In my mind, from my time as a child (too young to watch it first-run, but my parents did) and through repeats and syndication (it was on every evening in Honolulu growing up) and through its 1972-1977 run of 251 episodes of M*A*S*H, starting from season one, disc one from Netflix.

This show haunts me but is sort of like my glory days in high school, maybe my memories are clouded by my parents’ love for M*A*S*H and its merry pranksters, Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, John Patrick Francis Mulcahy, Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, Maxwell Q. Klinger, John Francis Xavier “Trapper” McIntyre, Henry Braymore Blake, Franklin Marion “Frank” Burns, Walter Eugene “Radar” O’Reilly, B. J. Hunnicutt, Sherman Tecumseh Potter, and Charles Emerson Winchester III.

Well, I finished the first disc of, I think 7 episodes, including the pilot and I must say that the show started off on blocks, sprinting away from the pilot.  I am so excited about watching the show in broadcast order because, as you know, watching old series like this is a nonlinear and atemporal experience, from Trapper to B.J., from Blake to Potter, from Frank to Charles — completely without self-consciousness.

Anyway, thanks to DVDs individually mailed to me in Portland, over time, by Netflix, I will have seen all the episodes of MASH at some point in the future and I am pretty sure my life will be changed when this is over.  The only thing I can say to you millennial whipper-snappers — and to many folks my age who were out of the loop — is that watching the entire five-years of M.A.S.H. in order should be your queue after you get through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks & Geeks, and Undeclared.

I have Lost in Translation playing on the TV in the background, recorded off of HBO, I guess, onto DVR.

It really is one of the best movies ever, in my humble estimation.  Sofia Coppola gets a lot of shit, I guess, for being the daughter of Francis Ford, but her talents are profound.  She understands negative space.

She understand the pregnant pause.  She understands ambiance and naturalism.

The most gorgeous moments of Lost are environmental.

That and the willingness and shamelessness of the camera to fetish the impossibly young and ethereal Scarlett Johansson.

Virtually no makeup, a shaggy head of hair, and the pleasantly apropos preppy kit she probably brought with her, un-stylishly, to Japan from Yale, which fit in beautifully, of course, in the school girl-obsessed Tokyo: flat canvas shoes, peacoat, a little girl’s clear plastic brolly.

And, though Sofia is obsessed with Scarlett as a possessed, out-of-context, wild thing in a cultural alien landscape bereft of appropriate levels of appreciation and adoration, she is also obsessed with Bill Murray.

Every crag of his face, every arch of his brow, every flyaway hair on his receding hairline.  She is fascinated with Bill and Scarlett equally — with the sort of emotional detachment proffered by a German nature documentary.

They’re like wild things in a wilderness that is actually a wilderness park.

They’re like two alien life forms contained in what their captors how are good enough manifestations of their natural environment.

But in this Japan, in this particular containment in Tokyo, it is not through luxury or pleasure or even their family that they find the courage to finally venture into alien land and find their comfort and joy and safety in and through each other.

Can you find a home in someone else’s simulacrum?

Can the simulacra become one’s home?

Yes, but only through another.

I love this movie.

Universally, the biggest gasp I get when I meet people new to marketing, PR, or advertising is that most ad copy is restricted to a 6th grade reading level.

I am going to use this blog post to reassure everyone that writing simply should mean writing elegantly and not writing simplistically, resulting in young adult fiction.

While the reading ease is kept simple, we’re generally not writing to appeal to 12-year-olds.

One of the biggest challenges that writers have across all disciplines is with interpretation. While ambiguity and nuance is favored by poets and novelists, creating copy that isn’t concise, clear, and succinct is a disservice to my clients.

What is required, at least online and when engaging bloggers, is messaging that endures the obligatory game of telephone that always happens when sharing between people. If you’ve never heard of telephone, I thought I would share this from Wikipedia:

The first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.

Social media is essentially a game of telephone, so it is critical to make sure the last player receives as intact a message as possible, no matter who is in the chain.

No matter their background, native tongue, education, gender, cultural heritage, age, or disposition, our most important job is creating messaging that both injects a durable copy into the mind and consciousness of the consumer while also making it past the client’s review.

It isn’t easy, to be sure. If I choose a word that someone isn’t familiar with, they generally won’t take the time to explore the OED—not because of intellect but because people are busy, people have limited time and attention, and we don’t have them on salary.

The time we have with them is generally limited to five minutes from opening an email pitch to when a blogger clicks on [Post] on their blog.

Gustave Flaubert was fastidious in his devotion to finding the right word, le mot juste, and so should we be because when you’re able to spend a little time distilling your message, the client’s message, or your company’s mission, then you’ll probably learn quite a lot about yourself as well as how you’re perceived.

I had been using the word premasticate in my talks about blogger outreach and online messaging because I like to think about how the kiss was developed, in a time before Gerber’s when baby food was made by a mother who would pre-chew food for her child.

I also like to think of sea birds going out to sea, fishing for smelt, and then coming back and feeding their chicks through regurgitation. I loved these visuals and it always amused classes when I did my Blue-footed Booby mating dance (pictured above) and subsequent feeding of chicks as marketing metaphor. However, I now know that the visual is vile and is often considered infantilizing to bloggers.

Like I said, I am always listening and always learning. Progress not perfection.

When you think carefully about your core message, think about not just the ideas but also the consumability of each word (6th or 7th grade reading ease), you also realize that thinking this way can also be very useful for organic SEO and search.

How? Well, when you consider every word, you’ll start to think about how other people read and comprehend your brand. Have you ever listened to an interview of someone who has a highly-technical job?

Their responses tend to include acronyms, nicknames, and references that are only understandable by other scientists, politicians, engineers, doctors, and lawyers. A good interviewer asks what those acronyms means, slows the interviewee down, asks them to explain what they’re saying.

They call this unpacking your thinking, or layman’s terms.

Google runs on layman’s terms—all search does. And because search engines don’t use thesauri and are painfully explicit, it’s important to broaden your choice of words (search keywords).

For example, a television is also popularly called a TV, a flatscreen, a plasma, a big screen, an HDTV—even a boob tube and idiot box. If you don’t include them all in your online copy—if you don’t know the potential lingua fanca of everyone, you really had better cover your bases.

In summary, the resulting “simple” of any copy you write for general consumption should be as accessible as possible—not simplistic. More like Hemingway—to the marrow—rather than of a lower fidelity.

Writing like this requires and demands that we, instead, work harder, become more concise, and distill the larger prose, copy, corpus, text, into something more essential, more easily and universally comprehensible and intact.

It demands the we bear the brunt of the load, do all the hard work, instead of depending on others to parse what we’re on about.

And, on that note, I am well aware that I didn’t follow any of my rules while writing this post. Let me know if I should have.

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

Image by wstera2 via Flickr

Since there’s so much going on online, post Osama bin Laden‘s death in Pakistan, in memoriam of the attacks on September 11th, I wanted to add my personal memories as culled from my blog entries from 9/11 and the week or so afterwards. As close to real-time reporting of the moment as I have:

Driving the Jeep Home
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 09:29 AM

I must have spent some time with Michelle, as she was under the weather, because on my drive back from Michelle’s pad in Dupont, I had the windows rolled down and Morning Edition on the radio. It was then that I heard about the 0850 and 0904 crashes into the World Trade Center. First into the first Twin Tower (as I knew them) and then the second, respectively.

The weather was pristine, in the low 80′s like it is today, and I had the windows down and the radio was on loud. I looked over to other drivers and we shared looks. The looks were not terror, they were not panic, they were not any of those things. They were not even numb, dumb looks. They were looks of incredulousness. Disbelief. Dumfounded.

There were rumors of all sorts of things at that moment. There had been no sort of anything in DC yet, but there were rumors that there was a bomb in the State Depeartment.

At this time, 9:30, I was driving fast down Massachusetts Avenue, returning from a night’s sleepover with my ex-girlfriend, Michelle.

I was staying there because I has double-booked my apartment and as there was a bed for Isabelle and a bed for Kate, I was either sleeping on the love seat (I am 6’3″) or in the bed of a friend. Michelle was my friend. Michelle is my friend. So are Kate and Isa.

Lincoln Park and the Explosion
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 09:35 AM

I returned to the Hill, and was rounding Lincoln park, on 11th Street, SE, and I heard an enormous, muffled, but distant blast. There were rumors on the radio that there was a bomb at the State Department. Michelle works at the State Department.

I hit the gas and hustled home to Isabelle, to Kate, to the television and to the phone so that I could call Michelle to see if she was okay.

Before the blast, I was in the Jeep, listening to Morning Edition on the radio. I was returning to my home office. I had the windows down and saw everyone in the other cars with looks of disbelief in their faces. My face must have been similar.

When the day began, I woke up in bed with my Ex, Michelle. She had let me spend the night because I had double-booked my pad and needed someplace to crash. She was sick so she didn’t plan on going to work in the Library of the Department of State.

Upon Arrival at the Grotto
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 12:03 PM

Upon returning to the Grotto, my pad, I joined Kate and Isa on the blue Ikea loveseat. They were hunched over, squinting at the little Sony 19″ TV with all their might. The room was dark. Kate told me my mom had called to tell me what was going on. When she called, Kate and Isa had turned on the TV. Neither of them watches. Only my obsessive NPR-listening kept me informed as returned from Michelle’s.

It was really only then did I recognize what was going on in NYC. It was only then, as they alternated between live news feeds and the looping looping looping footage of the crash crash crash of the two planes into what knew as the twin towers, but now learned were called Tower One and Tower Two of the World Trade Center.

I had been in New York city just about a month previous. I had been staying in Brooklyn in Anne and Ian’s apartment. While they were gone. When they returned, I commuted into the City with Anne. She works for Moody’s. Ian works for the Port Authority. She worked right next to the WTC towers and he, Ian, worked in them.

We had walked from their gorgeous walkup apartment in Brooklyn to the Subway. It was only a short ride to the Subway right there at the WTC. I walked Anne to her building, gave her a hug and a kiss, and then headed uptown to the trains back to DC.

I wrote this first weblog entry the week before visiting Anne, Ian, Marlise, Minna, and Mark; I wrote this second weblog entry the week after.

Funny that. It bears no importance that I was at the towers a little over one month before the terrorist events of 9-11, but I hadn’t realized it.

Collecting My Family
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 12:20 PM

When I realized the import of what was going on, I called Michelle Nolan, my recent Ex, and told her that I was jumping into the Jeep and dashing back over to Dupont so that I could collect her from her 10th floor condo, right up the street from the State Department and relatively close to the Executive Branch. And she lives in a Studio apartment, one wall of which is glass. And she lives with our dog Suzi.

So although she didn’t want to come at first, I sped over there anyway. To collect her. To collect them. Big Little Erz and Little Little Erz.

There was a lot of traffic forming. There were the first signs of the military. I hustled up 13th, and then made it up to Florida and cut around above the city center and after some nasty jams, I made it in to Dupont and there was Miss Michelle and Miss Suzi, all packed up and ready to bail.

I got her in the car. As I said before, she was feeling sick anyway. She was looking kind of out of it; I knew I was kind of out of it. It didn’t matter. When I need to perform, I always do, thank God.

As I recall, there were already Hummers at some of the corners downtown, so I avoided downtown again. I tried my best to do the circuit, but as I recall, I believe I tool Mass Ave mostly.

When we got into the Grotto — Suzi, Kate, Michelle, Isa, and I — I felt better. And by that time, Anita was back home and her crew were starting to drink some beers. Isa had made plans to bail town to the ‘burbs to avoid the inevitable, I was blogging and sending emails on the kitchen table, Michelle and Kate were glued to the TV, and Suzi was just chillin’. She’s good like that.

Of course, the towers fell. The fell and many people didn’t get out. And there is something wrong when the rescuers need rescue.

By noon, Kate and I headed over to Al’s to grab some ‘za.

And, then there was the plane, hijacked, and apparently on its way to the White House. And then there was the report of it going down in a field in Central Pennsylvania.

And the day passed.

Washington (and America) Under Siege.
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 11:10 AM

This morning at 0850 a jetliner crashed into the World Trade Center. Then another. Then a jetliner crashed into the Pentagon. A car bomb at State. A fire at the Old Executive Office building. I heard an explosion on the way home from Dupont. I guess it was the State Department. The towers collapsed. There is a jetliner on route to DC. It is hijacked. A 747 crashed in Western PA. Part of the Pentagon is collapsed. All federal buildings have been evacuated. F-16s are scrambled. The two towers are collapsed at the World Trade Center. What are you doing right now? Are you okay? What were you doing when the initial terrorist action was perpetrated?

Washington Gridlocked and Panicked.
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 02:01 PM

Union Station is closed down, for obvious reasons. 395 in Virginia is as well. I was just on the road picking my friend up from Dupont so she would not be alone, so I know that 16th street up to Bethesda is locked, so is New York Avenue, Rhode Island, Mass Ave, and obviously downtown. I have decided not to leave the city, as this probably won’t go NBC, so I am staying put.

People are blowing through red lights and stop signs. Emergency Vehicles are stranded in traffic.

I recommend leaving your windows open so that you can hear sirens and horns

The routes out of the city are mad and gridlocked but most folks who are home are eating lunch right now at the stores and restaurants around the hill.

Don’t panic. Stay at home. Slow and stop for pedestrians. Give blood. Respect the authority of the street cops as they direct you, if you will be on the road.

Be safe.

Friends, Please Check In!
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 2:33 PM

If you are here, you might know me. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to those who are suffering, are injured, or have died, and their friends and family.

Secondly, please click on the “comments?” link below and let me know if you are okay? Or if you want or need to talk about this.

My Experience of Wednesday’s Terrorism in DC
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 03:42 PM

Egad!

I found out on the way back home this morning from a friend’s house. On NPR. At 0930. Washington was hit by an AA jet — the Pentagon.

I left the windows open when I was driving. I drove across town twice today, once from Dupont at 0930 and once at around 1130.

Each cross street was dangerous because there was a cascade of Emergency vehicles. I left the doors open because of Emergency vehicles as well as cop cars. I kept my windows open because people were blowing through stoplights and stop signs.

Union Station is locked down. When I dropped Isa off there, all trains were ceased and Jersey Barriers. The sky was and is clear, bright blue, and earily quiet.

There is not a plane in the sky.

Southwest of here, there is a waft of dark smoke. I assume it is the Pentagon.

All the roads out of town are gridlocked and I am hoping that there is not a second round.

The entire city is evacuated. There have been many revisions of what had happened: car bomb at the State Dept., Old Executive Office Building on fire. Something going on at the White House.

Right now, the skyline of Manhattan is completely different and Washington a panicked and ornery.

The Pentagon is still partially collapsed and the full extent of the attack — the force of its ripple; the reaction to a definite action — is still to be revealed. Is everyone okay? Is Anne and her fiancé Ian okay? Others in Gov’t and Finance?

Well, I know that Mark, Michelle, Diane, Cheryl, Suzi, and Kate are okay. How about the rest of you. Lots of love and Godspeed!

Chris Abraham

Normalish
Posted Sep 13, 2001 – 06:02 PM

I just drove out to Target on rt 1. The car’s batts were acting funny, so I wanted to get a charge on, so I went to Target so that I could buy a can opener and some laundry detergernt and dishwashing machine liquid.

I didn’t see the damage to the Pentagon. What side was it on? Anyway, aside from the a little more intensity with regards the police presence, all the roads are open and I could even travel up Independence back to the pad.

Its very weird to see it heal at least superficially so darn quickly. There are roads closed off, but I don’t see the National Guard or anything.

Chez Michelle
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 07:30 AM

A year ago this morning at 0719, 11 September 2001, I woke up with Michelle. Michelle had recently moved out of our shared apartment and into her new condo in the Chandra Levy building in deepest, darkest Dupont, Washington, DC, US.

Michelle felt sick. I got up, had some water, used the loo, and then left the little Studio flat with our dog. I walked Suzi up to P Street, grabbed Michelle some food from the convenience store. The kind of care package one collects for a friend who is under the weather. As everyone knows, I always over-buy. She could have camped out in her little apartment, under the covers, for a week on my supplies.

Chris Abraham Online 9-11

Employee number one and the Poet Laureate of Abraham Harrison, Sir Phillip Rhoades of Fulton, wrote the most amazing anti-advice post ever that is so funny — and really what everyone in the space is actually doing too much of — that my eyes are bleeding — 10 Essential Tips For Failing At Social Media Business:

Plenty of people out there are giving you the down low on how to manage your social media presence successfully, but that can lead to some serious repercussions! Improved brand coverage, more business, and worst of all – more work! No one wants more work and that’s all “more business” is after all. So for those of you who want to make sure you reduce your work load this year, I have these 10 essential tips for failing at social media business:

1. Only reach out to A-listers, because you want to make sure you have all of your eggs in one basket and that when they all turn you down that you have no recourse and no resources left to reach out to the B-listers. After all, who cares about the thousands and thousands of people that follow the B-listers. They’re all just B-people anyway.
2. There’s no reason to rush a response. People online have all the time in the world. They are all just a bunch of jobless, socially inept, timewasters anyway. They don’t need you to respond in an hour or anything like that. A month or two should be just fine!
3. Being online is just like being at home on your couch in your underwear. Treat every single interaction as if you’re just yelling at the TV. None of those people online are real and it’s not like they feel emotional pain or anything.
4. If someone gets angry with you just threaten them with lawyers and knee-cappings. It totally can’t go wrong. Better yet, send lawyers to commit knee-cappings! Yes!
5. Keep as much of the conversation in the dark as possible. Always start a phone call or email thread as soon as possible. Especially if you’re actually helping someone. If people see you helping someone then they might get the wrong idea about your company. They might think it’s a friendly and helpful company. That would mean more business and more business means more work! No one wants more work. Screw that.
6. Never ever turn a support request into a conversation. Conversations lead to warm fuzzy feelings of emotional connection with your brand, which of course leads to more business! We already know from rule 5, more business is more work! No good will come of it!
7. Always tell people asking stupid questions to google it. In fact be extra abrasive and send them a link like this: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Abraham+Harrison+LLC which is awesome because it shows them how easy it is to search for something. This way they feel the sting of the insult that much more. Huzzah! Less business and less work! (Also, all questions are stupid questions)
8. Be as mean, curt, and condescending as possible. How dare these people bring their baggage into a conversation with you about your brand! Make sure to unload with some baggage of your own.
9. Make sure to make a lot of promises that you can’t possibly keep. Make these promises publicly and often. Then come up with the flimsiest excuses to defend not following up. Examples include: “Corporate says no”, “We lost the paperwork”, “I never said that”, and “Really this is all your fault because blah blah blah”.
10. You’re off the hook the minute you stop communicating so keep communication at a minimum. Only communicate in the most basic and simple ways. Most importantly, NEVER offer a solution, especially one that actually works. If you solve people’s problems then they won’t learn. . . learn to leave you alone so you can enjoy some peace and quiet that is! Solving problems can only lead to more business and more work! No one wants that.

Well, there’s my extremely bad advice. If you follow these tips your social media presence is sure to be doomed, business will decrease, and you’ll have so little work that you’ll wonder how you ever had so much before.

That’s how many I have! Come join me over at FourSquare: foursquare.com/chrisabraham

What does this mean for Carrie Ann Inaba‘s clout if she’s coming to Fort Wayne, IN?  Either way, she’s doing it for breast cancer.

I think it means she’s a super-hard worker and far from a princess. I think she’s maximizing her current valuation and doing an honest-to-goodness grass roots pitch to where her fans live and breathe. I also think they showed her the money.

Only had a late-night two hours from 9pm-11pm tonight, Tuesday. Listened to some No Agenda and some Coast-to-Coast AM on podcast while trying to walk as fast as I wanted.  Night was cool and I enjoyed the walk. Via Jockular Athletic Blog

Mark promised me that Berlin was high-culture, high-brow, and intellectual. However, check out the signage here for Sex and the City 2, dubbed into German.

What’s more, on the message boards and on Facebook, sophisticated German and expat women are, city-wide, organizing girls nights out to consume the exploits of Carrie and her friends and her over-sexed and hyper-drama lifes and “loves.” Also, note the Marmaduke sign to the left of the SatC poster.

Poor Germany and poor Europe — they’re becoming as banal & mundane as we!

• Zattoo – watch online TV
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• Television
• German Links – German Language Learning Resources Online – German Culture Resources – Websites on German Language & Culture
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• German Internet TV – TVover.net
• OnlineTVRecorder.com – Your personal multichannel tv recorder
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  Awesome list of streaming German TV channels
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• Internet-Fernsehen: Filme, Shows und Serien als Online TV bei RTLNOW.de
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• Chris Abraham – Language Learning with Rosetta Stone
  Chris Abraham