Pink slips in God's marketing department

It seems a safe bet that God ranks up there with Coca-Cola and Anheuser Busch for brand market saturation. So many churches, so many customizable flexi-letter signs offering insight and encouragement to passing drivers as they head to the bar or wherever it is they're going. Sometimes witty, occasionally poignant, often groan-worthy, and always with one goal: Getting people to think about God.

I'm pretty sure that if the pastor at the Westboro Baptist Church had run this sign by God prior to posting, it would not have gotten the thumbs-up. Reasons include (but may not be limited to):

• First, and obvious to anyone with corporate experience: Don't associate your CEO with abject cruelty to innocent victims as retaliation for the actions of others. (Canceling the free coffee in the break room because one of the salespeople consistently botches his Power Point presentations is no way to build team morale.) Even if God is a killer, you people to think of God vanquishing evil, or at least something annoying like mosquito. Snuffing fuzzy little synonyms for joy isn't the kind of press God wants.
• Next, there's the spelling. The word is "masturbate", and if they'd spelled it correctly, they would have been able to use the saved E to finish the last word of the message. However, I'm willing to forgive this one because it subliminally demonstrates that the folks at this church know so little about self-satisfaction that they don't even know how to spell it. (Though the cynic on the committee in my brain thinks that exactly what they WANT me to think. Yeah, nice try.)
• Finally, they need an editor, as this seems to imply that people should wait until marriage before masturbating. If you really want people to abstain until marriage, then you need to up the ante on the reward system to include other people's genitalia. (Though on the other hand, this might stand up as written---they may not know much about auto-eroticism, but they seem to know a thing or two about marriage.)

All in all, the fine folks at the Westboro Baptist Church ought to put a little note in the Sunday bulletin: "Wanted: copywriter. One clever line per week that reflects well on the congregation, the clergy, and God. Immediate opening."

(This photo came from CNN's iReport. I prefer to think it wasn't photoshopped.)

The Art of the Handwritten Note

By now, you probably heard about Sarah Palin's Tea Party cheat sheet -- notes scribbled on her hand to help her get through a grueling Q&A session with the world's friendliest audience. (At least if you're a gorgeous Republican.) The markings on the hand seemed to read:

Energy
Budget Tax cuts
Lift American Spirits

I'm not passing judgment on the necessity of writing notes to one's self. We all fear public speaking, and it's helpful to have a prompt in case we find ourselves struggling for a starting point. No, I'm simply offering Mrs. Palin some tips on effective flesh scribbling to help her avoid the unnecessary ado that accompanied her recent event. I'm convinced the media swirl surrounding her ink-stained hand could have been avoided had she simple followed these simple tips:

1. If you need to write notes on your hands, do not mock your enemy for using a teleprompter. The teleprompter is a fixture in modern politics, so there's little cache in ridiculing someone's use of them. There's even less cache when you deliver the line while you yourself are reading from a printed speech, and your hand looks like you've been struggling to compose a valentines haiku. Maybe next time the hand-scribble should include, "avoid hypocrisy".
   
2. The note should be about something challenging to recall. For instance, if you expected to have to handle a question about the economic bailout, you might write, "Toxic Asset Recovery Program" on your hand so that you don't mistakenly name the R word as "relocation", changing the meaning considerably. But "Lift American Spirits"? Isn't that an essential part of your political raison d'etre? Do you need to remind yourself to talk about the American people? Apparently.
   
3. Don't write your cheat sheet until you know exactly what you plan to cheat with. By all appearances, the former Governor wrote "Budget cuts", then crossed out "budget" and replaced it with "tax". Seven words on the hand, and one of them had to be crossed out. That's a 14% failure rate on a note to yourself. A little prep can go a long way.

I suspect Sarah Palin has a few public speaking engagements scheduled in the next few years, so hopefully this advice will help her keep the media focusing on what's in her head, not what's on her hands. (Assuming that's what she wants them to focus on.)

Star Trek, the 60s, and, well....

Fans of Star Trek (the original series) will recognize this photo as the Doomsday Machine, an intergalactic Great White Shark that consumes anything and everything in its path. (Forgive me, Trekkies, if I have oversimplified the nuances of this menacing device/organism/concept.)

I'm going out on a limb here, but the limb seems strong enough to support me: tapered, cylindrical shape? Glowing, fiery tip? Is the inspiration for this fairly obvious? (I suspect the original concept had it devouring only items in refrigerators and pantries.)

Where the streets have two names

I’m all for commemoration. Great people who have achieved great things against great odds are worthy of our gratitude and respect. What I don’t understand is the necessity to commemorate these people by naming streets after them.

Over the last year, Portland experienced a seething debate over the proposal to rename Interstate Avenue “Cesar Chavez Boulevard”. The debate frequently devolved into a racial argument, as if a failure to support the change was a veiled commentary on the acceptance of Portland’s Latino population. Others accused the city of attempting to put a faux feather in its cap while pushing their plans on less affluent neighborhoods. (The shortest discussion in Portland history would have been a proposal to rename NW 23^rd to be Cesar Chavez Blvd. The thought of that happening is downright laughable.) Eventually, the city council voted that 39th Avenue should be renamed for Cesar Chavez. (Local activists have threatened that if the name change was approved, they would propose that the city rename NW 23rd to "Richard Nixon Ave.")

I didn’t support the change to Interstate, or to 39th, but it had nothing to do with Latinos or Cesar Chavez---it had to do with simple logistics. Quite simply, why must we commemorate our heroes with a street name? Portland has done it before, in 1989 when Union Avenue became Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, and in 2006 when the city, sans discussion, abruptly renamed Portland Blvd. as Rosa Parks Way. Great people who achieved great things---but why impose on every business on a miles-long road to reprint their business cards, stationary, web sites and advertising collateral? Why require a wholesale update of every local yellow pages directory? Why require ODOT to refashion every highway sign that makes reference to the street in question? The ripple effect of changing a street name is full of tremendous costs to every business (and even homes) on that street, along with huge costs to the city. (There are literally hundreds, even thousands of “39th Ave” signs posted at every street corner on that avenue, which stretches north to south across nearly the entire city.)

I live near Columbia Park. This lovely park isn’t close to Columbia Blvd, is even further from the Columbia River, and as far as I can tell was arbitrarily named. If the city wanted to rename it Cesar Chavez Park, that would be splendid. City maps would require updating, but otherwise, the financial impact on citizens would be completely minimal. The park would be every bit as enjoyable, and it could serve as ground zero for any local Chavez celebrations---something that’s harder to do on a street full of cars traveling 35 miles per hour.

Renaming streets seems like the quintessential example of government ridiculousness, incurring huge expense for a highly visible but barely symbolic gesture. Case in point: Every day my bus travels past Rosa Parks Way, where the “Rosa Parks Way” street signs have been fastened just above the “Portland Blvd” street signs, rather than replacing them. This seems like little more than lip service to Ms. Parks, since three years later, dual identity seems to contradict the whole point of the commemoration. And if we aren’t even going to fully commit, why pretend otherwise? Let the letterheads remain unchanged and find a way to wholeheartedly show our respect.

The Dark Side of Nostalgia

At work, we listen to NPR on a "boom box" radio that likely appeared in a K-Mart sale flyer in 1982 with starbursted pitches like "AM/FM/cassette" and "convenient compact size" (translation: bass-less 3" twofers---not much boom in this particular boombox). It works fine for the limited sonic frequencies produced by Noah Adams and Ira Flato, so we never give the machine much thought beyond the functionality of the "on" button.

Today Blair decided we should utilize the cassette feature, especially since there was a cassette already in the player: Fragile, by Yes. (While I'm fairly sure it was inserted by one of our prog-rock -loving coworkers, it seemed entirely appropriate that this archaic machine would feature a circa-1972 album behind its clunky mechanical door, and I prefer to think it had never housed another cassette.)

As it started, we talked about an article I had seen in which a woman talked about giving a walkman to her iPod-steeped teenage son, who inquired about the device incredulously: How do you switch to the next song? How do you access the other albums in the machine? ("It plays only ONE album? Wait, it plays only half the album? What do you mean, 'flip it over'?") We laughed about how dated cassette technology had become despite all of us growing up when tapes were the pinnacle of convenience.

We reveled in the strains of "Roundabout", "Long Distance Runaround", and all of the other titles that never made any mixed tapes of my youth. A short time later, Blair noted that the music had stopped, but there was still lots of tape left on the cassette. Immediately, we began troubleshooting the issue---"the battery light is on, that might be a factor", so we assumed it had been unplugged, but investigation revealed that the cord was still firmly planted in the socket. We spent a full minute pondering what could possibly be wrong, as mystified as cavemen trying to troubleshoot a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner.

Finally, Blair pushed eject, and as he removed the tape, a long magnetic fettuccini appeared, dangling between the cassette and the player. The player had "eaten" the tape. This would have been bad news 20 years prior, but today, we delighted in the disaster: The frustrations of tapes being dragged to their death by dirty capstan pins was a concept that had escaped our collective memory. As Blair stuck a pencil into the cassette cog to recoil the cassette, our retro cassette flashback was complete.

Same, but different

I encountered a light-hearted example of communication failure last weekend while having breakfast at Laurelthirst, where many of the breakfasts are numbered and available in two forms – two-egg scrambles or three-egg omelets – and several options for sides. A couple sat at the next table and the waiter was taking their order:

Woman: “I’d like the #6, please, as a scramble, with a biscuit, and hash browns.”

Man: “I’ll have the same thing, except a #5.”

I understand what he was saying---also a scramble, also with a biscuit, and also with hash browns. Yet to say you want the same thing as the #6, except you want a #5, is like saying, “My wife drives a Malibu. I drive the same car, except it’s a Taurus.” Both may be sedans, both may be automatics, both may have a CD player and power locks and fold-down seating and scores of other similarities --- but they’re not the same car.

I suspect the waiter would side with me on this clarification, as I saw him write “2” next to the #6 order, then scratch it out when he realized that it wasn’t the same thing at all.

Did the gentleman placing the order succeed in simplifying his order? He probably saved a few seconds, so if that’s a measure of success, perhaps. But to me, it still seems like a strange way to order the #5.

Just the facts, ma'am.

Listening to OPB news this week, I heard a story about a triple slaying in Oregon, and a particular factoid caught my ear. I visited OPB’s website and found the attached article, which included the line that had piqued my interest:

“Thompson said all four knew each other, and the three victims were unemployed.”

Is the reporter implying that their unemployment was a contributing factor in their deaths? Oregon’s unemployment rate at this time was 12.2%, so being out of work is hardly an exclusive club. Would it have been worthy of note if they were all Democrats? Sagittarians? Fans of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond”? Do unemployed people now have to worry about murder along with rejection, foreclosure, and eventual starvation?

I have reread the article several times, looking for the link between their employment status and their murders. All I could find was the fact that “Thompson” said they were all unemployed---and “Thompson” makes no previous appearance in the article. Thus, I’ll chalk this up to amateur reporting and careless editing.