[Journal] The Importance of the Surreal and the Supernatural

I was reading an article on Boing Boing the other day about a rotting and now-demolished Japanese themepark that was set in the world of Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels. The post included a picture of a giant Gulliver statue that people were once able to walk on like Lilliputians. When the picture was taken, the statue was covered in graffiti.

Source: SleepyCity.net / Boing Boing

The creative regions of my brain began firing when I saw this image, and I immediately sat down and started writing a story (which I’ll post up later this week). As I wrote, it occurred to me how much the element of the surreal and supernatural is important in storytelling, and how it’s one of the key ingredients needed to tell a story that sticks in the memory of others.

I’ve commented before that films like Super 8 or The Matrix, shows like Lost and The X-Files and novel series like the Dark Tower and Harry Potter all begin with mysteries that are slowly metered out over time. Part of what makes these stories so appealing, I’ve argued, is the fact that things are happening that don’t make sense to the audience, but which do make sense to the characters within the world because of unknown information. Even when the main characters are as out-of-the-loop as the audience, there are others (often, the villains) who know the full story and who promise some kind of answer.

But at the same time, these stories often have some element of the surreal and/or the supernatural that helps to make these mysteries more intriguing. Harry Potter exists in a hidden world of wizards and mythical creatures. Agents Mulder and Scully exist in a world where the paranormal is real and has an explanation that goes beyond what we know in our own world. Neo is a computer hacker who realizes that he is able to manipulate the world around him because it’s just a program with rules that can be bent and broken.

And yet the surreal and the supernatural don’t have to be so far-fetched. Often, they are at the heart of mystery stories that have perfectly natural explanations. I’m reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose right now, a story where medieval monks who do believe in the supernatural are faced with the fact that the evil that is causing murders within a remote abbey derives from humanity and not the devil. Many of Sherlock Holmes’s mysteries involved a mysterious crime (often accompanied by patter meant to make the caper look supernatural in nature) that could be explained by natural causes. The idea of a grotesque or interesting murder creating a phenomenon that is later revealed to be deception is a common plot device for mystery writers, and perhaps the question of “What was the cause of A when B is not a satisfying explanation?” is the reality of what a mystery truly is.

Sometimes, too, the fantasy of a simple surreal image – such as a giant statue of a man lying dormant in a field, with strange symbols graffitied on his face – can yield something memorable as well. I hope that will be the case with my own story.

I’ve also noticed that often, the surreal image of an idea of what a story is about is more appealing to me than the actual story. I was much more interested in The Dark Tower before I read the books, because in my mind, the idea of a gunslinger chasing after a shadowy tower always on the horizon was a powerful image. But when I read the books, I was disappointed to see what Stephen King did with the story, constantly bringing it back to our own world and often introducing characters who seemed like they were written on a whim rather than included with a purpose. (The fact that the author wrote himself into the story as a major plot device was almost too much to bear.) My imagining of the story was far more interesting than the final product.

I’ve felt that way about many other stories – Lost and Harry Potter and the later Matrix films among them – because they’ve all strayed away from that central mystery and focused instead on characters and sidestories and avenues that just weren’t relevant. Whereas mysteries are built around the surreal or the supernatural almost to a fault, these longer stories run out of gas once they stray from their central notion.

This is all interesting to me because one of the trilogies of novels I’m working on progressively introduces more surreal elements as it goes on, ultimately revealing a cause for the mysteries that is far-out, but which I hope will be satisfying. What begins with a haunted house becomes a deeper story about religious cults and alien visitors. It’s different from the story I’ll be sharing this week, which is more about effects than causes. But I hope it will be enchanting all the same.

-SJJ

[Journal] Why Star Wars Kinda of Sucks

NOTE: I’m going to make an attempt to keep my daily journal going. I’ve also got some more writing scraps to post! Stay tuned. You can also see more about my family over at the Jordan Family Blog if you don’t know why I’ve been so busy lately.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a little baby to hold, and it’s resulted in me spending a lot less time working on the craft of writing. But the upshot of this is that I’ve been able to catch up on my Netflix queues, both Instant and Mail, and I’ve had the chance to watch some pretty great films that have clearly served as major influences on filmmakers from the 1970s on. Some examples of the movies I’ve watched have included the Kurosawa films Yojimbo, The Seven Samurai, Sanjuro and The Hidden Fortress and the Sergio Leone films A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. (All of these, incidentally, are films I’d recommend.)

One thing I’ve noticed in watching these and other films, however, is how much George Lucas cribbed from them when he made Star Wars. Now, it’s no secret that George Lucas used an awful lot of inspiration for the development of Star Wars:

• Lucas insisted on the crawling text at the beginning of the story to recreate the feel of old sci-fi serial films.
• He’s cited The Hidden Fortress as being the inspiration for C-3PO, R2D2, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia.
• He looked to Marvel Comics’s Dr. Doom character as a template for Darth Vader.
• He instructed his special effects team to imitate footage from  the film Battle of Britain to create the Death Star scene at the end, and the film Dam Busters is often cited as the inspiration for Luke’s trench run.
• He wrote to classical music, and must have told John Williams exactly which pieces he used, because a lot of Star Wars’s score hearkens back to Holst’s The Planets and pieces by Strauss and Stravinsky, among others.

I could go on, but most of this stuff is fairly common knowledge. The origins of Star Wars have been talked about so much that there are numerous documentaries and books that contain entire histories of the minutiae, and there are even internet archives where earlier drafts of the screenplay and initial concept art can be found.

Like many people born around the late 1970s and early 1980s, I grew up in the age of Star Wars and absolutely loved it. The first movie I ever remember seeing in the theater was Return of the Jedi (I was 3 years old at the time), and many of my adolescent experiences involved Star Wars in some form – reading the initial extended universe books, playing the Star Wars paper-and-pencil RPG and the various video games and computer simulators, playing with a large assortment of the toys, begging my mom to let me go on the Star Tours ride at Disney MGM repeatedly, and so forth.

And, like many people, I felt betrayed and annoyed when the first of the prequels came out and completely ruined everything that was good about the original films for me.

But here’s the thing – I’m not actually sure that Star Wars itself is very good. In fact, the last time I watched it (about a year or two ago), I was surprised at how hokey the dialogue was, how confusing the subplots involving the Empire were, and how the movie really seemed like an excuse to bounce from special effect to special effect instead of really developing characters beyond broad archetypes. (The actual growth of the characters happens in the sequels.)

Sure, compared to contemporary films from the late 1970s, like Logan’s Run, Star Trek: The Motion Picture or (shudder) Zardoz, Star Wars is a true masterpiece because it’s able to tell an entertaining story in a manner that looks convincingly real. But what’s entertaining about the film has more to do with the lightsabers and the spaceships and the space aliens in the Mos Eisley cantina than it does with the quality of the writing.

In other words, Star Wars is all about stylish presentation and a rich fantasy world, but it’s completely lacking in depth. And, I’m starting to realize, it also features a plot that’s been done better by many other directors.

“What?” you might be saying. “Are you talking about the generic hero’s journey plot? Because sure, that’s been done a million times.”

Nope. I’m talking about a very specific subset of films within the hero’s journey spectrum – westerns and samurai films. The former were very popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and clearly had an influence on George Lucas. The latter were very popular in film schools in the 1970s… and you’d be surprised how much George Lucas cribbed from them.

Let’s think more broadly about Star Wars for a moment, and pretend it’s set in actual history instead of “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”. What you have is a classic tale of a boy leaving his agrarian life behind to travel to a trading post and to a military installation to free a princess. He inherits a family sword and some servants and is trained by a disgraced general who once knew his father. The villains include an evil military of masked warriors led by an even more fearsome masked warrior who prefers to fight with a sword rather than a cowardly projectile weapon. In order to defeat the villain, the boy has to learn to trust in his technique and training. But the real villain of the story is technology, which is used to decimate neighboring kingdoms as rebels who have rebelled against the ruling authority are rooted out and hunted down. Let’s call this “Factor 1.”

The boy also happens to be a skilled horseback rider and knows how to shoot a bow and arrow (or a pistol) while riding. He encounters a rogue who carries a pistol at his side and who has a big bodyguard who doesn’t speak English. The boy comes from the desert and has to fight off primitive bandits that can be found around bison when he’s out in the wilderness. He wants to leave home and go to a more urban area like his friends, but he’s expected to remain home for the harvest and continue to live the life of a farmer. Let’s call this “Factor 2.”

Factor 1, as I’m sure you realize by now, has much in common with the genre of samurai films, and Star Wars imitates them in some big ways. The Jedi clothing resembles the clothing of feudal Japan. Lightsabers, at least in their original form, are used like samurai swords, and the film even includes the romantic notion common to samurai films that a blade is far better than a gun. Even the concept of an evil and oppressive galactic empire hunting down rebels is a common theme for pieces set in the pre-Meiji era. Oh, and the Force? It’s just a mystical version of bushido with a little bit of Buddhist philosophy thrown in.

What’s more, if you watch samurai films from the 50s and 60s (particularly Kurosowa’s The Hidden Fortress), you’ll see familiar wipes, shots, characters and tropes. There are far too many for it not to be intentional.

Factor 2 includes elements from the American Western and later Spaghetti Western film genres. The former of these dominated popular culture throughout the 50s and 60s, and the latter were almost a guilty pleasure series of films that were widely panned by critics, but which also served as the birthplace for the brilliant director Sergio Leone, whose visual style of close-ups and attention to detail had an influence on many directors of the day, including George Lucas. Many of the shootouts in Star Wars feel reminiscent of the Western genre (far more so than the brutal war films of the 1960s and 70s) since everyone’s a bad shot except for the heroes and the stormtroopers tend to die dramatically.

One of the early scenes of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly has the film’s villain sitting down at a table with a man he’s been hired to kill. They talk, and suddenly, the villain shoots the man from underneath the table. If it sounds familiar, it’s almost exactly the same scene that George Lucas put in the original film version of Star Wars, where Han Solo shoots Greedo. It’s easy to see where Han Solo’s character inspirations lie in Westerns – he even dresses like a cowboy, hangs out in a saloon and has a bounty on his head. Meanwhile, the good guys wear white, the big bad guys wear black, and the smiling rogue and the stormtroopers wear a combination of the two.

Now, granted, there’s no such thing as an original idea, and every creative work stands on the shoulders of others. What made Star Wars seem so unique and original to my generation was our lack of familiarity with these older genres and our comparisons to other contemporary works. One might argue that Star Wars was so successful was because it married the stale ideas of classic works with exciting new styles of special effects. It was a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of filmmaking; take pieces of two big genres, throw in a dash of soundalike classical music and then add a dash of blaster fire, spaceships and lightsabers to the exterior.

And that leads me to realize that when you get right down to it, Star Wars kind of sucks, and the more it deviates from its source material in the later films and becomes a work unto itself, the more obvious that is. The films that Star Wars cribs from are all more satisfying as films, and were it not for the exceptional art design and special effects from the original Star Wars film, the whole thing would have felt as hokey as Logan’s Run or the Planet of the Apes sequels did.

What’s more, many of the other space-themed films of the era, all of which drew some inspiration from 1968’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, were probably better as films as well. Silent Running, for example, is a deep film with a bleak environmental message. Alien showed that sci-fi could be legitimately scary, and its pseudo-predecessor Dark Star One showed that sci-fi could have a comedic side. Close Encounters of the Third Kind had something to say about humanity. The Mobile Suit Gundam anime series (often referred to as the “Star Wars of Japan”) used many of the same ideas and inspirations seen in Star Wars (namely, the concept of “samurai in space”) and crafted a story much more rooted in science fiction than space fantasy and which had far better-developed characters by the end.

The magic of Star Wars is not that it’s a film, but that it’s a fantasy retelling a mythic idea that’s permeated storytelling since the beginning of time. The story and the dialogue are really incidental; the iconic figures and the surreal nature of the space fantasy world are merely the window-dressing.

Is Star Wars an important film? Absolutely. But I suspect that many adults at the time of its release feel the same way I feel about Avatar, which is also an important film – it’s good enough entertainment, but it’s not as new or exciting as its fans would have you believe.

I’m sure some Star Wars fans will take issue with my honest appraisal of their sacred cow. Comment all you like below!

[Journal] Dog Fostering

Hunter at the pound.

On Friday, my wife and I became foster parents.

For a dog.

The story’s a sad one. Hunter is a 3 year old beagle who was dropped off at a Missouri animal shelter because the family was moving and couldn’t keep him. He’s housebroken and seems to be trained to respond to some commands, and the family claimed his shots were up to date. But for whatever reason, they decided to drop him off at an animal control facility the way one would drop off a bag of old clothes at Goodwill. The poor dog, who is sweet and friendly and adorable, was slated to be put down if he couldn’t be adopted out within a few days.

I found out about the dog through St. Louis Pet Rescue and, braving snow and ice on a Friday afternoon, drove out to the shelter to pick him up myself.

I’m so aggravated that this even needed to happen, because it says something about how people in our society treat their pets. I love my pets, and I probably spoil them a little, but I try to make them happy because they make me happy. I can’t imagine life without them, and I tear up at the thought of Ramses or Oscar passing away. So, for someone to be so cold and callous about their pet is alien to me. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have at least found him a home, or contacted a rescue organization. He’s a purebred beagle, for crying out loud. People pay hundreds of dollars for them at the pet store. (The sale of dogs at the pet store is another gripe, but we’ll save that for another time.) Instead, they simply said, “we can’t handle this dog any more, so we’ll turn him over to the authorities.” That’s just loathsome. They took a creature that loved them deeply and they discarded him because it was too much trouble to make sure he was properly taken care of.

The Animal Control facility people are frank: they destroy dogs after a few days. They have to. They don’t have the space or the funding or the ability to keep these dogs, and they are reliant on rescue organizations to come in and bring the dogs off death row. It’s an ugly situation. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that every year, 6 to 8 million dogs and cats are brought to shelters, and of those, around 4 million are put down. Think about that for a moment. 4 million. Where I live, in St. Louis, there aren’t even 4 million people in the area. 4 million is a number that should boggle the mind. 4 million would be genocide if it involved people instead of pets.

People often ask me why I get so upset about animals when I should be caring about people who have problems. My answer is that the way we treat animals reveals much about who we are and what we stand for. If we are kind to animals and have compassion for them, we are typically kind to people as well. If we are cruel to animals or callous to their needs, we are typically selfish when it comes to assisting others. I think this proverb sums it up best:

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal,
but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10, NIV Bible)

Proverbs are meant to be chewed on and digested. What this one says is that when a person is good, he or she cares for the needs of an animal because that is what good people do. But when a person is wicked (or, by extension, selfish), no matter how much he or she tries to be kind, the action is cruel because the person is acting out of ill-intent and self-preservation. A good person bears good fruit; a bad person is poisonous.

Hunter is so much happier now that he's in foster care!

I don’t know if the people who abandoned Hunter are bad people. But I will say that they are ignorant and short-sighted at best and very likely callous and selfish. They don’t deserve a dog like him. All he tried to do was love them. But they couldn’t plan their future with him in mind.

Fortunately, he is fine now, and sleeping behind me in his crate. He’s a little upset that he can’t be around me all the time, or that he has to compete with my dogs for dominance. But he’s alive, he’s enjoying life, and he’s going to find his way to a family that will love him. I think it’s a big deal, because all of the humans involved in this story are going to learn so much more about compassion than they would have otherwise. And so many more will hear Hunter’s story (or the story of other foster dogs after him) and perhaps consider fostering some pups of their own.

As a final note, I was searching for Hunter’s new profile on Petfinder and came across another beagle named Hunter who was adopted out of the Madison County Humane Society only to be brought back a few months later because he kept getting out of his new owner’s fence. This Hunter was an 8-month-0ld puppy when he was adopted out, and full of energy. Perhaps the owner should have tried walking him more often instead of relying on a fence, or putting in one of the many fencing options that are designed with dogs in mind. Instead, the owner dumped him off at the Humane Society like a piece of returned merchandise. What a tragic world we live in, when the life of a loving canine companion can be tossed aside so callously for want of a better fence.

[Journal] The Sort of Story I Want To Tell

I’ve been reflecting, following the Lost premiere last night, about why some stories are so captivating while others are so forgettable. Lost is just one of a series of stories that have managed to build up an impressive following despite being complex and different. In the 1990s, The X-Files experienced a similar phenomenon. I’ve also realized that the Harry Potter books, the first Matrix film, the first season of Twin Peaks and even the original Star Wars trilogy have managed to achieve similar success.

But what is it about these stories that has made them so popular? It boils down to the following common elements:

1) The presence of an overpowering element. In Lost, it’s the frustration of trying to get off an island populated by seemingly evil forces. In Star Wars, it’s the evil galactic empire and the dark side of the Force. In The Matrix, it’s the presence of the enslaving machines. In The X-Files, it’s the government. In Harry Potter, it’s Voldemort. All of these stories have not just a great villain, but a real sense that this villain (or evil power) cannot be defeated without great perseverance.

2) Everyman heroes. In each of these stories, the heroes are just normal people who are trying to stand up against a great force. By persevering, these heroes can achieve some sort of power (or knowledge), but they are never strong enough, on their own, to defeat the evil power entirely. These heroes also tend to be morally good, though that is not necessarily a requirement.

3) A secret world. Even in a fantasy world (such as the fantasy galaxy of Star Wars), some secret sub-world must exist. In Lost, the secret world revolves around the cult of the Island. In Star Wars, it revolves around the Jedi and Sith. In The X-Files, it revolves around those who have some knowledge of “truth”. In The Matrix, it revolves around hackers who are jacked out of the central network. The sub-world is what the story is able to use to not only reveal key elements of the story, but also what the story uses to elevate the heroes above their everyman status.

4) Unknown story elements that result in mystery. These might be secrets that are being intentionally kept from the characters, or they might be knowledge of the villain’s motivation, the nature of the evil force, or the true power of the secret world. Revealing these secrets must be done in a careful, metered way, though the longer the mystery exists, the more effective it will be at keeping the reader hooked.

5) Plot twists that change the audience’s perception of the story. Plot twists, when employed correctly, can give a story new life. Lost has been notable in that it has introduced plot twists in every season that have changed the very nature of the show. The original Star Wars trilogy offered one major plot twist per episode that changed the face of how the characters would react: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, the revelation that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker, and the revelation that Luke was fighting not just for his noble cause, but also to protect his secret sister. The X-Files had plot twists that would confirm Mulder and Scully’s quest, only to frustrate them even more when the evidence vanished. The audience was left with a deeper understanding of the story while the characters were bolstered in their attempts to uncover the truth.

6) A very deliberate structure that never allows the heroes to triumph until the very end. This is, perhaps, the most important aspect of telling this sort of story, and it’s actually the reason why the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the two Matrix sequels and the second season of Twin Peaks and the resulting movie weren’t able to achieve the same sort of success as their predecessors.

The structure is very similar to what you see in the original Star Wars trilogy, and it can be remembered by considering the titles of the film. The first film, Star Wars: A New Hope introduces the element of conflict with some glimmer of optimism. The second film, The Empire Strikes Back, results in the overpowering force defeating the heroes and preventing them from prevailing. The final film, The Return of the Jedi, puts the heroes in a last-ditch effort to overcome incredible odds so that they can finally defeat the villain and the evil power behind him.

Now, look at the prequel trilogy and you can see how this structure was employed incorrectly. The first film was titled The Phantom Menace, indicating that the evil power had yet to become overpowering or dangerous. The second film was titled Attack of the Clones, but the third was titled Revenge of the Sith. The conflict of these two films should have been reversed. George Lucas would have been much better off to ditch the first film, begin the new series in the midst of the Clone Wars, have the Sith return and overpower the Republic in the second episode, and then be defeated by the tragic figure of the ends-justify-the-means Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader in the process of putting the evil Palpatine (himself a Sith) in greater power.

The Matrix told its story incorrectly as well. The correct structure would have been to kill Neo at the end of the second film and then have him return in the third with a greater knowledge of who he was, allowing the humans and machines to fight the greater menace of Agent Smith. Instead, the second Matrix film decided to info-dump the audience and remove the magic of the story with a bewildering scene that gave answers no one was ready to hear.

Even Lost, which has managed to string its story along so well, has struggled with story arcs that waste characters and provide unneeded information. Charlie, a fan favorite, is probably one of the most wasted characters in the series. He was made into a pseudo-villain during the second season, and then killed off in a meaningless sacrifice in the third. Other characters, such as Sayid, were changed later in the series in the name of plot twists, but these twists were neither necessary nor appealing to most viewers.

Anyhow, the story with the elements above — that is the sort of story I want to write. Three times, to be precise — on three different projects I’ve been working on. Now that I’ve been able to identify these elements, I think I’m in much better shape to incorporate them. The next step is to work on my revisions.

[Journal] Why It’s Hard For People To Change

I’ve spent the better part of the last year talking about all the ways I want to change. I want to exercise more, to eat better, to accomplish the things I do want to do and to stop wasting so much time with filler activities like messing around online or playing video games.

Unfortunately, I’ve gotten so used to TELLING myself what I want to do that I’m having a hard time getting started now that I’ve run out of excuses.

I think a big part of the problem is momentum — as Newton told us, and I’m paraphrasing, objects in motion tend to stay in motion, while objects at rest tend to sit around and feel their butts grow bigger. It’s really easy to make changes if you get some momentum behind changing your life. But it’s really hard to do it when you’re starting from nothing. Getting that first shove so you’re in motion is difficult, and it requires a major force (either through your own willpower or some life event) to make the change start to occur.

Another problem comes in the form of habits. We develop habits because they help us to sort of hardwire our behavior into our brains — to allow us to think less and go on autopilot more. Unfortunately, some habits aren’t very good for us, and some activities we get involved in are actually bad habits. But it’s hard to change a habit. I’ve been trying to ditch the fingernail biting for years with no luck. I don’t like chewing on my fingernails, but I think, deep down, that I’m comfortable with it. It’s hard for me to change because I find some comfort in knowing that it’s my way, even if it’s not a particularly GOOD way.

So, what I need to do are the following things:
1) Get some momentum going behind the areas where I do want to change.
2) Understand that if I want to change habits in my life, I have to do so by rejecting the hardwired response and building new pathways instead.
3) Stop being complacent about being comfortable with “my ways”.

-SJJ

[Journal] My 5-Car Pileup

Photo Credit: Markybon (Flickr.com)

Note: This is a non-fiction entry in my personal journal.

It was after an exceedingly stressful day that I was in a 5-car pileup on the Interstate. A pickup truck in front of me hit the brakes suddenly, and then I hit mine. And then, the lady behind me hit me, and the two cars behind her hit each other and then her, pushing me into the truck in front of me. 5 cars, stuck in a domino effect. Every one of us unable to prevent the accident from occurring.

My description makes it sound a lot worse than it really was, of course — no one was hurt, do real damage was done, and the whole thing wound up being a big inconvenience to everyone involved. One of the guys was even annoyed that I called the cops since it was going to take a chunk out of his evening. But isn’t it wonderful that we could all be in a 5-car pileup and be annoyed that the paperwork was taking too long?

Here are some of the many things that could have made the accident much more serious, and potentially fatal to some of us.
1) A semi could have been involved.
2) Someone could have hit their accelerator instead of their brakes out of panic.
3) The roads could have been icy or wet, resulting in less traction.
4) The accident could have spilled over into another lane.
5) It could have happened at a much greater speed.
6) It could have happened a quarter mile earlier while we were still on the curve of a bridge.
7) Someone could have not been wearing a seatbelt and been more seriously injured.

And so on, and so on.

But nope. Hardly any damage, either to ourselves or collaterally. We all lived to be annoyed. I’d call that the best car accident I could ever hope to be in.

Let’s hope the next one is just as easy.

-SJJ

Change is Coming…

Once again, I find myself looking at my Web site and asking myself, “Why do I have this again?” My dream of keeping daily articles on this site continues to fall through the moment I lose interest in whatever new scheme I’ve set up for updating, and I honestly am too busy with my upcoming marketing blog (for my new job) to keep this updated with fresh content that interests me.

I have, however, decided that I need to start “scrap writing” every day as an exercise. Scrap writing is a lot like flash fiction — you just sit down for a few minutes, write a story of less than 1,000 words, and go with it. You don’t spend a lot of time editing or developing it – you just write what you are feeling at the moment. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but it doesn’t really bug me if they don’t; I came up with this idea, as I come up with so many other good ideas, when I was taking a shower.

So, starting January 1st, I’m going to alter the design of this site a bit, take down most of the links to old articles, and begin posting writing scraps every day. I will occasionally intersperse these with journal articles or items of interest, but fiction (or occasionally, non-fiction!)  is going to be what I put up from here on out.

So, to those who have enjoyed my articles, thanks, and to those who are simply friends with me and who wonder what I’m up to, send me an e-mail or find me on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: Marketers Re: Twitter

To: Marketers
Re: Twitter

Here's a simple analogy. Say you want to study the ocean. Do you go to a popular beach and draw all your conclusions from the scene there, or do you take the time to get a boat and some SCUBA gear and go searching for the big fish?

Look, I know you’re excited. Really, truly, I do.

But for the love of God, please stop trying to convince me that Twitter is the be-all, end-all of marketing.

I’ve been watching Twitter for awhile, and honestly, I think it’s pretty limited in what it can do. You marketers keep telling me it’s great because you can study trends on it. You love that you can see real-time reactions to entertainment media or to big news. You love how easy it is to click on the “trending” tools and see what the biggest topics of the day are.

But what you don’t seem to understand is that Twitter is a social network largely used by vapid, know-nothing attention whores who want to make every aspect of their lives known. Think about this for a moment. If you use Twitter, everything you post is available to anyone who wants to see it. Since you’re restricted to 140 characters, you can only really give the cursory details of your life. Twitter encourages stalking people by “following” them, and it discourages real communication by making it difficult to offer more than a surface reaction to the topic of the day.

I understand that many of you in the marketing world fall into this mold, so you don’t see anything wrong with it. But trust me. Twitter is the most superficial social network there is. It has its uses, but trying to draw any meaningful conclusions from it is ridiculous. It’s like going into a crowded room and trying to overhear how a bunch of people respond to the events of the hour. Sure, there are going to be common threads, but it’s all just a lot of noise.

Do you want to know how Twitter should be used for marketing? 21st century marketing is about having a relationship with your customers. If you want to use Twitter for your ad campaign or your customer retention strategy, you need to use it to encourage a dialogue. Twitter can be very useful as a portal to much deeper, more meaningful content and interactions. You can use it as a means to begin a conversation with people who just want a quick response to whatever their question or issue is.

But all this nonsense about building ad campaigns based on the views of the Twitterati, or testing product designs on Twitter, or any of the other nonsense I hear about every month in the various marketing publications I read? You guys are setting yourselves up for failure, and while you might seem trendy and cutting-edge now, you’re going to look like idiots when this whole Twitter thing gives way to some other trend.

I understand that you’re young and you’re bored and you want to do something exciting, but focus that energy on building a better marketing strategy that’s based on solid marketing research. It might not be glamorous, but it’s going to benefit you down the road when you want to manage a division instead of a bunch of mindless morons twittering banalities at you.

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: That Guy Who Cut Me Off To Get One Car Ahead Today

To: That Guy Who Cut Me Off To Get One Car Ahead Today
Re: Musings

There we were, driving down a single lane road on the way to the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. I was keeping up with traffic, and there was barely a car’s worth of space between me and the car ahead. We were just an intersection away from a 2-lane road. There were no traffic jams or problems to contend with.

And yet for some reason, you decided to gun around me and move up a single spot.

I realize you’re probably in a hurry. It was the noon hour, and maybe you were running late getting back from your break. That’s fine. But did you have to be so ridiculously inconsiderate? Did you have to nearly cause an accident? Had you known that I was running a fever today, and doped up on cold and sinus medicine, would you have taken such a stupid risk?

Let me tell you something about cutting people off — don’t do it to people who are driving crummy cars. My car is a compact. It has rust spots around the back wheel-wells. It’s dirty. You were driving a nice, new-looking SUV. If I hit it, I wouldn’t do much damage. But the accident would total my car, because it’s built to crunch. Yes, I’m insured, but not for very much. I don’t have a lot to lose here. You, on the other hand, could find yourself with a messed-up bumper that might take you months to get fixed while you wait on your claim to get paid out. Guys in crummy cars don’t typically have very prompt insurance.

It must have escaped you that this took place in East St. Louis, where people are even less likely to have insurance than usual. You could take them to court, but they don’t have any assets to seize. It’s not smart to have a close call in East St. Louis. You’ll almost always walk away a loser.

It must have also escaped you that we were right next to the police station. Any accident we had would have generated immediate response. I assume from your driving that you’re hotheaded and stupid. Do you think the police would find me at fault for being unable to stop when you gunned around me like an idiot? They deal with enough idiots down there. They wouldn’t suffer your bad attitude for too long before writing you a ticket.

So, in closing, you’re an idiot, karma’s eventually going to pay you back for being a jerk, and next time, please be a little more careful to actually hit my car. I wouldn’t mind totaling it out and getting something nicer. You’d be doing me a favor.

-SJJ

[Open Letters] To: Sony Re: PSP Go

To: Sony

Not as cool as a newer, better PSP would be...

Re: PSPGo

Ah, Sony.

When the PSP came out in 2005, I was one of the people who jumped right on it. I couldn’t help myself. The system was beautiful, and it had some really cool games that made my GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS games look like toys. To this day, I’ve been a PSP booster.

But the PSP Go baffles me. It’s a little smaller than the PSP-3000, and it looks kind of cool. But why would I ever need this device if I’ve already got a perfectly good PSP? It doesn’t do anything different. It has fewer features than the PSP I’ve already got, and it can’t play any of the games I already own. Its control scheme looks like it would cause my hands to cramp up. And, most important of all, it’s about $80 more than I’d spend if I replaced my original PSP-1000 system with one of those shiny new PSP-3000 models. $250, for a system with fewer features than the one I’ve already got? You have got to be kidding me, Sony.

Clearly, your marketing team was asleep during their marketing strategy classes, because the whole concept of the PSP Go is flawed. You want to repackage a 4-year-old handheld and sell it as geek chic. But in doing so, you’ve made it incredibly impractical to own. It’s a device that relies on digital downloads to play games… and yet it can only download on the wifi 802.11b standard, which ensures slow download speeds. Hrm. You’ve only made about 100 games available for download, and yet you’ve missed many obvious titles, such as Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Lumines and Metal Gear: Portable Ops. Hrm again. The games are being sold at full retail with no associated bonuses, which means that they’re going to be more expensive than their used counterparts. Hrm once more. Did you marketing team sleep their way through economics as well, somehow concluding that during a recession, people spend more money on items than they might otherwise?

What really galls me is that you put out a press release this week announcing that hardware sales for the PSP are up 300%. What that really means is that you’ve shipped out new hardware to retailers for the Christmas rush. It has nothing to do with what consumers are buying. You want people to think that the PSP Go is the must-have item right now. Maybe a few will fall for it. But I have yet to see a line for PSP Go hardware forming at any stores I’ve been in. The guys and girls at my local store are telling me that no one’s very interested. Why should they be? It’s like taking a McDonalds happy meal, putting it on a fancy plate, charging a dollar extra for the presentation and then slapping on an extra fee for the toy, soda and fries. The happy meal was fine the way it was. There’s no reason to try to make it into something better.

Speaking of which, where’s the PSP upgrade that consumers really want — the one with two analog sticks, four shoulder buttons, and switchable faceplates? The one that can use 802.11g and that has a kicking web browser. The one that has a battery that lasts more than a few hours, and that can play downloadable PS2 games? I’d pay $250 for that system, even if you stripped out the UMD drive and vulnerabilities to homebrew. And if I could use it to access PSN Home and to stream the videos on my PS3 over the Internet and I could hook it into my TV like I can with the PSP-3000, then yeah, I might even pay more.

All I can conclude is that you aren’t listening and don’t care what I have to say. That’s fine, Sony — you’ve always been too cool to let your customers push you around. But you’re going to pay the price for that as the years go by. In the 21st century, the most dangerous move you can make as a company is to treat your customers like they’re not important.

You’re lucky I love my PS3 so much. At least you’ve finally got yourselves straight where that console is concerned. Too bad you had to lose so much ground to Microsoft while you skimmed the market with a ridiculous price point and lackluster software. You might recover during this generation, but you’ve made yourself vulnerable, Sony… and it’s going to be hard for you to keep things up when the next generation of consoles is due and you’re still trying to pay off all the money you sunk into blowing the PS3 launch.

Good luck. You’re going to need it.

-Sean J. Jordan