I love a snappy slogan

Most small companies aren’t very clever when it comes to writing their advertising copy.  That’s why it’s always a pleasure when I come across one that actually puts some quality thought into their ads and marketing flyers.

Consider this company, for example.  Their website copy needs improvement; however, their marketing materials were clearly thought through very well.  Look at the downloadable copy of their line of colony counters, for example.  I thought that the slogan they came up with was clever and had a lot of impact, but without being overly cutesy.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

This is an interesting new series on the Cartoon Network. Not bad, but it does have some rough spots.

I like their imperious take on Aquaman, though I think that they’ve gone a bit overboard in that regard.  I also like the way they depict Green Arrow, and I especially like the way they gave little Speedy some significant airtime.  Their characterization of the Blue Beetles hasn’t been bad either.

On the other hand, I absolutely detest the way they depicted the Elongated Man.  The voice they gave him was utterly atrocious as well.

More on profanity

The following statement from another acquaintance is also worth repeating:

“My husband swears a lot and it’s really getting old. Shit, damn, ass and an emphatic fuck (she dreamed!) don’t bother me at all. But he CONSTANTLY uses fucker, cocksucker and motherfucker. If you say cocksucker or motherfucker when you drop a piece of bread or burn your finger, you’re tapped out. There really isn’t much worse that you can say. What if you get hit by a car, or your house burns down, or someone shoots your dog? You’ve already used up the worst words. Believe me, I can swear like a trucker IF PROVOKED, but overusing curses just makes one sound unintelligent, like you can’t think of a smart thing to say. It’s like getting into a physical fight (unless you are in danger, someone is attacking you or a loved one, etc.) Gee, I really have nothing intelligent to say, I think I’ll just punch this guy or say fucking cocksucker because my pills fell on the floor. When you swear a lot, you rob the words of their impact and you just sound like an impatient, short-fused ass. When you hear it every day, it gets old really fast. “

Profanity

An acquaintance of mine made the following comment recently. I think it’s worth repeating.

” Swear words are a net minus for society and we’d be better off without them. They are definitely lazy. One could, I suppose, have an academic debate of whether they’re theoretically useful for “escape valve” or “code switching” purposes. In reality, it’s gone way past that point. There are now a lot of people who spout profanity in every single sentence they use, for no reason whatever except that they can’t be bothered to speak English correctly.”

Another post on Asian men

I though the following two posts from the aforementioned discussion thread were also interesting. The second was a rejoinder to the first.

I don’t think it is true at all. Asian American men may have certain qualities (nerdy, short, etc) in greater numbers than other races, but this does not mean that being Asian American in itself puts them on a “lower rung.”

If that were the case, then we should see a proportionate number of Asian leading men, sex symbols and heartthrobs in movies and on TV… but we don’t. When was the last time you saw a young woman put up a poster of a hot Asian actor in her room?

Now, whenever this subject comes up, people often toss around the following counter-examples:

• Bruce Lee. Sorry folks, but he’s been dead for over thirty years now. What’s more, he was more of an action hero than a sex symbol. It was usually the teenaged boys who put his poster up in their rooms, not the girls.
• Jackie Chan. A funny and talented gent, but again, not generally considered to be a sex symbol.
• Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat. Once again, chop-socky martial artists. Some women find them attractive, but they’re not usually regarded as heartthrobs. When was the last time you saw them on the cover of Tiger Beat or somesuch magazine?

Asian men and attractiveness — again

Came across another discussion thread in which the subject of Asian men and their lack of attractiveness came up. I thought I’d post a brief excerpt from that thread:

There have been countless papers and books written on these subjects. For issues of Asian American men being considered “inferior” compared to men of other races, you might want to read the play David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and the criticism surrounding it (it’s a story about a white man who falls in love with an Asian man pretending to be a woman; based on something that actually happened). Frank Chin has quite a few things to say on the subject, and although many of his views are now outdated it’s interesting to read his opinions on how he considers Asian American culture to be traditionally masculine and how he thinks it’s been emasculated by American stereotypes of Asia as submissive and silent. Much of what he had to say was in response to Maxine Hong Kingston (author of The Woman Warrior), whom Frank Chin despised for supposedly distorting authentic Chinese culture and perpetuating the stereotype of the Asian male as either violent and overbearing or inept and powerless. Actually, you might want to do a search on articles about Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club – there are plenty of articles criticizing how it panders to the Western expectations of Asian cutlture. And of course, Said’s Orientalism is good background reading on Asian stereotypes in general. You might also want to read Yellow by Frank Wu, and War Without Mercy by John Dower (the latter talks about Japanese stereotypes during WWII). I also recommend Re/collecting Early Asian America, which gives a good overview of early Asian Americans in Canada, the US, and South America and how the stereotypes we are familiar with now developed over the course of history. The Chinatown Trunk Mystery is also an interesting read, particularly in light of the VTech shootings – it talks about an unsolved murder of a white woman supposedly committed by a Chinese man back in the 19th century, I think, and how American society reacted to it at the time.

Lauren Tewes, Love Boat Cutie

I’m on a bit of a nostalgia kick, so I decided to rent some DVDs of The Love Boat from Netflix. I have got to say that your cruise director, Lauren Tewes, was a real cutie. Very pretty in a sweet wholesome sort of way. She never became a real sex symbol or superstar, but that’s because she didn’t have that kind of appeal. Instead, she had a much more wholesome, down-to-earth kind of beauty and likeability.

It’s unfortunate that Ms. Tewes ruined her life for a while with cocaine. What a terrible shame.

E-mail

I just wanted to repost the following amusing excerpt from Larry Bailin’s book, Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From?

How about email? I am going to go out on a limb here and say that if you are not using email at this point in time, the rest of us are just waiting for you to die. Anyone that is not using email, especially in their business, will soon just vanish. We won’t be able to hear you or communicate with you. You will eventually just cease to be. So, get with the program or move over and let your competition communicate with us in the way we want… the way we demand to be communicated with. Get it? Got it? Good–now go get a friggin’ email account.

Darn. Darn. Darn.

I was waiting for a phone call last night. It never came. I thought she might call tonight instead, but that didn’t happen.

Dang it. That person can be so darned frustrating at times. It would be a lot nicer if I knew where things stood.

Rats. Rats. Rats.

It’s so hard to find intelligent women. It’s even harder to find women who have solid character and who are basically attractive. It would be so much nicer if she would show a bit more encouragement though, especially since she’s the one who first contacted me.

Darn it.

Bernard Haldane and Associates

Several years ago, I responded to a newspaper ad by Bernard Haldane and Associates. My then-employer was going downhill, and they claimed that they could help. So they invited me to come in to discuss their services.

Right from the start, something sounded fishy. First, their sales agent made a very disparaging (and rather tactless) remark about my resume, saying that they would have to rework it. He said something to the effect that they would never let it see the light of day. That alone sounded suspicious. I knew that there was room for improvement in my resume, but I also knew that I was a good writer and that I had done plenty of reading on resume-writing techniques. His criticism seemed to be a bit over the top.

Second, he claimed to offer access to a secret job market… job openings that were not available anywhere else. This raised the obvious question of how they came by these job openings. Were there really hundreds of companies that advertised exclusively through Bernard Haldane and Associates? That seemed doubtful; after all, if a company wanted to fill a job opening, why would they only use one channel — a channel that charged job seekers a hefty fee?

That was the third big warning flag. The fee that they would have charged was outrageous — at least a couple of thousand dollars, if I recall correctly. Another big warning flag.

When I showed resistance, their agent said, “I guarantee that we can find you a job.” So I asked, “When you say that you guarantee this, do you mean that I’ll get my money back if I don’t land a job through your service?” He went silent.

I later learned that multiple lawsuits had been levelled against this company in various states. I’m so glad that I decided to pass on these guys.