Secondhand Rants | Rock on, Sisyphus

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

The “Gentle Leader.” At first glance, you’d conclude it’s the poor man’s gentle reader, the RC Cola on a shelf packed with attentive Perriers. At second glance, you’d conclude the exact same thing and rationalize it as a horrible lisp. It’s actually none of these things.

Pet supplies, even those forged with the latest technology, seldom consume our discussions, so why this one? My co-worker painted the device in dark tones, explaining how it left minor abrasions on his Boston terrier before inflicting even greater strain on the poor dog’s psyche. He found his pet sitting in the dark, on the couch, having appropriated human levels of sulking.

And then he remarked that “Gentle Leader” sounded like some kind of missile manufactured in Red China. Perfect.

The field of weapons marketing, fertile as it may be, probably doesn’t command the top spots in business school curricula, though it damn well should. Take the Gentle Leader, for instance. If it were called “Chinese Missile” or “The Real Asian Fireworks,” you can bet your WMD’s there’d be panic in the streets. I know I’d instantly picture a camouflaged silo flanked by verdant hills, and tucked away in that superstructure would be Chairman Mao’s fourth wife. Not so with the Gentle Leader, whose very syllables cause my shoulders to relax as I place my faith in a gigantic yet cuddly explosive.

Let’s give this whole renaming thing a try, alright? With haiku.