Book Club With Your Boss
An anonymous reader writes in with a Company-related conundrum:
I read this book and promptly gave it to some of my work colleagues—I’m sure you hear this all the time. I wanted to buy a case to keep under my desk to hand out to people who came in my office.
Now my manager and some others have read it and they want me to come to their book club to lead a discussion! If you have any ideas to lead me into this land of discussing this with upper management who just happen to be members of this book club please let me know. I need to keep my job!
Hmm. Tough one. Perhaps, “What I got out of this book was a deep, abiding relief that our company is nothing like this. That’s why I hand it out to people at work; everyone enjoys stories that have nothing to do with their own lives. It’s pure escapism!”
One of the interesting things about corporate workplaces is that they turn otherwise decent human beings into… well, management. They’re not like that because they’re petty, deceitful scumbags. I mean, obviously that helps. But it’s the environment that encourages those personality traits. This could be a cry for help from your boss, who in a flash of self-discovery has thought, “My God, what have I become?” Your job at this book club, then, is clearly to reassure him/her that it’s only the other managers who are like that, and gather information that will be politically useful at your next performance evaluation.
6 commentsObviously my child is some kind of frickin’ genius
In
the morning, with Fin nestled between us in the bed, Jen
and I discussed plans for the day ahead. “You could go to the
B-E-A-C-H,” I suggested. It’s like with dogs: you don’t
want to get their hopes up.
“Beach?” Fin said.
Probably coincidence. And, I have to admit, the sequence of letters B-E-A-C-H does sound a bit like “beach.”
That night, Fin wanted to read “Farm.” This is a book with pictures of things you find on farms, labeled accordingly. It’s not much in the plot department, and forget about character development, but she likes it.
She pointed at the first letter of the title and said, “Green F.”
She’s just turned two. Sometimes I get frightened at her growing power. Today she can spell. Tomorrow she may shoot lasers from her eyes. The day after that, she may leave me.
Max Does a Workshop
And sorry to abuse your email inbox, but I’ve just signed on with
the good people at ChuckPalahniuk.net to run an online writing workshop
based around novel-writing. Places are limited, so if you want in,
clicky clicky:
Yes, they photoshopped me into a suit.
Sublime Fu*ks
Holy
crap! I thought I might get some great can designs,
because, well, not to boast, but my readers tend to be smart, talented,
and exceptionally good-looking. I’m sure you’ve noticed this.
But still: holy crap! I am getting some great designs here. It
is only a matter of time before Coke or Pepsi blatantly rip
these off and launch them as new products. And a special
mention to Lucia Suarez for coming up with the brilliant
“Kinetic Beverage.” You know in two years they’ll all be called that.
Here are a few of the best entries so far: James F, Nataliya Lalor, Emily Elizabeth Moser, Nathan Carnes, Lucia Suarez, Karan Juneja, Kyle Huberman [1] [2], Chris Hubbard, Andrew Roff, Lori B, Sean Marks, Rod McBride, Shane Smith, Petar.
![Kyle Huberman [1]](/images/misc/fukk/kyle1.png){kind=link}
![[2]](/images/misc/fukk/kyle2.png){kind=link}
Lots of people emailed me questions about how to enter, so let me answer some of those here: you should get your entry in this week. A web-friendly JPEG is ideal for submission, but hang on to your high-res original, which we’ll need if you win. And yes, the product’s name is “Fu*k,” asterisk and all.
Next week I’ll create a gallery of all entries, for the film producers to peruse. You’ll be able to do that, too. If you submitted a design but don’t want me to post it or put your name on it, please let me know.
Update: The Fu*k Gallery is now online.
Update 2: Congratulations Mat! Chosen as the best submission from an excellent bunch. When the cans get mocked up, I’ll post a pic. Thanks again to everyone who worked on a design.
Make Mine a Fukk
The Syrup film producers want to mock up some cans
of Fukk. I think they are hatching some kind of promotion. They asked if
I had a design in mind, and I said not really, but I bet if I mentioned it
on my web site, somebody would come up with something good.
So here we are. If you invent a graphic design the producers like, they’ll mail you some of the mocked-up cans, and I’ll send you an autographed book, and the next time we’re all in a limo with Natalie Portman and she says, “I don’t wanna go home! Where can we party?”, we’ll suggest your place. Although that last one has never happened yet, so I wouldn’t count on it. Still: cans and book.
Your design should:
- be for an energy drink called “Fu*k” (as opposed to a cola called Fukk; that’s changed in the script)
- be shaped appropriately to be used on a can
- probably have a black background
- be cool
I’m thinking you may not need to be particularly fancy on this one, because understated is cool. But whatever you think. If you want to enter, email me.
Your Future Career: Being Awesome
Let’s get this out of the way first: some parents tried to name their baby “@,” which is the name of a character in Syrup. I guess it’s a good month for real-life Syrup connections. Unfortunately the baby does not appear to be a blonde, slutty, backstabbing corporate villain, but still: I need to mention it because every newspaper in the world ran the story, and everyone who’s read Syrup (all seventeen of you, bless you) e-mailed me about it.
Going above and beyond, however, was Andrea, who also pointed me toward TatAD (“Bring your advertising to life!”), which is a company that brings together corporations who want to get their logos branded onto human skin and people who think that sounds like a pretty good idea:
Are you ready to start making some BIG BUCKS as a TatAD promoter? All you have to do is get our logo tattooed on you! Then get ready to cash in BIG TIME!
To its credit, TatAD takes the time to address the notion that getting yourself imprinted with a logo for money is some kind of sell-out:
You are already a walking billboard for your favorite companies simply by wearing their clothes or driving their cars or smoking their cigarettes.
You are a salesman for your favorite companies without a paycheck!
In fact… YOU PAY THEM!!!
Don’t look at it as the corporate world has initiated this, the people have, we had no potential sponsors when we began, only people who wanted to be sponsored.
When you look at it from that angle there is no corporate sell out, in fact it’s the other way around. We have the opportunity to get something in return for once.
It’s that simple, we’re all walking billboards anyway so why not get paid to do it
Now, I might quibble with TatAD that there is a difference between simply telling people about a product you like, and getting paid to be branded with logos. A few differences, actually. One of which is “credibility.” But that’s just details. What interested me most was TatAD’s supply and demand problem. Their forums are full of people people pleading to be tattooed, many being not too particular about with what, exactly. (My favorite: “Who wants my face?”) It’s clearly a buyers market: if you’re looking to imprint your logo on some flesh, you’ve got yards and yards to choose from.
So naturally you’d look for prime real estate: the young, the beautiful, the admired, and the desired—as opposed to, say, the guy who has “a few spaces left on my right forearm”. Sorry, dude, in advertising we call that clutter. It’s the same rules as celebrity endorsement: if you’re a sports star, Nike pays you to wear its products; if not, you pay Nike. But now the bar is much lower. You don’t need to be one of the best tennis players in the world; you can earn a little sponsorship money just by being kind of awesome.
Ideally you’re gorgeous, of course. That’s the kind of awesomeness that everyone understands. But I bet an admired DJ can make a few bucks from logo tattoos, no matter what he looks like. Or a college high jump star. Anyone who’s kind of awesome, even on a relatively small scale, I think can look forward to a bright future of ever-increasing options for turning their awesomeness into cash. A certain amount of shamelessness will be required, of course. But that’s a small price to pay for being able to make a career out of being awesome. After all, you were going to do that anyway.