paradessence

paradessence, a new word to me. here it is applied to sarah palin, from the website infinite thought:

"palin is a paradessence, and hence a wildly popular commodity, because she combines the family-centeredness of the ideal suburban mom with the ruthlessness of a corporate 'warrior' in the dog-eat-dog neoliberal economy or of a hard/core ideologue/foot soldier for the far right."

a paradessence, branding and marketing people say, is essential for selling a product, exploiting the paradoxical contradictory parts that lie within, finding two opposing desires that can be simultaneously satisfied. an example is coffee: a stimulant, but in starbucks, a relaxing agent; harley-davison riders who are wild, free, and independent but ride in packs; mcdonalds that suggests friendliness but is impersonal, cold and sterile.

i think everyone is ready to move away from obsessing about sarah palin and on to the real issues and real candidates. i certainly am. wall street is really scary today.

but it is interesting to think of examples of paradessence in successful products. any suggestions?

too much going on

friday is posting day and i hardly know what to write or where to begin, so i might as well go for cute. the frog is jackson (see previous post); the expert frog charmers are olivia and anna bostrom-baker, visiting with antonia from l.a.; and of course tamara at 3 and 3/4 yrs:



so much has been going on, so many things to pay attention to. the olympics; the democrats' convention with michelle; the sad but fascinating kwame kilpatrick saga; and scary sarah now on the scene. jm on crutches with a bad sprain; jh off to california on a grandma gig; translating emails from sweden; the fall semester beginning and need to buy textbooks on existentialism (jh) and web design (jm); planning with penny for the wellesley girls in october; riding the bike to the library for more henning mankell; swimming in the local lakes (independence, pickerel, trout, spring mill pond); kayaking; distributing the colossal tomato crop; watering the garden; hoping for rain; getting horse manure for compost...it goes on an on.

who can keep up with it all and keep the blog going? i plan to be a better blogger now that life might level out again.