When the Lobster Goes Bad

 

Above: Facebook ad for The Hill Store 

You gotta wonder why any sane marketer would discount a $1,200 product by 97%.

Maybe the lobster went bad.

Norma’s, a tony Manhattan brunch spot, is famous for its $2,000 omelette—the world's most expensive, according to Guinness World Records. 

Norma's omlette commands that price because it's larded with fresh lobster, and because "playful extravagance is the whole theme of our menu," according to the restaurant's VP of marketing. 

Were Norma's suddenly to cut the omlette's price by 97%, you'd likely suspect the lobster's gone bad.

Why some marketers are so stupid about pricing eludes me. 

Rock-bottom pricing makes no sense for quality brands. Never ever ever.

Quality brands are about value and trust. Value comes not from price, but from the brand's ability to deliver on its promises; and trust comes from the brand's legacy. 

When a brand trumpets a rock-bottom price, it confuses its customers—both prospective and past.

However, with the goal of driving easy sales, misguided marketers will discount, sometimes deeply.

But a 97% discount? Why not a 100% discount? In other words, a free sample. Now you're talking. Who can resist a free sample?

While not every quality brand's position is "playful extravagance," no quality brand's position is "rock bottom." 

Rock bottom only says the lobster's gone bad.

Pulpits and Poohbahs

While today we would say something's "great" ("GameStop is great!") Ragtime-era folks would say it's "bully" ("GameStop is bully!").

So in 1904, when Rev. Lyman Abbott was invited by then-President Teddy Roosevelt to preview an important speech, Roosevelt confided, "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!"

In a chronicle of the meeting, Abbott recalled Roosevelt's words and described his bully pulpit as a license to build Americans' support for reform, while tearing down opposition to it.

Abbott's pubic mention of Roosevelt's words made the term famous overnight.

But today "bully" is a pejorative; and behind today's bully pulpit stands an actual bully—a corrupt conman who's using his platform to promote treason and panic timid supplicants.

However, access to the bully pulpit doesn't in itself turn a bully into a poobah.

The bully must do that to himself.

Poohbah—meaning a "pompous big shot"—was coined in 1895 by Gilbert and Sullivan when they composed The Mikado. 

The two songsters liked the flatulent sound of the word, later claiming it derived from every tin-pot dictator's way of dismissing a new idea by saying "Pooh!" or "Bah!"

Poohbah leapt overnight from the stage into British parlance, but didn't catch on in the US for another 31 years, when A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh first appeared.

Criminal Minds

The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?

— Jeremiah 17:9

I've so far avoided mention of a close friend's deception, so heinous and unfathomable it defies explanation.

It's been just under two years since I learned that a former coworker, client and colleague had been leading a secret life as a child pornographer, a crime for which he's now serving 10 years in a federal prison; and a crime that will shadow him, no matter what, for the rest of his natural life.

I could readily forgive philandering, bigamy, cross-dressing, a shoe fetish, tax evasion, cat-burglary, drug-trafficking, assassination—even secret membership in the Boogaloo Bois. But the production and interstate distribution of child porn?

Who can know the wicked heart? Not I. 

If you asked me to describe my friend two years ago, I would without hesitation have said he's a quietly devoted family- and businessman, with a passion for thrillers and minor-league baseball; socially and politically mainstream; quick to win over others with charm, praise, and wit; and able to inspire coworkers to excel. It never occurred to me—until I read the DOJ's brutally stark press release—my friend led a separate, secret, criminal life.

A secret life, psychiatrists say, provides a safe haven in which we can explore "who we really are."

Given the magnetic power of compulsions, that's terrifying.

Believing isn't Knowing

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time,

but it ain't goin' away.

— Elvis Presley

Wisconsin pharmacist and flat-earther Steven Brandenburg is in deep kimchi for destroying 500 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. He insists the vaccine contains a microchip designed by eugenicists. (He also insists the sky is a shield deployed by the federal government to prevent us from seeing God; but that's another matter.)

British judges call Brandenburg's willful ignorance "blinkered," "blind-eye" or "Nelsonian" knowledge, after Lord Nelson's brave deceit. When faced with a hostile force, the admiral would hold his telescope to his blind eye and announce that he saw no enemy ships.

In the US, we like to say, "ignorance of the law is no defense." In the UK, the principle is better stated: "It is dishonest for a man deliberately to shut his eyes to facts which he would prefer not to know. If he does so, he is taken to have actual knowledge of the facts to which he shut his eyes."

Do we have the right to shut our eyes to facts and believe whatever we want?

Right now, right-wingers say we do; but that's bullshit.

Beliefs only aspire to truth; they don't entail it. Believing isn't knowing. Earth might be flat, but isn't. The vaccine might be microchipped, but it isn't. The sky might be a shield, but it isn't. It's absurd to hold any of these beliefs, as it's absurd to say, "It's raining, but I don’t believe it's raining." Believing it isn't raining isn't authoritative. The rain is.

I really don't care how you came to your asinine beliefs, Mr. Brandenburg. Maybe their source is your crazy uncle Cal; your born-again minister; your loser drinking buddies; the voices in your head; an angel named Jack; Jim Carrey; or Q. All I care about is that your asinine beliefs denied 500 people their vaccinations.

Your beliefs aren't only false, they're irresponsible and morally repugnant. You're not entitled to them.

You're woefully willfully ignorant.

Neologisms

Writers like words, and speculative fiction writers in particular
like to make them up.

― Zara Poghosyan

Children of the '60s will be happy to learn The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, published this week, includes the word grok.

   

Grok—meaning "to perceive or understand fully"—was coined by sci-fi novelist Robert A. Heinlein. His Hugo-winning Stranger in a Strange Land was a staple among readers in the '60s—even among those who, like me, didn't much care for science fiction. 

Along with The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch-22, the Library of Congress has named Stranger in a Strange Land one of the "Books That Shaped America."

The novel recounts the adventures of Valentine Michael Smith, a super-cool Martian who can't comprehend why Earthlings act so desperately. 

Despite enjoying a psychic's abilities, Smith is a naïf—no match for the cunning creatures he meets during his brief visit to Earth. 

But Smith does manage to leave one lesson behind: he teaches Earthlings to grok, to know and love all beings, the way God does. Literally (in Martian) to "drink in" all creatures great and small.

Sci-fi writers like Heinlein seem gifted in their ability to mint neologisms. 

And while not all sci-fi writers' verbal concoctions come into vogue, plenty do.

Among the latter are these gems—all coined by sci-fi novelists, playwrights and screenwriters, and all in common use today: outer space, deep space, cyberspace, hyperspace, warp speed, zero gravity, blastoff, spacesuit, time machine, scanner, transporter, ray gun, robot, genetic engineer, alien, extraterrestrial, replicant, computer virus, computer worm, fanzine, flash mob, unperson, thought police, Big Brother and Frankenstein.