they gave me the willises

for my initial training period in media ops, they've given me the willises (and sundry): bruce, rumer (that's her in the picture; just turned 20), scout and tallulah, as well as demi & ashton, plus bruce's love interest, currently emma heming.

the meeting with begner was pretty intense. she's got quite a chip on her shoulder about how important media ops is, and how well the work is done. apparently there are plenty around the organization who think this kind of celebrity pushing is unimportant and/or so easy to do that we hardly need people to do it.

but after less than a week on the inside, i certainly have a new respect for the work they do in the rue morgue. (they like that name, by the way. i wasn't sure how they'd take it, but it seems to be a badge of honor.) the way begner runs the place, it does a lot more than simple distraction. and the way they coordinate things, it all really works to much greater effect than straightforward media pushes usually do.

and begner seems to be in on everything. another one trying to impress the council, no real surprise there. she's famous for zero-tolerance, for canning people after one mistake. intense, like i said. but she seemed to like me okay, or at least not dislike me so far. i've had rougher bosses, i can handle her.

so it looks like i'll be back in north america for a while. i'm staying at a temp place here in new york while i learn the ropes. soon i'll have to spend some time on the west coast, where a lot of the movie celeb stories are run from. i don't have a bungalow any closer to the action than my new place in trois-rivières, but i'm in no hurry to get another. the temp places are more than adequate for now.

i'm in the same office as an old friend from school days, mak. he's been in the rue for almost a year, so he's an old hand compared to me.

mostly i'll be studying the willis story and related substories, i'll be getting full training on the psychology of leisure-level distraction. also be working out all the instruments and outlets, of course. once i get a lot of that groundwork behind me, i'll be moved up to higher profile, more key celebrity characters. but these aren't bad for starts.

new assignment: rue morgue

just got back to zielona góra, where i thought i'd have a chance to catch up on the primary project i was working before getting pulled in to work on that beijing-timed stuff.

but no. i barely got into the office this morning before derrick, my boss, calls me in. he's brilliant, and works his ass off; he's exactly the type that will be on the council himself someday, i'm sure. but on a personal level, he's basically a jerk. just completely unsympathetic and tactless, is all. you get used to it. or you get transferred, i guess.

anyway, with no preamble whatsoever, before i even finish sitting down, he says, 'you're going to media ops, celebrity division. you'll report to begner.' and then he just keeps poring over the papers on his desk, doesn't even say 'thanks' or 'that's all' or anything.

his assistant gave me the folder with all the details on my way out. there were copies in there of the review procedures for the scenarios i'd worked on over the last, what's it been? 30 months? he put some decent comments in there; nothing too glowing, but all true, at least. once he's a councilor, those will be nice to have in my file, no doubt about that.

so, media ops, celebrity division. or as it's more popularly known around the organization, the rue morgue. i guess begner was impressed with some of the work i did on the u.s. scientology people a couple years ago.

so long story short -- too late i know -- i'll be helping organize and plan some of the distracting and headline-stealing antics of your most-loved and/or most-hated celebrities. you'll see my work in everything from tabloids to vogue, from e!tv to the bbc. of course it won't all be me, the staff at the rue morgue is huge. but hopefully it won't be too long before they give me someone big & splashy. like paris, or britney, or brad, or becks.

unfortunately i have to leave poland, and only right after i got here. sigh. just boarded the rail europe train in wroclaw. i couldn't schedule a jet to paris until late tomorrow, so i figured i'd just slum it on reg transit. i'll meet some of my new coworkers in paris, which is as much of a central office as the celebrity division has, i hear. then on to new york, to meet begner.

maybe i'll see someone famous on the way, lol.

the green line

just finished a good national geographic article on bethlehem. it's from the december 2007 issue, what can i say, i'm behind on my magazine stack. well, this is reading for pleasure, that's why.

ng is one of my favorite reg mags, because it doesn't try to get all political. you have to realize how impossible it is to read any news or political analysis when you know that any time an author's right about what's going on, it's completely by accident. so ng is a nice escape: fossils, slice of culture somewhere, some exotic animal, etc.

so this issue's slice of culture somewhere is bethlehem 2007 a.d., right in the middle of the israeli-palestinian conflict. now, of all the conflicts in all the world, this one is indeed special. it is the only one that is totally uncontrolled, unstaged.

all the others, literally without exception, are carefully orchestrated by us to accomplish certain objectives, or to maintain certain stases. from india/pakistan to the "georgia crisis", they're all planned out. and you wouldn't believe how rarely they stray from plan, or how quickly they're put back on if they do.

but not israel. that whole damm place is wild and on its own. it has been since 1949. things were sliding into chaos after 1948 -- real chaos, not our usual faux chaos -- but the councilors couldn't agree on what to do. oddly enough, there were partisans for both sides, which never happens. i don't know why, though i know it wasn't any of that religious claptrap that fuels the conflict on the ground.

so during one particularly absinthe-fueled night, after weeks of interminable meetings, the idea was floated: what if we really let them go? au naturel, uninterfered-with, and see what happens? amazingly, the councilors were all so sure their side would quickly prevail that they agreed. and the knowledge to be gained from such an experiment was another benefit, they decided.

that's what the green line is really named for, the absinthe. the ink-color story was cooked up for the media, for obvious reasons.

the rest, as they say, is history. nothing's stabilized, and it doesn't look like anything ever will be. there were, and still are, interesting observations coming out of research about it. but frankly the cost and work of managing everything else surrounding this thing is beyond immense.

"This is not just land," says Froman, his long white beard spilling from his chin, unruly as a river rapid. "This is the Holy Land. There's no oil, no gold, no diamonds. It's a desert! But this is God's palace." Froman is 62 years old; he can count back 17 generations of rabbis in his family. He's the 18th. His son is also a rabbi.

guess what dude. it is in fact just land. and you're right, it's not even good land. hang it up already, you crazy bastards.

russia and georgia go for the gold

as you've probably guessed, the main destabilization planned to occur during the worldwide distraction event in beijing is the russian/georgian conflict. without the media cover of something on the scale of the olympics, it's much harder to keep this kind of thing on the back burner. and that's where it needs to be for a little longer, while it continues to simmer, building pressure.

the final result, as the tv networks have already started hyping, will be the return of the russians to superpower status. once obama is sworn in next january (spoiler alert; oops, too late, lol), the u.s. will be stepping down as global aggressor and wildcard. it's another character's turn to play the heavy in next season's episodes.

but don't worry about that. just keep watching to see if your favorite "athletes" will medal in beijing. (here's an insider tip: watch what happens with jessica zelinka.)

"R.P.D.M.": Far Out Shirts Design In Movie

Here at Far Out Shirts, our involvement with movies is usually limited to making designs inspired by them. So we were excited to be contacted by independent filmmaker Mark Harris of Desperate Comfort Films about using an image from one of our shirts in a short film.

The film, finally done and fresh from winning 2nd place in a film festival in Los Angeles, is great. You can't miss our shirt design, which is from Cthulhu For President, one of our most popular shirts.

NOTE: The film is unrated, but is definitely "not suitable for work". I'd hazard to guess that if it were rated by the MPAA, it would be in the "R" neighborhood (drug use, violence, brief nudity; all that good stuff).

That disclaimer out of the way, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present: R.P.D.M.