multi-lingual menu of delicious words

by be.aaron, copywriter extraordinaire

Pamplemousse

Atachatfas

Aioli

Guanciale

Bouillabaisse

Sardinas Plancha

Rhubarb

Sorbeta

Kulfi

Thali

Txakoli

Cava

Rosado

Cafe con leche

Word of the Week #1

by Betsy Aaron, Procrastinator Extraordinaire

The word this week is macerate. I like to think of it as passive prep; the food does the work for you. You can stew in your own juices while your procrastinate as long as you want and you’ll produce nothing more than your own fine funkitude but when you slice strawberries, sprinkle them with the tiniest hit of sugar, and let them sit all morning, all afternoon, even on into the evening, they produce a beautiful berry sauce that’s perfect over ice-cream, or my fave, on angel food cake, which acts like a sponge.

Maceration sounds vaguely sexual, another reason to enjoy this word. When you macerate fruit, you barely need to masticate. Whatever you do after dessert is up to you.

The maceration process works well with tomatoes too. Just cut them into small chunks, pour olive oil over them, add some mashed garlic, salt +pepper, perhaps some torn basil, and let them macerate. When it’s time for dinner, you’ve got salsa fresca.

Muddling is a close cousin to macerating but requires a bit more muscle. You can muddle mint for mojitos or limes for margaritas. But you can’t have one sip of these fine summer drinks until you’ve finished your work.

Off-site Spiel

by be. aaron, copywriter extraordinaire

No one assigned to write should have to do it in a cubicle. OK, maybe journalists– they’re always shown pecking away at their keyboards in movies and on TV and though I’ve done all kinds of things, I’ve never attempted to report the news. Technically however, they are at work in a newsroom, not a cubicle.

It’s not just that copywriters need an environment free of distraction, because working off-site, which sounds so much more professional than working at home, presents loads of distractions: dog-walking, eating, errands, puttering, pacing, staring out the window. Procrastination is as essential to the writing process as picking one’s nose. And like the latter activity, best done in private.

Non-writing activity is productive because diversion allows ideas to bubble up from places so deep, dark and inaccessible that they require trickery to tap into. Of course, the creative nap, (literally sleeping on it,) is also an effective way of having ideas– again, an activity which cannot be comfortably undertaken in a cubicle.

Clients think that working off-site means that I am in my jammies all day; mais non, getting dressed is part of the procrastination process. There’s the issue of color palette, footwear choice and of course, the accessories. Even if no one sees me at work, I am looking good.

If the assignment is to write copy that connects with consumers, one must be out in the world to witness how things are actually consumed. A cubicle reduces all consumer activity to abstraction sans context. (For more on this, or if you’d like to use more persuasive arguments than mine to convince your boss to let you telecommute, consult “The Practice of Everyday Life” by Michel de Certeau. It’s thesis is essentially, if you are naming nail polish colors, go out and get a mani/pedi.)