DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

We visited a half-dozen local Sonoma County artists as a part of the 2001 ARTrails exhibit. I was amazed. I expected craft-fair goods — nice, but kitschy — but instead found gallery after gallery of inspirational, inspired art.

Highly recommended: Don Jackson (photographs); Warren Arnold (stone sculpture); Gerald Huth (painting, collage); Stephen Fitz-Gerald (metal sculpture, wood sculpture)

So I’m in the locker room. There are two men nearby, chatting. One of them is naked; the other is clothed. The naked man extends his hand, introducing himself to the other. “Hi,” he says, “I’m Richard. Call me Dick.”

Heh.

An article by Caroline E. Mayer in the Washington Post [original: Direct Marketers Adopt New Tactics on Mailings to Avoid Losing Business; sfgate.com mirror: Direct-mail businesses respond to anthrax fear] reveals that the Direct Marketing Association, which is responsible for most of the unwanted crap you receive via postal mail, has issued new guidelines to all its members — instructions for how to best continue sending out junk mail during the ongoing Anthrax scare.

The challenge, in a nutshell, is that average citizens are afraid to open unsolicited mail, given the potential downside (swollen lymph glands, necrosis, shock, vomiting, death). And yet the DMA member companies make way too much money from sending out junk mail; it’s in their best financial interests to disassociate their unsolicited mail from the type that might kill you. After all, if the powder that spills out of the latest Fingerhut catalog dissuades you from placing an order for a decorative lawn goose, then Fingerhut is out a few bucks. For the DMA, this won’t do at all.

The DMA advises members to “avoid using envelopes with no return address or clear identification marks,” on the theory that recipients are more likely to open an unsolicited envelope from a recognized merchant than an unsolicited, unlabelled envelope (which more likely than not would have otherwise been disguised as an “urgent mail-gram!”). I have to wonder why the DMA hadn’t advised merchants to identify themselves on junk mail prior to 9/11/01 — perhaps because this might normally prevent recipients from opening the mail? That is, in a sane world, well-balanced junkmail recipients might decide that this month’s JCPenny missive isn’t worth reading, but in an insane world, frightened and mistrustful junkmail recipients should be reassured that, compared to a potentially lethal infectious bacteria, the JCPenny catalog isn’t too bad after all.

The DMA advisory goes on to suggest “that businesses alert consumers to upcoming solicitation by first notifying them through e-mail or telemarketing calls.” So, DMA member companies are going to send me email I don’t want, to warn me that they’re going to send me paper mail that I don’t want? Or worse, they’ll interrupt my dinner with a phone call to tell me that the crap arriving in the mail tomorrow doesn’t have anthrax in it?

Perhaps now is a good time to remember that it’s possible to prevent telemarketing calls.

Carl Hiaasen is one of my favorite authors of escapist fiction. His books feature a recurring character who frequently dines on roadkill — animals found dead on the highway.

I’m a vegetarian, more or less, so I’m less likely to ever eat roadkill than, say, you are. Still, I’ve been eating a lot of avocadoes that have fallen out of my tree, and I wonder if that qualifies.

I listened to Anthony Robbins’ audio webcast today. He wanted to address ways of coping with fear, in the aftermath of what he called the “nine one one” attacks. (It took me a few seconds to connect what I heard as “911,” a telephone number, with “9/11,” an infamous date. Does that make me a visual learner or auditory learner, if the same sound could be represented by two separate visual symbols, and I confuse them?)

Robbins was thoughtful, intelligent, and provocative, as usual. He’s also an entertaining storyteller, as evidenced by today’s presentation.

I think what I appreciate most is that he is always goal-oriented… You cannot follow his advice and fail to take action. You can, of course, read his advice and think to yourself, “I should do that.” Robbins calls that “shoulding all over yourself.” (That’s an auditory joke, for all you visual learners. Say it out loud; you’ll get it.)

He plugged a new movie, in which he has a cameo: Shallow Hal, starring Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow. Robbins invited listeners to see the movie in order to change their state (from fear to happiness, I guess). He said, “you’ll laugh your tail off.”

I’ve seen the previews, and I think that may be all I see of that movie. (If you want a laugh, go see Bandits instead.)