Wow . . . I haven't posted anything in a while.

In my defense, I'm not lazy. I was suffering from exhaustion . . . just like Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.

Too much travel, too much drinking while traveling, too much stress . . . my publicist told me I should lay low for a while and claim exhaustion--exhaustion being the new code word for "excess."

But I'm better now. Thanks for asking.

In the last post I wrote before the exhaustion set in, I talked about the five communicators I meet on the road: The Dr. Phils who use employee vehicles to hand out patronizing "life advice." The Julies from the Love Boat who try to be the social director at the company.

The tough-talking Barney Fife sissies who let everyone walk all over them. The suck up Larry Kings who never push their executives--or anyone else--to communicate properly. And the Winston Churchills--the communicators who are willing to fight the good fight wherever and whenever they need to, in order to improve communication at their organizations.

Well, as I was laying in bed, suffering from exhaustion, I was re-reading some of my recent C.R.A.P. (Corporate Rhetoric Awards Program) columns in Corporate Writer and Editor. (When you're suffering from acute exhaustion, you don't have the brainpower to read anything new; the only thing you can do is read stuff you've already written.)

And one recent column was a perfect example of two of those five people: A Julie from the Loveboat and a Dr. Phil. So I thought I'd share them with you, as a way to slowly climb out of the exhaustion pit and start blogging again.

So here's the column . . . .

A smorgasbord of C.R.A.P.

Oh . . .where to begin?

When you are up to your hips in C.R.A.P (Corporate Rhetoric Awards Program), how does one begin to shovel out? This month, we’re giving out not one, but two C.R.A.P. Awards!

Our first award goes to an editor who actually runs a regular feature where she asks employees: “Do you look like your pet?”

She then encourages the employees to send in photos of themselves with their look-a-like pet, and she runs those photos!

The damage this editor must be doing to her reputation with senior management aside, there are two other important reasons not to do this feature:

First, people who think they look like their pets are weird. They are lonely. They are desperate for attention. Imagine the kind of prescription medicines or illegal drugs you would have to be on in order to one day decide, apropos of nothing, that you look like your dog. Can you imagine the scene?

Wendy from accounting sits in her cluttered living room. There is dog hair everywhere. Empty vodka bottles litter the room, and the pungent stench of low-grade marijuana hangs in the air. Wendy, bleary eyed and unstable, sits on the floor in a filthy bathrobe, holding her miniature schnauzer, Pookie, by the scruff of its neck, as she stares into its face.

Wendy (slurring her words badly): "Well . . . I’ll be God damned. You and me, Pookie. We’re the same, aren’t we girl? We’re all we’ve got, baby."

You don’t really want to profile Wendy, do you?

The second reason you don’t want to do these stories is because nobody ever looks like their pet! Never. We’ve seen these stories in consumer publications quite a bit . . . and the people who send their photos in never, ever look like their pet.

This article carries with it a photo of a woman and her dog. She thinks they look alike. But they do not. For example, the dog’s hair is blazingly white. The woman’s hair is jet black. And . . .one of them is a dog. Saying this dog looks like this woman is like saying Snoop Dogg looks like Cameron Diaz . . . and I can say that without knowing for sure what Snoop Dogg even looks like.

If you get a woman who really looks like her pet, don’t run her picture in the employee publication. Call the circus, and put her on a double bill with Jo Jo the Dog-faced Boy.

Our second C.R.A.P. Award this month goes to the editor of a health-care publication, for running a bunch of tips on keeping your child safe during the summer months.

All of the tips are fairly patronizing and obvious, such as these:

* Have an adult watch your child at all times when near any water—pool, lake, river or ocean.”

Do you really need to tell parents that? Do you think there’s a chance that Darrin and Laura Smith are sitting down in Florida, on vacation with their four-year-old son, Mikey, and this scene occurs.

Darrin: (half asleep on the beach): Honey, where’s little Mikey?

Laura: (engrossed in a Danielle Steele novel): Hmmm? What’s that? Oh, I think he’s in the ocean.

Darrin: In the ocean? By himself?

Laura: I think so. He said something about wanting to see what an undertow is.

Darrin: You know, I think I read in the last issue of my employee publication that you’re not supposed to let kids go into the ocean by themselves. Should we go see if he’s okay?

Laura: Okay . . . as soon as I finish this chapter.

If you really think you need to tell employees to keep their eyes on their children in the ocean, you need to get new employees!

And when the tips aren’t patronizing, they’re unrealistic. Listen to this one, on staying safe in the sun:

“Protect children with sunglasses, hat and T-Shirt, and limit exposure during the hottest part of the day—10 a.m.-4 p.m."

Does this writer even have kids? Have you ever spent a summer with a child? You want them out of the house all day! And children don’t wear sunglasses! I hope to God the woman who wrote this article does not have kids. I can only imagine the conversations her house, if she does:

Little Johnny (standing by the door with is baseball mitt): “Mom, everybody’s playing ball in Mikey’s yard. Can I go?”

Overprotective, dim-witted Mother: “Not yet, Little Johnny. It’s only 3:30, and the sun is still far too hot. But I’ll tell you what. If you put on your burka, your sombrero, and your aviator glasses, I’ll let you go out at 3:45 today . . . but only this once.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: People don’t need you to tell them how to raise their kids. Let them screw it up on their own, like everybody else.

When you make a living as a communications consultant, you learn to live with disappointment.

A big contract you were expecting to get falls apart at the last minute.

You do everything right in a communications audit, but the client decides not to take any of your recommendations, and it was all for naught.

You break your ass to launch a great new communication vehicle . . . and there’s a change in leadership, and the new leader decides to “go in a different direction.”

All of those things have happened to me a lot more than once. So I’m used to having my expectations crushed liked grapes in a Tuscan winery.

But still . . . despite a career’s worth of disappointments, nothing prepared me for the disappointment and letdown I received three days ago. I was so crushed, it took me three days to be able to write about it.

But first, some background.

As regular readers of this blog know, I had a vasectomy in January. It was horrible. All those men who told me that “it’s nothing, just a little snip snip and you’re done” and “I was playing golf the same day I got it done” and “you won’t even notice it” are God damned macho son of a bitch liars.

You won’t even notice it? I noticed it. How do you not notice a searing hot, buzzing little rod being jammed repeatedly into your nut sack? How do you not notice that? And not only did it hurt at the time, but it hurt for a long time afterwards.

For a month, I walked like the Penguin on the old Batman series.

Anyway . . . after you get a vasectomy, you have to get tested, to make sure you’re shooting blanks. I was supposed to get tested in late April, but I never got around to it.

So on Wednesday, I finally decide to go in and get my stuff tested. Now, it’s important to note: When you do this, you don’t get to create the specimen at home. You have to go in there and create it at the lab.

Which is kind of naughty and exciting, isn’t it? And I was sure they would make it so easy for me to provide a specimen, too.

I had visions of this wonderful, dimly lit room, loaded with sexy magazines and videos, various lotions and oils, a comfortable couch to lay on, assorted little buzzy toys for the nether regions in case you lean that way, soft music playing . . . . in my head, the whole thing would be rather, I don’t know, romantic.

Except that I would be by myself. But I’m used to that.

So Cindy and I go to the clinic, get signed in, and a battle-scarred nurse says to me:

“Oh, you’re here for a fun test!”

Yes! I remember thinking. I AM here for a fun test. The rest of these sorry sons of bitches are going to be getting tubes or fingers rammed up their asses, or needles stuck in their arms . . . but I’m heading to the Pleasure Palace for a delightful little rendevous with myself!

I couldn't wait to get into my room!!

Then, the nurse shattered my dreams. She handed me a plastic cup, and said:

“Go in the bathroom. When you’re done, there’s a trap door in the wall. Put the specimen in the door and let me know when you’re finished.”

What’s this? The bathroom? Oh, I thought. That must be what they call the special little cozy love room. Cute.

But no . . . it was a bathroom. A public bathroom. No oils, no music, no porn, no buzzy toys . . . just a sink and a toilet and a trap door.

And the toilet didn’t even have a lid on it. It was a glorified fucking porta potty, is what it was.

And the worst part of it? I could hear the people in the lab on the other side of the trap door. I could hear them clearly!

Which meant, of course, that they could hear me! Not that I would be moaning loudly or anything. But could they hear me . . . I don’t know . . . rubbing? Could they hear and chuckle over a sort of whoosh whoosh whoosh noise?

Would they secretly be timing me? Was there a hidden peephole? Did the battle-scarred nurse go into the lab and say: “We’re going live in Bathroom Number One people,” so everyone could set their stopwatches?

One minute into my session, I convinced myself that people were, in fact, timing me. So I made it a macho thing, manhandled the son of a bitch, and got er done in about two and a half minutes. A minute of which was spent checking the trap door to make sure it was really shut tight.

It was the hardest I've worked since the time I did seven shifts at a factory, working an assembly line.

So I finished, stuck my specimen in the wall, and went out to face the nurse.

“I’m done,” I said.

“Okay, thank you,” she said.

“Was I the fastest one ever?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Was I close?” I said.

“I don’t keep track,” she said.

“But you probably have an idea,” I said.

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“It was like, three minutes,” I said.

“I wasn’t paying attention,” she said.

“I bet I was the fastest,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

At that point, Cindy took me by the arm and led me quietly from the building, before I could make an even bigger fool out of myself.

Another day, another dream dashed. Such is life.

So I made it back from the IABC conference in one piece . . . never a sure thing when a conference takes place in either New Orleans, Las Vegas, New York, or anywhere overseas, or San Francisco, or Toronto. Or Vancouver.

In fact, the only place I always know I’ll return safely from is Dallas, because there is absolutely nothing to do there.

I led a pre-conference session at the IABC show on Sunday on the topic of Corporate Creativity (no, it's not an oxymoron, and I had proof!), and I have a question I want to throw out to everyone who has either a) spoken before a group; or b) attended a conference session.

Which should be just about everyone reading this, I would think.

Does anyone out there know why the actual ROOM that you speak in sometimes plays such a big role in how the session goes? Are there any crowd psychologists out there?

Here’s why I ask: My session room at the conference was huge. It was a ballroom. But it was only half-filled. Which meant that the entire back half of the room was empty.

Now, I’ve had that happen before to me, and it’s never good. You can have 150 people in the room, but if the room is big enough to fit 400, it still feels like there’s nobody in there.

And having a big room only half-full does something to the energy in the crowd, too. Namely, it sucks the energy out like a big exhaust fan.

The crowds in those types of rooms are typically very quiet. They might chuckle, but they rarely laugh. They don't ask too many questions. They smile and nod and take notes, and tell you afterwards that they really enjoyed it . . . but you wouldn't be able to tell from the session itself.

That was the case at IABC this year.

I know what you may be thinking: It was just me. I sucked the energy out of the crowd with a lackluster session, and I'm trying to blame it on the room.

But that wasn’t it! I swear! I don’t know how to give a lackluster session. In fact, if anything, in order to compensate for the dead room and the sleepy crowd, I probably went too far the other way, and had too much energy.

(Actually, someone who was in the session next door told me that the speaker there actually complained about the volume of my voice, which he could hear through the hotel wall. “You sounded a little like Mussolini rallying the troops for battle," my friend told me.)

And I know the session went well, because I got tons of e-mails afterwards, and lots of people came up to me at the conference to tell me they enjoyed it.

But man, you couldn’t tell by the crowd. I felt like a Jewish comedian working a wake in the Catskills.

And it wasn't just me. Whenever I went into someone else’s session, and they had the same kind of room set-up, it was the same thing. Large rooms + small crowds = funeral atomosphere.

The past two years at IABC, I was in much smaller rooms, but they were packed. Probably about the same amount of people that were there Sunday, but you couldn’t find a chair to sit on.

And those sessions were exciting! Rolling laughter, tons of questions, and great energy.

What is it about a packed smaller room that makes for a good session, and a half-empty, larger room that sucks the life out of the crowd? Does anyone know?