inception: the subconscious ninja of marketing

to date, i have pumped roughly 3,320 gallons of 76 gas. roughly put in 58,240 nonacademic searches into google. so what kind of subconscious ninja would it take to break me away from brand loyalty and habit?

blizzcon transcendentalism

there are few things that are as transcendental as music. everyone can enjoy a good beat. it's a universal language without words, infinitely more popular and understood than esperanto by any measure. it invokes nationalism, sorrow, joy, and when you're in the club, it brings out the moves. there is music that will complement any type of mood. you can listen to erik satie while enjoying a gallery full of degas or bump up some metallica when you hit the dunes on that atv. alternatively, you could be doing absolutely nothing but watching stallone blast the burmese militia away to the first blood theme or watch leo and kate make hanky panky to 'my heart will go on.'

nothing to boost your aromatherapy like some soothing music. nothing to max out your emo like dashboard confessionals. sit for a minute and think of the mood you're in and what you want to listen to. change up your tuneskies and see how your mood changes. put on your favorite songs and think of what memories they bring up.

ready, set,

my goals for this year were discovering and honing my passions and, in spirit of the recession, downsizing - really trimming the fat. i've done a great job of the former, and a half decent job of the latter, but it seems my work load has increased. projects seem to multiply quicker than mrsa on a petri dish so it's high time to implement the brilliant up or out of the cravath system. 6 monthsish per venture to reach the next stage or out. my weakness is persistence, the last man standing. so here's me drawing hampers to throw the towel in.

dear stephen hawking

for every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. what if, in the context of ideas, there is an equal and opposite idea? further, what if there is a conservation of brilliance. throw this on a bell curve. subsequently, for every pickin brilliant idea you come up with, someone is fishing with dynamite - chucking them in the air upwind - or worse, chasing good ole nessy with nukes. with this, i petition that you produce more mediocre work to avoid plaguing the world with inversely equivalently inane ideas. exhibit a. thank you.

- village idiot

boogie scapegoat

the more i think about it as i lay in bed rather sleepless, tony hayward almost got away with the bp incident. it wasn't his fault...per se.

we haven't sat around blaming the toyota maelstrom on watanabe or leaded toys on eckert, but we certainly glared at brown for hurricane katrina and glowered at davis, eventually leading to the second recall in history. of course, ford's nasser got shat on as well for sitting around willing tires to explode, right?

anyway, this makes me wonder why some get the boot, and others get lavish compensation in light of some seriously questionable offenses (ahem, mozilo). bp certainly wasn't looking to kick hayward out, but due to delayed and inadequate response, people were becoming furious and demanding accountability. while it's easy to hate a large corporation (i.e. walmart), you just can't derive any joy from hating an inanimate object. so of course the hate started piling onto hayward. and then the bloke decided to go sailing. i'm not saying he didn't deserve a day off, but couldn't he have absconded elsewhere? well, i've gotta say that was the straw that broke the camel's back. while bp didn't intend to give hayward the boot, the opportunity rapidly hit a haitus with the last act. so in saving face for the corporation, they kicked out the face of the company, who had drawn all the anger. the kleenex was covered in boogies, so why not just toss it out?

gomboc mind cuss

fate is a rather curious thing. it's a multidimensional collision of serendipity and murphy's law possibly extending beyond the space-time continuum. the improbable alignment of events in such a way that results in a rather statistically improbable outcome. all in all, it's quite the mind cuss for me. i'd consider myself a scientist - loosely, if you will - whether physical, social, or other. so to believe in the concept of fate is a bit of a leap of faith, something i don't prefer to rely on. yet we could say i was fated to believe in fate. roll your eyes, here it goes.

but really, there must be some formula that quantifies the whole shebang, or we can promote or relegate it to nature's design. pi? gomboc? fibonacci? nautilus? fractals? tessellations?

so every once in a while, ask yourself how you got where you are. how events have played out given that you chose this path in the last fork you came across. why you came across the people you came across. people enter your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime. there is reason even in that season.

next time you hit that snooze button, think of how the rest of your day will change and the ripple effect it will have on person x displaced y degrees from you in 50 years. maybe you narrowly dodge a ridiculously gnarly accident on the freeway, bump into someone you spend the rest of your life with, or come across someone who can use your help. a certain commercial bores you at a particular moment and you change the channel and see something you later end up discussing with someone. the fortune cookie you chose from the dish - the fact that you're at the restaurant at that day at that time and asked for the check at that particular moment.

of course we can toy with the concepts of karma, optimism, pessimism, and the like - dragging them into a perfect tessellation of an equation - in the sense that we have become beings with endless predilections that tend us towards some events more than others, resulting in predictable outcomes. what comes around goes around?

dear jamba juice

I AM A HUGE FAN of your culture, mission, and products. i maniacally promote your brand and forward coupons and events widely. but brand loyalty can be like yesterday's meal - great at the time, but sh*t tomorrow. i am writing to implore that you never again use the paper cups for smoothies. here's my story:

i crave your smoothies on most normal days, and a hedonist, i indulge myself more often than not. on sleepless nights, i have counted the hours till opening, and on long days, i have broken many a statute and limit to place the last order of the day. for the most part, i hem and haw between two or three drinks, but you could give me anything and i'd love it. regardless, its always an original 24 ounce, whose breadth and depth i know so well, the rounded plastic lid usually with an iota of smoothie oozing out around the straw hole. i firmly grasp the styrofoam cup, sturdy and insulating. i know its dirty secret - that it leaves behind tiny flecks of your logo inside from the last cup in the stack, but no matter. i yank off the remainder of the straw's cover and take in that cool, fruity goodness. i close my eyes as the calming satiety rolls over me.

BUT WAIT!

this time, it was all wrong. i heard my name and reached for my drink. COLD. WET. something was terribly awry, like an m&m that melts in your hand. my jamba juice, not yet a minute or two into this world, was sweating all over itself. the damage was done, it had pissed all over my hands. i instantly realized that my drink was in a PAPER CUP! sacre bleu! and things only got worse. there were hard fragments of something i'm still not sure what, but i spat them out. and if this unfamiliar object condensating all over my hands with a rock boost wasn't bad enough, the sonofab*tch slipped right out of my hands and took a whopping dump all over the front mat of the third street promenade's gap. i actually meant to exit uneventfully, jaywalk right back to your store, and ask for my drink to be replaced sans rocks. but i fumbled making michael vick look better than jerry rice, and here's the kicker. you made me feel like an a**hole and i apologized profusely to gap's staff for your blunder.

your smoothies are dense and, i'm quite certain, would outweight 24 ounces of most drinks. throw a dense smoothie mix into a paper cup and it only creates a puddle of water. but start drinking that sucker and guess what, there's nothing to support the empty part of the cup, and you're stuck with a bottom heavy baby. so my hand was sufficiently wrapped two-thirds up on the cup when the opening folded in on itself as the slippery bastard simultaneously dropped out from my grasp. were i jim carrey in the truman show, we could cue back the incident and i could tell you which came first. but because i haven't subscribed to instant replay, you're just going to have to take my word for it that both events were mutually inclusive. subsequently, i find your change to paper cups inanely reckless and blatantly reprehensible. so to summarize, smoothie + paper cup --> slippery + heavy --> diarrhea on the floor.

albeit a socially responsible person, i don't care if you're moving away from styrofoam for environmental concern. no more paper cups.

all in all, the damage has been done. however, i am willing to retract half of my outburst for a modest sum of $11,800,275 for my troubles, but will gladly settle for a free drink.