Nobody's Fool

Watch this space ...

for a travelogue from our Italy trip. It's coming soon, I promise. Post-vacation catch-up has been consuming all my time.

A favorite thing or two

I'd been sort of obsessively tracking when one of my very favorite bands, Sun Kil Moon, was going to be releasing a new album (they're one of those bands that kind of meanders about these things, and have actually only released one album of their own songs in their entire time as a band). And then I got busy and lost track. So I was thrilled to see a glowing review of the their new album, April, to be released (not coincidentally) April 1, in my new issue of Paste yesterday. I was even more thrilled to learn I can listen to some of the songs streaming on the band's MySpace page. There are only four songs there now, but every Sun Kil Moon is like its own little mini epic, sometimes stretching to several minutes apiece, long enough to keep me happy as I sit here and work.

I have an Arizmendi pastry and coffee in my belly, a sleepy dog at my feet, brochures to write, Sun Kil Moon playing sweetly on the stereo and a sunny California spring day outside my window. These are very nice work-at-home moments indeed.

Back to Basics

My daughter is learning to talk. Every day I share with her the simple joy of learning to build the bare bones of language — the fun ways to move her mouth and tongue to make pretty la’s and staccato da’s and ba’s, and then how to put those sounds together to make short, powerful words that mean something. She’s learning the importance of opposites — what goes “up” must always come “dow!” — and the never-ending game of being able to call out the name all the things that so important in her little world — “ducky” and “apple” and “cheese” and “shoes.”

I think the most satisfying part for her is how, when she uses the right words, she gets immediate results. She’s beginning to master the imperative, letting us know what it is that is rocking her waters at a given moment: that she wants “up” to eat in her high chair, that it’s time for a “baba,” or that her pesky new tooth is giving her an “ouch.” I as her mother am relieved and grateful for this most basic and effective communication. For the most part, I’m able to keep my little one satiated enough to get from morning to night without any major crises.

Along with so many other things that I’ve rediscovered in the past 15 months of being a new mom (experiencing along with her every day the sheer delight of simple discoveries), I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our communication becomes so much more complex as our worlds get bigger. And how so many times when we communicate to each other in the business world, we make a point of doing so in a highly technical way. Why? Is it to prove that we know what we’re talking about, to show how smart we are? Or because we feel like we’d be doing a disservice to our very complex subject matter if we try to simplify what we’re saying? Or because we’re so in the weeds we don’t know how to step outside of what we know in order to explain it in a way that makes sense to others?

I’ve had so many people say to me over the years, “Our audience is very academic / technical / clinical, so they want to be communicated to in a formal and technical way.” That might be what audiences think they want, but at the end of the day, your customers and readers are still people. And they’re busy. Overworked. Overwhelmed with information, just like the rest of us. You can never do a disservice to your audience by communicating to them in a simple, straightforward, well-organized way, so that they can understand the message and how they need to react very quickly.

We were all 15-month-olds at one point. In our core being, where our inner toddlers still hide out, I believe we crave communications that make sense without trying too hard. And like my toddler, we find profound relief in understanding and being understood, in this world of obfuscation.

So next time you sit down to write a letter or marketing piece, think about what it is that you really want to communicate – what’s your imperative? Doing so will prevent the business-world version of what we experience when our message doesn’t quite get through at home: tomato sauce ground into the rug, toys flung across the room and messy, bitter tears.

Dumbest thief ever

So the day before my birthday, earlier this month, someone got hold of my credit card number. Unlike before when this happened, my plastic was still secured snugly in my wallet, so the likely scenario is that somebody grabbed it from some Internet e-commerce database or copied it from a receipt in a store.

Luckily, FIA Card Services discovered it almost immediately and by the evening called to let me know there had been suspicious activity on my card. The total damage: $97. Andrew and I laughed over dinner that this obviously amateur credit card thief hadn't gone on more of a shopping spree. The last time someone lifted my credit cards (slipping them from my wallet at work several days before Christmas) they went on an afternoon-long shopping spree that started at a Target in Daly City and ended (when the cards were finally turned off) at the Tiffany & Co. in Walnut Creek. The card companies in that case were set back nearly $3,000.

But here's the weirdest part of this story. A couple of days ago, I got a box via UPS. From a supplement company. I opened it up to find this "cleansing system" that promised to rid me of gas and bloating. It was one of those membership programs with this beaming guy named Tony beaming on the enclosed brochure, promising to make me feel better forever. The invoice was for $75. And the product was shipped, and billed, to me. Ordered over the Internet on 1/5, the day that Internet thief had stolen my card.

I was a little thrown off. Why in the world would somebody use a stolen credit card to have product shipped to someone else? I thought maybe it was a mistake at first. And yet, today, UPS pulled up again. One of the fraudulent charges I remember from the list that the fraud services rep read off was for a coffee company called Boca Java -- I remember it only because it was the first company I didn't recognize after he read off some of my genuine charges, and I had to think for a moment whether I'd ordered coffee online for someone. Well guess what showed up today! Four bags of coffee, a bag of cocoa, two mugs and some gingerbread. Billed and shipped to me.

I am a little nervous about this. First, would somebody really be that dumb? Second, in both cases somebody signed me up for a monthly membership to these companies; Boca Java promised me another shipment next month. What I'm trying to figure out is ... is this a scam that I'm not smart enough to catch on to yet? Even though my card got canceled, will I inevitably be bitten by these products that keep showing up to my house? And what is my thieving friend getting out of this?

Whatever it is, I'm hoping it's just somebody who's sitting at home waiting for his/her box of Boca Java coffee to arrive and realizing that he/she bungled the scam.