ch-ch-ch-changes

I just came across a notice that was posted today on Struglingteens.com concerning staff changes at Shortridge Academy in Milton, New Hampshire. Don't ask me how I found this, though I will say I found it... very interesting.

Christopher Locke has announced that he will be stepping down as Academic Director, effective January 26th 2007, in order to allocate more time and energy to his writing. For Chris, writing is both a passion and a gift. During the month of February he will be traveling to Mexico to spend time with his family and to concentrate on his writing.

Hey, Chris, if you get a chance? Mail us a little bud from Michoacan.

Five easy pieces

There's evidently a game of blogtag afoot, and JP Rangaswami said I was it (along with four others). I guess the challenge is to reveal five things about yourself that most people don't know. Hmmm. This calls for deep thought. Well, let's see...

1. I was raised by a tribe of Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. Until I was 16, I never wore clothes. You can see me running around that way in a couple scenes of The Gods Must Be Crazy.
2. My first marriage lasted 47 minutes.
3. I am the reigning badminton champion of the Malagasy Republic.
4. In 1996, I worked at IBM. Jesus, what a mistake that was!
5. I have a pair of black patent leather boots that go right up to my youknow.

Oh yes, and I hereby tag: Jeremy, Halley, Mike Golby, Angelina Jolie, and The Happy Tutor.

An end-of-year message to all our clients

I couldn't begin to express it half as well as Nelly Furtado does in this video. All of us here at Kat Herding Media hope you will listen carefully to the lyrics and know that this is exactly the way we feel about you, our valued customers.

Extend enterprise business processes

Security-rich software enables businesses to communicate, collaborate and increase productivity. Deploy role-based work environments and speed time-to-value with scorecards and composite applications. Create, organize, share and manage business information to provide solutions where they're needed, on demand. More than just messaging. Stand-alone or integrated, collaborate real-time to facilitate decisions. Deliver online learning resources for users and powerful administrative tools for managers.

“Hey, you created me. I didn't create some loser alter-ego
to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!”

~TD

mean people suck

Usually people are very nice here in the blogosphere. Most people. But there are always a few smart alecks out there who cannot refrain from being callous and uncaring. I won't mention any names, but they know who they are -- and they should be ashamed. Picking on me just because I'm a girl! Well let me just tell you something, mister: you better pray Jeremy and I don't come over there and open a can of whupass on you.

we are not amused

I'm not sure what any of this means

Somebody sent me this link and said, "You simply must check out Gonzo Marketing." So I clicked on it, but it wasn't at all clear what was going on there. I browsed around a bit, looking at... I guess they were book titles. And I guess I must have clicked the wrong one or something, because what I eventually got to was this book in what appears to be German. No one on that site seems to have liked the book very much, and one reviewer wrote (translation courtesy of Babelfish -- in which "Locke" gets rendered as "curl")...

Sky thunder weather again, Marketer have nevertheless direct entrance to Textern. Why does curl its thoughts worth reading not better, but does zumutet to us this mixture from study training course and Direct Mailing pack up? Perhaps because it did not only clear the heap of debris when destroying classical marketing pointingnesses, before it made itself to the reconstruction? Anyhow it needs patience and staying power, if one wants to work the Essenz out. Finally calculated telling belongs to good story to its Tipps. That is not new however. On page 160 curl summarizes its past remarks in nine maxims. I did not know also after the reading of these maxims, which Gonzo marketing should have been. Be called perhaps simply only air? Perhaps but others are more intelligent or more indulgent.

I was really curious what that subtitle meant -- nur die Verrückten überleben -- so it was back to Babelfish. Here, evidently, is the answer...

we're a global media agency

An astute UK reader was surprised to see the image below pop up on a web page a couple days ago. While I appreciate him sending this, I don't know why people are surprised to see photos of me on various sites around the web. Kat Herding is, after all, a full-service media company with global reach. Arbeit macht frei, nicht wahr?

rich people are people too

At some point, we've all had to deal with rich people and bear up under their special brand of self-absorption and peevish arrogance. That's why I was so moved by these testimonials of happy vacationers. There's something touching, almost poignant, in their perseverance in believing that it was human kindness that motivated the attention they received, and not merely their grandiloquent outlays of hard currency. Here, see if you don't agree...

• The room at the Princeville Resort Kauai was beautiful with a view you could die for.
• ...room service was an absolute God-send. And, of course, the service was always impeccable.
• We had an outstanding time in Peru, on our honeymoon, and we loved staying at both Hotel Monasterio, and at the Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel.
• Ivonne was extremely helpful, contacting the property to get us in at the last minute and providing us with the normal amenities such as free breakfast (a great value), in-room reflexology massage (which was wonderful!), and free upgrade based on availability.
• The food was exquisite and its presentation enticing. All six of us chose the wine tasting menu, so the sommelier paired a generous (and delicious!) glass of wine with each course.
• The service was impeccable. The only sad thing was the fact I left a memento of the F1 Race (a red tank top) at the pool.
• We will definitely accept the Dreams Come True Package at the Four Seasons Milan and want the ticket to Giselle at La Scala...

Just reading through those, I began to tear up. Aren't they just too romantic?

I just thought this was so pretty

I'm in the book - look me up

a quick-n-easy email marketing tip

A lot of people are using Gmail these days, which is one reason Google makes so much money (I think) off the little text ads they serve up into messages as they are being sent. It's quite the clever scheme, actually. I wonder who thought it up? But here's something else to wonder about. What if you could influence which ads get inserted into the mail you send? Well, the good news is that you can! But be careful how you apply this trick -- if Google catches you, they'll take away your email privileges for a whole year. You have to kind of disguise what you're doing.

For instance, suppose you're marketing an anger management seminar. For heaven's sake, don't write about that! Instead, you might write to your closest 10,000 friends about, oh say, some asthma treatment you've discovered or read about somewhere (it doesn't really matter if it's true). So you might write something like the following...

The results won't quite fit into this blog page, but you can click here to see what sort of ads this message pulls from Google. Do have a look. I think you'll be as surprised as I was!

watching the detectives

this is what it's like around here some days

Can you imagine this being the flag of an actual country? The Isle of Man is technically a "British Crown Dependency," but still... what we're they thinking? (Love the thong, though.) You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize just how weird people are. And I mean all over, not just here in the United States. Though God only knows how weird they are here! Awk awk awk awk, if you know what I mean. (Thank you, Dave, whoever you are.)

those thieving bastards!

Dammit, Jeremy! I told you to grab that CLIENTOLOGY domain name, and now some guy who calls himself Elron Dullard has gone and stolen it. Oh, I'm so mad I could spit! I'm sure they read about it on your blog. So great, you gave them the idea and the opportunity by not following through. How many times did I ask you to register it? Do I have to do everything myself around here?

My only consolation these days is knowing that at least some people out there think I'm pretty.

from the mailbag

I just got a message from a reader. "Kat," she said...

"You don't know where you belong. You just need to belong somehow. Relying on rhetoric, not well versed on topics, any idea what you're talking about? Revisions of history fair well in some company, but don't shove that bullshit down my throat. You should be more careful as you follow blindly along. You're told what to wear. You're told what to like. It'd be nice if you'd think for yourself sometime, but you don't. So life turns up empty and you're so dissatisfied. Who are you blaming this time? You don't know where you belong. You should be more careful."

Well, I never! Thank you for sharing, Cyndi!

the academy is...

very hip these days. Far more so than you may have suspected. Charles Petrie, senior research scientist at the Stanford Computer Science Department Logic Group, several days ago gave a talk titled The Web 2.0 Wave in the US and Poland. Use the arrow button in the lower left corner of that page to step through his slides. I think you'll be quite surprised by the first one.

We've come a long way, baby. And now we're planning something big. Oh yeah!