RUR! No stealing gags from Wayne's World!

Pete, I hope you never read Clancy-style thrillers, because the constant "HECKLER & KOCH" will probably induce a stroke.

quote:

Originally posted by Kitsune:

I found it got right on my tits, quite frankly. Especially when he called a pen a "Bic". No one calls a pen a Bic. Not even people who pay money to read Vice and worship Nathan Barley. Some call it a Biro, which is a brand name and would have been more acceptable.

Funny that Vice got mentioned indirectly with reference to my Gibson flame. I was on my way to London to work with ViceUK and do some work with Moodys. I finished Spook Country in an Moodys apartment in Canary Wharf right where the zombies stream out into the light in 28 weeks later. My sister is writing a book for ESPN and my best friend was Marketing Director for Vice. I was pretty upset at the level of corporate influence on creative works.

Well, Gibson's little overuse of brands pales compared to what Vice just did with the Rambo premiere. Huge government support, indirect funding, control of the script of the film and such hyprocracy on the part of Shane and Saroosh to have a documentary about Darfur followed by an ad for Rambo. Don't get me started. If Gibson's publishers were able to influence the brands that Gibson used it is minor and perhaps funny and even subversive on his part. We're smart enough to know when our tails are being yanked.

Or are we? Do you folks really know how deep and twisted the mole holes go?

You're still here? With your stupid crack'd-pot theories about literary product placement?

Hi Martin,

Did you have a serious and polite comment that I can respond to?

Is there any chance that you work in the publishing industry?

What exactly is it that you do that allows you to be intolerant of other opinions and inspires you to attack a person instead of using a rational argument to discuss any faulty premise I may have presented?

For the record, I declare Crocker's Rules and live by them. You may want to learn about the ethics behind them and consider adopting them yourself. http://sl4.org/crocker.html

Radical Honesty is another concept that you may want to explore. The Overcoming Bias web site at Oxford will give you a good grounding. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/radical-honesty.html

Learn to think clearly and communicate objectively and people may begin to take you more seriously and treat you with the respect that I'm sure you're looking for.

I'm not trying to start a flame war; I'm looking for a good discussion about issues that William Gibson has presented in his works.

Pete

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:
RUR! No stealing gags from Wayne's World!

Pete, I hope you never read Clancy-style thrillers, because the constant "HECKLER & KOCH" will probably induce a stroke.

Yea, I havnt read Clancy much. I had a hard enough time with Mitchner's "Space" as a historio/fiction. As a kid I was "tricked" into believing that there had been a black astronaut in the Apollo Program. My silly young mind thought that Mitchner wrote about real events. What an experience to learn that he had made up the final Apollo mission and had a black hero. A.C. Clarke has done similar "twists" where he challenged our unacknowledged racism by giving us just enough info about a character for us to identify with them and then making that character something that we "can't" relate to. The recent book "Spaceman Blues" makes the reader embrace a gay lead character that is so "cool" and powerful that by the end of the book all negative associations with "gayness" have been flushed.

The power of "art" to make us challenge our limitations is vital. The power of "art" to sell a hat or sell us hate is vial.

Pete

Wow, I understood that Michener was fiction right from the get-go! I can't imagine your quandary.

I also can't understand that you don't understand that Gibson's use of brand names is a pop culture shorthand, not a means of promoting Apples or VWs or Levis with the identifying marks filed off the buttons.

It's a means of communicating a character's character. Those of us who understand what the signifyers signify are able to grasp a little more about the characters. We don't run out and buy a PowerBook as a result of reading that Hollis has one. Well, perhaps some people do...there's no accounting for some people, after all.

I am 99 and 44/100% sure that there's no product placement contract attached to Mr. Gibson, and you may have noticed that many people around here are insulted on his behalf that you should assume there is.

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
Hi Martin,

Did you have a serious and polite comment that I can respond to?

No, I have no wish for you to remain here any longer.

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
Is there any chance that you work in the publishing industry?

None at all. I am however a thin-skinned consumer and extremely aware of advertising attempts.

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
What exactly is it that you do that allows you to be intolerant of other opinions and inspires you to attack a person instead of using a rational argument to discuss any faulty premise I may have presented?

Well, beyond that you're trying to ram your pet theory down our throats, and we all disagree with you?

quote:

Originally posted by petebertine:
For the record, I declare Crocker's Rules and live by them. You may want to learn about the ethics behind them and consider adopting them yourself. http://sl4.org/crocker.html

Radical Honesty is another concept that you may want to explore. The Overcoming Bias web site at Oxford will give you a good grounding. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/radical-honesty.html

Learn to think clearly and communicate objectively and people may begin to take you more seriously and treat you with the respect that I'm sure you're looking for.

I'm not trying to start a flame war; I'm looking for a good discussion about issues that William Gibson has presented in his works.

Pete

Great. Go away until you decide to debate things. As it is you're simply telling us you're right and we're wrong.

petebertine, while we are being radically honest, I'd like to tell you that your avatar is huge and wastes bandwidth in transmission, and computing time in auto-reduction by the board. It would be a favour to the world at large if you would reduce it to about 50x50 pixels.

For me it was irritating in that it not only assumes things without any proof, but he also considers the author is a liar. But it is so ridiculous that I did not think that merited a response.

quote:

PRODUCT PLACEMENT IN PR?

Are you kidding? The Curta, *definitely*, *and* the Sinclair ZX-81!

Otherwise, alas, no. I am indeed an Apple user, and have been since switching from my once-tediously-notorious manual portable Hermes, but all I've ever been offered by Apple was, I think, once, a free upgrade to OS X. Amazing, really; if I were them, I'd deluge me with fab cutting-edge hardware. Nudge nudge. Viral marketing! Wink wink. No? O well. Fact is I wrote PR on a Cube, and wanted to describe it, and I felt it helped build Damien's character. But then my friend Steve Brown pointed out that it was already sort of long in the tooth, so I went back and explained why he still had it.

Full disclosure, though: I'm wearing a pair of Buzz Rickson's WWII Waist Overalls bluejeans, and *I didn't pay for them*. But these were part of a corporate care-package sent after the fact of the once-imaginary black BR MA-1 having appeared in PR. And they're making me a black MA-1 of my own...EXTRA LONG.

This thread is tired. I think it needs to go to sleep.