• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, August 12, 2011

To paraphrase a Kingston Trio song that most of you are too young to remember: 

They're rioting in London, the economy is tanking in Spain.

There are hurricanes everywhere, but Texas needs rain.

The whole world is festering with hack-happy geeks.

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Greeks.

Italians hate EU oversight, some gun lover shot up the Dutch.

And I don't like anybody very much! 

While they might rightly riot in London over the behavior of News Corp., "journalists" and their collaborating local police department, it appears to one observer rather "a new form of mass theft, organized by Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry messaging -- the social media so recently seen, in the Arab Spring, as an agent of democracy and freedom, now used to cow large parts of a great city." At least BlackBerry finally has something to put in its competitive ads against iPhone and Android: "Because BlackBerry Messenger can be untraceable, unlike Twitter or Facebook, rioters have relied upon BBM in covert fashion, staying one step ahead of police via the social networking tool."

My favorite story on the lawless looting was on NBC the other night, which reported that every store in a particular mall was ransacked -- except a bookstore, which survived untouched. Say no more. 

When I was growing up, Spain and Greece and Italy were places where you could take an affordable vacation and bask in centuries of history and charm. Now they threaten to bring down the very banks that are trying to throw them a lifeline. It is hard to imagine that the European Union will survive this mess. Which is fine by me, since part of the fun of traveling in Europe was bargaining with local currency. Hate the euro.

If I lived in a state where the temperature rose over 100 degrees for nearly 50 straight days, I would move. No matter how wonderful the Cowboy's football stadium or the country music. Besides, what they call barbeque in Texas, North Carolinians would use for dog food.

Unfortunately, that Kingston Trio ditty didn't cover the market crash(es), starvation in Somalia (again), what a bunch of ass wipes the Pakistanis have become, why anybody cares about Michele Bachmann (regardless of her Newsweek cover photo), or why audience targeting really works on the Internet. Maybe Terry K will pick up the slack (when he isn't updating/explaining/defending "The Chart").

I must say, it is hard to stay focused on serving the right ad to the right person at the right time when the world around us seems ready to detonate.

Otherwise, I hope you are having a pleasant summer.