Dear So and So,

No doubt you heard awhile back about the tragedy on the Tri-State, when a semi full of M&Ms drove off the road and crashed, spilling its precious load onto the concrete. Not to worry. It turns out they weren’t real M&Ms, just peanut M&Ms.

In some country in Africa with a big landmine problem, there is a cadre of trained rats that sniff out these mines so they can be proactively detonated. Trained rats. Previously reviled, creepy, evil rodents are suddenly transformed into life-saving heroes, doted on by their trainers, given cute names, fed well and loved. Just like bomb-sniffing dogs. Imagine that.

Speaking of Africa, when did Niger become nee-JHER. Just because it used to be a French colony is no reason to suddenly start pronouncing it in that French way. Yet this is what I’ve been hearing from many TV newsreaders recently. You’d expect this pretense from an NPR newsreader. But from network TV? It would be one thing if this approach to pronunciation were applied even-handedly. If NBC News’ policy were to pronounce all foreign words foreignly, then I guess that would be okay. But when they just arbitrarily pick a word here and a name there upon which to bequeath this honor, it’s obnoxious. Until these readers start pronouncing Des Moines Day Mwanh, let’s try to stick with plain old American English please.

Occasionally I am asked why I don’t save myself a lot of trouble and do that blog thing, instead of smailing this old-fashioned, printed letter. This question falls under the category of, “Don’t get me started.” From the first time I heard about the blahhg phenomenon years ago, I bristled. In trying to explain my resistance to this new communication avenue I inevitably sounded so crotchety and fossilized that I stopped responding to the question. Until now.

Eight million blahhgs? Even if you exempt all the business blahhgs out there that may have some useful reason for being, we’re left with what? Five million? Six million? Who the crap is reading them all? How many millions of people have nothing better to do than generate endless banal blatherings for public consumption, or worse, have the time to read the banal blatherings of others? Who really cares about the innermost thoughts of all these people with no particular talent for expressing themselves, and nothing much to say beyond the know-nothing opining and pontificating that goes on in the course of everyday life, across the dinner table, at the local bar, on countless sports radio stations?
Most of the blahhgs I’ve glimpsed are fluffy, first draft, self-involved, self-indulgent, self-important, amateurish wastes of my time.

I have yet to go “Hmmm, good point . . .”, or “ nice turn of phrase . . . ”, or “ oh boy, I can hardly wait to read their next entry . . .”.

Blahhgs are sort of the language equivalent of Garage Band. Just as this software enables everybody to become a bad songwriter, by the same token, blahhgs give everybody a forum, a pedestal from which to share their own earnest musings and creative spewings with the world. Eight million of them have apparently decided that they also have the ability. What makes this problem particularly insidious is that, in a sense, they can write. Most everyone can write. But these people have confused writing with writing.

If you write something on your blahhg site, it’s easy, instant, and digitally ephemeral. Somehow, there is less substance to what you’ve written by dint of its digitalness. Whereas, if you take the trouble to write something, print it on a piece of paper and smail to someone, it carries more weight, more commitment, more permanence. It’s on the record, it actually physically exists, you can’t delete it.

Frankly, I find all this “democratization of creativity” business to be tiresome and wrong-headed. Blahhgs devalue, commoditize, lowest-common-denominate writing. It would be great that we now have this technological catalyst to encourage that creative spark in all of us—except that there really isn’t a creative spark in all of us. Or, if there is, it certainly isn’t always a creative writing spark. You could argue that, if the blahhg phenomenon reveals even one exceptional writing or thinking talent who might not otherwise have been discovered, then it’s all worth it. You could argue that, but, in the words of Ross Geller, (or was it his alter ego, Russ?), “You would not be successful.”

Fortunately, the shakeout has already begun. In fairly short order, almost all of these short attention span wannabes will lose interest and their blahhgs will atrophy. Of course, most of them will no doubt migrate to podcastville, where the same disease is about to become an epidemic.

Hey, be sure to watch for the new Crain’s Chicago Business :15 TV spots on various cable news channels. If you like them, I worked with Maddock Douglas to create them. If you don’t like them, I’m not sure who did them. In either case, the folks at Crain’s are a pleasure to work with. And now I’m eagerly anticipating new projects out there in advertising land (hint hint).

My brother, “Philosophy Don”, decided recently that, since I sign off my letters “stoically”, perhaps I ought to have some passing understanding of what the word means and whence it derives.

So he sent me a book of the writings of Seneca, who, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, was the pre-eminent Roman Stoic. What I learned, and what I should have known all along, was that stoicism doesn’t line up very well with the way I see myself in the world. All I intended to do by signing off “stoically” was to allude to my ability to appear unphased by wrenching changes, bad news, client changes, etc. And, indeed, part of Seneca’s whole stoic thing was about being “impervious to perturbations.” Something like this meaning has survived to this day. “Seemingly unaffected by pleasure or pain” is a typical dictionary definition these days.

However, it is the why’s behind being “impervious to perturbations” that really distinguish and define Stoicism. I will not burden you with any further explanation of this philosophy, mostly because I’m not up to it. But when I got to the part in the book about how, “essential in every man’s role is obedience to the naturally ordained overseers of the grand plan . . . the Stoic is bound to his duty to the state,” the Libertarian in me recoiled in horror.

As I roamed around in this book on Seneca, mention was made of Epicurus and epicurianism, another school of ancient Greek philosophy, only the distorted shadow of which survives in the current word “epicurean.” What little I read of this philosophy resonated with me. I toyed with changing my sign-off to “Epicuriously, . . .” But I’ve decided that, being an ad guy and all, it’s only fitting that I continue to use the term “Stoically” in a superficial and distorted way. So it stays. And in so doing, Philosophy Don will likely point out that I have expanded the definition of “stoic” to include “impervious to education” as well.

Stoically,

 

“I am never stupider than when I try to do funny.” — Al Swearingen

They’ve discovered a new species of monkey in Tanzania. Though it is a type of mangabey, its distinctive honk-bark is very different from the whoop-gobble of other mangabeys.

“Spielberg is the greatest storyteller cinema has ever known.” — Tom Cruise

“Tom Cruise is an idiot.” — Chairman Jimmy

When did Paul Simon become George Gobel?

“He who has least need of tomorrow will approach it with the greatest pleasure.” Epicurus “Passion is the enemy of precision.” — Daryl Zero