A week ago, one of my favorite people asked me to give her a mantra. Of course, that conversation is privileged, confidential, attorney work product, and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, so no need to share it here. It reminded me of Jeff Goldblum (in, sadly, one of his greatest roles) in the movie Annie Hall. Jeff is seen only for a split second while on the phone at a party as the movie takes a slight detour to California. He speaks to his unseen confidante and says urgently, "I forgot my mantra." And then he is gone. Sadly, shortly after I mustered the strength to share a mantra with my friend, so was she. Think about it: if you were speaking with a friend with whom you shared a deep connection, and you were asked to, on the fly, create a pearl of wisdom that would follow her around as she went about her day, that would be nestled somewhere in her mind for the foreseeable future (if only a few hours) - what a moment! What a tragic honor! I don't remember the last time I used that much of my brain for anything, including my dissertation or when I tried to locate my dentist's office in midtown.
It's kind of funny how people, usually not thinking about it this way, desire a personal mantra, because what they want is the antithesis of a mantra. A mantra has deep roots in eastern religions, and is used to focus thought and guide self-reflection. Whereas, a western mantra is more like a slogan, the incessant repeating of which builds confidence or serves the barely changed self in some other way. Actually, the mantra tends to encapsulate a sum of what the modern person believes, or wants to believe, or should believe, if only they didn't need a mantra. Sure a mantra in the modern sense focuses us as well, but the meditation is not of the quiet, searching form; it's more akin to how an archer focuses on her target before she releases the arrow. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some people truly need that kind of focus.
And then there are the crackhead mantra utterers, like the guy sitting three rows down from me in my bar review course, who once a week (maybe more?) wore a T-shirt that blared from the back, "GET IT DONE."
Well, it's no Om Mani Padme Hum. This is an obviously motto-style mantra - all goal, no grounding. No multi-layered wisdom...or is there?
There's a mantra, so to speak, making its way around the halls of my law firm. I would love to provide attribution, but my friend who has shared it with a few others has already been told by one attorney to cease and desist. So we'll call him J. J is one of those kindred spirits, very highbrow without trying to be, a man whose job it is to help fix things when they break down at work, and in the process he winds up setting the occasional human being straight as well. His mantra is tongue-in-cheek, but as with the lotus flower evoked in the midst of certain Buddhist mantras, it is layered as well. It comes at minute 3:00 in this clip, but please substitute the word "billing" at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
For now, I leave the unfurling of the layers to you. But there are dozens (hints: "second prize: a set of steak knives," "I'm here on a mission of mercy," the incessant use of the word "lead" - which in an onomatopoeic sense feels so simple and pure, stripped of the real-world machinations that generated them, or perhaps not? - and another, more vulgar word (the original Pulitzer prize-winning play used the latter 150 times which in the early 1980's in London was apparently a big deal).
Let's talk about something important.
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Self Awareness Week
Hola,
OK, so I just finished posting an eharmony profile. Scary stuff. Why is it scary? Because my matches seem a bit disharmonious (it's a real word, I promise).
I tell the gurus at eharmony that I don't watch TV. Match 3 says that the four things she can't live without are (in this order): The Lord, My friends, The Bible, TV(!), My car. Match 6 says: My family, My dog, My friends, HDTV(!), The New York Yankees.
One attorney says that her boss (!) is the single most important influence in her life.
Hey, guess what Match 7's friends think about her: "you'd have to ask them" (!!)
Match 2 just read Pride and Prejudice(!). Is that code for "I don't read"?
Match 8 adds at the end of her profile, "Tell the truth!" (exclamation point free with quote)
Big news! All of my matches are "intelligent," "caring," "hardworking," "athletic," and..."modest."
Two of my matches reveal that their best life skill is..."managing their personal finances."
One says that she can't live without..."the Olympics."
Another adds that she is wary of those who live "like pod people."
So maybe I filled out the survey incorrectly. Scarily enough, I doubt it. I think that this is me, staring me hardworkingly and caringly in the face, with finances in order and remote control in hand, looking for an honest answer to some basic questions. And there were some very interesting elements as well. Like Match 4's favorite recent book about the hunt for Edvard Munch's stolen artwork. Or Match 9, my personal favorite, who specializes in kidney disease (how did eharmony know about my kidney stone?).
For those of you who are still on the fence, gather 'round. There are several things that you need to consider before taking the $30 a month plunge. First, be liberal with your answers. Don't box yourself in. One of my best friends answered everything truthfully, including how she would only date a Christian/Jew and would prefer someone who didn't drink or smoke. She was told the following:
"Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time."
Frankly, I'm stunned. But then again, I live in New friggin' York, and only got ten matches so far. I mean, "matches."
Next, consider this: yes it only takes about 20 minutes to fill out the 400+ questions, but then you are placed in a holding pattern where you have to "ask her questions," send "must haves and can't stands," "send second questions," "read her answers," "read Dr. Warren's message," and only then are you granted a furlough where you may begin "open communication." For the daring among you, there's the red button option - "request fast track." This is an e-mail sent through eharmony that includes a request to bypass all of the above. A dangerous move, likely to scare away those whose "friends think I'm shy" and the many who appear to need to "build trust." Be warned!
Next, consider the scope of the questions that you may select and send to your "match." Of the zillions of things worth talking about, your questions are confined to the trite and pedestrian. Do we really need to know whether our dates would prefer "roller blading by the ocean" to "the ballet" for a date?
Most disturbing are the banner ads that grace the pages of eharmony, most of which are for teeth whitening or digital photo enhancing services. We wouldn't want anyone seeing what we really look like right away, would we?
Finally, it should be noted that many "matches" also means many people who at any moment can put you "on hold" or "close" your profile, turning you down before they even know about your love for the sound of cool metal against the boardwalk. So rejection can come fast and in stereo. Be strong, my brothers!
I don't trust this 29-dimensional algorithm, which claims to allow you to be flexible in finding the right person for you, yet returns a group of strangers who seem so eerily similar to one another. There are many ways to be wonderful, and I refuse to believe that I can only find love in a careerist smiley gal who enjoys hugs and is thankful for free will. The most disturbing part of it all was how I told the nice interface that I was open to people of all faiths, as long as the person believed in God, only to find my "matches" confined to Christians. There may even be a political element to eharmony - a desire on the company's part to bring together people in certain combinations. After all, it's impossible to instruct your computer that you'd like nothing better than to meet members of the same sex.
I want to develop my own patented matching algorithm, but need your help. It needs to seek out more than one personality type for each weary traveler, giving them the chance or at least the hope for finding love in unexpected, exciting, and edifying places. Here are my first ten questions. Comments welcome.
1. What was the first thought that ran through your mind when you woke up this morning?
2. Which would you prefer, to awaken finding yourself with your own body and the mind of an orangutan, or with the body of an orangutan and the mind of a human being?
3. I can think of a New Yorker cover that provides a nice visual depiction of where I am in my life (Likert scale)
4. Puddles on the sidewalk - to step in or to avoid at all costs? (scale)
5. You have one dollar bill. You happen upon some street performers in a subway station:
(a) an African singer who plays guitar and a sings in Swahili with a moving voice but dances embarrassingly out of rhythm;
(b) a violinist who plays a halfway decent but movingly heartfelt version of Clair de Lune; and
(c) a woman with a long, flowing, ruffled dress and dark, curly hair, sitting with a drum machine in her lap that is connected to very large speakers, who randomly sways to a techno beat while she howls into her microphone.
Where does the dollar bill find its home?
6a. "We're marooned on a small island, in an endless sea. Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape. But tonight, on this small planet..." Would you use this quote in a TV show, a movie, or as a sample in music?
6b. Kindly complete the above quotation.
7. You are sent to Best Buy to purchase The Office. Do you bring back (a) the original BBC series, (b) the American version, or (c) Extras?
8. In a crowded place, I stare (a) down at my feet, (b) at any available advertisements, (c) directly at other people, making occasional eye contact, (d) randomly, everywhere.
9. True or False: People who apply the "veil of ignorance" concept to an ordinary life situation while in group conversation either don't know what they're talking about or are in love with themselves.
10a. An article appears on page three of the New York times, indicating a new correlation between the sipping of green tea and the reduced risk of disease. I (a) immediately drink more green tea; (b) change nothing about my green tea consumption; (c) take out my anger at the gross misrepresentation of multiple regression analysis by drinking less or even no green tea; (d) do nothing; it's the Times, after all, and I'll be damned if I eat or drink like a Liberal.
10b. Follow-up to 10a: will that be jasmine, gunpowder, "whatever they're serving," or sencha?
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
OK, so I just finished posting an eharmony profile. Scary stuff. Why is it scary? Because my matches seem a bit disharmonious (it's a real word, I promise).
I tell the gurus at eharmony that I don't watch TV. Match 3 says that the four things she can't live without are (in this order): The Lord, My friends, The Bible, TV(!), My car. Match 6 says: My family, My dog, My friends, HDTV(!), The New York Yankees.
One attorney says that her boss (!) is the single most important influence in her life.
Hey, guess what Match 7's friends think about her: "you'd have to ask them" (!!)
Match 2 just read Pride and Prejudice(!). Is that code for "I don't read"?
Match 8 adds at the end of her profile, "Tell the truth!" (exclamation point free with quote)
Big news! All of my matches are "intelligent," "caring," "hardworking," "athletic," and..."modest."
Two of my matches reveal that their best life skill is..."managing their personal finances."
One says that she can't live without..."the Olympics."
Another adds that she is wary of those who live "like pod people."
So maybe I filled out the survey incorrectly. Scarily enough, I doubt it. I think that this is me, staring me hardworkingly and caringly in the face, with finances in order and remote control in hand, looking for an honest answer to some basic questions. And there were some very interesting elements as well. Like Match 4's favorite recent book about the hunt for Edvard Munch's stolen artwork. Or Match 9, my personal favorite, who specializes in kidney disease (how did eharmony know about my kidney stone?).
For those of you who are still on the fence, gather 'round. There are several things that you need to consider before taking the $30 a month plunge. First, be liberal with your answers. Don't box yourself in. One of my best friends answered everything truthfully, including how she would only date a Christian/Jew and would prefer someone who didn't drink or smoke. She was told the following:
"Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time."
Frankly, I'm stunned. But then again, I live in New friggin' York, and only got ten matches so far. I mean, "matches."
Next, consider this: yes it only takes about 20 minutes to fill out the 400+ questions, but then you are placed in a holding pattern where you have to "ask her questions," send "must haves and can't stands," "send second questions," "read her answers," "read Dr. Warren's message," and only then are you granted a furlough where you may begin "open communication." For the daring among you, there's the red button option - "request fast track." This is an e-mail sent through eharmony that includes a request to bypass all of the above. A dangerous move, likely to scare away those whose "friends think I'm shy" and the many who appear to need to "build trust." Be warned!
Next, consider the scope of the questions that you may select and send to your "match." Of the zillions of things worth talking about, your questions are confined to the trite and pedestrian. Do we really need to know whether our dates would prefer "roller blading by the ocean" to "the ballet" for a date?
Most disturbing are the banner ads that grace the pages of eharmony, most of which are for teeth whitening or digital photo enhancing services. We wouldn't want anyone seeing what we really look like right away, would we?
Finally, it should be noted that many "matches" also means many people who at any moment can put you "on hold" or "close" your profile, turning you down before they even know about your love for the sound of cool metal against the boardwalk. So rejection can come fast and in stereo. Be strong, my brothers!
I don't trust this 29-dimensional algorithm, which claims to allow you to be flexible in finding the right person for you, yet returns a group of strangers who seem so eerily similar to one another. There are many ways to be wonderful, and I refuse to believe that I can only find love in a careerist smiley gal who enjoys hugs and is thankful for free will. The most disturbing part of it all was how I told the nice interface that I was open to people of all faiths, as long as the person believed in God, only to find my "matches" confined to Christians. There may even be a political element to eharmony - a desire on the company's part to bring together people in certain combinations. After all, it's impossible to instruct your computer that you'd like nothing better than to meet members of the same sex.
I want to develop my own patented matching algorithm, but need your help. It needs to seek out more than one personality type for each weary traveler, giving them the chance or at least the hope for finding love in unexpected, exciting, and edifying places. Here are my first ten questions. Comments welcome.
1. What was the first thought that ran through your mind when you woke up this morning?
2. Which would you prefer, to awaken finding yourself with your own body and the mind of an orangutan, or with the body of an orangutan and the mind of a human being?
3. I can think of a New Yorker cover that provides a nice visual depiction of where I am in my life (Likert scale)
4. Puddles on the sidewalk - to step in or to avoid at all costs? (scale)
5. You have one dollar bill. You happen upon some street performers in a subway station:
(a) an African singer who plays guitar and a sings in Swahili with a moving voice but dances embarrassingly out of rhythm;
(b) a violinist who plays a halfway decent but movingly heartfelt version of Clair de Lune; and
(c) a woman with a long, flowing, ruffled dress and dark, curly hair, sitting with a drum machine in her lap that is connected to very large speakers, who randomly sways to a techno beat while she howls into her microphone.
Where does the dollar bill find its home?
6a. "We're marooned on a small island, in an endless sea. Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape. But tonight, on this small planet..." Would you use this quote in a TV show, a movie, or as a sample in music?
6b. Kindly complete the above quotation.
7. You are sent to Best Buy to purchase The Office. Do you bring back (a) the original BBC series, (b) the American version, or (c) Extras?
8. In a crowded place, I stare (a) down at my feet, (b) at any available advertisements, (c) directly at other people, making occasional eye contact, (d) randomly, everywhere.
9. True or False: People who apply the "veil of ignorance" concept to an ordinary life situation while in group conversation either don't know what they're talking about or are in love with themselves.
10a. An article appears on page three of the New York times, indicating a new correlation between the sipping of green tea and the reduced risk of disease. I (a) immediately drink more green tea; (b) change nothing about my green tea consumption; (c) take out my anger at the gross misrepresentation of multiple regression analysis by drinking less or even no green tea; (d) do nothing; it's the Times, after all, and I'll be damned if I eat or drink like a Liberal.
10b. Follow-up to 10a: will that be jasmine, gunpowder, "whatever they're serving," or sencha?
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Life in the '07
Yeah, it's nearly mid-January, but I needed to gear up for my new year's resolutions. Promises, promises.
BP's New Year's Resolutions:
1. Practice (after figuring out!) proper IM etiquette. If I want to have a fight with a friend, first I must GET RID of my active icon, such as the Yeti who dodges avalanches and smiles that adorable smile. It's just not acceptable when you're going off on a person to have a Yeti dancing around and making sounds similar to what the other person would hear walking past a construction sight. And I need to figure out all of those abbreviations and acronyms. Like, brb = "be right back," ttyl = "talk to you later," igtldywahs = "i'm going to lunch, do you want a ham sandwich" and so on. Many of these shortcuts, I should avoid. For instance, tech support at my job has been known to write, "I'll fu later" for "follow up." I am NOT kidding. Believe me. I'm not writing this for laughs. I can't even see you as you read this...you're sitting too far from your web cam...
Also, I should avoid holding too many IM conversations at once. This practice has been known, in several documented cases, to result in "cross-messaging." I want to avoid the following scenario:
broodingpresenceatwork: LOL
cipher84: hey i'm thinking of going to France
broodingpresenceatwork: but you don't speak French ; )
cipher84: you're always so critical of me! i don't like that about you
broodingpresenceatwork: i was just trying to be funny. brb
cipher84: where the hell are you going? you can't run away from conflict!
broodingpresenceatwork is away...
cipher84: like i have all day to wait for you
broodingpresenceatwork: sorry, had a partner on the line
cipher84: look at you, Mr. Man. all important and bullshit like that
broodingpresenceatwork: well you don't have to be rude!
broodingpresenceatwork: i was just sayin, maybe try something a bit more out-of-box than Paris. Like the trans-Siberian railroad. You could stop at Lake Baikal and see the
[box 2 opens on screen]
partneratwork174283: can you stop by my office as soon as possible?
broodingpresenceatwork: six-gill sharks that still live there, virtually unchanged after millions of years!
partneratwork174283: excuse me?
cipher84: see the WHAT?! why are you being cryptic with me?
partneratwork174283: never mind, I'll ask somebody else
cipher84: i can't believe you think you're too good for Paris.
2. Speaking of IM: remember: the existence of IM communication does not render asking a woman on a date via e-mail the new "in-person."
3. Speaking of dating: resolution number 3: resolve the "brick and mortar" vs. "sketchy Internet dating" divide and elect to probably try neither. I admit, I've come close to convincing myself that it's OK to dump your bio data on some website, of course after sufficiently researching whether you agree with how their algorithm selects prospective partners. I once thought that Internet dating was just plain wrong, because I needed a "narrative" about how I met a person - it had to feel random yet predestined. But now that I've been reading a lot of science fiction, I'm sure that I can come up with something worth telling the grandkids by the fire while we're camping in the Adirondacks. And why would randomly running into someone at work or Borders Books and Music and Coffee and Biscotti be any better than learning about them on-line first? I mean, e-harmony basically creates a virtual book store, "populates" it with several dozen people who, like you, are all about "the dawn" and love to eat those little yellow candy chickadees at Easter and are constantly seeking expression of who they are and meaning in what they do (andhavethesamelevelofeducation - ain't nothin' wrong with a little bit of SES), and then lets you browse. If you see one of these ravenous chickadee eaters in the Inspiration section, you can start up a conversation without sirens going off and the poor, misunderstood (I didn't smile at you!) woman escorted by armed guards to safety. Because for some reason, people only feel like going to this particular book store when they're single and interested in dating. Or so they claim.
Now I just think it's sketchy.
4. Stop acting so careerist. After all, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that "Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them." But what to quit? And which cousin to estrange? And let's not forget that RWE is only one man. Everyone and his mama has something to say about "genius." Like Einstein. He said that "intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." Whither me, Mr. InstaConflict? (just add water!)
5. Speaking of quitting jobs AND real genius: this year, establish a beachhead within the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship selection committee; maybe one of them has a daughter with a YouTube channel on which I could post an endearing comment or two. Hey anonymous nominators, imagine how purdy my blog site would be if I had an extra 100 g's? Heck, you've awarded the fellowship to rare book binders and clowns, and I'm sorta funny and my book that just came out might as well be rare based on its Amazon sales ranking, so holla!
6. Speaking of funny: this is the year I take the world of stand-up comedy by storm, or at least by rumors of rain. Where art thou, open mic? My first joke:
"You all ready to have a good time? You ready to laugh your asses off? Huh?! Are you READY TO LAUGH YOUR ASSES OFF!? OK, goodnight!"
7. Charitable giving: decide whether I want to keep setting casts and handing out slings or if I want to finally invest in filling that pothole out in front of the doctor's office. Give accordingly.
8. Resolve all moral quandaries, especially whether I should donate a kidney. If I were to pass an icy lake with a small child drowning in it, and I knew that jumping in to save her would increase my chances of dying before my time by 1 in 4,000, I would try to save her. Otherwise, I would be valuing my life 4,000 times more than her own, which is just silly. But to date, I have not increased my risk of premature death by the same amount and rid myself of a superfluous organ. I've asked my friend Greg, who is studying to become a priest, this very question, and he promises to bring this up in his next class. I can see the news clip now:
"One seminary. Twelve priests-in-training. Twelve kidneys. The inexplicable mass-gifting of kidneys anonymously to children who were too far down the donor waiting list to otherwise have a fair chance of survival began shortly after the new year began. It is sparking a nationwide movement, and spawning copycat donors within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who some say have the most to lose."
9. Be nice to people. And I mean everyone. Whip up a nice batch of niceties and start dishing them out, even to people who don't even come close to deserving them. Then just sit back and start keeping score! I mean, just sit back and bits of happy will return to you from the ether. Duck if they're inordinately large.
10. Realize that every day is a gift. Live each day with the sense of urgency that such a realization demands.
I gotta go.
Vaya con Dios - Brooding Presence
BP's New Year's Resolutions:
1. Practice (after figuring out!) proper IM etiquette. If I want to have a fight with a friend, first I must GET RID of my active icon, such as the Yeti who dodges avalanches and smiles that adorable smile. It's just not acceptable when you're going off on a person to have a Yeti dancing around and making sounds similar to what the other person would hear walking past a construction sight. And I need to figure out all of those abbreviations and acronyms. Like, brb = "be right back," ttyl = "talk to you later," igtldywahs = "i'm going to lunch, do you want a ham sandwich" and so on. Many of these shortcuts, I should avoid. For instance, tech support at my job has been known to write, "I'll fu later" for "follow up." I am NOT kidding. Believe me. I'm not writing this for laughs. I can't even see you as you read this...you're sitting too far from your web cam...
Also, I should avoid holding too many IM conversations at once. This practice has been known, in several documented cases, to result in "cross-messaging." I want to avoid the following scenario:
broodingpresenceatwork: LOL
cipher84: hey i'm thinking of going to France
broodingpresenceatwork: but you don't speak French ; )
cipher84: you're always so critical of me! i don't like that about you
broodingpresenceatwork: i was just trying to be funny. brb
cipher84: where the hell are you going? you can't run away from conflict!
broodingpresenceatwork is away...
cipher84: like i have all day to wait for you
broodingpresenceatwork: sorry, had a partner on the line
cipher84: look at you, Mr. Man. all important and bullshit like that
broodingpresenceatwork: well you don't have to be rude!
broodingpresenceatwork: i was just sayin, maybe try something a bit more out-of-box than Paris. Like the trans-Siberian railroad. You could stop at Lake Baikal and see the
[box 2 opens on screen]
partneratwork174283: can you stop by my office as soon as possible?
broodingpresenceatwork: six-gill sharks that still live there, virtually unchanged after millions of years!
partneratwork174283: excuse me?
cipher84: see the WHAT?! why are you being cryptic with me?
partneratwork174283: never mind, I'll ask somebody else
cipher84: i can't believe you think you're too good for Paris.
2. Speaking of IM: remember: the existence of IM communication does not render asking a woman on a date via e-mail the new "in-person."
3. Speaking of dating: resolution number 3: resolve the "brick and mortar" vs. "sketchy Internet dating" divide and elect to probably try neither. I admit, I've come close to convincing myself that it's OK to dump your bio data on some website, of course after sufficiently researching whether you agree with how their algorithm selects prospective partners. I once thought that Internet dating was just plain wrong, because I needed a "narrative" about how I met a person - it had to feel random yet predestined. But now that I've been reading a lot of science fiction, I'm sure that I can come up with something worth telling the grandkids by the fire while we're camping in the Adirondacks. And why would randomly running into someone at work or Borders Books and Music and Coffee and Biscotti be any better than learning about them on-line first? I mean, e-harmony basically creates a virtual book store, "populates" it with several dozen people who, like you, are all about "the dawn" and love to eat those little yellow candy chickadees at Easter and are constantly seeking expression of who they are and meaning in what they do (andhavethesamelevelofeducation - ain't nothin' wrong with a little bit of SES), and then lets you browse. If you see one of these ravenous chickadee eaters in the Inspiration section, you can start up a conversation without sirens going off and the poor, misunderstood (I didn't smile at you!) woman escorted by armed guards to safety. Because for some reason, people only feel like going to this particular book store when they're single and interested in dating. Or so they claim.
Now I just think it's sketchy.
4. Stop acting so careerist. After all, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that "Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them." But what to quit? And which cousin to estrange? And let's not forget that RWE is only one man. Everyone and his mama has something to say about "genius." Like Einstein. He said that "intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." Whither me, Mr. InstaConflict? (just add water!)
5. Speaking of quitting jobs AND real genius: this year, establish a beachhead within the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship selection committee; maybe one of them has a daughter with a YouTube channel on which I could post an endearing comment or two. Hey anonymous nominators, imagine how purdy my blog site would be if I had an extra 100 g's? Heck, you've awarded the fellowship to rare book binders and clowns, and I'm sorta funny and my book that just came out might as well be rare based on its Amazon sales ranking, so holla!
6. Speaking of funny: this is the year I take the world of stand-up comedy by storm, or at least by rumors of rain. Where art thou, open mic? My first joke:
"You all ready to have a good time? You ready to laugh your asses off? Huh?! Are you READY TO LAUGH YOUR ASSES OFF!? OK, goodnight!"
7. Charitable giving: decide whether I want to keep setting casts and handing out slings or if I want to finally invest in filling that pothole out in front of the doctor's office. Give accordingly.
8. Resolve all moral quandaries, especially whether I should donate a kidney. If I were to pass an icy lake with a small child drowning in it, and I knew that jumping in to save her would increase my chances of dying before my time by 1 in 4,000, I would try to save her. Otherwise, I would be valuing my life 4,000 times more than her own, which is just silly. But to date, I have not increased my risk of premature death by the same amount and rid myself of a superfluous organ. I've asked my friend Greg, who is studying to become a priest, this very question, and he promises to bring this up in his next class. I can see the news clip now:
"One seminary. Twelve priests-in-training. Twelve kidneys. The inexplicable mass-gifting of kidneys anonymously to children who were too far down the donor waiting list to otherwise have a fair chance of survival began shortly after the new year began. It is sparking a nationwide movement, and spawning copycat donors within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who some say have the most to lose."
9. Be nice to people. And I mean everyone. Whip up a nice batch of niceties and start dishing them out, even to people who don't even come close to deserving them. Then just sit back and start keeping score! I mean, just sit back and bits of happy will return to you from the ether. Duck if they're inordinately large.
10. Realize that every day is a gift. Live each day with the sense of urgency that such a realization demands.
I gotta go.
Vaya con Dios - Brooding Presence
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
blog take two
Why hello there!
It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because I've been busy with work and other work and working on other things. But it's good to be back. This is the first post of the rest of my life, and I'm thankful for that. But I'm also confused...
Did you ever have a moment where you were struck by the enormity of how utterly strange the world seems? I mean, it's gotta be some sort of joke, right? Maybe you've had this gestalt while waiting in line at a public restroom. Or perhaps as you stood in an elevator and watched several others stare at the little Captivate screen. You may have even had the moment staring at your likeness in the mirror - you know that it's human, and yet this being in the reflection appears so alien to something inside of you.
We've been around as human beings for a couple of million years! And we've evolved to what? We've risen above what?
Start with the physical plane on which we exist, which to my best guess is a ghetto in space-time where we believe that there are three dimensions when in actuality there are closer to ten or maybe two, depending on who you ask. Other dimensions weave in and out of our limited existence in the form of bridges both subatomic and infinite. Add to that the notion that embedded within this slop is some sort of consciousness, allowing physicists to account for the uncertainty principle. And don't forget the 99% of it that we can't see or classify and to which we've attached the label "dark." Time in this ghetto only appears to advance in one direction, and yet we are housed in shells that decay over the years (one of my favorite professors, Roger Fisher, once told me that "getting old ain't for sissies"). The mind is infinite, but at any moment it can be snuffed out by a blood clot. We have many emotional states, situated intelligences, and personalities, but this gradually (and then not-so-gradually) decaying frame of ours gives us a semblance of oneness. We rely mostly on information embedded in our surroundings, scaffolds that are essentially energy in a form we can interacted with and could just as soon be something completely incomprehensible to our limited conception of reality. We exist as vast heaps of trillions of cells working in relative harmony, allowing us to interact with these surroundings, and through our actions, we create information, or entropy, which is proof that we existed and some physicists believe will be replayed for all of eternity when the universe collapses. We never think about any of this. We live by a few routines (movies, work/physical exertion, eating, gossip, and sexual politics) and close out the rest from conscious consideration.
Ever feel that there's something strange about all this? Just think! Millions of years and yet the best most people can do after a movie is leap to their cell phones and exclaim, "it was amazing, you gotta see it, the ending was incredible," or "that was strange, I didn't get it, it was too slow"? Millions of years and we find our mates through either algorithm-assisted screening or randomized false pretense performed in privately-provided public spaces (such as barnes and noble)? Millions of years and the average person at least in our neck of the woods spends 10-14 hours a day staring at one kind of screen and then another and holds out hope that meaning can be found in the arrangement of the pixels? Millions of years and yet when some of us find ourselves with some time on our hands that has not already been claimed by toil and trudging things about, we have absolutely no idea how to use it? There are a billion things that we could be doing, if only we could maneuver through the infinite possibilities and potentials with some sort of perseverance.
The human condition seems so limited at times, and yet our circumstance is so profound. Why the disconnect? Even in Manhattan, where anything can happen from the mundane to the terrific to the terrifying, most of what goes on seems scripted. Those who ask for money on the subways even have prepared speeches. So I tend to my own rituals, in which there must be an answer, some clue as to what this is all about. It is true that what we do not know approaches infinity, and the more that we are aware of this, the more paralyzed we feel. We use rituals as veritable landcruisers to take us across the multiformed abyss of a thought, a field, a teaming mass of life in a drop of water, a city, an ocean, a fold in spacetime. And through those rituals, like heating a pot of water and forming a mini-cyclone in a glass as we pour our tea in the morning, or standing in line for some sugar, water, and fatty cells and watching time grind to a halt amidst the swell of the morning rush, we can contemplate infinity and eternity from a vantage point that is infused with some sense of security. But why have these rituals not led us as a collective to higher states of consciousness after all of this time? Is the relatively recent phenomenon of drawing artificial boundaries between "nature" and "society," by which we claim some semblance of mastery over the cosmos, just no match for what evolution has imprinted on our minds, the text splattered across our cognitive maps of most of the known universe that reads, "here there be monsters"?
It seems that the limited physical plane in which we act out our daily routines offers us faint hints or whispers of the infinite, of that which really matters. What does it mean that after millions of years, the bridges are so hesitantly lain and most care not to tread on them?
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because I've been busy with work and other work and working on other things. But it's good to be back. This is the first post of the rest of my life, and I'm thankful for that. But I'm also confused...
Did you ever have a moment where you were struck by the enormity of how utterly strange the world seems? I mean, it's gotta be some sort of joke, right? Maybe you've had this gestalt while waiting in line at a public restroom. Or perhaps as you stood in an elevator and watched several others stare at the little Captivate screen. You may have even had the moment staring at your likeness in the mirror - you know that it's human, and yet this being in the reflection appears so alien to something inside of you.
We've been around as human beings for a couple of million years! And we've evolved to what? We've risen above what?
Start with the physical plane on which we exist, which to my best guess is a ghetto in space-time where we believe that there are three dimensions when in actuality there are closer to ten or maybe two, depending on who you ask. Other dimensions weave in and out of our limited existence in the form of bridges both subatomic and infinite. Add to that the notion that embedded within this slop is some sort of consciousness, allowing physicists to account for the uncertainty principle. And don't forget the 99% of it that we can't see or classify and to which we've attached the label "dark." Time in this ghetto only appears to advance in one direction, and yet we are housed in shells that decay over the years (one of my favorite professors, Roger Fisher, once told me that "getting old ain't for sissies"). The mind is infinite, but at any moment it can be snuffed out by a blood clot. We have many emotional states, situated intelligences, and personalities, but this gradually (and then not-so-gradually) decaying frame of ours gives us a semblance of oneness. We rely mostly on information embedded in our surroundings, scaffolds that are essentially energy in a form we can interacted with and could just as soon be something completely incomprehensible to our limited conception of reality. We exist as vast heaps of trillions of cells working in relative harmony, allowing us to interact with these surroundings, and through our actions, we create information, or entropy, which is proof that we existed and some physicists believe will be replayed for all of eternity when the universe collapses. We never think about any of this. We live by a few routines (movies, work/physical exertion, eating, gossip, and sexual politics) and close out the rest from conscious consideration.
Ever feel that there's something strange about all this? Just think! Millions of years and yet the best most people can do after a movie is leap to their cell phones and exclaim, "it was amazing, you gotta see it, the ending was incredible," or "that was strange, I didn't get it, it was too slow"? Millions of years and we find our mates through either algorithm-assisted screening or randomized false pretense performed in privately-provided public spaces (such as barnes and noble)? Millions of years and the average person at least in our neck of the woods spends 10-14 hours a day staring at one kind of screen and then another and holds out hope that meaning can be found in the arrangement of the pixels? Millions of years and yet when some of us find ourselves with some time on our hands that has not already been claimed by toil and trudging things about, we have absolutely no idea how to use it? There are a billion things that we could be doing, if only we could maneuver through the infinite possibilities and potentials with some sort of perseverance.
The human condition seems so limited at times, and yet our circumstance is so profound. Why the disconnect? Even in Manhattan, where anything can happen from the mundane to the terrific to the terrifying, most of what goes on seems scripted. Those who ask for money on the subways even have prepared speeches. So I tend to my own rituals, in which there must be an answer, some clue as to what this is all about. It is true that what we do not know approaches infinity, and the more that we are aware of this, the more paralyzed we feel. We use rituals as veritable landcruisers to take us across the multiformed abyss of a thought, a field, a teaming mass of life in a drop of water, a city, an ocean, a fold in spacetime. And through those rituals, like heating a pot of water and forming a mini-cyclone in a glass as we pour our tea in the morning, or standing in line for some sugar, water, and fatty cells and watching time grind to a halt amidst the swell of the morning rush, we can contemplate infinity and eternity from a vantage point that is infused with some sense of security. But why have these rituals not led us as a collective to higher states of consciousness after all of this time? Is the relatively recent phenomenon of drawing artificial boundaries between "nature" and "society," by which we claim some semblance of mastery over the cosmos, just no match for what evolution has imprinted on our minds, the text splattered across our cognitive maps of most of the known universe that reads, "here there be monsters"?
It seems that the limited physical plane in which we act out our daily routines offers us faint hints or whispers of the infinite, of that which really matters. What does it mean that after millions of years, the bridges are so hesitantly lain and most care not to tread on them?
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Soundscapes
Some of you may love hip-hop. Like me, you may be elated that De La Soul recently decided to abandon major label support and release their masterpiece. You may marvel at the infinite creative potential of a single funk tune from decades past such as "More Bounce to the Ounce." Do you recall how in the early- to mid-1990's, an entire nation's youth danced to this song, not even knowing that it existed? Take the music from its origins in Zapp, loop the first nine seconds, slow it down, pin it up against Cool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" at strategic moments, and have a couple of former boy scouts from Brentwood, NY trade boasts, one with a speech impediment, and you have "You Gots to Chill" by EPMD (Erick and Parrish Making Dollars):
"I be the personal computer informational rap
Like the B-I-Z my pieces will make your toes tap
I format the rhymes, step by step
Make them sound def
to maintain my rep
Prepare to come off
In case of a diss
Don't worry about a thing
Cause we can do this
Cause we can turn the party out just be standing still
Make the ladies scream and shout
While the brothers act ill
Take total control of your body and soul
Pack a nine in my pants for when it's time to roll."
Speed up "More Bounce" a tiny bit, add reverb, a Yes guitar lick every 16 bars, and Brother J speaking about the Blackwatch movement and the red, black, and green, and you have "Heed the Words of the Brother," by X-Clan:
"Great blackness brought from the Genesis
We'll exist till Armageddon is a witness
The originals built the earth
Why must there be aggression to learn a basic lesson?
Quite majestic, stern within reality
A juggernaut when you tamper with mentality
Or with a crown, extension and dimension of a brain cell
Bringing hell to the sellout
The ever-tangled web we weave
Always trying to obtain, no attempt to achieve
Descendants of kings and queens act like jesters
Never potential
Quarter of the measure
Jealousy
of what are we
becomes tendency
for their thievery."
Loop 4:04-4:08 of "More Bounce"'s high-pitched wail and the bassline, skip it rhythmically, deconstruct a whiney tone several octaves higher during the chorus, and pass the mic to a simple-minded pimp, and you have MC Breed's "Ain't No Future in Yo' Frontin'":
"This sound hard
Somethin funky people gone dance to
Give the record a second and a chance to
Hittin people like a scene of amazement
While they slippin back my feet is planted in the pavement
Crumple I could never do
So now I'm lookin dead at you
What are you gonna do
You're listening to the knowledge of a scholar
You say how Breed, tell em how I holla
I'm the E-double, and I proclaim my name
Straight up, good game, peeps all gangs
I'm like a rhino runnin through the roughest pack
They figure I'm a trigger happy brother so they step back
BREED, the microphonest, who lasts the longest and who's the strongest
It ain't a game it's plain to see
You're listening to the sounds of Breed and the DFC."
This endless take on "More Bounce to the Ounce" lasted for years, spanning east coast, west coast, expansive gangsta rap and claustrophobic east coast hip-hop alike. Then, a few weeks ago, De La Soul unleashed "Relax." See, in hip-hop, imitation is a form of flattery. For example, MC Breed, above, called himself the "E-double," which was actually Erick Sermon's nickname when he was with EPMD and made "You Gots to Chill." In "You Gots to Chill," Sermon also says "Relax your mind, let your conscience be free and get down to the sounds of EPMD." In turn, De La drop "Relax," complete with sample of that line during the chorus, an inverted "More Bounce" beat, and a loop of the few seconds before the splice used by MC Breed. As De La trade "relax your mind"'s with the sample, it just works. As Guru once said, "the rhyme style is elevated, the style of beats is elevated," but it's still More Bounce to the Ounce...and something completely different at the same time. And then you progress to "Wasn't for You" and other classics, and all is right with the world.
There are two primary reasons why people won't listen to hip-hop: they can't hear the lyrics for what the artists are trying to communicate, or they think the sounds are too repetitive. I actually believe that the latter is a source of strength for the art form. To prove it, let me invite you to participate in an experiment. If you want to understand why people live for this music, purchase Mayday's "Nothin." Load it onto your mp3 player, and press play. The song rises to its feet from a deep slumber, bass drops stretching, hand claps shaking off the hours of stillness, a distant guitar chord morphing into a random-walk keyboard, reverb slinking in and out of this seemingly barren landscape, until the beat drops.
There's something about a steady 808, bassline, keyboard progression, and dueling, obscure treble samples that lulls you into a peaceful ponderance. The music gently hovers you above the known world, a presiding mind, and the continuity of it all gives your mind a canvass upon which to weave complex thought tapestries. Inverse biomorphic concretism. There's nothing like it. Instead of the elements of a piece, at first seemingly disparate, snapping together in the mind in a moment of gestalt, the monotony slowly deviates from itself in how it's perceived, meaning every time you hear the beat, it's not entirely the same as when you last encountered it.
Mayday enters the stage, singing the chorus, and then he begins:
Nothin's really real
Nothin's what it appears
Nothin's what I feel
When I'm wiping the tears
Nothin is somethin here
An inner space where the gravity is gone
Where the weight is not so strong
Far
Still it all amounts to nothin
Nothin in your ears
Nothin I can do to not disappear
Nothin is somethin here
So I repeat and dissect the prior years
Smokin weed drinkin beers
Gettin numb, let it breathe
And then the bass meanders, and you breathe easier. Your mind is more alert, filled with images and concepts. You begin to listen to the song in your headphones as you walk down the street. As you slink into a chair at the end of the day. As you drift to sleep. The world seems different as the beat plays and shifts and weaves through your mind. It is your drug. And its only known side effect is the desire to hear it again. I've known people to leave their apartments in the middle of the night, before there were mp3's, in search of a friend with a particular beat. They could not sleep without it. I admit I have shared this addiction and I'm not ashamed of it.
If you have any doubts about the power of this medium, you need simply stick around for verse two of "Nothin'." If you aren't choking back a tear by the end of verse two, before the chanting begins with "Mayday, save me," then you are a hopeless case or have no soul. The world is vast, and perhaps another genre will suit you. But hip-hop is not in your blood.
You should listen to "Nothin'" for the first time not knowing the lyrics, but I reproduce them below for your records:
Rhyme-wise, I drew the figure eight
There's nothin I regret nothin I won't make straight
She told me save those tapes
Cause my life is logged in 'em
Hidden within the words
Buried inside the rhythm
I said "sure,"
Not knowin that's the last we'd speak
She fought it hard
But eventually just chose to sleep
Back to nothin
But somehow somethin lingers behind
Imprinting my mind
Broken bloodline
Time
And I can still see her there
Cooking in the kitchen
Feeding us with all her care
But now there's nothin there
It vanished into air
So will I
Say goodbye
Let her go
Let her die
Mother please don't cry.
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
"I be the personal computer informational rap
Like the B-I-Z my pieces will make your toes tap
I format the rhymes, step by step
Make them sound def
to maintain my rep
Prepare to come off
In case of a diss
Don't worry about a thing
Cause we can do this
Cause we can turn the party out just be standing still
Make the ladies scream and shout
While the brothers act ill
Take total control of your body and soul
Pack a nine in my pants for when it's time to roll."
Speed up "More Bounce" a tiny bit, add reverb, a Yes guitar lick every 16 bars, and Brother J speaking about the Blackwatch movement and the red, black, and green, and you have "Heed the Words of the Brother," by X-Clan:
"Great blackness brought from the Genesis
We'll exist till Armageddon is a witness
The originals built the earth
Why must there be aggression to learn a basic lesson?
Quite majestic, stern within reality
A juggernaut when you tamper with mentality
Or with a crown, extension and dimension of a brain cell
Bringing hell to the sellout
The ever-tangled web we weave
Always trying to obtain, no attempt to achieve
Descendants of kings and queens act like jesters
Never potential
Quarter of the measure
Jealousy
of what are we
becomes tendency
for their thievery."
Loop 4:04-4:08 of "More Bounce"'s high-pitched wail and the bassline, skip it rhythmically, deconstruct a whiney tone several octaves higher during the chorus, and pass the mic to a simple-minded pimp, and you have MC Breed's "Ain't No Future in Yo' Frontin'":
"This sound hard
Somethin funky people gone dance to
Give the record a second and a chance to
Hittin people like a scene of amazement
While they slippin back my feet is planted in the pavement
Crumple I could never do
So now I'm lookin dead at you
What are you gonna do
You're listening to the knowledge of a scholar
You say how Breed, tell em how I holla
I'm the E-double, and I proclaim my name
Straight up, good game, peeps all gangs
I'm like a rhino runnin through the roughest pack
They figure I'm a trigger happy brother so they step back
BREED, the microphonest, who lasts the longest and who's the strongest
It ain't a game it's plain to see
You're listening to the sounds of Breed and the DFC."
This endless take on "More Bounce to the Ounce" lasted for years, spanning east coast, west coast, expansive gangsta rap and claustrophobic east coast hip-hop alike. Then, a few weeks ago, De La Soul unleashed "Relax." See, in hip-hop, imitation is a form of flattery. For example, MC Breed, above, called himself the "E-double," which was actually Erick Sermon's nickname when he was with EPMD and made "You Gots to Chill." In "You Gots to Chill," Sermon also says "Relax your mind, let your conscience be free and get down to the sounds of EPMD." In turn, De La drop "Relax," complete with sample of that line during the chorus, an inverted "More Bounce" beat, and a loop of the few seconds before the splice used by MC Breed. As De La trade "relax your mind"'s with the sample, it just works. As Guru once said, "the rhyme style is elevated, the style of beats is elevated," but it's still More Bounce to the Ounce...and something completely different at the same time. And then you progress to "Wasn't for You" and other classics, and all is right with the world.
There are two primary reasons why people won't listen to hip-hop: they can't hear the lyrics for what the artists are trying to communicate, or they think the sounds are too repetitive. I actually believe that the latter is a source of strength for the art form. To prove it, let me invite you to participate in an experiment. If you want to understand why people live for this music, purchase Mayday's "Nothin." Load it onto your mp3 player, and press play. The song rises to its feet from a deep slumber, bass drops stretching, hand claps shaking off the hours of stillness, a distant guitar chord morphing into a random-walk keyboard, reverb slinking in and out of this seemingly barren landscape, until the beat drops.
There's something about a steady 808, bassline, keyboard progression, and dueling, obscure treble samples that lulls you into a peaceful ponderance. The music gently hovers you above the known world, a presiding mind, and the continuity of it all gives your mind a canvass upon which to weave complex thought tapestries. Inverse biomorphic concretism. There's nothing like it. Instead of the elements of a piece, at first seemingly disparate, snapping together in the mind in a moment of gestalt, the monotony slowly deviates from itself in how it's perceived, meaning every time you hear the beat, it's not entirely the same as when you last encountered it.
Mayday enters the stage, singing the chorus, and then he begins:
Nothin's really real
Nothin's what it appears
Nothin's what I feel
When I'm wiping the tears
Nothin is somethin here
An inner space where the gravity is gone
Where the weight is not so strong
Far
Still it all amounts to nothin
Nothin in your ears
Nothin I can do to not disappear
Nothin is somethin here
So I repeat and dissect the prior years
Smokin weed drinkin beers
Gettin numb, let it breathe
And then the bass meanders, and you breathe easier. Your mind is more alert, filled with images and concepts. You begin to listen to the song in your headphones as you walk down the street. As you slink into a chair at the end of the day. As you drift to sleep. The world seems different as the beat plays and shifts and weaves through your mind. It is your drug. And its only known side effect is the desire to hear it again. I've known people to leave their apartments in the middle of the night, before there were mp3's, in search of a friend with a particular beat. They could not sleep without it. I admit I have shared this addiction and I'm not ashamed of it.
If you have any doubts about the power of this medium, you need simply stick around for verse two of "Nothin'." If you aren't choking back a tear by the end of verse two, before the chanting begins with "Mayday, save me," then you are a hopeless case or have no soul. The world is vast, and perhaps another genre will suit you. But hip-hop is not in your blood.
You should listen to "Nothin'" for the first time not knowing the lyrics, but I reproduce them below for your records:
Rhyme-wise, I drew the figure eight
There's nothin I regret nothin I won't make straight
She told me save those tapes
Cause my life is logged in 'em
Hidden within the words
Buried inside the rhythm
I said "sure,"
Not knowin that's the last we'd speak
She fought it hard
But eventually just chose to sleep
Back to nothin
But somehow somethin lingers behind
Imprinting my mind
Broken bloodline
Time
And I can still see her there
Cooking in the kitchen
Feeding us with all her care
But now there's nothin there
It vanished into air
So will I
Say goodbye
Let her go
Let her die
Mother please don't cry.
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
This one's for the men and women of the corporation
I want to take this moment to pay tribute to men and women of the corporation.
The book, that is.
Yes, in a couple of months, we'll hit the 30th anniversary of the book, Men and Women of the Corporation. Winner of the C. Wright Mills Award (ooh!). Dubbed "a bank of candles in the dark" by Dust Cover Reviewer #1 (aah!). Written by the Class of 1960 Chair in Business Administration at Harvard Business School (stop, it's too good!). And let's not pay short shrift to Front Cover Top Reviewer: "I cannot think of a better guide to the inner workings of the modern corporation."
Now that we've properly vetted this major work, let's peer inside to find out what people were thinking about the Corporation (its men and women) way back when. Gather 'round, children! Hear what MAWOTC has to say about:
Secretaries:
"The first fact about the several thousand secretaries at Indsco [a pseudonym for an "industrial supply company"] was that they were all women, except for two men at headquarters who were classified as typists."
Their bosses:
"When bosses make demands at their own discretion and arbitrarily, choose secretaries on grounds that enhance their own personal status rather than meeting organizational efficiency tests, expect personal service with limits negotiated privately, exact loyalty, and make the secretary a part of their private retinue, moving when they move - then the relationship has elements of patrimony."
Bosses vis-a-vis secretaries:
"The boss's status determined the power of the secretary...Higher up, secretaries' power derived from control of bosses' calendars."
Rogue secretaries:
"To take initiative without taking over the job, then, marked a fine line the more ambitious secretaries walked. They ran the risk that the more they did or the better they did, the more threatening they became to bosses and Indsco."
Incompetent bosses of secretaries:
"A man who is sloppy will not only expect his secretary to compensate for his sloppiness but will inevitably suggest that her neatness and capacity for organization are proof of a tidy, and therefore limited, mind, while his sloppiness is the sign of unfettered creativity."
Wives (an entire chapter is devoted to this topic):
"Because corporate wives were generally seen to be content to operate behind the scenes and to be ambitious for their husbands rather than themselves and because they made use of social rather than intellectual skills in their hostess role, the image of women that emerged for some management men from knowing their own and other wives reinforced the view that career women were an anomaly, that they were unusual or could not really be ambitious, or that their talents must be primarily social and emotional rather than cognitive."
Sexual fantasizers of corporate women and the wives who love them:
"Several saleswomen at Indsco felt, rightly or wrongly, that they were the targets of the sexual fantasies of male peers. Some said that men used them to taunt their wives, e.g., by making innuendos about going out on a sales call with one of the women. For this reason, may saleswomen felt it important that they establish good relations with the wives, giving women an additional task men did not have. Wives, in turn, not themselves directly participating in the work world, could fear what would happen when their husbands worked with women as peers, such as the Newton, Massachusetts policemen's wives who protested the hiring of policewomen, giving as one reason the sexual potential of long shifts shared by men and women in patrol cars."
Tokens:
"If one sees nine X's and one O:
X X x x X X O X x X
the O will stand out. The O may also be overlooked, but if it is seen at all, it will get more notice than any X. Further, the X's may seem more alike than different because of their contrast with the O. "
And more on Tokens:
"One of Indsco's most senior women...was among the five women celebrated at the civic lunch for outstanding women in business. A series of calls from high-level officers indicated that the chairman of the board of the corporation wanted her to attend a lunch at a large hotel that day, although she was given no information about the nature of the event. When she threatened not to go unless she was given more information, she was reminded that the invitation had come down from the chairman himself, and of course she would go. On the day of the luncheon, a corsage arrived and later, a vice-president to escort her. So she went, and found she was there to represent the corporation's "prize women," symbolizing the strides made by women in business. The program for the affair listed the women executives from participating companies, except in the case of Indsco, where the male vice-presidential escorts were listed instead. Pictures were taken for the employee newsletter and, a few days later, she received an inscribed paperweight as a memento. She told the story a few weeks after the event with visible embarrassment about being "taken on a date. It was more like a senior prom than a business event."
You may be laughing at the matter-of-factness of these excerpts, or the obviousness (and in other instances, sheer ludicrousness) of some of the gender relations problems that they encapsulate, but this book was earth-shattering when it came out. And the book now comes with an Afterword focused on "The View from the 1990's," about such challenges as "The Empowerment Problem: The Female Service Army" and "Dilemmas of Diversity" ("But the next step up from tokenism - skewed groups in which several more O's are present although X's still dominate - can create even more problems - backlash, resistance, complaints of 'reverse discrimination.' Research shows that dissatisfaction and tension are greatest in groups in which there are several women or minorities...").
Seriously, the book offers an interesting, Weberish account of the structural determinants of behavior within an organization. Even though some of it is overly deterministic, its insights into how the organizational structures that used to be commonplace for the American worker (hierarchical, vertically integrated, stable monoliths like the pseudonymous Indsco) severely limited opportunities for women were long-overdue when MAWOTC rolled off the presses. So pick up (or, if you're getting a Ph.D. in org theory, dust off) a copy today. You just might learn something. About your sexist piggish self.
Oh, and did I mention that it was written by a woman?
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
The book, that is.
Yes, in a couple of months, we'll hit the 30th anniversary of the book, Men and Women of the Corporation. Winner of the C. Wright Mills Award (ooh!). Dubbed "a bank of candles in the dark" by Dust Cover Reviewer #1 (aah!). Written by the Class of 1960 Chair in Business Administration at Harvard Business School (stop, it's too good!). And let's not pay short shrift to Front Cover Top Reviewer: "I cannot think of a better guide to the inner workings of the modern corporation."
Now that we've properly vetted this major work, let's peer inside to find out what people were thinking about the Corporation (its men and women) way back when. Gather 'round, children! Hear what MAWOTC has to say about:
Secretaries:
"The first fact about the several thousand secretaries at Indsco [a pseudonym for an "industrial supply company"] was that they were all women, except for two men at headquarters who were classified as typists."
Their bosses:
"When bosses make demands at their own discretion and arbitrarily, choose secretaries on grounds that enhance their own personal status rather than meeting organizational efficiency tests, expect personal service with limits negotiated privately, exact loyalty, and make the secretary a part of their private retinue, moving when they move - then the relationship has elements of patrimony."
Bosses vis-a-vis secretaries:
"The boss's status determined the power of the secretary...Higher up, secretaries' power derived from control of bosses' calendars."
Rogue secretaries:
"To take initiative without taking over the job, then, marked a fine line the more ambitious secretaries walked. They ran the risk that the more they did or the better they did, the more threatening they became to bosses and Indsco."
Incompetent bosses of secretaries:
"A man who is sloppy will not only expect his secretary to compensate for his sloppiness but will inevitably suggest that her neatness and capacity for organization are proof of a tidy, and therefore limited, mind, while his sloppiness is the sign of unfettered creativity."
Wives (an entire chapter is devoted to this topic):
"Because corporate wives were generally seen to be content to operate behind the scenes and to be ambitious for their husbands rather than themselves and because they made use of social rather than intellectual skills in their hostess role, the image of women that emerged for some management men from knowing their own and other wives reinforced the view that career women were an anomaly, that they were unusual or could not really be ambitious, or that their talents must be primarily social and emotional rather than cognitive."
Sexual fantasizers of corporate women and the wives who love them:
"Several saleswomen at Indsco felt, rightly or wrongly, that they were the targets of the sexual fantasies of male peers. Some said that men used them to taunt their wives, e.g., by making innuendos about going out on a sales call with one of the women. For this reason, may saleswomen felt it important that they establish good relations with the wives, giving women an additional task men did not have. Wives, in turn, not themselves directly participating in the work world, could fear what would happen when their husbands worked with women as peers, such as the Newton, Massachusetts policemen's wives who protested the hiring of policewomen, giving as one reason the sexual potential of long shifts shared by men and women in patrol cars."
Tokens:
"If one sees nine X's and one O:
X X x x X X O X x X
the O will stand out. The O may also be overlooked, but if it is seen at all, it will get more notice than any X. Further, the X's may seem more alike than different because of their contrast with the O. "
And more on Tokens:
"One of Indsco's most senior women...was among the five women celebrated at the civic lunch for outstanding women in business. A series of calls from high-level officers indicated that the chairman of the board of the corporation wanted her to attend a lunch at a large hotel that day, although she was given no information about the nature of the event. When she threatened not to go unless she was given more information, she was reminded that the invitation had come down from the chairman himself, and of course she would go. On the day of the luncheon, a corsage arrived and later, a vice-president to escort her. So she went, and found she was there to represent the corporation's "prize women," symbolizing the strides made by women in business. The program for the affair listed the women executives from participating companies, except in the case of Indsco, where the male vice-presidential escorts were listed instead. Pictures were taken for the employee newsletter and, a few days later, she received an inscribed paperweight as a memento. She told the story a few weeks after the event with visible embarrassment about being "taken on a date. It was more like a senior prom than a business event."
You may be laughing at the matter-of-factness of these excerpts, or the obviousness (and in other instances, sheer ludicrousness) of some of the gender relations problems that they encapsulate, but this book was earth-shattering when it came out. And the book now comes with an Afterword focused on "The View from the 1990's," about such challenges as "The Empowerment Problem: The Female Service Army" and "Dilemmas of Diversity" ("But the next step up from tokenism - skewed groups in which several more O's are present although X's still dominate - can create even more problems - backlash, resistance, complaints of 'reverse discrimination.' Research shows that dissatisfaction and tension are greatest in groups in which there are several women or minorities...").
Seriously, the book offers an interesting, Weberish account of the structural determinants of behavior within an organization. Even though some of it is overly deterministic, its insights into how the organizational structures that used to be commonplace for the American worker (hierarchical, vertically integrated, stable monoliths like the pseudonymous Indsco) severely limited opportunities for women were long-overdue when MAWOTC rolled off the presses. So pick up (or, if you're getting a Ph.D. in org theory, dust off) a copy today. You just might learn something. About your sexist piggish self.
Oh, and did I mention that it was written by a woman?
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The Man by the Door Will One Day be Your Boss
I love how subway ad campaigns just drench you in product these days. I was on a subway (sorry; the "T") in Boston and the entire subway train was a series of colorful Tide ad wraps, reminding us how incredibly dirty everything was. I had this desire to strip naked and run about the cars, screaming "There's something in the clothes!" But I refrained.
Now I'm in New York, and the daily ad soak continues. Even the government gets in on the fun - some days, it's all security, all the time. Terrorists, take note: There are 16 million eyes in New York. And if they see something, their owners are going to say something (apparently that doesn't go equally for men who decide to get their grind on with daily commuters when the subway reaches capacity at about 9:45 a.m. - the Village Voice even has a "Best of NY" category entitled, "Best Place to Be Groped"). There's also a common reminder that the MTA has some sort of emergency preparedness video on-line. You can check it if you're bored at mta.nyc.ny.us. And I'm definitely going to check out Front Lines: Rebuilding the Rails After 9/11 at the New York Transit Museum.
But the craziest ad campaign of late goes to u-r-connected, which is really a sneaky set of posters designed to get you to go to a website of the same name, view some intriguing text about how truly linked all of us are ("There is a theory that anyone on the planet is connected to any other person through a chain of six people - no one is a stranger for long"), and then answer a series of survey items (example: I am: (a) my work, (b) the sum of my experience, (c) my future, (d) my contribution). Your selections take you to a page which tells that you resemble one of six main characters on the new ABC drama, Six Degrees.
The ads are interesting. I like the two that span the middle of each car. One of them says, "The Man by the Door will One Day be Your Boss," while the other intimates, "The Girl Across the Aisle is Flirting With You." So not only did TV execs take forever to move past the fact that six degrees has been reworked to death in film and finally exclaim, "fuck it, we're going with a show called Six Degrees," they also had to use it as a vehicle for peddling base stereotypes.
And there is no theory which says we're all connected through six people. When Milgram sent postcards to hand-picked subjects and asked them to return them to a target either in Massachusetts or the Midwest, sure, 80% of the successfully delivered cards were sent through four or fewer contacts, and nearly all traveled through six max. But Milgram's research notes reveal that 95% of the letters FAILED TO REACH THEIR TARGET. Similar results can be found post-mainframe computer, even though success continues to be achieved in six or less most of the time.
There's a phrase for the fact that this misconception, which permeates our culture and influences our behavior, lives on: herd mentality. How apropos for a subway ad campaign.
By the way, I took the survey. My new buddy is Whitney. And I'm pleased to report that I'm two degrees of separation from Osama bin Laden. But I have no idea where he is.
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Are you Rapture Ready? (in praise of an index)
As if you needed any further reason to tread lightly on my blog, let me talk to you about religion.
God works in numbers.
We see it in the appearance of fibonacci sequences in nature, such as in the branching of tree limbs or the arrangement of a pine cone. A fibonacci sequence occurs after two starting numbers, where each following number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, as in 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 43, 55, 89, 144. Consider, for example, a bee population: If a female bee lays an unfertilized egg, it yields a male bee. If the egg is fertilized, it hatches a female. Therefore, a male bee (1) has one female parent (1), a female has (2) parents, the mother had two parents and the father had one parent (3), and the two grandmother bees each had two parents while the grandfather bee had one (5).
And you know about the Golden Ratio (1.618), which is the result of the ratio of the sum of two quantities to the larger of the quantities, over the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller. We find it everywhere in nature (from galaxies to the human form to crystals to sea shells) and in man's pursuit of the sublime through his art forms, leading the German intellectual Adolf Zeising to declare the Golden Ratio:
[A] universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.
And let's not forget how the physical constants that govern our existence, 26 in all, seem at least at first glance purposefully tweaked for the emergence of life forms with moral agency. Here's one of many examples: Want a universe populated with stars, the givers of life as we know it? Well, no such luck if the fine-structure constant (a function of electron charge relative to the Planck charge) were different, or if the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger. If that were the case, hydrogen would fuse too easily and diprotons would become stable, rendering the concept of a star unthinkable. While it is true that the argument is tautological and only suggests that life as we are able to imagine it would not have formed, you have to marvel at the precision with which our existence is fine-tuned.
I'm not an intelligent design fanatic. I do believe, however, that if you're going to follow evolution, as I do, then you have to come to terms with the fact that evolution itself is directional. And evolution is the only example in the known universe of a process leading to the emergence of new, more complex, more intelligent, and more organized arrangements of matter, that can increasingly cooperate for mutual benefit. Why the push toward higher levels of consciousness among living things? Is it random?
Something to think about the next time you align your phi-proportioned frame with the earth and hold the phi-proportioned veins in your hand to your phi-proportioned face so that you can gaze past the fibinacci-branching trees with their phi-proportioned leaves, up toward the (scarcely allowed under any circumstances other than our own) sun, and take in the phi-proportioned chemicals which lead all several trillion cells of your body to feel a slight calming effect, and wonder why you feel at home in the universe even though you're just lying on a tiny vessel spiraling endlessly according to the golden ratio in a galaxy of other improbable stars.
Then you can ask yourself why the great books of the creator, if there is such a being, were written in numeric languages such as Greek and Hebrew, and why among many other coincidences, the word for humankind, Adam, equals the number 46. And why 46, the number of Adam, or the number of humankind, equals the number of chromosomes that dwell within the nuclei of the trillions of cells of our bodies.
If there is a God (I lean toward yes as you can tell), and he does work on a universal tapestry with numeric paints, than I bet he's pretty pissed at those who distort numbers in His name for their benefit. Like the clowns over at RaptureReady.com. Nearly twenty years ago, they created a site whose purpose is to let us know that Jesus Christ will be returning soon, there's still time to repent, and that they (the creators of the site) have a good sense that the end times are upon us. Whether Jesus is coming, or even if the "rapture" that the site professes to believe in is real, fantasy, or indeterminate (it's doubtful whether it is even discussed in the Bible), is beyond the scope of my silly post. But the site is very popular (9.5 million hits!), mirroring the staggering popularity of the Left Behind book series, which with the help of Christian bookstores and Walmarts has sold more than 63 million copies. Its primary tool for scaring us into God's loving arms, so that we, too, can avoid being "left behind" when the rapture hits, is the Rapture Index. The index is the result of a crude scan of the week's events, which are translated into a numerical measurement of the confluence of Bible prophecies thought to be linked to the start of the next dispensation and the fulfillment of God's covenants with His chosen people.
The index contains many categories, which I provide for you, Dear Reader, just in case you wanted to be on the lookout (or as President Bush says, "vigilant"): False Christs, Occult, Satanism, Unemployment, Inflation, Interest Rates, The Economy, Oil Supply/Price, Debt and Trade, Financial unrest, Leadership, Drug abuse, Apostasy, Supernatural, Moral Standards, Anti-Christian, Crime Rate, Ecumenism, Globalism, Tribulation Temple, Anti-Semitism, Israel, Gog (Russia), Persia (Iran), The False Prophet, Nuclear Nations, Global Turmoil, Arms Proliferation, Liberalism, The Peace Process, Kings of the East, Mark of the Beast, Beast Government, The Antichrist, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Wild Weather, Civil Rights, Famine, Drought, Plagues, Climate, Food Supply, and Floods.
The numbers assigned to each category are adjusted frequently, accompanied by one-line explanations for each change. Examples include "Satanism: In England, Satanists are believed responsible for a series of sickening 'satanic rite' attacks on farm animals," "Debt and Trade: The US federal budget deficit has declined - minus 1," and "Mark of the Beast: The US Patriot Act has failed to get enough votes for extension."
What does the index number (presently holding steady at 154) mean? Dunno. We are told, though, that the index hit a record high on September 23, 2001 (hmm...) and was at a low on December 12, 1993. So I guess you could spend an afternoon googling events of those dates and come up with why the number hit 182 in September, 2001. How arbitrarily frightening! There isn't much of an explanation on the site for that date, other than a few hints, such as "Beast Government: With America knocked out for the week, the EU was left as the acting super state" and "The Antichrist: The major act of terrorism against the US creates perfect setting for the Antichrist to come in and work his magic."
But I do recommend the "frequently asked questions" page, which provides plenty of poorly-worded talking points (e.g., "Is the Pope the antichrist?" [unlikely, because "the antichrist will be accepted by the Jews as their messiah"]; "Will the antichrist be a homosexual?" [possibly; he will have no regard for the desire of women, for he shall magnify himself above all]; "I am afraid of the end of the world: What should I do?" [guess what the answer is?]; "Since Israel controls Jerusalem, is the "time of the Gentiles" over?" [not until the massing gentile armies are defeated]; "Do things like protecting endangered animals and the environment really matter?" [yes!]; and "what makes conspiracy theories so appealing to some folks?").
It's frightening how an evangelical, who must understand the Bible's warning not to place your trust in those who claim to know the time of Christ's return, could promote such an arbitrary and simple-minded tool for the ill-informed. Don't think that a measly index on a single website matters? Why don't you spend ten minutes on the site's Message Board. Read what people are saying every day in response to world events. Take in how intensely giddy or forlorn they get when violence flares or things don't seem to be progressing according to plan. There's an army of Christian soldiers out there, and many of them are already marching as to war to the beat of RaptureReady. And they love it when terror strikes, children die, and soldiers, both uniformed and civilian, mass on borders and in shantytowns across the Middle East. The site makes a mockery of God's work and should not be taken seriously.
At least the site explains why the index is not used to set a specific date for Christ's arrival: "A couple of years back, one participant [on the message board] threatened to kill himself after he thought he'd missed the rapture."
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
God works in numbers.
We see it in the appearance of fibonacci sequences in nature, such as in the branching of tree limbs or the arrangement of a pine cone. A fibonacci sequence occurs after two starting numbers, where each following number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, as in 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 43, 55, 89, 144. Consider, for example, a bee population: If a female bee lays an unfertilized egg, it yields a male bee. If the egg is fertilized, it hatches a female. Therefore, a male bee (1) has one female parent (1), a female has (2) parents, the mother had two parents and the father had one parent (3), and the two grandmother bees each had two parents while the grandfather bee had one (5).
And you know about the Golden Ratio (1.618), which is the result of the ratio of the sum of two quantities to the larger of the quantities, over the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller. We find it everywhere in nature (from galaxies to the human form to crystals to sea shells) and in man's pursuit of the sublime through his art forms, leading the German intellectual Adolf Zeising to declare the Golden Ratio:
[A] universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.
And let's not forget how the physical constants that govern our existence, 26 in all, seem at least at first glance purposefully tweaked for the emergence of life forms with moral agency. Here's one of many examples: Want a universe populated with stars, the givers of life as we know it? Well, no such luck if the fine-structure constant (a function of electron charge relative to the Planck charge) were different, or if the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger. If that were the case, hydrogen would fuse too easily and diprotons would become stable, rendering the concept of a star unthinkable. While it is true that the argument is tautological and only suggests that life as we are able to imagine it would not have formed, you have to marvel at the precision with which our existence is fine-tuned.
I'm not an intelligent design fanatic. I do believe, however, that if you're going to follow evolution, as I do, then you have to come to terms with the fact that evolution itself is directional. And evolution is the only example in the known universe of a process leading to the emergence of new, more complex, more intelligent, and more organized arrangements of matter, that can increasingly cooperate for mutual benefit. Why the push toward higher levels of consciousness among living things? Is it random?
Something to think about the next time you align your phi-proportioned frame with the earth and hold the phi-proportioned veins in your hand to your phi-proportioned face so that you can gaze past the fibinacci-branching trees with their phi-proportioned leaves, up toward the (scarcely allowed under any circumstances other than our own) sun, and take in the phi-proportioned chemicals which lead all several trillion cells of your body to feel a slight calming effect, and wonder why you feel at home in the universe even though you're just lying on a tiny vessel spiraling endlessly according to the golden ratio in a galaxy of other improbable stars.
Then you can ask yourself why the great books of the creator, if there is such a being, were written in numeric languages such as Greek and Hebrew, and why among many other coincidences, the word for humankind, Adam, equals the number 46. And why 46, the number of Adam, or the number of humankind, equals the number of chromosomes that dwell within the nuclei of the trillions of cells of our bodies.
If there is a God (I lean toward yes as you can tell), and he does work on a universal tapestry with numeric paints, than I bet he's pretty pissed at those who distort numbers in His name for their benefit. Like the clowns over at RaptureReady.com. Nearly twenty years ago, they created a site whose purpose is to let us know that Jesus Christ will be returning soon, there's still time to repent, and that they (the creators of the site) have a good sense that the end times are upon us. Whether Jesus is coming, or even if the "rapture" that the site professes to believe in is real, fantasy, or indeterminate (it's doubtful whether it is even discussed in the Bible), is beyond the scope of my silly post. But the site is very popular (9.5 million hits!), mirroring the staggering popularity of the Left Behind book series, which with the help of Christian bookstores and Walmarts has sold more than 63 million copies. Its primary tool for scaring us into God's loving arms, so that we, too, can avoid being "left behind" when the rapture hits, is the Rapture Index. The index is the result of a crude scan of the week's events, which are translated into a numerical measurement of the confluence of Bible prophecies thought to be linked to the start of the next dispensation and the fulfillment of God's covenants with His chosen people.
The index contains many categories, which I provide for you, Dear Reader, just in case you wanted to be on the lookout (or as President Bush says, "vigilant"): False Christs, Occult, Satanism, Unemployment, Inflation, Interest Rates, The Economy, Oil Supply/Price, Debt and Trade, Financial unrest, Leadership, Drug abuse, Apostasy, Supernatural, Moral Standards, Anti-Christian, Crime Rate, Ecumenism, Globalism, Tribulation Temple, Anti-Semitism, Israel, Gog (Russia), Persia (Iran), The False Prophet, Nuclear Nations, Global Turmoil, Arms Proliferation, Liberalism, The Peace Process, Kings of the East, Mark of the Beast, Beast Government, The Antichrist, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Wild Weather, Civil Rights, Famine, Drought, Plagues, Climate, Food Supply, and Floods.
The numbers assigned to each category are adjusted frequently, accompanied by one-line explanations for each change. Examples include "Satanism: In England, Satanists are believed responsible for a series of sickening 'satanic rite' attacks on farm animals," "Debt and Trade: The US federal budget deficit has declined - minus 1," and "Mark of the Beast: The US Patriot Act has failed to get enough votes for extension."
What does the index number (presently holding steady at 154) mean? Dunno. We are told, though, that the index hit a record high on September 23, 2001 (hmm...) and was at a low on December 12, 1993. So I guess you could spend an afternoon googling events of those dates and come up with why the number hit 182 in September, 2001. How arbitrarily frightening! There isn't much of an explanation on the site for that date, other than a few hints, such as "Beast Government: With America knocked out for the week, the EU was left as the acting super state" and "The Antichrist: The major act of terrorism against the US creates perfect setting for the Antichrist to come in and work his magic."
But I do recommend the "frequently asked questions" page, which provides plenty of poorly-worded talking points (e.g., "Is the Pope the antichrist?" [unlikely, because "the antichrist will be accepted by the Jews as their messiah"]; "Will the antichrist be a homosexual?" [possibly; he will have no regard for the desire of women, for he shall magnify himself above all]; "I am afraid of the end of the world: What should I do?" [guess what the answer is?]; "Since Israel controls Jerusalem, is the "time of the Gentiles" over?" [not until the massing gentile armies are defeated]; "Do things like protecting endangered animals and the environment really matter?" [yes!]; and "what makes conspiracy theories so appealing to some folks?").
It's frightening how an evangelical, who must understand the Bible's warning not to place your trust in those who claim to know the time of Christ's return, could promote such an arbitrary and simple-minded tool for the ill-informed. Don't think that a measly index on a single website matters? Why don't you spend ten minutes on the site's Message Board. Read what people are saying every day in response to world events. Take in how intensely giddy or forlorn they get when violence flares or things don't seem to be progressing according to plan. There's an army of Christian soldiers out there, and many of them are already marching as to war to the beat of RaptureReady. And they love it when terror strikes, children die, and soldiers, both uniformed and civilian, mass on borders and in shantytowns across the Middle East. The site makes a mockery of God's work and should not be taken seriously.
At least the site explains why the index is not used to set a specific date for Christ's arrival: "A couple of years back, one participant [on the message board] threatened to kill himself after he thought he'd missed the rapture."
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Life mimics marketing
Let me take a break from brooding to share a little slice of New York randomness with you. I love this city - the produce store with the gray cat that wanders the aisles, which sits lovingly below my apartment on the corner; the highrise across from me with bars on every window on the 18th floor (Spiderman, be warned!); the beach volleyball court in the middle of Central Park; the lobby of the natural history museum, with the physically impossible display of a sauropod skeleton rearing up on its hind legs to defend her young from an allosaurus attack; the free Wi-Fi in the parks; and even the eerily smart city-bred children (one of them asked her mother this morning "why is the prostitute working when it's light out?" - so cute). Every day, I wake up, knowing only some of what will happen before my very eyes. It's exhilarating. And it's why I could never live in the 'burbs.
But on with the anecdote! It was a late Sunday evening, and I was in midtown, around 53rd Street, at Oxford Cafe, the deli. They were closing, but I was undeterred. So I walked up to the counter, and there before me was a slew, nay, a sea of sandwiches, panini's, quesadillas, and salad ingredients. I was dumbfounded. What do I order? I stood there, and the looming micro-kiloton nuclear test in Korea, President Bush "the decider"'s failure to decide what to do about ten different pressing matters, my headache, and the fact that Imogen Heap has (still!) yet to reply to my open letter (see my September 15th post) faded away. I was about to leap past two billion people on this crazy rock called Earth and join the ranks of the well-fed. And there were options. How do I choose?
Suddenly, I realized that a very kind-looking store attendant (owner?) and a man who might have been her husband were standing in front of me, just past the warm glow of the food display. I apologized, and quickly ordered a chicken parmigiana panini, which the woman began to prepare. As we stood there silently staring at each other, a commercial began to play on the radio. It went something like this:
(upbeat piano licks and steady, 80's-style rock anthem drumming)
"Bud light presents, Real Men of Genius (Def Leopardish singer repeats: Real men of genius)
Today we solute you, Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy (Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy!)
You approach a menu like a CPA approaches an audit
There's not an appetizer, entree, or ingredient that escapes your scrutiny (what's the soup de jure?)
Carpaccio or calamari, halibut or ceviche, these are incredibly important decisions that need to be made, sometime before sunrise (cockadoodledoo!)
No matter, because when the food finally arrives,
You spend the entire dinner wishing you got what everybody else did (I got entree envy)
So crack open an iced cold Bud Light, Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy,
Because today's special, is You (Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy)."
She smiles knowingly, and I nod my head in repentance. And even though we're from completely different worlds, and our paths may never cross again, for that one moment, we get each other.
Too bad I don't drink.
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
But on with the anecdote! It was a late Sunday evening, and I was in midtown, around 53rd Street, at Oxford Cafe, the deli. They were closing, but I was undeterred. So I walked up to the counter, and there before me was a slew, nay, a sea of sandwiches, panini's, quesadillas, and salad ingredients. I was dumbfounded. What do I order? I stood there, and the looming micro-kiloton nuclear test in Korea, President Bush "the decider"'s failure to decide what to do about ten different pressing matters, my headache, and the fact that Imogen Heap has (still!) yet to reply to my open letter (see my September 15th post) faded away. I was about to leap past two billion people on this crazy rock called Earth and join the ranks of the well-fed. And there were options. How do I choose?
Suddenly, I realized that a very kind-looking store attendant (owner?) and a man who might have been her husband were standing in front of me, just past the warm glow of the food display. I apologized, and quickly ordered a chicken parmigiana panini, which the woman began to prepare. As we stood there silently staring at each other, a commercial began to play on the radio. It went something like this:
(upbeat piano licks and steady, 80's-style rock anthem drumming)
"Bud light presents, Real Men of Genius (Def Leopardish singer repeats: Real men of genius)
Today we solute you, Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy (Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy!)
You approach a menu like a CPA approaches an audit
There's not an appetizer, entree, or ingredient that escapes your scrutiny (what's the soup de jure?)
Carpaccio or calamari, halibut or ceviche, these are incredibly important decisions that need to be made, sometime before sunrise (cockadoodledoo!)
No matter, because when the food finally arrives,
You spend the entire dinner wishing you got what everybody else did (I got entree envy)
So crack open an iced cold Bud Light, Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy,
Because today's special, is You (Mr. Indecisive Food Orderer Guy)."
She smiles knowingly, and I nod my head in repentance. And even though we're from completely different worlds, and our paths may never cross again, for that one moment, we get each other.
Too bad I don't drink.
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
Monday, October 09, 2006
You only hate me because my PDA is black
Did you ever notice how the speaker on the back of a Blackberry is the spitting image of a Decepticon logo? The 8703 in general, with its angular shape and overall boxiness, is very Transformeresque. But what would it become if the machine were to leap from its holster on my belt and actually transform [insert transform sound here]? I imagine it linking with five other Blackberries to form UltraMessage, a towering anthropomorphic figure set to do battle with the evil Treotron.
And what's with Opinionistas eschewing the device when her site presently carries no fewer than three Blackberry ads?
Linking work Blackberries to personal cell phone numbers: thoughts?
Why is the number of Blackberry subscribers the same as the number of people in prison in the United States? Crackberries indeed.
What will homo sapiens look like generations from now, given the trend toward keyboards optimized for "thumbing"? It's interesting how the last major phase of our evolution involved freeing our limbs from the demands of walking on all fours and the emergence of fine motor skills, made possible in large part by the opposable thumb.
Can you believe that they were going to call it a Strawberry? The small keys reminded a branding agency consultant of the tasty fruit. Why Blackberry then? "Straw" was rejected as "slow-sounding."
I firmly believe that Blackberries and other distractions have one clear impact on our society - the death of the public intellectual. You know, people like Lewis Mumford or Jane Jacobs, who were widely read, skilled in multiple disciplines (Jacobs for instance fancied law, poli sci, zoology, geology, and econ), curious about everything and anything, and not afraid to go traipsing about the city in search of their next groundbreaking insight. Do you think the men and women who might walk in their footsteps really have the time to compose massive tomes that span aeons in a quest for truth, when they must incessantly check e-mail and re-enter their PINs as their Blackberries switch to lockdown mode every hour?
Anyway, in my opinion Manhattan is best experienced with the help of GoogleMaps Mobile. True dat (double true!).
Vaya con Dios - brooding presence
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