Posing with his replica Gandalf Grand Master Award complete with magic pixie dust.
Archive for August, 2005
This is a website! Today I got my very first piece of comment spam!
Name: Tri City Tank Tech | E-mail: tahsis22@yahoo.com | URI: http://oiltank.ca/ | IP: 24.87.12.13
Tri City Tank Tech is a Vancouver, B.C. Company specializing in the removal and remediation of residental [sic] and commercial buried furnace underground storage oil tanks in the Lower Mainland.
We employ certified technicians and offer reasonable prices. We also offer hazardous materials removal (such as asbestos) and drainage services. See all of our services.
At least it was relevant, having been posted to my entry about our oil tank getting banged up in the storms last month. I wonder what a service call from Vancouver to Connecticut would be. 
Dove has recently asked the question, “How long have we been chasing someone else’s idea of beauty?”, in their new promotion, Campaign For Real Beauty, resulting in some discussion, which, while being a refreshing change of pace from the typical lack of social discourse that is the norm, will likely do little to alter peoples beliefs. I will admit that I hold my own prejudices in this discussion; I am passionate about the real, the tangible, and the shimmer of attainability. That is my kink, the everyday.
With that in mind, Lucio Guerrero opines that billboards should be reserved for the unattainable, offering these enlightened thoughts:
[A]ds should be about the beautiful people. They should include the unrealistic, the ideal or the unattainable look for which so many people strive. That’s why models make so much money. They are freaks — human anomalies — who need to be paid to get photographed so we can gawk at them.
However, beyond the fact that in a few short words he stripped those models of their humanity, I have difficulty in believing Guerrero that he truly sees models as statistical outliers. The premise of his article is built around the notion that the everyday man and woman are far too average to gaze upon and alludes to the root of his bias and his personal kink, writing:
Hopefully, Dove will come back to its senses and make my morning commute — and Phil’s and Kevin’s and that of countless other men — a little more pleasing to the eyes.
That is the problem. To Guerrero, and countless others, the measure of beauty is a confluence of sexual yearnings and media images. The object of sexual desire has been removed, flattened into two-dimensions, air brushed, and touched up. It is devoid of personality as well as any anchor in empirical reality; these woman and men serve only to fuel his fantasies. The perversion of these fantasies is that they can alter an individual’s sense of self. How can one gaze upon these human anomalies all the while consuming the message that these individuals represent the pinnacle of beauty and not be affected when looking into the mirror?
My feeling is that the marketplace, in its attempt to appeal to customers, has contributed to a deep and widespread neurosis regarding body image and Guerrero’s comments hold that assumption up. In an environment where individuals are faced with filtering, sorting, and consuming messages all day long the process is bound to shape that person in the same way that countless footfalls slowly carve marble steps. I’ll admit that I am a victim of media saturation, in that I have a slightly warped sense of my physical self.
To be blunt, I am a block of wood with legs, not a nicely carved block of wood mind you but rather one of those letter blocks you played with as a child, the kind you and the family dog gnawed on; my body is a squat and long with flaws. At 5′ 9″ I need to shop at the big and tall for 50R suit jackets but I can run a mile and walk fifteen with no problems. Overall, I am healthly it is just that I do not look like Brad Pitt or Mark Walberg during his Calvin Klein days but I am real and that is what matters. These woman that Guerrero derides are real as well and that is what makes them so beautiful.
Since ending grad school nearly two years ago I’ve been gripped with a most disconcerting case of ennui. Most of my higher education has had my time strictly allocated between work and study leaving precious little for me to have to find ways to entertain myself. So this recent hiatus has been ramping up in terms of boredom and restlessness particularly since I have not been able to find any real world application for my MBA. Luckily, there might be some hope for me.
A friend of mine launched a self-started magazine aimed at discussing the intersection of art and politics. The goal was to produce a slick, glossy, two-color cover product on a quarterly basis with the freshest content being mirrored on the magazines website. However, the magazine has had a rocky start in meeting the quarterly release schedule, only managing to release two issues in a little over a year. This is not unheard of in the industry in that most magazine ventures fail within their first year of operation largely due to the incredible costs associated with production and distribution coupled with a highly competitive advertizing marketspace and diminishing readership.
So how does a new venture survive in that environment? For me, it is a puzzling question and one that truly draws me in. My MBA concentrated on technical project management, building bridges between technical staff and requirements and business needs and processes. With only a handful of marketing classes and no publishing experience to speak of I’m inclined to take two steps back and look at the magazine more as a cottage industry product than a publishing venture with the goal being to find a stable release schedule and, at a minimum, break-even profitability.
The first challenge, and probably one of the most important tasks at hand, is developing an executive strategy for the magazine. At the moment, the venture is running much like a zine and that is to be expected since it is a self-starter and is manned by largely creative people. Organizing their vision into a cohesive and actionable plan is necessity as it will guide their future actions and provide a framework for the business to be built around. While an executive strategy is largely a macro-level document it can guide the firm in drafting more detailed documentation for the business plan and later marketing strategies and operational processes.
Seven topics to get started (borrowed from QuickMBA):
- Business Concept - What do we plan to do?
- Company - How will we do it?
- Market Potential - What is our target? What does that target offer?
- Management Team - What is the leadership of the venture? Who is accountable and for what?
- Distinct Competencies - What are the strengths of the firm? What makes us unique?
- Required Funding and its Use - How much do we need in order to deliver a product? How will it be allocated?
- Exit Strategy - How will we land if we fail?
It will be interesting to see how this process turns out and I’m excited both for the magazine and the opportunity to put some of my education to work.
What is OfficeGuns?
We want to use our experience as developers of weapon systems to make your day at the office a more exciting one. And we want to make your co-workers feel less safe around you at the office.
Being obsessive I am forever making lists often before their time is due. So in the spirit of all those myriad little scraps of paper is an evolving list of top albums for the current year.
Ananda Project - Relight
Bebel Gilberto - Remixed
Celso Fonesca - Rive Gauche Rio
DJ Rap - Bulletproof
DJ Cheb I Sabbah - La Kahena
Doves - Some Cities
LCD Soundsystem - Self-Titled
Lemon Jelly - ‘64-’95
M.I.A. - Arular
Nortec Collective - Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3
Sleater-Kinney - Woods
Yerba Buena - Island Life
I’m sure that more will be added to the list as the year grinds to a close but for now these are some of my favorites so far.
