Monday, August 04, 2008

MP Free :  I was excited when Spike called with an offer I couldn't refuse. This thing seldom happens to me, but when I was approached by Spike, this was the second time in two days. I was being invited to a free seminar about internet marketing, worth $100, and while attending, not only would I have free food, a free and informative seminar, but I would also get a free MP3 player. The day before, I was informed that my entry, out of no doubt thousands, had been selected at random, and I was the winner of a trip to Vegas with flight and hotel, if only I could stomach a presentation about time shares. The only catch was that my only catch - Mary - would have nothing to do with time-share presentations, no matter how big a trip I had potentially 'won'. I knew it wasn't worth asking Mary to come, so when my prize-giver told me that I had to bring my wife, I knew that I would have to rustle up a ringer.

Mary, like most sane people, doesn't like to be bombarded by high pressure sales tactics. Which is what she assumed such a time-share presentation would be. Me on the other hand, I lap that stuff up. I see it as training. If I train on escaping unsold from something I really don't want, I might build up some resistance to being sold on things that I may want a little. And also, I'm a student of persuasion. As a REALTOR® I am constantly bombarded with opportunities for training, as it seems the real estate industry is 45% made up of helping people to buy and sell homes, and the remainder consists of helping REALTORS® to do that through courses, mentoring, seminars and 'presentations'.

So I was understandably excited about the prospect of a seminar with free food, good company and an imitation iPod Shuffle. I wanted to see how it was done old school. If I graduated from this seminar without buying something, maybe I could progress onto the time-share seminar and from thence onto buying a used car from a dealership.

I couldn't believe the scope of the seminar. Signing in as Mister Gillespie, so as to protect the innocent and their personal privacy, I studiously avoided everyone's eyes. Much as everyone else was doing. It was like that corridor where you wait to give sperm samples for money. No-one acknowledges that anyone else exists. If I can't see them, they can't see me, and besides, I'm not here anyway.

We were introduced to the man with a suit who was to be our instructor, and then led to VIP seats at the front of the auditorium by our own personal valet who remarked on our names and found something unique to say to each of us. And soon enough it started. Spike kept looking at her watch and announcing the minutes until dinner and I listened feverishly to the preacher.

And he was a preacher. There were some 200+ people in the room by my estimates, and we were all transfixed by the sheer simplicity of what he said. Now, as a background, I have recently finished reading the Four Hour Work Week - a book that encourages us to throw off the shackles of employment and set up our own businesses using the interweb that we can manage virtually from a beach with a margarita in one hand and a fishing rod in the other. And this presentation spoke very well to the idea of setting up a fully operational e-commerce business in as little as three clicks. The preacher raved and intoned and gesticulated in a very animated way. He told the story of the internet, and above small print that told us that the stories were not typical of the results of people using the system, told us fantastic stories of people selling things on the internet.

The girl to my left wrote "I can smell the bullshit" on her pad, and some of the audience lapped it up. And for all my psychic anti-influence defence training, I started to believe. To believe in a better place where I could have a website. A business. A magic wand to cut away the ties to employment and fly on the magic carpet of the world wide web.

Only this was 2008. About nine or ten years ago, I had played a part in the formation of an internet technology company, which helped blue chip clients to develop their internet businesses. Even six or seven years ago, this sort of stuff would have been pretty neat. Before people had written books and movies about eBay stores and Yahoo stores. I like to think that I was thinking all of this at the time, but in reality, I was pretty keen in the inform-a-frenzy. The idea of drop shipping, zero inventory, complete intermediation - putting myself in the middle of the buyer and seller. I could be that middle man - I could be the inefficiency in the market - I could tax every transaction and sip that top shelf cocktail with a marlin running with the bait.

Once I had suspended disbelief that I was actually a member of the studio audience in some info-mercial, I started to think that I, too, could do this. I could sell rocks on the internet. Or sell bottled-anger. The key point that almost tipped me over the edge was that if I didn't do this now, then when would I? And the price was just fantastic for what was being offered. And then the price got slashed. And then slashed again. As we gasped in disbelief at just how chronically insane the organizers must be to offer so many bundled products and services for one low price of $50, the e-shopping paratroopers descended upon us with order forms.

I was at the point where I was thinking "why not?", when I took a step back and looked at all of the punters sitting there. I wondered if they were adequately informed to make a good decision about this. And then Spike confiscated my order form so that I couldn't buy. One paratrooper came up to us and asked if we liked the presentation. He was nice, and enthusiastic, and even had an online business of his own. He didn't want to tell us what his business was, to avoid a conflict of interests, but he hadn't reckoned with the journalistic skills of my compadre, who soon ferreted out his product. He didn't have a good answer for how he managed to keep his unique value proposition differentiated. They didn't teach him that. But they should have probably taught him better not to give away his product. Or people like me could find a way to compete with him on cost and iron out his little money-soaked wrinkle in the market.

Thinking about it, if he didn't have the sales-foo to resist joining the cult in the first place, he would be putty to Spike's crouching tiger journalism-foo in extorting his internet business. He left, defeated, and we got the $100 meal. In case you were wondering, the bag of chips, cookie and ham and cheese croissant each (not to mention the red fruit-punch / cult inducing fruit punch) were probably worth only $50 at perhaps the most expensive restaurant on New Year's Eve putting on an event at the top of the Eiffel Tower, so I'm guessing $100 value applied to both meals.

During the meal, they sent in the sale-foo end-of level boss to close us as we ate. They had given us both free education, and the chance of a lifetime if we ordered right then *and* at least $50 worth of bread cheese and meat product, so it would be churlish of us not to talk to the end of level boss. And even if we ended up ponying up $50, we'd still be ahead with the second meal and the toon player. But he fared no better, his direct and obvious attack was easily parried with some polite smile and some deft face-filled footwork of two white belt sandwich-eaters. Too easily he fell ensnared in Spike's "But tell me about your business..." block, and started to tell us about his year in China and his surf-board business.

The Russians next to us were waiting for the MP Free player, and I was shocked and amazed that the preacher man was actually handing them out like so much free tainted candy at the exit.
After defeating the end of level boss in multiplayer mode, it looked like I was going to have to go solo to grab the end of game prize. But Spike grabbed one and gave it to me. She got one too.

Not only did it kindly display the URL of the online store software on the box, it was actually charged and loaded, and I later discovered it was loaded with a Lionel Richie tune. Oh joy! Recovering from the loss of not being allowed to open a successful internet business, I bathed my sorrows in relish. The relish of uploading songs to this new device, to listen to as I ran. My iPod Nano has bitten the dust due to the freakish weather in Texas which no mortal consumer electronic device can stand. Especially not in the glove compartment of my car for a month.

I literally rushed home, and plugged it into my PC. Would this be some trick forcing me to register? No! The darned thing worked the second time I plugged it in. It took me a while to realize what the little gadget had done. It had installed itself as a portable drive, and that made sense. I immediately started to copy self-help books about not buying online shopping stores onto it. The slightly more cunning thing it had done was to mount itself as a CD device and automatically run an install program on my PC. Which does who knows what? That took me aback, and it was all I could do not to smash the little box into bits. But I keep it. I keep it to remind me of all the online stores I didn't build.

Labels: MP Free

Thursday, April 03, 2008

18 reasons why my grandfather has always been a great man : 

• He survived two winters in a concentration camp in Siberia after leaving home at the age of 15 to fight for his country.
  
• He was passionate and laughed constantly.
• He walked out of a concentration camp across Europe to freedom and to join the enemies of his oppressors (sounds a bit melodramatic, but better than walking across Europe to join the Allies)
• He avoided execution for his ideals close to his home town when his German mother came to beg for his life.
• After 40 years of exile from his home country, he took his wife and his grandson back to communist Poland to reunite with his family.
• He raced pigeons (against other pigeons).
• His ears were large to start with, and they never stopped growing.
• He survived unanaestheticized operations for gangrene on his frost-bitten legs.
• He married by grandmother in somewhat unusual circumstances.
• He sang while he cleaned the dishes.
• He was the perfect host and would entice you to eat more kabanos and drink more vodka than you had ever anticipated.
• He could teach any political candidate about charm while maintaining a thoroughly Eastern European accent.
• He was the epitome of love and understanding to his family. He was strict a first, and then generous to a fault.
  
• A beautiful warmth shone from him. You could not help but be affected by his smile.
• He turned his hand to anything practical. He made things work.
  
• He knew how to extract every ounce of nutrients from a chicken bone.
• His love and devotion to my grandma and stubborn resistance to accept any form of help were an amazing sight. He would insist on carrying all of the cups of tea to the lounge from the kitchen, limping on an artificial hip and a cane between rooms, ushering everyone to sit down and relax.
• He was a fantastic father figure in addition to my own father.
  
• He is loved.
  

Friday, February 22, 2008

I've had a few :  But then again, to few to mention.

Tonight I mixed things up a little. You know, when your routine becomes just that - a routine, and worse! you notice. That's when the creative gremlins get to work.

Tonight we watched "You Kill Me" which could have easily been you like me. For me the premis is drinking. The Murdering comes second. I couldn't watch the film without 3 stiff drinks. Drinks that make a jack ass out of a man. I found myself yearning after AA groups. The one I nvere attended two doors down on 45th street. Such is life, such I am/
posted by Garreth at 1:01 AM

Monday, September 03, 2007

The Time Machine :  So I made this project for Burning Man 2006. It was a self-service mobile video kiosk called The Time Machine. Here are the burning man 2006 time machine videos.
posted by Garreth at 9:31 AM

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Some of my photos :  Late 2003

Summer in London
Leaving London
Gaudy
Punta
Spain

2004

Snowboarding in france
Coming to America
Willhelm Reich and Zombie Burlesque
Austin Pirate Rampage April
Mont Blanc
Cycling through france
Berlin and the Big Chill
Carping in England
Prague

Burning Man

Old stuff

A collection of old photos

posted by Garreth at 4:27 PM

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Retired-plus :  Ron is officially taking a well earned break from his retirement, after doing sufficient laps of the world in a drunken state to merit a breather. He won't be adding new blog entries here.

Garreth continues to write some totally different things using livejournal, in a totally different style. Some of his writing is protected, but to view it, you only have to ask him to befriend you.

posted by Garreth at 8:48 AM

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Letting Go :  One of the things I hadn't realised about 'Burn Events' like Flipside was that the act of burning is considered an act of letting go. Some people take physical things that they want to let go. They commit them to a flamey destruction.

One thing that everyone let go was a giant wooden monkey. That went up like a stick of dynamite when it's time came. Strangely the last of its six arms to crash from the shoulders into the firepit was the one that we had broken the day earlier. We had been trying to mount a sculpture in its hand, but the sculpture was too heavy and took the whole arm out.

So it's time to let go, even of the things that have been broken and fixed.
posted by Garreth at 9:10 AM

Monday, May 31, 2004

You're my wife now :  Burning Flipside is an art festival at a pukka location in the Texas Hill Country. What can I say? It's flaming hot, things are burned, costumes are worn. Tenses are confused, verbs are conjugated and there's a creek to swim in to give relief from the merciless sun.

Flipside has a new recruit in me. I had a better time than I imagined possible. My stick critter received critical acclaim, I introduced the B52 to the battle against any temporary bouts of sobriety and I broke a very large monkey's arm. In a large campground, it's amazing how power and monkey juice can quickly go to your head. Armed with a bullhorn and a golf cart, a select group of volunteers got to rampage around the dirt tracks marshalling arriving traffic and doing gratuitous donuts around cattle grids. It sure was a blast, with very few incidents despite the massive tanks of propane, various petroleum products and dry ice. I even got married on Friday night. Bonza.


As Papa Lazarou might say, "You're my wife now."
posted by Garreth at 7:21 PM

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Curiouser and curiouser :  Strange times, and they are about to get stranger.


Two days ago I agreed with a friend that we should not try to build last-minute flame throwers into our hobby horses.

Yesterday I was taking a milkshake to someone who has pneumonia. I found myself wishing I had cup-holders in my car. A sure sign that I am getting more Septic by the day. Positively gangrenous.

Today I was chatting to a shop-owner in her shop and she took off her top to demonstrate that she was a hot librarian.

Whatever next? Oh yes. Flipside - an art festival in which I am camping with a group of lovely folk who put up a giant mushroom and a giant monkey's head amongst all the mayhem of 1300 artists.
posted by Garreth at 2:34 PM