RULES : How Many 'Feel Good Ads' A Company Has Is Directly Proportional to Their Evilness

I'm a sucker. A complete and utter sucker who, in the road of life, has only luck and a rather voracious web reading habit to thank for not falling for various Nigerian Email scams and being the proud owner of 3 college diplomas in only three weeks!

When political strategists get together and decide what their messages is going to be, you can bet I'm the low end of cynicism. I just naturally tend to believe whatever someone is telling me. Especially if accompanied by say, stellar copy and a crisp, clean cinematography. If you have a nice cropped shot of a sunflower and then zoom with some really heart rending words about caring for the only planet we have, you can bet that my vote for you to win the next Nobel Peace prize is in the mail. Never mind if you are say, Dow Chemical who made that ever so delightful anti-personnel weapon, napalm; or the 'We've Got More Money Than God But Can't Bear To Pay Our Fine For the Valdez Spill' Exxon.

I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps my addiction to whiz bang movies has made me an easy target. You have compelling image, of say, a bright eyed child telling me how your company is saving 1 million lives a day, I'll totally believe you. I mean, it might be an ad for the GOP party, and I'd still believe you.

But I've found, in my short life that, that the companies with the bestest, most tear jerking and optimistic ads are invariably these atrocious entities that one cannot believe have not been swallowed up by the bowels of hell. On second thought, their collective evil is so great I'm sure the Seventh Circle wouldn't like the competition. I mean Shell, which has been indicated in assassinations of environmentalists in Nigeria, who, quite by happenstance, I assure you, were opposed to Shell's increased rap-- I mean ethical drilling of their environment. And then there are the ads for coal. COAL! I still find it surprising we use COAL to power anything. It's pretty much the default energy source for 18th Century Industrial England, what with it's scampy street urchins and millions dying from respiratory disease.

So, that's my tip for you readers out there who haven't figured this out (which I'm sure you have, smart bunch that y'are), feel-good commercial == Corporation Made From Evil Incarnate.

Photography, Much Better Than Small Talk

It's a function of adulthood, going to parties with strangers. It's not that I was a big partier before. Unless you count playing 'Killer Instinct' and getting a Big Mac combo a "night out on the town". But when you reach a certain age, the circle of friends no longer expands, there's no new people falling into you life, like your new slightly off-kilter lab partner who can do a winning impression of Dan Quayle. Social life is, for a lack of a better term, static. Or, if you're a nerd like I, even more static. A veritable Tesla coil of non-social group expanding am I.

If you're a guy, social life is invariably going to the odd potluck with your wife's friends. (In the future, I look forward to many 'parties' with complete strangers who's offspring happen to be friends of my offspring.) Ah, adulthood.

Luckily, I've taken up photography. And really only because Mrs. Owl enjoys photos so much. Me, I'd be happy with the odd snapshot in a long forgotten manilla folder stuffed under old Transformers and not taken out until I'm moved into a slightly disused and alarmingly underfunded retirement home. But The Boss, she likes pictures, lots and lots of family shots and kids shots and shots with kids and family and, well. It goes on.

It's not like photography is not in the family. My dad was a big proponent of the 'candid' shot. Those shots taken just as life is running along. Unscripted shots of moments capture forever in quickly fading albums that no one will care about except for wives who'll dig them up eventually and just marvel, marvel at them. What he'd do is seem to have his damn point and shoot with him at all times. Usually we'd find him standing off in a corner, his right hand down by his side, kinda obscuring it with his leg like he was packing irons and this was a western, and we (me and my brothers) were the cheatin' card players soon to meet our grisly end. And then, BAM, he'd take a shot. The vast majority of these shots were utterly blurred and crap, but the very very odd time, there was magic.

This appeals to me. It's a very hackerish way of taking shots. That is, I'm not terribly good, but I' enthusiastic, and if take enough, one of those is going to be good. I think.

So, how does this fit in with awkward potlucks? Well, at one toddler's party and another potluck, I just made myself the designated photographer, looking all artsy and taking shot after shot. It's super effective at those awkward moments where you ask each other what you do, and how do you like it, and how did you get into it. It's a conversational shield, SHIELD I say.

And, sometimes, you get damned lucky and take some really great shots about which I can find nothing sarcastic to say:

Hope

It's fashionable among the nifty trendsetting ultra-hipster pseudo-elite, to mock the US. Whether you are from the US hardly matters. And it's not only because America is such a unfathomably large target: bombastic and patriotic, star and stripes and assault rifles and Monday Night football; it's not only because America has become a caricature of everything that comes to mind when one says 'boor'.

No, it goes deeper than that.

For those outside the US, America represents that hypocrtical parent you catch toking a doobie while speed dialing his mistress. A paragon, if you will, of virtue, of (probably due to Hollywood) everything that's Good In The World. Independence, freedom, a general distaste for hierarchy. The States were always the Rebel Alliance for much of its short history; scrappy and just one of the good ol' boys; the passengers in steerage in the great Titanic of world politics.

All that changed, of course.

One needn't outline all the atrocious things that have passed under the Bush Administration. The list is unspeakably long, laughably absurd. Domestic wiretapping; pre-emptive wars; torture; prisons which sucked foreign nationals in and never let them out; black ops CIA torture shops that were stationed outside the US; botching of Katrina relief; hampering stem cell research; gutting environmental protection laws.

It all goes directly against what the US meant not only to itself, but to the world.

The list sounds over the top. Something out of a dystopian sci-fi epic where the protagonist is well-trained in a stylish killing technique and the art director finds colours outside the grey-scale to be abhorrent.

The affront is all the worse because it comes from the brash, bastion of freedom. The plucky upstart that showed those entrenched dowdy Europeans the what-for. A country that took the throwaways from different countries and built something great. A country, quite literally, of underdogs.

It's a poetic country.

A country that inspires patriotism, that feeling of belonging and pride that usually is only given to sports teams or marginal British comedy troupes. Sure, we laugh and scoff at the mulleted, stars-and-stripes parachute pants wearing red-neck at the NASCAR rallies; but that sentiment, to literally wear ones country, wells from somewhere. A sense that we are all equal, that every one has an equal chance to succeed in whatever way they see fit. That freedom, to do and say what we want and how we want, is a basic right, moreso than Star Wars prequels that don't suck or a Thanksgiving Dinner that isn't too awkward.

The world loves America, but even more than that, loves what America stands for. An idyllic rough and tumble world of meritocracy and hope. Hope for a better life, for the best in ourselves realized. Hope that those who work the hardest and the smartest will get their earned reward. That it's not where you're born or what you're born into, but rather what you are driven to achieve that counts.

It's that love that is so white hot that can turn to hate so cold.

And now the US stands on the precipice of another election, now with a Democratic nominee who inspires, who thinks about issues. Who really is about coming right from the very bottom, and clawing the way to the top. A thoughtful, enlightened president. One who can, let's face it, give one hell of a speech.

The world is once again in the thrall of US, once again in this honeymoon of America as an idea, no, no, the ideal idea. A country that almost every free country strives in some ways to be like.

Cynic that I am, it's only natural for me to brace for the worst. But Obama has me in thrall as well. This skeptic die-hard sarcasm-as-a-second-language nerd can't help but hope, throw his full unrepentant sentiment behind the idea that the US will choose a better direction, for a better country, a better world.

Imaginary Cabinet Positions I Would Excel In

Thanks to cheesoning for the blog topic.

A day doesn't go by when I don't imagine myself in the halls of power, making decisions, attending steering committee meetings, heading discovery working groups. And let's not forget drafting legislation and speaking firey tirades to a legislature populated by 17 sleeping members of parliament.

That's the life for me.

And even before that, you got the dry and pablum campaign trail where you say nothing of substance and try and repeat the most catchy if inaccurate soundbite twenty times a day. On TV! Repeating phrases that my handlers and political analysts have deemed best 'resonate' with this or that demographic!

But I think I'd really excel if they created certain Cabinet Positions for me. The sort that might not exist in a single democratic regime, or even in the crazy ones where the warlords drive Bentleys and the children learn the fine art of AK-47 assault rifle maintenance at the age of 7.

Such as:



Director of "That's What She Said"
This might be the trickiest of all of them. I'll have to sit in on any public hearing and scream, with little voice modulation, "THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID" to anything that may be construed as vaguely sexual. I'll get bonus points if I yell it at quotes that make no sense at all.

The thin line here will be to mock the actual use of it, as in, the sort of person who might say this habitually, without becoming that person.

Sort of a Frodo/Smeagol thing.



Deputy Minister of Antics
This job will entail pulling off absurd stunts when the media is giving undue attention to something the government would rather forget.

Kick backs being traced dangerously close to an appointed official? I got this Edgar Allan Poe Short story I'd like to perform for you all in backwards Klingon, my assistent will be juggling three empty flames... in esperanto.

Another senator getting caught in a sting against deviant and highly sexy bathroom behaviour? Hey everyone! I'm going to now question the purpose of pauses in modern theatre, starting with Pinter and ending with Dr. Seuss. This will be performed in a large vat of mint and jalepeno Jello.

No flash photography, please.



Head of the Department of "Boooooring"
It'll be my job to sit in on speeches to a general audience in which complex and far-sighted solutions are proposed. The answers will be thoughtful, backed by scholarly research, and overall better for the country, if difficult to understand. Unfortunately, they are being championed by my party's opposition, so I'll yell out "BOOOOORRING" as soon as they get too 'in-depth' and or start to present 'scientific evidence'.

We'll seemed down to earth, and to be bringing some common-sense to those big wigs up on Parliament Hill.

Hopefully I'll be able to parlay this catchphrase into a short-run and universally panned talk show.



Minister of Peppermint
What? I just really like it. It's like a fresh April shower in your mouth!

Baby Names And The People I Imagine They Create

So Mrs. Owl and I are expecting another baby. Don't worry, I don't expect gushings or cigar passing. We are quite happy about it, no need to expect semi-strangers to feel the same way, you heartless succubi.

Anyhoo, we're doing the usual knock-down drag-out bare knuckle fighting that ensues when an otherwise normal couple tries to think of a what to name the baby.

Owlet was relatively easy. It was just a pretty (albeit a somewhat popular) name. No, not Owlet, the name we actually use. In real life. Where there are no links and blog rolls and tags and google adsense.

But this new one, he's going to be a he. Which I'm pretty ambiguous about, I guess. As long as they are healthy, etcetera. On the plus side, I don't have to worry about those hell-spawn boys slavering after another daughter. On the other hand, I have to worry about a child that will most likely think nothing about jumping off the roof of the car onto gravel "because it looked fun". So, pros, cons, whatever.

What follows are the names we've thought of, and some we wish never crossed our minds, and the sort of guy I'd imagine my son would grow up to be if he got the name (my profuse apologies if you have named your son this, or this is in fact your name):

Hank : Hank'll change your tire for ya. He's got some pretty serious opinions about the Boston Red Sox and fly fishing, otherwise, he's just a stand up sort of feller. He doesn't eat cereal unless it's hot, and parlsey is just another word for salad. Meat is either red or chicken.

Enzo : I immediately think of 'speed' when I hear this name. Perhaps because Ferrari's first name was Enzo. Perhaps because Enzo just strikes me as the sort of person who does parkour on the weekends and street luge every month.

Nikko : Nikko joined an Eastern European mafia outfit at the age of 13. He has voluminous chest hair and loves his gold rings. When he breaks knee caps, he doesn't use more force than is necessary and just has a admirable technique.

Stanley : A modern medical miracle, Stanley was born, fully formed, as a 67 year-old, complete with a trusty toolbox and a rocking chair. He doesn't think much about any single issue, relying, instead on tried and true cliches ("You can tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving", "A only good lawyer is a dead one", "Drill baby, drill.").

Wyatt : I love this name. Mrs. Owl doesn't. This is the name of a guy who likes westerns, does bullriding on the weekend, and has retired from the career of smoke jumper to the more idyllic, slower lifestyle of a firefighter for a large uban metropolis. He drinks only one type of beer, you've never heard of it but it has 23% alcohol and three times the legal hops limit.

Matthias : Does watercolours soley about the large colon. Has a vintage tie-dye collection and only listens to Rush. Finds four-leaf clovers terrifying.

Some People Saw The Meltdown Coming, in February.

Sorry for the lame YouTube post, and one not even featuring Terry Tate(!), but this video is really excellent.

Rough Draft For Coronation Acceptance Speech, Emperor. 3rd Iceberg to the left, Antarctica

Thanks to betaray for the topic suggestion.

Many of you are worried about the regime change. The changes I shall instigate are things that you've all been wanting anyways. Whispering about on the floes, gossiping about during our Egg Sit.

Firstly, no more waddling. It's undignified and makes each of us look like a clumsy waiter with a glandular problem. It's quick steps and sliding on your belly or nothing. Yelling 'whee' while your sliding is not acceptable.

Next, I'm not sure what sort of twisted god made us most adept at water but still made us walk over land to get to our nesting site. I'm having none of it, we're moving to Chile.

Thirdly, well, this is about walking too. Let's just move on.

We are never going to get any respect as long as we mournfully look after our eggs that have rolled away. Any men who lose their eggs, buck up, keep a stiff upper lip. No mugging for the camera. Related to this, we're going to start hunting really big things. None of this flying through the water with the greatest of ease to snag fish of all things.

We're going after big game people. Walruses, crippled sea lions, particularly near-sighted orcas. We'll move up from there. I'm projecting that by Q4 we'll be launching full combined assaults on a grey whales. At least.

We as a people gone through some rough time with credibility. First the heart-warming documentary, then not one, but two animated movies. You don't think the Grizzlies are still feeling it from the Pooh debacle of '67? We all have to pull together, step it up.

Nobody wants to end up like the Pandas.