day five

I am 37 words away from being 25% done. Wow.

It had improved very, very slightly, but most of it is still utter tripe. And that's OK. Maybe that's why this strange character came along and insisted I write this piece of historical fiction when I had never attempted anything remotely close: to make me hear my own voice. Because that's mainly what's wrong with my novel - it sounds like me, a contemporary woman, rather than the narrator of a piece of historical fiction about a young boy coming of age. Besides, I'm not overly fond of kids, so inventing his childhood has been, well, inconclusive. It would be painful to reread, but that is for another time. If NaNoWriMo teaches me that I can beat the monster that is procrastination into submission, even temporarily, and that I should write what I know, then it will have been a success, even should I choose to delete the file once December 1st comes around. I doubt that I'll do it, but it would be fitting to represent how NaNo is about the experience.

I wrote very little last night, because I was watching So You Think You Can Dance Canada, and constantly flicking to the election coverage on ABC (least nauseating and obviously biased - hell-o, Fox). Two things: if I hadn't posted it before, I've been telling my boyfriend that Nico will take it all. (I was right about the final three on the last season of SYTYCD, right down to the order. Yay Joshua and Twitch!) As for Obama, godspeed, my man, the road ahead is long. But somehow, your presence made my world feel a little safer today.

goal before bed

In honor of what NaNoWriMo is likely to be, I figured I would find a way to reach my goal of 50K by the end, not of the week, but of this weekend. At the same time, I wanted to write at least those 1,667 words on both weekend days. So here I am, 2,090 words later, just 110 words or so short of the finish line I had drawn in my head. The same one I figured I would never reach this weekend; lo and behold, there it is, just a few lines away. So while I Want to Work for Diddy plays in the background (am I the only one who is amazed that that plus-size African-American lady made it so far ? I remember coming across the show in the first week or so, and thinking there was no way in heck she would survive. Yet there she was, in the final four! But I gotta admit, her dismissal was a glorious bit of karma. But I digress.), I keep rambling away to make sure that my fingers reach over that invisible line in my mind.

Done. Time for bed.

(194)

words fail me

I heard what was perhaps the saddest thing in advertising in a long, long time.

The latest Discover card ad begins with, "We live in a consumer society. And that's OK."

Erm. That is so wrong, on so many levels. Talk amongst yourselves.

(43)

blame it on the Olympics

Yeah, I've been a real couch potato these days, partly due to the Olympics.

Hearty bravos to Alex Despatie for his "golden" silver. I think he really epitomizes how we should react to silver or bronze medallists: if the athlete's thrilled with the result, then so should we. Bottom line. A lot of American silver medallists see it as being "the first loser", a take I have a lot of difficulty comprehending.

As to Canada's medal count, let's put it this way: the States have ten times Canada's population, and got just over six times our medal count. I won't compare with the Chinese, whose setup is such a paradigm shift from Western world athletes that there's just no reconciling the two. (But let it be known I agree that at least two of the Chinese gymnasts were underage.) And in figuring out how to sort country medal counts, I say this: doesn't sorting gold medal winners higher than higher total medal-count countries just run against the Olympic spirit? I agree a silver or bronze will never be a gold, but still, to me, total numbers should be the main factor. If you can put thirty people on the third step of the podium, you are more worthy than a country who has a single silver medal, period.

Some of the highlights for me (apart from the obvious Phelps and Bolt) are Australian Matthew Mitcham stealing the gold from the Chinese in the 10-m platform dive. I keep wondering what the competition would have looked like if Alex's back had held out...Nonetheless, Mitcham was quiet, absolutely solid and beautiful to watch. Another was watching Priscilla Lopes-Schliep celebrate her unexpected silver in the 100m hurdles - in the arms of Sally McLellan from Australia. In a race where the 2nd to 6th positions were determined by 2 one-hundreths of a second, it was a wonderful display of true Olympic spirit.

See you in Vancouver, y'all.

(324)

"half a second away!"

That's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Paul Heyman of (the original) ECW fame.

I stumbled onto his column for London's The Sun newspaper, and I've been watching his "Heyman Hustle" webisodes. His videos are all over the map, and a little too sloppy for my taste. Maybe I've just been spoiled by WWE over the years, as far as slick production goes. Once in a while, there'll be a good, solid bit, but it's too hit-or-miss so far for me. It is half a second away.

On the other hand, I find his written columns intelligent, articulated, and perfectly on-point. Perhaps the best example was his post on the Chris Benoit saga, in which he expresses the finality of the senselessness of it all, and how everyone has tried to come to terms with it, family, co-workers and fans alike. I myself have tried to wrap my mind around it, with no amount of success; the tribute shows are still on my DVD's hard drive, neither archived nor erased. I just can't watch them, but I don't want to gloss over the events and pretend they never happened.

I've wanted to write about it, too. But once my mind starts thinking that professional recognition should bear on professional achievements only, I start to think that three people were denied to right to have further professional achievements (or any, in the case of young Daniel), and that that cannot be honoured. All my thoughts string together with "Yes, but..."s. In that, Paul E. sums it up well: "I've no answers and I never will."

But I digress. Point is, Paul Heyman does a great job of analyzing the field of sports entertainment and MMA, particularly from a marketing standpoint, and he is quite enjoyable to read. Give him a try.

He has a particularly interesting viewpoint concerning the Joey Styles/Mike Adamle, um, debacle? Heck, it's the only thing that makes sense. Personally, I think they want to rebuild a "kickable" interviewer, like Coach was in the Rock's heyday. With Jonathan Coachman's rumoured departure for ESPN, they had the opportunity to juggle things around. I think the addition of Mick Foley was brilliant - he's not perfect yet, but give him time to settle in. Besides, he's already better than JBL ever was. Removing Joey Styles, to me, was a mistake for ECW, the weakest brand WWE has. But parachuting Adamle was a great way to turn him heel almost instantaneously - not that he's evil, just that his eagerness to impress and his incompetence are a perfect combination to get people to want him to get beat up. Check out this week's Dirt Sheet; I think that's the best clue to where WWE is trying to head with Adamle.

I just hope they haven't sacrificed a great voice (Styles, I hope you enjoy running the website), if not all of ECW, for the sake of a shortcut to building a minor character. Unless they name him GM of Raw, in which case I quit!

(509)

food, animation and childhood

Sometimes, not getting what you want reveals lovely surprises. Now, most people who know me realize I am an avowed dessert junkie. After lunch today, I returned to the cafeteria for a little sweet to get me through the afternoon on a day when the warm sunny outside world beckons and work is tough going. I looked at the oatmeal cookies – overbaked. (I like mine light and chewy.) The other cookies? Ditto. No chocolate pudding. Not in the mood for Jell-O. So that left me with a single option: butterscotch pudding. The prospect didn’t immediately thrill my mind, but my taste buds sang from the moment the first spoonful touched my tongue. Songs of childhood and days gone by, of mother’s love and after-school snacks. Yummy. Its creamy smoothness contrasts nicely with a cup of strong hot coffee, too.

I guess I’m just feeling a little nostalgic these days, what with translating a text about how marketing can bank on nostalgia, and mother’s day being just around the corner. Also, there’s a new release out on DVD this week: a double-disk compilation of episodes of La Linea, Italian animated shorts from the seventies.

It took until last year to figure out what the show was actually called; I had always referred to it as “monsieur Bayou Badou”, after the first seconds of the theme music. I still imitated how he would stretch once the pencil had completed his outline, before taking off down the line. Funny, then, to learn that he was called “Balou” in some parts of Europe and “Badum Badum” in Slovenia – without words, a lot of us naturally converged on the same principle!

Once I had figured it out, it was right over to YouTube for a session of concentrated linearity. (Isn’t it marvelous how easy it becomes to find something online once you know what it’s actually called?) But I’m still going to invest in the DVD. Or splurge, whatever. Besides, it’s a healthier form of nostalgia than butterscotch pudding!

(334)

annoying ads

I probably watch too much TV. Once in a while, there are ads that, for one reason or another, drive me up the wall. For the purposes of this discussion, I will avoid the interminable Subway ads that come on at every WWE commercial break.

First, the latest Bowflex ad is driving me up the wall. To Brian Alvarez, the cocky @#$% who says he gave his fat clothes to his fat friends, and that his wife gives him a little wink now and then, I say this:

1. I hope one of your fat friends sits on you until you say uncle. Then sits on you some more anyway.
2. Your wife only gives you a wink now and then because she’s probably @#$%ing one of your fat friends…you now, one of those nice guys, not one of those arrogant know-it-alls that probably now watches every calorie she ingests.

Another ad I need to comment on is GM Canada’s “Cars Gone Wild/Trucks Gone Wild” event. This one aggravates me, not by how unbelievably bad it is, but how unbelievably boring it is considering the material they were working with.

Now, I don’t know about you, but merely seeing cars and trucks taking curves on closed streets and hearing about the great deals GM has for consumers doesn’t do it for me. That’s not in the spirit of “Gone Wild” by any stretch of the imagination.

I want to see flashing headlights, open hoods, open trunks, preferably with shock absorber action, maybe some “come hither” wheel spinning…and, of course, airbags! What a missed opportunity.

(260)

how much thought actually went into this?

Nissan currently has a series of ads on French TV, in which a new consultant is being brought in my management, and that employees have been advised to cooperate with him to the fullest extent. His name? Common sense.

Disclaimer: I drive a 2003 Altima that I despise.

OK, so the message I'm getting here is that Nissan is unfamiliar with common sense, its employees are resistant to change, and only now are they coming around to realizing what every one else already knows works pretty well.

Do these people have a marketing department? Where were they when this was approved? That's what really boggles my mind when I see things like this. It isn't that some creative type at an ad agency thought this concept up. It isn't that the team thought it was worth presenting as an option to the client. It isn't even that someone selected it, approved it, and had it produced. It's that throughout this entire process, either no one stood up and said "Excuse me, but doesn't this essentially say we're MORONS?" or no one listened to said person. *shakes head*

Never again a Nissan.

(191)

and there you go...

Donald Trump chooses ruthless and rude Piers Morgan over tenderhearted team player Trace Adkins, based on sheer numbers, on the bottom line.

That he would fail to realize that you cannot hope to lead the team that deserts you is astonishing. I wonder what the employee turnover rate would be under Piers. I’m sure they would tell me I couldn’t cut it in corporate America; I can imagine the smugness, the virtual pity in their voice. My response would no doubt baffle them; I cannot fathom why anyone would want to subject themselves to such a life, particularly for mere money and power.

Voilà, in a nutshell and very much IMHO, what is wrong with the world today.