Dino Baskovic Can't Lose

The idea came to me by "freak" accident (ahem) this morning when my better half accidentally posted something about rooster hair to my Twitter account. Her laptop is on the fritz so we've both been sharing mine. This means having to sign in and out of our respective Facebook profiles and such whenever we swap the Mac. Sure, we each have our own mobile devices but sometimes you just want to type on a keyboard. Regardless, all week we've been accidentally posting to each others' accounts. Harmless, but it made me wonder...

For the sake of science, would you entrust the keys to your online persona to another soul, and vice versa, even if only for 24 hours? Would you be willing to try?

Sure, you'd have to find someone who would agree to go along, figure out all the privacy and security stuff, all of that. Goes without saying, and perhaps easier said than done. But once you got past that, could you imagine blogging on your lab partner's behalf while they tweeted on yours? And could this work for businesses as well as buddies? Would you make it clear to both sets of audiences, and why or why not?

So many variables to consider, I know. Aimee and I may give it a go, if not just to mess with our in-laws:

[My wife, to her mom, pretending to be me]
"No, Aimee made it clear in no uncertain terms that you wanted the girls all summer. We're just grabbing a bite to eat on the way to your house. No need to help me unload the truck. I pretty much brought their entire wardrobes. But they will want to eat again the moment I arrive and they are already screaming 'Nana!' and 'New toys!'"

[Me, to Aimee's tweeps]
"Screw this green organic vegan crap. The 'Kind Diet' my ass. I need cow, NOW. #winning"

Okay, maybe not to those extremes. In fact, forget the prank factor. Drum up a deal where you guest host/star/chair with someone you know, just for one single day. Trading places on Posterous. Whatever.

Plausible? Practical? Possible?

Please share if you intend to try this at home (or work). But please kids, do not try this at home without consulting a physician, human resources, a law office or a priest. I can't be held responsible if you lose the kids or the farm, especially when you mess with moms.

"You're doing it wrong." Epic fail. WTF. Truly, a triple facepalm:

If you have trouble viewing the images in this email, please view the online version here.

Hi Dino,

I am sorry to bother you, but would you mind referring me to the person in charge of your online marketing?

Thanks for the help and have a great day!

Kind Regards,
Alexandra

--

[Contact info redacted, though I was tempted to leave it. -DB]

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"Physical fitness is one thing. Mental fitness, that's another."

And why yes, Alexandra. I do mind.

Kind regards,
Dino 

No, sweetie, I don't know where you put your library book, jean shorts, shiny rock you found in some parking lot, some doll you haven't played with in months if not years, not that one but that blue hair band among the hundreds you own but it must be this particular band, "Cinderella II" on DVD the one with the scratches but still plays sort of, the money Grandma Vicky gave you last Easter, the Happy Meal toy because that really narrows it down, or your walking stick and for that matter where did you get a walking stick, please go brush your teeth, there is no reason to cry over a rock, we will find you another rock, did you leave the rock on the bus, you know what, fine, I will help you find a new rock, no it will not be the same rock, no I cannot tell the bus driver to look for the rock, yes just like when we lost the other rock at Chuck E. Cheese, yes just like that, the bus is here and I am sorry you don't have your library book and no you can not take the walking stick, please stop crying, seriously, where did you get a walking stick?

And can't you see Daddy is running out the door and I am trying to find my wallet, keys, BlackBerry charger, iPad charger, water bottle, lunch bag, lunch to go in my lunch bag, matching belt, no it doesn't match my lunch bag, it matches my shoes, I don't have time to explain why my shoes should match my belt just help me find my belt, you are absolutely sure your sister did not take my car keys, Aimee did we pay the dry cleaning bill, I will stop at Meijer on the way home but just email me the list, no not to my work account, yes Gmail, the new Gmail not the old Gmail, bless it I need those keys, what do you mean I left my keys at work, how is that even possible, how would I have gotten home, yes I see the car is in the driveway, I said I will stop at Meijer, never mind my wallet is in my lunch bag next to the dry cleaning I hung in the garage where I keep my belt and the sprinklers, with the keys, just make sure we have time to watch Netflix tonight or why are we paying that bill?

See also: "How do I grill tofu?" or (sadly) follow #HowToGrillTofu.

It's not your fault, Eric.

It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

I am out of the office until 3/29/2011.

In my mind, I am basking under the island sun, ocean mist on my face. In reality, I am cleaning my garage and quietly checking my BlackBerry—just don't tell my wife about that last part. For truly urgent matters or press inquiries, please contact XXXXX. Or find me on Twitter where all the cool kids stopped hanging out 15 minutes ago.

You can read this blog post any time. Donate to Japan relief efforts now. 

South by Southwest was a strange distraction last week. Strange in that I didn't physicallly attend, yet it was very top of mind for me. Between last week's tragic events in the Pacific, and sending a first-timer from my staff to Austin, I couldn't think of much else.

I'll address Japan in a bit. First, let me introduce you to Sri (pronounced 'SREE'). She has been a proven part of the public relations department with me at Amway for many years, and is a trusted advisor to fellow PR peers across our global markets. Recently, she expressed an interest in joining our social media team. While Sri isn't a "techie" in the traditional sense (whatever that means), she is soaking up the social-media scene like a sponge. And talk about full immersion. Face it, SXSW may as well be BUD/S school for the Web 2.0 set.

Still, I was somewhat reluctant to send Sri to SXSW, fearing she may be overwhelmed by the intense atmosphere, aggressive networking and know-it-all attitudes. Sri is more than capable of mingling at huge, glitzy events like this, but I naively thought she might in over her head.

I can't tell you how glad how wrong I was. Sri had some helpful travel companions from headquarters and made some dazzling connections of her own. We prepped her on some nifty Twitter apps, a Flip and behold, she was off and broadcasting in no time. In fact, she joked how sore her thumbs became trying to keep up with presenters (BlackBerry thumb has long replaced Nintendo thumb, agreed?). But what blew me away was this observation Sri made on Facebook:

"Want to see REAL Diversity? Go to SXSW. People are not judged by their skin colors, geeky looks, the way they dress, language they speak, or 'the usual' factors. They are judged by what their contribute to the society however small. All of the talks about interactive world may not stick in my head, but I learn something that will outlast the digital and mobile technology."

Sri is an avid shutterbug, and was also able to capture that smack-to-the-back-of-your-head sentiment in the above photo. Between seminars and soirees, she even encountered this gentlemen (pictured below) along 6th Street: 

"A portrait of poverty and homelessness where the world's brightest gather. In the world of plenty, poverty still exists. I wished to honor the dignity of the man by not sharing. But a friend told me that I put a face in the issue of poverty. And if I didn't share, who would? What can we do? I do not have the answer to that."

Stunning. We have an incredible responsibility as communicators, crafting messages and engaging with people in ways that enlighten, inspire and challenge. Amidst the world's brightest, as Sri indicated, are the digital tapestries and tools with which to reshape civilization as we know it. I sent Sri to SXSW thinking she would come back having learned the fundamental skills necessary to master modern media. Instead, Sri sent me straight back to school. I, and so many of us that proclaim ourselves to be agents of change, have much to learn from persons such as Sri.

As for Japan, it was infuriating reading so many self-serving hashtags coming out of the conference (and Charlie Sheen, and anything else) while truly serious matters of humanity unfolded before the eyes of the world. I wondered whether SXSW would at all harness the collective mindshare that had descended upon the Lone Star State to aid in earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in some meaningful way. They did, sort of. And I'm sorry, but it's pathetic. Barely $23K of a $30K target goal raised, as of this blog post? Appalling. There were bar tabs bigger than that.

I have yet to attend SXSW, yet one day will. I hope to make the most of my experience, meet many of the great minds I read and follow, and apply what I learn to what I do both professionally and personally. But based on some of the pushback I've read as of late, I'll be sure to scour the schedule for the truly worthwhile venues, the ones featuring people like Sri. Otherwise, heck, I'll just go hang out with that guy on 6th Street.

Now stop reading and help Japan.

Earlier Wednesday morning, he or she was tweeting on behalf of the Chrysler account. As I and many social-media pros do, this person probably had multiple desktop applications open on their screen, or maybe one app that fed multiple Twitter feeds—one of those being a personal account. One misfired tweet laden with the F-bomb, followed by immediate panic and what must have been some horribly uncomfortable phone calls, and by the afternoon said staffer was severed from said interactive agency as confirmed by the automaker.

(Read the offending tweet here, which was first RT'ed by @tverma29 and later reported on by Jalopnik, Mashable, The Detroit Free Press and even HuffPo before it was later regurgitated by USA Today, CNET, Autoblog and other outlets. For the record, @tverma29 has a name, and Trisha wryly gives her take on her personal blog.)

Everybody has an opinion on this incident, whether the punishment fit the crime, if one could call it that. Did Chrysler and New Media Strategies do the right thing, the only thing to do in this case and terminate the employee, or should they have taken a page from last month's Dogfish-Red Cross case? I'm torn, to be honest. I see every side of this, from Chrysler needing to act swiftly to protect its consumer brand to NMS needing to preserve the agency-client relationship at all costs, to coming to the defense of the pour soul at the center of it all. Hey, that could one day be someone from my social-media team. That could be me.

Sure mistakes happen, though for as forgiving a society as we claim to be, we are first-most cold and unforgiving, all too quick to cast the first stone, calling "OUT!" at the first strike. That's not a complaint, that's just reality. Face it, dropping the F-bomb, even accidentally, was a career-limiting move well before the web. I am a bit perplexed that NMS won't so much as acknowledge the incident on their website, blog, Twitter or Facebook. But I know all too well how that can go. Imagine the conversation: "Utter so much as a hint of this on any of your sites and we'll lawyer up." Maybe that's an unfair assumption, and perhaps both agency* and client are working up some sort of joint mea culpa, potentially to pre-empt any of those year-end business blunder lists.

But what of this mystery offender in question, alleged critic of Motor City traffic and current jobseeker? I don't really care what was going through his or her mind at the time, and I'm sure this person will land on both feet just fine. How, exactly, is what most intrigues me. Will we see this character at a conference any time soon, recounting that crazy day in March when their world turned upside down in a matter of minutes? Can they parlay this into a guest spot on Freakonomics Radio or a better gig or whatever golden egg gets laid before them, being a little older, a bit wiser?

Or will it all be a waste, just another cautionary tale for community managers to consider while a would-be web genius dons a smock at Starbucks? Because that would make me one angry f#@$%!...

* Interestingly enough, one of my Twitter followers pointed out that NMS seems to like a loose tongue.

That was my key takeaway from my self-imposed Facebook moratorium last month. Get a monkey. Fast. And make it update my Facebook account.

I'm far too busy with Twitter now, plain and simple. All that retweeting and hashtagging, it takes work, you know? My Klout is, like, 60 or something. I don't really know what that means, but if it dips to 59, I can't guarantee anybody's safety is all I'm saying. And Quora? I'm posing some really insightful questions on there and suddenly I have all these followers. That's too much responsibility to bear if you ask me. Or Quora.

Never mind how freakin' productive I've been offline. I finished entire chapters of books, refilled prescriptions and cleaned not one but two desks. You try doing that while keeping up with everybody's predictions for Bristol Palin post-Dancing With The Stars. One Saturday, I even thought of subverting a small government. But really, bringing down a dictatorship with Facebook? That'll be the day...

Too much multitasking, man. I love "friending" old friends and all, but I can get a monkey to do that for me while I'm shoveling snow or mulch or whatever it is I'm shoveling that day. Teach it to accept friend requests from only those that owe me favors and believe you me, I do not forget whose bar tab it is next. And when Zuck starts selling my deets to Madison Avenue, I can train my monkey to swing back with a DDOS attack while I eat a club sandwich.

(The monkey will of course make the sandwich, though without the whole wheat crap. Millbrook for me. And that will go on Facebook, too.)

So a helper monkey it is. For Facebook, for sandwiches, for the children. And nobody better touch my monkey.

Oh, I did learn actually learn a thing or two from my Facebook-free February. Nothing earth-shattering. No major epiphany. But plenty of small ones, which I will share in no particular order pretty soon. Or the monkey will share on my behalf. I have yet to decide.

No monkeys were harmed in the posting of this blog.

Collected clips from my long-defunct webzine, dated February 16, 2000:

Be careful what you give... or you're going to get it

Guys generally get a bad rap, and Valentine's Day has a lot to do with it. Cheap gifts, or what are perceived as cheap gifts, also have a lot to do with it. And sure, there's thoughtlessness to account for. For example, I knew of one future couples-therapy candidate who gave his darling a check for Valentine's Day. Yep, you read that right. A check. And not even inside of a card. Just handed her a check, told her it was easier than trying to pick out something for her. And the capper to this caper is that this was not just some girl he'd been dating for a month or two. This was his fiancé.

But, as Mr. Pink said, "F--- all that." I'm here to tell you it's not all our fault.

First of all, what happens to that "it's the thought that counts" mentality that is so prevalent at Christmas? By February, it seems that materialism and/or some Harlequin-novel sense of romance pervade. But not every guy is Fabio; some of us have brains in our heads, after all. Well, brains or not, soon guys are being hit over the head with the idea that they are cheap, insensitive louts with no more romantic sense than God gave a rabbit. But I am here to say that you guys are not completely to blame. Notice I said "not completely." I am all too aware of the shortcomings, so to speak, that most men possess.

And who's to blame for all of this? Why, The Media, of course. (That's right - capital letters, because this is big-time evil we're talking about.) When The Media are not discussing the oral sex habits of politicians; not turning our kids into mindless zombies with the attention spans, -- as Dennis Miller put it so eloquently - "of a ferret on a double espresso;" when they aren't generally drowning the public in a sea of sordid sewage, what are they doing? 

The Media are giving guys a bad reputation.

- Brian W.

Like I need a hole in the heart

I've come to the conclusion that I'm a hopeless romantic with a hole-y heart. It makes it easier to write and harder to talk about what's really going on inside. Some of you might recognize this phenomenon. But when were you wounded and how do you mend them? Can you?

And let's face it, some wounds are downright funny. Any story ever written by a dejected fool just wreaks of sarcasm and drips irony. It's as if the person plucked every barbed wire from your heart, cackling all the while. And then there are the sloppy sweet believers who marinate every word in lovey-dovey, fuzzy toilet seat covers. Words like "snoogle" become part of their vocabulary. To this crowd—please, drown yourselves. 

Finally, there are those of us who believe, whether right or wrong, that we exist somewhere in the middle amidst the constant struggle to survive our own conflicting reflections of flushed cheeks and dagger-me stares. If we all got together in one room would we find we were missing the same pieces or could we form a whole person together? What the hell does a whole person look like anyway? I'm pretty sure I've never met one.

- Aimee V.E.

Explode myself

We went out to shoot, and I called fire on myself. We were in a bunker and I figured, "What the hell." I got the coordinates from a Plugger (a military GPS system). The captain didn't mind. 

Some of the rounds landed behind us, but I know I got at least one hit. They were only 105mm rounds. Only about 40 pounds of explosion.  

Mostly fragmentation and shrapnel. The truck nearby didn't do so well. Neither did my own personal truck.

- Don S.

The XFL???

This one is way too reminiscent of big fish in a small barrel, or something like that. No, idiot, I'm not concerned about the integrity of the game play. Anyone taking that point of view is a little goofy in the gray matter. 

A real huge question mark is money. I saw old man Vince McManon is investing $10 million. To you and me that's a whole lotta Bud Light, but in pro football that's a fraction of a single team's payroll. I admit I don't know what his whole plan is, but I can only imagine. What does it consist of, two teams made up of washed-up high school gym-class heroes, traveling the land and playing like the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals?

Others have tried a whole lot harder to take a piece o' market share away from the No Fun League and they haven't succeeded. Count me in with the naysayers.

- Mark H.

O, what a night

I soon found out that I'd have no problem getting home as Calvin slammed the door to his bedroom and announced that it was time to go. Was he kidding? Why did he bring me to his place if we'd be leaving so soon? I'm no expert in post-bar etiquette so I followed him out the door and into his car where I met a situation so awkward I began to think maybe my life was a goddamn movie. 

It seems Calvin's girlfriend, yes, his girlfriend, had decided to wait for him in his bed as a little late-night surprise. Neither she nor I expected the other and somewhere amidst my dramatic plea to a greater power to put me out of my ceaseless misery, I laughed at how truly pathetic this was. This shit only happens to me. I mean, really, who does that? In his pitiful apology he convincingly called her his ex and acted just as shocked and bewildered as I was. Ugh, please. I can only say that I am naive, not stupid, and that maybe Calvin should have checked to see what friends we had in common before he fed me a story so asinine I now think he's been checked in the head a few times too many. 

The next day, my friend and faithful relationship counselor John laughed in my face as he told me the truth behind my evening. Calvin was a cheating bastard, it seemed, and the joke was altogether on his girlfriend and me. I don't know what Calvin said to her, but they are still together. I'd give anything to tell her to get a little self-respect and peace his unfaithful ass out. 

- Rebecca G.

Top X list

As I once explained, my head swells with multiple egos and competing agendas. It's like there's a buncha little horned Dinos hunched on my shoulders all day whispering "kill her" or "slowly clip the green wire" or "my beloved ice cream bar."

Long story short, I couldn't decide on a single topic to write, and dammit, I wrote enough shit last month to last you through the rest of winter. With that, here are the top 10 stories I almost wrote, attributing of course the enigmatic letter "X" and the month of February...

X. [REDACTED]

IX. Exacting methods of medieval monkey torture.

VIII. My idea for "Disney After Hours: XXX-Rated Mousecapades".

VII. [REDACTED]

VI. [REDACTED]

V. Cancel Letterman.

IV. Exacting methods of medieval monkey torture for the family.

III. Top 10 lists are a great way to fill white space.

II. [REDACTED]

I. Roman numerals are for sissies.

- Dino B.