Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

RUMOR, THEORY AND THE AGE OF DELUSION.

In To Jerusalem and Back, Saul Bellow recounts a conversation with art critic Harold Rosenberg about turning 70:

"Well, sure, I've heard about old age and death and all those things, but so far as I'm concerned it's all a rumor."

Aside from the exquisite classic Jewishness of the joke, the line struck deeper for me. It's true the thought of aging and dying is something none of us really looks forward to, so this sort of humorous denial of reality is cute and clever and charming.

The trouble arises, however, when we ignore reality and fact on a host of issues that demand timely action.

When climate change deniers ignore the mountain of evidence supporting the man-made effects of pollution on our environment, it's not funny.

When creationists reject evolution because it's a "theory" (gravity is a theory too but they don't have a problem with that one) and hold up as counter-evidence beliefs only supported by books written by bedouins two or three thousand years ago, it's not really funny.

When birthers go on with their racist rumors that Barack Obama was not born in the US, in spite of documentation and common sense overwhelmingly telling us otherwise, it undermines the political system and the efforts of someone trying to bring about positive change for the majority of Americans.

And speaking of which, when opponents of universal healthcare in the US, so fearful of scary socialism (they don't mind socialized police and fire departments), make up stories about death panels and losing the right to choose one's doctor, it's not funny. It hurts the majority of Americans who stand to gain incalculable peace of mind from a system the rest of the world agrees is better for 99.9% of people.

Debate and dissent are vital in moving our society and civilization forward. But I wonder: is having to give equal time to deluded crackpots who refuse to accept reality too high a price to pay when so many problems need our real attention now?

WORD OF THE DAY: SWIVE

Followers of my blog (all three of you) may know of my reverence for a certain four-letter word.

According to Bill Bryson in The Mother Tongue, however, before 1503 the vulgar word for sex was not fuck but swive.

Yes, swive. I never heard of it either. But I like it.

According to the Collins English dictionary by way of urbandictionary.com, it derives from the same Old English word that gave us 'swivel.'

So next time you spin in your chair at work and think of sex, you'll know why. Consider it my gift to you.

Keep swive alive!

Thus endeth the lesson.

(Image)

MISPELLING.

A little Saturday morning fun for language nerds, courtesy The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

Which of the following words are mispelled?

supercede

conceed

procede

idiosyncracy

concensus

accomodate

impressario

irresistable

rhythym

opthalmologist

diptheria

afficianado

caesarian

grafitti

(See below.)

.

.

.

.

.

.

Actually, they're all misspelled. So was mispelling in the title and the first line.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

BROS, ICING AND MARKETING. EWW.

I'm not keen on the term 'dude' but I absolutely despise 'bro' -- as in "Hey bro, that's awesome!" or "Don't tase me bro!" or "Bro, do you have a light?"

So (a) I don't smoke, and (b) I'm not your 'bro'.

It's one of those terms lame, privileged boozy suburban white boys use to make themselves sound cool (so they think). Like, brodacious, dude.

Urbandictionary.com defines 'bro' thusly:

"Obnoxious partying males who are often seen at college parties. When they aren’t making an ass of themselves they usually just stand around holding a red plastic cup waiting for something exciting to happen so they can scream something that demonstrates how much they enjoy partying. Nearly everyone in a fraternity is a bro but there are also many bros who are not in a fraternity. They often wear a rugby shirt and a baseball cap. It is not uncommon for them to have spiked hair with frosted tips. Bros actually chose this name for themselves as they often refer to each other as "bro" even though they are not related."

Priceless.

Well, apparently there's a whole bro culture out there -- I use the term 'culture' loosely -- centered around, what else, drinking Smirnoff Ice. And it turns out the folks at Diageo are not amused.

AP DITCHES THE DASH.

They say it's hard to see evolution take place because it happens so slowly relative to our own lifetimes.

The evolution of language, on the other hand, takes place a bit more quickly and sometimes you get a chance to see it in action -- even if the changes are tiny (literally).

A little while ago I blogged about the archaic way people still insist on writing words, like "thank-you" instead of "thank you" or "co-operate" rather than "cooperate."

Well, AP has made a move that a lot of us already have informally. "Web site" is no more. It's now "website," one word, no hyphen and lowercased. It's a welcome change for the anal crazies among us who felt "website" along with "internet" are familiar enough to join the ranks of "television" and "radio."

Welcome to the big time.

THE IPAD, TED BAXTER, RICK SANCHEZ AND THE FUTURE OF WORK.

It's coming up on five months since I began working from home full-time. And while I miss some of the office camaraderie, I can't say I miss much else. Here's what I love the most about working from home:

First, the flexibility of working my own hours -- even if I sometimes start early, end late and work weekends, I can carve out a big gap in the middle of my days to work out, shop, take a nap or watch the lovable, dopey Ted Baxter of his generation, Rick Sanchez (there, I admit it).

Second, there's a fantastic sense of honor and empowerment to know I'm getting paid for every hour I work -- no more corporate executives dangling the carrot of bonuses (that never came) or promotions (that never motivated me).

Third, although I wake up most mornings with an eddy of fear in my stomach, wondering where my next project will come from and when, it's a good feeling, one that makes me excited about the future.

And finally, working from home makes me feel like what the first guy to get his hands on an iPad must have felt like, or how I felt when I ditched my car 10 years ago. I know I'm on the leading edge of monumental change -- in this case, the way work will work for a lot more people in the next 10 or 20 years -- and that feels kind of cool. Seth Godin wrote about it in TIME Magazine last year:

"More and more, [...] the need to actually show up at an office that consists of an anonymous hallway and a farm of cubicles or closed doors is just going to fade away. It's too expensive, and it's too slow. I'd rather send you a file at the end of my day (when you're in a very different time zone) and have the information returned to my desktop when I wake up tomorrow. We may never meet, but we're both doing essential work."

And blogged about it again this week:

"If we were starting this whole office thing today, it's inconceivable we'd pay the rent/time/commuting cost to get what we get. I think in ten years the TV show 'the Office' will be seen as a quaint antique."

LADY GAGA'S ALEJANDRO.

So what if it's an hommage to (ripoff of) Madonna and/or ABBA and/or The Three Stooges and/or Kathy Lee Gifford (a.k.a. Kathy Lee Johnson a.k.a. Kathy Lee Epstein) from her days on Name That Tune.

Gaga is so hot right now and I love it. (And it has bubkes to do with copywriting. Sue me.)

A SHIFT IN OUR CAR CULTURE.

Yesterday I rented a Jetta named Jenkins from Zipcar for the first time so I could get to a client meeting in Mississauga. Not only was the entire process from reservation to pickup to drop-off completely seamless, but when I realized after an hour and 15 minutes in traffic (silly me, I'd only given myself an hour and a half to drive back downtown) that I wouldn't be back in time to return the car, I was even able to extend my reservation with one simple phone call.

Jenkins and Zipcar were amazing. The drive home was barbaric.

Back at the turn of the century I ditched my own car and never looked back. It took a big psychological shift to get there -- like most North American kids, I grew up in a suburban two-car household, got my license on my 16th birthday and never considered not having my own set of wheels. But there's rarely been a day since then when I wished I had a car, or the $1,000 or so in expenses that come with the privilege. 

It never fails to fascinate me when I speak with people who live in the suburbs. One of their first reactions to me living downtown is how expensive that is. So I ask how much having one or two cars cost them every month and what kind of home that lost money would get them in the city. That's usually followed by silence or claims about 'quality of life.' I don't know, the fact I can walk to work, to the movies, to buy groceries and to a dozen or more restaurants seems pretty A1 quality to me. I even have an elementary school across the street if I decide to have kids. And then there's that $1,000 extra in my pocket or my retirement account each month.

It seems I'm not alone -- times may be a-changin'. Urban planning expert and author Richard Florida blogged last week about 'The Great Car Reset' and how, finally, our unconditional love affair with cars may have peaked.

For a whole lot of reasons, not the least of all this, the shift isn't coming a day too soon.

FOR GODSAKES, SAY SOMETHING.

I hate small talk. It's why I've never picked up anyone in a bar. And why I've mastered the art of analyzing the floor number buttons in my elevator when someone else is in there. I just get really uncomfortable having to talk about nothing.

Don't get me wrong. Once you get me started on advertising or politics or 30 Rock or the latest Malcolm Gladwell book, you can't shut me up.

But conversations about nothing kill me. Sadly, they are the air most companies -- and most people who work at those companies -- breathe. Because more people hate silence more than they hate bullshit. So the corporate environment is littered with filler and double talk and meetings to 'strategize' filler and double talk. Stuff like this:

"The goal here is simple: benchmark teams with exciting accountability and responsibility for channel and business lines."

Or this:

"We now have a structure and a exceptional start to strategize the leadership supply-chains within the team."

Or:

"We're going to benchmark processes and systems that aren't working and benchmark them so you get the bandwidth you need."

Or:

"The creation of our niche unit is the logical evolution of fantastic work that has been done in the niche pillar."

THESE DON'T MEAN ANYTHING. No really, they don't. They were automatically generated from an online corporate bullshit generator. But I can swear I've heard someone say something like this a million times.

Remember the Infinite Monkey Theorem, which essentially says that if you leave monkeys to their own devices with typewriters they'll eventually bang out Hamlet? Well, I think the theory is wrong. They bang out this stuff.

I suspect a lot of this stems from our education system, especially high school and university, where we were asked to write 1,000-word essays on topics where 500 would have done the trick. But we were young and stupid and insecure so we padded the rest of the assignment with filler, hoping it would make us sound smarter and garner a better grade.

It's still happening.

Master Yoda (a.k.a. Seth Godin) writes:

"Most people work hard to find artful ways to say very little. Instead of polishing that turd, why not work harder to think of something remarkable or important to say in the first place?"

Amen to that. How about it?

A FEW WORDS ON THE GAZA FLOTILLA CRISIS.

Since starting my own company, I’ve made a point of avoiding posting too much on this blog about politics. Although I’m passionate about the subject, I figure it’s a no-win stuation: I’m not particularly looking to attract clients who share my political views nor do I want to offend those who might be superb clients but who disagree with me.

However, as much as I might want to be, I’m not simply an entrepreneur; I’m a human being and citizen of the world and I believe it’s important that all of us speak our minds on issues of consequence, not by spouting off with the same old talking points or by screaming past each other but rather by trying to get beyond the misunderstanding and hatred and one upmanship. 

We have to try.

I believe that what Israel did on the high seas this week, boarding a flotilla attempting to break an embargo on Gaza, was legally justified but morally wrong. Just as I believe that the occupation of the West Bank, the result of a planned existential attack on Israel 43 years ago by its ‘neighbors’, is legally justified but morally untenable. And I believe continued settlement building in occupied Palestinian land, including East Jerusalem, is wrong and must end.

But I also believe that the Arabs of Palestine and their brothers throughout the Middle East have been morally and stupefyingly delinquent as well. For a century now – because this fight did not begin on May 14, 1947, or on June 10, 1967 –  they have used their children as pawns, taught them to hate before they could spell and squandered every conceivable opportunity to end what has become the raw, festering, gaping wound of our civilization.

We can argue till the end of time about who is more wrong and who has committed more atrocities. ENOUGH. It will get us absolutely nowhere. It is a path guaranteed to continue the bloodshed and perpetuate disaster. For once, the history is irrelevant.

I don’t know what the solution is. I wish I did. I do, however know this:  the answers we’re looking for will not come from the minds or hearts of cowardly small men like Khaled Mashaal or Benjamin Netanyahu. What we need right now are leaders like Anwar Sadat who, in 1977, had the courage to shatter the status quo with one brave trip to Jerusalem, where he declared:

“I wish to tell you today and I proclaim to the whole world: We accept to live with you in a lasting and just peace.”

Twenty-five words. But they made all the difference.

In these dark days for a country that I love and a people who deserve a real home of their own, I’m reminded of words spoken in another divisive time, by one courageous man about another. Simply replace “black” and “white” by “Arab” and “Jew” or “Palestinian” and “Israeli” and Robert Kennedy’s words on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination still ring true:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

“So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

“But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”