A Sort of Housekeeping:

You might have noticed a bit of orange to the immediate right of this post. I've begun pumping the RSS feed of this site through Feedburner which cleans up your RSS feed, gives you stats on who is downloadding it and a whole bunch of other classical gas. So if you formally subscribed to the Where There's Smoke feed here, please update your RSS readers and subscribe here.

That is all.

Ducks Amuck:

The 150-year old Peabody Hotel in Memphis calls itself the city's only "5 Duck Hotel." Everyday at 11 AM, the hotel's Duckmaster (a fulltime employee) rolls out a red carpet and the hotel's ducks march down the carpet to the hotel fountain in the center of the lobby. They swim in the fountain until 5 PM and then retire to their home on the hotel roof.

According to legend, it's been going on since the 1930s when the hotel general manager thought it would be funny to toss live ducks into the hotel fountain. When the original Duckmaster retired after nearly 50 years of service in 2003, the hotel conducted a worldwide search for his replacement. The winner was Daniel Fox, who now is responsible for training and care of the ducks. The ducks are rotated every 90 days as when they grow up, they develop an independent streak and start wandering around the lobby.

I found out about all this when my father was in Memphis recently on business and stayed at the Peabody specifically to see the Duck March. I love that guy.

Merger of (Wo)Manhoods:

Does anyone else find it strange that the Protcer & Gamble/Gillette merger is being framed as P&G (which makes Ivory Soap, Pringles Chips, Iams Cat Food and Hawaiian Punch among others) getting into the "Man" business? Sure we all know Gillette razors but they also make Oral B toothbrushes and Duracell batteries which, last I looked, were free of gender. If I were to rewrite the lead, it would say something like this...

Proctor & Gamble, one of the world's leading manufacturers of household goods, recently beset by declining stock price and eroding brand loyalty, has agreed to acquire Gillette, another giant of consumer hygiene products recently beset by declining stock price and eroding brand loyalty.

Isn't that the business story here? That consumer products is a mature industry, wracked by Wal-Mart, bulk purchasing, generic products and declining brand loyalty and that merger is a natural if panicked response to that (see the major record labels)? Leave gender out of it. It bespeaks a lack of imagination.

Sunday Morning Shards #21

On my mind and in the reading queue this week. The "In The Evening" edition.

*I've been reading Soul City, a neat little fable by Toure' about a fictional municipality where the streets (Cornbread Boulevard, Satchmo Stret), buildings (Negritude Univeristy, Cool Street Library) and districts (Honeypot Hill) are all named after famous African-American icons. In Soul City, the mayor is a DJ whose mix pipes through speakers embedded under the sidewalks and the citizens dance and strut as they walk. I'm lovin' it.

*In honor of the 21st birthday of the Apple Macintosh, a video of the original mac's announcement and debut (January 24, 1984) at Apple's Cupertino HQ, has been circulating around. Steve Jobs is dressed like a member of the Billionaire Boys Club and the computer today looks laughably squat and boxy. Nonetheless, when the theme from Chariots of Fire begins and the crowd erupts into a standing ovation, I had tears in my eyes. Over a friggin' computer announcement. Damn that Jobs guy knows how to put on a show.

*Salon has a related article called "Hallelujah, the Mac is Back."

*The 2005 Bloggies have been written up in the Washington Post (via Large Hearted Boy).

*I get asked all the time by my clients how to appropriate pitch their books to bloggers. Now I've got somewhere to point them.

*The New PR is a resource for public relations professionals to discuss the changes blogs and nanomarkets are briging to their business. There's also talk of creating a wiki of editors, columnists and media contacts, which would remove such information from the proprietary clutches of companys like Bacon's and make it freely available on the web ala Wikipedia. Exciting stuff.

*Sogudi is a tiny add-on to the Safari Browser which allows you to abreviate searches on your favorite web sites. Sounds minor but has saved me a bundle of time. Or at least it feels that way (via 43 Folders).

*I spent the afternoon today purging my office and processing outstanding things to do according to the principles of David Allen's Getting Things Done. Though I only got part way done and there's a huge pile of files and action items on my floor, I feel oddly clensed. Must. Press. On.

*Coachella's lineup is announced tomorrow. I'm going to try to go this year. Wahoo!

No 'Shards'. Again

I've committed myself to purging old junk from my office today so no Sunday Morning Shards unless I get to it this evening. Just wanted to let you know.

One Sentence Movie Reviews #24

The Hebrew Hammer (2003): "If you can pull off a Jewish Shaft, please have the courage not to stop there."

Photographic History:

Suzan took a really good picture of me last night while we were at dinner. Which if you know me is pretty damn near impossible. I even look rather dignified.

Now go outside and duck as pigs fly by.

What's good for Margaret Atwood:

Is good enough for my friend Wendy. She's got a book coming out in a few months and has taken it upon herself to invent a robot to do her signings. F*ckin hilairous.

Dumb Little Thing(s) I Noticed:

TypePad allows me to assign multiple categories to posts. Faboo.

Also, there's a new version of Delicious Library. Anybody know how it's an improvement? Or if it is?

Also Redux: Ive been messing around with Feedmarker which claims to be Del.icio.us and RSS Readers combined. I don't quite get it yet but the creator was nice enough to respond to my questions. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Home For a Little While:

Hey there. So I'm back from LA, well rested and ready to shake life awake again. I don't leave townn again until March when I head to New York to meet my publicist, then down to Austin for South by Southwest then up to Virginia to speak at the Virginia Festival of the Book then home to San Francisco to release my sanity from its lockbox.

Worth mentioning: SXSW Baby, the conference's community-driven weblog, is back up and running thanks to the mad skillz of Brad Graham. There you'll find everything you need to know about attending and meeting up with your favorite geeks.

Also worth mentioning: I'm not much of a shopper but I had to make one purchase down south. The 20th Anniversary of Live Aid is this summer and in anticipation, the whole damn concert, over ten hours worth of music plus the original Band Aid and USA for Africa videos, has been released on DVD. I bought it immediately. Because nothing stops me and 80s nostalgia from gettin' down.