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PotD  /  Status
Frustrating Frustrations
May 25, 2016

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

charles i. letbetter - frustrating frustrations

I’m not one prone to endure frustrating situations in silence. If there’s a problem, people need to know.

Starting the day in a bad mood is rarely a good thing. Typically, when that happens it is the result of a bad dream and I can shake it, to some degree, by the time everyone else is awake. This morning, though, Kat and I were greeted by a frustrating situation before either of us were really ready to get up. Walking the dog helped tamp down my temper, but even that was frustrating as this nosey hound dog flushed a cat from its hiding spot and attempted to take off after it, nearly jerking his leash from my hand. Coffee helped, but I’m feeling a bit frustrated by that now as I look over and my cup is almost empty. I’ll have to stop and make more.

Much of what I find frustrating is beyond my control. Weather, for example. The forecast for each of the next five days holds some chance of rain and/or thunderstorms. We both know it won’t actually rain all those days, but as long as the barometric pressure remains below 30.12 In. I’m stuck trying to pretend that every joint in my body doesn’t hurt when I move. Not a damn thing I can do, legally, short of moving to Colorado. Even that doesn’t solve the problem but makes it more bearable.

I’m frustrated by my own errors. I sit here typing and there are too many times when my fingers and my mind are not in agreement as to exactly which version of they’re/there/their should be used or how a word is spelled. Such errors are frustrating because my head knows the correct usage and spelling. Somehow, though, the wrong synapses fire and my fingers get the wrong message and as I look back over a sentence I’ve just typed I find ridiculous errors that only a child should make. I expect better of myself. Of course, then I read an article from a major news outlet and find similar mistakes and don’t feel quite so bad.

Politics are frustrating. Continuously. This morning, it is the protests outside a political rally last night in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’m frustrated not only because the two presumptive nominees are both total pieces of crap who will do our country significant harm, but because I fear the protests may lead to something worse. The situation is not aided by the fact that already disenfranchised people are being further disenfranchised by the candidates. Every time one of the candidates speak, people are given a reason to hate them all that much more. The system isn’t working and that’s frustrating.

Global unrest is beyond frustrating and, again, not a damn thing I can do about it. Talking with my son stationed in Okinawa brings frightening clarity to news reports of China conducting extended naval drills in the South China Sea.  These are more than the standard defense preparedness drills in which every military organization participates. Such drills imply that more aggressive actions are being considered, if not planned. Add that to all the absolute nonsense in the Middle East and frustration is just the tip of the emotional iceberg.

The fact that it’s #NationalWineDay and I’m totally out of anything good is very frustrating. By “anything good” I mean anything that costs more than $5 a bottle. I’m not especially picky, though I do have an abundance of fruit that needs to be eaten so something white is probably a good choice. Of course, the closest liquor store doesn’t carry much wine. This is more of a beer neighborhood. That would be yet another point of frustration.

You should be getting the picture by now that there are plenty of frustrating things in my world, and I’m pretty sure there are plenty of frustrating things in your world. I could easily continue. Fencing we ordered has yet to arrive. Meetings that needed to be scheduled before the kids get out of school for the summer haven’t been. We don’t know what we’re doing with the kids all summer and we don’t have money for endless camps. The little brat across the street keeps stealing the Tipster’s tricycle from under the carport. And on and on and on.

Dealing with so much frustration could be fatal. My blood pressure is already high and not being sure what I’m doing for dinner tonight doesn’t help. I could have a heart attack or a stroke if I can’t find a set of pictures that I need. So, what do we do to combat these frustrations? Here’s my plan:

  1. More coffee. We’re on our second pot this morning. I anticipate at least two more before Kat leaves for school. It’s just one of those days. Coffee keeps me from throwing things.
  2. Nap with the dog. He’s a good hound dog who likes to sleep right on top of me. He has a good sense for knowing exactly when to lick my face.
  3. Keep food easy. No elaborate preparations for anything today. At the moment, I’m favoring some form of salad for dinner. The kids love salad.
  4. Avoid answering any messages that I already know are going to be upsetting. They are not critical to anyone’s life or death, so they will wait until I can respond without ripping someone’s head off their shoulders.
  5. Stay the fuck off Facebook. I’m fortunate in that I can post to my page there without having to actually be on Facebook. What I see in my newsfeed too often makes me prone to acts of violence, such as slapping some sense into someone’s head. I don’t need that kind of trouble, so we’ll just stay away.
  6. Smooches. Lots and lots of smooches, even if they have to be digital. Something tells me Kat’s guests wouldn’t especially like it if I walked onto the floor and starting smooching her up while she’s trying to color someone’s hair. So, we’ll keep our smooches digital. That is better than nothing.
  7. Chocolate. We keep a stash hidden just for days like this.

The one other thing that could help isn’t immediately available: shooting a new set of nudes. I didn’t have the foresight to schedule anyone. If you’re reading this and want to volunteer, you know how to contact me. Just do it before Belvedere and I take our nap. We both get frustrated when someone interrupts our nap . One of us is likely to bite. Not saying which one.

We’ll get past this frustrating day. We almost always do. Just don’t do anything stupid and we should be fine.

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Advertising  /  pop culture  /  PotD
Hardcover No Longer Undercover
May 17, 2016
charles i. letbetter - hardcover no longer undercover

Getting 10,000 listeners for a free podcast novel is a lot easier than selling 10,000 hardcover novels at $25 a pop. —Jeremy Robinson

 

charles i. letbetter - hardcover no long undercover

Everyone was so sure that hardcover books were all but extinct. They were wrong.

My favorite people all read. A lot. The smartest people you’ll find are avid readers. The richest people in the world always have a book handy. People who don’t read regularly don’t just bother me, I find them quite frightening. Interestingly enough, I have found that those who have no hardcover books on their shelves seem to have the hardest heads, least likely to be open to information, creativity, or anything new.

For the past several years now, we’ve been told that hardcover book publishing is all but dead. Sales numbers supported that claim. E-readers were everywhere for a while, and it wasn’t all that unusual to see them on the bus, or the train, or at the local coffee shop, typically in the hands of someone young, hip looking, and wearing earbuds to avoid conversation or interruption. Going digital seemed like the environmentally friendly thing to do, too; more books could be published without killing thousands of trees. Going digital also meant one could carry multiple books with them without suffering the weight of an overcrowded bookbag. The whole premise sounded good, and to some degree still does.

What any avid reader will tell you, though, is that while digital publishing does have its advantages, there’s still nothing like the feel and pleasure of holding a real, hardcover book in your hands. We’ve always known that. We might give e-readers a try, and there are moments when they can be quite convenient, but we always come back to hardcover books because holding that physical tome of paper and ink is almost as much a part of the reading experience as is the story enclosed in the book’s pages.

Now, here’s the surprise: Hardcover books are coming back, both in terms of what is fashionable as well as hard sales numbers. The numbers are not huge, yet, according to Publisher’s Association; some $50 million or so out of a $7 billion-plus market. At the same time, though, digital publishing took a similarly-sized downturn. Put the two together and one has to optimistically consider this a trend.

Oh, and on top of that, the British bookseller Waterstones stopped selling e-readers, converted the shelf space to hardcover titles, and saw a five percent increase in sales! Considering the complete demise of Borders books, and how other booksellers have struggled, one has to wonder if perhaps those in charge of such operations might have given up a bit too quickly, tossing in the towel without putting up a sufficient battle.

What has pushed the trend back toward ink-on-paper books? Some point to an increased popularity in lifestyle titles such as Andrew Weil’s Spontaneous Happiness and Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. The popularity of coloring books among young adults hasn’t hurt sales, either, though that hardly counts as a literary genre. Ultimately, what has brought us back to the hardcover is emotion and practicality. We love our books. We love how they feel in our hands. We love turning down pages. We love decorative bookmarks. We love that ability to make sure everyone sees the dust jacket so they know what we’re reading.

We’re also more keenly aware of the shortcomings of e-readers. The portability is great for the first couple of hours, but battery life is limited and no one likes to be tethered to a wall outlet while they read. Environment is a problem, too. Too much or too little sunlight and you can’t see the screen, and the quickest way to ruin an e-reader is to take it into the kitchen while you’re cooking. Drop your Kindle? Sorry, you’ll have to buy a new one. Set the reader too close to anything magnetized and you lose your entire library.

Books are back. We’re not really surprised, are we? While this does not necessarily mean brick-and-mortar bookstores will return in the fashion we once knew, we can be certain that hardcover books are not going to disappear anytime soon. Probably never. Real readers know this. We love our books.

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Art  /  PotD  /  Status
Toxic Frustration, Easy Solutions (video)
May 5, 2016
charles i. letbetter - toxic frustration, easy solutions

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. —Kurt Vonnegut

 

charles i. letbetter - toxic frustration, simple solutions

Frustration is toxic and poisons an environment quickly. Solutions don’t have to be complicated, though.

My alarm wouldn’t shut up or snooze this morning. I couldn’t find the image I had planned to use for this article. A child was up way too damn early. A cat demanded I fill the food bowl, despite there being more than enough food already there. I try to not be too terribly superstitious, but this morning has me wondering of there’s some validity to all the concern over Mercury being in retrograde. As I’m writing, we’re not even to 6:00 AM and already my level of frustration has reached a toxic level.

There are a number of things that can be frustrating.  Realizing that it is only Thursday, not Friday, is one. Finding out someone ate the last of the Frosted Flakes will certainly do it. Remembering just now that we forgot to get milk for breakfast adds to the list. In a society where the pressure to perform is high, where expectations exceed reason, where resources never seem to match demand, frustration is a daily occurrence. The question is never whether we’re going to be frustrated, but how quickly in the day is it going to happen.

Frustration is toxic and spreads quickly. Twitter is probably the best example of that fact. One person posting their frustration is all it takes for a topic such as #DropOutHillary to start trending. Whether the topic is valid or has any merit is irrelevant; people are frustrated with the entire election system so they’re more than happy to jump on the bandwagon and wail. Frustration hits quickly, hits hard, and lands punches where we least expect them. As a result, our reactions are often excessive or even inappropriate to the size of the problem.

Solutions are not especially difficult to find, though, except for that part about wanting to change who is running for political offices. Most of what frustrates us are the tiny annoyances that have a relatively small impact in reality but feel significant at the time. We can’t always stop or prevent the frustration from happening, but we can address the toxicity through some rather simple steps.

  1. Step back from the situation and take a breath. When my alarm wouldn’t shut the fuck up this morning, I was so frustrated Kat had to intervene. I couldn’t find a solution to the problem because I was too emotionally involved. Being able to step back and see the insignificance of the annoyance gives us a chance to find a solution without causing damage.
  2. Drink something. When problems happen before I’ve had my morning coffee, my frustration is immediate and often severe. Being able to wrap my hands around something other than someone’s neck, something like a coffee mug or, later in the day, a glass of scotch, reduces the likelihood of collateral damage.
  3. Momentarily distract yourself from the problem. Most of what frustrates us does not require our immediate attention, unless it’s an alarm that refuses to shut off. Dwelling on the problem only ramps up the frustration. Find something less volatile, like a comic strip or a stripping comic to distract you until you’ve calmed down. Then, you can approach the problem more calmly.
  4. Put down the gun. Gun safety is requisite for those of us whose high anxiety levels lead them to frequent periods of frustration. Even getting to our weapons is a multi-step process that is intentionally difficult to perform when angry or frustrated. This has saved countless lives of passing motorists whose stereos are far too loud and preserved phones, computers, and other digital devices from being riddled with bullet holes. Violence is never the solution.
  5. Create something. Being frustrated takes up an incredible amount of energy. Pouring that energy, even if it is negatively motivated, into doing something creative can be cathartic. Not only may you create something beautiful and fulfilling, you might well be saving yourself a heart attack in the process.

What did it for me this morning, at least momentarily, was this clip from last night’s Late, Late Show with James Corden. I mean, how can you hold on to your frustration when George Clooney is in the backseat doing Hollaback Girl? This is a very funny 15 minutes and I’ll probably watch it more than once today, given how this day seems to be challenging me right out of the gate. Perhaps it will help you as well.

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Hashtag Philosophy  /  pop culture  /  PotD
Odd Thing That Irritates Me
April 23, 2016

One thing above all gives charm to men’s thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me. —Anatole France

 

charles i. letbetter - odd thing that irritates me

#OddThingThatIrritatesMe is trending on Twitter and it irritates me that I have so many items to add to the list

I was not born with my father’s easy-going temperament. My brother was. I’m not sure he’s raised his voice for anything other than a Rangers’ game in the past 30 years. Poppa was gentle, the very definition of being “slow to anger.” I envy that quality and it rather irritates me that I don’t have it.

Me? I got my Grandpa Slover’s short fuse. I seem to have inherited a number of his traits, from walking with my hands behind my back to having a low tolerance for mindless noise. The temper is what gets me in trouble most often, though, and none of my attempts to adjust that over the years have succeeded.

So, when I got up late this morning, I found it somewhat fortuitous that #OddThingThatIrritatesMe would be trending. There is much that irritates me. Given sufficient time, I could probably create a list that would dominate Twitter for the entire week. Sad, isn’t it? Especially compared with some of the rather mild irritants that have been posted by others.  Consider these:

See? Those are mild irritants at best. If anything, I’m irritated that everyone else’s irritants are so pallid. What irritates me is a long list of grievances that have grown from mild annoyances that were not worth mentioning to major issues that make me want to scream. I am irritated that I have such faults.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled to share what irritates me because I know that doing so irritates other people and if I’m going to be irritated then I damn well want company. So, here are just a few of the things that irritate me.

  • Knowing damn good and well that I bought something at the store yesterday but not being able to find it when I need it. This happens far too often and, of course, when I need that particular item is usually when I’m in the middle of cooking and don’t have time to go traipsing around all over the kitchen trying to find where it was misshelved. This is made all the more infuriating knowing that I’m the one who put up the groceries.
  • When it’s still dark out and the cats decide to scare the living shit out of me. Our three cats almost always get up when I do of the morning because they know I’ll turn the light on in the kitchen and that pleases them for some stupid reason. They take advantage of this time when the children are still asleep to chase each other and play, which can be rather cute. But they don’t make a lot of noise as they chase each other up and down the hall. I’ll be sitting here typing away and all of a sudden, WHOOSH! There are three cats running along the back of the couch and under my chair and over the desk and then gone again. Startles me every time.
  • Phones that make noises during the night. If I could, I’d leave my cell phone on silent mode all the time. Doesn’t matter how cute or funny the ringtone is, it irritates the living hell out of me every time one goes off because there’s never any warning and it disrupts my train of thought, or my nap, whichever is happening at the moment. Silent phones mean missed messages, though, so I have to turn it up during the day and too often I forget to turn it back down before I go to bed at night. So, somewhere around two in the morning, I’m jolted awake as my phone all-too-loudly informs me that, “A new message has been received.” Kat has her phone set to just chirp, but that little noise comes off as condescending, flaunting the fact that whatever message just arrived isn’t for me. We need quieter phones.
  • Kids toys that shouldn’t make noise, but do. As I’m typing, the Tipster is awake and attempting to play with the tea set she got for her birthday. Logically, that shouldn’t be a problem unless her tea party turns into a wild Barbie rave. But the ceramic cups and plates clink every time she sets one down, and she’s six, so it’s not like she’s the most graceful being on the planet. So, I’m hearing this constant arhythmic high-pitched clink, clinkety-clink, clink, clink, clink while I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m doing. Good thing spell check is turned on.
  •  Having to stop  what I’m doing to refill my coffee cup and take my medicine. Whether I’m writing or editing pictures, concentration is critical and any interruption is less than appreciated. The problem comes that my brain doesn’t work without coffee and bad things happen if I don’t take my meds. Inevitably, I’ll be deep in thought, fully committed to whatever I’m doing, reach for my coffee cup and …   empty. Now I have to interrupt the flow of my work, walk to the kitchen, fill my coffee cup, return to the desk, find that comfy spot in my chair again, and try to remember exactly what the hell I was doing. Taking medicine is just as bad. I easily lose 10-15 minutes of productivity every time.
  • Writing something really cool with an especially wonderful picture and no one reads it. This happens a lot on the weekend. I spend just as much time on our Saturday and Sunday articles as I do those during the week, but if the weather’s good they aren’t read by more than two or three people. I understand, when it’s pretty and warm and all spring-like, who in their right mind wants to stay indoors and read something irrelevant off the computer? Understanding doesn’t prevent me from being disappointed, though, and it irritates me when I feel like all that work was for nothing.

I could go on and on and on, but we both have better things to do than sit here listening to me gripe about the tiny little irritants that aren’t going to go away. I’m sure you have your list as well. We all do. And that list never seems to get shorter.

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Advertising  /  Photography  /  PotD
Throwing Shade Over Coffee
April 14, 2016
charles i. letbetter - throwing shade over coffee

I like coffee because it gives me the illusion that I might be awake. —Lewis Black

 

charles i. letbetter - throwing shade over coffee

Either the coffee is right or everything is wrong

Competition is everywhere. We compete for time, we compete for attention, we even compete with ourselves when it comes to matters such as losing weight or going to the gym. We understand competition both from a personal and commercial perspective and we typically don’t think too much of one product throwing a little shade at their competition. We rather expect that. After all, they have to compete for our attention before they can compete for our dollars.

Coffee is a competitive business, to be sure, but at the same time, it is one of the things that unites a lot of people. Meeting over coffee is one of my preferred ways of getting together with people. How people drink their coffee, or whether they drink coffee, tells me a little bit about them.

Where we don’t necessarily expect competition, though, is among dictionaries. Certainly, it has always existed, with each claiming to be either the most precise or the most complete. The dictionary business has changed dramatically, though, as the Internet has developed. People are buying fewer dictionaries than ever before, and major search engines now provide the definition of a word simply by typing it in, so we don’t even need to visit a dictionary’s website. Spell check doesn’t help the dictionary business, either, though that function isn’t always reliable.

I’ve just given you three very different and distinct topics within three paragraphs, loosely tied around the concept of competition. Yet, what brings all these together this morning, and the only reason I’m writing about them in the first place, is the shade one dictionary threw at another over coffee, which thereby highlights just how competitive the word business can be.

The whole thing started when the top-ranking dictionary.com posted this tweet:

Seems a rather appropriate tweet given this is National Library Week, doesn’t it? A gentle hint at how our word choice carries basic emotions. But look carefully at the picture. Do you see the problem? The folks at Merriam-Webster, you know, that more traditional dictionary that folks my age used all through school, caught the error and were quick with a comeback.

Oops! Major shade thrown. By a dictionary.

If ever there were an example of needing to not only double check but triple check one’s work, this is it. Even in the dictionary business,where competition tends to be more elevated and subtle, if one makes an obvious error in public be sure that the competition is going to pounce on the opportunity to take advantage of your mistake, even if it’s one most people probably didn’t even notice the first time around.

And most people didn’t notice. No one had said a thing about the fact that the coffee in the picture didn’t have any visible signs of being creamed until Merriam-Webster brought it to our attention. Most people tend to skim their Twitter feeds anyway and we actually pay attention to less than ten percent of what we see there. Had the competition not been watching, chances are that even if someone caught the error they likely wouldn’t say anything.  After all, who wants to take on people who work for a dictionary? For most mortals, such a challenge could end badly.

The other lesson to be learned here is that pictures have meanings and definitions just as much as words do. One can’t just take a random picture and slap it with a set of words that have no relation, or worse yet, contradict the image. You’ll notice that in the picture we used here the coffee does have cream. Uhm, you did notice that she’s holding coffee, didn’t you? Maybe I’m expecting too much of some, but I’m sure one or two people caught on without having to scroll back up and check. My point is, though, that matching the right picture with the right words can be quite challenging. It took over an hour of wading through the archives before we found a coffee picture that actually had cream in it. Imagine what the challenge would be like for someone who didn’t have such a collection at their fingertips. Finding the right picture can be every bit as challenging, and every bit as important, as finding the right words.

Which brings me to my final point: this is what happens when marketing departments use stock photos rather than buying original imagery. Dictionary.com was slammed because someone in the marketing department, possibly an intern, was instructed to pair a stock image with a literary quote [we’ll just assume that dictionary.com has permission to use the image and didn’t steal it from the Internet]. Business is too competitive to be risking your image with stock photography, especially when the photo doesn’t match the message.

In the end, this isn’t a huge, earth-shattering or career-ending faux pax.  I doubt anyone lost their job and this isn’t the type of thing that is going to sway anyone’s opinion about which online dictionary to use. There are lessons to be learned from the situation, though; lessons we all should remember so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.

And we all could probably do with another cup of coffee.

 

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Experimental  /  Photography
How Many Choices Are Too Many?
April 10, 2016
charles i. letbetter - how many choices are too many

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. —J. K. Rowling

charles i. letbetter - how many choices are too many

Having all the latest bells and whistles sounds like a good thing, but how many choices do we really need?

Imagine walking into an ice cream parlor and there only being three choices of flavors, none of which you liked. Would you walk out? Perhaps we might imagine walking into a restaurant that advertised an all-you-can-eat buffet, but would only let you pick five items from which you could consume your fill; that wouldn’t be exactly what we expected from a buffet, would it? We like having choices and, a significant portion of the time, the more choices we have the more in control we feel of our situation. Yet, we do well to ask the question: how many choices is enough?

Yes, I know, the answer depends primarily upon the topic and perhaps even the circumstances, but in whatever the situation might be, it seems only logical that, at some point, the number of choices one has begins to deteriorate one’s ability to actually achieve anything. If for example, Baskin Robbins were to suddenly expand their selection to 438 flavors, one might very well spend such a long time deciding as to no longer be interested in ice cream at all and go elsewhere for a nice burger. There is in all things a point of diminishing returns where the number of choices becomes too many.

When talking about the post-processing of digital imagery, the list of potential choices seems endless. Even if one only uses Photoshop on its own, with no third-party plugins or filters, there are still more than a sufficient number of choices to address pretty much every situation imaginable. I’ve not yet found any critical artistic or necessary adjustment common to photography that couldn’t be performed in Photoshop in some way. With choices abounding what matters is whether one knows how to actually access and implement all the choices available. The preponderance of choices is so great, in fact, that a third-party industry has cropped up around creating Photoshop actions to help save on post-processing time by automating some basic choices.

Like most photographers, I have certain tools that are my favorites. I reach for them often and, at times, even shoot specifically for a given set of tools. I have what I need, or, at least, I thought so.

Last month, Google released it’s Nik Collection of Photoshop plugins. Free. I’m not sure how much the collection had cost previously, somewhere between $300-$400 I think, but now the collection is totally free and they’re even giving refunds to those who had recently purchased the set. I found the move interesting from a marketing perspective but didn’t think much of it beyond that because they didn’t  sound like something I would need to use.

I take the same approach to the full Adobe Creative Suite. Are there some really valuable and incredible tools in the set? Yes. Can I see a potential use for those tools? Yes. But I don’t own all those tools because I don’t need them. They would just sit here and cost me money that could best be spent elsewhere.

Then, Friday evening, a colleague who had downloaded the Nik collection was telling me all it had in it and especially emphasized its ability to reduce noise. Noise is an issue for me because of the age of my camera. In low light situations, noise can ruin an otherwise good shot. He convinced me that the noise filters in the Nik Collection could fix my problem. So, first thing Saturday morning, I downloaded and installed the full collection.

When I next opened Photoshop, I groaned. There were so many choices I hardly knew where to start! I had watched the tutorial on eliminating noise, so I could find what I wanted, and it does work quite well. But what am I supposed to do with all this other … stuff? These tools expand my capabilities immensely or at least make a number of things easier. But with so very many choices how am I supposed to determine which ones are best for any given situation? Insert scream of panic here.

Take a look at the pictures at the top of this page. Both are composites of a photograph processed multiple different ways to demonstrate, I hope, just how confusing and complicated the number of choices can be, especially for someone who is already creative and always looking for something different. Which method I think is best is going to change based on what other art has influenced me lately, what kind of mood I’m in, and how much coffee I’ve had. I am sometimes criticized that my work lacks cohesiveness because I’m always moving on to try something new. Giving me these many choices hardly seems like a good thing! Consistency just flew out a window I didn’t have open.

Returning to our ice cream analogy, creatives are the type of people who walk into an ice cream parlor and, at least, consider all the options before making a choice. I know some who would have to actually taste all the options first. Given a certain budget, a specific amount of time, and sufficient desire, we run through all the options in our minds. Waffle cone or plain? One scoop or three? Or maybe a banana split? Or that brownie sundae looks good … Only when we have pondered all the choices do we make a decision, and even then we may spend the next three days second-guessing ourselves. If we do that with a limited number of ice cream choices, how do you think we respond when our creative choices number into the thousands? It’s a problem!

I understand why software developers put so much into a single package. How I use a piece of software is going to be different from how another person uses the same software. I’m not a product engineer so I’m not likely to use a lot of the 3D rendering tools available in Photoshop. My interest in graphic design is limited, so I don’t utilize the drawing tools as often or as proficiently as someone else would. Creative software has to be robust to speak to the myriad ways in which it can be used.

Still, it would be nice if there were a way to limit or perhaps turn off more of the choices so that they wouldn’t be sitting there looking at us, begging to be used. I don’t have time for this level of temptation. I’m four weeks behind on editing as it is! Too many choices are the bane of productivity.

Maybe we should all just go back to analog film.

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Music
Finding The Perfect Song
April 3, 2016
charles i. letbetter - searching for the perfect song

I’m totally convinced I can write the perfect pop song. —Moon Unit Zappa

 

charles i. letbetter - searching for the perfect song

Can there ever really be such a thing as the perfect song? We’ve not found it … yet.

I’m too cheap to pay for premium music streaming, so I get commercials every few minutes. I really don’t mind, for the most part, and have even found one or two almost useful. What makes me giggle, though, is when Spotify tries to sell me on their “Perfect Song.” concept. No, they don’t actually have a playlist by that name. What they’re inferring is that by using their premium service you can play the perfect song for a particular situation no matter where you are. You choose the song and play it from whatever device, thanks to Spotify Premium downloading it to your device.

Music is incredibly subjective. You know as well as I do that what might be perfect for one person in one given situation can be totally inappropriate for someone else. No one who knows music at all is crazy enough to claim that one song is the perfect song. We know better.

However, there are situations for which certain kinds of music are better than others. While I’ll stop short of claiming that any of these are perfect, they’re certainly worthy of your consideration. Oh yes, I should warn you that our sarcastic sense of humor came into play on some of these.

Best Workout/Exercise Songs

Yeah, I know some of you need a longer list, but by the time we make it to the end of Faint we’re usually ready to do just that. 20 minutes is about all we can handle.

Best Driving Songs

Maybe the list isn’t long enough for a whole road trip, but it should get you across town without swearing at everyone else on the road.

Best Songs For In The Kitchen

It’s a certain groove when we’re cooking, whether breakfast or a fancy dinner. Okay, so you might have to hit repeat of the meal is really involved.

Best Dance Songs (Especially if no one’s looking)

We turn our lights off when we dance. It’s better that way.

Best Funeral Songs

(just kidding)

Best Coffee Break Songs

I don’t dare make this list any longer or we’ll never get back to work.

Best Songs for Sexy Time

I realize that list is wayyyy too long for some of you, but our whole list would have just been discouraging for mere mortals

Best Songs for Passing Out

That should be enough to get you through most of your day. The whole list is a little over two-and-a-half hours, so you’ll want to spread it out a bit, but I think we’ve hit the most important times. For your convenience, we’ve compiled them all into a single playlist for you here. Have fun!

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Photography
In The Middle Of The Night
March 28, 2016
charles i. letbetter - in the middle of the night

If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently. —Bill Watterson

 

charles i. letbetter - in the middle of the night

Finding aspiring models who are willing to tackle the tough shoots can be difficult, but Rachel Williamson jumped in like a champ

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep

And I’ve been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I would never lose
Something somebody stole

The lyrics from Billy Joel’s River of Dreams  seemed appropriate as I was editing this set of pictures with model Rachel Williamson. It’s been several years since I’ve had someone willing to get up so very early in the morning to take pictures like this. To find someone who was not only willing but able to pull it off without looking completely worn out is something of a dream.

Not that any of this was easy. Knowing that we would need to be downtown on Mass Ave. no later than 5:00 AM, Rachel and her boyfriend Jake came over the previous evening and spent the night, with poor Jake sleeping on the floor, so we could be sure to get everyone up on time. There would be no missing the shoot due to oversleeping. At 3:00 I was up making coffee and by 3:30 Kat Franson was applying makeup to Rachel’s face and brushing at her hair.

We don’t normally play so rough when shooting a model for the first time, but Rachel came highly recommended by a respected colleague and she had plenty of warning of what to expect from members of Jake’s family, which include model Tiffany Beckett and Sweet F. A.’s J.T. Thorpe. She didn’t back away from any of our suggestions, washed the sleep from her eyes, and brought everything she had before most people were having their first cup of coffee.

After running around the nearly barren streets of Nap Town for about an hour, we still didn’t let Rachel off the hook. We pushed through four additional looks once we returned and she kept going through them all. She didn’t complain a single time. Her poses were just as strong in the last set as they were the first.

I’m always a bit anxious when working with someone for the first time. Just because a model says she’s down for whatever we throw at her doesn’t mean she’s going to handle the situation well. Shooting in the middle of the night is rather extreme, but Rachel did it quite beautifully. We’re looking forward to working with her again very soon. Here’s a sample of the results:

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
The Art Of Being Chill
March 22, 2016
charles i. letbetter - the art of being chill

I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man, but nothing winds me up more than people saying, ‘Chill out’ to me when I’m irritated! —Martin Freeman

 

charles i. letbetter - the art of being chill

Being chill comes easily for many people, but there are some who have turned it into an art form

Like many people my age, I have to deal with high blood pressure. Medically, there are a lot of reasons for having blood-pumping issues: our lifestyles being hectic, our diets being too high in sodium, and a general fear that we might die without having accomplished enough. There are plenty of things that would probably solve all but the worst of blood pressure problems without medication, but that would require we actually alter how we live rather dramatically. We’re not likely to do that, being the stubborn folk that we are, so the doctor gives us pills that try to force our blood pressure back down to a manageable level that won’t kill us quite so quickly.

The pills don’t always work, though. The doctor has increased the strength of my medication twice before and I’m still generating systolic and diastolic readings that are far too high to be safe. Kat keeps telling me I need to chill. She makes it sound so easy. She makes it look so easy. Just “chill.” She drinks coffee and relaxes. I drink coffee and feel the need to take a thousand new pictures. She sees something stupid in her news feed and ignores it. I see something stupid in my news feed and am ready to rip someone’s head off their shoulders. I am so very much not chill.

About a month ago, Forbes magazine published a story Finding Chill in Valparaíso, Chile. The article contains beautiful photos full of the color and culture of this relatively small Chilean city. The author talks about his hotel with hammocks on the roof, the delicious yet inexpensive food, and stray dogs that will walk you home at night (not kidding). Everything in the article sounds so wonderful that I was almost ready to pack my bags and go, until the author discloses that, while there, he tripped on a seawall and broke his leg in two places. That’s a risk I can’t take. Scratch Chile off my travel list.

It seems obvious that I need to go somewhere to chill. Indianapolis is definitely not a chill type of city. We get uptight about almost everything around here. With the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 this year, the entire neighborhood around us is anything but chill. But with Valparaíso off the list, where should I go?

Back in 2010, Forbes also published a list of the most relaxed cities in America. The twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul topped the list. They won because they have short commute times, get plenty of exercise, and had good insurance. Note, this survey took place before the Affordable Care Act took affect so that last detail might have changed. Looking through the other cities on the list, Milwaukee, Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Jose, it seems to me that all those cities have experienced some significant change in the past six years. Political changes have ruined Wisconsin. Portland’s population of hipsters has exploded. Seattle has become one of the most expensive cities in the country. Denver won a Super Bowl. San Jose’s Silicon Valley has experienced a lot of employment upheaval while real estate prices soared. Not seeing a number of benefits there.

Music is supposed to help people chill, right? According to the British Academy of Sound Therapy, the song Weightless is the best choice to help people chill. In fact, the song is apparently so effective one some people that the scientists involved in the study recommend that one not drive while listening to the piece. The song, which was specifically composed for this study. starts at 60 beats per minute and gradually slows to 50. I tried listening. I made it about 30 seconds before wanting to shoot something. Weightless has no freaking melody! It’s just electronic noise with carefully constructed pulsing.

From what I can tell, if one is going to master the art of being chill, they need to successfully do the following:

  • Live somewhere inexpensive. Paying a lot of bills or not being able to afford food is stressful.
  • Exercise. Being able to get out and walk without getting killed seems to be a plus.
  • Have friendly neighbors. You know, the kind that don’t fire weapons indiscriminately in the middle of the night.
  • Consume fresh food that is easily accessible. Having stores within walking distance helps (hint, hint).
  • Enjoy live, non-sedentary entertainment. I’m not sure whether Netflix and chill counts or not.
  • Have something constructive to do that you enjoy and provides sufficient income. Stressful jobs are inherently chill killers.
  • Don’t over-commit your time. Saying “no” and not feeling guilty about staying home helps.
  • Avoid toxic people. That friend who is constantly inducing drama? Ditch ’em.
  • Sleep more. Not getting enough rest is one of the primary causes of stress.

Anyone who can successfully do those things can master the art of being chill.

I’m probably going to die.

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Photography  /  PotD
Too Early For Intelligent Thought
February 20, 2016
charles i. letbetter, too early for intelligent thought

The early bird gets the worm. The early worm… gets eaten.—Norman Ralph Augustine

 

charles i. letbetter - too early for intelligent thought

Technology has improved a lot since this picture was taken. Early mornings, however, are still the same

 

Even by London standards, I am up way too early. You see, it’s not enough that we cover all the important fashion shows, I still have to keep up with my standard shooting schedule and this morning that includes doing some long exposure photography downtown. In order to pull off the look required, we need to be standing in the middle of the street by 5:00 AM. In order to be standing in the middle of the street by 5, I had to wake everyone up at 2. Being able to make coffee with my eyes still half shut is a very good thing.

Getting up early isn’t all that difficult for me on most mornings. I rather like London time, sort of. Our British friends tend to get things started around 9:00, which equates to 4:00 in Indianapolis. So, that’s typically the time I’m up and running. But we’re even beating that schedule today. As I type, Kat is doing hair and makeup on a lovely young model who is trying her best to be awake. My composition time is slow as I type a few words then have to reach for more coffee. More coffee. Always, more coffee.

Of course, you won’t be reading this until much later, will you? No, you have better sense than to be getting up this early. You’re almost certainly still lying in bed, totally oblivious to the fact that in order for your world to be ready for you at whatever time you decide to put your feet on the floor, someone else had to get up before you and prepare that Starbucks that you grab every morning, or the muffin that you eat while driving to work. You’re smart, letting someone else do the work like that.

I think of those poor chaps at the BBC who have to prepare the morning report, or the writers for Business Insider who have to not only write, but do research to be able to concatenate the most important news into a list of things I need to know before I start shooting off my big mouth. Of course, this is a Saturday, so there are no such lists. Not quite as many people are up at this unholy hour, which is why it is the perfect time for us to be taking pictures in the middle of the street.

The biggest danger in getting up so damned early is that the brain hasn’t had enough rest and recuperation time. I’m running on all of two hours sleep today. Yesterday, I splurged and had three hours. Some days I’m lucky and get a nap during the afternoon, but that won’t likely happen today as, being Saturday, there are children at home. All day. They don’t stop unless you’re throwing food at them, and even then it seems as though they just barely slow down. How can I be expected to exercise the level of intelligence of which I am capable if my brain is still half asleep?

Speaking of children, they seem to do early better than anyone. They hit the floor running the moment their little eyes pop open, especially on Saturdays when we would dearly like them to sleep a little later than 5:30. I’m convinced that they are able to get up so quickly and easily because their little brains are not yet full of enough information slowing their boot up every morning. They don’t care too much about the Chinese stock exchange, couldn’t care less what the price of oil is, and neither of the slackers are planning on voting, given they’re only 5 and 7. They care a little about the weather since that determines whether they can play outside. They care about what’s for breakfast and whether they can stream some mind-numbing drivel via Netflix. Their little brains boot up in .002 seconds because their operating system isn’t yet weighted down with garbage.

I remember my own father getting up this early, much to my mother’s frustration. He always said he enjoyed the peace and quiet and I can certainly appreciate that. The difference between he and I is that I can get up without disturbing anyone else in the house. Poppa had some difficulty with that quiet thing. Mother accused him of being too much like a bull in a china shop. By the time he finished making coffee, the rest of us had at least stirred.

If we are all very lucky, and it will take no small amount of good fortune, I will be able to share the results of today’s adventures with you. I expect you to feign appreciation if we do. After all, we’ve gone to all the trouble of getting up way too damn early in the morning; too early to be doing hair & makeup, too early to be having intelligent conversation, and too early to be taking pictures.

But here we are, the early birds. Those worms better be tasty.

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PotD  /  Social Commentary
Bookstores And Dreaming: A Natural Combination
February 3, 2016
charles i. letbetter - bookstores and dreaming

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.—Jerry Seinfeld

 

charles i. letbetter - bookstores and dreams: a natural combination

Bookstores do so much to stoke our imaginations that our dreams cannot help but be influenced by what we see there

This past summer, I was downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee with two of my sons enjoying Moon Pies and Coca-Cola when we came across a store they hadn’t visited before. The storefront was unassuming, a simple black on yellow sign giving the name of the store but not really indicating its contents. From the opposite side of the street, glare prevented seeing through the plate glass window, so we chose to investigate.

Walking through the door, our senses were immediately overwhelmed. Books lined hand-made shelves from one end of the store to the other. Not just new books, either. Beautiful, old, brown-at-the-edges books that had been loved and read for years upon years were there, some dating back to the very first part of the 20th century. My boys are equally avid readers as their parents and quickly took to exploring everything they could find in the stacks. There were books they’d never known were available. Books that were so far out of print that even digital reprints can’t be had. Every genre one could imagine, at every reading level, was right there, waiting to be explored, to be loved, and perhaps to be taken home. Had common sense not prevailed, we might have gone broke.

Bookstores were once a staple of Western culture, a part of life that was critical to society. Having a bookstore meant a town had vision to look beyond itself. Having more than one bookstore meant the city was open to ideas and fostered intellectual pondering. Bookstores were part of a neighborhood identity and their contents gave as clear a demographic picture as any census or survey. Bookstores were heaven.

Then came the mega stores, Borders and Barnes & Noble, that forced the small mom-and-pop stores out of business. We griped. We complained. But the new stores had coffee and would let us sit and browse for hours without actually making a purchase, so we still shopped there.

Along came the Internet and a man named Jeff Bezos introduced us to this thing called Amazon.com and the entire business of bookselling changed. There were easy comparisons. There were ready reviews. There were lower prices; sometimes significantly lower. Slowly but surely, even the biggest brick and mortar bookstores began to close or severely downsize. While bookstores still exist, they’re much more difficult to find.

Yesterday, a mall real estate developer, Sandeep Mathran, said during a corporate earnings call that Amazon, that giant online retailer that drove everyone else out of business, is going to open between 300-400 new brick-and-mortar bookstores. The Internet lost its collective mind. Yes, we understand the irony. At the same time, though, the romantic thought of 400 new bookstores dotting the country got everyone very excited.

Since that initial statement was released, there has been speculation that Mr. Mathran may have been trying to paint a picture for investors that is less than accurate. Amazon has refused to confirm or deny Mathran’s statement and persons close to the company say the move doesn’t make financial sense for the retailer. So, don’t go planning those browsing trips just yet.

Still, we like to dream and nothing fuels dreams any faster than do bookstores. While shopping online might be more cost effective and give us access to a wider range of books, nothing beats wandering the aisles of a bookstore and finding titles and authors we would not have considered otherwise. Bookstore shopping is very different than online book shopping. When we shop online, we are typically looking for something specific, either in terms of subject or author. We might, occasionally, click on the automated recommendations of the website, but we go to the site with a fair idea of what we want to buy.

When we shop in a bookstore, however, we allow ourselves the option to browse. We might go in looking for a specific book, but then we stay and look at different genres, explore different interests, and allow ourselves to be swept away by all the possibilities. Instead of leaving with just one book, we are more likely to walk out the door with multiples.

As much as I like bookstores, I will admit that I frequently do shop Amazon. Not only do I shop on Amazon, I sell on Amazon. You can buy all my books, including the one in the pictures above, by clicking this link. One of the great advantages of Amazon is it that they have the ability to sell print-on-demand titles that a bookstore would not be able to stock. Where I would never be able to convince Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million to carry my tomes, Amazon is eager to cooperate.

I love bookstores and can get lost spending hours wandering the stacks. I would not complain at all if Amazon were to actually open several brick-and-mortar stores (though 400 does sound unreasonably aggressive). Bookstores and dreaming are a natural combination and I don’t know any creative person who doesn’t like to dream. We’ll wait and see what happens. Should Amazon open a store near me, though, don’t expect to find me online too often. I’ll be somewhere midst all the shelves, indulging in dreams.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
Dance With Your Own Shadow
February 2, 2016
charles i. letbetter - dance with your own shadow

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

charles i. letbetter - dance with your own shadow

Our challenge today is that we expect too much of others while expecting too little of ourselves

It is still dark as I’m writing this, but already hundreds of reporters and photographers are gathered in Pennsylvania for the weather prognostications of Punxsutawney Phil. The 130-year-old tradition, much like last night’s Iowa caucuses, has little to do with the actual outcome, but the tradition is one we can’t seem to break and, for a day, we are distracted by a myth that something might actually change. In our minds, we know both events are heavy on hype and short on substance. There’s a blizzard moving into the Northern sections of the Midwest, and powerful thunderstorms, some possibly with tornadic activity, will hit the opposite side of that system and move Eastward. Being in Pennsylvania, Phil could actually see his shadow, supposedly indicating six more weeks of winter but that won’t stop the storms from coming. We expect too much from a groundhog.

We are the same way with our politicians. None of last night’s results produced a clear winner. On the very crowded Republican side, no one achieved even a third of the overall vote. As I’m writing, most news outlets are saying the Democrat side is still too close to call, so again, no clear winner, no one standing above all the others. We know the system is broken. We know little, if anything, said on the campaign trail will ever evolve into reality. Yet, we buy into the rhetoric and hyperbole of a presidential campaign just as surely as we do the shadow of a chubby little groundhog.

I firmly believe that the measure of a person is not in the size of their stature nor the poetry of their speech but in the length of the shadow they cast. There is an overabundance of people who stand tall and talk big but whose actions fall quite short at their feet. Interestingly enough, a great number of those people are politicians. Talk is cheap on the campaign trail and it is easy to be boisterous and make promises that are popular with the electorate. What one discovers after being elected, however, is that moving a nation is as complex and slow and difficult as trying to move the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Florida. To pin all our hopes and dreams on one personality is about as foolish as making picnic plans based on the predictions of a Pennsylvania rodent.

Change comes from those who cast a long shadow. To know who casts the longer shadow, pay attention to where they stand in relation to the light. Have you ever noticed what happens to a shadow at high noon? It’s almost non-existent. Those standing directly under the spotlight, those who seem to glow with the radiance of illumination, cast very little shadow and affect very little change. They are too concerned with keeping the light on themselves and do so by saying what pleases the ears of those listening. Those who stand at an angle from the light, those who buck the system, those who claw their way through red tape, those who spend more time doing rather than talking, those are the people who cast the long shadows, those are the people who get results.

To that end, who best to rely upon to create change, to get work done, to clean up the mess and change the system than ourselves. We are not powerless, and we certainly are not brainless (with a few questionable exceptions). There is much one can do through invention, creativity, and more often than not, good ol’ hard work. If the banking system is no longer meeting the needs of the people, let’s create a new system of money management that better addresses contemporary realities. If global corporations truly cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of their customers (and they can’t) then you have the ability to work around them, create a local cooperative if necessary to achieve the same service in a more responsible manner. If you don’t like how a coffee shop brews their coffee, do as I do: buy a french press, buy and grind your own beans, heat your own water to 150°, and make your own coffee (it really is much better this way). Dance with your own shadow.

You are the one who has the power. You have two incredibly strong weapons: your wallet and your vote. Don’t let anyone tell you that your voice doesn’t matter; people who say that are cowards who would rather complain about the system than contribute to its overhaul. You can do great things. So can the person next to you. Working together, we are invincible.

Yes, we need a strong, central government and we need strong people who can cast a long shadow running that government. Make no mistake, though, when it comes to real progress and creating genuine change, the shadow that makes the most difference is your own.

 

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Advertising
Burgers, Barbies, and Vikings, Oh My!
January 29, 2016
charles i. letbetter - burgers, barbies and vikings

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars.—Charles Kuralt

 

charles i. letbetter, burgers, barbies and vikings, oh my

Barbies give children a chance to explore and create a world the way they see it, even if it’s not a world adults like

It’s Friday! Bring on the burgers and the beer! Wait, hold on, we still have to actually attend to business first. Burgers are coming, though.

This has been an interesting week in the world of advertising, but the best of the bunch have, rather surprisingly had little to do with that big ol’ football game coming up a week from Sunday. Well, okay, one of them technically has something to do with the game, given that it is the winner of a contest. Still, what makes that one commercial a winner has nothing to do with the game.

Intuit’s QuickBooks sponsored a national contest among its users and a small upstate New York coffee company, Death Wish, won the contest. Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Death With Coffee is the actual name of the company. The name comes from their claim that it is the world’s strongest coffee. I know, that sounds incredibly strong and bitter, but their website claims that it’s actually smooth, with hints of cherry and chocolate. While that’s not enough to make me want to drop $20 for a one-pound bag, should I ever find myself lost in upstate New York (and being lost is about the only reason I’m likely to be up in Round Lake), I might risk stopping by for a cup.

The commercial is definitely a wonderful prize. The 30-second spot itself, which will appear sometime in the third quarter, is worth $5 million, which is almost as much as Death Wish made the entire year. That’s not even counting the incredible amount of production time and an award-winning team that put it all together. All total, the cash equivalent is something like $12 million, give or take a pound of coffee.

Whether the commercial is worth the cost remains to be seen, of course. Will it double Death Wish’s revenue last year? More importantly, will it convince more small business owners to use QuickBooks? Both are pretty big gambles. The game needs to be close, no more than a touchdown difference, for people to still be watching commercials in the third quarter. If the halftime show sucks, and with Coldplay being the headliner that seems quite likely, a good portion of the audience may be dead before the second half ever kicks off. So, go ahead and take a look at the ad now and you won’t have to risk bad music or a bad football game later.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 36 hours or so, you are likely already well aware that Mattel has introduced a new set of Barbie dolls: tall, curvy, and petite. Allegedly, the move is being made to help boost girls’ self-esteem and address body issues that the traditional dolls created. While some would happily sit and argue all day over whether the new dolls actually achieve that goal or make matters worse, the truth is that children like playing with dolls that look like them and their friends. Children use dolls for a number of different fantasy and real-life scenarios, sometimes playing out things that have happened, other times fantasizing about the way they want things to be. For adults to superimpose too much meaning on their play, though, is probably inappropriate for the majority.

What’s different about the spot Mattel and BBDO dropped this week, though, is the involvement of documentarian Rory Kennedy, daughter of the late Bobby Kennedy. This is Ms. Kennedy’s first ad and the non-commercial, documentary feel she gives the piece may be just the approach needed to take on such a touchy topic. People, especially mothers, take Barbie and other dolls quite seriously and Kennedy’s spot does a good job of addressing some of the most common concerns while still keeping the tone of the commercial light and fun.

I don’t expect the new dolls nor the new commercial do actually do much to quiet Mattel’s critics. Some people are not going to be happy no matter what the toy company does so there really is no sense in pursuing every little complaint that might be made. Still, this is a positive step in a good direction.  Take a look at Ms. Kennedy’s work below:

https://youtu.be/vPETP7-UfuI

One thing the advertising world has enjoyed for a long time is the art of parody. We parody music, we parody pop culture, we parody celebrities, and we even parody ourselves. So, it’s no surprise at all that my favorite commercial from this week is a wonderfully horrible and yet brilliant piece of parody that is partly in bad taste and at the same time had me instantly Googling Schweid & Sons because I’d never heard of them.

The ad steps into somewhat dangerous territory, parodying the very serious P&G #LikeAGirl ads for Always. Women’s empowerment is obviously a critical issue and one that deserves serious attention. Schweid & Sons, which sells the meat for burgers by the way, isn’t challenging women’s issues at all, though, and brilliantly presents the one woman in the commercial as the only sane person in the whole spot. Instead, what gets justifiably lampooned is the snobbery, especially in upper-scale burger establishments, as to what makes a good hamburger. You want mayo on that? There’s no reason to feel oppressed by those who say you can’t. Go ahead, smash that box, eat your burger with a hot dog on it if you want. Burgers should be as individual as you are.

If you can’t watch the ad with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, realizing that we really do take the details of mere burgers far, far too seriously, then you’ve absolutely no business watching this ad. If you enjoy a good parody, though, and can handle the way both men and the dining industry get skewered, then sit back and enjoy. Then, go out and have a couple of burgers, and don’t be ashamed to ask for mayo.

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PotD
#MondayMotivation
January 25, 2016
charles i. letbetter - #MondayMotivation

The older you get, the more fragile you understand life to be. I think that’s good motivation for getting out of bed joyfully each day.—Julia Roberts

 

charles i. letbetter - #MondayMotivation

Does a positive attitude really increase our life span? Does it hurt to try?

Another week is starting and if ever there were a time the hashtag #MondayMotivation was necessary, this would be it. Getting out of bed was rough; there’s rain coming in today and my arthritis has my hands hurting to the point that every letter I type is painful. I can use a little encouragement to get through the next several hours. There’s too much to do to stay in bed.

More than just getting out of bed in a timely manner, though, I’m trying an experiment this morning. It may run a day, or a few hours, or all week. I went to the death clock yesterday for amusement (yeah, I’m that weird) and noticed something interesting. Of all the variants that might make a difference in my longevity, attitude played the biggest role. If I leave all the settings at their default, which is what I’m inclined to do, the death clock has me kicking the bucket at age 73, which is less than 20 years from now. I’m not especially happy with that outcome. However, if I change the “mode” or attitude to “optimistic” the calculator has me living to the ripe old age of 93. Twenty years difference in longevity simply based on attitude. Now there’s some #MondayMotivation for you.

Of course, the calculator is meant for entertainment purposes only and while there’s some lightweight science behind their use of the BMI index, it certainly shouldn’t be taken too terribly seriously. Things happen that we can’t predict. Still, it got me thinking that it probably would make everyone’s life a bit more pleasant if I made more of an effort to be just a touch more optimistic in my attitude, and that certainly applies to how I feel about Mondays. This is rarely my favorite days, and for me, Tuesdays are often worse.

However, none of that replaces the fact that the joints in my fingers are screaming at me this morning. So, rather than type a lot of motivational platitudes at you, I’m going to borrow some from Twitter, which conveniently stores all the #MondayMotivation things in one place. These are totally random, but hopefully they at least give you reason to smile a bit.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
Avoiding Bad Blizzard Sex
January 24, 2016
charles i. letbetter - avoiding bad blizzard sex

My favorite thing of all time is a New York City weekend when there’s a blizzard. Everything gets really quiet, and everyone goes to the movies and the park.—Idina Menzel

 

charles i. letbetter - avoiding bad blizzard sex

Stop and think: do you really want to be handcuffed to that person if the power goes out?

This has been a crazy weekend, has it not? New York is reporting 26.8 inches of snow, officially; the second largest snowfall since 1869. The #JonasBlizzard logged the most snow ever in Baltimore, second heaviest at Dulles International Airport. In keeping with tradition, no one knows exactly how much snow fell in Washington, D.C., because they’re still arguing over how to measure the white stuff. The good news is that at least the snow has stopped falling. The bad news is that now comes the problem of getting rid of the frozen wonderland. Flooding has already started in New Jersey and several other areas. It could still be several days before the majority of roads are passable and people’s lives are back to normal.

Of course, as Idina mentions above, a little snow doesn’t stop New Yorkers. By the time you’re reading this, New York’s travel ban should be lifted and people will be getting out, making their way to Central Park, and trying to make the best of the situation. Aged rock star Steven Tyler even found a CNN live report to bomb, which may actually be one of the most interesting things to happen in the past 24 hours.

One of the biggest challenges now is avoiding bad sex and keeping yourself from participating in the seemingly inevitable spike in births currently scheduled for late September. Sure, I know we told you to make new friends to help keep you warm, but do you really want these people to hang around all summer, smelling things up, putting their stinky feet on your coffee table, and taking over your life in ways you never imagined? No, of course you don’t. The last thing you want is to encourage your blizzard buddies to linger by having sex with them. Even worse, you definitely don’t want to have bad sex with them and chances are high that any sex you would have at this juncture would not be the best ever. Let’s not make this blizzard any more of a disaster than it already is, okay?

Don’t worry, we’ve got your back, metaphorically speaking. Here are some tips you can use to avoid having bad blizzard sex.

  1. Don’t. Just don’t. For the love of warm bagels and cream cheese, show some restraint for once why don’t you? Do you really want to risk going into the fall with a newborn, or a partner that acts like one? Having sex with someone you didn’t know well before the blizzard destroys any chance for you to have a long and meaningful friendship. Two days in the snow is not enough time for you to really get to know each other, no matter how many secrets you spilled after you were three beers into Friday night. Don’t go there. Don’t. Stop it. Don’t even entertain the idea.
  2. Stay ready for further emergencies. Just because the snow has stopped falling doesn’t mean the worst of this blizzard is over. There will be flooding. Power outages may still happen. You might need to evacuate quickly and without warning. Stop and think for a minute: do you really want to be handcuffed to that person if the power goes out? Would you want first responders breaking down your door and finding you struggling to get back into your footed pajamas? No, that isn’t a risk you dare take. You must remain alert and vigilant until your guest(s) leaves.
  3. Keep all your adult toys well hidden. Despite the weel-long warnings that this was going to be a “blizzard for the ages,” no one really prepared for the thing until late Thursday afternoon. You may not have picked up your stray friend until Friday. Nothing says bad sex like someone discovering your box of sexual indulgences and asking, “What are these?” Even worse is the question, “Can you show me how these work?” Now is not the time for you to take up teaching remedial sex education. Should your temporary body heat buddy come across your stash, pretend they were left by a former roommate and then, for added measure, suggest they could be covered with some STI. That should keep you safe.
  4. Use Netflix to determine their sexual maturity. This one might be a bit complicated for some of you, so pay attention. From within Netflix, enter category number 1402, which takes you to Late Night Comedies. Be sure, there is nothing here that is socially redeemable or actually funny. These are disastrous films made for adolescent minds. So, as you’re scrolling through the list, should your would-be partner give any indication that they’ve not only seen but actually enjoyed any of these movies, you definitely don’t want to have sex with them. If you are unsure, start one of the movies. If they giggle at the first sight of bare boobs, you know you’re in trouble. Kick them out into the snow. Now.
  5. Go for a walk in the snow.  This is the real reason you find all those people in Central Park after the city gets socked in. You’ve been cooped up with this person (or these people) since Thursday or Friday. Your decision-making ability is not as strong as it should be. Get out, taking a walk, cool down. The cold air will help you snap to your senses and remind you of all the things that could go wrong if you have sex with this person. Can they even tell the difference between a tube of lube and a tube of toothpaste? What would happen if you had to introduce this person to your mother? Walking in the snow is great for clearing your head, and if you’re lucky maybe the dimwit will get lost in a snowbank and you won’t need to worry any further.

Hopefully, that is enough to engage your creative juices, as opposed to those associated with adult copulation. Obviously, if you are sequestered with someone you already love and cherish, nothing here applies. We still encourage restraint unless you really want a September baby. Maybe you’ll get lucky and your Ob/Gyn will have a half-price sale due to all the volume. One thing for sure, though, is that sex with someone you just brought in from the cold is definitely not going to be good. What happens in your fantasies doesn’t exist in real life.

Perhaps it’s time to warm up another frozen pizza. Good luck.

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PotD
Snow Survival Essentials
January 22, 2016
charles i. letbetter - snow survival

Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.—Bill Watterson

 

charles i. letbetter - snow survival essentials

Winter Masquerade (2012) was a delightful romp in the snow. It can be done.

Those of us sitting here in the heart of the Midwest are feeling rather pleased this morning. Sure, it’s cold, as it always is in January, but this year we’ve gotten off lucky. There is, at most, maybe two-and-a-half inches of snow on the ground with no more in the immediate forecast. By most any comparison, this is proving to be a delightfully mild winter and that makes us very happy.

Our friends along the East coast, from Virginia to Massachusets, are bracing for a blizzard this afternoon that could dump two to three feet worth of snow on them. Boston, of course, home of the everlasting winter, knows how to handle an event like this. After last year’s great snow-in, this storm is practically a cake walk. For our nation’s capitol, though, this snow is an Armageddon. The mayor of Washington D.C. has closed city schools and offices at noon, and is encouraging businesses around the city to do the same. Even underground transit will be closed by Saturday.

Federal offices are closed as well, which is great for all the government employees who actually get things done. Be sure that all the hot air, otherwise known as Congress, has already left the city, which may be one reason so much snow is in the forecast. In a way, though, D.C.’s tragedy is a great advantage for the rest of the country in that, the longer Congress stays away, the longer they can’t do something stupid, like attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act for the 50 gazillionth time. From that perspective, the rest of the country wouldn’t really mind if the city stayed socked in until Spring. Sorry, D.C.

Since we have so very much experience with piles upon piles of snow, I thought this might be a good time to share some of our expertise with those who are about to experience one of nature’s most amazing displays of power. You really have no defense against a storm like this, so it is better to make some last-minute adjustments this morning so you’ll be able to survive until Monday. Not this coming Monday, mind you. We’re thinking the third Monday in April if you’re lucky. Here is our list of essentials.

  1. Rush to the store and buy everything. It doesn’t really matter how much food you already have, you must go buy more. Buy anything edible, just in case it doesn’t stop snowing and this is the beginning of the next ice age and you’ll never see your friends and family unthawed again. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t have enough room in your refrigerator. When it’s this cold, you can store foods right outside your window. Most likely, there’s not much left on the stores now but bad beer and brussel sprouts, but that can keep you alive.
  2. Make new friends and invite them over. This is a perfect time to make lots and lots of new friends. Hang out at the coffee shop (which will be the last place to close) and buy coffee for any prospective new partners. Now’s not the time to stand on morality, though, and it certainly isn’t a good time to be embracing monogamy. The more the marrier, and warmer! You never know but what you might need to help re-populate the city. This also gives you more options should you run out of food.
  3. “Borrow” the Netflix passcodes from four or five additional people. You don’t want to run out of entertainment during the storm, but neither does anyone else, and, sadly, Netflix has limits as to the numbe of devices that can be signed on to a single account simultaneously. Everyone is going to be watching Netflix, which means the passcodes belonging to the most popular people are likely to be ineffective. Stock up. Get the passcode from that little old lady three doors down who has all the cats. Hit up the wino on the second floor. Check around on dating sites. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
  4. Refill all your medications. This can be a little tricky if you’re on something that is highly regulated, but the last thing you, or any of us, want is for you to get stuck three days in without your crazy pills. This is a severe danger, because people on anti-depressants are often to depressed to remember their refills, and people on anti-anxiety meds are too jacked up to go by the pharmacy. There are also those regulartions about the number of pills you can have at one time. Lie. Go to multiple pharmacies. Do whatever it takes to make sure you have enough meds to get you through until Spring. Just don’t take them all at once.
  5. Assemble all the candles you can find. I’m not sure there are any Wicks ‘N’ Sticks locations still open (their website is completely gone), but if nothing else this would be a very good time to raid the Dollar Tree. It doesn’t matter if the candles have pictures of the Virgin Mary or Donkey from Shrek, you need all the candles you can find. Power outages are inevitable during a storm like this, and flashlights just don’t cut it because you can’t heat up a can of Dinty Moore over a fucking flashlight. You need candles. Be sure to save the wax as it melts, too, because it’s reusable once your other candles are gone. You can use shoestrings as wicks because you aren’t going anywhere.
  6. Leave instructions for your next of kin. Sadly, not everyone is going to survive this storm. As the days linger on and you grow hungry and delerious, you may post things on social media that would tarnish your sterling reputation. Make sure your next of kin knows your username and password for all your social media accounts so they can delete that shit upon your demise. You want people to remember the good, happy side of you, not the starving, raging, homicidal maniac you are about to become.

That’s about the best advice we have to offer. Those survival steps have kept folks in the Midwest going for almost 200 years now. We wish everyone about to be affected by today’s storm good health and long periods of sanity. For those who don’t make it, we promise to miss you and think of you every time we’re stranded and shivering in the cold. Be careful, stay safe, and, should you survive, keep in touch.

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Current Issues  /  PotD
Water You Thinking?
January 21, 2016
charles i. letbetter - water you thinking

When a country wants television more than they want clean water, they’ve lost their grip.—Lewis Black

charles i. letbetter - water you thinking

The United States has grown too accustomed to a constant source of clean drinking water that is no longer sustainable

Ah, coffee. While I can imagine a morning without it, such a tragedy does occasionally happen, I don’t want to even think about such a horrible state. That hot water and a crushed bean could bring so much life and happiness to people is simply amazing. While I’ll admit to being a coffee fanatic, I’m by no means as obsessive about it as some I’ve seen. I like mine black, moderately strong, but not to the point that the acidity upsets my stomach. No sugar. No cream. No foam. Just pure, simple coffee. Those of you who get all upset about half-this, whipped-that are just crazy.

Now, imagine a world without coffee. As horrible a condition as that sounds, it could happen, and it may happen much sooner than anyone would like. Even without any external events involved, the sheer number of people on the planet, well over seven billion now, is beyond the level of sustainability. We’re going to run out of clean water. We’re going to run out of coffee.

The country has been relatively transfixed on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan this past week. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has, justifiably, been on the hot seat and universal condemnation of the city’s poisoned water supply has been laid on his doorstep. And while there is plenty of blame to be spread not only among the Governor’s office but other agencies as well, finding a solution to the problem is much more challenging than first thought. People of Flint are having to deal with the reality of not having a ready supply of clean drinking water, and that reality is quite frightening.

As much as I am sympathetic toward the plight of those stuck living in Flint, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the crisis there might, possibly, be a good thing for the rest of the country. Why? Because the whole reason this issue has gotten national attention is that every city in the country is just as vulnerable as Flint was. What happened there could happen here and the odds of such tragedy are increasing on a daily basis. The situation is not new. We’ve been on the precipice of disaster for several years. The tragedy in Flint, though, has awakened our senses to the issue of clean water like nothing else could.

We’ve had water disasters before. Just this past year, an oil spill into the Yellowstone River threatened drinking water. We, as a nation, yawned. The Environmental Protection Agency, the very people who are supposed to help us keep water clean, took responsibility for a giant waste water dump at Gold King Mine, near Silverton, Colorado. An oil spill along the coastline at Santa Barbara, California affected cities and beaches and even roadways all along the coast. Manure spills put the Green Bay water supply at risk. An ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to pollute waters there will little being done to remedy the problem. All of those things happened, received attention from the press, and the US population, as a whole ignored them.

Those are just the most recent tragedies in an ongoing global crisis that is just now beginning to impact our privileged society. We’ve known about the water crisis in sub-Saharan Africa for decades, but because it’s not right here in our back door we’ve turned a blind eye to the millions of people who lack proper sanitation and clean drinking water. Some might occasionally cut a check to NGOs such as The Water Project, but once the check is in the mail we don’t give the matter a second thought. We think we’ve done our part. We don’t realize the extent to which it is our own overuse, our own over-industrialization, our own lack of careful water use that has contributed to the larger global crisis.

Just how bad is the situation? Consider these facts:

  • 663 million people – 1 in 10 – lack access to safe water
  • 2.4 billion people – 1 in 3 – lack access to a toilet
  • A review of rural water system sustainability in eight countries in Africa, South Asia, and Central America found an average water project failure rate of 20 – 40 percent
  • Globally, 1/3 of all schools lack access to safe water and adequate sanitation
  • In low and middle-income countries, 1/3 of all healthcare facilities lack a safe water source

We haven’t given much thought to the water crisis until now because it has always been “somewhere else.” We’ve been more than content with letting other countries deal with their own problems. The crisis is coming home to roost, though.  Last April, California Governor Jerry Brown placed restrictions on water consumption across the entire state. Many complained that the restrictions were too severe, but as the state faces a continuing drought conservationists are concerned that current restrictions may not be enough.

Here’s the thing: our very lifestyles contribute to the severity of the water shortage. Americans waste more clean water every time we flush a toilet than many people see in a month. Our national lack of industrial oversight pollutes our water supply on an ongoing basis and we get extremely upset with any effort to curb such industrial use. States such as Indiana have even fought back against restrictions in the Clean Water Act because “they would prove too expensive to implement.”

Maybe, just maybe, the water crisis in Flint is a good thing. Maybe seeing people there struggle will be the wake-up call we need to realize that our current water habits are killing our water supply.

Imagine life without coffee. If we don’t push for dramatic change, and quickly, that is exactly what is going to happen. Flint is just the beginning.

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Art  /  PotD
A Clean Start To The Day
January 20, 2016
charles i. letbetter - a clean start to the day

I love the big fresh starts, the clean slates like birthdays and new years, but I also really like the idea that we can get up every morning and start over.—Kristin Armstrong

 

charles i. letbetter - a clean start to the day

Just as we might start the day with a clean body, our minds and our agendas could use a good scrubbing as well

I like a nice, hot shower first thing in the morning. There is something wonderful about having a few minutes while the coffee is brewing to wash away all the cobwebs, clear my head from whatever nonsense was left by bad dreams, think through the day’s schedule, and set a proper attitude for getting things done. Unfortunately, that’s not typically the way my day starts.

Most mornings, I stumble into the living room in the dark, trying not to wake anyone else while simultaneously doing my best to not step on one of the three cats at my feet. I look at any headlines from overnight, check email and web stats, then start coffee. Coffee takes 20 minutes, but since we do french press it’s not something you can just leave and come back when it’s done. You have to watch the water to make sure it doesn’t boil; 140 degrees is perfect. The beans have to be ground. The press has to be emptied and cleaned. Cups have to be prepared. Twenty minutes later, I can sit down and start working.

Kat will have joined me by this point, which is lovely. She’s not a morning person, but the Marine Corp conditioned her well. She sits with her coffee, looking through Facebook and other correspondence. She shares when she thinks it appropriate, but is careful to not disturb when I’m writing, or especially when I’m not writing because the words just aren’t coming.

We won’t have been up long before one of the children will poke a head out. “Mommy, can I get dressed?” I’m waiting. One of these days I’m sure Kat is going to slip and say, “No! No clothes for you! We’re sending you to school naked.” I’m going to laugh when that happens because the children are still young enough to believe the majority of what Mom tells them. That interaction is my cue to hurry and get to a stopping place because once there are children in the room there’s no peace and quiet until they’re on the bus.

With all that commotion and routine, I rarely get my shower until after Kat leaves. I still enjoy the shower no matter when I get it, but the day doesn’t feel as clean as it does when the shower comes first. Sure, that’s totally a mental wall, but there’s no getting past it. If I want the day to really start clean, I have to put a shower at the very front.

Starting the day clean with a physical shower is one thing, but we have a need to start clean in other ways as well. With all the information overload we get, our minds and our thought patterns too quickly become cluttered with details and news and trivia we just don’t need. Sure, all those cat memes are cute, but they can get in our way. The more clutter, the more time we waste, the less productive we are, and ultimately, the less fulfilled and satisfied we feel.

How one choses to clean their mind of leftover clutter is a highly personal thing. Yoga and meditation is a preference for several friends. Friends more aligned with traditional religions spend time praying. I even know some people who rely on morning sex to get their mind clean and ready for the day.

For me, it’s music. Exactly what changes from day to day. Mozart happens frequently, but then so does my blues playlist. If everything has me a bit down, then old-school gospel does the trick. If I’m pissed at the world, classic rock at full volume is just the cleansing tonic I need. There’s been a lot of classic rock lately.

Everyone’s pattern, routine, and methodology is going to be unique. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for getting your day scrubbed and clean. I know plenty of people for whom clean is a literal thing and everything around them must be spotless. I’m not one of those people. I like my clutter organized, mind you, and I get anxious if the stacks start getting too tall. Still others can step over mounds of trash in the floor and not be bothered. I don’t understand either extreme, but I don’t need to understand anything beyond what works for me.

What’s important is recognizing that starting our day clean isn’t just a soap and water thing. Our minds and our spirits must be just as refreshed and rejuvinated as our bodies. If we overlook this simple matter, we eventually become overshelmed, depressed, and disturbed. We become ineffective, destructive, and unproductive. I firmly believe that much of our attitude toward other people come from the amount of garbage we hold from day to day. The nonsense and the clutter alters our perspective of people and situations, leading us down paths of thought we might not touch if we were thinking with clearer heads.

So, take some time, my dear friends, and clean up. Maybe take a shower. Go for a run. Have a quiet cup of coffee. Whatever works for you, do it now. Don’t let the day continue with yesterday’s grime. You deserve better. Start the day clean and enjoy it.

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PotD
#MakeMeThinkIn5Words
January 16, 2016
charles i. letbetter = #MakeMeThinkIn5Words

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.—George S. Patton

charles i. letbetter - #MakeMeThinkgIn5Words

Ah, the weekend! You made it and, quite fortunately, you’re still alive! This has been a very emotional week with the deaths of so many prominent people and we’ve all expended an abundance of energy mourning, fussing, remembering, arguing, and various other activities that, in the end, contributed to little more than the grayness of our hair. If all of 2016 is going to be this stressful, we’d just as soon go back to the previous year, please.

After such a difficult week, we thought it was time to have a little Twitter fun again this week. This time, the hashtag we’re playing with is #MakeMeThinkIn5Words, which, interestingly enough, involves six words, not five. The whole premise is to ask mind-challenging questions using only five words. This is interesting because, while the game fits well within Twitter’s 140 character limit, it comes at a time when the executives running the social media app are questioning expanding the limit to 10,000 words. Whatever would we do with all that space? There are advantages in being forced to be succinct.

Nonetheless, five words are our limit. We’ve seen some good ones already, such as, “What if Darth Vader sneezes?” and “What’s another word for thesaurus?” Even our friends at NPR got in on the game with tweets such as this:

Obviously, we’re going to have to put our thinking caps on for this one! So, let’s see what we can do:

(Sorry, couldn’t resist getting that one in early)

 

An old platitude involves the line, “you can win the battle and lose the war.” Maybe winning isn’t always everything. That is a very difficult concept to grasp when we live in such an aggressive that champions winning at all costs. Still, if you’ll give it a moment’s thought, I’m sure you can come up with a scenario in which winning on one level results in losing on another. For example, breaking the record for running the mile, but dying as you cross the finish line. 

 

No one really wants to die, and medical science is doing a lot to prolong our lives. But if we never died, would that not remove the need to procreate? Would we have to make sex illegal in order to survive? I can imagine life getting quite uncomfortable if we begin living too long.

 

I do my most serious thinking and research sitting right here in front of this computer. The more thinking I do, the more sedentary I am. The more sedentary I am, the more likely I am to snack on junk food. Knowing that there is a cherry turnover in the kitchen right now isn’t helping. I tend to consume more coffee and scotch when I’m thinking as well, which leads me to the possible consideration that thinking, ultimately, could kill me.

 

Frequent visitors know how I feel about the benefits to posing nude.However, we’ve not written about it yet this year, and we’re getting a lot of new visitors. Maybe we should write about it again. I need a different hook, though, don’t you think? We will need to revisit this question soon.

 

You know the concept already: If a man says something and no woman is around to hear it, is he still wrong? Or, more commonly, If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? Whether there can be reality without perception has been an arguable point for centuries. One can take sides, but the truth of the matter is that anything that might answer the question would amount to perception in some form, therefore the question is unanswerable. Bloody frustrating.

 

Another philosophy question because I’ve not seen them asked and they’re so much fun. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716) proposed that, “We live in the best of all possible worlds.” He based that statement on the concept that, prior to making the world, God must have considered every possible iteration, including one without hate and malice and other forms of evil, and decided that we were better off with them. A world void of evil, he thought, would rob man of free will. However, given that modern science no longer binds us to a mythological view of creation, does Leibniz’s concept still apply? Could the universe have done a better job of evolving?

 

Seriously, chocolate may honestly be the best food ever! Whether eating it by itself, or using it as a layer with other foods, it is difficult to imagine any situation that cannot be enhanced by chocolate. Even when it’s messy, it’s still good. What other food can come close to possibly comparing to the pleasure and satisfaction that chocolate brings? There are many great foods in the world, but none are going to beat chocolate.

I’m going to stop there because I think you fully understand how the game works now and should be able to carry on without my assistance. Be sure to follow me on Twitter (@charlesletbetter) and I’ll follow you back. Have a wonderful, thought-filled Saturday!

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Current Issues  /  PotD
Lottery Lost, What’s Next?
January 14, 2016
charles i. letbetter - lottery lost

I have never played the lottery in my life and never will. Voltaire described lotteries as a tax on stupidity. More specifically, I think, on innumeracy.—Daniel Tammet

 

charles i. letbetter - lottery lost

If you really need to get your blood pumping, there’s nothing like a romp in the snow in your underwear

So, you lost the lottery. Again. Please excuse me if I don’t feel too terribly sorry for you. My opinion of lotteries is right down there with wet shoes and jeans that don’t fit right. Sure, the concept of $1.4 billion is alluring, but no one is going to get that. There were no fewer than three winning Powerball tickets sold. The amount will be divided, half will be taken in taxes, and what’s left will be less than what one might make from investing wisely. What bothers me is that I’m sure there was more than one person who spent their last two dollars on a damn lottery ticket instead of food, and are now both hungry and broke.

The country has been so obsessed with the lottery over the past week or so that its passing leaves a bit of a void in the realm of mindless office conversation. With dreams of telling the boss to fuck off having gone out the window (for now), whatever shall we do? Wherever shall we go? Oh, the hopelessness of humanity! (Please tell me you’re picking up on the sarcasm there.)

I’m not inclined to leave everyone stranded this morning, though perhaps some of you deserve such. So, here’s a list of options for you, carefully crafted over the day’s first cup of coffee, of things you can do today despite not having won the lottery.

  1. Go play in the snow. Make it more exciting by doing it in your underwear. Really brave and daring? Do it naked. Just, uhm, pick me up before you do that last one. We need pictures or it didn’t happen.
  2. Drop by your favorite coffee shop, order coffee, drink it there. Too often we’re in such a hurry that we don’t take the time to enjoy the little things around us. Relax. Sit. Drink your coffee. Maybe even strike up a conversation with a new friend.
  3. Get your hair done. Hair deserves to be pampered when it’s this cold. If you don’t have hair, maybe get a scalp massage.
  4. Have lunch with someone who loves you. Maybe your mother, or a sibling, or a spouse. Call them up, meet them for lunch, enjoy the company.
  5. Adopt a pet. Winter is an especially rough time for strays. Two of our favorite kitties are ones we brought in out of the cold last winter. They’ve now acclimated and become the best lap cats ever. Many shelters are full. Gain a friend and save a life by adopting a new pet.
  6. Try a new cuisine or, at least. a new restaurant. Kat and I are fortunate to have both been around the world and privileged to try many different foods. Still, there are plenty of restaurants around we haven’t tried and each one offers the chance for a new culinary and perhaps cultural adventure.
  7. Have sex in the middle of the day. I’ll leave the details to your own imagination.
  8. Discover a new local artist. There are artists everywhere, even in smaller communities. Look around, ask your local arts organization. Meet someone creative and maybe even buy something. They’ll appreciate your time and patronage.
  9. Read a book; it doesn’t even have to be a new one. I can think of no better way to spend a moment’s down time than to pick up a book and read a few pages. Your brain really could use the exercise.
  10. Have your picture taken! Okay, so not every photographer you know is going to be available on such short notice, but I know I have openings today and I’m guessing a number of my colleagues do as well. As with our first suggestion, you can always make it more exciting by doing it naked. In the snow. Contact us.

See, you have options! Okay, so they don’t involve quitting your job and buying an island in the Caribbean. You really don’t want all that hassle anyway. Relax. Enjoy the life you have instead of wasting time wishing for you one you don’t. You don’t need to win the lottery to have an amazing and rich life.

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PotD
California Dreamin’ Once Again
January 6, 2016
charles i. letbetter - california dreamin

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.—Edward Abbey

charles i. letbetter - california dreaming

I have been away from California too long and need to go back. How do I know this? We have a wind chill of 16 degrees this morning and I’m not in the mood to put on pants. There’s only one reasonable solution to that problem: California. Southern California, to be exact. I have a fondness for the Santa Monica area, which is where today’s picture was taken.

California is a wonderful example of how we adapt to our environment. Notice the gentleman seated on the bench here. He’s wearing a sweatshirt. A few minutes later, a woman passed wearing a heavy coat, walking her tiny little mop of a dog that was wearing a sweater. It was 72 degrees that morning. Everyone was looking oddly at me because I was in my short shirt sleeves and enjoying what was, for me, considerable warmth. By the time my trip there had ended, though, my own body had begun to adapt. I was wearing long sleeves and not bothering to roll them up as I had when I arrived. If I had stayed another week, I might have been reaching for a jacket as well.

The human body is amazing in how it adapts to whatever climate surrounds it. When I went out to fetch the little ones off the school bus yesterday afternoon, the temperature had risen just to the freezing mark with a windchill of 25. After the cold of the morning, the afternoon warm up didn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable as it might have had we arrived at that temperature coming down from, say, a more moderate 45.

Our response to temperature is relative which is what allows us to tolerate living in places such as Indiana or Michigan or Minnesota. Once we become accustomed to the idea that the temperature at which water freezes really isn’t all that cold, we are better able to tolerate the seemingly endless winters we encounter. There are people across the Midwest who actually miss snow when we don’t have it. There are times when I’m one of those people.

California gets snow, too. The uniqueness of the variations in altitude there allow one to go from the desert warmth of Palm Springs, which is a lovely little city this time of year, to a mountain ski resort within less than a two-hour drive. One might think that such quick transitions from warm to cold might make one ill, but that hardly seems to be the case. Our bodies are amazingly flexible when called upon to do so.

Yet, no amount of adaptation allows me to actually enjoy mornings like this. Perhaps the fact that it is morning has something to do with the problem. I have less of an issue with the cold around noon. By evening, I hardly notice the frigidity.

Then, there’s that whole time change thing. Time is, of course, an artificial measure of human construct, but it still affects when we do things like sleeping and such. There is a three-hour difference between Indiana and California. I’m accustomed, and my body is well adapted, to getting up around 4:00 AM each morning and having coffee. Do the math. That means when I’m visiting California, I’m looking for a coffee shop that is open at 1:00 AM. I’m sure there’s one somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area, but none within walking distance of my breach-front hotel. When I ask the front desk clerk, he looks at me as though I’m crazy. I have to wait until 6:00 Pacific Time before the nearest coffee shop is open.

Okay, so there is a down side to being in California. Adapting to the time change is not as easy as adapting to the weather. Then, just about the time one has made the transition, it’s time to come home, which throws the body off its schedule once again. Maybe, just maybe, our bodies aren’t as good at this whole traveling thing as we might like to think. Sure, we’re adaptive, but the constant switching back and forth between time zones and climates becomes wearisome. There is a reason our primitive ancestors staked out one place and called it home.

Still, when I put on my coat and scarf in a few minutes (and pants), it will be California of which I’m thinking. I really need to visit out there again, soon.

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Advertising
Ad Trends for 2016
January 5, 2016
charles i. letbetter - ad trends for 2016

It is in revolutionary periods that the culmination of previous trends and the beginning of new ones appear.—C. L. R. James

charles i. letbetter - ad trends

Minor Rebellion. Model: Kat Gulling. Makeup: Danelle French. Hair: Kelly Walsh. Styling: Jantina Anderson

Advertising is all about trends, when to follow and when to start new ones. Get it right and your client loves you. Miss the boat and millions of dollars go down a worthless hole. There is no sure thing. Trends have to be played just right or they can make a brand appear insincere. Declaring trends is easy, but knowing which ones to follow is extremely trepidatious.

We’re here to help. Looking at numerous sources, including Sparks & Honey’s A to Z Culture Glossary and AdWeek’s exhaustive trove of trend research, we’ve compiled what I think are going to be the most important trends for advertisers in 2016. Whether or not we’re correct is, as always, arguable, but these are almost certainly worth considering more than once.

Strong, Powerful, Independent Women

The only way I would put a woman in a kitchen this year is if she happens to be running her own cooking network. Actually, Food Network president Brooke Johnson claims she’s not a good cook, so yeah, totally can that idea. There’s no more “little woman” waiting at the door to greet … anyone. The marketable influence of women has grown exponentially and those who ignore such are risking doom and despair. Yes, they can still be sexy (see Ronda Rousey’s ad for Carl’s Jr.). Yes, they can still be vulnerable while showing tremendous courage (see Ram Truck’s “courage is already inside” ad). What they are not is weak, dependent, desperate, or needy on any level. This includes young girls, by the way, who can play with light sabers just as well as any little boy.

What this trend means for a lot of companies who have yet to catch on, or think they’re somehow immune from the trend, is re-thinking their approach toward women, especially if women are their primary market. There is no tolerance for any level of condescension, even in jest. Women with small children need to be shown as competent and caring in the face of exhaustion. Girls should be shown as not merely cute or sexy but equally as intelligent, witty, and humorous. Oh, and they play video games with a blood-thirty vengeance that is frightening. This is one trend that is only going to grow stronger. Ignore it at your own peril.

Rethink The Concept of Gender

LGBT rights scored some tremendous victories in 2015 but if you think merely placing a same-gender couple somewhere in the back of an ad has you covered, think again. Watch the 16-24-year-old demographic very closely on this one. If you’re not already familiar with the term gender fluid, you might want to ask your intern. Older teens and young adults are leading a rapidly growing trend wherein claiming a specific gender identity just doesn’t work for them. They’re not merely gender neutral, mind you. They are gender fluid, a term and a lifestyle that is just beginning to make its way into mainstream consciousness, even though the practice has been around for centuries. As we build upon the successes of the past year, gender fluidity is the next step toward total acceptance.

We saw the ire Target drew when they removed gender classification from toys in 2015. When moving forward in matters like this, one has to expect backlash and possibly even consider building in an appropriate response as part of the campaign. The issue goes beyond toys, though, and forward-thinking advertisers will find ways to include transgendered and gender fluid people into normal office and social settings without trivializing or being condescending toward anyone. As more young people grow comfortable expressing themselves in this fashion, expect older adults to do so as well, making public lifestyles they’ve kept hidden their entire lives. Smart advertisers will position their brands to stand for inclusion and acceptance in increasingly meaningful ways.

Finding Moral High Ground

A touching, heartfelt ad makes everyone feel good about themselves and the brand. Transference is what psychologist call it; because the ad shows people representing a product or brand doing something good, consumers feel they are also participating in the good thing, whatever it is, by buying that product. This is far from being a new concept, but what we saw especially in the last quarter of 2015 was a rather surprising uptick in just how responsive people were to ads and products that have some participation in the greater good, whether that might be environmental, economic, or health-related. So, a company that addresses iron deficiency in Cambodia sees sales increase in the US and EU. Car maker Volvo records an increase in dealership visits after announcing a spray that keeps pedestrians safe at night.

Let’s be real honest here, finding a moral high ground that someone isn’t already attempting to stake as their own is going to be challenging. What’s more, once one claims such space the company is obligated to make a commitment to that cause beyond the life cycle of the current campaign. This is not a cheap trend to embrace and doing so for the wrong reasons are almost certainly going to backfire. However, as the world grows smaller and awareness of interactions and their consequences becomes more common, people care more about what is going on in places other than their backyard and truly want to help. Find a way to help your target audience help someone else and your brand becomes a champion.

Not Being Perpetually Online is Death

Connectivity issues are going to be huge this year and for all the talk about needing to unplug the reality is that not only are we afraid to be disconnected from the Internet, in some cases being disconnected can be life threatening. This gives advertisers and marketers a giant opening that we’re just now beginning to study and understand. Even more, the biggest opportunity may be for small- to mid-sized companies in markets that have yet to leverage the digital potential in any significant way. Going beyond merely having a website, which is still a big deal for small, entrepreneur-driven business, interacting with customers via third party apps such as Instagram and Periscope represents the new way of communicating directly with a brand’s consumers.

Fashion is already learning that what happens on Instagram impacts the retail market. What happens next is seeing that same interaction in other business models, especially those that historically have not been able to facilitate high levels of customer contact. Think how such interactivity might affect business-to-business models or allow a reluctant tourist to see what actually happens on a cruise before booking their trip. What might be the benefits of a restaurant that allows patrons to live-stream their meal being prepared? People are afraid to put down their mobile devices and that means advertisers have to find creative ways of making sure that is where they interact with customers.

Even Higher Tech

From virtual reality hoods to a Japanese noodle company that provides a digital “companion” for those eating alone to customized fragrance experiences to live-streamed medical assistance, if you’re working with last year’s technology, you’re already behind. With the rapid development and deployment of new tech reaching something close to the speed of light, advertisers can no longer wait two or three years, or even months, for a new technology to prove itself. Yes, this means assuming some higher level of risks as not all new tech is going to survive. However, that is a risk well worth taking as falling behind the tech curve increasingly becomes a death sentence, especially for retail-centric products and businesses.

Think you’re already pretty tech savvy? If you’re not familiar with twitch.tv, typographic neuroscience, ultrasonic sciences, 4D smart paper, or brain-computer imaging (BCI), you have some heavy catching up to do. One of the most important trends for advertising this year is going to be the ability to recognize break-out technologies and being among the first to use them in marketing and advertising situations. For many agencies, especially in smaller markets or those with boutique clients, this likely means making technological innovation a team-wide responsibility. Those with sufficient budgets already have personnel whose sole function is to reach out to new tech companies and find ways to apply science and innovation to the ad experience. Failure to follow this trend may well mean some smaller shops close their doors by year’s end.

Of course, there’s more

I could go on for several more pages, I’m afraid. There are a lot of more niche-oriented trends, such as senior tech for an aging but still mobile (and well-financed) population, family outsourcing, and a lot of really amazing medical innovations. What we do with our leisure time is changing as well and that impacts how consumers respond to certain methods of advertising.

What matters most is that we not rely as much on our past experience and use these trends and innovations to spark our creativity, finding new and exciting, perhaps longer-lasting ways to reach consumers and clients. 2016 belongs to the ambitious. Get up and get moving.

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PotD
Back To Work We Go
January 4, 2016
charles i. letbetter - back to work we go

I put my heart and my soul into my work and have lost my mind in the process.—Vincent Van Gogh

 

charles i. letbetter - back to work

Work. Ugh. Welcome to the first Monday of 2016, the day we bid a fond farewell to some of our readers who joined us over the break but must now leave us in favor of gainful employment that frowns upon them spending time with pleasures such as this. It’s a whopping 27 degrees in Indianapolis as I write this and scattered snow showers across the city are threatening to make a mess of everyone’s first commute of the year. We’re getting off to such a great start, aren’t we?

Coffee. Thankfully, we’ve acquired a fair amount of that deliciously roasted bean over the past month. I’m not sure exactly how that happened, but I’m not complaining and it’s coming in especially handy this morning. Kat and I both crashed early last night, but the down side of that is we were up earlier than usual. Work without coffee would be inhumane, in my opinion. I’m fortunate to have never been in a situation where I couldn’t have a cup nearby. I know not everyone can, though, and for those people I truly feel sorry.

I also feel sorry for school teachers who are returning to the classroom this morning. I remember the trepidation Mother always felt when returning after the holiday break. Teachers don’t really get time off. When they’re not at school, they’re doing other adult things such as entertaining family which requires cleaning house and catching up on the piles of laundry that have been ignored all semester. The holidays were never that much of a mental break and today teachers get to welcome back all those darling little demons who have been running around wild the past two weeks. Teachers should get hazardous duty pay the first three days of this week. Be sure they’ll earn it.

Getting back to work after such a long period is never easy. Even if one was technically at work through the whole month of December, the atmosphere following Thanksgiving is different than the other eleven months. Despite the stress of working to complete year-end goals, there is still a sense of frivolity and an absence of the serious tones that dominate the rest of the year. At least, for most people that is the case. For those whose companies completely shuttered on December 31, you have our sympathies.

Here, too, we’re getting back to our normal schedule with some new additions. In case you’ve not already noticed, we’re doing more than just a single post each day. We’re keeping a very close eye on events in fashion, advertising, and music. We’ve only done one extra article per day over the weekend, and for weekends and holidays that will be the new norm. During the week, though, we’ll add articles as we feel appropriate. Fashion is barreling toward February’s Ready-To-Wear runway season, advertising’s eyes are on the Super Bowl ads, and there’s a long list of artists ready to release new albums in the first quarter. We’re watching it all and will comment where we feel we have something valuable to add to the conversation.

So, back to work we go. Bundle up, buckle in, and enjoy the ride!

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PotD
Future Thoughts
November 21, 2015
charles i. letbetter - future thoughts

And yet, I suppose you mourn the loss or the death of what you thought your life was, even if you find your life is better after. You mourn the future that you thought you’d planned.—Lynn Redgrave

charles i. letbetter - future thoughts

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Planning for the future is one of those things we are instructed to do from the moment we first begin primary school. Kindergarten prepares us for first grade., then we’re prepped for Middle School which, n turn, prepares us for High School, and at some point, somewhere, we’re supposed to graduate from something being fully prepared for the future, but we never truly are. There are always surprises. Our best plans are laid to waste when the future doesn’t happen exactly the way we anticipate.

We have ten days left in November. Of those, at least two are taken up with Thanksgiving events and, for us, celebrating a seven-year-old’s birthday. Some of you will spend time traveling back and forth, and the more dim-witted among us will waste time standing in line to spend money they don’t really have on things they don’t really need. When all is said and done, there might be four days of half-way decent productivity before December hits. That’s not a lot of time to plan.

Once December hits, this blog shuts down for the rest of the calendar year. Next week we try cramming in all the stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere. I’ll post something snarky on the first just because it’s my 55th birthday and I can’t let that pass without flinging something silly into the cybersphere. Beyond that, though, the rest of this year is given to planning for the next: what we will post, what we won’t, what we’ll change, what we’ll completely eliminate, and whether there’s anything new worth tossing into the mix. There are a lot of things to consider. We’ve already been doing research, looking at the year’s stats, and formulating ideas.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Today’s picture is exactly what one would see if they were looking over my shoulder while I’m in research and planning mode, attempting to divine the future. We play with pictures and try new editing techniques. We do a lot of reading. We check trends. Yet, for all that activity, I almost always end up sitting here, pipe in hand, headphones on my head, and when appropriate a shot of scotch within easy reach, wondering if I’m wasting my time.

What makes planning for the future so difficult and uncertain is that we do so expecting certain things to stay the same. We expect the same people to remain in our lives, fulfilling the same roles, behaving in a predictable fashion. We know some things, such as technology, will change, but we expect the base elements of our lives to stay put and when they are suddenly and unexpectedly altered, everything we had planned for the future suddenly goes out the window. There have been too many years where I counted upon a level of stability that just didn’t happen; the future wasn’t remotely predictable.

December planning may be a sure sign of mental instability on my part, but at this stage of my life it’s as much habit as anything, and I really can use the break from trying to find 600 or so words at 4:00 every morning. Looking into the next year, I know PFC Letbetter will be stationed in Japan, a handful of people are getting married, politicians and terrorists will both be disruptive, and mobile devices will complete their takeover of the internet. Beyond that, though, anything is a guess and if you want to see how it all turns out, you’ll just have to keep watching.[/one_half_last]

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Music  /  PotD
They Call It Stormy Monday
October 12, 2015
charles i. letbetter - call it stormy monday

charles i. letbetter - Call It Stormy Monday

Solitude (2012).

I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.—Groucho Marx

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I know, Monday. Erg. No one likes Monday because it means going back to work. And there’s the rub, how much of our lives do we spend hating one-seventh of our week? Any way you come at this, you end up with the blues. Monday means an end to the fun, an end to the play, an end to family time, an end to leisure. Who wants to give that up? Well, unless, of course, you’re an NFL player or something related where you work on Sunday. I suppose the Peyton Mannings of the world look forward to Monday as a chance to recuperate from Sunday. That would be another reason we’re jealous of the rich bastards, and another reason to have the blues.

Preachers typically like Monday, too. I know Poppa did. Mondays were his quiet day, or at least he tried to keep them as quiet as possible. He put everything he had into those two services on Sunday. Monday was for him. He’d get us kids and Mom off the school and then hit the coffee shop, or donut shop depending on where we were living. He’d sometimes hang out with other preachers, maybe go to lunch, and then take a nap before we all came busting through the door as noisily as possible, absolutely destroying his solitude. There are probably a lot of people who look at Monday as a relief, but doesn’t mean they don’t still sing the blues.[/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Actually, you realize we have unions, industrialization, and that whole 40-hour-work-week thing to blame for our attitude about Monday. Prior to that whole 40-hour thing, Monday was just another day. Sure, folks would take a pause on Sunday for church and such, but there wasn’t any difference between Monday and any other day of the week. There wasn’t such a thing as the weekend. There was no Friday night football. No Saturday afternoon football. No Sunday night football. Good god, how in the world did those poor people survive without football? No wonder they had short life spans.

Music gives Monday a bad rap, too. Rainy days and Mondays alls ways get me down, you know. Manic Monday. Blue Monday. Monday Monday. Blues great T-Bone Walker sings about Stormy Monday below the break. The thing about Monday music, though, is it actually seems to help one feel a little better about getting the day started, or surviving the whole thing. That’s what the blues does for you, gets out those negative emotions so you can feel better about yourself and get on with your week.

Although, Tuesday’s just as bad.[/one_half_last]

 

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