"Too large and profit-driven to be 'Corporate'"

Perhaps there are levels of intended irony at work here that are far beyond my poor power to appreciate. But I think it's more likely that the folks at Budweiser are just idiots.

If you listen to any moderately alternative radio station, and by moderately alternative, I mean "owned and operated by a giant media company playing music for the 13-30 crowd with piercings", you may have heard a Budweiser commercial that goes something like this:

Bored/ stoned young male on the verge of saying "whatever": Yeah, I have this job for a giant dumb company, and they make me wear a tie, and my friends all have jobs for giant dumb companies that have procedures and forms and bureaucracy and shit, but we're not sellouts, because we all get together in a bar after work and say surly passive aggressive things about our employers. And we drink Bud while doing it.

The key line is something like "and we mock all things corporate" over a Budweiser.

Now I hope the irony need not be spelled out. But in case you are the marketing genius from Budweiser and not one of my clever regular readers (whom I have unforgivably neglected since starting my new job), I'll spell it out:

Dissing corporate evil over a Bud is not merely ironic, it's hypocritical. Read this and tell me Bud's not corporate. Anheuser-Busch has nearly half (47%) of the world wide beer sales. Not corporate at all. Hardly establishment. Very edgy.

So now the key question: Who's dumberrer? The bud marketers who actually thought they could align their brand with the anti-big company feeling of the alt rock crowd, or the Gen X/Y types who don't see the irony/ insult in the ads and actually start to think "I reject corporate life! I unplug from the matrix!, Bud is my beer!"

Given Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and "Jackass", I fear I must bet on the marketers.

Life is good

Job continues to go well. Between the job and school, it's tough to find any time to write. I use my commute on the ferry to usually do school work: reading, writing. Once I'm home in the evening, I have time to make dinner, pack for the next day (readying breakfast, lunch, and clothing so I can get up, go to the boathouse, row, shower, get on the ferry and go to work) and do some school work. I'm usually so tired I can't begin to think about creative writing.

My wireless router now works wonderfully, thanks to a new cable modem. Now that there's wireless, I can be online from bed, which raises the odds of my getting a post up.

I'm just back from NYC for school. I had a 7 am flight Sunday morning from JFK to SFO. I needed to leave the hotel at 5 am. Which means I'd have needed to get up at 4:30. And since anything less than 3 hours sleep is more trouble than it's worth, I'd have needed to be asleep by 1:30. WHich means I'd have had to have left wherever I was by 1. And there was no way was going home at 1 am. So I elected just to stay up all night. Had a GREAT time. Had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, and it was really great. Then spent the evening in a bar with my classmates and there was a lot of merriment and eventually dancing. It was great.

I'm almost over my broken wrist. I'm back to rowing. It's still a little sensitive, but I can do what I need to. I've begun weight training to restore my lost upper body strength. I'm back up to 175#, which is my "in shape" weight, though I still have a lot of cardio work to do.

I bought a toyota Matrix. It's cute and silvery blue and zippy and fun. I'll try to post a picture.

I'll be selling my ancient Isuzu trooper to the great state of CA for $1000 since it's a gross polluter and beyond repair. It ws my first car, and I'll always love it. But it's aninanimate object, so I ought not to grieve. Still, I feel disloyal.

I'll try to post something interesting. Thanks for still reading me.

It's the job

I'm very swamped. Haven't figured out how to fit blogging into my new life. More at some point.