There is less than nothing I can add to what’s being said about the utterly horrific tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. My brother and nephew and their families live one town over. My sister-in-law is a teacher near there. My nephew’s son is of the age of many of the children who were slaughtered. The sadness in Newtown is impossible to measure and will last for a long, long time.

I’ve read some absurd things in the last 24 hours. The worst of them blamed President Obama for staging the shooting as a way to restrict gun rights. I wish that opinion were a crazed outlier; sadly, it’s more prevalent than any reasonable person can stomach.

Here are the two best pieces I’ve read in the last day or so. There will be many more to come. Let’s hope that words lead to actions this time. Frankly, though, we’ve been here before — too many times — and nothing was done. I’m not optimistic.

Newtown and the Madness of Guns

Twelve Facts About Guns and Mass Shooting in the United States

One of my fondest memories from my junior high and high school days was wandering through the stacks of a store that not only sold actual books, but sold nothing but paperback books. Very cool place.

Ah, but those days are long gone.

I received my Barnes & Noble holiday mailer the other day. I’m a member there, and if I’m not getting it on Amazon, I’m probably getting it at Barnes & Noble.

Still and all, it’s discouraging to go into one of their stores and see the square footage provided to books decreasing while the square footage for games and toys continues to increase. Am I in a Barnes & Noble or a Kay Bee?

So: the mailer.

What do the coupons in the mailer feature? Godiva chocolate. Starbucks coffee. Harney & Sons tea. Toys & Games. Books? Well, only by inference: There are coupons to “save 20% on one item.” So to the extent that an “item” could be a book, I suppose books are there.

But am I the only one who finds it odd that the word “book” isn’t  printed at all in a Barnes & Noble mailer? Okay, that’s not precisely right: The word “bookmark” appears once (“Holiday Bookmark just for you!”), because along with the detachable coupons there’s a detachable bookmark.

In other words, B&N is pretty much saying to me: “Okay, if you’re a Luddite  here’s something you can use with those big, clunky paper doorstops, but we really don’t want to sell any more of those things to you. We’d rather you buy a cup of coffee and a Nook.” The Nook occupies a full page of the six-page mailer, though “ebook” isn’t mentioned anywhere, either.

I sure miss The Paperback Bookstore. (That woman behind the register was profoundly creepy, though.)

Short of getting Carl Kasell on your answering machine, here’s a bit of fun you can have with your phone message, especially if (like me) you live in a swing state this election year.

“Hi, you’ve reached [phone number]. If you are a telemarketer or you’re making a political call, hang up now. Otherwise, please leave a message. We might even pick up if we’re screening this call.”

That’s been my phone message for the past several weeks, and I love it. Nine times out of 10, here’s what I hear:

“Hi, you’ve reached [phone number]. If you are a telemarketer or you’re making a political call, hang up now. Otherwise [click].”

That’s almost as satisfying as picking up the phone and blasting the air horn I keep on the kitchen counter into the receiver.

Well, this is an interesting subject line that appeared in my inbox today.

The definition of “whet” is “Excite or stimulate (someone’s desire, interest, or appetite).”

Meanwhile, this means something else again … or nothing entirely. But certainly not what they intended.

*sigh*

Why are communications professionals so lousy at communications so often? It’s downright embarrassing. Just because it’s likely that most of the recipients of that email won’t even notice the error doesn’t excuse the sloppiness of the subject line.

Then again, the whole email was sorta sloppy: Their Facebook button wasn’t clickable and the alt text on the web version of their email seemed to have nothing to do with this mailing.  And is there really no way to remove the Vertical Response logo from the mailing?

Nothing against Digney, specifically — I suspect it’s more about having someone who does online marketing and communications as a fifth or sixth job responsibility handle your online marketing and communications.

Which is a good reason why you want to hire experts and specialists.

Just sayin’.

Neither, I say!

A post this morning over on Social Media Today talks about how Twitter has an inherent edge over Facebook as an advertising medium. It says that “people do not go to Facebook expecting to see ads.”

I disagree. People expect to see ads on Facebook; they just don’t plan to be clicking on them … and are you suggesting that people go to Twitter expecting to see ads? (Or, at least, more so than they expect to see ads on Facebook?)

It feels like Facebook and Twitter have been with us forever, but it hasn’t really been that long at all. Facebook launched in 2004 while Twitter launched in July 2006.

Still and all, there’s evidently a vast divide between social media experts, who preach interaction and conversation at every available soapbox, and marketers, who’ve never met a method of interrupting people they didn’t embrace.

When, oh when, will marketers as a whole wake up and realize that interruption sucks when it comes to social media?

Instead of thinking “How can we trick someone into seeing our ad?” or “How can we make it harder for someone to close the popup window that contains our ad?” (those light-gray buttons on clear backgrounds are really getting old, people), marketers need to be thinking, “How can we engage people?” and “How can we provide the tools and materials that make it easy for our most passionate customers to spread the word about us?”

Because as far as I can tell, we’re still in pretty much the same place we were about five or six years ago.

Haven’t marketers learned anything in that time?

Takeaway for marketers: Stop thinking print and television. Get with the program, already, willya?