Yeah? You got a problem with that?

Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices - Christopher Locke (Perseus Publishing)

If the value of a business book equals the usefulness of its ideas multiplied by the likelihood of someone actually reading it, Gonzo Marketing is worth picking up. Though Locke, a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, can be annoying and preachy at times, much of this rant is a riotous page-turner. He's not afraid to poke fun at himself, and he repeatedly pulls the rug out from under the reader. The book applies the notion of gonzo journalism -- where the writer participates in a scene while reporting on it -- to marketing. For example, Locke envisions rank-and-file Ford employees fanning out over the Internet, finding others who share a passionate interest in, say, organic gardening, and ultimately identifying this group's unrecognized automotive desires. Some of his arguments aren't new; some are wacky. But delivered with humor and passion, they compel us to reflect on the future of commerce.

With The Bombast Transcripts, Christopher Locke (a.k.a. RageBoy, that iconoclastic cybervoice of dissonance, disdain, and all things provocative) is leaping from your screen to your bookshelf. Look out. The scathing rants from the creator of Entropy Gradient Reversals -- probably the most wittily outrageous, cryptically observant, and eagerly puzzled-over Web zine ever to pollute the airwaves -- are explosive.

As a tag, screed is only partly accurate for the contents of this volatile collection; they're long harangues, all right, but by no means monotonous. Listen in as Locke lets his alter ego loose in friendly chat with IBM's Lou Gerstner (well, actually an exit interview with Lew Firstner, pompous and clueless chairman of the 666 Corporation). As he not-so-clearly illustrates what "getting it" means (by pondering T.S. Kuhn, voodoo ceremonies, and a sacred space you can't enter with your mind on, let alone your shoes). And as he gleefully admits that most of his readers "seem to enjoy abstruse and obfuscatory exegeses on themes that utterly elude them" but apparently "alleviates their anxiety about not knowing anything that wasn't covered by Geraldo." Don't be insulted; be alleviated. Locke may indeed be the Web's most acerbic gonzo journalist and techno-semiotic social critic, but he's also written for Forbes; worked for MCI, Ricoh, and the Japanese government's AI project; and been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world. If you missed out on this cyberpundit's irreverent rants the first time around, catch him now (if you can). As Locke himself reminds us, "Being totally insane is hard work. People don't realize that." They should now. --S. Ketchum

"For all their economic clout and cultural sway, the ten great multinationals profiled in our latest chart -- AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media -- rule the cosmos only at the moment. The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go -- always with a few exceptions -- the overall Leviathan itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter, forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in every other head."

Last April or May I was seduced by blogging because I read every filthy screed that Chris Locke sends my way, and count myself fortunate to be on his EGR mailing list. But I put it aside. I set up a blog called "Aging Hipster Be Not Proud" and pride kept me from exposing myself before this august (or July at least) company. I'm kind of the bearded Emily Dickinson of bloggers at this point...

Voice. Locke raves on about finding your voice then wailing with it. Truth to tell, I think you gotta have truth to tell. And 'truth is no stranger to fiction' or something like that. Maybe I'll put that in the bumper-snicker contest. And so to bed. (Anybody seen that damn mastiff? Let him out to pee and he comes home with a neighborhood brat in his ugly jaws every time).