Christmas at DollarTree – with the future of all humankind…

Posted on December 24, 2025 by Greg Swann

“Life is a game measured in false proxies – money, beauty, talent, brains – when the only victory condition is survival. When the rest of the world cowered in terror, you dared to hurl your genes across the abyss. The world belongs to people who love more than they fear, and your daughter is living proof. Well done, all of you. Merry Christmas!”

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

December 24, 2025 – Sun City, AZ

“Can I pet your puppy?”

I had been waiting for that overture, but I wasn’t sure it would come. All kids are curious about dogs, but some of them are afraid.

“Her name is Cleo, short for Cleopatra. If you give her your face, she’ll give you lots of kisses.” To prove me right, Cleo stood forward in her little doggie stroller and kissed the little girl thoroughly. This was met with gales of giggles, and just like that Cleo had her paws on her shoulders and was ready to hop into her arms. She loves everyone, but she loves children best.

We were at DollarTree in Sun City, and I had heard the little girl all over the store: “Dad! Did you know they even have dog toys?” “Mom! Did you see all those spatulas?” It’s true, too: Every DollarTree has everything, but where 99th Avenue paradoxically intersects with 103rd Avenue in Del Webb’s Original Sun City, the largest DollarTree on earth offers up extra everything.

But it was she I was interested in. You may not have noticed, but children are thin on the ground. Even so, that DollarTree is the perfect place to let a kid off the leash: Creeps will be creeps, but that store is filled with people who love children – and at least half of them at any given time will be carrying concealed firearms.

And Cleo can’t actually escape her stroller. She’s a charcoal ‘blue’ French Bulldog, twenty-two pounds of diminutive Mastiff muscle, but she’s strapped in on both sides. But the two of them were arm-in-arm, as much as they could be, and Cleo was licking at the little girl’s (more…)

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Willie Humanseed: Cultivating greatness one choo-choo train ride at a time.

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Greg Swann

“All aboard!”

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Monday, April 24, 2017

“Oh, I do love to see a man in a collared shirt!” I said that to The GoBot as the brood of youngsters and their grandma was still approaching me at the choo-choo train kiosk at the Arrowhead Mall.

He was five years old, short but proud. And the shirt was just a striped, knit polo – but still. “It used to be a man had to work at things, but today that collar makes you one of the ten best-dressed men at the mall.”

That’s so, alas, but so is everything else – alas. Here’s better news, instead: There are super-heroes down at the mall – sturdy oaks who might look too much like slender saplings to you, for now.

By then they had arrayed themselves neatly in front of the kiosk, stately Granny and four sweet super-heroes – all led by The GoBot, of course, who was not the biggest but who was easily the busiest.

The little dude had swagger, from his big grin to his squirm-swathed short-cropped hair. He was front and center at the kiosk, ready to make the deal for everyone – everything but the money, that is.

I nodded to him – rank has its privileges – before saying to Granny, “So, who’s riding?”

Sales monsters will note that I opened with a brutal closing question. That’s the luxury I have when the Brand Specifiers – kids like The GoBot and his mannerly siblings – come to me pre-sold. The Decision Maker – that would be Granny – is the money, which is why I put the question to her. But they would not have come so close if the money were not mine to lose.

Granny already had her cash out, anyway. To the kids she said, “You’re riding the train by yourselves. Those little cars are no good for my bones.”

I smiled at that. “I promise years of memories, but I can guarantee three days.” As I said that I leaned forward and pushed at the imagined pain in my back and Granny chuckled.

Shooting a glance to (more…)

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Therapy couples: Study up on marriage and family – for free!

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Greg Swann

Enjoy your friends – love them riotously – but keep your eye on the horizon: They are navigating the same shoals as you, and you should be learning from their successes.

We live our lives in families, and the great mistake of egoism, individualism and modernity-writ-large has been the failure to acknowledge the obvious – perhaps because it is so obvious, so much the water we (used to) swim in. As with grammar and typography, we see the family best in its absence, and even then we don’t know what we’ve missed.

In the West we celebrate outliers – people who betray the family paradigm like DaVinci – and even what we celebrate about normal family men is very far removed from their families. Accordingly, while books written prior to Reagan’s catastrophic initiation of no-fault divorce will assume normal, healthy families, good luck catching sight of them: It’s been on no-one’s radar for centuries.

I’m a big fan of therapy couples. Not “Couples’ Therapy” – commie crap confabulated by crazy Karens – but, rather, making a habit of objectively observing other people’s marriages and families – taking account of what they’re getting wrong, of course, but making special note of everything they seem to be doing better than y’all have done, so far.

That’s graduated sociopathy – “We’re enjoying our time together, but we’re both also secretly studying you to perfect our own family’s praxis” – but I don’t know what to say about that; it’s what we all do all the time, but with a shared, acknowledged agenda and with your eyes wide open.

Couples dating is dating and is therefore inherently dishonest. If you must, longer is better – the farmer’s market, a day at the beach – because masks will have had time to slip. Accordingly, weekend visits are even better: You want to see your therapy couples living their real lives as their true selves, so you need time for the make-up to wear off.

We are what we do, not what we say we do, so by simple observation you discover who people really are, how they choose (more…)

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Silent cinema in three quick glances: Emily Brownbangs at the conception of guile.

Posted on May 14, 2023 by Greg Swann

This is not what my train looks like – unless you’re a toddler.Photo by: Tejvan Pettinger

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Sunday, May 8, 2016 – Mother’s Day

I want to tell you another train story, but this is a sad one – a little girl’s discovery of evil. I haven’t known what to do about sad train stories, to say the truth, but the sad truth is, they’re there. There are no monsters at the mall, or none that I’ve met, but still there is tragedy – the kind that lasts a lifetime.

So this is a tragedy about religion and silent cinema.

Every story I have to tell about my time driving the choo-choo train at the mall is a story about religion, ultimately, because the train itself is the first idol in the lives of the children who idolize it.

And a whole lot of train stories are silent cinema because, in the din of the mall, with the clamor of the train, if we’re not standing face to face or speaking mouth to ear, there is no point in anyone talking. To drive the train is to communicate by signalling – by hand gestures and facial expressions.

And I see your part of the story whether or not you’re aware of me, and I see more than most people do in the first place, and I see the same silent movies over and over again – different players, same scenes. And that makes it easy to spot the things I’ve never seen before.

So: A taxonomy: Infants, babies, toddlers, children. Infants bawl and sleep. Babies bubble and coo. Toddlers babble in words used as signals. Children converse – in abstract conceptual language. Infants, babies and toddlers are mammals graduating into their potential humanity. Children are short, inexperienced human beings.

To infants, the train is a loud distraction, at best, and a reliable nap-disturber. To babies, it is the wondrous other, vast and thrilling and incomprehensible. My choo-choo is a benevolent dragon to toddlers, a true super-hero, a great and powerful presence who is nevertheless perfectly reliable – unlike, perhaps, some other could-be-heroes (more…)

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Love at first sight, twenty-five years later: Someone to thrive with.

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Greg Swann

I wrote this twenty years ago today, but it describes events that happened twenty-five years ago. You’ll figure it out…  If you wonder what a gorgeous woman like that is doing with a schlub like me, I commend you to the power of poetry. –GSS

 

Someone to thrive with.

January 2, 2003

So…  She says it’s time she goes
But wanted to be sure I know
She hopes we can be friends

I think… “Yeah, I guess we can,” say I
But didn’t think to ask her why
She blocked her eyes and drew the curtains
With knots I’ve got yet to untie…

What if I were Romeo in black jeans?
What if I was Heathcliff, it’s no myth?
Maybe she’s just looking for
Someone to dance with…

The song is ‘No Myth’ by Michael Penn, a very folky kind of Rock ’n’ Roll. There’s this one and ‘Thunder Road’ by Bruce Springsteen: “You can hide ’neath your covers and study your pain, make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain.” We never had an ‘our song’ because we always had two.

I found her on the internet, like every good thing. It was just after Christmas in 1997. She was a widow awash in sadness, and her sister pestered her into posting this completely impersonal personal ad:

Women Seeking Men, Phoenix, Arizona

Intellect, Hubris Appreciated

Relationship: Talk/E-mail
Religion: Gnostic, Hermetic
Other: Doesn’t Smoke, Drinks, Doesn’t Have/Want Children

Description: I haven’t started dating since my husband
    died… and I’m not ready to start yet. I do, however,
    enjoy stimulating discussions, and am interested in
    expanding my network of gentlemen friends without
    having to go out and meet anyone. You may fantasize…
    I am lovely… but do not be crude or too graphic. It
    seems that the chatrooms I’ve scanned are populated
    with people looking for anonymous opportunity to be ill
    mannered. Please do be eclectic, though. There is so
    much fascinating knowledge to be shared and adventures
    to be enjoyed, that the mind should not be limited by
    crassness or trite vocabularies. If you don’t
    understand, please go to the next on the list.

I was in the same sort of spot. I had been through a completely vicious divorce, very costly financially and emotionally, and I had no need or use or (more…)

Posted in Love and marriage, Poetry and fiction, Splendor! | 4 Comments

My only points of disagreement with Ayn Rand, libertarianism and scholarship in general: Everyone has been wrong about everything, going back forever.

Posted on September 3, 2022 by Greg Swann

My epistemology professor – a playful peripatetic.

I have met a lot of big-O and biggish-O Objectivists over the years – people who were present in the salons at the Hotel Martinique, others who were actual invited guests to the show trials at Ayn Rand’s apartment, still others who were close to Nathaniel Branden during or after the split, many others who were attached to spin-off groups – on- or off-campus Objectivist Study Groups. It’s all a Ci china-shop at the top, so bulls like me are not tolerated. But the atmosphere can be more Cs further down – which is how I got to know any of these folks.

Fool that I am, I only just lately thought of a question I should have been asking of all of them – the Willie question, the words no one wants said: “How many abortions do you account for personally?”

Purposefully vague: My own count is two, neither the fruit of my own loins, once by poor advice, once by underwriting the cost of the assassination. (I have redemption-children, too, FWIW, kids I campaigned for on the bubble.) The more pointed question would be, “How many of your own offspring have been murdered in the womb?”

Unconscionably rude, obviously, but it matters to me now because Ayn Rand’s legacy has become nothing but an abortion cult. My ultimate question would be: Was this her movement’s social glue all along? Stupidly dysgenic, obviously, but stupid by every possible conception. And yet this is all that is worth fighting for in her work – per the Ayn Rand Institute – the “sacred” “right” to spawn and then exterminate a philosophical movement by the most efficient possible means – covert de facto virtual-celibacy.

All that’s by way of highlighting how far removed I am, by now, from Rand’s thought – but ultimately from all of libertarian thought. This is me on Facebook today:

“‘Nine Empathies’ is eight years old today. Since then, I went looking for the birth of the thinking brain, and lately I’ve been probing what is true in Cleo, who inarguably lacks a thinking (more…)

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Ayn Rand and me – why my homework is late…

Posted on August 25, 2022 by Greg Swann

Human thriving is not a solitary pursuit? Who knew?

I am dilatory, plainly. More than a year since I’ve written anything here, and that story’s horrors bloom like mold spores. For two years and more, I’ve been stuck with a book I clearly do not want to write and yet can’t stop thinking about – so here I am, waiting to find out how I’ll do.

I am caught out, too, in that I am not comprehensively defended. I’ve been leaping on a lot of new lily pads in the past ten years, and I’ve only glossed that work.

This was brought home to me by a contact-me email, basically asking how my approach to egoism differs from Ayn Rand’s. As if to illustrate how much I have addressed without adequately defending, this is my reply:

I’m delighted you’re there.

I give you four egoists and their objectives:

Nietzsche – domination
Stirner – predation
Rand – independence
Swann – thriving

By thriving I mean achieving mankind’s maximum potential throughout life, which means leading a whole and appropriate human life: Not being a boss or a crook or an obsessive celibate genius, but instead being a man, a husband, a father – and therefore being an uninterrupted and impeccable example of thriving for everyone to see.

Rand and I diverge a lot at love, sex, marriage and family, but the bigger split owes to DISC: Rand was a champion of Dc, but she and her enduring influences are all Ci – hideously the opposite of independence. I am Di, but my philosophical goals are all Ds – where Ds is the actual ideal man and the actual means of achieving universal human thriving. It’s how we did it the last time, the Golden Age now being smelted away.

There’s more where I am now, and I have not written much of it: We do what we see others doing, so the Middle Class can create a virtuous circle – that Golden Age – simply by ongoing social contact. This used to happen by neighborhoods, but by now we are too isolated. Now you find moral growth in churches and in (more…)

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An infinity of souls.

Posted on June 20, 2021 by Greg Swann

Miss Chioux. She’s even friendlier in person.

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Sunday, June 20, 2021 – Father’s Day – Rio Nuevo, AZ

“Why aren’t you writing?”

Josh asked me that, and this is the price you pay for letting people get close to you: They get pushy. Ask me how I know.

Cleo was planning her assault on yet another lawn sprinkler. I said, “I think she thinks they’re aliens. They hide out most of the time, and then, when they finally evince themselves, they’re ghostly, practically invisible. And if you try to engage them, they spit right in your face.”

“You’d think she’d get bored with them.”

“I hope she never does…”

Miss Cleopatra Chioux is a French Bulldog puppy who is not mine but who lives with me almost all of the time, at least for now. We were walking her at dawn in Erin Groves, a tree-lined subdivision up the block from Rio Nuevo. Why there? Sidewalks – and sprinklers! – and no snakes or scorpions to strike at a bull-headed dog.

We – all of us, me, Josh, Tegan and Miss Chioux – are living on a desert horse property that backs to the New River but fronts to a shopping center with an octoplex cinema and is an easy walk to several nice, orderly subdivisions. In other words, come visit soon, because everything around us will be rolled up and ‘rationalized’ in the blink of an eye. But the land still backs to the river – that would be a desert flood-control channel to you – so there will always be snakes and scorpions there.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why aren’t you writing?”

I smirked. “Not-writing is almost all I ever do.”

“Sell that to Manny Kant. That joke is an antique.”

“It’s not a joke. I only write when I have to. I only write when I can’t not write.” That didn’t seem right, either. “I’m not writing for you or anyone else. I’m writing for me. I tell myself stories I need to hear told. Lately I seem to have no stories, just horrors.”

“An Uncle Wille horror story. Now that’s a funny idea.”

“No (more…)

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My three Trumps: Envisioning strategies leading to an exit strategy.

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Greg Swann

Start here: I am not a Trump fan-boy. Never was, and, while I haven’t written much here lately, you can follow my trajectory of Trump affination in these pages over the last five years. At first I feared what everyone does: Demagogue becomes tyrant. Willie wrote a story about that. Instead, Trump has become the great Federalist – as exhibited most extremely this year in his responses both to the Coronavirus and to this Summer’s riots.

With that said, I am fascinated by the man in ways that surprise me. Trump taught me what I want in a politician: Puts Ci on tilt. It was Sarah Palin who first showed us that, but we didn’t know what we were seeing. Trump puts Ci on tilt simply by existing, and that has proved hugely edifying. When he’s on his game, he deflects every Ci display – every order they give him. Frustrated displays escalate and amplify – and here we are.

I think the President is Id, but I can surmise, instead, that he is Di affecting Id as his table image – in other words, that he is perfectly executing a long con. How perfectly? For years now, I have been assiduously watching for just those tells – for giveaways that Trump is Di affecting Id, playing Queens-dumb to sucker the city-slickers. They seem to be there, sometimes, too; for example when Barr shares the press-briefing podium.

But: I am led to today’s analysis by a remark I saw on Twitter: “Have you ever known Trump not to be prepared?” I never have the impression that Donald Trump is ever fully-prepared for anything. I am a sales monster, and I evaluate him that way. He has two speeds: Winging it, when he likes what he’s talking about, and phoning it in, when he doesn’t. He has deft speechwriters, but he kicks their words around like pebbles in a parking lot, killing time until the next impulse to ramble off script.

Here’s the truth of Trump and of Trumpism globally: If old-school politics is Hollywood for ugly people, Trumpian politics is stand-up comedy – without the (more…)

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The Grasshopper Rebellion

Posted on August 12, 2020 by Greg Swann

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Tuesday, August 11, 2020 – Rio Nuevo, AZ

“And in the end, even though nobody planned it that way, that was the meme that ended the war.”

Thalia said that – and the truth is, I should treat her better.

“I’m sorry. Say what?”

“You were drowsing again. The point is, everyone was dreading a war war – and there was some of that. But it was more of a meme war.”

“No, go back further. I think I might have missed everything. What are we talking about?”

“The Grasshopper Rebellion. Did you really snooze through the whole story?”

I shrugged. “I think we have to assume I did. My apologies.”

I really should treat her better. Right now she’s all I’ve got.

And it has been a long, long quarantine for Uncle Willie. No choo-choo train to drive, of course, but the train has been waning with the mall, anyway. But much worse is this: My whole schtick is built around talking to strangers, and this is practically impossible for now.

I’m talking about the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, if you are reading this in some other year. And: With luck, a year from now, this is all a memory.

But Thalia deserves much better than she gets from me. You could say that she’s just a hanging yard ornament on my front patio, a brightly-bejewled copper butterfly who is too-easily upended by the winds. Or you could see her as she sees herself, as the homebody flower-sniffer who flits about the northwest suburbs of Phoenix, always coming home with tales to tell. Or you could look upon her as Homer did, as the inspiration of humor – and hope.

For me, she’s all of that and more: She talks to me when almost no one else can.

“Do I really have to start at the beginning?”

I grinned. “Start in the middle. Make me work to catch up.”

“The middle meme in a meme war? How about this one, from the Ants? ‘Ants Give A Damn!’”

“…Maybe a little more context…”

“Aesop’s Fables? The Ants and the Grasshoppers?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So what happens when the Grasshoppers have had enough scorn from the Ants?”

“…I don’t (more…)

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Surfing The Deuce with Sarno’s Ghost.

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Greg Swann
Want to hear some juicy Vegas gossip? The Grace on the left had a boob-job.

Want to hear some juicy Vegas gossip? The Grace on the left had a boob-job.

Extracted from the Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie book Losing Slowly, available at Amazon.com. I have great ideas. You have money. We should trade.

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Las Vegas, NV – July 22, 2013

“It’s more fun if you ride standing,” said Sarno’s Ghost. I didn’t know to call him that when we met. I’m borrowing ahead on my future credibility, a totally Vegas thing to do. “It’s like surfing on the subway in New York. I grew up in Missouri and I can remember the first time I rode those trains. I thought I was going to fall flat on my ass.”

Completely plausible. Sarno’s Ghost is the perfect American meatball, portly-short on small feet, a threat to topple with every step he takes. You might not even see him as a meatball, though, because all you would be likely to see is an old vagrant. He actually had on ratty overalls over a beat-up red flannel shirt, just like a Missouri farmer, which I thought was choice. He was bald like a monk, with untamed tufts of snow white hair over his ears.

And this was all a disguise, so you know. I can smell a bum – who can’t? – but Sarno’s Ghost smelled a lot like fabric softener, soap and mouth-wash. Totally cool. It’s Sin City. You get to be who you want to be. But don’t bullshit a bullshitter.

I said, “I saw you get bounced from Main Street Station earlier tonight.”

“Yeah. I like to take a piss on the Berlin Wall, when they’ll let me.”

“Regular thing, is it?”

He nodded with an immense solemnity. “Every night…”

We were riding on The Deuce, a double-decker city bus devised by the Las Vegas transit mavens to keep the tourists off the real buses. It runs from The Strip to Downtown and back, all day and all night. Take it from Mandalay Bay to Fremont Street on a Saturday night and the trip – seven miles – could take two hours. You could easily outrun the bus on (more…)

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“The one becomes the other…”

Posted on September 11, 2019 by Greg Swann

Extracted from Bubba:
How the Predator-in-Chief pulled it off.
Buy Bubba. Then: Bye, Bubba!

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

September 16, 2001

“Mr. President, before we begin I need to remind you that reality television is still television.” Manny Kant said that. His hands were folded together, his thumbs pressed tightly to his lips. His hair was slicked back and his tiny black eyes were hidden behind tiny mirrored sunglasses.

Dubya wore a look of profound confusion, which is basically the ground state of his face.

“What I mean is, the pilot got great ratings, phenomenal ratings—”

“But not one cent in advertising,” Fishman interjected. He was sitting to Manny’s right at the conference table, growling around an unlit cigar.

“But not one cent in advertising,” Manny agreed.

“I believe you gentlemen have lost me,” said Dubya. “What’s this pilot we’re talking about?”

“This week, Mr. President,” Manny replied. “Television. Wall-to-wall, sign-on to sign-on, twenty-four-hour continuous coverage.”

“Who would have thought that so little could be regurgitated so many times? To such huge audiences…” Wakefield said this, a sly kind of post-modern wonder in his voice.

We were sitting in a hotel conference room in Arlington, Virginia, the five of us: Manny Kant and his two minions, Dubya, and me. Don’t ask me why I was there. My guess is that Manny was showing off. I’ve known him since he was a greasy little peddler on the streets of New York, selling empty soda cans with a soft con. Later he had me along when he launched the Corpse brand of cigarettes, a daring experiment in honesty in advertising. Now he’s director of programming for a major television network, and I think he was just taking another chance to gloat at my astonishment.

And don’t ask me how a craven hustler like Manny Kant gets to program a TV network. Nature abhors a vacuum, would be my guess. Which is the nice way of saying that scum rises to the top. In a culture of unreason, every outcome is necessarily the consequence of thoughtlessness…

“Anyway,” said Manny, “we can’t afford to take chances. It might be reality TV, but we’ve still got (more…)

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Some days the train robs you: Desperados waiting for the hearse.

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Greg Swann

“Some days you rob the train,some days the train robs you.”Photo by: Syuzo Tsushima

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The saddest questions are the ones you already know the answers to, without having to ask.

“Awb oar!” the little boy said – all aboard! – but he was too big to speak that small. Except of course he wasn’t.

“His name is Christian.” Joe said that to me, a few months ago. He was speaking of his great-grandson, who was flailing his way onto the Coal Tender car of the Arrowhead Mall choo-choo train, the open car just behind the faux locomotive.

I nodded. “And so is yours.”

I met Joe and Christian and Martha, Joe’s wife, just after New Year’s Day, the very first Saturday of a brand new year. I had just started driving the train, but they were old hands, and Christian has been a train fanatic forever.

How long is forever? That’s one of the questions I don’t ask. At a guess, I’d say Christian is eight years old, but I’m an easy sell on six or ten.

I haven’t asked what’s wrong with him, either, but it’s a lot: Random and unreliable muscle control coupled with a significant mental disability. Christian can want as well as any toddler, and as stridently. He can intend for his muscles, but they will not cooperate for him, not well and not for long. He does almost everything he can do with help from Martha. He can verbalize, again like a toddler – making sounds that are less than abstract ideas but still more than mere grunts – but he cannot conceptualize, as far as I’ve seen, and it’s plausible to me that he never will.

And I haven’t asked what Christian’s deal is, either, but this is what I know for sure: Christian’s deal is Joe and Martha. Your kid’s kid’s kid is your kin, and even if no one else stepped up to take care of Christian, Joe and Martha did.

And that’s saying something, because they’re no kids themselves. Joe was an Army Chaplain in Vietnam, and he has a (more…)

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The way to beat Ci compliance displays is to rob them of their oxygen: Your compliance.

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Greg Swann

Thanks to Google, now even girls know how to shop for just what they want, ignoring everything else.

I’ve vituperated a lot, lately, about Ci and its inverse, obverse photo-copy Ic. There’s a reason for that:

We live in a Ci culture – and it is collapsing.

We need to supplant Ci with Ds or live with the grave consequences of letting Dc take over instead.

That’s Chess, huh? It’s practically a Marvel Comics plot summary.

And none of this is meant to malign Ci’s or Ic’s as people. The everyday world needs actuaries and undertakers – just not very many.

By making a fetish of Ci displays, we have encysted the world with insistence, but that’s easily dealt with. You do it all the time already.

Do you see? You are met with Ci/Ic displays – with compliance displays – all the time, and you successfully manage to resist those demands almost all the time.

What am I talking about?

Advertising.

Image advertising is all Ic: “He can’t be a man if he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me.” Persuasive marketing is typically FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt. Every bit of it is devised to induce in you a compliant itch that can only be scratched by compliance – by buying the product being promoted.

Does it work? Hugely well on I’s, less so on S’s, only with DISC-focused value propositions – money or time – on C’s and D’s.

Does it work better, in return on investment, than doing nothing – or doing something else? Asking that question will get you fired up and down Madison Avenue.

Does it work on you? Almost never. How do I know that? Because however many purchases you have made today, you’ve been hit by a thousand times that many marketing messages. More than likely, you responded to none of them, or none more elaborate than mere signage.

Big hero you: You were met with thousands upon thousands of compliance displays and you defied them all with a skilled, studied and well-practiced indifference. Well done!

Your indifference warrants scrutiny, of course. How can we study nothing? Because it’s not nothing, it’s two (more…)

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A Costco family Christmas.

Posted on December 24, 2018 by Greg Swann

Do you know about Costco? It’s a warehouse-sized store that sells huge quantities of stuff at wholesale prices. There are other companies that exploit the same basic idea. Another big one is Sam’s Club, where the motto is, ‘When mere WalMart just isn’t enough.’ It’s like mainlining heroin for shoppers. You start out with a shopping cart that’s bigger than a dog’s kennel. You work your way up to a four-wheeled cart the size of a pick-up truck bed. And eventually you take home skid-loads of merchandise from the loading dock. Costco is absolutely the most American store that could ever exist.Photo by: Michael Ocampo

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Saturday, December 21, 2002

“Okay, so one day we’re driving, and we’re just about to get on the freeway, and I look up and the sign says, ‘Squaw Peak Freeway.’”

The Kid said that. Maybe eleven years old, tall and thin. Tousled brown hair and the most beautiful gray eyes I’ve ever seen. He was talking to the Mom, mid-forties, fair and tall. She had long brown hair and eyes of a gentle, laughing green.

She said, “That’s what the sign says.”

“But my whole life I thought it was called the Pipsqueak Freeway. That’s what Dad always called it. That’s what he still calls it.”

The Mom was laughing silently, trying very hard not to laugh out loud.

“It’s not funny! I asked him why he called it that and he said he named it after the mayor.”

The Mom was still trying not to laugh.

“Oh, sure. Very funny. Every day after school we used to stop at the Post Office, and I was seven or eight before I found out that it’s not really called the Edgar Allan Poe Stoffice. I didn’t even know who Edgar Allan Poe was.”

The Mom was stopped short by her laughter. She stood there behind her shopping cart trying to catch her breath.

“You think it’s funny. I think it’s funny sometimes, too. But I never know when he tells me the name of something if that’s the real name, or if it’s just something he made up.”

“You have a (more…)

Posted in Christmas brutality, Poetry and fiction, Willie stories | 5 Comments