This fatherhood thiing is getting out of control

29Apr10

Cycling to work this morning, I saw a business man in a suit (must have been in his mid thirties) yawn and rub his eyes in exactly the same way my daughter does when she wants to go to bed. I had a powerful urge to pick him up and rub his back while he rested his head on my shoulder, sucking his thumb, before putting him down in his cot. 

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What is facebook

31Mar10

I’ve never heard of this “Face Book”. Is it just pictures of lots of people’s faces displayed in a book?

 It’s more like a series of photos and updates of people you used to know. The object of the exercise is to go through their holiday/ party/ family photos and analyse the quality of their homes, the attractiveness of their friends and spouses, how expensive their clothes are, and how closely their holiday destinations resemble glossy brochures from expensive travel companies, and from there judge whether or not they are beating you at life.

At the same time, you have to go through your own pictures and updates and carefully select the ones that best represent the lifestyle you want people to think you lead. This means, for example, that if you’re at a party and there’s an attractive girl there, you fling your arm round her shoulders, gawp into the camera and stick it up as your profile pic, as though you and this girl are the best of friends. Do this a few times. Then make sure none of the photos of you curled up in a foetal position, sobbing into a bottle of creme de menthe are tagged with your name. Hey presto! You look like the Hugh Hefner of Broadstone.

If you’ve got kids, make sure you only add pics of them looking angelic, dressed in the most expensive clothes they own, and maybe pointing and gurgling delightedly at something off camera, while the other parent smiles adoringly down at them. Obviously don’t post any pics of them grabbing handfuls of cowshit during a nature walk, while it pisses it down with rain and your partner storms off back to the car until you “bloody learn to control the little c**t”. Also don’t post any pics of the time they managed to get into the roll of barbed wire n the shed because you were busy in the loft, surfing for porn. Although, hopefully your first reaction on that occasion wasn’t to grab the camera and take pictures.

Status updates… as with any communications campaign, you need to know what message you want to put out. Stressed!LOL is a popular one, so make sure you let everyone know when you’ve had less sleep than you feel you needed, or if you’re Working Late… Again! Treat the status update as though people actually give a fuck. As though there’s some cosmic Pity Bucket that you’re gradually filling up, and that one day the universe will knock on your door and go “Wow! You’ve had it really rough!”

Alternatively, post up nebulous comments about forthcoming/ past activities that are going to be AMMMAAAAZINGGGG!!!! Perhaps you’re going to Thailand, in which case you should start a countdown that goes THAILAND!!! 33 days and counting!! Or just post Looking forward to a big weekend – you know who you are ;o). This way people will look at your page and get jealous of the amazing hedonistic life you lead.

Ultimately you have to remember that Facebook isn’t a tool for communication, or reviving old friendships. It’s there for you to create a better ‘you’ and to be able to place that ‘you’ in a hierarchy of people that you grew up with, went to university with, or met through work. Good luck!

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Christ this is depressing

26Mar10

Stats for my WordPress blog. This must be how Horne and Corden felt.

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Man Drives Car

26Mar10

I see from the news that Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has had his car impounded for dangerous driving. Why is it that whenever a racing car driver gets caught for speeding people are always like “hahaha! He’s been told off for fast driving even though fast driving is his job lol!” whereas if an off-duty army recruit goes berserk with a machete, guns down a load of Muslims in South London, and then fires a rocket at a school, people’s sense of irony just evaporates.

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Look: It’s a fucking baby!

25Mar10

Looking through other people’s posts I get sick of the fact that a simple image of something artful (ie, half of it is missing from the frame) gets a flurry of comments like ‘cor, wow! You’re so deep’. But I figure it’s probably easier to look at a picture than it is to stumble through 1000 words of one of my ghastly posts. And it probably stands out more in the newsletter thingy. So I thought I’d try a picture of my own. This is my idiot daughter Alice. Basically, this is me, pimping her out in order to get more people to look at my blog.

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Tags: baby, marketing, music red hot chili peppers, whiskey

Whiskey Review

25Mar10

Like anything worth having, the very best whiskies aren’t that easy to track down – but if you can get your hands on them, it’s well worth it. Your local London Whiskey Shop may not – unless you’re very lucky – stock Royal Game. Howvere, I know that Gwynne’s corner Shop in Colehill still has a few bottles left. It’s about £7.99 for a litre, so it’s not cheap – but it’s definitely worth splurging out on if Kestrel Super-Strength Lager seems a bit underpowered for you ever since you had that fall near the canal.

I once heard a chef and an art-critic arguing on Radio 4 about whether cheffing could ever be an ‘art’. The Critic said ‘no’, because the range of emotions you would seek to evoke with food are limited. Specifically, he said until someone describes your food as “harrowing” and you take it as a compliment, then food will never be an art form.

With that in mind Royal Game is truly high art, and will help you transcend the boundaries of mundane reality in the way only great works can do. The label boasts that it’s “The Finest Blend”, and you start to realise that this is no idle boast, that this blended whiskey can achieve things that pandering, people pleasing single malts could never do. Initially, the taste is a surprise. You’re going to be taken on a journey though your childhood. The drink skilfully evokes worming medicine, TCP and the kind of toxic paint people kept telling you not to drink. Listen to them no more! You’re an adult now and this is your prize to seize.

The first half litre is fairly agreeable, if tinged with a longing melancholy for lost days. This is merely a set up that will make the second half that much more powerful and moving (like the classic novel The Outsider, with which Royal Game shares many themes, it is meant to be consumed in one sitting). After that – sort of pleasant – first half, things start to become undone. Your vision starts to waver, and a deep dread starts to build. People will start getting in your face at this point, asking you questions you can’t answer (eg, “are you alright?”). They may even try to take the Royal Game away. You may find that even if you want them to, they won’t be able to take it from your hands. Push them away, head to the woods, be alone now. You’ll find, at this point that your memory of your life collapses. Anything pleasant you felt before is smashed into a flat haze of blind existential fear and anger, and that there is no ‘child’ you anymore, no hopeful cherub, no ambitious teenager, these beings aren’t within you, they’re not ‘you’ They’re just a memory, and all that’s left of them is a screaming, sobbing man lying in the woods clutching an empty bottle of whiskey, and in time, he will be gone too. None of it matters, and before long, no one will care or remember. This is the royal game and whether you want to or not, it’s one you will be forced to play.”

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Tags: 9/11, baby pron, burma, embarrassing, idiocy, marketing, publishing, rambo, red hot chili peppers, taliban

Marketing the Taliban

25Mar10

Although I don’t seem to be making that many updates these days, when I do it generally seems to be driven by the fact that I’m a stupid fucker and as such I say stupid fucking things. For example.

Started a marketing course a couple if months ago. Been in marketing for about five years, and I thought that being a stupid fucker was maybe the only qualification I needed. But it turns out I can get an official Stupid Fucker certificate, so I thought “yeah, I’ll do that”. So I paid, like, two and a half grand of my own money to watch a man stand in front of a class and say things like “Microsoft has a strong brand”. Even though the moment people think of Microsoft they think “rip-off, rich bastards, wobbly products, coporate evil” etc. Not exactly positive brand associations. But, stupid fucker that I am, I paid my money and went on my course.

Wading through some turigid nonsense about Service Level Agreements this week, a slide called “Causes of Conflict” came up. One of the bubbles had the words ‘Unplanned Events’ written in it. “Unplanned Events” said the tutor, “Such as things like 9/11″. Without really thinking I blurted out “Surely 9/11 was an incredibly well-planned event?” The tutor eyeballed me and said “You sound like you admire them.” Face reddenning, I tried to bring it back to the subject and said “You don’t achieve something like that without an incredibly efficient project manager. It just seems unfair to describe it as unplanned”. Put my head down and scribbled the word ‘stupid fucker’ on my notepad a couple dozen times.

Anyway. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that next time I’m in a room with a bunch of other marketing half-wits, and people are shouting out the usual Great Brands, I’m going to suggest Al-Queada (<– ha! My terrible spelling means the CIA will never pick my blog up on their clever word sensors! Take that Jason Bourne!). They’re globally recognised. They’ve experienced massive growth in visibility thanks to flawlessly executed PR stunts, and they’re extremely highly regarded among their core market. Even people who despise them despise them because they’re an extremist organisation dedicated to the demolition of Judeo-Christian society. But those are their core brand values!

Take BMW, for instance. They would like us to think that BMWs are aspirational, a symbol of freedom, success and joy. But in reality people think they’re nothing more than an oversized toy aimed at twats, and that the only reason they sell is because they’re a less permanent alternative to having “I’m a massive wanker” tattoed on your head.

The people who hate Al-Quueaadea hate them for exactly the same reasons people love them. So their brand messaging is incredibly consistent. Well done, lads! But your problems aren’t over yet.

Alan Qieuda might be going great guns with his core market, but they’ve probably grown as much as they can in that sector. As well as having an excellent project manager, it seems that they’ve also done very well on their PESTEL analysis, and identified some areas in which they can bring the… Al Queadea experience to new groups, based on the external analysis of their environment:

Ben Laden says:

“All industrial nations, mainly the big ones, are responsible for the crisis of global warming. This is a message to the whole world about those who are causing climate change, whether deliberately or not, and what we should do about that.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8487030.stm

Right on man! I can get behind that, and I’ve no desire to see the eradication of the etc etc. A great example of an organisation identifying new markets that will help them continue their massive growth.

On the other hand, he may have missed the boat, because I can’t sell books on climate change for love or money at the moment, although that may just be because I’m a stupid fucker.

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Tags: 9/11, baby pron, burma, embarrassing, idiocy, marketing, publishing, rambo, red hot chili peppers, taliban

I Hope I Die Before I Grow Mould

25Mar10

As I mentioned when describing the Rambo IV/ Burma debacle, I wouldn’t necessarily tag myself as a stupid person. But apparently I am. I also wouldn’t necessarily tag myself as a neglectful parent, either but… well…

There’s been a few moments, I will admit, where I’ve been doing things like e-drumming, that have led to the occasianal moment where I’ll pop a headphone, and realise that that weird sound in the background isn’t interference, but is instead my daughter’s anguished screams from her cot upstairs, creeping through the noise-reduction padding of the headset (they really are terribly effective in this respect – she has to be going full tilt before I can even hear a whisper). In my defence, she’s never been left like this for more than about five minutes, despite the fact that her screams are of the “I knew it! I knew you’d abandon me to starve!” variety. So although I always end up sprinting upstairs and cuddling her back to sleep with a thousand apologies, it’s not really that bad.

Until yesterday, when I realised that I’d let her go a bit… mouldy. I was sitting in Costa Coffee with my daughter on my lap, when I noticed a weird smell coming from her head. Tentatively lifting up her earlobe, was what looked like a ragged gash between her ear and her head. She thrashes around in her cot a fair bit so I wondered whether she’s pulled her ear away from her head. So it would be – you know – her own fault.

But on closer inspection it turned out that it wasn’t a cut or a scar at all, but rather a thick crust of cheesy mould. Whoops! She was whipped home for a new bath, and the parmesan layer was chipped off (the SMELL WAS DISGUSTING) and daddy sat there wondering whether letting your daughter grow cheese, and then go mouldy somehow reflected badly on him as a parent.

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some music

25Mar10

  
Download now or listen on posterous

EJ2_Dani_JazzClub.m4a (3411 KB)

Some stuff we did at band practice – me on bass, my wife doing the singing…

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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I got mentioned on the BBC Have Your Say!

25Mar10

Not by name, but someone mentioned me on the BBC Have Your Say about whether or not it’s worth going to university!

For some it is not worth it. These would be the mediocre who go there because mommy and daddy told them they had to have ANY degree. They excel at nothing because they care about nothing except partying, hanging with friends, consuming hours on Facebook everyday, and are incapable of competing in the real world which requires knowledge, ambition, and a will to produce.

Mike Nowak, PA, United States

Now, I’ve never met Mike Novak, but he seems to know me better than my own family. I read this and thought hey! I am mediocre! I did go to university because mum and dad shovelled me into it! I am incapable of competing in the real world! I was pretty impressed by this – even though we live on seperate continents, I feel like there’s a connection here on a cosmic level, so well does Mike know me.

I’d only disagree with him on one point: I did feel like it was worth going to university. If you failed to stand out at school and are destined to thrash around ineffectually in the work place, then getting a mickey-mouse degree at a mickey-mouse university is essential. It gives three years of blissful sociability among people whose inability to succeed is matched only by your own. It’s three years of doing something you’re good at, regardless of how unproductive it is (in my case, reading fictional books and saying things about why these people who didn’t exist did these things that didn’t happen).

It’s three years of happiness before you’re condemned to a life of broken dreams, nudging an optical mouse around a messy desk while staring blankly into an Acer EyeFUCK9000.

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