High Holy Mass of Contradictions

• brand tags
  Interesting experiment about the collective wisdom of brand perception.
  (tags: branding brands collaboration tags community marketing)

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• The Green Revolution In Magazine Publishing—Truth or Hype? | Circulation Management Magazine
  Why aren’t more magazine publishers printing on recycled paper?
  (tags: magazines recycling)
• Parental Fail « The FAIL Blog
  Jon sent me this and asked “we didn’t know each other then, did we?”
  (tags: drinks funny kids)

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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I’m going to some shindig on Thursday featuring “microroasted artisanal coffees.” Really? “Microroasted?” I was aware of the home roasting trend (I started to call it a craze, but I think that’s overstating the case) but hadn’t run across the term “microroasted.” I’ve actually largely given up coffee (truly, you wouldn’t believe how much caffeine I’d been consuming and for how many years of my life) but this I just gotta see.

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Stumbled across a good post by Frasier Smith about what makes a song hit-ready. I think this is the songwriting equivalent of “get rich quick” schemes to the average Joe, or of “Good to Great”-style books for business. And yes, I’ve thought a lot about the topic myself.

Smith talks about various elements in hit songs that make their lyrics and melodies memorable, universal, and instantly appealing. Certainly those are elements worth striving for, if pop hits are your goal — and they are ours.

But one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is the importance of writing for me. I’ve always done this, to a degree, but at times I’ve strayed a bit into unfamiliar territory in the hopes of writing something that more people would connect with. Imagine me writing, for example, a song with NASCAR allusions. I’ve tried it. It sucked. I won’t do it again (I promise).

And I just don’t believe it’s necessary to deal with the unfamiliar. Some of my favorite hits are the ones that seem broadly appealing and universal, but which have lyrics that appear specific about the writer’s own life. I’ll cite “She’s My Kind of Rain” as an example, even though its merits are often contested in songwriting circles. I’d cite other examples but I’m about to board a plane. Let me just assert that they are plentiful.

Moreover, I’m finding that the more I strive to write about the most universal topics in the most universal way, the less motivated I am to write them. Maybe that’s a “duh” kind of realization, but it hadn’t sunken in yet after all these years of writing. I think I’ve got it now.

So for me, the question of what to write about is “whatever I’m thinking about.” And then I guess I’d hope that I’ll sometimes stumble across universal themes. That makes it pretty simple, huh?

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• Lestat? « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures - I Can Has Cheezburger?
  Best LOLcat I’ve ever seen.
  (tags: lolcats)

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Web-forward people, particularly iPhone users, what’s the next thing after Quicken? Mint? Wesabe? Quicken online? I’ve tried all of these, and I have some complaints about each. Quicken no longer affords me the convenience it used to before I had an iPhone, when I used Pocket Quicken on my Treo to record expenses as I transacted them and could sync them up back at my laptop whenever. Now I have a stack of receipts piling up and no motivation to do anything with them, but I miss the granular visibility I used to have into my finances when that system was working well for me.

So what now?

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• rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » Blog Archive » When magazine publishers start acting like bloggers
  (tags: magazines blogging bloggers)

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My staff is the best

Originally uploaded by Kate O’

Edited to add: Oops. Must have misformatted my email to flickr-blog this photo, because I had notes with it and they didn’t make it. Oh well. What I was saying was that this was on my monitor when I came back to my desk after a particularly difficult day.

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• The All-You-Can-Read Subscription Offer - Blogs emedia and Technology @ FolioMag.com
  Maybe this model is the “real” Netflix of magazines, in contrast to Maghound.
  (tags: magazines magazines.com maghound magazine)

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We’ve just launched a promotion on Magazines.com that spotlights titles printed on recycled or sustainably harvested paper. Earth Day wasn’t originally on our seasonal marketing calendar (silly oversight) so we pulled this together on very short notice, and I’m proud of us for making the effort.

http://www.magazines.com/ncom/mag/main/earth_day

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After reading Mike and Jon’s laments about being “off the grid,” I did a little ego-surfing on Google Maps street view, and, hey whaddya know, we’re on it. They must have driven by before our transom and sidelights went in on our doorway, so it looks a little unfinished, but we’re there!

So, um, yeah. That was really important to determine. And now back to work.

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I can hardly believe it, but I saw Emo Philips live last night.

No way. Way.
No way! Way!
NO WAY! WAY!

And yeah, so obviously, here’s where I reveal myself as the nerd fangirl I grew up as. ‘Cause I mean, seriously, how many other teenaged girls did you know who were into twisted absurdist silliness? I bet they, like me, were all mathletes too. Right? Yeah. I rest my case.

It’s true, though, and if I may reflect for a moment: my friend Walter introduced me to Emo Philips’ “E=MO2” album when we were in grade school, I think, and Emo’s material became a staple of our mutual friends’ vocabulary for years to come. I cannot overemphasize how both formative and refreshing that material was for me, since I had had no other exposure to such offbeat humor, and I loved it.

Twenty-some years later, I finally got to see him perform live at Zanies Comedy Showplace here in Nashville, and it was indeed worth waiting for. The man is a freakin’ comedy genius. His character is so well developed and his material so carefully written that you eventually just start taking his bizarre affectations in stride — in other words, his writing is so good that if he didn’t act like a mental case on stage, his comedy might seem too polished to be funny. (Which is probably why most of the people I’ve met later in life who’ve found out I was an Emo Philips fan have reacted with surprise — their only familiarity with him were quotes they’d read online, and although the jokes hold up, they’re just not the same without that spastic, tortured delivery.) Taken as a package, though, his work is pure gold.

Anyway, back to my being a fangirl: we hung around after the show to buy CDs and get Emo’s autograph, and — why not? — take a picture, too. So check it:

Whee!

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CNN Money, that is.

Omniture put out a press release about some of the success Magazines.com has had using their Test & Target (formerly Offermatica) tool, and it got picked up on CNN Money’s Marketwire.

And look!

“When specifying our testing and optimization goals, we wanted to deliver more personalized content to different types of people who visit our site. We just needed an easy way to do it,” said Kate O’Neill, director of customer experience at Magazines.com. “With Omniture we have one platform used by marketers for both testing and targeted content.”

And:

“Everything you think you know and every intuition you have as an online marketer can immediately be tested so you can determine if your marketing is working or not,” said O’Neill. “Omniture Test&Target has brought reliability to our marketing campaigns.”

Woot!

Update:

Also picked up in techrockies:
Omniture Signs Magazines.com

AND in the Huffington Post, complete with a really cheeky video “explaining” what Omniture does.:
Omniture Works Its Mojo For Magazine.com (Luckily, Magazine.com redirects to Magazines.com. Whew!)

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• Next time you think you’re signing up for a veg*n cruise, check to make sure you’re not in fact signing up for one on holistic health and macrobiotics with just a hint of patience for veg*ns.
• However, if you do find yourself on a holistic/macrobiotic/veg*n cruise, you will eat far, far better than you initially fear.
• Eating gourmet five-course macrobiotic/veg*n cuisine for three meals each day will make you feel healthy and light and pure, but will still probably add the Cruise Ship 10 to your bottom line.
• Having the opportunity to hear doctors and macrobiotics experts and yogis and monks speak on all aspects of physical, emotional, and spiritual health is amazing; being at sea while having that opportunity means missing a lot of classes in favor of hanging over the side railing on the pool deck watching flying fish in the ocean.
• SPF 70 sunblock only blocks the sun when it’s actually applied to the skin, not just sitting in the bottle in the cabin while you’re on the pool deck watching flying fish in the ocean over the side railing.
• I burn easily. And then I do not tan; I beige. I am, therefore, sunbeiged.

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I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” on one of my flights a few weeks ago. (It’s a wonderfully insightful and beautifully written book; I highly recommend it.) There’s a passage where the author, having recently developed a personal relationship with prayer and a self-styled spirituality, is describing an exchange with her pragmatic sister, Catherine.

A family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy when both the mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, “Dear God, that family needs grace.” She replied firmly, “That family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing the family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.

Karsten and I got talking about my father’s death. My father was a popular man, loved by many in his town and with a wide circle of friends and family across the country. Many people were praying for him as he waged his fight with cancer. Some people would probably conclude that the prayers must not have been very effective since the cancer ultimately won. But even as a non-spiritual person, I think that’s an unfair characterization of the effects of that praying. I would never attempt to claim that there is no power in prayer. I just don’t think it’s the only vehicle for the conveyance of caring, and it’s loaded with religious affiliation, which has no appeal to me. But I have no trouble accepting the possibility, perhaps not as a direct result of prayer, but perhaps resulting indirectly from the quantities of people who simply told my father and the rest of his family that they were praying for him, that my father died with more awareness of how loved he was, and that we, his family, could accept his death with more comfort because we knew how loved he was.

Maybe you wouldn’t call that the power of prayer, per se. And I would agree that it’s something different, but I think — and this is a non-believer attempting to understand the minds of believers, so I may have it entirely wrong — but I think there’s something uniquely potent about prayer to a believer that is somehow not present in the offerings of “thoughts” or “good vibes” or “positive energy,” or any number of alternatives you or I might suggest.

That’s the struggle I have as a non-believer who wants to offer comfort to my loved ones. I wish I had something I could offer my cousin’s family as they’re dealing with my 17-year-old cousin battling lymphoma. I have told them I’m thinking about them, but I feel acutely that that’s not as powerful a statement as telling someone you’re praying for them. To my eyes, as a non-believer, that’s the power of prayer: a communication shortcut that says you want to intercede for someone; that you feel their situation merits grace, and you’re looking to powers bigger than yourself to provide it.

But without that communication shortcut, I guess I find myself in the role of the pragmatic sister, trying to think of when and how to make the proverbial (or literal) casseroles and hope that they are received as grace. (Here I should mention how humbling it is to have a sister who is both a praying person and a casserole maker in the most active sense — she was recently awarded Citizen of the Year in her hometown for her efforts in setting up a non-profit organization that helps the poor and needy in her otherwise well-to-do suburb. She’s a double-helping of grace.) What I lack in spirituality I make up for in plain old compassion, but how can I be of much practical use to a family hundreds of miles away? There’s a missing ingredient that could help bridge the distance, and to say “I’m thinking of you” sounds hollow.

I suppose it’s relevant in some way that I’m musing about this on Easter morning. I have no real ties to Easter: nothing about its religious implications carries weight with me, and the childhood chocolate-fest is behind me. Even the pagan traditions offer little to the pragmatic, so it’s simply a Sunday when more businesses are shuttered than usual. But there is something about the hope of renewal, the rituals of rebirth that carry through from the pagan to the Christian traditions, in welcoming spring and recognizing the cyclical nature of life — something about that does appeal to me. (Maybe it’s the gardener in me.) I know I’m looking for a chance to discover something in myself — some offering I can provide to those who need comfort that feels as powerful as prayer and does as much good as casseroles.

I don’t expect to find the answer today. But I’m asking the question, and questions are more important than answers.

Happy Easter, happy March equinox, happy Sunday, happy day. I’m thinking of you.

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• blouses, button ups, tanks, and other tops for women from edge of urge boutique!
  Awesome stitched bird tank tee from Edge of Urge boutique online
  (tags: shopping clothing clothes)

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I’m not one to take glee in others’ misfortunes - schadenfreude just ain’t my style. But there’s something about this email mishap from Amazon in my inbox this morning that just made me giggle, and it’s not the likelihood that someone in Seattle has just lost a job. Maybe it’s the idea that even in a company as big as Amazon, where the job functions are no doubt as specialized as insects in the rainforest, where filling in a few lines of text in an email is probably the bulk of what someone is paid to do on a daily basis, that this kind of thing can still happen. It amazes me.

(In the words of long-lost Brittney, click the image below to embiggen.)

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I think porn is kind of boring, frankly–it’s like watching monkeys type. Yeah they can do it and it LOOKS real, but you know it’s all a setup.</p>

- Kat Coble

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Thanks to the fine folks at ContentRobot, this blog is now equipped with an iPhone-ready theme. If you view www.honeybowtie.com/blog from an iPhone, it will automatically show up in a minimalist iPhone format.

And thanks to Dan Dickinson’s simple explanation, the whole honeybowtie.com site now has a custom webclip icon if you add it to your home page.

Whee!

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Yes, each of these probably merits a post of its own, and my blog has been sorely neglected of late. But since I’m powering through my to do list, I’m giving them each a bullet point, and I may choose to come back to one or more of them later.

• I’ve been working very, very hard. If you visit Magazines.com over the next few months, you may see some cool changes start to take place.
• I’ve been traveling a lot. Since the beginning of February, I’ve been in San Francisco, New York, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Boston. And not in Nashville very much, clearly.
• My 17-year-old cousin (well, first cousin once removed) has lymphoma. But she’s got a great attitude and a lot of fight in her. I’m thinking a lot about my cousin and her family.
• My coworker’s 10-year-old nephew just died from cancer after 9 months in the hospital. And then, at the funeral, the same coworker’s mother-in-law collapsed, had a heart attack, and died. I’m thinking a lot about that family.
• Karsten and I are about to go on our first cruise. It’s a vegetarian cruise.
• This weekend is the fifth anniversary of the crazy little experiment Karsten and I performed that we like to call “getting married.”
• I finally convinced Karsten to join Facebook. We’re now married on Facebook! I feel so hip.

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