Sod it..... Lets Get Morbid!

I didn't know Annie Woolf at all bar what she presented to us on her blog.

Don't get angry about this but it's like a celebrity such as Princess Diana dying (I hope Anna is chuckling away wondering where this analogy leads). We saw Diana from afar - more in publications and perhaps TV than anything. Few got to meet her. Fewer still got to speak with her. And yet when she was killed, we were affected. We felt connected by the fact that we saw something in her that we had in common. I'm not sure what it was - she seemed a most singular woman to me - yet she never failed to make an impact.

Annie Woolf has managed to achieve a bit of that as well.

I learned of her death by the blogosphere. That nebulous mass of people who, somehow believe, that people want to read what they write. Or write for the hell of it. Or any manner of reason. And that is the thing that I had in common with her.

Her life (and death) are worlds away from mine. Apart from some basic trivialities such as we are currently living in New Zealand and English appears to be our first language (after a few drinks, I suspect it becomes my fifth!), we had little else in common.

Now she has died and the only thing that strikes me is: today Anna died and someday I will die too. People have been busy leaving messages and posts about Anna on Not PC's site. Predictably, the mood is sombre and reflective. Sad that Anna has gone and the common thread is missing a stitch.

Today wasn't an everyday occurrence. And suddenly we all feel a wee bit vulnerable. Cause the other thing we have in common is going to happen too. You know, the "D" thing. Bugger. On the flip side, though, probably not today.

And that is Anna's legacy to us. For over a year, she shared with us what was happening to her all the while  still railing against the same things we, as bloggers, do: life, love, politics and bad food. All  said with grace, charm and delicious wit and all the while adding her comments on her Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma like it was a normal everyday occurrence.

But thats the point. Anna talked about it in the midst of strident comment and invective thrown around at Kiwiblog or prickly, acid commentary at Cactus Kate. Ranting madness at Whoar or barracking over at the Standard. All the things we bloggers go on about. All the while someone was dying.

Anna's death binds our community. This is a good thing. Like Diana's death perhaps. I know all the bloggers at the Cavalier tonight are finding out that we have more in common than an internet connection and a willingness to expose our thoughts.

So next time bloggers you're about to go ape on someone that has annoyed you or are about to get personal, take a moment to think about Anna Woolf. Someone who was facing the biggest and baddest challenge that all of us will face. Remember her grace and style in the face of the fact that she wouldn't be writing her blog the next day. Then remember how lucky you are to have the opportunity to do what we do.

I'm back!

After an enforced holiday due to technical complications (no Mum, I wasn't a guest of Her Majesty), I finally have access again.

Being without blog has been like sufferring oxygen deprivation - one is strangely lightheaded while the world revolves at twice the speed.

Anyhow, nice to be back.

A Change is as Good as a Holiday

I have been experimenting a wee bit with layout and in an effort to clean things up have come out with a new template. Please tell me if you like it by leaving a comment.

Using the Blogger templates has been great however getting the subtleties of HTML is taking a little longer.

Best Post of the Week!

LaughyKate posts here the best (IMHO) post of the week.

God kiwi's do understatment well.

On a More Serious Note.....

Clarke Gayford (you may remember him from such shows as Getaway and C4) is up for the Best Job in The World competition as the caretaker for the islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Having seen his video application, young Clarke stands up well against the competition but needs our vote to help ensure success.

It would be good to see the local boy beat the rest of the world (check out some the other applicant vids) however he has some pretty stiff competition. One girl, from Taiwan has over 130,000 votes! Clarke has 2400.

So, let's get behind the Kiwi, and help him kick the crap out of the opposition. Click here to vote.

Perception is Everything

Cactus Kate breaks a great story here about Diagnostic Medlab's attempt to pervert the law through the manipulation of the media and, therefore, us.

Not living in the mighty Auck would probably lead to some saying "well what do you care". And to a point they may be right. However it is a wonderful example of how corporations try to sway natural justice through artificial means to the point where what has actually occurred - what is real - is not the point. These people are trying for an outcome through duplicitous means. I.e they are bullshitting. Some might call it marketing.

The same goes for Real Estate agents. These people are the masters of perception over reality. "We paint pictures with words" you may hear them say or "We accentuate the positive". This is actually funny because this accentuation (if there is such a word and I guess there is now - I just made it up) can be so good that the current occupiers may not know how good it is. If in fact everything that the agent said was true about the house they are selling, 50% of vendors wouldn't shift at all! There would be delights to their section that they had never experienced.

For example:

"Wonderful Harbour Views" translates as "If I stand on tip-toes, I can see a square inch of the Harbour Bridge out the window of the back toilet".

or

"Gracious Family Living" translates as "A korean family with 6 kids , 2 dogs and an elderly relative once stayed here".

So while, in the most minutest way, the claims may be true, reality is dwarfed by perception. And this is it - the point of the post. A leading auction house and realty company has for it's slogan "Marketing is Everything".

These days the most trivial of things are marketed to us. Our news is tailored for us on the basis of demographic, whose got the most upright male anchor and which female anchor may be justly inheriting the title "Mother of a Nation" (though lets face it - no one could replace Judy Bailey). Even that most well worn of media cliches "If it bleeds, it leads" still holds true.

Even our government feels the need to be branded which is another form of marketing. Have you ever noticed that at the bottom of ads detailing public services, there is an icon (sorry - logo) that says New Zealand Government with a very swept up and groovy swoosh through the font. No doubt, armies of media consultants, visual artists and graphic designers were paid extraordinary amounts of money to come up with that wee pearler of originality. It's even an example of how perception becomes a self sustaining industry.

That same industry will argue that, in todays busy world, even the smallest and meekest of organisations need to fight for our attention and therefore marketing is needful. They may be right. However there is something oh so cynical at work when we need to be marketed to for even the basest of goods and services.

And when the marketing comes from a company, like Diagnostic Medlab, for the purposes of profit - not from a genuine commercial point of view, rather a "we cocked up and we are going to lose everything, Lets screw the New Zealand justice system" angle, well we live in troubled times then if we let perception become our reality.

Well done Kate for being the NZ blogosphere's version of Kevin Milne and Fair Go (although, I hazard to guess, a damn sight more attractive than Kevin).

Satisfied

unPC (How do I start a new sentence when the proper noun of whom I'm talking about is in lower case? I feel slightly dirty) has read my blog....... well bits of it.

unPC publishes her own blog here which I have admired for sometime for to it's witty prose, style and bare-faced honesty (or bare-faced lying passing as bare-faced honesty - I can never tell which is which). She is also read by a great many people through the blogosphere who have blogs of their own.

And she had nice things to say about it - at least the two sentences she has read so far. So to say that I am satisfied in my progress towards my goal of global literary domination would be true!

Read unPC. You will laugh. I did.