#074 In which our hero tells it like it is.

I didn't write the below, and I've never seen it attributed to a specific author. But, if you work in advertising or marketing, you've probably seen it before. I came across it again today, and it makes me laugh every time.

What a client says, and what a client means

1. We want a slogan like "Just Do It"
   Translation: We want to be the Nike of plumbing accessories.
   
   
2. "We don't want your creativity to be constrained by a budget."
   Translation: We are bankrupt.
   
   
3. "I personally think the ad is brilliant, but I think our target market isn't ready for something that innovative."
   Translation: I don't want you to think I'm uncool, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
   
   
4. "Make the logo bigger."
   Translation: You advertising people are all the same. All you want is to do some hoity-toity ad that's going to win you awards, take you abroad on some overpriced photo shoot and spend my company's money on Bordeaux and Osso Bucco at four star restaurants. Well let me tell you buster, I'm on to your game. I may not know your fancy ad-talk, and I may not be able to figure out where you've hidden all the money for your hedonistic debauchery in my ad budget. But I do know one thing: people love my logo, dammit, and they want to see it. Personally, if it were up to me, I'd just buy a super-powered laser and project my logo on the moon. But since I can't, for now I'm stuck with you assholes.
   
   
5. "What is the agency recommendation?"
   Translation: I wouldn't know good creative like differentiating between my ass and my elbow.
   
   
6. "I don't think it speaks to the teen market."
   Translation: I showed it to my attention-deficit 13 year old, and he was indifferent.
   
   
7. "We want a 'bite and smile' shot."
   Translation: Even 'Ogilvy On Advertising' is too avant garde for me.
   
   
8. "Which one of you is the writer?"
   Translation: We hate the copy.
   
   
9. "Which one of you is the art director?"
   Translation: We want the logo bigger.
   
   
10. "So, how long have you been at (name of agency here)?"
    Translation: Good lord, I'm old enough to be your father. Say, what are you doing for dinner tonight?
    
    
11. "Can we take the headline from this ad, and combine it with the visual of that ad?"
    Translation: I am mentally retarded.
    
    
12. "This music isn't appropriate for our brand."
    Translation: The music you have selected isn't on heavy rotation in my SUV's 6-CD stereo system. (or) I haven't heard this type of music in an ad for our competitive brand yet.
    
    
13. "Let's get back to the basics of what made this brand great."
    Translation: If I don't see some tits and ass in this beer commercial, you're all fired.
    
    
14. "Do you think that font is appropriate?"
    Translation: I want you to know that I know how to use the word 'font' in a sentence.
    
    
15. "We'd like you to have a look at what the authorities are doing with this brand."
    Translation: You don't have an igloo's chance in hell of ever seeing this commercial produced.
    
    
16. "May I have a look at the strategy again?"
    Translation: I don't want to appear uncool in front of the creative team, so I am going to blame the account team for this fiasco instead.
    
    
17. "Here's how I think the headline should go:"
    Translation: I am a frustrated ex-English major.
    
    
18. "We had a lot of learning on this one."
    Translation: I have no clue about production costs. I am hoping to score points with my boss and save money by eliminating those expensive backgrounds.
    
    
19. "I love the layout."
    Translation: I hate the idea.
    
    
20. "I hope you guys didn't have to work all weekend on this!"
    Translation: The power I have over you amuses me.
    

Ah, so very, very true.

#073 In which our hero loses it, big-time.

I am a broken man.

I've tried so hard to remain strong, adopting several sensical plans of action to help me deal with this constant, unrelenting drain on my mental resources. But I have lost the fight.

The dog has defeated me.

He has labored hard to overcome the combined strengths of The Scientist's smarts and my incoherent screaming, and has thus far thwarted our every plan. Fortunately, Skat Watch 2005 continued uninterrupted... but if it had been Piss Patrol it would have folded day one. The dog pisses on the floor constantly, and I, for one, am at a loss of what to do about it.

I'll remind you that we have long ago given up and actually not having him pee in the house, and at this point just want him to piss in the foyer, which is tiled. See how desperate it's become? The best I can now hope for is daily piss-mopping.

Of course, the dog does not wish to be contained in the foyer. Never mind that given the choice the asshole would simply lie down three feet from where we want him to. And yes, I put his dog bed (which is atop an extra pad to make it extra soft and comfy) right there in the foyer for him, along with a nice rawhide bone to chew. Naturally, he'll have none of it.

Here are some recent attempts to corral him and their results:

Put up wooden baby gates to block both hallways.
Result: he destroyed one of the gates, allowing him free reign of the house.

Replaced wooden baby gates with steel baby gates.
Result: managed to push one open, giving him access to the rest of the house.

Altered the way the baby gates hang so that they could no longer be pushed open.
Result: First, as part of this plan The Scientist thought it would be a good idea to leave the top baby gate (top of the stairs, that is... this one is made of wood) open, so he could get to the upper hallway. We closed all the bedroom doors, so there was just a carpeted hallway. I'm still not sure why The Scientist wanted to do this, being that the goal was to keep him for destroying our carpets. I think the theory was that if he couldn't chew through the metal gates, that he would set his sights on the wooden one and just fuck it up.

The ultimate result was that he pissed in the upper hallway, pushed open our bedroom door, tore up three used diapers, ate two pairs of The Scientist's panties and pissed twice more in our bedroom for good measure.

This was just yesterday. As you can probably imagine (if you've read anything I've written before) I completely lost my shit. I screamed at him and chased him around the house. I cornered him in the laundry room and proceeded to scream, "I hate you! I hate you!" like a disenfranchised 16-year-old. This had the result of him pissing all over that floor, too. I finally ordered him back to his bed, where he sat whimpering.

Now, you know how people always ask if crazy people know if they're crazy, or if those going insane can see where they're going? I'm here to tell you that I'm going mad, and I'm painfully aware of it.

Here's the thing: I was standing there glowering at the dog. He had just pissed up the whole house. I had just gotten home from work, and I actually had to pee myself.

Do you see where I'm going?

I pissed on the dog. Whipped it out and peed right on his goddamn stupid dog head. He seemed much less concerned about this action than, say, I would have been if someone pissed on my head. He seemed more like, "What the hell? I'm getting wet."

Well, this (obviously insane) action only led to more work for me... not only did I have to clean up bits of diaper and underwear, but now I had to throw the dog's bed in the wash and give him a quick bath.

So we have now put the next plan into action. He is again in the foyer, but The Scientist bought some spray stuff that's supposed to repel dogs. Personally, I can't imagine it's going to work, considering that breaking off pieces of his own teeth as he tried to chew through a wire kennel wasn't deterrent enough for him; I don't know what a little stinky spray is going to do.

If (when) this fails, The Scientist says that we can get some sort of invisible fencing for the inside of the house. One that, according to her, comes with a shock collar whose settings go up to "shock the shit out of him."

Which, I'm sure, will make him piss all the more.

#072 In which our hero is sleepy.

A couple random things, since I'm too tired to construct a coherent post (the "why" of which will be explained in #2).

#1. I didn't even know all of that could fit in my butt!

The last two weeks have been a little stressful for me at work. This is notable mostly because I am never stressed out at work (unless they are screwing me on a raise or the like). However, the last two weeks have been really stressful, and I just recently figured out why.

We just got some new business that involves me writing a manual of sorts, that lists everything that this company's local stores can do to increase business. The company (see how I cleverly avoid naming the company? Oh yes, I am sly and savvy) has a ton of little business-building programs, but no central repository for them. This is basically what we've been hired to create.

Anyway, in our initial meeting with the client, we sat down and started to discuss all the programs, making sure I understood them, since I would be the one writing them. However, after two hours of this, they were obviously bored talking about these programs, and ended up just throwing a giant heap of brochures, flyers and print-outs at me and saying, "The rest of what you need to know is in there."

Well, naturally, the rest of what I needed to know wasn't in there. So I'm basically been making things up and pulling "facts" out of my ass in order to meet the deadline. This fills me with the same shaky fear that I felt whenever I didn't study for a test in high school.

"What are the primary program goals of the "Point of Sale Proposition" display? Shit, I should know this. Didn't we talk about this at that meeting? Where are my notes... no, nothing in my notes. Well, hell, guess I'll just invent something that sounds reasonable."

It's crazy how often I have to do something like this... and even crazier how often the client loves what I wrote.

#2. Did I smoke a bunch of pot and forget about it?

I just looked at my eyes in the men's room mirror, and they are seriously bloodshot. "What the hell?" I thought... then it dawned on me that I didn't go to bed last night until 2:30AM; and I got up at 6:30AM. And I pretty much did the same thing the night before.

But, you see, it's not my fault. It's Pharaoh's fault.

I went to Target to buy Freedom Force, but, alas, they did not have it. And, since I had just finished Starcraft, I was jonesing for a new game, and needed a fix. I saw this game, Pharaoh, and it looked interesting. I had seen it before, and it looked interesting. Basically like "Civilization" set in ancient Egypt.

And now, I am totally obsessed.

I think what appeals to me is not just the cool graphics (which are very cool, don't get me wrong) but that if I screw up, an enemy army doesn't automatically roll in and wipe me out.

Funny side note: I was really hooked on "Civilization" when it first came out. This was v.1, where the graphics sucked and everything was a little square with an icon to represent what it was. I had been playing for hours and was doing the best I ever had... and I had just created my most fearsome and advanced troop type yet: knights. Knights! On horseback! It was just about then when the Chinese appeared at the fringes of my country with an icon I hadn't seen before... tanks. I had just made knights, my enemy had tanks. It didn't take long for my civilization to be but a memory.

So Pharaoh is my new obsession. The spirit of Ra commands you!

#3. I'm not joking, I'm really tired.

The Scientist works tomorrow and I'll be watching the little girl all day. Man, I'm beat. I should really get to bed early tonight... but ancient Egyptian empires aren't going to build themselves, now are they?

#070 In which our hero contemplates the end of days.

Bad times are coming. I can see them on the horizon, like gathering storm clouds.

There are several things in my life right now that hold the potential for disaster. And, I'm sure, the cosmic entities that control my life have also noticed this, and made their dastardly plans.

The events:

• My wife is pregnant with child #2
• The dog's bowel issues seem to be escalating
• We have been, up to this point, unable to corral the dog into a non-carpeted area*
• The in-laws are coming for an extended stay after the baby is born
• Child #1 has become increasingly possessive of her toys (and when I say "her toys," I mean anything that happens to be in her grasp and/or line of sight. This includes, but is not limited to, anything from the kindling pile, Kleenex, and cell phones)

I don't have to paint you a picture, do I?

I know, know, in my bones that all of the events above are going to collide into one giant dog-shit-cramped-quarters-screaming-baby black hole.

And I will be unable to escape.

The sound.

The smell.

The horror!

* Don't think we haven't tried. A quick review of the archive will reveal several dog plans, each failing in turn. The Scientist and I have more or less thrown in the towel, as far as curing this dog. We've gone straight to disaster planning; when, not if. You'd be surprised, and more than a little repulsed, I'm sure, to learn how much of our daily conversation revolved around our dog's bowels.

THE SCIENTIST: Did he poop on the walk?
ME: Yeah, a little bit. But I think there's more coming.
TS: What was it like? Was it firm?
ME: It was a little soft, but not alarmingly so. I'm not sure if it's from the chicken and rice diet, or if something's coming.
TS: Did you give me those antacids before you fed him?
ME: Yeah, but only three. Is he still getting those steroids? That firmed up his poop.
TS: We cut him back to stop the peeing in the house.
ME: Oh yeah...

We watch him like hawks every time he's let out into the back yard to poop, jockeying for a better position if we don't have a good line of site to his ass. Then we examine what comes out, like judges evaluating Olympic figure skating.

ME: Hmm... firm start, nice break...
TS: But a little soft at the finish.
ME: Agreed. Not his best showing.

#069 In which our hero realizes a wider world.

(Want to know how mature I am? I just typed out "entry 69" and thought "Ooh! Sixty-nine! I should make this one about sex! Tee-hee-hee! But sadly, no, this is not about sex.)

Something strange happened to me recently. In an inspired hissy fit I took down my site and replaced it with a single black page. You may have missed it, since it only lasted a day or two. However, in that time three people emailed me directly and asked what was up, and if my site was going away forever.

Well, three people isn't that big a deal, except that I only knew two of the three. See, I've been operating under the assumption that only people that I know personally read this thing. But, apparently not. My brother-in-law revealed that he tells his friends about "the funny ones." (You know, they're all good, not just the "funny ones," you dick.)

Suddenly, I feel like I was dancing around in my underwear and just now noticed that the blinds are up and the neighbors are watching. Eek!

Anyway, that got me thinking about traffic to my site, etc., etc., something I really haven't paid much attention to up to this point. However, my hosting service (quick shout-out to GoDaddy.com, I've been really happy with their service and pricing - and they have recently featured big-breasted women in TV commercials, so what's not to like?) provides a statistics page that I've largely ignored.

But looking at it over the weekend revealed some interesting things.

Successful requests for pages in last 7 days: 587
Successful requests for pages: 12,184
Distinct hosts served: 1,012 Hosts

I find all of this rather mysterious. Is that 1,000+ unique people coming to look at my stuff? I don't know, and I don't think there's really any way to tell for sure.

But then, more interesting that that, is the search query report. This I understand, it's the number of people and the search words they typed into their favorite search engine leading, inadvertently I'm sure, to me

1. [my whole name] (5)
2. hurpis (5)
3. cats pissing (2)
4. cedar point police (2)
5. disfunctional family circus (2)
6. simple plan baby pictures (2)
7. scripturient (2)
8. boob (2)
9. adult diapers (2)
10. rhodesian ridgeback vomit (1)
11. facts about the george foreman grill (1)
12. why isn't my a/c working in my car? (1)
13. rhodesian ridgeback and vomit (1)
14. touch her boob (1)
15. cat puking (1)
16. radio stopped working in car (1)
17. dog piss cleaning (1)
18. unclothed underwear (1)
19. george foreman grill facts (1)
20. speedometer gas stopped working (1)
21. tagamet 100 pound dog (1)
22. dogs/irritable bowels (1)
23. scripturient our hero (1)
24. speedometer doesn't work until (1)
25. cleaning dog shit out of carpet (1)
26. han solo shoot first (1)
27. dog shit carpet (1)
28. dog smell carpet (1)
29. death's by drinking and driving (1)
30. boooooooooooooooooooob (1)

It gives a pretty accurate snapshot of my life that 11 of the 30 listed results deal with animal piss or shit. Sigh.

It's pretty funny that the #2 search term was a word I just made up. And what exactly was the guy expecting who typed in "boooooooooooooooooooob" in Google? Of course, the funniest part is that my boooooooooooooooooooob doesn't even make the first page of search results.

But, I have to feel sorry for the people that were looking for legitimate things ("Adult Diapers," "Facts about the George Foreman Grill," "Death's by drinking and driving." - what's that last one about?) and stumbled across my ramblings.

So, if you're reading this now and wondering how to get Rhodesian Ridgeback vomit out of your carpet - try scrubbing the spot with baby wipes while it's still fresh, that usually works for us.

Welcome to my world.