www.nickhodge.com

I was born a Prot­est­ant. I will more than likely die one, too. Intense excav­a­tion into fam­ily his­tory has shown me that my genes are Prot­est­ant for at least 8 gen­er­a­tions on both sides. Bap­tised and con­firmed a Lutheran, I was taught a thing or two about the most suc­cess­ful (not the first) split from the Cath­olic Church by Mar­tin Luther.

Dur­ing pub­lic school man­dated “religious edu­ca­tion”, I was taught by the local Cath­olic Priest. He seemed nice enough; kindly tak­ing us through the New Test­a­ment book Romans. It took many years for me to real­ise that this was an attempt at turn­ing me from my heretic ways to the true canon. If I recall, he didn’t even use the Revised Stand­ard Ver­sion of the Bible. Yes, Peter and Paul: the fath­ers of the cath­olic church.

After trav­el­ling to Europe in 1997 and 2004, I saw enough Saints’ rel­ics: shrunken heads, fin­gers, toe­nails and shrouds to last me a life­time. Large cathed­rals raised in the name of the Vir­gin or some Saint across the cit­ies of Europe show the folly of man, attempt­ing to reach for ter­restrial god status. The ven­er­a­tion of Saints and other popery not only rubs me the wrong way: I am sure my ancest­ors turn in their col­lect­ive graves.

So as Mary MacK­il­lop has moved through the man-made pro­cess of can­on­isa­tion within the Cath­olic Church, my genes quiver.

We hear that the church wants old and young to travel to Rome to wit­ness the can­on­isa­tion cere­mony. That will fill the cof­fers of the Romans.

I also heard many dis­cus­sions on the “brand” of Mary MacK­il­lop being valu­able. Like a product. Even our ABC both on radio and TV seems to have caught the “Mary MacK­il­lop” fever. So much for edit­or­ial independence.

And that is exactly what this can­on­isa­tion is about. Money. Never get in the way of a large cor­por­a­tion and money.

Luck­ily the Cath­ol­ics re-admitted her to the church. Oth­er­wise they would have missed out on their cash.

This tra­di­tion and hun­ger for money is not new. Saint­hood and pil­grim­ages have cre­ated many a city in the world as sup­plic­ant masses crawl on their knees to assuage their mor­tal sins. Pay­ing money for Indul­gences, as done in the Middle Ages, and more recently with spe­cial vis­its to ran­dom vir­gin sightings.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not anti-personal faith.

But please sep­ar­ate Mam­mon from Mary. She was, and I high­light was, just a not­able Aus­tralian woman who did more for the down­trod­den than any group of Car­din­als, Abbotts or Bish­ops ever did. And I would argue, ever will.

Dear Nor­ris Carter (Gen­eral Man­ager, Loy­alty Pro­grams, Qantas) and Pier­ric Beck­ert (Man­aging Dir­ector, Amer­ican Express)

Note with interest that you have sent me a fake/promotional credit card in the mail. Obvi­ously as a dir­ect mail cam­paign to attempt to get me to use your products: Qantas and AMEX respectively.

How many trees did you kill to send this piece of dir­ect mail out? Not to say the envir­on­mental dam­age in the plastics in the fake card.

Yes, I have said it is OK to send me dir­ect mail when I signed up for AMEX some years ago — but recall­ing hav­ing said “no more dir­ect mail” with either of your organ­isa­tions in the recent 2 years. (see pre­vi­ous post on this mat­ter)

I am expect­ing someone to call me at home, on my unlis­ted phone num­ber, between the hours of 6pm and 8pm some­time dur­ing the week com­men­cing 1^st May telling me the addi­tional bene­fits of the card and why I should spend AU$395 for an AU$100,000 (sub­ject to credit approval cri­teria). I will politely point them to this blog post.

Again I repeat: I use your products often. But now you are just pes­ter­ing me for no reason. Your data­bases will show I have been “sold up” or “cross sold” to exactly zero AMEX products. Zero. I am now cost­ing you more than you make from me.

Time to move on in your mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, guys. Dir­ect mail is old school.

Nick

Twit­ter to/from SMS sus­pen­ded for Aus­tralia: http://twitter.com/blog/2007/04/twitter-down-under.html

I’m with Leslie: the mobile phone net­works in Aus­tralia suk0Rz. Big time. The devices are like bricks in pretty col­ours and think the world revolves around some backend that locks you in via your goolies.

There is all this talk about open source soft­ware, open source pro­to­cols, open source con­tent, open source file formats — yet we have no altern­at­ive and free­dom in the air­waves. Ham radio isn’t going to cut it.

TCP/IP is going to be every­where one day. It isn’t going to mat­ter what device you have. You’ll be online stream­ing up and down “stuff”

Oh well, thanks to Twitteresce, It’s not so bad. (ooh, 0.6. Time to upgrade)

Dear Amer­ican Express Marketing

I use your products daily. A Cor­por­ate Charge Card, a per­sonal Gold Card and your travel ser­vices are excel­lent. I pay my bills on time, and use the online ser­vices to reduce the load on your call centre staff. Where I have called your staff, they’ve been help­ful and solved my problem.

The online ser­vices help me cor­rectly cal­cu­late the forex charges, and the abil­ity to use my Amex points as Qantas Fre­quent Flyer is good too.

But for the love of god, please stop send­ing me junk mail attempt­ing to sell me another “fin­an­cial product”. And please stop call­ing me, on my unlis­ted phone num­ber, attempt­ing to cross sell me a product from this junk mail your latest tie-in. “I’d like to ensure you under­stand the inform­a­tion we’ve just sent you.”. Guess what. I chucked it out before read­ing it. Have been for 5 years.

And those people at shop­ping malls and air­ports who are push­ing your credit card (For the 20^th time, I do know the dif­fer­ence) on me is start­ing to tar­nish your name. In fact, because of this push­i­ness, I refuse: repeat refuse to ever own one. Some­times back­ing off might actu­ally sell more.

Yours

Nick