In the gray, pre-dawn here on Gulf coast, I’ve taken to my chair to scribe a rant just for you.

And then, change. Abrupt.

I was putting pen to Moleskine knock-off and sipping the remains of yesterday’s French press coffee reheated (a glamorous life or what?) when the morning quiet was choked awake by strangled notes of every military man’s favorite piece of music.


Yes, we’re talking “Reveille.”

It’s pronounced, “REV-ah-lee,” though that is clearly not what the letters spell for English speakers. Doesn’t it look more like it should be pronounced “Re-vile”?

Nearby, we have is a military base. Each morning at 6am, “Reveille” sounds over the base PA speakers.

We can hear it out here on the other side of the gate. And know that I don’t use the word “strangled” lightly.


Maybe it sounds better and less reviled inside the gate.

Out in the land those men and women are working to keep free, here outside the gate and inside the house, that song is a garbled mess of harsh sonority, a crush of cruel notes assembled for your waking displeasure.

So, what’s in a word?

What is the goodness of “Reveille”?

Let’s start with the obvious.


It’s French.

For some, that’s reason enough to hate “Reveille.”  

And it seems that “Reveille” is indeed hated by military personnel, something in which Irving Berlin took inspiration. (More on that later.)

“Hate” is a strong word. However, I was never in the military nor woken by “Reveille.”

The closest I came to military-ish service was standing watch on ocean-going sailboats, and the word “hate” is usable for the moment any hour of the night when you’re woken from your warm bunk to put on cold, wet clothes and go stand out in driving ran and crashing waves for three hours as you move (one hopes) ever closer to your destination across the pond.


But, as the French might say, Je digresse.

The word “Reveille” originates from the Latin “vigilare” or “keep watch,” and the subsequent French verb, “revéiller,” to wake, which brings us the French command “revéillez!” or “wake up!”

There are different military calls to wakefulness that are misnamed as “Reveille.”

Both the British Army Cavalry and the Royal Horse Artillery (shouldn’t firing horses from cannons be considered inhumane?) both use a tune called “The Rouse,” which is often misidentified as “Reveille.”

My personal fave is that the Scottish Regiments of the British Army sound bagpipes (which in the estimation of those who “hate” bagpipes should be sufficient to wake the dead under any circumstances) in a call entitled “The Rouse,” but set to the tune of “Hey, Johnny Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?”

I doubt the regiments play the upbeat, British music hall version “Hey, Johnny” that I’ve heard. But it is fun to imagine a bunch of cranky, uniformed Scots dancing a jig into their morning.


But what if one has neither bugle and bugler nor (thank God) pipes and piper?

If a military unit lacks the personnel or equipment to play “Reveille,” it falls to some poor bastard to walk around, sticking his head inside everyone’s tent shouting the word, “REVEILLE!”

He does this until everyone wakes up and (presumably) douses him with hot coffee. (I have this not from personal experience but a wiki source, so if your personal military experience proves different, feel free to report me to the CO.)


And now, the words.

There are no official words, good or otherwise, to “Reveille.”

There are some unofficial words heard in boys’ locker rooms.

Then, there are some words commonly heard among the military folks who’ve learned to enjoy the “hated” morning call to wake.

For example, the British Infantry likes to sing, “Get out of bed, get out of bed you lazy bastards.”

The British infantry prefer instructions to “Scrub the bloody muck out of your eyes.”

The Royal Navy is much kinder (kindness being something at which the military excels): “Wakey, wakey, lash up and stow!”

The common US words are perhaps the least good: “I can’t get ‘em up, I can’t get ‘em up, I can’t get ‘em up this morning!”

There are alternate US versions which insult, alternately, enlisted men, non-coms, commissioned officers, and (of course) the bugler.


But the goodest of all words to “Reveille” are those penned by Irving Berlin (who in 1918 was certainly using a pen).

Switching the time signature from military 2:4 to a swinging 6:8, Berlin wrote: “Some day I’m going to murder the bugler/Some day they’re going to find him dead/I’ll amputate his Reveille and step upon it heavily/and spend the rest of my life in bed.”

Berlin wrote this because of what he perceived as a universal hatred of “Reveille” among military men.

I will again propose that “hatred” is perhaps overstating the case, at least insofar as heavily armed military organizations are never founded on love. And they can muster genuine hatred for the enemy.

Anyway, hope all this helps you climb into your day.

Words good. “Reveille” cruel. (But in a necessary, keeping-the-world-safe-for-words kinda way.)
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City

LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
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Unleash The Snark!

How shall I phrase this? I’ve been to the mountaintop?

Mmmm… no.

It was Minnesota. No mountains.

Have I been to the Promised Land? It’s Minnesota. Some may see it that way.

But I think I may just have to fall back onto a well-used Hollywood cliché…


I’ve been to see the wizard.

In this case, the wizard is a St. Paul-based poet entrepreneur (poetpreneur?) with an extraordinary track record in business of telling people things they don’t want to hear.

That man is Dan Hill. A former academic with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing/Poetry, and a PhD in English, Dan Hill is the world-renowned master of facial coding, which he performs with his company Sensory Logic.


What is facial coding?

Let’s call it measuring human emotions through facial expressions in order to understand people’s reactions to various input. (That input can include advertising, even radio commercials.)

Dan’s system for judging human emotional reactions through facial cues has put all kinds of businesses on his client list at Sensory Logic. That includes more than 100 of the world’s top 100 advertisers.

His groundbreaking book, Emotionomics, has been an Advertising Age Top 100 must-read book for the year, and has been translated into a dozen or so languages.

Dan Hill is a certified smart guy. So why is he seeing me?


Hello, shameless self promotion!

Dan and I were introduced by the great Jerry Lee, legendary radio station owner, President of SpotQ Services (for which I’ve done some consulting), crime prevention philanthropist, and all-around extraordinary human being. (Jerry Lee was knighted by the King of Sweden. I mean…how did I end up in such illustrious company?)

Dan was writing a book and was looking for contributors. He talked to Jerry Lee, and yours truly somehow ended up on the shortlist.


That’s how your relentless scribe became a contributor to Dan’s first satirical business book.

It’s called Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide To Office Lingo.

This book is created in the vein of so many classic works, ranging from Henry Beard’s The Sailor’s Dictionary (a personal fave) to The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (deemed one of The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature, and Dan’s inspiration for this volume).

Blah, Blah, Blah is funny, it’s biting, and it’s something unexpected.


It’s a public service.

The idea for Blah, Blah, Blah developed when Dan was having conversations with important business types who each told him, separately, that about 25% of corporate managers are bullies.

This idea seems reflected in the book’s dedication: “This book is dedicated 100% to the wonderful people we’ve known on the job, and 10% to treacherous people who made writing this book so cathartic.”

Dan told me he thought of turning to satire as an effort to encourage reforms in the workplace.

The resulting book is funny enough that it has received genuine, out-loud laughter from The Fabulous Honey Parker.

(If you know anything about comedians and comedy writers—both groups to which Honey belongs—getting them to laugh at all is a project. They’re always analyzing the jokes, and they’ve heard more jokes, good and bad, than normal, healthy people.)


Here now, a few Blah, Blah, Blah definitions that passed the Honey Test…

TALENT: The assumption that corporate life reaches Hollywood standards, when it’s really more like Vaudeville.

ANTICIPATION: The naïveté that precedes Anticipointment.

THOUGHT LEADER: A person who possesses neither any original thought nor the propensity to lead.

SEXUAL INNUENDOS AND HARASSMENT: While innuendos involve pointless body-part references that belong in a bedroom, not a conference room, harassment may become the catalyst for mandatory training whereby (some) male employees learn that “harass” isn’t actually two separate words.

BORDERLINE DECISIONS: What leaders with borderline personalities do best.

I confess, that latter definition is mine. Accordingly, I’m honored to have moved the needle on The Fabulous Honey Parker’s Laugh-O-Meter.


Anyway, all this to say, Dan’s business is fascinating. And his new book is funny.

Feel free to buy it here. If you read this as text only or your links are disabled, copy and paste https://www.amazon.com/Blah-Snarky-Guide-Office-Lingo-ebook/dp/B09BWPQGGJ

It’s available in Kindle and Paperback. I have both. I recommend paperback for the full and fun, book-like effect.

And I get paid not one thin dime for any of this. No fat dimes, either.

For me, as a writer who has had to battle corporate jargon in daily life, it’s just about knowing that this effort at sanity and public service is out there, chipping away at the deeply ensconced criminality of intellectually illicit institutionalized lingo.


Also, when you read Dan’s preface, you’ll find a link to bonus material.

So there ya go. No hard sell on this one. It’s just good work by a good man whom I admire, and I’m honored to have been part of it.

(Thanks for the referral, Jerry Lee. And thank you loyal reader Rod Schwartz of Radio Sales Café for the invaluable introduction to Jerry Lee.)
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City

LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the REDUCED bargain price of $9.95
 
For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)

Perfectly good words are going bad before our eyes.

Yours truly has been called on the carpet for a usage that crosses invisible lines, raises hoary hackles, sends soaring raptors into tailspins, and makes innocent babies cry.

Your relentless scribe is struggling this morning with a lexical problem that kept him up much of the night.

And no, the problem is not that I’m referring to myself in the third person again.


This all began with one word I will not repeat here.

I’m not going to make that mistake in a public forum and risk being shouted down by the vocal minority that can ruin what remains of my career below the radar.

This now unacceptable word has a literal counterpart that IS acceptable because it has roots that are more casual and less clinical sounding, its etymology more English and less Latin.

Word A means exactly the same thing as Word B.

Yet, Word A is banned—BANNED—for no clear reason other than a certain group representing a tiny fraction of less than 1% of the population deems it incorrect.


It seems that this happened many years ago while I was not watching the newswire for intel on this tiny fraction of the population.

I did not get the memo.

Last night, when I was taken to task by a lovely 20-something for using Word A (which I believed to be innocuous), I was unapologetic.

Again, since I did not receive the memo, I believed the Latin roots I was uttering were innocent of malice.


Oh, no sirree bob.

This morning, bleary-eyed over my coffee, suffering the lingering effects of the low-grade, overnight haunting of vocabularic ghosts, I investigated my transgression.

Indeed, Word A had fallen from favor with the group from which I had learned it. It has indeed been shunted aside for Word B, its more prosaic counterpart.

BUT…

Word A is now being embraced anew by an even smaller subset of the original tiny fraction of the population because they see it as more appropriate.

They can use it, but we can’t.

So now, we’ve ended up with a perfectly good word gone bad that can be used as good by only a sliver of the self-annointed elite and if one of us in the great unwashed use it, we are to be scorned, possibly stoned, our garments rent and our flesh scourged.


Does anyone besides me see the crime against language?

We’re not talking profanities or racial slurs here.

We’re talking about a word that refers to a manner of dress.

It is a descriptive recognition of an elective condition that is neither pejorative or judgmental.

It’s as if I’ve said, “Ah, you’re wearing green,” and was slapped down, the slapper saying, “We don’t use that word. We say ‘vert.’”
 
“Vert? That’s French for ‘green.’ It means the same thing.”

“Too bad. ‘Vert’ in. ‘Green’ out.”

“Does it matter that you’re now using a masculine adjective, where the feminine counterpart would be ‘verte’? How does that impact all of this?”

“You’re the spawn of Satan. We’re going to shout you down on social media.”


Rewind to New Orleans, where I was recently at the World War II museum.

Yes, it was New Orleans and no, I was neither drinking nor dancing. I was sober and seated.

I was watching a multimedia presentation about the war. It painted a fascinating portrait of the banding together of people nationwide to defeat a common enemy.

About halfway through it, I began thinking that if WW II happened today, we would never be able to pull it off. To paraphrase Walt Kelly’s famous quote from the Pogo comic strip…


We have met the enemy and he is us using our own language.

Today, we could never make it past the insanity of parsing words that go in and out of fashion like the violently shifting winds of the derecho climatology deep in the heartland of the United States, flinging unanchored mobile homes and splintering old barns with the violent and epic gracelessness of Zeus on a bender.

(Oh. Sorry. Zeus. Cultural appropriation. And possibly dismissive of people who live in mobile homes.)

In our present climate, overarching ideas are subjugated to intense prosecutions of minor vocabulary violations that carry no insidious intent, but pollute an entire message like a stink bomb at a gallery opening.

There’s a conservative pundit who likes to say that the US has become an unserious nation.

I disagree.


What we’ve become is a nation entirely too serious about the wrong things.

At best, it makes us laughable.

It’s only a matter of time before a different, tough, humorless, dangerous nation eats our lunch.

Or maybe we fall on our own inability to tolerate each other.

Or both.

I hope I’m wrong.

Words good. Gone bad. 
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City

LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON
The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95
 
For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, 
​both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)