THE CHARMED OR UNCHARMED LIFE

I’m having trouble thinking about blogging and all things digital right now because my head is back in the 19th century. I’m writing a new novel set around 1880 and the more I read letters from that era that end in flourishing signatures, preceded by phrases like “I am, your affectionate brother" or "yours very truly”, the harder it is to wrench myself back into today.
Look at this signature by my great-grandfather, Joe Buddle, laid down by him in Tauranga in 1879. It’s so elegant and practised that it would seem it was obligatory then to develop a ‘hand’ that said something about you - assuming you could actually read and write.
We don’t care now. Who’s writing letters with a pen? People aren’t even bothering to say “Hi Joe” at the start of emails, let alone “Dear Joe”. We just launch right into the message. Our sign-offs are just “cheers”, or “regards” if we’re being extra polite. Affection doesn't get a look in. And business emails don’t even carry a name as a sign-off because the automatic signature does it for you. Texting requires no goodbyes at all, except perhaps a CU.
Perhaps it’s all this impersonal communicating that is making big events seem much more profound now. Half the planet must have stopped to watch Michael Jackson’s memorial service, with all of its tributes. When Michael’s brother Germaine sang Smile, and his daughter Paris showed us her breaking heart, they revealed how important it is in this crazy world for us to stop, listen and feel.
We’ve come in 130 years from a world where it was important to write 'very truly’ to one where we care mostly about speed and instant fame.
Michael’s life may have been all too speedy and a bit manic, especially in his later years, but in his going he’s somehow touched a lot of lives.
His whole career was all about exposure and visibility (and the opposite as well - made up of secrecy and shadows). In a way, he was a human example of the power of advertising, that peculiarly 20th century art form.
The entire world knew his music and his moves and his face. Whether admired or despised, he was a massive global brand.
But I’ve found that advertising’s power began to get a hold on us much earlier than the 20th century. In reading old issues of the Bay of Plenty Times I’ve come across an 1880 ditty that was already shouting to the world that if you wanted to be KNOWN, if you wanted to SUCCEED, then you had to advertise, you had to be SEEN. Here’s how it goes – read and ponder:

THE CHARM OF LIFE
Tell me not that advertising
Is at best an empty dream,
For its charm is more surprising
That its base traducers deem.

And whichever way thou turnest
Thou wilt find upon the whole,
Those who advertise in earnest
Soonest reach the wished for goal.

Wouldst thou save regret and sorrow
For good prospects thrown away?
Never wait, then, till tomorrow;
Always advertise today.

Advertise then! Time is fleeting!
All the wealth this side the grave
That is ever worth the meeting
It will bring if thou be brave.

Try the charm of advertising,
And avert a meaner fate;
Be ye ever enterprising,
Learn to advertise and wait.
(Author unknown)

Feeling a touch of grumpy coming on

I guess the time may come for all of us to get to the grumpy old woman (or man) stage. Women have menopause to contend with, of course. And Dr Frances Pitsilis told Paul Henry on TV1’s Breakfast show that male menopause really can happen. It’s all because a bloke’s testosterone levels drop throughout life.
At 70, your average guy apparently has only half as much of the t-hormone as he had at 20. And as it wanes, from middle age onwards, men can lose their potency and enjoyment of life – not just in the sexual sense but also in terms of general perkiness, curiosity and liveliness of thought, possibly leading to glumness, depression and even a shorter life span.
Not to worry though, she said. Once your GP has ascertained your testosterone status through blood tests (and you might need more than one as the results aren’t always exact), he or she can prescribe hormone boosters. One such little helper comes in the form of a cream.
“Where do you apply it?” asked Henry innocently as he picked up a jar of the wonder ointment. ‘Behind your testicles,” said the good doctor, thus perhaps becoming the only person to ever utter the word on Breakfast. Henry dropped the jar so fast it was as if she’d told him he was holding a scorpion.
It was just about the best chuckly moment of the morning. But as a grumpy old woman in the making, I’d already had my share of droll moments. One was hearing a Newstalk ZB newsreader inform me that the recent loss of an Air France jet may have been partly caused by a “fierce equilateral storm”.
“Equatorial, you fool!” I said into the early morning darkness, feeling guilty that I could find any humour at all in anything to do with such a ghastly event. Perhaps it was that very earliness that addled the brain of the journalist who wrote the sentence for her to read.
And perhaps it was the same only-half-awake person who put a piece of paper in front of Kate Hawkesby recently, requiring her to read in another bulletin that the Pope had beatified someone (thus proclaiming that the person was blessed and worthy of veneration). Only the word that came out of Hawkesby’s mouth was “beautified”.
But even the grand and the famous can have foot-in-mouth moments. British PM Gordon Brown dropped a lovely clanger in a speech about D-Day when he referred not to Omaha Beach, but Obama Beach. Just one more reason for the beleaguered PM to feel like a total grumpy old man right now.

The instant book machine

I'm intrigued by this video, showing the workings of a newish gizmo called the Espresso Book Machine. It's not exactly mass production, but in book shops you can use it to order up out-of-print or hard-to-find books, if you can find what you want in the retailer's database. I am not sure how this will work in terms of author's copyright. This is becoming a very complicated world.
However, self-publishers are intrigued by this idea (print your family history,with pictures, for instance), though if you want a thousand copies of something, getting it bulk-printed is still far cheaper. It is of course a great way to make instant books look good, no matter how tedious or unreadable the content may be.(Yay! The world still needs editors, designers and proof readers.)
This video shows the machine in action with book retailer Blackwell's UK, and Angus & Robertson are also doing it in Australia, with eventual plans to put 50 of these machines in shops across Oz and New Zealand.
It's funny, though, that while it's undoubtedly clever, there's something about this machine's whirring noises and moving parts that make it seem kind of steam age - a throw-back rather than a step forward, and more akin to Gutenberg than Digital Age. It takes 15 minutes to print an average book, and costs the same as buying one ready-made.

Check it out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIq0VqF0MnA

The clack of the keys

The newspaper paragraph that slayed me lately was the one in which writer and satirist P J O’Rourke admitted to not being able to “work a computer”.
Best-selling author (14 books), top-rated speaker, mocker of presidents and governments, and former foreign desk chief at Rolling Stone , the guy’s been an ace communicator for 30-something years. Now 61, he comes to New Zealand for a full-on round of speechmaking and interviews and tells the Herald’s Karyn Scherer that he’s computer-illiterate.
I am astonished.
He told her, “I can't imagine how I would manage with email. It's just such a massive distraction with email, and BlackBerries, and Twitter, and so on. I have somebody input the stuff and off it goes.”
He excuses himself by saying that if he had a computer he would play with it. He might find himself looking up “exactly what was Rwanda's GDP in 1954, and other such distractions”. He does enough of that already, he says, “just with the books that are sitting around”. And he is nervous that that sort of activity would “soon devolve into playing Battleships with someone, or whatever”.
He has a cell phone but declares that its number is known only to his family, so he and his wife can co-ordinate childminding schedules. Scherer wasn’t brazen enough to ask him if he knows how to text.
He has no interest in blogging. “The only thing that makes writing worth anything is that people put some time and thought into it, and you just can't do that on a blog,” says O’Rourke. (Tell that to some of the best bloggers around.)
He sees the computer not as a useful tool but a distraction, and prefers his outmoded typewriter because all he wants to do is have time to think about something, and not be “constantly distracted and interrupted”. He seems not to consider that cell phones can be switched off, doors can be closed, and email can be checked as often or as rarely as you like.
He sounds like a man who is very easily distracted.
Typewriters. Ye gods. The miles my fingers must have done. I once prized my turquoise Olivetti Lettera portable like I now treasure my laptop. I’ve battered keys on Imperials, Royals, Underwoods and Smith Coronas. I’ve clacked away for hours, furiously typing xxxxx over errors when I couldn’t be bothered using that special eraser (a round, hard, thin rubber disc) or wielding a Wite-Out brush. I’ve faffed around with sheets of carbon paper and once possessed a now long-lost office vocab. Hands up who can remember what a platen is.
O’Rourke apparently uses an IBM Selectric, invented in 1961 and gradually improved over the years until IBM ditched the whole idea when everyone shifted to computers around 1990. Everyone, that is, but O’Rourke. Amazingly, for all his wit and intelligence, he has become an old fogey. Still, whoever it is who “inputs the stuff” must be pleased. At least the job will be there for as long as PJ keeps writing.

Stress in the kitchen

Everyone wants to cook well, but we forget how CRUCIAL a good home-baked cake was in great-grandma's times for women's self esteem. At least, that's what advertisers tried to tell them.
This word-packed ad, from 1922, tells a tale headed "From Failure to Success: The Story of a Young Wife Who Thought She Couldn't Cook."
Its chapters describe the terrible food served up by a new bride to her long-suffering husband. How shocking this was then. Working women were expected to leave their jobs when they wed. Housewifery was far more important.
The story coyly begins, "When the friends of Miss Office heard that she was to become Mrs Cook, they began to crack the age-old jokes about newly-wed wives. 'Jack will have indigestion for the first month,' they said."
And so it goes. Her first cake is "very heavy", followed by a doughy Madeira, leaden scones and pastry that is "simply waste of good butter".
Then, oh joy, she discovers "sure to rise" Edmonds Baking Powder. "Oh!" she exclaims. "I've not been using Edmonds! No wonder my cooking was a failure!"
Brimming with exclamation marks and proud smiles, she is shown in her pinny at the ad's end as simpering Jack assures her that her cooking is "just as good as Mother's - and better."
Tradition like this is what makes for enduring brands. This is how old slogans make for mindsets that do not change for years and years and years. This is why, when Edmonds was attacked this month by professional cooks for the inadequacy of its Hot Cross Bun recipe, the brand's owners would not admit to any problems at all.
Just like Jack's wife, they had a "sure to rise" reputation to uphold, even when the buns weren't rising.
But they should beware of wives in pinnies. Put-upon women have a habit of flinging aprons off, going back to work and buying store-bought cakes instead. Or not eating cake at all for health reasons. Or coaxing Jack to do some baking instead.

Tick tock bye-bye watch

Preparing to make a speech to staff at a media company, I trawled through some old magazines I’d once edited and came across a full-page ad from 20 years ago starring the coolest new accessory from those times, the Swatch watch. The guy in the ad was delirious with glee over the prospect of having on his wrist something so sexy, so slender, so very ‘now’.
I’d forgotten about the Swatch. Did a Google. Discovered the brand is very alive and kicking. But it got me thinking about the wristwatch. Years ago in a British museum I was delighted to spot, in a glass case, an example of an early watch from the late 1800s. A fat, clunky thing it was, with a leather strap rendered fragile by use and age.
They became so ubiquitous that a good watch became the gift of choice in the 20th century – the pretty one for a girl’s 21st birthday, the ideal anniversary gift (with a few dinky diamonds), the gold-plated one on retirement. That was a weird idea, actually, given that it’s the very time when clock-watching loses importance.
The Swiss originally cornered the market for watches, along with cuckoo clocks and anything else that ticked. But then something bad happened, at least from the Swiss point of view. The Japanese got inventive. Once they’d got over just copying Swiss cleverness, they began to make watches that were just as good, and cheaper, than timepieces put together in Europe.
Yikes, said the Swiss. What to do? And so they invented the Swatch. Cheap, thin, bright, smart and colourful, they were an instant success in a brand-hungry world.
But now something else bad is happening. People are going off them altogether. Timepiece sales have dropped off every year since 2001. I asked my audience yesterday how many of them go watch-less. Close to half the room raised their hands.
Instead, they rely on cell phones, PDAs, in-car digital displays, the computers they sit in front of all day and the clocks that still adorn public buildings around town. It’s the cell phone that’s really done the damage of course. Everyone has one available at all times.
And yet what a funny turnaround that is. Apparently the first flush of enthusiasm for wrist watches came in the women’s fashion accessory market. A hundred years ago men carried pocket watches. Ladies’ gowns didn’t have handy pockets, so a dainty wristwatch was a boon for them.
World War 1 changed that. Blokes about to let loose the artillery or urge the troops out of the trench didn’t have time to be digging into pockets to find out if the moment had come. A flicking glance at the wrist was so much easier.
And now here we, hurtling into the digital future and, at the same time, returning to the past and fumbling in pockets and bags to find a time display not attached to our persons. These must be worrying times at Rolex. And at Swatch.

Recession's alphabet soup

Once it was acronyms that drove us nuts. Well, they still do. I’m forever stumbling over clumps of letters that mean nothing to me.

Now we’re also being faced with the challenge of understanding itty-bitty letters. The first time I heard economists debating the likely look of the end of the recession, I thought, ‘what the?!’ They spoke of U-curves, and V-shapes and (ohmigod) the worst shape of all... the dreaded L.
It seems that, historically, recessions have followed certain patterns – giving us those Us, Vs and Ls. It seems we all love Vs, because it means a swift descent into the depths, followed by an equally rapid upsurge – something like the woe that hits fox-trotters’ faces when criticised by judges on Dancing with the Stars , quickly followed by grins when they score the next dollop of praise.
U curves are pretty good too. We slide down, swoop around the bend and then quickly ascend once more. But the L? Bad news. It indicates a vertical drop followed by a flat line, with damn-all uptick in sight.
I keep hearing commentators rattling on about ‘green shoots’, signs of life, and evidence of better results. But it all depends on who’s talking. It seems Kiwi business people aren’t expecting a U any time soon, given that the latest survey out today (April 8) says confidence hasn’t been this low since 1974. But given that stockmarkets have done a little up-climb lately, followed by a down-slip, I’m betting it won’t be long before someone invents a W mode, with a pesky up/down jiggly bit in the middle. Maybe even a series of them.
My metaphorical soup was made even murkier last week when I heard someone use “hockey-stick” talk to describe the typical uptake pattern for new technology. I took that to mean there’s a brief, u-shaped hesitation at the bottom of any new way of doing things, followed by a swoop up the vertical handle of the stick, as more and more people come on board.
But no.
Googling revealed that the term – coined by someone debating climate records – is based on the shape of a North American ice hockey stick. It describes numbers running along from left to right on a flat line (as represented by a stick lying on its back) followed by an acutely angled upturn, like the blade of that sort of stick. Sharp angle, not U-curve.
At least acronyms do have meanings you can easily get to grips with, unlike two types of hockey sticks. Why, only today I’ve been reading about a NASA project called THEMIS, which stands, as I’m sure you know, for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms. Yes, well. It is interesting. Really.
NB As there’s nothing we can do about economics or outer space, the best thing to do is work on our own wellbeing. Which means getting out, having fun and being creative. Here are four ways of doing that (all Auckland events). I’ve done courses with all the women mentioned below and know they can give you a good, powerful and even life-changing time.

You can:

FEEL EMPOWERED at Sally Mabelle’s uplifting range of classes covering singing, speaking, relating, and creating. http://sallymabelle.com/events

FIND THE COURAGE TO BE YOURSELF by attending six evening sessions with visionary trainer Amanda Fleming, beginning mid June. Here's the info on this, and her other courses. www.amandafleming.co.nz/courses

DANCE FOR JOY at an afternoon event, April 19, with the inspiring Lizzie Haylock and unwind out of your rushing, time-stressed life. NB No dancing talent needed! As Lizzie says, however you want to move is perfect, no matter your age or shape. A creative, time-out, sensory space for women. For info email: lhaylock@xtra.co.nz

And you can also WRITE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, at my own weekend course on May 16-17, Call Out Your Inner Writer. It’s just as much about developing your creative confidence as your scribbling skills. www.lindseydawson.com