The Bombast Transcripts

Steve McLaughlin writes: "When Chris Locke isn't writing business blockbusters like The Cluetrain Manifesto and Gonzo Marketing ,his alter ego Rageboy is churning out issues of the webzine Entropy Gradient Reversals. The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy is a collection of EGR's best and worst musings since it first hit the Web in 1996." (Steve's review continues below.) The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy author Christopher Locke pages 288 publisher Perseus Publishing rating 8 reviewer Steve MacLaughlin ISBN 0738206334 summary Subversive provocateur of the business world's version of "No more Mr. Nice Guy," packaged for your convenience.

While some writers are just starting to publish on the Web, Chris Locke is already offering readers a second helping of EGR in print form. This is just the sort of brain twisting high jinks that's made Locke infamous in the business and technology world.

The Bombast Transcripts reads like a recipe for some exotic elixir: One part prose, one part poetry, a splash of marketing genius, a double-shot of volatility, and some freshly squeezed satire. But be warned. You have to take the book in a bit at a time to avoid overdosing on Locke's unorthodox style. Over and over again Locke reminds readers that "I do not Question Authority, I piss on it at every opportunity."

In one chapter Locke recounts his nightmare conversation with the Under Assistant Counsel to the Executive Vice President for Legal Affairs at the 666 Corporation. In another he proclaims that "the greatest invention of the 20th Century is not the microchip, not extra-orbital flight, not bio-engineering" but instead "rock and roll." And who could forget chapter titles like "DiChirico Fends Off the Spectral Bats of Andalusia" and "Moe Ron Hubbard on Diuretics"?

This is not to say that The Bombast Transcripts is just 288 pages of random thoughts and hallucinogenic ramblings. Locke has also sprinkled in some of the most insightful ideas and commentary about business, technology, and the media. He lends his advice to companies that still don't understand how to communicate on the Web: "Congratulations on that new corporate homepage! You sound like a sexless droid with a badly damaged Personality Module." And who could forget the passage that reads: "I think many of us would prefer that those who don't 'get it' ... would either a) do so quickly, or b) get the hell out of the way."

I'm sure a lot of people will wonder why on Earth they should pay for something that they can already get for free on the Web. (That's what people used to say about cable television.) First off, think of The Bombast Transcripts as your portable guilty pleasure. It contains some of the best EGR moments, and you can literally open it up to any chapter and then let the mind games begin. Second, EGR subscribers have been getting something for nothing for years now. Now's the time to leave some change in the give-a-penny, take-a-penny dish. Just think of it as doing your part for the cause.

The Bombast Transcripts takes readers inside the sausage factory that is Chris Locke's mind. Please, no flash photography. You see how some of the ideas from both The Cluetrain Manifesto and Gonzo Marketing first sprang to life. It's not always a pretty sight, but the end result makes it all well worth it. I highly recommend ordering a healthy serving of The Bombast Transcripts, even if you've had a taste of it before.

You can purchase The Bombast Transcripts from Fatbrain. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.

Comments

Cluetrain Manifesto....hmmmmm

[sphealey]

Cluetrain Manifesto ... hmmm ... wasn't that the book that described everyone who didn't immediately dump all their current business practices and processes in favor of a net-centric, dotcom model as a "clueless idiot"? Yep, that was good advice. I'll rush right out and buy that guy's next book.

sPh

Rageboy: Corporate Bran

[ngr8]

One of the good effects of Chris Locke's work is that it speaks (or spews) high amounts of reality in the midst of hyperbolic screed.

Locke has done much to reduce the use of the royal "we" in communicating to consumers, and the need to wake up and smell the coffee when looking at who, in fact, the poor customer is and what, in the hell, the customer might want to know or need from corporate messaging and communications.

Dissonance has its place; Locke writes with neon crayons in the hope that some suit will notice, push beyond the gonzo, and get thinking about what the hell is going on with messages and market positioning. Just pleasing the CEO or the uber director of marketing don't mean squat; its like gagamaggot webpages that look great on the LAN demo and then blow chunks at 28.8. Follow Locke long enough (and it can be tiring) and you'll find archetypes and templates for unhosing that which is hosed.

So, thank you RageBoy and EGR. The review is rather suck up, but I have already compensated for that by snatching up five copies of Cluetrain Manifesto (another Locke reality sandwich) for a buck a piece at a bookstore that was going out of business. Voice of the consumer.

So, grab some Locke and a Guiness, read it along with Kotler's Marketing Management, HBR, and Letters To Penthouse. But do anything other than spew out soul free websites and describe your venture as "WankNuts, the *leading* yadda yadda." What's it mean to the customer?