Yes, I am late to the Bud Light controversy.  In fact, I am so late that the party is almost over.  So, no culture war thoughts from me.  But just a recap.  Back in March, Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of Bud Light beer used a transgender social media influencer in an effort to sell more beer to people who follow social media influencers (okay, one culture war comment: the presence of “social influencers” of any sort – people who make fortunes from nothing more than posting selfies and Tik-Tock videos – are a sure sign of our complete lack of seriousness as a culture). The attempt to use the social influencer did not help them sell more beer, however. In fact, sales are down 20% since the attempt.

Enough said.

Culture wars aside, the Bud Light fiasco is becoming textbook material for would-be marketers.  Along with the Ford Edsel of two generations ago (or the Pontiac Aztek of one generation ago), the Bud Light affair is a potent illustration of what not to do.

It was the Edsel-like outcome of the beer campaign the Chief Marketing Officer of Bud’s parent company wanted to talk about earlier this week. Continue reading →

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times ran an opinion column under the headline “Please Don’t Call My Job a Calling.”  The immediate context of the piece is the current screen writers guild strike and the statement by a Warner Brothers executive suggesting that those who write scripts for movies and Netflix series and jokes for late-night comics will come back to work soon enough because, after all, they love their jobs.

Forget loving what you do, says the columnist. “The rhetoric that a job is a passion or a ‘labor of love’ obfuscates the reality that a job is an economic contract.”  Later in his rant he mentions those who name teaching, nursing, or being a librarian a “calling” as a way of justifying paying such professionals low wages.

The writer is correct when he points out that loving your job or the joy of helping others doesn’t pay the bills.  Paul tells Timothy that the worker deserves his wage (1 Timothy 5:18). Continue reading →

I have some general idea of how their algorithms work, or at least what they do.  Google, Meta, Twitter, and the like are pretty much watching over my shoulder all the time. My “location services” – there’s a nice euphemism for the surveillance state – tell them where I am at all times.  When I scroll down a page or click on a link, the big brothers know about it and are keeping a list of what I see and don’t see, what I like and don’t like.  Based on that profile of places I go and things I see, they feed me memes and links and stories they’re sure I’ll like, whether I like it or not.

It’s a small price to pay for being able to access the answer to any trivia question in a matter of seconds.

Because of what their algorithms have collected, I see many ads for churches (note to that church in Arizona: you’re wasting your advertising money trying to get a guy in Indiana to show up at your church on Sunday morning). I also see links to quizzes about old cars – yes I am a sucker and I keep taking the quizzes even though the Great Cars of the 50s quiz shows photos of a 1962 Chevy Impala and a 1967 Dodge Coronet. Continue reading →

Who can disagree with the wisdom proffered in the now ubiquitous admonition that we should always stop to smell the roses. Younger people in the midst of the busiest seasons of life are reminded to stop to smell the roses and those of us past those busy seasons are told to regret the times we passed on the opportunity to smell the roses.

Metaphorically speaking, stopping to smell the roses is one of the ways we best sabotage the tyranny of the urgent. When the to-do list insists that we do one more thing, we stop to smell the roses in defiance of the list’s despotism in our lives.

According to the grammarist.com, the phrase comes from the 1960s autobiography of pro golfer Walter Hagen who wrote, “Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”

Who can disagree with not hurrying and not worrying and being sure to smell the flowers along the way?

In a way, I do. Sometimes there are things to do that are more important than stopping to smell the roses. Continue reading →

Not long after moving into our house, we had some Mugo pines planted in a landscape area near the front door.  A Mugo is a shrub conifer, and the experts say they grow well almost anywhere.  Three of the four Mugos are thriving, but the fourth has had a hard time of it. Poor Mugo #4 is half dead, that is, half of its branches are dry and brittle with a bed of brown needles at their feet.  The other branches are filled with lush green needles and lots of new growth.  I have named our fourth Mugo Sardis.  Sardis the Mugo.

Sardis the Mugo’s namesake, of course, is the church in Sardis addressed by Jesus in Revelation 3:1-6.

Jesus tells Sardis the church, “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” He advises the people of Sardis to “wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die.”  Despite the dire warning, the Lord offers hope to those in Sardis whose faith is still alive: they are to remember and live the Gospel. “They will walk with me in white,” he says, “for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life.” Continue reading →