364 Days Left

364 days left. Creatine fizzing in a bottle. Caffeine entering bloodstream. Kitty chomping Meow Mix (I didn’t have time to get him his usual Sciene Diet so he has to deal with the travesty of food from White Hen).

How much time each year do you spend in virtual worlds? If you add up the hours I spent watching the Lord of the RIngs trilogy or The SImpsons or Seinfeld or 24 or Lost… any length of time spent in a fictional universe… how many days is that? I know these alternate places as well as I know my own neighborhood. My primate brain gleefully delights in the repetition of ‘He took it out.’ or ‘I come to you now at the turning of the tide.’ or ‘You’re not fit to be the first lady.’

Do you ever wonder what would happen if Karl Rove’s tactics were used for good in this world? What if we used those kind of marketing methods to launch tranforming social programs. Does all politics marketing boil down to fear? Are we past the use of hope in American politics? Where voters aren’t motivated by an ideal future but by a future nightmare? Karl Rove has expertly leveraged homophobia again and again to motivate the conservative voters… but phobia has to be used to motivate liberal/progressive voters? To break through the noise, do you have to market to a phobia or a fear? Fear motivates better urgency. Can hope motivate similar urgency? I know that ‘hope is a not a strategy,’ but it can be a commodity. Oprah seems to do well with hope but often immerses in fear to sell a promo.

All marketing boils down to three needs: more time, more money or look better. That last one can apply through so many spheres: look sexier, stronger, more patriotic, more pious – attractive in every possible way. How can you market more taxes without turning people off? If people vote for who they wish to be (not who they are) then how do you leverage that over and over again. I think I’d be good in politics because I’m from the midwest – there’s no possible way I could be an east coast intellectual. I went to a public school so there’s no way I could be an Ivy League elitist. The liberal arts degree would probably throw them and my years doing theatre might be considered a trifling prospect but that was in my ‘young and reckless days’ right? Of couse, the gaiety would be a great way to campaign against me, that I’m trying to advance the homosexual agenda. I was raised by public school teachers – with a stay-at-home mom – so I can’t be seen as a trust fund baby.