October 10, 2008 • 9:28 am
Apparently, Borders is privy to the end of the world. In music and movies, at any rate. They’ve just announced The Top 50 Music and Movies of All Time. Never mind the questionable grammar of the title, spare a thought for their marketing department. Where do you go after this? The five books to read in heaven? Perhaps we’ll see a return to Egyptian burial rites, with people being burried with their favourites cds, dvds, and books. Penguin aren’t much better with their return to the genesis of the paperback. There is something about consumer capitalism that gives you the feeling that you are at the end of the world. At any rate, booksellers and publishers are in that headspace right now. Can you not feel the doom gathering? The black clouds of crisis are hanging over the book industry, and they know it. They are pulling out all the stops they can – (by the by, how is it that an organ (of all instruments) metaphor is so prominent?) – to stave off the apparently inevitable.
Anywho, here are Borders top 5 in albums and movies:
Albums: Thriller – Michael Jackson; Grace – Jeff Buckley; The Joshua Tree – U2; Darkside of the Moon – Pink Floyd; Rush of Blood to the Head – Coldplay
Movies: Amelie; The Lord of the Rings; Love Actually; Star Wars; Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The album top five is acceptable, (but Coldplay? The Beatles came 6 and 7 with Seargent Pepper’s and Abbey Road). But the movies…. Love Actually?!? (There might also be protest over the presence of trilogies being a trifle unfair).
See the two lists here.
Filed under: books, cinema, eschatology, hilarious, literature, madness, marketing , books, Borders, Crisis, Lists, marketing, movies, music, Penguin, Publishing, Stupidity, Top 50 of All Time
My two cents. Read this this morning, reporting that almost 80% of voters would like the government to actively cut petrol prices. The sample wasn’t that big, and who knows where it was taken from – but really, do they think that will change anything?
Pricing doesn’t work on the cost price of goods. It works on what the market will pay – and people are still paying for petrol. Any cut in excise and the market price will gradually grow to what it has been… and keep growing.
I’m sure that people’s wallets might be feeling the pinch, but as long as we have 100’s of DVD’s on our shelves, flat screen televisions on our walls and up-to-date wardrobes, then there is still room to move. Time to start adjusting our lives to living with high petrol prices. Walking more, using public transport more, and shopping close to home. Car pool. Ride a bike. Grow your own food. Defer your wish for indulgence, live in a simpler fashion, take the time to enjoy the basic things of life that require no petrol. You might find high petrol prices don’t hurt so much after all.
One last thought: Why do we insist on seeing the various governments of our country as so many older brothers or fathers who will get us out of a fix? This sees the role of government as being to maintain my standard of living, thankyou very much. Can we not act, adapt and change regardless of their position? Do you need a car? Do you need to own a house or apartment? Why is it the government’s responsibility to do something about this? Instead, can we not revise our own expectations?
Sorry for the rant, but I can’t believe that neither the SMH, nor whomever conducts the polling cannot imagine some more creative things to poll on. Of course people will answer yes to the question of ‘would you like to pay less for X?’.
Filed under: Politics, dribble, economics, experiences, green, madness, marketing, observations, random thoughts , Australian federal government, housing prices for that matter too, petrol prices, rant
Yesterday at work we attended a session conducted by one of our authors, Ken Hudson, from here, about generating ideas and problem solving.
Interestingly, his thinking, which is derived from studying corporations and the way that they solve problems, generate ideas and solutions and manage creativity, has an inherent kind of phenomenology. He begins with breaking down ‘a problem’ into how the problem appears to consciousness, and the problem itself. He then concentrates on working through different perspectives and adumbrations of this.
As part of this research, he tells us, most people fall into 3 different types of perspective. In fact, they are three different types of Star Trek character; Spock, Bones and Kirk. The rational, the empathetic, and the intuitive. The vast majority of these fall in Spock’s camp.
Not worrying about these so much, all of this raised an interesting point. While telling us that he thinks our business models over-emphasise the rational, and stifle creativity based on the other two approaches he prompted the following response: That reason and rationality has been developed to control our other sides. Strangely enough (or not, when you think about it)*, even in a discussion about business models – notoriously uninterested in waffly stuff – there is a fear that people need to be controlled, watched, guarded by reason. Not only that, that we feel we need to control ourselves, that we fear ourselves, we fear unreason, irrationality, madness.
Interesting place to end up in work training seminar.
*After all, the average cube-farm has more than the hint of a panopticon about it…
Filed under: madness, marketing, phenomenology, work
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