Soup du Jour

As I was sitting down this morning having my coffee time (i.e. 9 to 11:30), I came across an interesting article on the web. This article is really meant to be an editorial piece on another story dealing with blogging and corporate PR departments that is currently running in the New York Times. Since blogging seems to be my soup du jour at the moment I dove right in without hesitation – after all what if they mentioned my blog? (Surprisingly enough they didn’t). The gist of the article(s) is that Wal*Mart is feeding PR releases to independent bloggers, who then post the information on their own sites – often unedited and under the guise of their own opinions.

What great stuff! If I post about this on my blog maybe I can share a real world relevant opinion about something – perhaps even raise the intellectual level of my writings up a notch (or dare I dream, two notches?). Plus who doesn’t love some good old fashioned Wal*Mart bashing!?!? The thing is, I don’t have a problem with this. Hell I don’t even consider it newsworthy. So a big corporation decided to look into creative marketing/PR techniques. It probably wasn’t even their idea, no doubt it was some smart & shinny PR firm doing what they do best, and getting paid handsomely to do so. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not fond of Wal*Mart in general - after all I’ve seen at least 60% of the PBS documentary exposing them as the Al Qaida of the big box retailers. But we are purported to be a capitalistic society and people vote with their dollars. Personally I do my best not to shop at Wal*Mart because I do not approve of their labor or supplier practices, but

Can we stop a second to acknowledge the fact that I just used the words purported AND capitalistic in the same sentence! Who cares if I didn’t necessarily use them in the “correct” context – them’s still some big words. I think I raised this blog up an intellectual level in that sentence alone – maybe even a level for each word.

And we’re back. Okay I’m bored with the direction the blog was headed – that’s not news and I don’t care. Luckily that was just the opening monologue, the real reason for me highlighting this article is the following sentence:

“What is the use of a blog if bloggers are just going to copy sentences and sentiments from the puppetmaster's email?"

WOW! I mean seriously, this opens whole new realms of possibility! I’m obviously talking about the role of Puppetmaster here. Sure everyone has the dream of riding at the head of a squirrel armada – with the furry little creatures under your control no one could stop you. No one that is besides a Puppetmaster with his own army of bloggeteers… Is it possible – has technology advanced to the point where I can give up nights in the laboratory attempting to perfect squirrel mind control? In one sense that would be nice, because so far the only mind control technique that I’ve had any (limited) success with thus far involves covering myself in acorn-butter, and as you well know that can get fairly sticky. So what do you think, is it time to refocus my energies? Could this article be the sign I have been waiting for that the world ready for a new Puppetmaster to emerge? Does anyone need 5 gallons of acorn-butter?