2 Essays

Below are two essays that I wrote for my class: General Semantics in Journalism. I had fun writing them, and received high marks from a professor respectible for his precision and his reluctance to give high marks; he has high standards. Please have a look through them if you like!

Essay

“Alright guys, we’re gonna need some ideas, real ideas, and we’re gonna need them tonight! Nobody is getting out of here until we have some campaign we can go with!”
The CEO loosened his cornflower blue necktie and plopped down at the head chair of the long mahogany table.
It was dark outside. All five of the advertising reps had canceled their night’s plans an hour ago at the CEO’s demand. After the CEO adjusted himself at the head of the table, there was a long silence as nervous glances were exchanged.
“It’s the product,” the 20-something dude at the end of the table said. “Who in their right mind would buy a cereal coated in crystallized caffeine?”
“I’ll hear none of that talk!” balked the CEO, fist slapped on the table’s lacquer. “The FDA has already signed off on it! We’re trying to sell it here. Let’s hear something positive.”
“What about the name?” said the lady across from the 20-something dude, her fingernails and lipstick a matching shade of red. “Can’t we think of a better name than Colossal Crunch?”
“What’s wrong with the name?” asked CEO.
“Well, I don’t think it’d appeal to the female sector. How about Vitality Burst?” she said.
“There you go again with that lousy name,” said the shamus 30-something with the green bowtie. “Vitality is the last thing someone thinks of in the morning. People are thinking domination, gutsy gutsy domination.”
“Guys are thinking domination.”
“Not true. People in the morning; people with meetings, little league, cars to sell, businesses to run; are thinking of dominating the colossal world. It’s under their arm, in their palm. The caffeine is their rocket fuel,” said the bowtied shamus.
“No, the caffeine is their key to immortality. To vitality,” said the red lipstick. “Picture this: We have a woman,” lipstick got up, motioning with her hands, “and she’s standing atop this sheer cliff-face, track suit tight, sun bursting from the skyline, and she’s got a jug of milk and a bowl of power-packed Vitality Burst, which helped her conquer the mountain. The goddamn mountain! Christ!”
Eyes went to her, and the CEO said:
“I thought I told you two, our target demo is children.”
Lipstick sat down.
“We want children to crave the stuff – scream for it.”
“I thought we were going to avoid that cartoon stuff,” said the 40-something woman in the smart dress. “I agree with Mr. Dude (the 20-something dude), that Colossal Crunch isn’t the best name. Too much like Captain Crunch. Though, we do need some kind of symbol. Something to which children are drawn.”
Silent moment.
“Kinda hard to do without some bug-eyed cartoon jumping from the box,” said the shamus. “If we would just consider Professor Zapums.”
“I thought we agreed: No cartoons,” said smart dress, distressed.
“Listen: Professor Zapums is a retired – no part-time! – NASA aeronaut who races into outer orbit with the aid of his Zapum Bites! He’s got a sidekick named Kaffeeen Kool, and they get into wild adventures. We can put mazes, puzzles, maps to other planets, the possibilities are endless. Children will love the kick they get from eating the bites, parents won’t be able to keep their kids away from it. What’s wrong with that!”
“It’s unhealthy!” said smart dress.
“Hey!” balked CEO. “W-we’re talking ideas here.”
“I’m just saying,” said smart dress, “that these are basically corn flakes wrapped with sugar and caffeine. Before we go after kids like this, shouldn’t we consider what we’re doing? After all, we’re part of social science. I understand that this cereal we’re selling will be just like the other cereals, but before we use the knowledge we’ve gleaned from probing the depths of the human psyche in order to persuade someone to irrationally buy our product – that will apparently take us to the moon–”
Shamus sighed.
“–shouldn’t we consider what we’re doing to the future adults we’re about to make irrational?”
“Who says they’re not already irrational?” CEO said. “It’s competition out there people. We need something to draw people away from the rest of the competition. Besides, cereal is already a given product. People need breakfast food; people will consume it whether they want to or not. We,” CEO pounds the table, “need to hurd the cows in our direction and buy this goddamned caffeinated cereal. … And do I need to remind you guys we need it tonight?!”
Another awkward silence.
The man in the center of the table with the multi-colored tie raised his arm and said: “Perhaps we’re circling around a demographic underrepresented in the survey.”
“I’ve got the numbers here,” CEO said, “and nobody eats cereal anymore … except health nuts and kids.”
“Well, yes. But we’re trying to create a following of irrationals, not draw from the competition.” He stood up. “I picture the box to be in rainbow colors–”
“Here we go,”
“–there’d be a circle of close friends, the guys and the gals, sitting Indian style in a circle, sharing one big bowl of Fruit and Crisp. People from all walks of life–”
“that go antique-ing in Greenwich Village with their partners,” 20-something chided.
“–that enjoy a more liberal outlook on life. And here’s the kicker: Fifteen percent of all sales go toward AIDS research.”
“Hey genius,” CEO balked, “There’s no fruit in the cereal.”
“So we put some in. … Or call it Fabu-Crisp. Oh, and play up whatever organic chemicals we have in there.”
“Listen here,” said smart dress, “People aren’t fools, and especially your circle-of-liberal-friends demographic. They’re going to look at the nutritional content and see that it’s loaded with caffeine, sugar, synthesized corn syrup, and they’re going to buy Corn Flakes. Why don’t we just call a spade a spade and play up the caffeine – we’ll call it Coffee “Os”. Picture them next to a cup of coffee with a sliced banana or something. Instead of dancing around the obvious and hoping that people are too dumb to see beyond all the bull-hockey we spin, why not just come clean. Won’t the smart, loyal customers appeal to that? Heck, people are already addicted to coffee, so …”
Another awkward silence.
“OK! His name is Rascal the Early Bird. And he’s always so early because he can’t get enough of Early Risers. He and his wife Randie have got three kids: Rockum, Sockum and Grabum. And while Rascal is busy at the bowl and spoon factory, the kids get into all kinds of adventures trying to figure out what the secret ingredient in Early Risers is. Yeah! It’s a before- and after-school cartoon, it’s a candy-bar, we can make backpacks, and decoder rings so that the kids can go on adventures, too! We have a series of clues on several boxes, and a phone-in hotline so that kids can play along, and a Web site, too! The point is: Brand Loyalty. Parents will love Rascal for being so alert in the morning, and because they love him, kids will love the three little rascals. They’ll eat and eat, and eat more. If all that caffeine works, too, then we’ll have customers for years to come, all irrational and happy with Early Risers.”

McLuhan Essay

“What do you kill a spider with?”
He hunts around the apartment for something to use. The house spider inches across the screen of the television. In the darkened room of his apartment, each of the house spider’s legs casts a hairy eight-point silhouette behind the transmission of Access Hollywood.
“A-HA!” he exclaims, “A newspaper.” The gentleman snatches the pages from under a leg of his coffeetable; the table has uneven legs. After he’d rolled up the pages into a suitable weapon and made his way to the screen, he looked at the house spider. It is content to use the warmth of the screen as an extension of its thorax, or whatever.
“I’ll spare it,” says the gentleman on second thought, trapping it between the paper and a drinking cup.
After a bit of confusion with dealing with his front door and the trapped spider, he sets the cup on the ground and taps it over with his shoe.
The light of the setting sun outside startles the spider, and it circles the perimeter of the newspaper not sure of what to do. He looks down at it; he bends over to get closer; he inspects it a little more; he wonders just what kind of spider it is, anyway.
“Cool,” he says to himself. Then, up jumps the spider and sinks two venomous fangs into the gentleman’s forearm.
“Crickey!” he yells, smashing the spider to pulp on his wrist. The instant he cleared away the pulp he saw a few veins of blackness extending into his bloodstream, or whatever. He whispers: “Crickey.”
In a panic, he spots someone driving by; he flags the car down.
“Hey, I was just bit by a spider,” he says to the driver, a man who is interested in various forms of media and would later die in Toronto in 1980. “I don’t know what kind of spider it was. You think you could drive me to Poison Control?”
“Of course. Hop in,” says the media enthusiast.
They drive along for a few moments and get through the panicked details of the spider bite.
“So, what do you feel?” the media enthusiast asks, “sense-wise.”
“Well, it hurts,” the gentleman says, keeping an eye on that nasty bite.
“I’ve often thought about letting a spider or snake bite me. I wonder how different poisons would affect the senses.”
“Well right now it just hurts.”
“Can you talk well?” the media enthusiast asks. The gentleman just looks at the bite. “I mean, does it feel like the other senses are blocking your ability to communicate verbally?”
“Umm, I don’t think so. I am feeling a little numbness in my fingers,” the gentleman says, raising his arm above his head. “I should probably put my arm up above me.”
Stopped at a red light, the media enthusiast says: “See, as our senses become stimulated by more and more media — like us talking here — then our participation in the process of communication becomes lessened and we become further hypnotized by that to which we’re paying attention. If the poison coursing through you is activating those senses without your control, you’re probably experiencing a heightened form of synesthesia, which might negate some assumptions dealing with hot and cold media.”
“Whaa?”
“Because your senses are being filled in constantly by myriad variations of a unique sensory experience, your mind wouldn’t feel the need to “fill in” — so to speak — more information about an experience you get from a cold medium.”
“Hey, the light is green.”
“Perfect! You’re able to make an accurate report from the outside world using your sense of sight, and relay that through our combined extension of our feet — my automobile! Fascinating!” The media enthusiast steps on the accelerator. “So I guess you’re not hallucinating yet, which is a good sign that you’re still experiencing all our cold media in a low-definition state.”
“Actually, I’m starting to feel a little hot, a little light-headed, … and thirsty,” the gentleman says. “I’m on fire.”
“It’s OK, we’re almost there. Say, what happened anyway?”
The gentleman swallows. His throat feels tight. “Spider just jumped up and bit me.”
“Yeah, I already know that. Tell me the details.”
The gentleman’s head sinks against the passenger window. “I trapped the spider under the cup, …”
After a moment the media enthusiast says: “hmm, it seems to me that the traumatic event of the spider biting you has lead to a fragmentation of the experience. That is, that your central nervous system has blocked, or chunked senses to make the experience coherent. Does this seem about right to you?”
“I can’t move,” the gentleman whispers through the folds of his swelling throat.
“Yes. I diagnose that you’re CNS is cutting off senses so as to streamline the intense experience of a spider bite. Yes, like I wrote a while ago: ‘The central nervous system acts to protect itself by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense, or function.’ Page 42 of my book …”
“Please help me.”
“Don’t worry, your senses will come back after the shock has subsided.”
At the counter of the Poison Control center, the media enthusiast holds up the gentleman, and the two talk with the receptionist.
“I was bit by a spider,” the gentleman says, clearly fatigued.
“He was bit by a spider,” the media enthusiast reiterates.
“OK, let me pull up some information. And quickly, go with our physician,” says the receptionist. And they’re off. As fast as technology can integrate a human being into a bundle of senses chained to a computer, which in turn stimulates those senses and in effect hypnotizes the media consumer, the gentleman is fitted with several machines to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, kidney function and etcetera.
“Gee, these devices are incredible,” says the media enthusiast to the physician, who doesn’t look amused and is filling out a chart. The media enthusiast turns to the gentleman, who seems to be slipping in and out of consciousness. “But you have to remember that these are all only extensions to get you through. Remember, you are yourself and you shouldn’t let these things hybridize so close to you as to substitute for function. ‘As long as we adopt the Narcissus attitude of regarding the extensions of our own bodies as really out there and really independent of us, we will meet all technological challenges with the same sort of banana-skin pirouette and collapse.’ ”
The media enthusiast peels back the flaps of a banana and takes a bite. “Page 68 of my book. While you are hybridized with these technologies for the moment, just remember: as long as you recognize that you’ve been bitten by a spider and that you’re kidneys have failed, you’ll be fine.”
“You know, he wouldn’t need that kidney machine if he would have gotten here sooner,” the physician says. “And I will need someone to either fill out an insurance form or hand over $5,000.”
“Perhaps I can interest you in a barter. In fact, I’ve quite a few books in the back of my car — mine. I’ll give you a few and we’ll call it even.”
“Nope. We accept cash, check or credit card.”
“Ahh, there I can help you. See: ‘As work is replaced by the sheer movement of information, money as a store of work merges with the informational forms of credit and credit card. From coin to paper currency, and currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself. (page 137)’ I’ll pay you with the information in this book here. And if you value information as I do you can recognize that it’s a valid form of currency. Additionally, by transferring a mutually valuable item our bonds of interconnectivity with tighten. And the next time I get bit by a spider then I’ll be sure to come to you.”
“And what! Pay me with more books? I value cold hard cash.”
“Well my friend, this is where we part. While I wish you well through my vocal medium here, I am afraid that I cannot wish you well using the tactile instrument of gathering wishes — my money. So long!”