Random Thoughts: The A to Z Blog of the Overactive Mind

  Gather around for a twisted tale. More twisted than usual, anyway. A story from a mythical land where television channels were based on themes they actually stuck to. Whaaaaaaaaaat?? Truth. Like MTV - Music Television - played music videos. Of actual music. All day. On purpose. Gen Z'ers out there are going to believe this is folklore whispered by an aging writer staring nostalgically at flowered wallpaper and wondering where all the time went. Well... phooey. It's the truth. In the days of yore (the 80's), MTV wasn't just a content dump; it was cultural rewiring at its finest. We were hit with guitar solos, face melting riffs, synths, eyeliner, and a mystery glow from the ole boob tube that helped us cope with new and exciting feelings we didn't yet have words for. Video Jockeys (VJs) announced new videos like they were royal decrees. They told us what mattered.  We wore leather jackets indoors because it was cool and sunglasses at night because Corey Hart said s...

  The Day Marketing Took a Dump In 1985, Coca-Cola was wildly successful. The company made tons of money each quarter and their product was beloved by millions around the globe. And some executive looked at the numbers and said, "Yeah, but we oughta go full-on bat doo-doo crazy and hit the panic button anyway." Probably because he only had one yacht and drove a Ferrari instead of a Lambo. Thus, New Coke was born. Unleashed on an unsuspecting world by a boardroom full of suits who weren't happy just being bajillionaires. They'd clearly been drinking their own Coke Kool-Aid for far too long. Several things went cattywampus in this comedy of errors. First off, soda is soda, not a corporate chemistry experiment. However, somebody shared a power point... This led to charts and graphs with no solid informational proof being drawn up and nodded at because it had pretty colours. And finally, some dude named Gary said, "Consumers crave change," and nobody had the ...

  I don't know what kind of gadgets kids are grafting to their skulls or shoving into their earholes these days. Some kind of cybernetic mysticism is going on in the world around me, creating teenaged zombies attached to their devices. But we had the Walkman. It was 'compact' in an age when gargantuan Boom Boxes were a thing and caused semi-permanent spinal injuries. It weighed in at the low, low poundage of a mid-sized ham. It also provided an answer to a universal problem of the 80's: Other people existed, and sometimes they wanted to talk to you. Like, totally gross. The Walkman was liberation! Walk down the street and listen to your own soundtrack, pretending you were both star and way under-appreciated extra in your own  music video. Pop in a cassette, hit the play button, and suddenly for the next 90 minutes you were as emotionally unavailable as Mom during her afternoon soaps. Either that, or you burned through your third set of "value pack" AA-batteri...