"Smock, smock, smock, smock, smock."

I was mulling over several possibilities for the one book that really stands out to me, that impacted my life in a lasting way. There are many to choose from; different books touched me in different ways, depending on the condition of my life at the time I read it. Certain ones remain with me. There are the philosophical books my dad gave me when I was young, The Tao of Pooh and Siddhartha; Lord of the Rings when I was older; Kissing in Manhattan and Life of Pi when I was older still.

Ultimately, though, there was only ever one answer to that question: Calvin and Hobbes. I've never been more obsessed with a book or series of books than I was (and still am) with this one. I was ten years old, in fifth grade, and - completely at random - picked out Revenge of the Babysat for my mom to buy me at a B. Daltons (in the mall, of course). I took it to school with me every day; I colored in the black-and-white panels on the Sunday strips; I didn't understand even half of what Calvin and Hobbes were saying, but I loved the language and the way the two characters played off each other. And it made me laugh. A lot. I tried to make my sister play Calvinball with me; I wanted to make my own superhero outfit to rival that of Stupendous Man; I wanted to have my own spaceship like Spaceman Spiff's; I tried to copy Calvin's language in my journal ("Further bulletins as events warrent") without having any idea what they meant; I took on the moniker "Chelsea the Bold" (in emulation of Calvin the Great) and signed all my papers and assignments that way for the entire year. I even wrote, on research projects, "An Exhaustingly Researched Report by Chelsea the Bold." No joke. My teachers must have wanted to recommend a therapist to my parents.

As I got older and acquired all the books, I lost interest in the physical acting-out of Calivn and Hobbes' escapades (thank god! Although it took me longer than I would like to mention); I started focusing on the actual words being spoken by the characters, and the meaning behind them that I never quite grasped before. And after I began to understand the complex commentary, I learned more about the man who wrote them; the books are, after all, his personal take on life.

I think Bill Watterson is a genius; even if he is a cantankerous fellow, I think he's earned the right to be. I agree with almost all his views on life, and admire his cleverness in presenting his ideas in a twisted way through Calvin, with Hobbes as the gentle hand of reason. Watterson doesn't come off preachy to me, even in his later work when his feelings about the environment, society, and consumerism become more of the focus in Calvin and Hobbes' dialogue. I love the imagery and imagination behind every panel. I love that he wrote about complex issues through a non-standard narrative form. I love that Watterson defied the newspapers, who tried to force him to create in a set pattern, by refusing to do it. He was dropped from syndication by many papers, but the ones who kept him on let him design his Sunday panel how he wanted to. I love that he stood firm and refused to license out Calvin and Hobbes' images; he didn't want to make any money from selling T-shirts or coffee mugs or bumper stickers. Any merchandise you see of Calvin and Hobbes is fake, their images illegally appropriated to sell things. I admire his ideals, the way he presented them, and the way he never compromised them.

I hope that one day I, too, will be fortunate enough to have the option of not selling out.

Note to self: even in times of economic hardship bordering on devestation, creatine still sells.

The current craptastic economy continues to affect all levels of society and business, and the poor printed word takes yet another hit: I found this article that relates to one of my previous posts, about how The New York Times is selling ad space on its front page in a desperate bid for income. It looks like magazines may have to resort to the same tactics: the number of advertising pages in magazines for the month of March dropped 26%. I'm not sure which magazines are included in this survey, or what the criteria is for inclusion in the review - the article mentions that the downturn affected "nearly all titles" - but I do know that that sound I hear is the death knell for even more magazines.

The majority of people are pinching pennies. And if people aren't out spending money willy-nilly, marketers have less inclination to place their ads in numerous publications: they're spending a lot of money for very minimal results. How do you market effectively in a severely bad economy? That is: how do you make people want to spend money?

Apparently, promising to make a consumer's body look like the one in the picture is enough of an incentive: the only magazines unaffected by this ad decline were "muscle magazines":
ad placement in Flex and Muscle and Fitness rose as much as 33%. This finding makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe people who are obsessed with their appearances enough to subscribe to such magazines view pills as being as necessary to their well-being as groceries. Are there any sociologists out there who can explain this one?

In a final note, the beleaguered music industry continues to suffer, with magazines like Blender and Vibe losing ads by up to 64% - Print and Music Revenue locked together in a sad downward spiral.

Those beautiful, insidious email offers.

I'm guiltier than anyone I know about buying things online. And I say "guiltier" because the extra, superfluous packaging and gas used to drive my one or two items across the country to me is very wasteful and excessive. I'm better now than I used to be. For a while there, I had a J. Crew fascination; I think it had to do with the fact I lived in Hawaii, on the Big Island, where the only stores are Wal-Mart and Tommy Bahama - leaving me with the option of buying either a $3 shirt or a $300 one. J. Crew usually has good bathing suits - basic, well-made, not too overpriced - so I would buy mine online and have them shipped over. If they didn't fit or the color looked weird or whatever, I would send it back and they would resend me a different one. Sometimes several times. It's really the ultimate in lazy shopping: the clothes come to you! No need to think about all that this concept entails.

Anyway - J. Crew started emailing me offers all the time, about sales and whatnot. They still do, actually. I have definitely clicked through to their site through a sales-offer email, purchased my items, and then waited impatiently for their arrival. Every time you shop online, you're ten again and it's Christmas Eve. My experience with email offers, at least with J. Crew, have always been fine. They take me right where I need to go on the site; checkout is easy.

If I was still as into shopping online, I would find the emails I'm inundated with (Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom, Anthropologie, etc.) helpful - and they would absolutely encourage me to buy more, as they have in the past. The emails serve to remind you of the business' presence, and - hey! - they just so happen to be having a great sale! It's clever and I think it works. I also think that my deeply ingrained habit of consumerism is being manipulated, which I don't like at all. I've been trying very hard in recent years to repress these tendencies, to be happy with less, to only buy what I absolutely need - with the occasional treat thrown in - and it's been hard! So it's disconcerting when companies know exactly how to reach you and which buttons to push to encourage you to take a certain action. Then I feel less like a savvy consumer and more like one of Pavlov's dogs.

I like a little news with my ads every now and then.

We've been studying Google ads in our Online Marketing class: their cost, effectiveness, wording, manageability, etc. One of the most important factors to an ad's success is where it's located on a person's computer screen. If your ad isn't in the top few spots on the right-hand side of the screen, or in the banner at the top - that is, if your ad is "below the fold," meaning users would have to scroll down their screens to see it - odds are the ad won't make much of an impact. The whole idea behind the ads, though, is clever: advertise right where people are pursuing information.

Apparently The New York Times has decided to go a similar route: they decided last month to open up their front page to advertising. It's a move that seems to have surprised observers, and shows that The Almighty Times is as vulnerable as other newspapers in the massive (and irrevocable) shift toward online media. The first ad on the front page was a banner for CBS television in general that said "Front Page News." Sort of equivalent to: "Front Page News: Brought to you by CBS!"

People are, of course, divided about this - a position I sympathize with. One the one hand, you have The Times, struggling to keep advertisers buying space in order to maintain their print form. A senior VP at the Times said: "This high impact placement represents an exciting new opportunity for our advertisers to reach our educated, affluent and influential readers across the country." I have little doubt that front-page ads are the most effective, even if they are placed below the fold, as they are at The Times - a conciliatory gesture, almost.

Others consider front-page ads as "a commercial incursion into the most important news space in the paper." A point I see, but evidently most major newspapers have front-page ads (The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The LA Times). Still, there's something about ads boldly and colorfully displayed on front pages that makes me question the paper's journalistic integrity. I (completely irrationally, I admit) find it harder to trust a news source that compromises like that.

It's interesting to see the lengths to which newspapers are beginning to go in order to keep their printed words afloat. How far will they go with ad space in their bids to stay in print?

chelseaharlan@whataccountisthis.com

I've somehow accumulated four email accounts over the years.

I have two hotmail accounts. A few years ago they (hotmail) told me that my storage was at maximum capacity, and that I would have to purchase more to continue using my account. Which now, in retrospect, sounds like a bunch of crap. So I thought that instead of paying, I would outsmart them and open another account with them under a different name! Which I did, only to have my original account promptly have more storage than I could ever use in my lifetime. As an added insult, there was already another Chelsea Harlan out there, operating under my desired email address. I now tend to use my first hotmail account for personal messages from friends, and my newer account for school and other business.

I also have a PSU account, whose email address/password I've forgotten. They (PSU) don't have a "Forgot your password?" option on the site (ridiculous), so I would have to go to the tech lab or make some effort to call them and rearrange things (ridiculous).

And I just started a gmail account for this blog! I like it; I was still operating under the assumption that hotmail was the new, cool email provider. Little did I know, Google had not only got in on the action, but was doing it better than anyone else. And it's been ten years since hotmail was hot.

Which makes me wonder if I will keep on adding email accounts to my repertoire in the future as newer (and better?) services emerge. I also wonder if there is some sort of cache (I can't figure out how to make les accents aigus on here, sorry) attached to how your email address ends? Is it a subliminal message to others about how up-to-date you are, how tuned in to the modern world? Email snobbery and real estate snobbery: location, location, location. It reminds me of when I was recruited for grant writing for an organization, and my supervisor suggested, half jokingly, that I set the text of our submission in Times New Roman as proof that we didn't have any money: typeface snobbery (of which I am guilty. See first blog posting).

The Touch Screen Thing

I was perping around Jakob Nielsen's site this evening and found this article from Forbes about the growing dominance of touch screens on our gadgets. Apparently Microsoft will be putting touch-screen "capabilities" into the next version of Windows - test-driving the popularity of this technology on your computer instead of your phone. Sony has a touch-screen camera; Samsung has a touch-screen music player; and so on.

How do people feel about this, generally? Nielsen says this technology has existed for over 30 years (crazy! Wait a minute - I'm almost 30.) and that it is more "intuitive" and "direct" than using a mouse. Is this another one of those things where I'm being old-fashioned? I heard from several friends who got the new Blackberry Storm (which is touch-screen) that they wanted to switch back to their old one; that the new ones are lame. I wonder if it's more a matter of getting used to new technology, or if indeed the touch-screen version isn't as user-friendly. I don't hear those same complaints from people who have iPhones - but then, who would dare impugn the iPhone?

It would seem that this touch-screen technology is effective on gadgets with fewer, simpler options, so I am curious to see how the new Windows version fares. And if it does well, imagine the realms that will lead to. Web design and consumer usability would become whole other animals, wouldn't they? There would be less on a website's homepage (finger size!), and therefore more to navigate through; but would this be tolerable because it's easier to tap a screen with your finger a few times than to click a mouse the same amount?

One of the readers left a comment on the article's website, saying that the technology for voice-recognition/option software is on its way, and will eventually replace "most keyboard and many mouse functions." Is anyone else horrified by this idea? We already have restaurants and buses and streets filled with people talking on their phones instead of to the people around them; will the next step be people talking to their computers? We have more of a relationship with our gadgets than with each other. Which is getting off the topic...

Would you buy a touch-screen computer, when (not if) they come out? Do you think this technology is better, more user-friendly? Do you think the design of websites for consumer purposes will have to change drastically? For me, it indicates a further shift away from text, toward graphics. We are increasingly a culture of images, hieroglyphs, shorthand.

Ooligan Press: Publisher of the last book in Tony Wolk's time-travel trilogy Lincoln Out of Time. Hooray!

Ooligan Press, the student-run press at Portland State University (i.e. PSU), just celebrated the release of Lincoln's Daughter, the final book in the Lincoln Out of Time time-travel trilogy by Tony Wolk. Which is exactly what I just said in the title of this blog. I personally haven't read any of the Lincoln Out of Time books (which are based around Abraham Lincoln traveling backward and forward through time, generally causing a ruckus)-but I am currently editing one of Tony's latest manuscripts, Home, for an advanced editing class.

Home, like Lincoln's Daughter and the other two books in the trilogy (A Novel Life and Good Friday), has the protagonist traveling backward in time. The protagonist in this case is not Abraham Lincoln but Tony Wolk himself: Home is a memoir. A time-travel memoir. I'm not very far into it, but so far I am completely confused and completely interested. It makes me want to pick up the belly-bound Lincoln Out of Time trilogy and give that a go-just in time for Honest Abe's b-day celebration!

In fact, everyone out there should go get a set. Remember: Ooligan Press; Portland State University; Tony Wolk; Lincoln Out of Time trilogy; Lincoln's Daughter; and, of course, subtlety-and get out there and support the program, the school, and the arts!