Archive for December 27th, 2004

December 27, 2004

Lying

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You lie for a living.
You’re not a bad per­son, not really, but telling the truth at your current com­pany tends to get peo­ple fired.
And you can’t afford to be fired. You’re thirty seven, you’ve got three kids, you’ve got a big house to pay for, your wife would leave you within nano­se­conds if the cash­flow ever dried up, and it’s been well over over a decade since a cute, ran­dom girl in the street loo­ked at you with anything even faintly resem­bling a spar­kle in her eye.
Society only needs you because they need the pro­duct your com­pany makes. Lose the job and you are no lon­ger nee­ded.
Without your job you’re just a mere stain.
So lying equals sur­vi­val.
You have to lie because you have no other ideas about how not to be killed. How not to lose everything.
Lying repla­ced ideas long ago. Lying repla­ced great sex long ago. Lying rela­ced your marriage long ago. Lying repla­ced joy long ago.
Your lies became the pain­less can­cer.
Yes, I’ve read your resume. Very impres­sive.
Look, I already said I’d get back to you next week.

turning the hughtrain into a global microbrand

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Though I’ve been mostly silent on it, these last weeks I’ve been wor­king on a really inte­res­ting pro­ject:
“Tur­ning The Hugh­train into a glo­bal mic­ro­brand.“
Been loo­king at ways to com­mer­cially extend The Hugh­train into mar­kets in Lon­don, Europe, Asia, the US West Coast and the US East Coast.
Suc­cess­ful? Depends who you ask. Right now it’s sprea­ding me pretty thin. I’m doing it for ZERO money. Hell, I wouldn’t even call it “Shoes­tring”. “Second-hand Den­tal Floss” would be more accu­rate.
But it’s WORKING.
There are 3 con­ver­sa­tions in the US. There are 3 con­ver­sa­tions in Europe, and there is 1 or 2 con­ver­sa­tions in Asia. Add to that, there’s about 6 con­ver­sa­tions to do with the whole cartoon-merch-publishing thing. Besi­des that, there’s a whole sea of B-List con­ver­sa­tions hap­pe­ning as well. My fin­gers are numb from wri­ting so many e-mails.
You can divide the B-List into two dis­tict cate­go­ries:

1. Here’s how we can help you.
2. Call us when you’ve got lots of money and we’ll be plea­sed to take great chunks of it away from you in exchange for doing bugger-all.

Guess which one works best for me?
As always, it’s about deli­ve­ra­bles.
The stan­dard Ad Agency biz model doesn’t work for this. Nor does the stan­dard Know­ledge Mana­ge­ment model. And yes, the “Blogs are really cool, please can we build you one and you pay us” model is pretty bloody awful, as well. Methinks the action is elsewhere.
What I’m seeing is a mas­sive dis­con­nect bet­ween the cul­tu­ral and tech­no­lo­gi­cal, bet­ween the inter­nal and the exter­nal mar­kets.
Very few peo­ple outside the blo­gosphere know what the hell I’m tal­king about. They get it in theory, but inva­riably they’ve been wor­king for too long in spe­cia­li­sed indus­tries that acti­vely dis­cou­rage seeing the big pic­ture. Too busy guar­ding their own patch to be anything other than sec­retly hos­tile.
Right now I’m using a blog and some dra­wings to impose my ideas upon the world. Soon I hope to be upgra­ding to much hea­vier arti­llery.
Much hea­vier.
(Email me: hugh at gaping­void etc.)

Evelyn’s OK

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Heard from Evelyn Rodri­guez in Thai­land via e-mail this mor­ning. She’s OK, although she is in hos­pi­tal for minor inju­ries. She blogs about it here.