last book's a charm

clues to gonzo marketing...a list apart.

trend setter

We're going Closed Source. It's super secure, low risk, and controlled. And Quality's built in.

---

Gonzo 2.0

Yes, Gonzo 2.0. - Nothing new because Gonzo Marketing was always about that.

As you see this YouTube, don't you think Poetry? The Solution is Poetry. And maybe Poetry 2.0 - whatever, whatever, whatever.... props, just props but useful props, no?

When did you forget that this is your world?

And yes, Web 2.0, Poetry 2.0 - we are no longer "writing ourselves into existence". - We are now teaching the Machines how to write Existence so we can write ourselves into Being... That's what this is all about. You want to know who you are? Ask the machine!

We are teaching the Machines to write Structures from which our Being is generated. We are no longer The Web. Separation of content and structure. We are not our Blogs any more. There are no more blogs! There is no more information!

There is no more you! There is no more there there! What is is Your Voice as a Network of Conversations generated by the Machines we teach to regenerate us, our Being of the Conversation of the Web. - There! you want to know how you are? Ask the Machines to regenerate the You as You of The Web. Ask the machines!

Does that Blow your Mind? Don't worry. It will only blow your Mind if it blows the Mind of the Web of Conversations where Your Mind really is anyway.

There is no you unless you are connected. You show up as You only in the Web of Us. The machines generate the structures of conversations. We teach The Machines how to do that. The machines teach us who we are by knowing who we are connected to... Cool. Let's do some more of that. Yiippii. Bada Bing! Tudum Tudum!

YouTube link via FortyMedia

Birch Point Resort, Hayward, Wisconsin

Sandy’s 65th birthday was approaching and she was planning a party. The people at Birch Point Resort in Hayward spoiled those plans and appear to have cheated her out of a substantial sum of money. To find out more about Sandy's situation, click here. To add the power of the almighty word of mouth to balance out the tourist industry astro-turf, link-up and shine the light of conversation on these shady practices.

wow--i never really envisioned this.

it has to really suck to be a bulldog bitch on the rag? -- in spider man boxers especially.

Tags: bitches+in+heat

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someone didn't get the memo...

Laptop for sale.

Pictures of laptop for sale

New flickr guidelines say: DON'T Sell stuff (including yourself) Flickr is for personal use only. If you sell products or services through your photostream, we will terminate your account.

of course, if you send them to ebay to bid, i guess it's okay. I don't know--we may need an update to the guidelines...

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1000tags going wild...

the big thang tonight--1000tags.com is offering a free tag if you post and link. Thank you, I'll take one!

Taking Care of Business

Although my name and bio currently appear on the site, I am no longer associated with The Content Factor. As I've indicated previously, information relative to my business can be found on my current sites: www.jsessum.com and www.sessum.com, and the number of blogs and other publications I write for.

Thank you. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

(Disclosure++: I may delete this post when the requested information is removed from that site.)

 

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Why is this space blank and seeming not editable?

Yes, let us know the answer to this question, oh wise one.

Uh, is there a wise one? Is there an answer to this question?

Is the earth still sorta kinda round?

People like me (and who knows, maybe even you, too) wanna know.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

home sweet home

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY, A RABBIT WAS BORN.

SO WAS A DONKEY, SEVEN BEAVERS AND A GAME HEN.

CHANCES ARE GOOD THAT A FEW HUNDRED RODENTS WERE BORN AT UNDERGROUND ATLANTA ALONE.

ONLY SOME OF THEM MATTERED. ALL OF THEM ARE RELATED TO THIS.

THIS MATTERED.
THIS MATTERS STILL.

happy birthday RGE.
my home.

marekj.com

marekj is back. This time as himself which hasn't happend in a long time. I believe I stopped writing as marekj on the web about in the spring of 2002. Here we are now then 3 years later.

I am doing now this thing called Software Development Life Cycle Process as Human Cooperation Game Modelling. Workability Design of Such Games and Their Implementations. Business Process Distinction Context Modelling for Software Design as Core Business Structure. You know: the usual stuff from me.

I also started a blog I call BlindSpot which has nothig to do with Driving on a Highway of course. There will be a mixtrue of technical stuff, software testing, gonzo marketing etc... etc...

Stop by and say hello. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: agiletesting, marekj

mystic bourgeoisie

mystic bourgeoisie

To Troll or Not to Troll, That Is the Question by John C Mahler

The uninfluential columnists should be defined here. These are people whom you've never heard of, but whom other uninfluential A-list distopianist columnists all know. I reckon there are about 500 of them. He (or she) influences other like-minded columnists, creating a groupthink form of critical mass, just like atomic fission, as they bounce off each other with repetitive cross-links: trackback links, self-congratulatory links, confirmations, and praise-for-their-genius links. BOOM! You get a formidable explosion—an A-bomb of groupthink. You could get radiation sickness if you happen to be in the area. Except for PC Magazine, nobody is in the area, so nobody outside the groupthink community really cares about any of this. These explosions are generally self-contained and harmless to the environment.

Once in a while one of these crackpot ideas may sneak into the public consciousness and become huge because it was a good idea, although I cannot think of one.

The "folksonomy" notion is the columnists' last hope of invention, although it's a rewrite of the prebubble "semantic Web" technology at best. And it too is doomed to failure. The utopianism and idealism that exist in the online societies ignore the real problem with Trolls, metaTrolls, überTrolls, folksonomies, and the like. This is because they honestly think that most people are goodhearted. The online world, because of its anonymity, encourages bad behavior. "You suck!" is a common post, and it would be the number-one Troll if Trolling ever became popular. Then would come the Trolls about "Online Casino!" One site promoting folksonomies is the darling of the columnists: Flickr.com—an excellent photo-sharing site where being in perpetual beta is a marketing tool. The same people who hate Java and Flash love Flickr, which epitomizes everything good and bad about Java and Flash. Okay, whatever.

Flickr promotes the use of Trolls to add dimensions to photos so you or I could look things up by, uh, the folksonomy. You know, like "dead dog," for example. But when you look into it, someone will post 100 pictures and Troll them all "Yosemite," and that will be the end of it. I see no depth or real usefulness beyond the old-fashioned "title!" It's hard to express how jazzed some people are over the potential of all this. I'm certain someone somewhere will write a book on how this new old thing will change the world for the benefit of everyone. It may even catch on for a month. When you look into it later, you'll find it all deteriorated into spam and "you suck" posts, and then we'll do it again with a new name and a new group of boosters telling us what a great idea Trolling is.


Apparently it's lost on all of them that the term "Trolling," in popular parlance, refers to the worst form of public graffiti. These people don't get out much, it seems.

FORRESTER REPORTS THAT EVERYONE HAS A BLOG

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA ADVISORY

Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2005...According to new findings by Forrester Research, Inc. (NASDAQ: FORR), every human being and business around the globe now has a weblog -- or blog for short -- a type of frequently-updated, chronological online diary that gives insight into the passions of the writer on topics ranging from technology to quilting.

"When I first invented the Internet, I never dreamed that one day each one of us would have our own little piece of real estate," said former Vice President, Al Gore. "But when I saw that even Howard Dean could make a home in cyberspace, well I knew then that Tipper and I had succeeded, that my work as an Internet strategist was complete."

For information on the next wave of online pandemonium, visit podstreet

###

A blinding flash of obvious

What if I made myself as a business entity. What if I could completely became a corporation. I substitute myself for corporation. This would be a new type of citizen possibility. Equal.

What if each person in America incorporated themselves? What if each person would create a corporate structure in which their worldly affairs could dwell and play out. This I haven't thought before.

Who can help me with this project? I wan to cease to exist as a human being and become a corporation. I will speak new language. Instead of going to get a haircut I will visit an accountant every month to style my image.

I simply love this idea. Wanna steal it? Run with it? Who wants to join this project?

Talk to me at http://kombinat.us/blogger

a sort of a homecoming

Sending Hello! Been a while. Travelled a bit. Visited many places. So now I shall welcome myself back. Back to this conversation creation molecular realignment of meaning making production.

Freedom did get me there a bit Harry. Been battling the Warren Commission. I told them I saw that dude in Dallas on a grassy knoll but they still concluded that JFK died of self inflicted gun shot wounds. So much for bearing witness.

And yes Jeneane, I've first visited Pope Johannes Paulus Secundus in December of 1987 at Cite Du Vatican. I was young and full of dreams and I told him I was going to change the world and work for Peace on Earth. He just smiled. - Ever since then I've been embarassed of my dreams. Dreams don't work. So what works? - Human beings have been engaged in this discourse for a long time. Nice Paradox it is. - Let it be, Let it be - Love

Pope is dead. I see him with a Tralfamadorian dimension. All slices of life. As a side note: Tralfamadorians saw Time in it's entirety. They saw its beginning and end, thus a person's life was seen at all possible points of time of their existence and not only the moment you met them. Nice way to see someone. You could see a killer on TV and weep for he was once an innocent baby. You could see a baby and wonder what kind of Human Being-ness will he have along the way towards death. - Alas we don't see people this way. Too bad. It's a lot of fun.

Seth Godin has a new marketing book and a new website for it. It's completely idiotic. I've read most of his other books. They too are idiotic. But he is having fun. Perhaps duping us, the readers - selling us the Dream. New shapes of Dreams. Marketing the Marketing Dream. I think if I was him I would be too embarassed to constantly write so much Kaka De La Torro and maintain the excitement of continuous innovation. I am not sure that the world needs another marketing book, and from Seth Godin for that matter. I do hope that what the world needs is people teaching other people how to read and write so they can express their grievances to Governments that oppress them and articulate their commitments so that others know what you find worth living for.

Gonzo Programming Language Manual.

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby :: 2. Kon'nichi wa, Ruby:

"Pretend that you’ve opened this book (although you probably have opened this book), just to find a huge onion right in the middle crease of the book. (The manufacturer of the book has included the onion at my request.)

So you’re like, “Wow, this book comes with an onion!” (Even if you don’t particularly like onions, I’m sure you can appreciate the logistics of shipping any sort of produce discreetly inside of an alleged programming manual.)

Then you ask yourself, “Wait a minute. I thought this was a book on Ruby, the incredible new programming language from Japan. And although I can appreciate the logistics of shipping any sort of produce discreetly inside of an alleged programming manual: Why an onion? What am I supposed to do with it?”

No. Please don’t puzzle over it. You don’t need to do anything with the onion. Set the onion aside and let it do something with you.

I’ll be straight with you. I want you to cry. To weep. To whimper sweetly. This book is a poignant guide to Ruby. That means code so beautiful that tears are shed. That means gallant tales and somber truths that have you waking up the next morning in the arms of this book. Hugging it tightly to you all the day long. If necessary, fashion a makeshift hip holster for Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, so you can always have this book’s tender companionship.

You really must sob once. Or at least sniffle. And if not, then the onion will make it all happen for you"

RUBY! The OFFicial PROgramming LANGuage of GOnzo MARKETING!!!
Pass The ONIONS!!!

SpamBlog: 3 Dish Network Satellite TV Dish Network Free Instal

3 Dish Network Satellite TV Dish Network Free Instal. Excellent usage of Blogger by spammers.

Gonzo Engaged Blogger

Stories from the Front Lines
A blog by a high school biology teacher and 20-something single gal in NYC. Kelly writes today "Started reproduction today. You haven't lived until you've talked about reproduction to rooms full of south Bronx teenagers.". Wow. Kelly, thanks for teaching! Gonzo Kudos to you.

Rageboy goes to Westpoint

At least the American Army is excited about Cluetrain. The news coming from Rageboy aka Chris Locke aka Chief Blogging Officer is pretty incredible. He is Unleashing the Power of Army Profession. Definitely must read.

Three Kinds of Men
There are three kinds of men:
The ones that learn by reading.
The few who learn by observation.
The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

*** Gonzo mo:Blogged ***

Ken,
Gonzo Marketing has gone to bed with Corporations, as it should be after a brief dating. This is a time for courtship and also a little bit of drinking and late night foreplay. Perhaps some hard core fucking and blogjobs. Corporations and Gonzo Marketing are now discovering each other. Each a bit shy during the day but willing and lustful at night. I think we'll see them going steady soon. For now just keep noticing their attaction to each other, isn't it beautiful?

Navel Gazing
The danger is in becoming infatuated with ones navel. Too much gazing degenerates into sitting on a red sofa masturbating in public.

*** mo:Blogged ***

Why Do We Blog?

It's not all about Gonzo. Sometimes a little navel gazing is good for the spirit. It can, I think, keep our Gonzo engaged.

Bedtime for Gonzo?
I'm just wondering, of myself as much as of anyone, where has the Gonzo gone?


Marek my long lost friend, consider this an encrypted echo back from the metaverse. Decode it, and untold peace and harmony will be bestowed upon some complete stranger.

*** mo:Blogged ***

Why do You Blog?

I don't know. Really I don't know. It's like I am sending these encrypted messages out there into the universe. The universe resonds sometimes. Sometimes not. I am sending signals. Hello, I say. Hello! and I just want to someone to hear my Hello! I don't even need a response back, I don't need the universe to talk back to me. I just want to know that it listens. It's like love I guess. It's love when someone just listens.

Paynter, you bastard!

Happy Halloween 

Life Stealing

Someone is stealing your life
---
by Michael Ventura
---
(Excerpted from LA Weekly 26-Jan-90)


Most American adults wake around 6 ot 7 in the morning. Get to work at 8 or 9. Knock off around 5. Home again, 6-ish. Fifty weeks a year. For about 45 years.

Most are glad to have the work, but don't really choose it. They may dream, they may study and even train for work they intensely want; but sooner or later, for most, that doesn't pan out. Then they take what they can and make do. Most have families to aupport, so they need their jobs more than their jobs admit to needing them. They're employees. And, as employees, most have no say whatsoever about much of anything on the job. The purpose or service, the short and long-term goals of the company, are considered quite literally "none of their business" - though these issues drastically influence every aspect of their lives. No matter that they've given years to the day-to-day survival of the business; employees (even when they're called "managers") mostly take orders. Or else. It seems an odd way to structure a free society: Most people have little or no authority over what they do five days a week for 45 years. Doesn't sound much like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." Sounds like a nation of drones.

It used to be that one's compensation for being an American drone was the freedom to live in one's own house, in one's own quirky way, in a clean and safe community in which your children had the chance to be happier, richer drones than you. But working stiffs can't afford houses now, fewer communities are clean, none are safe, and your kid's prospects are worse. (This condition may be because for five days a week, for 45 years, you had no say - while other people have been making decisions that haven't been good for you.) I'm not sure whose happiness we've been pursuing lately, but one thing is clear: It's not the happiness of those who've done our society's work.

On the other hand - or so they say - you're free, and if you don't like your job you can pursue happiness by starting a business of your very own, by becoming an "independent" entrepreneur. But you're only as independent as your credit rating. And to compete in the business community, you'll find yourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as you can get away with. Pay them as little as they'll tolerate and give them no say in anything, because that's what's most efficient and profitable. Money is the absolute standard. Freedom, and the dignity and well-being of one's fellow creatures, simply don't figure in the basic formula.

This may seem a fairly harsh way to state the rules America now lives by. But if I sound radical, it's not from doing a lot of reading in some cozy university, then dashing off to dispense opinion as a prima donna of the alternative press. I learned about drones by droning. From ages 18 to 29 (minus a few distracted months at college when I was 24) I worked the sort of jobs that I expected to have all my life: typesetter for two years, tape transcriber for three, proofreader (a grossly incompetent one) for a few weeks, messenger for a few months, and secretary (yes, secretary) for a year and a half. Then I stopped working steadily and the jobs got funkier: hospital orderly, vacuum-cleaner salesman, Jack-in-the-Box counterperson,
waiter, nail hammerer, cement mixer, toilet scrubber, driver.

It was during the years of office work that I caught on: I got two weeks' paid vacation per year. A year has 52 weeks. Even a comparatively unskilled, uneducated worker like me, who couldn't (still can't) do fractions or long division - even I had enough math to figure that two goes into 52 ... how many times? Twenty-sic. Meaning it would take me 26 years on the job to accumulate one year for myself. And I could only have that in 26 pieces, so it wouldn't even feel like a year. In other words, no time was truly mine. My boss merely allowed me an illusion of freedom, a little space in which to catch my breath, in between the 50 weeks that I lived that he owned. My employer uses 26 years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do I get in return for this enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in return
for my life?

A paycheck that's as skimpy as they can get away with. If I'm lucky, some health insurance. (If I'm really lucky, the employer's definition of "health" will include my teeth and my eyes - maybe even my mind.) And, in a truly enlightened workplace, just enough pension or "profit-sharing" to keep me sweet but not enough to make life different. And that's it.

Compare this to what my employer gets: If the company is successful, he (it's usually a he) gets a standard of living beyond my wildest dreams, including what I would consider fantastic protection for his family, and a world of access that I can only pitifully mimic by changing channels on my TV. His standard of living wouldn't be possible without the labor of people like me - but my employer doesn't think that's a very significant fact. He certainly doesn't think that this fact entitles me to any say about the business. Not to mention a significant share in ownership. Oh no. The business is his to do with as he pleases, and he owns my work. Period.

I don't mean that bosses don't work. Most work hard, and have the satisfaction of knowning that what they do is thiers. Great. The problem is: What I do is theirs too. Yet if my companion workers and I didn't do what we do - then nobody would be anybody's. So how come what we do is hardly ours? How come he can get rich while we're lucky to break even? How come he can do anything he wants with the company without consulting us, yet we do the bulk of the work and take the brunt of the consequences?

The only answer provided is that the employer came up with the money to start the enterprise in the first place; hence, he and his money people decide everything and get all the benefits.

Excuse me, but that seems a little unbalanced. It doesn't take into account that nothing happens unless work is done. Shouldn't it follow that, work being so important, the doers of that work deserve a more just formula for measuring who gets what? There's no doubt that the people who risked or raised the money to form a company, or bail it out of trouble, deserve a fair return on their investment - but is it fair that they get everything? It takes more than investment and management to make a company live. It takes the labor, skill, and talent of the people who do the company's work. Isn't that an investment? Doesn't it deserve a fair return, a voice, a share of the power?

I know this sounds awfully simplistic, but no school ever taught me anything about the ways of economics and power (perhaps because they didn't want me to know), so I had to figure it out slowly, based on what I saw around me every day. And I saw:

That it didn't matter how long I worked or what a good job I did. I could get incremental raises, perhaps even medical benefits and a few bonuses, but I would not be allowed power over my own life - no power over the fundamental decisions on which my life depends. My future is in the hands of people whose names I often don't know and whom I never meet. Their investment is the only factor taken seriously. They feed on my work, on my life, but reserve for themselves all power, perogative, and profit.

Slowly, very slowly, I came to a conclusion that for me was fundamental: My employwers are stealing my life.

They. Are. Stealing. My. Life.

If the people who do the work don't own some part of the product, and don't have any power over what happens to their enterprise - they are being robbed.

And don't think for a minute that those who are robbing you don't know they are robbing you. They know how much they get from you and how little they give back. They are thieves. They are stealing your life.

The assembly-line worker isn't responsible for the decimation of the American auto industry, for instance. Those responsible are those who've been hurt least, executives and stockholders who, according to the Los Angeles Times, make 50 to 500 times what the assembly-line worker makes, but who've done a miserable job of managing. Yet it's the workers who suffer most. Layoffs, plant closings, and such are no doubt necessary - like the bumper stickers say, shit happens - but it is not necessary that workers have no power in the fundamental management decisions involved.

As a worker, I am not an "operating cost." I am how the job gets done. I am the job. I am the company. Without me and my companion workers, there's nothing. I'm willing to take my lumps in a world in which little is certain, but I deserve a say. Not just some cosmetic "input," but significant power in good times or bad. A place at the table where decisions are made. Nothing less is fair. So nothing less is moral.

And if you, as owners or management or government, deny me this - then you are choosing not to be moral, and you are committing a crime against me. Do you expect me not to struggle?

Do you expect us to be forever passive while you get rich stealing our lives?

Birth of The Corporation.

get disincorporated