Here’s a little confession: I can actually crochet. It’s been many years since I could actually be bothered to do any, but it’s something I learned and have knocked out the odd pair of baby’s booties and the like over the years.
For reasons I will never understand, knitting seems to have been enjoying a near cult following lately and, for reasons that equally evade explanation, I find knitting winds me up and annoys instead of relaxing, so I avoid it.
All that is by the way, because I actually came across these little delicacies when I was searching for real food at Flickr. Terribly cute to peruse and if you like those, you’ll also like these Gourmet Crochet & Knitting images.
I don’t think I shall be making any, any time soon, although the thought did cross my mind that crochet chicken drumsticks, stuffed with catnip, might make good cat toys. They probably wouldn’t mind the dim-sum or pizza, either! 
At the same time, I read about Hyperbolic Crochet Jam and the The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, "…a large-scale constantly mutating series of hand-made crochets that replicate the forms of natural coral …" Now that’s fascinating.
You’ve probably already seen this slideshow, touted as the World’s best presentation (Via: B.L. Ochman), but just in case you haven’t surfaced from under your rock in a while, here it is. I also wanted to comment on it, or to be more exact, what becomes obvious from the numbers it presents.
It concerns me too that there are governments and others with a vested interest who would seek to control either free speech or neutral and equal access to content on the internet. It may seem counter-intuitive (or even counter-revolutionary); it probably won’t do anything to save the planet, but capitalism and rampant consumerism could well be, strangely, what keeps these doors open, at least in what we laughingly call the civilized west.
The clue, I believe, is where slide 26 says:
14% vs. 78%
Hmm …
Which was explained in the previous two slides (view them, you won’t get any more *spoilers* here). With that much (see Reason #2) riding on such an effortless way of marketing, you can be certain that the big fat corporations will make sure that as many punters as possible can freely join in.
Wouldn’t you if you could, effectively, get 78% of your marketing done by others?
And you can too. Of course, you’ll need some good products that people actually like and want as well, but hey, that’s a mere detail.
How much consumer control is real or perceived?
This whole social thing works (it is not a fad) because of a phenomena called group psychology or group influence and, marketers (both good and bad) have been taking advantage (with either positive or negative connotation) of that human behaviour for longer than we’ve had a name for it.
It will go on working, because it’s unlikely we can change human nature.
Everything we do, think and buy these days is, at the very least, carefully and deliberately influenced (if you want a polite description), or engineered and herded like sheep (if you want it spelled out), but that’s today’s reality.
The question today is, can companies grow up enough to let go of control?
We can hope. And, here’s where we, as consumers, come in, again.
"Fortunately", one of the "benefits" of the current poor economy is a shift in control to the consumer (think "buyers’ market"), who will naturally demand better products and services when their investment has to be thought about more carefully, where the budget has to be stretched and, where purchases have to be made to last that bit longer. I know, this will not be achieved overnight, but as the realization hits enough of them that ignoring customers no longer works, the process will automatically draw companies into the conversation (and they need to see that it is to their own benefit to be there), because if they stay outside they’ll go the way of the dinosaurs.
As George Eliot (Middlemarch, Chapter 46) has already told us, you can’t have, "a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder."
The social revolution has begun and it cannot be stopped now.
Paradoxically, once businesses do relinquish the reins and, instead of trying to control with their dictatorial rules, actually become part of the group and the process, then they will regain some of their influence. It’s rather Catch 22.
A couple of other bits of recommended reading are this post, What do the Tour de France and a Victoria sponge have in common with your social networking web site? Or, if you want to get a bit more in depth, you might consider:
While researching and expanding on my thoughts for this post, I came across a blog called, Internet Psychology, where "Professional Speaker and Internet Psychologist Graham Jones provides regular updates on how the psychology of the Internet should be taken into account by businesses trying to sell online and undertaking Internet marketing," which I like. You might too.
Also see: What’s Next In Marketing & Advertising
Yes, you did Balu. Stop the presses: You actually woke up and got up, during daylight hours! This is progress, after weeks of cowering and hiding in bed, only appearing after dark and for meals since flying into Britain in June.
I’m sure it won’t happen again any time soon, but he did get the chance to go for a stroll in the front garden, meet one of the neighbours (yes, it is a cat on a lead), then after a good sniff round, he flopped down in front of the gate, right where there’s a gap that the cheeky squirrels use to come and go from one garden to another.
Balu has never actually met a squirrel mind you, but he’s probably worked it out, because they’re forever skipping past, just inches from the house. They must be half tame to get that close. Or they live here! Balu has probably seen them when he’s been watching from the windowsill during nocturnal hours.
What’s the chance he flopped down in that spot for no reason whatsoever? Or just to sunbathe? Possibly and it was a rare day when he could have. Still …
He was a dab hand at catching canaries & bunnies in Tenerife, but we won’t be encouraging squirrel hunting (too high in cholesterol?), nor pigeon perturbing, which is what I think really caught his eye! So he got some new balls instead (I mean the plastic type, for playing football) and a fake mouse that he tossed around until we all got tired.
Balu also got the run of the house while mother was out and, strangely enough, though he explored everywhere, didn’t try to destroy anything.
He was so quiet that, in the end, I had to see where he’d gone and, of course, found him lounging happily on the roof of mother’s dolls house: THE place that is absolutely verboten to cats! (Well, along with 1001 other places, which - constantly meeting closed doors - can’t be helping them feel at home.)
And, of course, cats immediately go for THE place they’re not supposed to!
The real irony is that, only the day before, I’d said I doubted the cats would ever settle enough to stop this hiding in bed all day lark (I still have my doubts that they’ll come out of hiding regularly and, I’m certain they’ll never be settled and confident enough to go outside alone). Balu did go straight back to bed after breakfast - like every day for the last few weeks - and, just as he was slinking under the covers, I commented that I “used to have cats”, i.e. not just lumps in a bed. Mid-day he got up and stayed up all day. Contrary puss!
Sunday morning: He was back to bed the moment he’d eaten some food and had hissed at me once and tried to run off to the bedroom to hide, no less than three times during breakfast. But, amazingly, both cats were out of bed, lounging at opposite ends of the sunny windowsill when I woke up. Both dashed to the kitchen, shouting loudly for food as soon as I moved. Yes that’s normal behaviour for cats in general and was for them before, but they haven’t done that here as timidness had gotten their tongues.
We shall see if he graces us with another appearance later, though it probably won’t be for a while: the snoring sounds are getting pretty loud again!
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And what better way to start le weekend of the week that brought us Bastille Day (and night) - France’s National Day (celebrated in some strange places) - but beaucoup de chats Parisien. In fact, we bring you 10 photos of cats in Paris and two of cats called Paris for a bit of Entente cordiale, feline stylee.
Ici, nous avons: 1. Cat in Pharmacy Window, Paris, 2. Feral Cats in Paris, 3. Cat in Paris, 4. Shakespeare’s cat, 5. Paris The Lazy Cat, 6. A cat in Paris, 7. Paris Cat, 8. Palla’s cat, Paris, 9. Cemetery cats in Montmartre, Paris, 10. Montmartre, Paris - la Chat (the cat), 11. paris cat.jpg, 12. Paris Cat
This little fellow running beautifully across the cobbles in Montmartre is the absolute double of my cat Balu, well, except that this one is MOVING.
… but I think they all have that special little je ne sais quoi.
Technorati Tags: caturday,cats,paris,bastille day,storming of the cats,chats parisien,cats in paris,cats called paris,cats of montmartre,shakespeare’s cat
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Norton Library): Sigmund Freud: Books
