From The Management

The management would like to apologize for the previous post. Those responsible have been disciplined.

Communism, Corporation, Community

There's an old Polish proverb which states "Under capitalism people exploit people; under communism the reverse is true." I recalled this after a discussion with my coworker Simon the other day as we talked about our various challenges when dealing with large corporations.

My job has brought me into contact with several large, multinational companies. Some are my clients, some aren't (and full disclosure: this is not a 'naming names' post, it's a general philosophical post.) Dealing with these corporations has been an eye-opening process for me; before agency PR, my background was at a startup games company and an Oklahoma state government agency as well as some freelance writing and editing gigs. I worked for State Farm for a few summers, but never really got a taste for the full company, and State Farm isn't a multinational anyway. So my exposure to business was limited to smaller and middle-level companies, and of course government.

What strikes me about massive companies is there is a kind of internal bureaucracy normally associated with socialist and communist countries. In fact, it is the exact kind of bureaucracy many libertarians and Goldwater conservatives oppose in goverment: the kind that is a barrier to progress. I'd be remiss if I didn't indicate that it is exactly the kind of bureaucracy that the Neocon Bush Administration has spent the last eight years creating in America. The same that lead to the ultimate failure of and subsequent distrust in the bureaucracy and the administration that created it following the disasterous and murderous breakdown of the system following Hurricane Katrina. The events following Katrina justify the Goldwater conservative / Libertarian view of bureaucracy in a way that no pseudophilosophical blog post ever could.

The resemblance to this justifiably hated bureaucracy in the internal structure of large companies is remarkable. I'm not claiming that it is as dangerous as a failure of infrastructure, but the process to affect change within these bureaucracies is ultimately so convoluted and Byzantine, especially (from my point of view) as they seek to embrace social media, as to be harmful to the company and its consumers both. I realize that these internal reviews and management structures exist precisely to keep things from changing too quickly, but in the digital world it is as much a liability as it is an asset when preventing change. In fact, it's probably far more of a liability. Bureaucracy is the single-largest barrier to adaptation and positive change in either a company or a government.

But how much of a liability? Dangerous to the company certainly. The ability to not react quickly to customer concerns and to rethink PR and communications as one of interaction and customer service is something that will ultimately doom those companies seeking to engage online and go about it the 'old way' and all that implies. But don't take my word for it: Carl Ichan, CEO of Ichan Enterprises (who owns, among other things, Blockbuster) said it best in his post 'Corporate Democracy Is A Myth:

Many American corporations are dysfunctional because corporate democracy is a myth in the United States. They run like a decaying socialistic state. Our boards and CEOs exist in a symbiotic relationship where the boards nourish the CEO with massive stock options that are re-priced downward if the companies stock declines - making them forever valuable. They reward the CEO with pay packages and bonuses when the stock is floundering or the CEO is leaving the company. Corporate performance and the shareholders welfare seldom enter the picture. What kind of democracy is this? There is no accountability.

Accountability is a word I've thrown around before when discussing the same despicable layers of bureaucracy the Neocons created, as ultimately what bureaucracy does is absolve anyone of responsibility. To go back to Katrina, the only one who really lost his job was Michael 'Brownie, you're doin' a heckova job' Brown, a man who was so criminally underqualified for his postion that whomever appointed him should be tried for the murder of people who perished in the days after Katrina. The bureaucracy created so many layers of confusion that in the end, no one except a crony stooge was accountable and the only action taken was he was fired from a job he wasn't doing and didn't need the income from anyway.

This invites other business-government comparisons as well, some of which are exceptionally relevant to engaging online. I could be snide and say Apple is a fascist dictatorship run by one man's cult of personality, but I won't. Or did I? But I'm more interested in the startup mentality from my experiences at WizKids.

The flexibility and freedom of a small to medium-sized startup is far more anagalous to an anarcho-syndicate collective working together to produce things (as opposed to a commune, which works together for the common good, an important distinction Simon pointed out earlier.) This is interesting in that it elegantly mirrors the behavior of many online communities; even within large 'communities' like Facebook people naturally congregate into smaller collectives to serve their specific interests. I realize that's an oversimplification but it's an interesting insight that the companies best equipped to take advantage of online behavior and step around the (you guessed it: bureaucratic) Old Media are those whose internal operations reflect that online behavior.

I can only speculate as to why this is; a company, like a government, in the end is nothing but a bunch of people with artificial structures. When the media structure operates in the same way as the company or government, then it seems - from a relatively small and nonscientific sample - that it is easier for the two to interface. This may be why large companies are so hesitant to embrace social media, as it reflects a system and structure so fundamentally different than the internal bureaucracies they've created that it is too alien for them to comprehend.

I certainly welcome thoughts from anyone who bothered to read this entire rambling piece.

The Same Dream

The way it begins varies but it always ends up the same: I'm in some kind of large store, always with my wife. People are buying strange old things like broken furniture, giant rolled rugs and cardboard boxes. It's extremely colorful and garish, and there are piles of old things just sitting around as if they were garbage but they're for sale too.

I run past all this and I realize I've got something sharp in my mouth. Most of the time it's a bunch of nails but sometimes it's sewing pins or needles or razor blades. I try to find the bathroom but I can't speak to ask where it is, and I have to stop to keep one of them from sliding down my throat, physically by putting my finger in my mouth. It's hard because I can feel the other pins there and they poke my finger.

I finally find the bathroom and it resembles a cross between a YMCA locker room and a slaughterhouse. The floor is made of olive-and-yellow tiny square tiles but it is covered with what I know is small pieces of blood and flesh, each maybe the size of a ball of cotton. I run over to the sink and spit out the pins, but some of them have stuck in my skin. Some have even poked all the way through my cheeks. I pick them out one by one and the holes start to bleed a little.

And that's typically about the time I wake up.

The picture above is by Polish artist Z. Beksinski and is available for sale at this gallery online.

Wizards of the Coast VS. WizKids: What the Hell?

Imagine my surprise when this story rolls through my RSS feeds this morning: WotC, WizKids Settle Lawsuit. The details:

Wizards has granted WizKids a license for the Pirates PocketModel Game to United States Patent No. 7,201,374, and all related patents that might issue.

Granted WizKids a license? For fuck's sake, I came up with the term constructible strategy game. Me. Jason Mical. I take full credit, because it was one of the things I was quite proud of as a 25-year-old marketing noob.

In fact, it says so in Wikipedia, providing some WotC revisionist doesn't get their hands on the article first. I've taken a screengrab and there's always the page's history should the revisionists arrive.

Update
Lawyers truly are worthless, soulless human beings.

I really should think before I type. I know two very good lawyers, a good friend and my father-in-law, and I did not mean to offend. A more accurate statement would be that corporate greed turns people into soulless human beings.

Sorry guys!!

Avast Me Fiction, Mateys!

It's a good time for me as a writer. How good? Really good.

I'm working on two stories for two separate anthologies, one about ghosts, the other about zombies. And in July, the next Blue Kingdoms anthology comes out featuring a new story by yours truly: "Keva's Six." It's a mixture of fantasy pirate action and classic heist tale starring the lovely Keva the Freemariner, the character who originally debuted in the original Blue Kingdoms anthology, and her crew as they attempt to break into an unbreakable vault and take treasure from a pirate who won't appreciate being the target of such rank amateurs.

Are you going to Wizard World Chicago this weekend? If so, Fearless Editor (and fellow Alliterate) Stephen D. Sullivan will be there at Booth 5910 selling copies of Buxom Buccaneers and other Blue Kingdoms things. The book will also be available on Amazon.com soon (I'll post a link when it is.)

Get yer copy me hardies, or I shove ye off the plank! Arr!

The Jurassic Park Award

Do you know an old media dinosaur that needs to be put into a zoo before they go extinct? Celebrate their devotion to the outdated manipulate-and-control nontransparent media model with the Jurassic Park Award! Click for big version, suitable for printing, framing and shaming.

The Dangers of Inauthenticity

Is inauthenticty a word? Maybe in the spirit of Stephen Colbert, it is now. We need something for the opposite of authenticity. That's the word. Here's an example.

I caught on SA a news story from the US about a high school 'scared straight' stunt where students were told their classmates had died, only to discover later that it was a deception intended to 'shock' them about the realities of drunken driving.

Quote from the article:

On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Oceanside Unified Schools Superintendent Larry Perondi discusses the DUI program as a student looks on.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax, a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.

As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego, California, suburb are defending themselves against allegations that they went too far.

At school assemblies, some students held posters that read, "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."

Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced that her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, had died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver. She said she felt nauseated but was too stunned to cry.

"They got the shock they wanted," she said.

Some of her classmates became extremely upset, prompting the teacher to tell them immediately that it was all staged.

"People started yelling at the teacher," she said. "It was pretty hectic."

Others, including many who heard the news of the 26 deaths between classes, were left in the dark until the missing students reappeared hours later.

"You feel betrayed by your teachers and administrators, these people you trust," said 15-year-old Carolyn Magos.

On one hand, I applaud the school for teaching their students to distrust authority figures and question the veracity of what they are told. Not that high school students need much encouragement in that area, but it's always a good lesson to reinforce. So bravo to the administrators for that.

But there's something even more deeply disturbing here that relates to my job. I realize I haven't blogged about work recently, but I'm going to start doing it again, so bear with me.

Manipulation is something that is so ingrained into so many people for so many reasons that it can become justifiable to them in instances like this. The administration's argument, that the ends outweigh the means, is faulty. I could post statistics that show being honest and straightforward with kids (and people) is the best way to influence their behavior. I could post a rant about schools manipulating their students (as soon as you're born, they make you feel small.) But instead consider it from the side of authentic communications, in which my company has become a major thought leader.

The fact of the matter is the old model of manipulate and obfuscate doesn't work. At some point your deception will be discovered, and the ends do not justify the means. Ever. Some marketers view the public as children to be manipulated. Traditionally, this thinking may work. It may get headlines. But like the student response to this deception, is the backlash worth it? If the administrators had instead sat down and shown them something equally shocking but not deceptive, for example, photos of DUI victims that you can easily find online, they would have achieved their goals without the need for lies and without the inevitable negative backlash and loss of trust.

The quote by the girl at the end really sums up the risks and dangers of inauthenticity: "You feel betrayed by your teachers and administrators, these people you trust."

The Highest Compliment

The other day, I was paid the highest compliment I have yet received as an up-and-coming writer.

An editor thanked me for my 'consummate professionalism.'

It made my week. I may not be a best-selling writer (yet) or a best-smelling writer (ever), but I'll take consummate professionalism over either of those things.

Blogging Ain't Easy

That's not true: actually it's really easy. In fact even my mom is blogging now. These are indeed crazy times.

No, what isn't easy is coming up with good content. That's been the Puppet Show's problem since the beginning. With RSS and Google Reader Shared Items, I don't feel like I have to make blog posts about other blog posts unless I have something really significant to add, which I typically don't. I could be blogging about PR and marketing but who really wants to hear about that? Creative blogging is alright but I don't do it nearly enough to make it the focus of this blog.

So I'm sure I'll keep inundating you with randomness and hopefully have fewer filler posts, but I also feel like I only have so much I can devote to blogging and writing and sometimes I have to direct it in other places - a story, the other blogs I work on, and so forth. So please pardon me if I don't update but a couple of times a week. It's not from lack of desire, just lack of time and energy.

When What You Think You Know Isn't True

Going through my RSS this morning, I found a shared item from Kevin about Bob Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, and what really happened when when the wreck was found:

According to newly declassified info and the lead scientist himself, Dr. Bob Ballard, the successful search for the Titanic wreck was actually part of a secret hunt for two sunken cold war American nuclear submarines. The USS Thresher and USS Scorpion had both foundered in the 1960s, and the Navy needed to know what had happened to their reactors over the years. When Dr. Ballard approached them in 1982 for funding to find the Titanic with his new deep-diving robot submersible, the Navy saw the opportunity and granted him the money on the condition he first inspect the two wrecks.

Ballard agreed, and in 1984 set off to investigate. Thresher had been the most advanced attack sub of its time, but in 1963 had an accident during testing that left it without power. Ballard's robotic survey discovered that it had sunk so deep it imploded, turning into thousands of pieces. His 1985 search for the Scorpion—which had disappeared in 1968 with 99 crew, and was thought to be a victim of a Soviet attack—revealed such a large debris field that it looked "as though it had been put through a shredding machine." The survey data revealed the most likely cause of the loss of the sub was one of its own torpedoes going rogue and hitting the sub after firing.

Once the two wrecks had been visited, and the radioactive threat from both was established as small, Ballard was able to search for Titanic. Due to dwindling funds, he had just 12 days to do so, but he used the same debris-field search techniques he'd used for the two subs, and, of course, it worked.

Ballard's search for Titanic was a very important part of my childhood development. It captured my imagination in a way that many other things did not, and helped put into context for my young mind history, determination, exlporation, science, learning, archaeology, and what could be accomplished with hard work and determination and scientific know-how.

And now I read that the reason Ballard didn't find the wreck immediately is that he was secretly looking for submarines, not that he was looking and didn't know where to go.

I realize as an adult that all of those things I listed, imagination, history, exploration, science, learning and so forth require money to accomplish on a grand scale and that money often comes from sources dedicated to many of the direct opposite of those things. Dear God, I recognize that my job allows me the security and time to travel and be creative. Well, sometimes it does. And that's a trade-off.

But it's a little mind-blowing to see that what I once thought was an expedition for pure science was really an afterthought of a military operation and accomplished because Ballard had already crossed the Ts on his creditors' mission, and that even he was beholden to those creditors.

There's a lesson here. It's a cynical one and something I really don't care to think about.

I need to wash my hands.

Scotch Review: The Peat Monster

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The Peat Monster

Scotch Review: The Peat Monster

Who could resist a Scotch called The Peat Monster? That was probably what the marketing folks at Compass Box Whisky were thinking and it worked. This was an impulse buy as I was selecting another Scotch, and I had to try it. Glad I did.

The label description:

Front: Big, Peaty, Smoky. A superb, balanced and delicious combination of smoky, peaty Islay malt whisky with rich, old Speyside malt.

Back: "The Peat Monster" is our big, peaty smoky malt whisky. This whisky is about balance - the balance between the power of smoky Islay malt whisky and rich, old Speyside malt. An ideal after dinner or late night whisky.

I have to respectfully disagree with part of their label copy: Peat Monster makes a fine afternoon sipping whisky as well. The 'monster' is a bit of a misnomer; the label is right in that this is an exceptionally well-balanced scotch. It is peaty but not too peaty, earthy without being overwhelming. What works best about this whisky is that no one element overwhelms the other, making it a pleasant drink all around.

I took their recommendation and had mine neat. The yellowish color gives a hint of its general properties: mild isn't the right word, and I keep coming back to "balance" so I'll stick with it.

Highly recommended.

Oops

I just restarted my account for the book social network Goodreads, and while I thought I was only connecting with the 10 people from my Gmail account who were already on the site, apparently I spammed all 492 people in my contact book.

If you're one of those (many, many) people, I'm very sorry. I blame Goodreads' shitty UI and not-very-transparent 'invite' system.

Update: Jesus, I spammed DeepDiscount's help system, Best Buy, everyone. Good fucking God I hate systems like that.

Note: If anyone out there is a programmer, add a fucking warning box when you want people to import their entire Goddamned address book or at least make it DAMN clear that's what you're doing.

Fucking assholes.

A Matter of Time

This post may be more appropriate on my Yankee In London blog but it's a little more general, so I'll put it here.

Today is a very important milestone for me. I almost didn't notice it was happening. Nine years ago today I returned from studying abroad here in London, after a raucous trip to Scotland and a semester living in another country. That means two things:

I have now lived and been outside of the United States for longer than I ever have before.

I am approximately one-quarter of the way done with our contractual obligations to be here in London, should we decide to come back immediately. Our work visas only last that long anyway.

It's a strange feeling since in a way it seems like we just got here and our lives are still in chaos. At the same time, it's even less remarkable since the real milestone happened about a month ago for me, since I came about a month early this time. Yet there's still that chaos. Things aren't quite settled yet and they may never be.

Of all the things I miss, my friends and family are byfar the largest thing. There is barely a day that goes by where I don't think 'hey, X would love this,' or 'I wish I could show this to Y.' I thought the same thing when I was here before and having the Beautiful Competition here to share this with me certainly helps but I still miss my friends and family greatly. Admittedly, my webcam and Xbox Live does help me keep in touch in ways I wouldn't have been able to do before, but they are still stopgap measures.

As I continue to reevaluate my life as I lurch ever closer to my next birthday (which I'm not officially celebrating, by the way) I realize more and more what's really important and know that I'm adjusting my life accordingly so I can enjoy every bit of time I have with the people I care about. Life's just too damn short to do otherwise.

Apologies for not posting in a while, the weather has been fabulous. This is the first morning it's rained in weeks. Which may be affecting my mood slightly.

Gone Silent

I realize it's been pretty quiet around here lately, mostly because I haven't had a hell of a lot of time to update things. Part of that is how busy I've been at work lately; another part is because GTA4 came out and I've been playing it a lot. A third part is that when I get home from work I just don't care to sit down at a computer and type more stuff. It's also gotten a lot nicer in London lately and I've been outside a lot more.

Last night I finished a new short story that is bound for the next Blue Kingdoms anthology. A Yankee In London has its new banner art. It's a bank holiday today and I'm planning to get out and doing something even if I haven't decided what that something is yet.

On Marketing

From the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.

Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes!

There's a nice new picture on the right nav bar, courtesy of a particularly talented graphic artist. You may recognize his art from the Something Awful forums and the hand-puppet avatars in the comic book subforum there. If you're interested, his site and contact information is here. I'll be plugging him again.

This cosmetic change is the first of several that will take place around the various puppet shows; it will culminate in the launch of a new professional blog, because as much as I'd like to avoid it, I don't think I can get away from blogging as part of my job - because it will ultimately be a necessary networking and platforming tool.

In the meantime, enjoy the new artwork and look for more changes soon.

The Long Weekend Road

I'm sitting on a National Express train back to London after a great weekend hiking in North Yorkshire. I needed a little time off, to myself, by myself. Booked three nights in a roadside inn (constructed 1680), grabbed some ordinance survey maps, planned some hikes and enjoyed getting away from London.

The trip originally had three purposes: to relax (done), to write (also done), and to try to figure out a general direction for myself. I'm pushing 30 and feel like I've been drifting, planless, long enough.

But what I realized before I left was that life isn't necessarily about plans. I discovered that I've never really gotten over my aborted plan to go to New York and Make It Big in Publishing, which was the sum total of my plans after college. In retrospect, as the magazine and publishing industry continues to contract and I'm enjoying a fairly lucrative career in digital PR, I'm not disappointed that I didn't Make It Big. But I've felt as though I've spent most of the last eight years adrift with very little in the way of a 'plan.'

My realization was this: life isn't necessarily about plans. It's about opportunities, about recognizing them and taking advantage of ones that are good for you. It's about seeing something that could potentially be good, whether it's for a career or a relationship or a hobby, and just doing it if it's right. Like moving into digital PR, or moving to London. Or taking a long weekend to Yorkshire and cranking out 10,000 words and a bunch of story and novel notes.

For the first time in my life I feel alright with not having a Plan. I regret some decisions I've made, but they have taught me much, and I stand by each one either as being good for me overall or at least teaching me some kind of lesson. And I can get caught in a snowstorm and still be prepared for it and recognize my limits - when it's time to turn back and try the mountain again the next day.

The funny thing about this is that the insight came before the trip on which I wanted to have it. I'm not complaining. I did get a lot of writing, and hiking, and thinking done. And had some really good Yorkshire ale. The black pudding, not as good. But still an experience.

I feel wholly confident that I can make time to do what I love and to separate my personal life from my work life - something I haven't been great at recently. And my Plan? To enjoy it as it comes. To go with the flow. It's funny: in college, if I'd said that, I would reply "that's Taoism, you took an entire course in that philosophy, remember!" And it only took eight years for the lesson to sink in.

Let Us Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Consoles

Yesterday I got up early to pack my 360 and all my Rock Band kit into a suitcase to drag it down Holloway Road, ride with it through the Tube, then drag it into my office so we could do our first planned office morale activity: play some Rock Band. That's doubly-cool because Rock Band isn't out here yet, so no one has had a chance to play around with it. I set up the Xbox, plugged it in, got all the instruments plugged in, ran through a test song to make sure everything was working correctly, turned it off until the session was about to start, came back and turned it on, watched as the menu froze, then watched as the startup screen froze, and then got the symbol you see above.

The Red Ring of Death.

The Red Ring of Death, or RROD, is what happens when there's a critical failure inside a 360 - it flashes three quarter-circles of red light to indicate that it's got a bit of a problem. It also means your console isn't working anymore and you have to send it to Microsoft so they fix it - and wait, console-less, for them to do so.

Now it's no mystery that I worked on the 360 account in my first days at Edelman, initially on the Corporate team and then on the Community team, before moving on to other accounts (and, that takes care of my transparency disclosure too.) I was excited to work on the 360 account because I came from traditional games, I thought the 360 was doing a lot of things right, and I liked the original Xbox a lot. I don't want to say that I was chugging the cool-aid, but I did buy the first 360 I could as soon as I could.

That one lasted about three months before its DVD drive failed, scratching some of my discs.

The next one lasted about six months or so before its DVD failed.

The one you see above is my third Xbox 360.

Additionally, I packed it into a box to ship over here around the first of November, so until recently I had been Xbox-less. It took far longer to get here than anticipated, so it was sitting unused in its box for a good part of the last few months. Since it got here, I haven't put it through any use it hadn't been through before - often I'm very good about turning it off and not playing for too long at any given time - not that I have time to do otherwise.

Now I've had a lot of consoles. I had an NES. It did start to get wonky, because some NES' had problems with their connectors going bad. Fixing it is an easy open-screw job. I have a Genesis. It still works fine. I had a SNES. Going strong. I have a Dreamcast that works like a charm. I have purchased a 2600, an Intellivision, a Colecovision, a Sega CD and Sega 32X, a Jaguar, a Turbo Graphix 16, a Saturn, and and Xbox, all of which work as well as they did when they rolled off the assembly line. I also have a PS2, which I had to replace twice, both times for the DVD drive failing. If I had purchased a piece of consumer electronics that failed three times on me, I would simply not buy it again or replace it after the third time.

Except in this instance I have hundreds of dollars of games for this device, so I'd really be screwing myself. So I will wait, patiently, for my the repaired console to come back.

I offer no judgment on this situation - I leave that up to you, Puppeteers. I'm only neutrally reporting what's happened to me and the fact that I will now likely have to wait two more months to get my console back. I also have to request my specific console back, because it's a US 360 and 360 games are region-coded - meaning if I just went out and got a UK 360, none of my games would work on it. And since I have to send it to the UK repair center (centre), I run the risk of them not returning my console to me at all but instead giving me one that won't work with my games.

In the meantime, as much as I'd love to play Rock Band or Crackdown with my friends back home - sorry guys, I'm going to have to sit the next few rounds out. I suppose you could send game requests to the repair center (centre) - I hear they have a lot of consoles there.

2Cats1Box

The cats have arrived and have adjusted nicely to living in a small flat. Well, almost nicely. The Beautiful Competition has discovered that she's allergic to them moreso than she was before - if she pets them and rubs her eyes, she has to take a Benadryl. I'm holding up alright but I can definitely tell the space is smaller.

But the biggest change is the box. I realize I run the risk of turning this whole post into some kind of poop joke, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum. But this is the first time both cats have used one litter box, and the clumping-nosmell-bakingsoda litter we used to use isn't available here. The flat is small, and the space for the box is minimum, so it's in the closet right as you walk in. So if it's dirty, you know.

Now don't surf away so quickly you read skidmarks: it's not as bad as some spoiled chocolate, only that you have to keep it clean. It's really just a matter of being careful, like stepping around roadapples or cowpies, or like you're repeatedly mulching your garden every spring. It's a matter of dilligence really. If you keep it free of floaters and regulate the tootsie rolls to the candy bowl, it's not much trouble.

The smell can get downright horrible however, as you might expect. Sometimes it's enough to give you the runs, and as summer approaches I fear that it will become even more craptacular, especially considering the overall flow of air in the flat isn't real great when we're away at work. We'll have to unplug things so that everything comes out in the end as the temperatures start to rise.

On Apple Keynote

I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong, but in this instance I feel more justified than anything else. I'm also one to avoid a hype bandwagon, sometimes (I'll admit) to my own detriment when something I would normally find cool is hyped to the point where it can't simply be that good. Especially when the person doing the hyping is one I tend to disagree with.

But I digress. I've had the pleasure these last couple of days of working extensively with Apple's Keynote software. For you PC scrubs out there, Keynote is to Apple what Powerpoint is to PC. Well that's not entirely true, because you have to own Apple-branded hardware to run this Apple-branded software (monopoly cough) while you can run Powerpoint on a Mac. But seriously, why would you want to?

When it comes to one functional program over I generally don't really care what I use. Features are the first dealbreaker; OpenOffice, for example, fucked up the formatting on my work documents so I scrapped it after a couple of weeks. UI is the second dealbreaker; how easy is the program to use? More importantly, how intuitive is it? I don't have a problem changing my habits to switch from one version of a program to another if the learning curve is low enough that it doesn't matter - and to its credit, Office 2007 is awesomely easy to learn.

But Powerpoint has always been my nemesis. I have never had a violent impulse from a video game, but Powerpoint has made me contemplate murder and other kinds of sociopathic behavior. Its autoformatting is a piece of shit and it just isn't easy to use - it's not intuitive.

Keynote is Powerpoint without the annoying bits. It is so ludicriously intuitive you'd think it was reading your mind. It gives you everything you need to adjust your slides automatically rather than making you hunt for them through a series of nested menus. It's almost fun to use.

I doubt I'm going to run out and buy a Mac anytime soon, but this does offer one answer to my favorite question for Macheads: what about a Mac actually makes it better than a PC (other than 'It's not Windowz LOL' or 'it just works,' which is a crock of shit.) Keynote kicks ass. I wish I could buy it for my PC.

Transparency Disclaimer: I worked (but no longer do so) on Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit PR team in the Digital realm.