Song for UPS annual sommerparty…
“Let’s talk about logistics baby…”
(note to self…what you find funny after 16 hours of work might not be funny to others…)
Busto
Raspberry Buffet
We we’re recently invited by prince to design a new wallpaper for his toolshed… to my surprise it was a big surprise when he wanted us to set aside 54 hours to go over 2 different drafts. Given that Prince hasn’t allowed a reporter near him for 32 years I thought I might sneak in an interview. I immediatly contacted Condé nast traveler ad told them to clear the first spread and of to LA we went.
I decided that I first had to befriend the guy so I started out with a bit of smalltalk. The following is a second by second description that would make even James Joyce jaloux and also an explanation on why you haven’t seen the interview in print…
Me: So…that song…Raspberry buffet…is there some funny story as to why you picked that name for the song… I mean … It’s quite an odd name for a song isn’t it ? And I don’t think it would ever catch on in real life…who would dine in a restaurant with raspberry being the only food on the menu… and secondly the…
Prince: It’s baret…
Me: …sorry…what ?
Prince: It’s baret… raspbarry baret…
Me: …oohhh
Prince: …yeah…
Me: …
Prince: …
“modus operandi”
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the book “48 laws on power” by Robert Greene. When it comes to power he’s the go to guy after the sudden death of Machiavelli. We have a very liberal work environment..to liberal in my opinion…but after reading the powerbook that was all about to change…I decided to pick a few pieces of advice form mister Greene and focus my attention…The rules aren’t specific so I decided to work with them in a frame of interpretation…
“Always Say Less than Necessary”
Jesper: Do you have the final size for the poster…?
Andreas: …4…
Jesper: …
Andreas: ….
Jesper: …not a classic way of describing a size…is it …?
Andreas: ….
Jesper: …normally we use more specific details…like X x Y…
Andreas: ….
Jesper: Forget it…
Andreas: ….
Jesper: No really…Forget it…
“Make other People come to you – use Bait if Necessary”
Made a trail of hard cash from Michaels desk to the kitchen…after picking up all the money (leading to me standing in the kitchen…) the following conversation takes place…
Michael : Hey…did you see all the cash lying around
Me (trying to sound like Redford in three days of the concord): …yes..
Michael : That’s beermoney right there…and a lot of it too…
Me :…
Michael : You don’t say much these days…do you…
Me :…5…
Michael : …good stuff with all the money though….that’s nice
Me :…
Michael : oki doki…catch you on the flipside…
Me :…(crap)…
“Learn to Keep People Dependent on You”
Text to Jesper and Michael friday afternoon… “Hi…took your creditcards and keys…see you monday…”
“Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability”
Monday 9:54 AM…strapped 32 sticks of fake dynamite to my waste and started eating a lot of chilli to get that “I’m about to blow myself up” sweat going…Spent 40 minutes staring directly at Jesper before removing my left shoe to slap him in the face with it…it did in fact create a sense of Unpredictability…
Let me say this much….that guy Greene (with the posh last “e” attached to a otherwise perfect lastname…) is full of crap…I’m not allowed to work in the same room as the rest of the office and I have to attend anger management every monday for the next 3 years….power my ass….
BUSTO
Reading will make you rich…
Aaaaand we’re back…this time for real…The door jammed to the toilet so I had to wait for the cleaninglady for 21 days. And believe me…it’s no picknick living in 5 sq feet living off soap and hot water. On the upside I can now recite the text on the back of a L’oreal shampoo in my sleep. Might come in handy if you ever meet a girl who’s into shampoo and stuff like that…
Cutting to the chase we’ve been busy and no..that’s not an excuse…but really…it is. Phones are ringing off the hook and sometimes we get a mail to. It’s wonderful and in no way annoying that you don’t ever have an day to work without interruptions. Guess now we now how Coleridge felt when he was writing Kubla Khan…But we’re doing all sorts of graphics and websites and love every bit of it. All of them fantastic and very speciel. (Same as myself…and if you don’t believe me just ask my mother. I’m a very special boy with special needs…)
A story… And this isn’t a regular story but more like a story of the sliding doors kind’a thing. I crafted it with my very own hands, so you better like it… In the little town of Shcprenzenberglauer am scleindeind lived a little boy. His name…Adolph Hitler..he was, as I am, a very special boy with the rather odd feature of having a moustache at the age of 3. Every morning he would shave it in the form of a brick and always tell his mother that this was the first brick in the line of many to build the “Second Reich”. Many years later he changed this to the “Third Reich” as he discovered that a small amusementpark in Ohio had an old wooden waterpark named ”The Second Reich” after the managers son (Hans Reich) and that the foresight of the very same manager had led to a copyright of this very name. As he thought about the various fields of work in which he could develop his passion for brown and structure his mind wandered to the old brownstone he passed every tuesday afternoon on his way to ping-pong practise. It was brown and had a lot of structure. Adolph was a boy of quick decisions and decided to go into real estate. He quickly learned that there were a lot of people in this business and thought it better to have a bit of edge. (Somewhere around here Adolph grows up in order to keep the story going and avoid stupid comments about a realestate agency being run three years old boy…) He hired an intern and had same brown uniforms made in order to give it a bit of an edge…Adolph was new in the business. He had a lot of pride and didn’t want to ask any of his competitors advice. Instead he sought out a restaurent where the very same competitors had lunch every day. This way he could eavesdrop on the conversations taking place. One quiet thuesday afternoon, having spend 3 hours eating a large bowl of onionsoup, two diet cokes and a second order of bread, while watching the occasional car going by the window, he suddenly found himself sitting right next to one of the top dogs in the business…He felt his left hand tightening the grip on the fork while trying to avoid squinting to the waitress watching him from the corner. (The waitress being a slightly paranoid girl named Eva Brown who just returned from New York with a failed TV career on her CV…Adolph liked her but couldn’t quite figure if it was on account of her last name as he had never spoken to her) After some small talk he suddenly picks up the top dog telling his apprentice that if he could give one, and only one, piece of advice it would be the following “Location location location…”…The words being said with such patos that Adolph decided to steal this phrase and make it his tagline for his own company. In order to explain the following we need a quick flashback. Adolph is standing in the kitchen age 12. He’s a very short kid and because of this his mother doesn’t see him when she’s opening the fridge to get a topperwarecontainer with hard boiled eggs. Adolph gets hit by the door on the right side of the face and developes a hearing disorder. The family doctor tells them that he will have to live with the fact that he’ll be deaf on the right ear. He gives Adolph a brochure on hearing disorders…Adolph decides that he needs to know more about this newly found disease and goes to the library … due to a case of the good old dyslexia Adolph instantly develops a fobia and gets dizzy every time the fish heering is mentioned. Getting back to the mainfeature Adolph decides to buy a large Billboard on a street nearby. He hires a designer to make up a logo and based on his eavesdropping the words ” CAUCASION CAUCASION CAUCASION” is printed in bright orange next to his picture. His company never becomes a succes and a few years later Adolph and Eva moves to Providence where Eva has a scholarship at the litterature department at Brown University…Adolph enjoys the quite life of gardening and often him and Eva sit on the terrace drinking a beer, watching the sun go down over the city. On Friday the 4th of march (Adolphs favourite month of the year…) Adolph feels a sudden tension in his chest and on this slightly misty morning, drops dead on the floor of his greenhouse after succesfully having paired two different kinds of Orchids…Evas favourite flower…
We’ll be right back with something I like to call the 48 laws on power.. - Busto
Aaaaaand we’re back…
This is the first post in the line of many to come. The blog has been as active as George Bush on a regular monday morning. Why is it that we do this thing called blogging I often ask myself. (And by often I mean four times or less…) And I guess it’s because it amuses me. Some time has passed and the blog has been held incommunicado by the tyranny of being busy. A lot has happened at this thing called BUSTO, and if by some odd coincidence you the slightest interested, I will make sure that you get on the know train…just not right now. Now is not a time for facts but a time for giving fuck about facts. If a guy called Lancelot Andrewes ask you out for an expensive lobster dinner please be sure to tell him no. Politely but firmly. There’s just not time and on that note I’ll let it be said that more text is waiting with a van and a bag right around the corner…BUSTO
Comic Con …
The blog has been sleeping in lately…That’s because we’re busy packing our bags for the annual Comic Con, where we’ll deliver the Keynote entitled:“Atsuko Tanaka’s influence on the postmodern view on Bill Clintons proposed anti terror bill…aesthetic idiosyncrasy in comics”After last years episode at the shrimpbuffet we’re not allowed at the floor, so I you’re around we’ll be in our winnabago (licenseplate: comics4real)…please drop by…Busto
The woman and the dog
A few days ago I walked behind a very fancy lady in a powersuit…she was walking her dog…every time the dog tried to sniff around etc she would yank the leash like the dog just told her that it for the last 7 years secretly had been making a lot of long distance calls…
I walked behind her for about 20 minutes…every time she looked at a man I would slap her in the back of her head…she turned around all mazed up, asking me what the fuck I was doing…told her that I was a certified Pavlov practitioner…and that I had observed how she was already trying to bend the dogs natural instinct around her own needs…Think she got quite pissed off when I told her that she should try something a bit lighter than a dog…like an old Sneaker or an Eggplant…
Busto
Spain predicted to invade Germany any day now…
The Spanish government just ran a design-competition for a new logo. The winner received 12.000 € for this little piece of art.
…and in NO WAY does that look anything like the one of the German government…
I don’t see any explanation other than Spain is looking into invading Germany.
The following conversation takes place in Madrid between José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero and Juan Carlos I.
Juan Carlos I “Hungry ?”
José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero - “I was more thinking Schwitzerland…all they got is those little pocket knifes…shouldn’t be that hard…”
Juan Carlos I “No…hungry…as in launch”
José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero - “Aahh…yes…I could eat…”
Juan Carlos I “Tapas…”
José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero - “I’m so freakin tired of tapas…you need like 230 to get full…”
Juan Carlos I “Yeah…like…last week. Me and Enrique…we had the munchies…that’s quite the project when dealing with tapas….sat at a bar for like seven hours straight… “
José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero - “What about Germany…you always see them eating those giant sausages on TV…”
Juan Carlos I “Yeah…and cabbage…always a lot of cabbage-eating going on…”
José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero - “ I’d like that…one dish…that’s it…and like….one of those giant beers..I’m sick of those small glasses of wine…when you hit the 8 glass it’s all over the news that you’re..like..”an alcoholic…”…”
Juan Carlos I “Germany it is…”
José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero - “…if we pick that rip-off logo we don’t need to change it when Berlin becomes Barcelin…”
Busto
The move
We are in the process of relocating HQ to a bigger and better location. Today the movers moved our mansized printer…the new place has a narrow and very steep staircase…and that’s not comme il faut in the moving business. I told the movers on the phone, and he told me that it wasn’t a problem…on location we had the following conversation…
Moving guy - “JESUS CHRIST…is it going op there…”
Me   - “yup”
Moving guy ” but…”
Me “…”
Moving guy - “it’s so steep…”
Me “yes it is…”
Moving guy - ” God dammit….”
Me -Â “but is it possible…”
Moving guy - ” i don’t know man …FUCK…”
Me -Â ” yeah…and stuff…”
They rig the thing with straps and lines and pulleys and…lift it up…and in the minutes to follow they have a classic “moving heavy stuff up stairs”dialog…
Mover 1 - “Aahh….”
Mover 2 - “&/”#&”%”…”
Mover 1 - “Got it…?”
Mover 2 - “AAHHHHH…”
Mover 1 - “It’s tipping….”
Mover 2 - “I’m slipping…”
Mover 1 - “AAHHHHH….”
Mover 2 - “put it down…put it down…put it down…put it down…put it down…”
Mover 1 - “FUUUUCK…”
Mover 2 - “€&€%!!!?€…”
Ten minutes later it’s in place, and we now know how it sounds like when a 230 pound makes love to his wife…
Busto