as Santa at a Holiday dance is going to see a hundred offensive things on their way to school in the morning. What next? Are we going to strip the Salvation Army of their tax-exempt status because of the street-corner Santas?

Okay, wow. Apparently, the Mexican city of Villahermosa has passed a measure making it illegal for people to walk around naked, even inside their own homes!

"We are talking about zero tolerance ... for a lack of morality,'' said city councilwoman Blanca Estela Pulido of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, which governs the state and city.
...
Pulido said she was confident that citizens who catch a glimpse of offenders would report them to police — though the law also threatens jail for peeping Toms.
...
"The majority of houses have a lot of ventilation and we give ourselves the luxury of going naked," Pulido said. "Because we walk past the windows, you see a lot of things."

Boy, I can count the number of times that has happened to me on... um, never. Still, its good to hear that the local officials down there are nipping this problem in the bud, before it has a chance to become an actual problem. I mean, why should people have the right to wear whatever they want in their own homes? Nothing about that in the constitution. I expect this will set a new precedent, and we can expect to see similar measures here in the States any day now.

I don't know about you, but I think that "dude" is one of the greatest all-purpose words in history. You can make it mean almost anything depending on context. Depending on my personal context however, I often keep that opinion to myself.

But never again will I be embarrassed about my fondness for dude-culture, for it's initiated into the ranks of legitimate academic study! Check it out!

Dude, professor studies 'dude'
And there's an NPR audio story here.

Last week in Greece, a pair of gunmen took a busload of people hostage and demanded one million US dollars in ransom. They didn't get it.

Now, they're in prison, and they're very sorry.

Two Albanian hijackers who held 23 passengers hostage on a bus in Greece apologized to the Greek people in court today, saying it was a "stupid act", a judicial source said.

On the one hand, it sounds like these two may have had genuine psychological problems that made them commit the act in the first place and I don't want to make light of that. Nor do I want to dismiss the seriousness of their crime or the mental anguish they inflicted on the victims.

That being said, I just picture them red-faced, hands in their pockets and digging the toe of a sneaker into the ground. "I'm really sorry that I took you guys hostage and stuff." I think that's pretty funny. Is that insensitive of me?

Apparently in San Antonio, the city council has just passed an ordinance requiring all exotic dancers to wear their permits while on stage. I wonder where they put them?

Check this out.

It's a Wonderful Life... the 30 second version... re-enacted by bunnies.

On the same site, the Bunny Theater Troupe also performs Alien, The Exorcist, The Shining, Titanic, and Jaws.

Other great flash cartoons:
Homestar Runner
Bonus Stage

Jeremy Tolbert pointed out this link on his blog. It's a whole bunch of photos taken in China, covering a broad spectrum of Chinese life. It's really a deeper look then we normally get on TV or the news. Check it out...

Check it out!

Christiania!

The NY Times quote of the day for today comes from this article:

"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today."
--MICHAEL A. KELLER, Stanford University's head librarian.

On the face of it, this sounds great, yet I can't help but wonder what impact this would have on the publishing industry. My take, I think that there will always be a market for physical books over purely electronic data. So perhaps it will become a Print-on-Demand world? Books and stories available for free online, but you pay a fee in order to print them in a physical book? *shrug* Who can say?

I don't know if you heard about the Celebrity Nativity, but apparently it's been vandalized.

The attacker waited until other visitors had left the area and charged at the figures, kicking and punching them in a frenzied attack. The face on the Victoria model was damaged most but her husband's was also severely crushed before the man fled into the street.

Now, I found the whole thing pretty tacky, but that was all. The fact that the celebrities in question did not give permission for their likenesses to be used in this way makes it a potential legal matter. But neither of those reasons justifies vandalism. If someone objects to a public work of art this way, that's their right and further, it is their right to protest. But vandalism of this kind is not only illegal, but it discredits the very point it is trying to make. This guy who attacked the models has not changed any hearts or minds. He's won a battle, but ultimately done a disservice to his position. I'm reminded of the phrase: "Is this the hill you want to die on?" Please people, when something offends you, criticize in constructive ways. It will do more good in the long run, and it will keep you out of jail.

Stupid Criminal stories: that apparently never-ending news sub-genre.

ABC News in Houston is reporting this:

Back in March, Sandy Wilson was taking care of her three grandsons when a group of men attempted to burglarize her home, pointing a gun at the kids.

The children happened to be playing a video game called Grand Theft Auto at the time. The game has dozens of random police scanner messages, which blare out calls such as "This is the police! You’re surrounded!" Believe it or not, Wilson says the burglars heard that message and thought police were outside the door waiting for them.

You can read the full story here.

I don't know about you, but when I think of the Coast Guard, heroes has not always been the word that first comes to mind. However, the story this week about the oil spill off of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska has gotten me thinking about these brave men and women. Six members have already been lost as the Coast Guard braved frigid water and ferocious storms trying to rescue the crew of the wrecked tanker. Even now, they are continuing to fight through the harsh weather, trying to survey the extent of the damage and beginning their clean-up efforts.

"We're working in a remote area with difficult weather right now," U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Ron Morris, the federal on-scene coordinator, on Saturday.

"It seems to be stopping some of the progress that we'd like to make to get on scene. It's very difficult to plan and to execute if you can't get out there and the weather keeps your helicopters grounded," he said.

It's far away from most of us, but lets try to keep these brave folks in our hearts and prayers.

I've added my blog to a couple more listings...

I was surfing various blogs and came across one called Kung Fu Trees! He's got a post up that links to an art site where you can use your Flash plug-in to paint a water-color type painting right on the screen.

Here's mine. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger version.


And you can see a painting replay here.
From there, you can also paint your own. If you paint one, the easiest way to get a URL for it is to email it to yourself. Once you have, link to it here!

Well, maybe not entirely shameless...

I was reading this article about how to promote your weblog. As a result, I've made a few more subtle changes to the site, and registered with Technocrati.com, Daypop.com, Blogdex.net, and Popdex.com. Will this be effective? I have no idea. Guess I'll just have to see...

Spotted this over at Dave Barry's blog. Ever been in a really tiresome business meeting? So bored at a lecture that your attention drifts to thoughts of suicide by ballpoint pen? Check this out: It's a Catapult Watch! I defy you to tell me you can't think of a million fun uses!

So did you hear about this guy? He's a naval officer who has deliberately and publicly refused to re-board his boat and sail back to the Persian Gulf because of his opposition to the Iraq war.

Over at Instapundit, I found a link to Indepundit, which has an open letter to this particular officer.

Basically, the letter calls the guy to task pretty harshly, pointing out all sorts of perhaps unforeseen consequences that his actions will cause, both to himself and to his shipmates. To be sure, the ramifications of his desertion are a lot more severe than I had realized based on most news reports. I wonder if he really considered all of them before making his decision.

I'm sure he thought of some of them at least, and he made a decision to desert publicly. He showed up where he was supposed to be with press on hand and refused to board his ship. He says he's prepared to accept the consequences because he believes the war is unjust. Now, whether or not we agree with his position on the war, I think that he is practicing legitimate civil disobedience. So often, people protesting things aren't really willing to put their own lives, careers, etc. on the line. This guy is in some serious trouble, but he didn't hide from it. I think that's admirable, whether or not you think that he's right about the war.

*shrug* My thoughts on the war would take too long to talk about just now. I don't know that this guy has all the right answers, but at least he has the courage of his convictions.

On the way home from work yesterday, I heard a story on the radio that really fascinated me. They've invented a new Table-Saw Technology called "SawStop" that can tell the difference between wood and flesh, and manages to stop the blade before it could do any serious damage to a person's fingers, hands, etc. Apparently, they run an electric current through the blade and since flesh is full of all sorts of conduct-y chemicals, the current changes and the blade stops. They demonstrate it with a hot dog on a two-by-four, and even when they slide it in there quickly, the blade stops before it does more but nick the hot dog! You can watch a video of the demonstration on the same site. Pretty impressive, I thought.

Since I haven't used a table-saw since I was seven or so, (don't ask!) my interest in this story might well have stopped there, but there's more. Even though this new technology wow's pretty much everyone who sees it, and could potentially save thousands of fingers every year (not to mention medical bills, worker's comp, insurance, etc.) this poor guy is finding his invention to be a really tough sell.

Cost is a factor, of course, and this technology adds anywhere from $100 to several hundred dollars to the base cost of a new table-saw. (Though surely if mass-produced, this number would begin to come down.) Also, since the technology is new, there isn't a lot of data about how the devices will hold up long-term. Yet these are not the only factors keeping power tool companies from adopting this item.

Basically, companies are concerned that adding this technology to all their models will price those models right out of their market share. They may be right, but why not offer a special model, for those willing to pay a little extra?

The answer? Lawsuits.

If they add this to one of their models, then someone is hurt by one of the other models, that person could potentially sue, claiming that the power tool company had an obligation to make their power tools as safe as possible. Given the availability of a safer option, it wouldn't be hard to convince a jury that the company could have done more.

Did you follow that? They can't make some of their models safer, because then they might get sued for not making them all safer, but if they just keep all their models the way they are, then they're fine.

You know what this country needs? A 'SawStop' for innovation! Now, we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater; there's no need to abandon lawsuits altogether, but the way things sometimes work in the world right now remind me of this poster. Anyone who sticks their neck out gets their head cut off by the conformity machine.

I was reading a business 'manifesto' by Tom Peters the other day, and he related a story from a book called: Aha! by Jordan Ayan wherein an artistic, enthusiastic, but non-conforming kindergartener is failing art class because he doesn't like to color within the lines! It's true, life does imitate cliches. In my own experience, I would often finish worksheets before the other kids were done, and I would have loved to just pull out a book of my own to read, but instead, I was told to just put my head down on my desk and stay quiet, or once, asked to practice bouncing a ball in the back of the room, to enhance my still-clumsy motor skills.

Now obviously not all new ideas are good ones, (Crystal Pepsi, anyone?), but should we really be organizing our society and educating our children in such a way that innovators are made to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Mistakes will be made, but the absence of mistakes is not perfection. It's stagnation.

I realize that I'm veering into a whole other set of motivational speaker cliches at this point, but it just reminds me of a great bit from The Incredibles. The mother is telling her hyperactive mischief-prone son that: "Everyone's special." His response? "That's just another way of saying no one is."

But it's a dilemma, isn't it? Studies have shown that gifted-and-talented students do better when placed in advanced classes. But studies have also shown that more average students due better when gifted students are in the same class with them. So who do we help? The special kids, many of whom will succeed anyway? Or the more average kids, who may need a little more help?

Perhaps that's not even the right question. Maybe instead, we need a more adaptive education system, one that is more suited to individual kids and less suited to pounding every kid's peg into the same shaped hole. How do we do it? That's a good question. That's an excellent question! Why don't we start trying to figure that one out instead of dumping more and more money into the currently failing education models?

Let's see, how could we do that? Maybe by not cutting the heads off of schools that try to do things a little differently? Magnet schools. Charter schools. Vouchers. Private Schools. Mistakes will be made of course, but let's allow those mistakes to be made and learn from them instead of allowing the existing system to continue failing year after year!

That's step one. Next step? Teach kids that failing is not the worst thing in the world. In the interest of self-esteem, a lot of kids are growing up in situations where they almost never experience the feeling of losing. Then, on the occasion that they do feel that way, they are told that they should get angry, because it wasn't fair that they should have to feel bad. Imagine an angry soccer mom screaming at a referee and see if you don't know what I'm talking about.

When we make losing or failing or mistakes seem like the most painful, scary, unpleasant experience you can possibly go through, we teach our kids (and ourselves!) not to take any risks. We become the wicked servant who buries his talent in the ground because he was so afraid that he would lose it. That's not what our lives are meant to be.

Well, that's the long-term solution. What do we do in the meantime, given that the lawnmower of conformity is still spinning above us? Well, we have to stand up anyway. We may get ugly haircuts ten times for every time we get past the blade, but otherwise, we'll develop pretty bad posture from hunching over all the time, to the point that we couldn't stand up if we wanted to.

And for God's sake, if you ever find yourself running the blade, put a SawStop on it! It may cost a little more, but the fingers (or hot dogs!) you save might change the world someday.

New Layout

Okay, so if you've ever been here before, you'll notice right away that I've updated the look of the site. I like this a lot better, and it contains so much more information. Of course, I'm just using one of the blogspot templates, but they have better ones available now.

Hmm, not sure I needed a post for something so inherently obvious. Those who saw it before will notice the change, and those who are new can't see what it used to look like, so this entire post is essentially irrelevant either way. Huh...

I actually found these a while back, but recently rediscovered them. They are enormously entertaining stop-motion short films using Lego men!

The first is "The Han Solo Affair" and it takes place 'between the scenes' in The Empire Strikes Back.

The second is based on Spiderman 2, called "The Peril of Doc Ock" and has Spidey battling his metal-tentacled adversary all over the city.

The third is based on 2001: A Space Odyssy, called One: A Space Odyssey

The last, you may have seen before. It's based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail The movie is here. This movie is actually one of the bonus features on the Holy Grail DVD.

All four are incredibly funny. Btw, I've learned from the BzzAgent website that this sort of thing is known as "Viral" marketing, because it is intended to spread from person to person, each one passing it on to someone else. As opposed to "Buzz" marketing, which would be a great big one-time event or stunt designed to get people talking, for example, someone building a 20-foot high lego model of New York City or something. "Word of Mouth" marketing is basically when someone would try the actual lego sets, like them, then tell people that. More on my initial impressions of BzzAgent a little later.

You know, sometimes I think that quiz results consist of 90% of all blog posts, and another five percent is links to quizzes that don't actually display results. Anyway, in an effort to contribute to the problem, here's another one...

You are 30% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Frankly, I'm a little skeptical that I didn't score higher than this, but oh well, anything that associates me with Kirsten Dunst aka Mary Jane Watson-Parker is sufficiently flattering that I can't really bring myself to complain.

Well, I was listening to NPR this morning, on my way to work, hoping like hell that I don't get pulled over, (misplaced my driver's license in San Francisco! Whoops!), and the show was talking about a new company called BzzAgent. Apparently, what they do is sort of a new kind of advertising. Instead of (or in addition to,) putting out television or radio commercials, they recruit normal, everyday people to try products, and if they like them, they 'spread the buzz.'

A hypothetical example: We've got the Generizer battery company that has a new kind of battery they want to promote. They pay BzzAgent a fee, and provide free samples. BzzAgent distributes these samples to their agents, along with information packets. Those agents are encouraged to try the batteries, then share their honest opinions with their friends and family. The information packet has suggested talking points etc., but there is no obligation or script that the agent must follow. The company is very up front about saying that their agents should always be honest about the products they are trying.

On the one hand, I think it's a pretty cool idea. These days, in the age of TiVo, people can just fast-forward through commercials, or they can get ad-free sattelite radio, and it's just becoming more and more difficult for traditional advertizing to reach people. This is basically an elaborate version of offering free samples and encouraging people to tell their friends.

On the other hand, I can definitely see a point of view where this sort of thing could be sort of unethical. When you're chatting with some co-workers and one of them says "Hey, you got to read this new book!" or "You really ought to try this new breakfast cereal." How do you know if that is a genuine opinion, or whether you have just been advertised to? Say what you want about annoying used car commercials, or actors pretending to use a certain kind of shampoo, at least you know when you're watching an ad. Even with product placement, most viewers these days are sophisticated enough to know that it's no coincidence that The Apprentice challenges often feature Crest Toothpaste or Pepsi soft drinks. The point is, that we know they are ads and we know that we need to take what they say with a grain of salt.

When we talk to people we know or even chat with strangers about a product, we generally have an expectation that the person doesn't have any vested interest in suggesting that we try a new soft drink or buy a certain cellphone. There is an assumption of honesty, because, frankly, why on earth would they lie? With this sort of marketing, even though they encourage people to share their genuine opinions, there is a definite possibility that people, through their sheer enthusiasm at being involved, will tend to speak more highly of the products they are trying than they might otherwise. So even if it's something they would have liked anyway, they might speak of it in more glowing terms than before, simply because it's neat and exciting to be participating in this new sort of marketing.

I saw an episode of Futurama where Fry discovers that, in the future, advertisements are broadcast into people's dreams. That dream where you're at school in your underwear takes an odd turn when you discover that everybody is impressed with your new Astro-shorts brand briefs. In the episode, it is clearly satire about the ubiquitous nature of modern advertising, but I wonder if this "Word-of-Mouth-Marketing" isn't almost more insidious. I don't mean insidious in a malicious way exactly, but it is kind of sneaky. It takes ordinary conversations and taints them, ever so slightly, with an aftertaste of insincerity.

Or does it? After all, it's really not fundamentally different from coupons or free samples except in the shift of emphasis. If you get a free sample bottle of shampoo in a random mailing, the shampoo company is hoping that you'll like it, and implicit in that is that you'll tell people about it. BzzAgent is essentially doing the same thing, only their making that hope explicit and providing an organized way to actually track that word of mouth, instead of just treating the whole thing like a big black box and hoping that their sales rise.

Frankly, it seems like a sufficiently neat idea that I'm going to go sign up, if not actually participate. My commitment to myself and my own ethics and morals is of course, to never say something that isn't true or to shade my feelings. Essentially, I'm just going to give it a shot and see what I think after having tried it. I believe that regardless of where I ultimately come down on the subject, we're all going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in the future. In fact, I'm thinking of adding an element like this to one of my current stories.

So, I'll report on what I find, and you'll have to just decide whether or not that makes me a mindless corporate drone. ^_^