I went up to the gym the other day and hopped on the elliptical machine for a ‘run’. I set the timer for 25 minutes and got going. I was flipping through my iPhone looking for a good song and all of a sudden there it was, one song that would take me through an entire time slot on the machine. It wasn’t exactly upbeat, but then again, I wasn’t either that day, but I knew it was a consistent tempo and that was better than nothing. Not a song, but a musical monologue, based on a true experience, by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie, and basically a protest against the Vietnam war.

And honestly, that 25 minutes flew by as I spoke and sang the words. I always love it when a tune from the past pops into the present, particularly one that is as fun as this one. And it’s as old as I am, not sure if that’s good or bad, but it was a fun trip down memory lane anyway. Written in 1967, so excuse the one offensive reference, or more if you find them offensive. The song on YouTube is the 1995 revisit, which is the version I have on my iPhone. Fabulous 22+-odd minutes of entertainment.

I have been humming the tune for the past few days and finally, on a whim, posted the title of this post to my Facebook. And enjoyed an entertaining hour of banter and laughter as a result.

Although the reference to 18 minutes and 20 seconds comes from the revisited version, the original album version occupies 18 minutes and 34 seconds.

Alice’s Restaurant

This song is called Alice’s Restaurant, and it’s about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice’s Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why I called the song Alice’s
Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on – two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin’ in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin’ all that room, seein’ as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it’d be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW
microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, “Closed on Thanksgiving.” And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn’t find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile
is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our’s down.

That’s what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, went to sleep and didn’t get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, “Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it.” And I said, “Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage.”

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police officer’s station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the police officer’s station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn’t very likely, and we didn’t expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be seen driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer’s station there was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said “Obie, I don’t think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on.” He said, “Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car.”

And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Ma*sachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer’s station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that’s not to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, “Kid, I’m going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt.” And I said, “Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don’t have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?” And he said, “Kid, we don’t want any hangings.” I said, “Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?” Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn’t hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn’t bend the bars roll out the – roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember Alice? It’s a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, and didn’t get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, “All rise.” We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, ’cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn’t nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn’t going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

They got a building down New York City, it’s called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o’ mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, “Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604.”

And I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL.” And I started jumpin up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL,” and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, “KILL, KILL.” And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, “You’re our boy.”

Didn’t feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin’ to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, “What do you want?” He said, “Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?”

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice’s Restaurant Ma*sacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome… – and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, did you ever go to court?”

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, “Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W …. NOW kid!!”

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W’s where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly ’n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, “Kid, whad’ya get?” I said, “I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.” He said, “What were you arrested for, kid?” And I said, “Littering.” And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.

“Kids, this-piece-of-paper’s-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-officer’s-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say”, and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the ma*sacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

(“KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?”)

I went over to the sargent, said, “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women,kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.” He looked at me and said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington.”

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say “Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.”. And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

And that’s what it is , the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Ma*sacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the guitar.

With feeling. So we’ll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud. I’ve been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I’m not proud… or tired.

So we’ll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part harmony and feeling.

We’re just waitin’ for it to come around is what we’re doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant
Walk right in it’s around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice’s Restaurant

It’s funny, but I’ve done so many things and stood in so many different worlds, that I don’t hide from any past experiences. And I don’t hide any of them from anyone else either. I used to, but that was when I thought it really mattered, and for the most part, it doesn’t. I am a former hairdresser with a PhD in immunophysiology. I am a former aquarium store assistant manager who currently provides biological support for Federal fish hatcheries. I am a former night club worker who currently teaches fourth year University courses in fish diseases and aquaculture. I am a former University College instructor who currently teaches marine VHF Radio to the public on a volunteer basis. I am a former music student who appreciates listening rather than playing – and most other people probably do too . I am a former competitive synchronized swimmer who enjoys boating/sailing, both here and in the Mediterranean. I am a former tom-boy who now enjoys painted nails and sparkly jewellery. I am a former arts and sciences student who still loves and participates both activities. I am a former Northern Interior resident who much prefers living on the South Coast. I am a former SCUBA diver who loves riding scooters and motorcycles. I am a downhill skier who never liked cross country skiing, but I did it anyway, and I didn’t do so well on a snowboard and tried to break my wrist, but I tried! I am a former canoeist who fell in love with kayaking. I am a former PC user who now extolls the virtues of Mac.

The ebb and flow of our lives provides so many opportunities for experiences and we can box them up and put them on a shelf, or we can use them to round out our lives and provide positive perspective on where we are and who we are now.

When I was in University I used to hide the fact that I was a hairdresser. I thought it would make people think less of me, think less of my abilities. That was a terrible thing to think because it meant that on some level I thought that about the people I had shared years working with. I came to realize that I was actually proud of those years, because they had given me amazingly positive life experiences, and life skills, that many others don’t have. I had gained the ability to talk to, work with, and deal with, just about any personality that I could ever be presented with. It gave me the ability to see other points of view, to listen carefully, to empathize. A hairdresser is like a bartender, they hear all the sordid details, all the heartbreaks, and the joys, of their clients. They also work in a world of fashion and jealousy. It was an interesting time in my life, I worked in that industry, on the side, through some part of each of my three University degrees, and I am thankful for it because it grounded me in two worlds. The academic one, and the public one. I have not hidden the fact that I worked in the hairdressing industry for a long time, and more often than not, people are fascinated to find out that the PhD teaching them fish health used apply colours to people’s hair.

What brought this to mind was nothing to do with hair though, it was that a colleague was over from the Island the other day for a meeting. Before the meeting we were chatting about this and that, and a connection came up that brought some other past to the forefront. We are both involved in reviewing and trying to provide some guidance to a Federal aquatic disease surveillance program and another woman who is putting together a sampling program came up in conversation. She is the former wife/partner to a man who won a position that I had been in a competition for (the fish world is very small). When I lost that particular competition it had sent me into a tailspin and left me floundering for awhile. I’m ashamed to say that I wallowed in self pity for awhile, for too long, but I came out of it a long time ago. She was surprised that I bore him no ill will and that my take on the process was that it went exactly how it should have gone. From her position, and that of some others, I got screwed over royally, but I don’t see it that way at all. The fellow who won the position deserved it, and the University College could not have chosen me over him. I knew that was going to be the outcome before the interviews ever took place, I knew the result as soon as I learned who my competition was. There were three of us in the running. Me, a vet without any academic teaching history, and an assistant professor from an Eastern University. I knew beating out the vet would be a cakewalk because her CV was shorter than mine and didn’t include important teaching credentials that I had achieved, but there was simply no way that the committee could choose me over the other guy. He was farther along in his career than I was, had research grants in his pocket, and had a proven record of supervising graduate students. The result was exactly what I expected it would be. And the great thing is, that I can look at where things went at that faculty from an outside perspective (now) and thank my lucky stars that I didn’t end up there. It has turned into an ugly toxic soup of recurring layoffs and unachieved goals. I never wanted to leave Vancouver, so really, everything worked out the way it should have and I am ultimately happy that it did. Hindsight is an amazing thing, particularly positive hindsight.

I think my point is that everything we do, everyone we meet, every achievement, every failure, every gain, every loss, every ex-boyfriend/lover, every ex-colleague. They all make up who we are because they all shape how we deal with the world around us, how we deal with people, and how we deal with situations. Sweeping something under the rug does a disservice to the experience and the time that it took in our lives, learning from the negative outcomes, but finding the positive aspects not only makes you a happier person, it makes you a more interesting person.

They say that the past is a window to our future. That we are creatures of habit and that we have patterns that we take with us wherever we go, no matter what we do. If we are smart we can analyze those patterns and figure out how to make them work for us instead of against us. We can use the past the make a better present, and to shape our future. Or we can hide from the past, try to forget it, or blame others for our inability to get where we are going, or to achieve the things we dream for, but that’s usually a recipe for failure since it generally seeps out in ways that aren’t beneficial or conducive for happiness.

The past is my friend, because it helps me in the present, and I think it will continue to do so in the future, as long as I remember to see the positives first and foremost, and remember to turn the negatives into more positives.

February 17, 2012 – When I was a kid I loved the Carol Burnett Show.

Kirk bought tickets for us for Christmas, and tonight was the show. And it was wonderful. It was an evening with Carol and she took questions an comments form the audience, presented vignettes and video clips from the shows, and was a completely delightful, and hilariously funny, person to spend an evening with. She even did the Tarzan call! Below is, quite possibly, the funniest skit ever from the show, with Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, and poor Harvey can barely control himself. She played this at the show tonight.

Then a mad dash back to Nanaimo to try and catch the 3pm ferry instead of the 5pm (really didn’t want to be late since those tickets were waiting!) And do you know what’s awesome? Driving like a bat out of hell, in a monsoon, and the police nail the guy in front of you and, because of that, you JUST make the boat by mere moments! I am SO grateful for that red light that briefly separated the crazier driver from me. Kirk says I have horseshoes stuffed somewhere, he may be right, if you looked at my history, he just may be right….

Fabulous and wonderfully memorable day!

“I’m so glad we had this time together….”

The other day I received an email that used a whole lot of acronyms that I was trying to sort through, one of them was something to do with translation services and NLP, so I looked it up with a quick Google search and decided pretty quickly that I had come across the wrong translation. The first thing to come up was “Neuro-Lingusitic Programming”. But the linguistic part sounded right so I clicked on the link for a definition, but oh was this not what I was looking for, this was definitely not what I was looking for. Not only was this new to me, it was downright silly.

And that got me off on a mental tangent about irrational things that people grasp onto, absurd pseudo-sciences. This NLP thing set off my skeptic radar full tilt and had me astounded that anyone could actually buy into such nonsense.

Let me lay this one out here…

NLP is a crazy approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created in the 1970s.

“The title refers to a stated connection between the neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”) and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (“programming”) and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life (Wikipedia). NLP practitioners claim to be able to “track another’s eye movements and language, thereby shaping the person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions.”

“As human beings, we can never know reality. We can only know our perceptions of reality. We experience and respond to the world around us primarily through our sensory representational systems. It is our ‘neuro-linguistic’ maps of reality that determine how we behave and that give those behaviors meaning, not reality itself. It is generally not reality that limits us or empowers us, but rather our map of reality.”

Uhh, yeah, ok, sure. (Looney alert!). It’s nonsense like this that lets people down. Humans are always looking for meaning, a sense of place, for purpose. I suppose that’s why religion is so popular. But this kind of unfounded pseudo-science, regardless of its stated goal of “finding ways to help people have better, fuller and richer lives” is just another irrational religion, but one that has no deity attached. It’s high on the “quack-factor” list.

And that got me thinking about other ridiculous things that people buy into, because they “want to believe”. Pyramid schemes and other ‘get-rich-quick’ notions, astrology, horoscopes, psychic readings, the Bermuda Triangle, levitation, crop circles, seances, channeling, Tutankhamun’s curse, biorhthyms, magnet therapy, laundry balls, Intelligent Design, etc. I lump them all together.

Another one that amazes me is the movie and book that followed: The Secret. Who buys (and buys into) this stuff?

“The Secret describes the law of attraction as a natural law that determines the complete order of the universe and of our personal lives through the process of “like attracts like.” That is, as we think and feel, a corresponding frequency is sent out into the universe that attracts back to us events and circumstances on that same frequency. For example, if you think angry thoughts and feel angry, you will attract back events and circumstances that cause you to feel more anger. Conversely, if you think and feel positively, you will attract back positive events and circumstances.”

“The Secret states that desirable outcomes such as health, wealth, and happiness can be attracted simply by changing one’s thoughts and feelings. For example, if a person wanted a new car, by thinking about the new car, having positive and thankful feelings about the car as if it were already attained and opening one’s life in tangible ways for a new car to be acquired (for example, test driving the new car, or making sure no one parks in the space where the new car would arrive) and the law of attraction would rearrange events to make it possible for the car to manifest in the person’s life.”

“The law is a magnetic power emitted through your thoughts. The power of thoughts are likened to a transmission tower that sends out a frequency to the universe and then returns the same frequency in a physical or experiential form. Next, a three-step creative process for manifesting dreams is introduced: Ask, Believe, and Receive. This creative process is based on a quote from the Bible: “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” (Matthew 21:22) The Secret highlights gratitude and visualization as the two most powerful processes to help manifest one’s desires. It asserts that being grateful both lifts your frequency higher and affirms that you believe you will receive your desire. Visualization is said to help focus the mind to send out the clearest message to the universe. Several techniques are given for the visualization process, as well as examples of people claimed to have used it successfully to manifest their dreams.”

Can anyone actually read that and not see that it is complete gibberish? Of course when we think happy thoughts we attract good things. And of course when we think unhappy thoughts we don’t. It’s simple, if you are happy you smile, smiling people make other people smile, happy smiley-faced people talk to each other, and when you are happy the world seems like a brighter place, you focus on happy things. When you are unhappy you frown, frowns repel people, when you are unhappy and frowny-faced you can’t see the happy things because all you focus on are unhappy things that add further fuel to your unhappiness. How do I know this? Because I was a very unhappy kid in right around when I entered my early teens. My parents were getting a divorce and I was miserable. Eventually I noticed that I didn’t have as many friends around me and I thought “hmmm, I’m unhappy so no one wants to be around me…maybe I should find my happy place..” Pretty straight-forward connection. It’s so friggin’ simple it amazes me that people actually need to buy self-help books and seek “help” from people that only see their misunderstanding, of something so simple, as a source of income. But honestly, are there people out there who really think a car is going to just materialize in their parking spot because they think happy positive thoughts? I really hope not….

I think it’s easier to believe than to not believe, and that’s what gets us into these silly fixations. We are programmed to believe unbelievable things because, in a fundamental cost-benefit analysis, it’s “safer” (sometimes) to believe than it is to be a skeptic. For example, believing in religion is safer than not believing. Why? Consider the arguments. If it’s true that there is a life after this and that I must believe to gain entrance or forever be damned to some purgatory, well, it’s safer to believe and the cost is very low. If there is no life after this, then I have lost nothing except some time and rational thought. But if I don’t believe and there is truth to the argument, then the cost is very high. See? Safer to believe. Call it calculated risk taking, except in most of the cases above (with the exception of get-rich-quick schemes and pyramid schemes) there is no real personal risk beyond disappointment. And that very logic is why I simply cannot believe. Belief without proof is blind faith, and blind faith is action without rational thought. I question nearly everything and I am anything but irrational in my thinking, reasoning must be grounded in reality for me to accept something as holding a probablility of truth.

Religion will probably always be with us, but these other silly fascinations with “cure-alls”, ridiculous fixes, and pseudo-explanations usually are discredited relatively quickly, because the need to believe is (usually) eventually overruled by the disappointment of failure to deliver, and often with the involvement of some degree of fiscal loss.

And all that came from an accidental acronym mistranslation.

WTF? It’s FUBAR – you can look that one up yourself if you aren’t familiar with it.

Have you ever been so absolutely taken by a marketing scheme that you thought was not only funny, but downright brilliant? If you are Canadian you will recognize this. If you aren’t Canadian, you will have missed out on this little nugget or marketing ingenuity.

A few years ago a marketing intern with Post Foods Canada was thinking about advertising ideas, and this is what the result was (YouTube Video – Rory Sutherland-Shreddies). I’ve posted the entire TED video that the clip comes from, but it again serves to highlight that often times we just need to be shown that there is intrinsic value in what we already have instead of always chasing some new, intangible, “better” thing.

(It was late, I was tired, this was all I could manage.)

If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch, ‘Who’s on First?’ might have turned out something like this:

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks I’m setting up an office in my den and I’m thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name’s Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don’t own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name’s Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don’t know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

COSTELLO: You just did what?

ABBOTT: Recommend something.

COSTELLO: You recommended something?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: For my office?

ABBOTT: Yes.

COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!

ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.

COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let’s just say I’m sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?

ABBOTT: Word.

COSTELLO: What word?

ABBOTT: Word in Office.

COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.

ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.

COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?

ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue ‘W’.

COSTELLO: I’m going to click your blue ‘w’ if you don’t start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: That’s right. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?

ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.

COSTELLO: What’s bundled with my computer?

ABBOTT: Money.

COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?

ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.

COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?

ABBOTT: One copy.

COSTELLO: Isn’t it illegal to copy money?

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

(A few days later)

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?

ABBOTT: Click on ‘START’………….

Enjoy!

….because they make a much bigger mess when you hit them at full highway speed………

I try to swing by this business every few weeks to see what witticism they have come up with. It changes regularly and is always entertaining.