1. Thou must Go for It
2. Thou must have low cholesterol
3. Thou must avoid the Bottom Line
4. Thou must be a STAKEHOLDER
5. Thou must Think Outside the Square
6. Thou must not have cellulite, wrinkles or unwanted body hair
7. Thou must accuse others of not living in the Real World
8. Thou must wear the new black
9. Thou must get a life
10. Thou must have a nice day
Subclause 1: Thou must be a living cliché.
Subclause 2: Thou musteth use ‘musteth’ but it’s too hard to say.
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Political slogans that harness the power of metaphors can manipulate us emotionally without actually delivering a single workable policy.
That ‘ladder of opportunity’ doesn’t go anywhere, but you cannot argue with a metaphor. They do not exist in the real world.
Here are some campaign classics:
1992 Bill Clinton: Putting People First (What did previous governments do? Put gophers first.)
1996 Bill Clinton: Building a Bridge to the 21st Century (A bridge to a different century!)
2012 Barrack Obama: Forward (NO! I wanna vote for the party that can turn back time.)
Vagueness Award:
1976 Jimmy Carter: Not Just Peanuts.
1996 Tony Blair: The Third Way (So, ah, let’s try Plan C this time.)
2001 John Howard: Keeping Australia in Safe Hands (Sounds ticklish to me)
2007 John Howard: Go for Growth (Or, ah, would you rather Go for Shrinkage?)
Only a new metaphor can kill off the old one. The metaphor I want to kill contributed to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis namely:
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If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
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This is propaganda put out by the monkeys to get more peanuts. If the monkeys in the financial sector were worth their peanuts, there wouldn’t have been a Global Financial Crisis. For many of these monkeys, grabbing their up-sized share of the peanuts was their only concern.
We need a new metaphor to kill the idea that the ‘peanuts’ are the only measure of a good manager. How about this?
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If you pay a King’s Ransom, you just get thieves.
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Here are some of the popular videos from my recent book launch:
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Why we should be aware of the corporatisation of healthcare:
Healer of Hustler:
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I am the joint-pain when you wake
I am the fog that’s in your head
I am every little twinge and ache
I am that which you most dread
I am the toxins in your veins
I am the cough you can’t hold back
I am the mole that looks quite grim
I am your inner hypochondriac!
Kerry Cue, Forgotten Wisdom (2007)
When a friend returned from an overseas trip recently he told a story about travelling with his elderly mother in America. Filling out the immigration forms on the plane he said, flippantly, to his mother ‘Don’t worry about it. Just make sure you’ve ticked every box’. She did. It must have caused considerable excitement among the US immigration officials to come across a form where someone had answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State?’ She also had a criminal record and a communicable disease. She procured for prostitution and was a drug addict. Needless to say, immigration officials were very interested in interviewing to her.
After some argy-bargy the immigration officials were finally convinced that she was not a criminal, drug-addicted, terrorist pimp, but a dithery, short-sighted elderly woman. So they let her into America. So there it is my friends. Be careful filling out those official forms. But if all else fails, claim you are a ‘short-sighted terrorist’.
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Conformity is the mill that forms each of us to fit society’s needs.
……………….But beware of its relentless milling.
For conformity can take the wild beauty of a tree
and turn it into a lamppost
Kerry Cue, Forgotten Wisdom (2007)
Let me step you through the
Brief History of How Digital Devices Came to Rule the World.
…….is the year The Wiggles released their second CD. The same year the first text message was sent. Humans revert to baby talk. Soz i wz l8. No wuz. c u @ 4. Humans stop laughing and start typing lol.
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…. is the year the first Harry Potter book is published. That year Google begins. Humans stop asking each other questions and start Googling the answers. Human memory banks begin a rapid decline.
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….is the year terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York. The same year Wikipedia begins. Once Bob Dylan sang ‘The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.’ Now the answer, my friend, is now on Wikipedia. All human knowledge is stored there. Humans are no longer the guardians of human knowledge.
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….is the year Janet Jackson has a serious costume malfunction during the US Super Bowl. It seems ridiculous defining a year by Janet Jackson’s nipple, but that was the year Facebook begins. Janet Jackson’s nipple set the tone for Facebook gossip. Humans become obsessed with the trivia of celebrities and their own lives.
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…. is the year hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans with tragic loss of life. That same year You Tube begins thus missing a perfect flood of horrific on-the-spot videos. Humans now spend significant amounts of time watching other humans being dumb.
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…. is the year the Bird Flu scare hits world headlines. Deaths follow. Appropriately, Twitter begins the same year. Humans start bitching, whining and abusing each other in 140 characters, a number that exceeds our collective IQ.
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…. is the year the final Harry Potter book is published. That same year the first iPhone hits the market. From now on a bell will ring every 10 seconds in Silicon Valley and a new smaller, faster, cooler and more devious device will be invented making your current phone look like a giant Lego brick.
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…. is the year Obama is elected to office. That same year the first App store opens. Apps now help you to lose weight, get pregnant, cook, navigate, accessorise, make all life decisions. Humanity will soon be controlled by Apps.
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…. is the year Julia Gillard becomes the Prime Minister. That year the first iPad hits the shops. Smart phones and tablet computers are now the portals to life. Humans cannot live without them.
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is the year Julia Gillard is sacked as Prime Minister. Do we care? Not really. A few grumbled. But let me put it this way. If they tried to take our iPhones away from us there’d be rioting in the street.
There is a rule that any official identification photograph taken of you shall be snapped at the very moment you appear, officially, to look like a shifty-eyed, drug-addled whacko. Ditto most passport photos, work IDs and driving license pics. Why doesn’t it worry employers that their in-house work IDs suggest their staff should be on the methadone program.
In my passport photo I look like Australia’s Most Wanted Werewolf Crack-Addict. But I am not the only travelling Werewolf in the world. My favourite story from the Evening Mail in Scotland told of journalist John Louvet, who was stopped by Police at the Austrian border. He admitted that he had been travelling through Europe with a snap of his neighbour’s cocker spaniel ‘Chummy’ as his passport photograph.
A police spokesman said ‘It was a very good likeness.’
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MeLand: 10 Ways Self-Obsession Makes You Stupid
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MeLand: 10 Ways Self-Obsession Makes You Stupid
kerrycue 