Mumbling in movies

Just watched Mystic River, have been rewinding endlessly to try to catch a couple of words that an actress says: Jimmy's wife says of Dave: "He married MUMBLE MUMBLE Celeste." Have searched on the Web for synopses of the film, also for crits, also "look inside" the book on Amazon ... this is such a common problem, and especially with American films ... MUMBLE FREAKING MUMBLE ... not to be mistaken for cinema verite, it is simply sloppy, lazy, insular behaviour, aided and abetted by bad directors and sound technicians ... same problem plagued The curious case of Benjamin Button ... the opening scene in which a croaky old woman Cate Blanchett cloaks her perhaps insecure Southern accent in IMPENETRABLE MUMBLING had me ready to bolt before the film had even got going. Similar sound problems occured in other parts of the film.

This is a general and widespread problem in an era where technology is everything and humans have become lazy.

To catch a thief ... or not.

Crouch End high street, yesterday afternoon. I walk into Tesco and see two security guards wrestling with a guy who has been caught stealing. He escapes onto the street and they wonder aloud whether they should call the police but seem in no hurry to do so. I follow the same man into Boots, where he proceeds to steal again. I let a member of staff know, he spies on the thief then pounces on him outside the store, managing to retrieve the stolen goods. But the thief walks free. I say to the Boots guy shouldn't we call the police? He says no, they will want video evidence and won't want to do anything. He seems to speak from bitter experience. I watch the thief walk around a bit longer, in no particular hurry, and then get on a bus.

Welcome to modern Britain where customers and concerned citizens get treated like criminals but thieves receive amazing customer service.

"I been away a long time"

... as the taciturn Native American says at the end of One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Yes indeed. I've been institutionalised in the madhouse of modern-day consumerism, too mentally deranged by it all to summon up the will to blog.

As WB Yeats put it, "the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." How conceited to assume I am one of the "best". But plenty of "passionate intensity" coming from those call centres and their affronted, can't-do staff.

Anyway, I really don't know where to begin to capture the raging torrent of customer nightmares (and a few glimmers of light amidst the darkness) that have passed under this particular bridge since I last blogged here.

I'll take a deep breath and get back to you.

A pact with the devil ...

... His Fiendish Lordship AUTOMATION!

When it works, bliss. But when it doesn't, hell. After days of disconcerting limbo, I finally managed to upgrade this blog to Google's shiny new format. Very nice. Just like magic! But what I really wanted, when the shayzer hit the fan, was a good ol-fashioned chat with a real live 'uman being. As ever, this is one miracle that Google can't perform.

Thank you Ryanair

This airline comes in for much flak over its "uncaring" customer policies (eg not providing enough support for disabled passengers). But credit where credit's due: I informed them today that owing to the death of a close relative I was unable to take my Ryanair flight the other day.

I was informed by Ryanair's very helpful PR woman Gillian that they apparently have a policy of giving a full refund in such circumstances. I'd been contacting her simply to get a letter confirming I hadn't flown so I could ask my travel insurance company for reimbursement. So that was a very unexpected plus and much appreciated.

More trouble at Tesco

I recently posted about Tesco on my marketing blog, regarding my frustrating attempt to get a straight-forward answer from a Tesco call centre employee. Well, plus ca change. More recently I tried to sign up for a Tesco credit card. More.

Retail is detail?

"Today I discovered yet again why so much offline retail is dying on its feet.

I visited Rymans, PC World, Comet and Curries in search of a reasonably elegant, simple, low-cost black and white printer. None of them had one. A couple of them had Hewlett-Packard printers that would have sufficed, but the display models were pointless because there were no boxed versions for sale." More.

Hello customer, good riddance consumer!

Consume: that’s what unthinking farm animals do, feeding at the trough. Consumption: that’s what they used to call cancer. Neither image is particularly appealing, is it?

Being a passive, force-fed consumer is so 20th century. It’s what “command and control” marketing was all about: a quiet contempt for those ignorant, easily manipulated masses. With the right ad agency and enough money, you could stuff almost anything down their bovine throats.

I remember a cartoon strip I saw in the 1990s, making a joke about how mass-production had become mass-consumption: consumers had replaced widgets on the production line. Too true.

Well, thanks to the Internet, the 21^st century is already proving to be very different. No more passive consumers. Today it’s all about being a customer – no matter whether that is a business customer or a Joe Public customer. It’s all merging together as the old, lazy labels and demographics (horrible word) fade into memory. The Internet is levelling the playing field as a maze of new marketplaces spring up. Instead of yesteryear’s marketers and consumers (invariably referred to as “she”!) today we see simply buyers and sellers, a la eBay, who need to be brought together on an equal footing.

Hence the name of this blog and why I will do my level best from now on to banish the word consumer, with all its nasty connotations.

The equation is simple: You are a seller; I am a buyer. You want my custom; I am your customer.