In the post-Christmas calm, I’m catching up on some reading – some new books I received as gifts and blogs, naturally! I loved Chris Brogan’s description of Twitter:

“Twitter is the stupidest thing anyone could ever imagine inventing. If I said to you, ‘I’ve got an application that I want you to install that is addictive, time consuming, cross-platform accessible, and otherwise as sprawling as kudzu,’ would you say yes? No. Of course not.”

Of course he goes on to say how much he uses it and how much it’s changed his 2007, adding “tons more connectivity” and given him experiences he didn’t have the year before.

But “as sprawling as kudzu.” I just love it!

As things wind down for a Christmas break, I thought I’d share with you an interesting quirk that seems to strike people good-hearted enough to post “found” ads. It’s the need almost so many of them have to name the foundling. And in this, the festive season, they are choosing festive names.

For example, my local paper’s last lost and found column had ads for 11 lost cats. Half describe the cat, and then say “We call Tinsel.” (Or in this issue’s column, Grinch, Frosty, Mrs. Claws or Sugar Plum). Now I ask you, how on earth is that going to help me know that you’ve found my cat? “Oh, they’re calling my all white male cat Tinsel, that must be my little Snowball!”

Well, whatever they are called, I hope they find their way home safely for Christmas and don’t run into any cars or coyotes. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Talk about down to the wire! Here it is, days until Christmas, and two projects that have been hanging over me for weeks – preventing me from sneaking out and getting my Christmas shopping done – are FINALLY done.

One was a summary of a three-year project. I had interviews with about six people over a couple of weeks, pressure to reach certain ones by a certain date, and eight pages of notes to turn into a readable account for an employee newsletter. I had some of the article done by Monday morning, and vowed, “Today I am FINISHING this article!” And I did! I knew the first draft of 1,400 words was too long so checked how many words I could have. Early answer: 500 to 600. Oh, ha, ha. I wrestled it down to around 900 words and negotiated 500 words on the front page and a continuation inside. Phew.

Project two: I’ve been trying to reach this fellow since November 21 – yes, four weeks of phone calls and e-mails to various people trying to pin down an elusive interview for an online employee newsletter. Original optimistic deadline was December 1. I finally got time with him: yesterday, when I secretly didn’t even want to talk to him any more. You’ll be happy to know I was professional about it and worked on it much of yesterday, vowing again this morning, “Today I am FINISHING this article!” Only six pages of notes this time but no less tricky trying to fit in all the facts and interesting comments. I’ve passed the draft along, and although there will likely be some back-and-forth activity, the heavy lifting is done.

Now if only Son#1 wasn’t out in my car, doing HIS Christmas shopping, I might be able to sneak out and finish that too. Sigh.

BuzzCanuck notes the top 30 words and phrases of 2007, of course topped by the gamer term of joy, “w00t.” I was surprised by a few entries, though, that seem to me to have been around for an awfully long time. What are they doing being on a hot list for 2007? I’m talking about:

Conundrum (a difficult problem or riddle)
Cougar (an older woman pursuing a younger man)
Apathetic (showing little interest, concern or emotion)

Others, like w00t, are fresher and thus seem to fit such a list:

Upcycling (recycling something to give it a better use)
Blamestorm (sitting around trying to allocate blame)

But here’s one that was new to me, although apparently it’s been used as a synonym for “hypocritical” since 1849 and was the Merriam-Webster word of the day for Dec. 10, 2006 (so again, what’s it doing on a 2007 list?): “Pecksniffian.” It’s also been defined as “haughtily hypocritical” and “unctuously hypocritical,” which give the word added depth and meaning, don’t you think? The word comes from one of Charles Dickens’ less pleasant characters, Seth Pecksniff, in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit.

A study announced yesterday reports that 47% of adult Internet users in the U.S. have Googled themselves. This shouldn’t be a surprise, when experts advise that this is one thing you MUST do, especially if you’re looking for a job. After all, you don’t want a prospective employer finding the top results of a search on you to be photos or posts that show you in a less-than-flattering light.

The study says, “Americans under 50 and those with more education and income were more likely to self-Google – in some cases because their jobs demand a certain online persona.” We also Google friends, family and new boyfriends/girlfriends.

I was curious about the group that did the study, so of course I Googled the Pew Internet & American Life Project. I discovered it’s a Washington, DC-based organization whose mission is to produce reports “that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care and civic and political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source on the evolution of the Internet through collection of data and analysis of real-world developments as they affect the virtual world.”

Among the information found on the site is that men and women are pretty much equally online these days, at 71% and 70% respectively. Not surprisingly, usage also goes up in tandem with household income and education.

Reading the latest Writing that Works newsletter published by Communications Concepts, I noticed an item about new words being included in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The writer included an example, biffy, adding, “People say, ‘You bet your biffy,’ but the word isn’t in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.”

The word is in the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, meaning outhouse. But what struck me about the comment was that I think the phrase should be, “You bet your bippy.” At least that’s what used to be tossed around on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a hugely popular comedy show that ran from 1968 to 1973. Baby boomers will recall that the show had a whole repertoire of catchphrases like “You bet your bippy” that were often silly, vaguely suggestive or made no sense but were funny anyway. Relating to words, one of my favourites was, “Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls.”

I’ve been meaning to blog about a “power breakfast” I attended, which featured Joanne Thomas Yaccato of the Thomas Yaccato Group. She’s an expert at her job, which she jokes is “whacking marketing managers upside the head about the importance of women.” As she told the group of women at the breakfast, we control 80 per cent of consumer dollars spent in the industrial world, but we feel profoundly disconnected from the very companies attempting to sell to us.

Why is that? You have only to look at advertising to see examples of how women are ignored or trivialized. As an example, Joanne noted that half the world’s business travellers are women, yet a print ad she saw for a hotel was headlined, “Right away, sir.” An insurance company provided terrific customer service, yet blew away any goodwill with a file-closing letter that began, “Dear sir.” If not ignored or portrayed in advertising as shrews, nags, bimbos, decoration and worse, we’re just not taken seriously. Some years ago I was looking for a new car, and made the mistake of visiting a showroom with my husband. The salesman was happy to tell me about girly things like comfort and colour, but when he talked about the engine and lifted the hood, he completely ignored me and talked directly to Mike. He was right that I wasn’t planning on doing my own maintenance, but he was wrong in assuming Mike was and that Mike was paying the bill. I went to a different dealership, by myself, and bought a different car.

Oh sure, men aren’t happy with sales and marketing either, but they have problems with inferior products or lame salespeople (and possibly being seen as morons in the kitchen). But they know just how many ads directly target them, and there are so many: all the ones with zooming cars, attractive women flocking around beer drinkers, nudge-nudge wink-wink ads for Viagra and the like. They also aren’t the ones who believe how they are portrayed is important; women do.

At the end of Joanne’s presentation, she pointed out that using what she calls a “gender lens” (the female perspective) will help companies get it right with women, which leads to a solid increase in sales and market share. The funny thing is, there’s a straight-line connection between getting it right with women and getting it right with everyone.

Well, that didn’t take long. Only day five and I already forgot to put something in the pocket of our Advent calendar!

The origins of these calendars is religious, counting off the days to Advent, the holy season of the Christian church and the period of expectant preparation for the birth of Jesus. More commonly, you’ll find 99-cent cardboard calendars with little doors opening on cheap chocolate to help children count down the days until Santa arrives.

In our house, we have an “interactive” calendar in the sense that there are 24 empty pockets that someone (me) has to remember to fill each morning or before I go to bed. Usually, that’s no problem; I’m first up with the dog and drop a treat into the pocket as I go by. This morning I slept in an extra half hour, waking to the sound of Son #2’s Homer Simpson alarm clock (my favourite: Homer says, “But I got up yesterday!”). So I bolted out of bed, quickly dressed, ran downstairs with the dog and didn’t give the pocket a thought…until Cory checked it and came up empty, just as I came in the door after walkies. He’s old enough that it’s not a big deal, but I still mentally kicked myself. Some days those cheap calendars seem awful smart!

Not having yet drunk the Twitter Kool-Aid, I’m always interested in reading about the experiences others have with this “microblogging platform.” From colleague Joan Patch came a link to an article about building your online profile by AdAge “editor at large” Matt Creamer. He says:

“Success in social media, I quickly discovered, is being comfortable with the proposition that every single waking thought and feeling you have is important enough that other people will want to read it. What else explains Twitter? …Twitter was for me something to be mocked, to be held up and derided as a symbol of a new wave of irrational dot-com exuberance…[but] I realized that I could use Twitter to promote my blog, as well as my writings for Ad Age…In isolation, these sites are kind of a waste of time, but in the aggregate there’s some real utility.”

Meanwhile, on the Black Belt Dojo, Sue Dewhurst writes:

“I must admit, from the little I’ve read about Twitter, I’d dismissed it in my head as some place people went to waste time chatting about nothing in particular…So I was intrigued to see Lee [Hopkins] talking about Twitter as a great way to keep in touch with remote workers who might have no access to a computer but do have mobile phones.”

I’m glad to hear of a solid use, because I have trouble with the idea of everyone simply sharing their every waking thought. I’ve been scolded for “lurking” too much and not commenting on other blogs, but I’m still feeling my way around a bit, deciding when/if I have something to add and wanting to make sure those thoughts are worth the time someone else would spend to read them.

Of course, exasperated rants about “service providers” like Sympatico, Air Canada, etc. fall into a different category!

What is it with the need some people seem to have to add “season” onto perfectly acceptable solo words? “Tis not only the season to be jolly, but also to be throwing around wishes such as “Happy Holiday Season” (complete with Unnecessarily Capitalized Letters) and “have a safe and healthy winter season.” Really, you could just say “holidays” and “winter.” Or am I just being a Scrooge? Oh, and in the grocery business, this is also the “entertaining season.” Fa la la la la!