the white whale is dead

Can't say that I've lately felt particularly obligated/compelled (or even able!) to contribute to whatever the hell project this blag is meant to represent. After catching the MKitto talk at the Bookworm, and seeing how worn fighting senseless battles with faceless morons can really make you, well, let's just say I've seen the light for how impossibly hard it is to keep up with keeping yourself safe (read: always being prepared for the path of plausible deniabilty) while simultaneously being able to enjoy yourself and your work. I'm speaking on behalf of the more passionate among us working in this twisted country's Media Nether Regions.

Of a more personal nature, I am now able to see more clearly the reasons why I began this blog in the first place, and while those same reasons do seem to remain as equally valid as they were before (frustration, sheer intrigue, misguided sense of adventure?), I find myself in a state of disappointment over so far being unable to sufficiently capture the consistently chaotic, humanly flawed, Tower of Babel-ishness of this place in a way that won't leave me feeling guilty for having done so, or at least in a way that doesn't resort to doting mockery: which just becomes fodder for the immature adults running a similar kind of Evil Empire "competitor" motoring along on a laughably out-dated mag-business model. Heh.

But I am actually worried that I haven't done enough to capture the sizable number of genuinely well-intentioned people working here, the ones simply doing the best they can with an awful situation, kind folks who wouldn't know what to do with their lives if it weren't for the Threshing Paranoia Machine which currently employs them. I've seen these people excuse themselves from the office to shed futile tears, chain smoke themselves back into a stable frame of mind, you know, things you people wouldn't believe. Perhaps this blog is a weak-kneed attempt at recording these kinds of injustices.

Nah.

In other more recent (and positive for me) news, I've had something of a glorious, revolutionary(!) breakthrough in being able to tell my tale (have I mentioned that some of my co-workers have already found me out?) that is not only fair, but certainly passes the "censure" test without me having to name names.

So call me K.? Syme? Ishmael? Loser? Sometimes fiction's simply the best you can do when everyone around you seems to be living in (working towards?) an illusory fantasy.

So, yeah, speaking of Moby Dick, our White Whale (the rotten apple at the top of a very precarious pile of title-ful managers responsible for a great deal of the Bad absurdities the magazine has had to deal with) is dead. Well, not dead. Just put out to pasture, meaning: transfered somewhere else. Out goes one English-less boss, in comes another.

Mr. Newboss... I suppose from here on out, I can call him: Klamm.

Klamm, holding his first meeting today in which he very confidently put the unruly (and to put it tactfully: incompetent) Elanger in his rightful place, has already promised one-on-meetings with all staff members:

That's me, on the right.

adventures in logo design, vol.1

The website's going to be shedding some skin in a couple days, growing and changing hopefully for the better, so imagine my delight to fire 'er up in Firefox and to see this gem of a design for the site logo. No idea where it came from or who made it, but man it feels good to laugh it up every once in a while, doesn't it?

And I can't wait for the web editor to see it because it's 100% certain that he/she didn't approve of this bad boy. It sure is great to work in a company where anyone and everyone can and does contribute to the graphic design of the greater good!

But seriously, "th[]t's"? Granted the mouse (or lamp?) is meant to be an "A", but come on, that barely registers on first glance!

"Yeah, man. You gotta check out all the best stuff in Beijing online."
'Oh yeah, brah? Wherez I gots to go?'
"Oh, check it out. This totally rad website: Thts."
'Thts? Sounds pretty cool.'
"Yeah, brah. Thts."
'Thts, total thts.'

High five.

the only apt metaphor i can think of: imagine if during the opening ceremony for the olympics if jin xiping's speech had been 10 hours long

Ten hours. Ten whole hours was how long our hastily-called Sunday staff meeting was. It began at 9:30am and ended at 7:30pm and we didn't move from our chairs the entire time, except to individually step out for a minute or so for whatever reason. TV dinner-style cafeteria food and newpapers-for-placemats were even brought to us as we all sat and tried to figure out just why the hell this meeting was called in the first place. It had been advertised by our English-less boss (have I mentioned his previous job was directing propaganda films for the government?) as some kind opportunity, meeting, something that would change the current state of ship-at-sea-without-anyone-at-the-rudder the mag is painfully going through.

I'm sure to write more about it later, but long story short:

We each passionately spoke at length and openly about necessary changes that we each felt needed to be made to give the mag's design a greater focus, how to provide a clearer vision for its business plan and an overall strategy for reaching our target audience.

In ten hours, no concrete decisions were achieved regarding:
- What necessary changes need to be made
- How to give the mag's design a greater focus
- How to give its business plan a clearer vision
- Our overall strategy for reaching our target audience is
- Who our target audience is

The job becomes more and more a tragi-comedy every day I manage to muster enough energy to slug myself down to the office.

The funny thing is, the ten hours went by pretty quickly... and what we were going through was by no means "fun" in any sense of the word. I guess the mind is easily transfixed by something that refuses to be understood, but more on that later.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.

the bell is tolling but god only knows who for

This is not what you want to hear from your immediate superior when you find out an impromptu meeting with The Faceless Bigwig has been called for sometime on Sunday: "This is going to be a unique episode in our lives." Even better when you hear that the topic of said meeting is about "big changes" that are coming.

Ooh! I hope it'll be change for the better! That's the only kind of change there is, right? For the better?

Two out of three Chinese grannies agree:
Confucian Nepotism makes for a strange
bedfellow with open-minded foreign staff.

my new goal: at least one reader in antarctica

Click to view.
I find it pretty funny that this blog technically now has a farther reach than the actual magazine.

Come on Africa! You're slacking!

Meanwhile, back in mag-world, deadlines are coming up and I've got a ton of shtuff to edit.

The only thing worth reporting as of late: the lovely two part harmonies some of my coworkers have been wont to walk around singing. It's really quite lovely, to be serenaded by your coworkers in an otherwise stale and static, white-walled office building. La la, la la lah... La la! La-la la-la... Ah... so serene...

This is a daily occurence as well. Great new way to get rid of all the spare mao coins I have laying around at home: put a down a hat in front of their desks and ask for requests, toin a coss, clink, I wonder if they know any Elton John?

the brand is saner on the other side: going meta-

Heh.

It's nice to know that someone over at "the" can appreciate what's going on in these neck of the woods. Hopefully I can laugh and shed some tears for the both of us.

It is a small world afterall. Cheers.

i pray no one ever calls my listed "office line" number, i have no idea where that phone is

This is what it says on the back of my company business cards:

The that's brand is supervised by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, and published by China Intercontinental Press. Zhong Dian Media Co., Ltd is in cooperation with CIP. HiPower Media Co., Ltd is the only organization with rights to run advertising for that's."

So, you know, if you were a company looking to run some ads to promote your goods and services to the expat community in Beijing, and you had hoped to utilize the readership That's is able to reach... shoot! Looks like HiPower has beaten you to the punch and has signed a monopolizing ad contract with... um, whichever one of these "organizations" actually controls That's. So sorry, only HiPower gets to run ads.

"... the only organization with rights to run advertising..." I gotta hand it to the legal gurus they must have found to draft the back of their business cards. A cunning move to force individuals into becoming businesses to fight for all the precious, precious ad space that is available. Split up all the troublemakers to make them easier to marginalize and control, right?

Update:

Thanks to my roommate for calling the "office line" number. Imagine my confusion when someone from another part of the office came to get me: "Phone. Phone."