Option Bonk

Yesterday was the first official day of the existence of Good Ink, Inc.

Yes, I know. I missed it too.

It was also Beltane, and May Day, and RSS Awareness Day, evidently. My contribution to the latter is summed up in the following statement: Are you aware that I have an RSS feed to this blog? Please become so immediately. I would participate for real, but I’m grumpy. I’ll do it on another day, I swear.

Now, May 1st was the day I promised myself I would go down to the local business bureau and register, as well as send off all the legal forms that officially declare my business a business in the state of Colorado. I have done that. Hurrah. The thing is, none of it really counts yet. My website isn’t up and running yet, my marketing strategy is still in the ‘writing it out’ stages, and the business cards are being made as we speak. I am, in short, way behind.

Now, I know how these things usually go down. I have been party to running a small business before and I am fully aware of the fact that no matter what you do, nothing happens on time or the way you planned. We had a saying for this at the other business. Every time something fell through, we would go through Option B and Option C and Option D until one of us finally said, “Fuck it. Option Bonk is we all light fireworks off in our pants.”

And you know what? Option Bonk always worked.

Option Bonk is my new business strategy.

I‘m actually going to have T-shirts made. They’ll say, “Fuck it. Let’s skip straight to Option Bonk.”

Option Bonk is probably where guerrilla marketing got started. Guys were going through your basic marketing strategy in an office somewhere – press releases, advertising, word of mouth – and some guy said, “You know what? Option Bonk is we roller-skate down the steepest hill in San Francisco topless with our company’s logo tattooed on our backs.” Everyone laughed and forgot about it, but then the first twenty logical marketing tactics didn’t work, so finally the president of the company, just to cheer everybody up after a long day of disappointments, said, “Let’s do that thing Bob said. Just for kicks.”

And what do you know. It WORKED.

You know Option Bonk. You’ve even said your personal Option Bonk out loud. It usually happens right after the phrase, “If all else fails.”

“If all else fails, we’ll go around to everyone’s doorstep and promote it in person.”

“If all else fails, I’ll just call up all my relatives and ask them to call twenty people.”

“If all else fails, I’ll wear a T-shirt with our logo on it in the Boston Marathon.”

You usually say it joking. You say it hoping all the other stuff will work. This is silly. Skip straight to it. Pretend everything else HAS failed. When all else fails, this stupid, crazy, cracked-out, high intensity thing is the thing you’re going to try, because you know it will work. That’s why it’s there, at the bottom of your list, staring up at you like hope. You know it will work. So why the hell is it at the bottom of your list? Bring that sucker right up to the top. Light the fireworks. Tattoo the logo. Go for it.

I shall henceforth run my business under the power of the Bonk. How am I going to promote myself? Probably by catching bees in the park. Or swordfighting under particularly tall elm trees. Or getting a head-to-toe body painting of a good Shakespearean sonnet and dangling upside down from rafter so that no one can read it. I don’t know what I will do, really. I will make a long list of all possible things that I could do for my business, and at the very bottom of the list, the last, the desperate option, the option when all other options have failed, will be Option Bonk. And I’m skipping right to it, because I know from futility.

The Power of the Bonk

Try Option Bonk for yourself. Think of a goal. Any goal you like. Asking that girl out on a date will do. Think of all the normal methods of asking the girl out. Introducing yourself, getting a friend to introduce you, facebook-stalking her, doing that accidental-bump-into-her thing. Then think of the crazy stuff. Really crazy. Not just ‘I’ll learn to play a lute just like Sting and woo her with a ballad’ crazy. ‘I’ll paint my car bright blue and fill it with cookies’ crazy.

Now, you’ll very logically ask “Why would filling your newly-blue car full of cookies get the girl?” Since you are asking logical questions, you are clearly not feeling the spirit of the Bonk. You do Option Bonk because there’s nothing else. It’s your last resort. And it ALWAYS WORKS. Because that’s what Option Bonk does. That is Option Bonk’s m.o. That is how Option Bonk rolls, dude.

You know every action movie you’ve ever seen? At the very end, when the hero is about to die horribly and then he does something crazy, the only thing left he can think of to do? It always works, doesn’t it? Yes it does. He saves the world, he gets the girl, and his Manhood Factor increases exponentially with the extremity of the Bonk. Bruce Willis does it all the time. Bruce Willis lives under the power of the Bonk. So do Jackie Chan and Steve McQueen and Zhang Ziyi. Hell, even DOROTHY pulled Option Bonk, in the Wizard of Oz. Throwing the water at the witch? What the hell was that? It was Option Bonk, that’s what it was.

Which is why the Wicked Witch of the West melted. She can’t compete with Option Bonk. She knows what’s up.

When all else fails, subscribe. It’s Option Bonk.