Two Reasons Coors Failed (and Carlsberg Didn’t)

Adweek rightly panned Coors’ recent and limp entry in the expanding ‘Prankvertising’ milieu – a piece so fake looking it will surely lure your inner troll out from under your inner bridge:

For me, there’s two big, and related, problems with the execution of this ad.

Not again: thoughts on theater shooting in Denver

Waking up to news of the overnight massacre in Denver gave me a feeling of acute nausea. Not again, I thought, reading early accounts of what must have been incomprehensible horror and chaos in a cinema where the largest mass shooting in US history took place.

As is always the case when news breaks of another US shooting spree, my initial reaction to the attack was a visceral one. I then began to logically justify my reaction with the arguments I’ve used countless times before against gun rights advocates – from the statistical correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths, to the empirical fact that people who like guns are stupid hicks with tiny dicks.

Invisible Children: haters gonna hate…but should they?

I’ve never seen a campaign so successfully balance hope and hate as #Kony2012 seems to be, and it’s easy to get swept up in #stopkony-mania. From the video to the website to the entire Invisible Children campaign, here’s something that’s easy to get on board with, right?

Maybe, but be careful before you go ordering your starter kit, because, as was inevitably going to be the case, some posts have surfaced, questioning everything from the effectiveness of the campaign to the ethics of Invisible Children. But haters gonna hate, so is there any point in listening to them?

If you have no clue what I’m on about, watch this video. It’s 30 minutes long, but well worth watching, because it’s beautifully made, and pretty interesting:

As of this morning, Kony 2012 has reached across the world to the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald website, been reviewed by Philip DeFranco, and “Invisible Children” and “Uganda” were trending worldwide on Twitter, so its safe to call it viral by now. Beyond viral, perhaps.

What a mess…

Yesterday I was giving an American friend a quick overview of recent Australian history in lieu of our current political shit storm, and I noticed that, in early-to-mid-2010, the story started to get messy and confusing. New characters had to come into it. Suddenly, alliances mattered. Powerbrokers had to exist where formerly some benign, invisible, democratic hand gave the people what they wanted. We went from a standard Hero’s Journey format to Game of Thrones. Or Boardwalk Empire. Or some other violent HBO show, without good guys and bad guys so much as a bunch of grubs with their eyes on the throne.

I’m starting to fear that, no matter who ends up winning Labor’s leadership spill, the story is likely to get a whole lot messier.

Ten signs that I’m getting old

I just pulled open the fridge to look for a snack, and the first thing I reached for was cottage cheese. After that moment of brief excitement you get when you know your teeth won’t be needed during snack time, I got struck by a thought I’ve been having quite a bit lately.

Shit…I’m getting old.

Defence against the dark arts of Latham and Palin – a strategy

Life is tough. To quote Dylan Moran:

“It’s not easy being a man! Oh no… I had to get dressed today… and there are other pressures.”

Today, unfortunately, those other pressures included exposure to Sarah Palin and Mark Latham. These things happen far too often.

Why our World Cup bid was Qatarded

What a disgrace.

No, I’m not talking about FIFA’s decision to host the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, though I’m sure my grand kids will be angry about it. I’m talking about the video pitch we made to the world on the eve of the announcement.

As John Huxley pointed out in the Herald, our miscalculation was a total embarrassment. To have our PM make a pitch which only netted us one vote leaves everyone involved red-faced. He further listed the qualities that ensure Qatar’s World Cup party will be pre-pooped: a population barely over a million living in the middle of a desert, with antediluvian attitudes towards women, homosexuals and adulterers, and barely a drop of booze to be found.

But it seems Australia has even less to offer when you look at our video pitch:

…what was I talking about?

I’m not sure when I realised I have the attention span of  goldfish. It may have been when I lost an argument with my girlfriend because I had to pause mid-rant and ask “what was I talking about?” It could have been when I started interning with community newspapers, and, disgusted to find the word counts expected of me were at most 300/article, struggled to achieve even this paltry total. Or maybe it could have been Friday when I realised that I’ve been reading Herman Hesse’s weighty, though not lengthy classic, Steppenwolf, since mid-September and I’m still only half-way through.

It isn’t that I’ve always been this way, not by any means. Only four years ago I would spend hours on end glued to a desk, intensely concentrating on unshiny, non-moving objects while studying for my HSC. So what happened?

Le tour de…..Timor

I wrote this piece for publication in the Dili Weekly, but recently found out it never ran. So rather than waste it, I’ve posted it below:

As the Tour de Timor finished in dramatic fashion on Friday morning, President Jose Ramos Horta and business leaders said the event would bring benefits beyond its five-day duration.

Steele von Hoff finished first in the final leg, but not by enough to claim the overall win

Speaking as the final cyclists were crossing the finish line outside the Presidential Palace, Mr Horta said the event will “create a lot of publicity overseas.”

“When tourists see [the coverage of the event] they will want to come to East Timor,” the President said.

Baucau’s it going?

Manatuto, half way between Dili and Baucau. Though the beach is gorgeous, locals don't swim here out of respect to victims of a horrific bush crash during Indonesian occupation.

Very well, thanks. Enjoying the stable internet connection in Timor’s second city, Baucau (pronunced bak-KOW!), running some media training for ICFJ. Having finished my second week here, the country is even more charming that it seemed at first. In my last post, I promised libelous allegations of corruption. Here’s one: