Bonana-fana-fo-Fataki

Fee fy mo Mataki

Starbucks Nailed Simplicity

While Fox & Co. paraded their disdain for the Starbucks cup, too reductionist for their sensibilities, the business media, honest to god, talked about it in business terms. It's like having your panties in a bunch and going commando at the same time. No mere mortal could possess that much compartmentilization.

There was too much class in the design to suit those who lead with their agenda. The Trotskyites probably railed at the Bolsheviks about the symbolism of re-used, chipped china. A green logo on a Christmasy red cup. Must all your cleverness come with a bludgeon?

Anyway, here in New Mexico we make the perfect use of red and green.

"Eat It"

Tonight, the 25th, we're having a casserole style enchilada with NM red sauce at one end and green at the other. Black beans and leftover latkes.

"Domini, domini, domini..." as The Firesign Theatre once put it.

Good Americans

"Obama bin Lyin'" Herp Derp

Lately, political correctness (PC) has been receiving the same kinds of denunciation as secularism once did. I don't have a problem with either which makes me suspicious of all that agitation.

It also generates enough blow from the reactionary right for the rest of us to question if yet another term has been coopted out of the lexicon (it would help if) everybody uses. PC is as healthy a blend of The Golden Rule, free speech, good manners and statesmanship (where applicable) as one might expect from a country with a Constitution such as ours. I get that it may seem tedious to those who poke and prod for a living.

It's intended to short circuit the manner of getting one's points across, when hateful, disrespectful, ignorant or worse, but not attempting thought control. Perhaps that should have been placed into past tense. As many in the press are well aware, it's being branded as a cudgel to prevent that greater depth of understanding about the events of the day and the participants. Also the locations, times and reasons for it all. (Recalling a free press can make a person feel as old as a party-line windup telephone in quantums of quaintness™. "Hello, Gertie?")

No-Credit-Check Politics

If only we had that 20/20 hindsight beforehand

The science behind advertising and campaigning is taught in our universities. Even in poorer ones. People can and do earn a living off the fruits of its research.

Some favor the dark side. There is no shortage of predation where the trusting meet the unscrupulous.

You see those ads on the independent channels in los boonies for a dealership with national name recognition and a goofy avatar which wants to put you in a 2002 Tercel without running your non-existent credit past a non-existent, ergo: cost-effective credit checking service.

Its business model assumes the repossession of your Tercel and its hasty return to the inventory, rinse, repeat.

Or, should you faithfully make every last payment, you will have paid someone unmercifully to obtain a 2002 Tercel.

For one of the parties, that's a win/win. For you, it's a lesson in the costs of not saving.