(holding sides with laughter)

Okay, this is too funny. You might have to be a market researcher to get the joke, though. One of my clients was just telling me a story about a job he was just coding for Johnson and Johnson. He was categorizing the open-ended verbatim responses from a web survey into "choice codes".

Now, typically when you're coding verbatims, you'll get a number of variations on common themes. Usually you'll assign the subtle variations all the same code, with the notation "(net)" at the end of the code to denote that it contains all reasonable variations of that given response. For example, the following three open-ended comments could reasonably be classified in the same "choice code" of "Low prices (net)":

Respondent #1: They have good prices.
Respondent #2: They're the cheapest in town.
Respondent #3: Their prices are the lowest.

So like I said, this guy is coding a project for Johnson and Johnson, and he gets to a question about their well-known product, KY-Jelly. Well, all of a sudden he reads a comment that says something like, "I like it when my husband uses KY with me, and he likes it when I use it on him orally." So immediately he's like, "Shit, what the hell am I gonna call this one? Sucking dick (net)?"

(pause for laughter)

Now c'mon, that's funny. I totally lost it laughing, and my wife and daughter are fast asleep in the next two rooms. He ended up assigning that respondent and a few others like it the code for "Stimulation/pleasure (net)". Hopefully the corporate cronies at Johnson and Johnson will understand the significance of that euphemism. It means that some folks are really using that product for its intended purpose, which is, of course, a marketing researcher's dream come true at a company like that. :)

(no subject)

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to
eat, or how I comb  my hair, but ask what I am living for, in detail,
and ask me what I think is keeping me  from living fully for the thing I
want to live for.” 

- Thomas Merton

I Feel Good

Read 'em and weep. I have tickets eight rows up in the second section from the stage for this Thursday night's James Brown concert at the Metro Centre in Halifax.

That's right, I said James Brown. The Godfather of Soul is playing here LIVE on Thursday night! And I'm gonna be there. He's a living legend, man. It's as though I get to go see Miles Davis or Prince or John Coltrane or Usher play live.

(laughing) Okay, scratch that shit about Usher. But otherwise, it's all good.

gig promo piece?

I've been working up an e-mail advert to tell my friends about a new gig we have, and thought this sounded like a possible promo piece as well. It might be too long.

Atlantic Standard Time, Halifax's premier modern jazz quartet, is unleashing a storm of ambient, funky fury at the resto-bar Seven, on Grafton Street, in downtown Halifax. Each Monday night from 9 to 11, Seven is the place for spinning live jazzphunk improv with The Doctor Chris Elson on keyboards, Adam S. Fine on bass (the "S" is for "So"), Bob Gaudreau on beats and brushes, and Dustin LindenSmith on the tenor saxophone.

As our name suggests, Atlantic Standard Time is a jazz quartet that's hip to its roots in traditional jazz. But make no mistake: our group plays live music in a completely fresh way. We dig music that has a groove, and sometimes that groove is swingin' and sometimes it's funky. You'll hear us play standards, but they're gonna have a beat. And wait till you hear what we have to play over tunes by Radiohead, Sarah Harmer, 50 Cent, and Ron Sexsmith.

Come check it out. You owe it to yourself to hear music this good.