Saturday, September 30, 2006

UNTETHERED, FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

FOR THE EGOTISTICAL YEAR ENDING 30 AUG 2006 (EY 2006)





Dennis Dale, Owner, Founder, CEO

Letter to Blogreaders

The weblog, Untethered, established on 31 Aug. 05, states as its institutional goals: "The furtherance of the egotistical gratification of its founder by maximizing attention accrual through the manufacture and distribution of cultural analysis, satire, political commentary, and pseudo-intellectual posturing. Untethered's near-term goal is the acquisition of world attention market share, furthering long-term aims of eventual global domination yielding complete and total breeding primacy."
While significant barriers have revealed the daunting nature of these goals, I remain convinced that Untethered, after an exciting, challenging, and sometimes frustrating first year of operations, has adapted to the challenges faced to implement a dynamic business plan that provides the blog with a strategy for unlimited growth moving forward. Untethered has created an institutional culture that rewards innovation, initiative, originality, cunning, intellectual theft, bureaucratic infighting, and, above all, abject prostration before its CEO bordering on deification.
Untethered recognizes the blog environment is a virtual microcosm of the global environment. Therefore, in seeking to become a dominant player in the blogging industry, I have decided to adapt the methods and strategy used by the management of the largest, most powerful organization of that greater, real-world environment--the United States. That is why my new business model not only incorporates the traditional methods of attention-garnering such as attitudinal posturing, cloying allegiance to more powerful blogs, and of course snark-intensive assaults on rival product, but also more aggressive, pro-active, new-paradigmatic approaches to protecting and consolidating hard-earned attention share.
Untethered also recognizes the blog industry is a high risk environment fraught with conflict and ill-will. Adjusting to our new reality, management has implemented a dynamic new pre-emptive strategy for defending against any competitor's attempt at drawing away attention share.
Blogging is a highly competitive, heavy attrition environment. Rival blogs that seek to do harm to Untethered are many. Therefore, I will not wait for other blogs to attack, but will concentrate on identifying threats not only before they reveal themselves, but before they develop; before they even exist. In today's environment of heightened competitiveness, it is necessary to anticipate not only your competitor's next move, but his next thought as well. I will destroy potentially hostile rogue blogs before even they know they are a threat. Indeed, many will not realize that they were destined to be threats.
Furthermore, I will do it with half the resources and effort. I'm very excited about this new way, adapted from the revolutionary, out-of-the-box thinking employed at the Department of Defense under the banner of "Force Transformation." Soon I will be forging this blog into a lean, efficient force along the lines of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's aggressive efficiency maximizing strategy. I'm not expecting to replicate the remarkable successes of that bold visionary, but feel confident that I've discovered a winner in this plan.
Together forward.
x
Dennis Dale
Owner, Founder, CEO, state ward

Management's Discussion and Analysis

Untethered's egocentric goals are presented in United States Standard Self Esteem Points (USSSEP) in accordance with generally accepted blogger accounting principles (BAP).
Results are for EY 2006. (cont.)

Results of Operations
Untethered's introductory product line of bellicose, invective-heavy opinion initially yielded a high return against minimal investments in thought and contemplation while incurring no significant expenditures on research. The limits of this model's growth potential were quickly realized, however. The introduction of the satirical product line also proved successful, yielding a marginally higher return on a slightly greater cognitive investment, with a similarly limited growth horizon; I am currently researching ways to broaden this product's appeal with the more attractive youth 18-24 demographic.
An attempted spin-off of a separate Department of Snark from the Satire Division was not successful, and was quickly shut down due to cost overruns and the immediate onset of managerial/talent disciplinary issues, related to the nature of the product and its well known tendency to produce an institutional culture of ill-will and inter-office dissension.
Attempts to introduce more cognitive labor intensive "prestige" product lines of esoteric philosophical argumentation and high-brow literary criticism remain mired in developmental issues. Introduction dates for both have been delayed as a result. I remain committed to expanding into these areas, and production for each is slated to ramp up in late 2007.
Overall, forecasts for the egotistical year ending 30 Aug. 2006 proved overly optimistic. Difficulties encountered include, but are not limited to:

1. Idea promulgation.
Forecasts predicting significant first year progress toward intellectual market domination proved unrealistic. Reasons for this include the insufficient ideational development resulting from ineffective R&D, faulty manufacture of ideas, inconsistent quality control, a near total lack of distribution capabilities, and ineffective marketing. Among the challenges faced:
(a) Scarcity of original analysis. A severe shortage of original thought continues to plague the ideational development department. Expertise and knowledge remain scarce commodities. Wisdom and clarity acquisition costs remain prohibitive.
(b) Quality Control. While shortages of crucial material required for the creation of original essays plagued manufacturing, Quality Control continued to struggle to deliver a competitive finished product, allowing unacceptable levels of irregular capitalization, redundant phrasing, excess verbiage, and substandard sentence construction. Difficulties resulting from a glut in the supply of semi-colons show no sign of easing. (cont.)
Report
UNITED STATES BLOGGING AND COMMENTARY COMMISSION
Seattle, WA 98101
Form 10-K

Â¥ ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 132 OR 15(d)
OF THE BLOGGING EXCHANGE ACT OF 1998
For the egotistical year ended August 30, 2006
of
UNTETHERED, UNINC.
Seattle, 00001-01
007 Maladept Ave NWE
Seattle WA
Intellectual property registered pursuant to Section 10(a) of the Act:
Common Stock, .01 USSSEP par value, Seattle Virtual Commodities Exchange
Preferred Purchase Rights, Seattle Virtual Commodities Exchange
(cont.)

7 comments:

ziel said...

Did you do research into annual reports to get such an authentic tone - you don't strike me as the corporate type - or are you just satirically gifted?

Dennis Dale said...

Satire? I, sir, take my fiduciary duties more seriously than that. I suppose one could pull up some annual reports online and cull a few useful words and phrases, as well as get a feel for how these things are structured, if he were so inclined. If this were a satirical post he might have even lifted that last part under "report" in its entirety and changed a few key words and phrases.
This, however, is entirely an earnest effort at blog transparency.
I deny any fabrication. I will admit this much: the photo has been airbrushed.

ziel said...

Of course. Forgive my impertinence.

Anonymous said...

Blog transparency. What a wonderful concept. In the same department perhaps as free association. Why do I suddenly hear "Someone Left a Cake Out in the Rain"?

I too greatly appreciate your efforts to stand on solid ground. While still walking.

Mike Courtman said...

What particular species of monkey is that featured at top of your post?

If it hasn't got a common name, I'm going to suggest calling it a small eared neo-conservative howler monkey.

ziel said...

I think his name is Macacca.

Mike Courtman said...

'I think his name his Macacca'

He reminds me a little of Hugo Chavez. I can picture him on T.V,perhaps at a UN meeting, exchanging bellicose "pant-hoots" with the great South American populist leader.

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