Planning - Planners & The Plan

2019 - Year Of The Cripple

2019, January and I was bed-bound for six weeks as the most crippling of pains burnt, pierced, scraped, smashed, needled and electrocuted their way through the path from my neck to my left arm and finally my hand, leaving me with a half-paralysed grasp when it finally subsided after a chiropractic visit that took away the perma-pain.

This was my welcome into a brand new year.

6 weeks in bed, ditching the complex-care work I was doing and now up to my neck in bills with no occupation.

The neurologist was succinct. 

Half an hour of electric needle tests and he said you've got brachial neuritis and we don't know what causes it.

Six fucking weeks and I got a name to call it by, and nothing else except bouts of pain for the rest of my life and a gammy typing hand after decades of effortless writing.

That's when I realised I'd fucked up and not written the book I'd mulled over for half a century, while I could still touch-type.

Too late buster.

Had it...

Lost it...

Serves you right. 

Som nom naa (gala hua jok) as the Thais say. 

Anyway, that's why I haven't written anything substantive for a long time.

So here I am, 2019... year of the cripple and bashing something out before I throw an iMac through the window to keep the neighbours entertained.

Ya hear me?

Good. 

I'm just beginning.

Possibly The Best Christopher Hitchens Interview

Watched this Christopher Hitchens' interview for the second time earlier today and and on reflection it's definitely one of the best.

Is The Mastercard Brand Fucked?

I've been using Tumblr as a tool for picking up on trends and I wondered that in light of Mastercard's capitulation to the State Department over severing Wikileaks income from Mastercard customers (customer first?) whether anybody else has noticed that the only thing more evident than Mastercards's silence on the matter are the slew of brand parodies emerging on the internet? I wonder if that is showing up in their tracking studies?

Straight To Video

Some things I take a bit too seriously. And some things I don't. I made the clip above a short while back so that I could test the Twitvid function on Tweetdeck. I bought the sheeps mask and tried it out. It's only worth embedding because I'm not taking myself seriously and it's consistent with the next clip.

Same shit right? Nope.


The trouble is, I have no recollection of doing the one above. I realised the next day something wasn't right as I couldn't recall getting home. Most unusual for me, so I retraced my steps. The main event was buying a couple of pairs of sunglasses from the night market. I did stop off beforehand to have a couple of local spirits called Lao Cow.

It's served in a small shot glass and often coupled with seasonal sour fruits like unripe tamarind pieces or wild berries and then dipped in chilli sugar. It's very blue collar, an acquired taste and most valuable for getting an unvarnished view of the world. I mean talking to people it's hard to normally break the ice with. I don't mean with beer Goggles on.

So as I lost my memory, I thought maybe I'd been spiked or something. But then I remembered a girl joining me who always turns up when I'm around. I roped her into a mini flurry of Lao Cow shots. Nothing that excessive, but definitely more than I've ever had before. I think six shots.

Then all mayhem apparently let loose.

I"m guessing I came home, tweeted about my glasses and then made the Twitvid above. There could easily be lots more carnage judging by the random replies to me on Twitter the next morning. I've still not checked my timeline to piece together the full story but just in case anything abrasive was said or done, I do apologise.

This post is sponsored by @pristyles who sheltered me (most graciously) from harm.

Stephen King - JWT

Have you ever wondered what the father of 'Account Planning' looked and behaved like? I first heard of the existence of this video in JWT London's weekly meeting and recall Guy Murhpy's (JWT Global Planning Director) face lighting up at the description of 'hammers' as examples of product parity in utility.

I then saw it for the first time at the launch of 'A Master Class in Brand Planning' with Merry Baskin and Judith Lannon back in November, and was taken aback at how plannery Stephen King was. Which of course makes complete sense. Here we can see the enthusiasm for the abstract from way back in this marvelous clip that Guy has released and which also includes the remarkable Jeremy Bullmore who shared with me the inside story on that JWT clothing allowance that John Grant talked about over on Brand Tarot here. Jeremy told me in London before I came to Beijing that the allowance was a tax break and that it was a choice between a lawn mower or a clothing allowance and not as suspected an elitist perk for the Toffs. I think this is as good an example as it gets of confirmation bias, narrative fallacy, silent evidence, and epistemic arrogance which are all weaknesses that planners should be conscious of struggling against when forming conclusions.