Excerpt From American Falconry Article

Dude, There IS an Answer to World Peace!

I was wrong About milkshakes. I thought milkshakes were the answer to world peace and even local distress. Milkshakes are happy food. They are cool and smooth and play well on the taste buds. People rarely get in fights after slurping one down, and they don’t impair driving, unless you use a plastic spoon on a concrete-thick shake. I thought if more people enjoyed more milkshakes we could end human strife. This may still be true, but I think the real hope to end human conflict is falconry.

The other day I was cruising down the freeway with my prairie falcon perched proudly in the back. He was perfectly visible to passing cars, trucks, and spaceships. I noticed in my peripheral that I was being noticed by a car starting to pass. You know what I’m talking about. The car speeds past, then suddenly slows way back until they are parallel with you. Then after a minute or two the car speeds off. This happens a lot, and not wanting to interrupt the hawk gawkers, I didn’t look over, but just let the faces press against windows and the fingers point in excited fashion. As I took my exit, I saw the car next to me also exit and come up beside me trying to get my attention.

I finally looked over to find it wasn’t a car; it was a truck, a garbage can truck. Not a garbage truck, which picks up garbage, but a garbage can truck which is a pickup that smashes garbage cans the night before the garbage truck comes. It was full of high school dudes who were surely on lunch break where they had just smoked a few homemade cigarettes. They looked like Wayne’s World groupies, and that dude was their favorite pronoun, noun, verb, adverb, and adjective. They gave me the universal signal for rolling down your window, which is to make a hopeful face and wave the arm in quick gyrating circles. I wasn’t sure if they wanted to offer me a hit on the home grown or if they were looking for someone with an unfake ID. As we stopped at the light and I rolled down my window, they said in scattered unison, “Dude, is that thing REAL?”

“Yeah, it’s real,” I said. “It’s a falcon.”

“Whoa! That’s … AWESOME!” And then they shook their heads and shoulders in violent agreement like the people on The Planet of the Apes. They just kept staring and saying Dude! and Awesome! as if I had a small three-headed alien from the planet Dorkton perched back there. Then the light changed and they said, “Dude, thanks for showing us the cool falcon bird dude. Have a nice day, dude!” And then they shifted through a few gears and were off.

©2008 American Falconry Magazine

Presentation Script for Trade Show Presentation

Client: Vinca Corporation
Purpose: Presentation Script for Trade Show Presentation

SCOTT

Good Morning, my name is Scott Florence, and I am the Director of Marketing for Vinca Corporation, the data protection company. Is everybody having a good time at PC Expo? Great! We’re going to have some fun today, because today we’re going to talk about money. Does anyone here like money?

THE CROWD FREAKS OUT, PEOPLE STAND, CHEER AND LOOSEN THEIR DENTAL WORK.

SCOTT

Good. Here ma’am. Have a dollar bill.

HANDS A DOLLAR BILL TO A WOMAN WITH LOOSENED DENTAL FIXTURES OR SOME OTHER EXCITED PERSON.

SCOTT

See I told you we were going to talk about money. Except we’re going to talk about money being wasted.

WADS UP A DOLLAR BILL AND THROWS IT WITHOUT CONCERN INTO THE AUDIENCE.

SCOTT

We’re going to talk about the money that is wasted when a network goes down.

WALKS OVER TO A SHREDDER AND SHREDS A FEW FAKE DOLLAR BILLS AS HE CONTINUES TALKING.

Because if (or when!) the network goes down, people start wasting money.

SHRED, SHRED

SCOTT

Money is spent as everyone is scurrying about trying to figure out why it went down, and getting a new server back up and the backup files restored. And money is lost as the opportunity for more sales goes on hold.

That’s why Vinca is in business. Our job is to make your job easier. To keep your business running as normal in the “unlikely event” of a Server Failure. Our job is to return your blood pressure to a reasonable level.

TO MAN OR WOMAN IN THE CROWD:

Madge, you didn’t know Vinca was a health product did you? Of course you must also, get plenty of exercise, and eat a complete breakfast of high fiber grains, and don’t purchase anything from infomercials. [Disclaimer].

Ok, let me describe a scenario for you.

TO MAN OR WOMAN IN THE CROWD:
Horace, come on up here and help me with something. Here’s a dollar for your efforts. Are you responsible for keeping your Server running in your company?

[Yes= Great you’ll be just fine. NO= Well you are now. ]

Because you are now head Server Master for Capital Markets INC. A very large and important company. Even a corporate sponsor for the games here in Atlanta.

It’s Saturday morning. Your day off. Do you get Saturdays off? You do now. It’s Saturday morning and you are fishing. The stream is perfect the fish are rising like mountain perfume from a flowered meadow.

SCOTT PUTS FISHING VEST AND COL. BLAKE (FROM M*A*S*H) FISHING HAT ON HORACE.

And of course you have your pager on, because ever since you got this job they surgically implanted this to your hip. So there you are casting with a whipper- wolly, a fly you tied yourself.

[SCOTT HELPS HIM WITH HIS CAST.]
And your hip goes off, that is your pager starts to vibrate. You grab it and quickly read the message:

SCOTT

(WITH THE VOICE OF THUNDER)

SERVER DOWN!

What is the first thing that enters you mind? (What is the first thing that enters your waiters?) Horace your palms are sweating, your eyes are dilating, you’re loosing focus. This is just an example. I’m sure your server is just fine, back at your real office!

TO THE CROWD:
When I said the words SERVER DOWN! Did heart rate accelerate? Was your blood racing a little faster? How about your stomach? Did it secrete additional stomach acid?

Wouldn’t it be great if the next thing your pager said was SERVER DOWN, BUT VINCA STANDBY SERVER UP AND RUNNING? Standby Server up and Running. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to know when you were that far away from the office? Wouldn’t it be great to know that most people didn’t even know the network went down?

This scenario we just went through actually happen to one of the users of Standby Server from VINCA.

Let’s now take a few minutes and tell you exactly how Standby Server works, so you don’t waste your budget and blood pressure on Server restoration.


SPECIFIC DETAIL ON HOW IT ALL WORKS

SCOTT

Ok, what have we talked about here today? We talked about money and how you might be wasting money on server downtime. Money that you could use somewhere else in your department, or someone else could use in other departments of the company. We also talked about occupational safety. Because if your server goes down and someone in Sales or the Executive offices looses “the big deal” someone’s occupation is now longer safe! Remember the name Vinca! Which is Latin for “making your job easier and giving you more time to fish!” Thanks for dropping by our booth today. We hope you enjoy the rest of the show.

© 2008 by Shayne Clarke

Client: Cafe Zupas!

Purpose: Interior Marketing/Web site

Café Zupas is a favorite restaurant! I have written stuff for the café walls, Web site, signs, cups, and brochures. If you haven’t tried their food, get yourself to your nearest Café Zupas NOW! Mark Meservy of m creative does all the splendid graphic design.

Zupas
We’re obsessed with Soup and Salad. We’ve searched the world for just the right recipes, with just the right ingredients. It’s all about culture, tradition, and ancestry. And it’s about artistry. Perfection is made from scratch; it’s fresh, homemade and unique. Let our passion for taste and texture be your invitation to join the Zupas’s obsession!

Soup Memories
Sipping our gourmet soups will spring an array of memories. Your grandmother’s kitchen as clam chowder bubbles gently on her ancient stove. Perhaps you return to a springtime café in Paris, or an evening outdoors in Greenwich Village. Where will you go this time?

Salad Talk
Salads are conversation. They can absorb the energy of a first date, or sustain old friends as they catch up. Salads are fun. They can handle group talk with everyone speaking at once or keep you busy while a good story is told. Share a story; make a friend; we’ll take care of the salad.

What Goes in to the Perfect Soup?
There is an order to soup. Our recipes derive from gourmet kitchens around the world. Each unique ingredient is carefully selected and added to the blend at just the right moment, in just the right sequence. Heat is gently applied to the specialty steam kettles and adjusted in perfect measure. Each batch is made from scratch. It’s personal. You’re worth it.

What Goes in to the Perfect Salad?
Salad is all about energy. Fresh ingredients measured and tossed about with abstract certainty. The secret is balance, a splendid harmony among greens, fruits, nuts, proteins veggies and cheese. The dressing must be a perfect flavor blend to compliment and highlight the rest of the salad. A salad properly prepared and dressed is a work of art. You’ll appreciate the difference.

Fondue & S’mores
Dip it. Dunk it. Spin it. Eat it. The new Fondues and S’mores desserts from Zupas are a party. Fork a banana or apple slice and submerge it in a nice bowl of warm caramel or chocolate. But don’t stop there; roll it around in crumbles of white or milk chocolate, Oreos™, Butterfinger™, or cinnamon pecans. Go ahead and close your eyes as you mumble something like “Yum!” And do you love S’mores? The tender melted chocolate making friends with mushy marshmallow and golden graham cracker. Imagine making S’mores without losing your eyebrows.

© 2008 by Shayne Clarke

Client:Kara Chocolates

Purpose: Direct Marketing Piece

Take a chocolate vacation. Slip a fresh Kara truffle in your mouth and close your eyes. Where will you go for the next few moments? Back to 1519 with Hernando Cortez who is sharing “chocolat” with the Emperor Montezuma? Or perhaps to 1657 as a patron of one of the original English Chocolate Houses. Maybe you’re in a rush, so you jump straight to 1876 to Vevey, Switzerland and share Daniel Peter’s new concoction he calls Milk Chocolate.

When you enjoy the smooth sensation of a Kara chocolate, you are taking part in a rich tradition. The industrial age reduced the art of preparing fine chocolate to a by-product of mass production. We have restored the art. We still use copper kettles to heat the chocolate because it distributes the heat evenly. Kara Chocolates are heated three times to ensure perfect consistency. We consider ourselves artisans, not manufacturers. You can taste the difference. And you should do it right now. It’s okay to have another one. You’re on vacation!

© 2008 by Shayne Clarke