Fusion is Hot! (Sorry) As I’ve recently stated in the news section of this site-o-rama, the reason that there is a big “Fusion” in the upper left is because Fusion is the theme for this iteration of my site. The official tag-line is “A Fusion of Thought and Emotion”. I try to make sure all of my rantings have at least a little of both. Failing that, I go with the unofficial tag-line which is “Going ballzout & bananas”.

Anyway, I first used “Fusion” in October 2004. Since then it’s become a hot marketing word. Not quite as bad as the word “Extreme” or the prefix “i” but certainly more so than “Fugly” or “Otiose”. There has always been Jazz Fusion and dance styles known as Fusion, but this is a full blown marketing-buzz-word-mania! By my current count (and I’ll update it if I find more), there were four products introduced during my tenure as Fusionista. I’m excluding Coke’s line of “Fusion Drinks” because the text is only on the label and they’re not marketing them as such.

Gillette brought out a (hideously overkill redefining) razor (with friggin’ batteries?!) bearing the fusion moniker as well as a supporting line of shave gel & barbed wire. The bloody thing (ha!) has 6 blades. Two of said blades are hidden somewhere in the packaging! Can you find both without using the included chain-mail gauntlet? Everyone dance the masochism tango!

Ford did its part by introducing the Fusion. A zippy little car that looks NOTHING like the Saturn Ion. Hrm. Fusion… FusION. Hrm. Actually, it looks like the Corolla. Well, actually like that one Scion. Hmmmmm. Not unlike the Focus either. What the hell? I personally think they wasted the name as Fusion would have been a fantastic name for a car powered by… uh… Fusion. At least it would have made a good “Hybrid” car powered by both gas and marketing hot air.

What’s up with Lifesavers’ “Fusions” candy? Well, they’re actually Two Flavors in one hard candy shell just like nature always intended! I don’t have much to say about these since I haven’t tried them since none of the flavors are “Pizza” or “Mt. Dew”.

Then there’s my favorite: Trident’s Fusion gum (with XYLITOL!). It tastes different depending how you chew it believe it or not. They market it as a new experience in chewing gum! w00t! Everyone dance the mastication tango!

So what’s up with the glut of fusion-cloning? Lets look at it from a marketing perspective, shall we? Of course we shall!

FUSION:

• Root = Fuse. Those things that burn out or blow up your firecracker. Nobody ever noticed a fuse unless it blew when they plugged in the air conditioner or it wouldn’t light/burned to fast and resulted in a lack of eyebrows. This can’t be the reason.
• Rhymes with Disillusion? Not good a good Image. Rhymes with Collusion? Another word with a bad press rep. Never used with anything legal. Thiscan’t be the reason.
• Considering gas prices, global conservation is a hot-button blah-yadda natural resources wossname. The Powers that Be would like it if we all warmed (no pun intended) to the idea of Fusion as a power source. Coal is Oil and Oil is out. The Powers obviously got Bush elected so the entire f’n world would turn against Oil and those who sell it. Dr. Evil will be president before this country allows another Oil Baron in the oval office. Unless he/she is religious anyway. Fission is out. Three Mile Island & Chernobyl and the fact that we haven’t built a new plant since the 70s proves this. Bio-fuel? No way! A power plant that smells like French fries? NIMBY! Wind farms? They require land and the rich own the land. The rich are also Congress. Those Distinguished Gentlemen are busy falling over themselves to get some press opposing wind farms. NIMCOD! Besides, they’ll kill birds and we can’t just let them rot but, lets face it, a KFC at the bottom of every windmill would be just too damn many KFCs. We don’t have enough dam rivers to go with Hydroelectric. Besides, I’ve seen what happens when those dams burst. Nature’s pent up fury has a way of cleaning up all those pesky houses and bridges that we’ve built after damming the river. That leaves us with Fusion. We’re getting closer to being able to pull off true thermonuclear fusion, which is the real power-source of the future… but we’ll need MASSIVE amounts of funding to be able to force it to create more energy than we used to sustain the reaction. That kind of funding would only be possible with Big Government Grants. We’ll need a Fusion Friendly Fuhrer to supply those grants and we’ll need a whole lot of marketing to create a favorable brand around the word Fusion before The Powers can get someone elected on a Fusion platform. It has begun my friends. Or maybe that’s just too much conjecture. Wait, I have it and it’s obvious! The companies just want to be me. Oh, and I’m sweet like the candy, sharp like the razor and full of gas like the Ford. Yeah, that’s it. Perhaps The Powers that Be have me in mind for the Fusonista “leader”? I can say “Oook” as well as the next guy. Just in case, I’ll invent a buzz word right here on the spot that I can throw around later and sound cool. Before I do, I’d like to point out the Creative Commons Copyright on my main page. Ok, ready?

“I’ll make an excellent
representative because I have a fusionistic
view of our future!”

There you have it folks. I’m a shoe-in.

[UPDATE]

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but I just ran a search of Amazon.com for “Fuson”…. I received around 15,000 hits. A few hours later… I’m worn out looking at Fusion Products. The canonical list of All Things Fusionistic would be well beyond the scope of this webpage. So… I’ll have to get creative. 🙂

Presenting! All Things Fusion 2006!

For more information on current true Fusion progress, check these links:
ITER – The International Fusion Reactor Project
Nuclear Fusion
Cold Fusion – The holy grail of power sources
Slashdot’s Power/Energy category
Fusion Dance!