Geezer with a Grudge: Taking the Cat by the Horns

Jun 22, 2010

Taking the Cat by the Horns

British Petroleum should take a lesson from Agip, the manufacturer of Hello Kitty synthetic oil. Agip's corporate logo, that six-legged cat at the bottom right of the can, is a brilliant advertisment for renaming problems as solutions. Microsoft and Apple have been telling us that software bugs are "features" for 30 years, it's not much of a leap to move air and water pollution into the same category.

"Yeah, our oil causes birth defects and a million other environmental problems, but look at the cute six-legged cat. Gotta love that, don't 'cha?"

And we probably do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: These guys know that oil-in-the-gulf will become another tired brand name and people will stop paying attention. That's how every generation gets to have its own war, sold to it on the basis of righteous patriotism by govt. People forget. What were once big issues devolve into clown shows. People change the channel.

Now they are admitting it "might be" 120,000 bpd. Maybe the whole floor of the gulf is methane clathrates and all of it will evaporate and burp to the surface and ignite as one huge 4th-of-July celebration.

KC; 6/23/10, 9:41 AM
T.W. Day said...: I wonder if we have good seats for the show in Minnesota?; 6/23/10, 9:42 AM

The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.