All Together Now

I've been in the freelance creative provider biz for almost exactly 30 years. That's 30 glorious years of running around in my pj's, generally starving but occasionally creating illustrations, web sites and now Flash animation.

Early on in my career I made a pledge to myself to not accept assignments for goods or services I felt were counterproductive to the public good. Cigarettes are a prime example of this. I've lost more than one decent payday along the way but I sleep much better at night.

So today I received a phone call from a large company whose name sounds a bit like "Spacey Blennie" asking if I'd create a three minute animation exposing the evils of unions. Being an aggressive progressive I immediately knew the job wasn't for me but because he seemed like a nice guy I told him I'd think it over anyway. I figured that maybe I could somehow sabotage the production with subliminal populist messages. Just imagine a single frame of Janeane Garofalo wearing nothing but an SEIU logo across here scrumptious keister crammed into some lugubrious distribe about Pete Seeger.

As fate would have it, just as I'm lowering the handset back to the cradle an email popped up which contained an alert about the Employee Free Choice Act, something I've been following closely. It led to a great little video which you really ought to see.

Now I get all kinds of email from progressive concerns throughout the day and I am hardly the superstitious type so this was nothing more than just a coincidence, but it resulted in my turning the job down without another second's thought. Someone else will eventually get the assignment and probably do a great job of the animation... but I've read the script. It's gonna suck. Hard.

So that's where I stand and that's where Spacey Blennie stands. Where do you stand?

=mike=