Jan 29, 2007

It's not just a pen, it's also a MAZE!!

This post over at Green Wombat resonates with something I've been thinking about lately: does anyone that does not suck actually appreciate garden-variety corporate schwag gimmickry?

Answer: No.

That was of course a comletely rhetorical question, because if you've ever gleefully filled a logo-ed bag with pens, rainbow-colored paper clips, and the occasional mug (the, ahem, grail of promotional tchochkes) then you, at some level, suck.

Last year for a customer survey, my organization gave out clear plastic pens with a vertical, 3D maze running the length of the pen. The kicker was, when I went to use the damn thing in a pinch, the pointy end literally fell out in between words. It was crap, and it's intended to be by all parties except the end user who thinks, 'I need a pen right now - oh, there's one,' only to find out they're not holding a pen, they're holding a pink maze attached at one end to something that looks like a pen that couldn't cost more than x per person so that the group that gave it out could avoid all perception of impropriety with expensive or even adequate gifts. And it's certainly intended to be a piece of crap by the guy in China who makes them, because to make more than a piece of crap with a price point of only fifteen cents apiece seriously cuts into the profit margin.

So what we have is a system of PR that impresses no one and is responsible for vast expenditures of money and natural resources. Should you think the effect is negligible, consider that this is a $15B a year industry spread across (they say) 750,000 products. Add to that the fuel burned in shipping (in Wombat's post his item traveled 40 miles to make it the 300 feet between him and the office that sent it to him - if I was a FedEx exec reading that post, I'd hire a new logistics chief) and the additional resources used in packaging, and I can't help but think this is an industry with vast space to improve the experience. Any number of things that require little or no shipping, little or no packaging, and include way more satisfaction could be substituted for the usual.

Note: None of the above should be misconstrued to mean that I never want more lovely post-it cubes with the Hassett Title logo on the sides, the only promotional item (well, those and the Hassett Title baseball caps) I've ever loved.

Jan 27, 2007

fotD 12


Hangar One, Moffett Field
Originally uploaded by The Electrician.

Jan 24, 2007

warming my toothsome cockles

toothsome - I read this word in a book review today and wondered for the first time (though I'm almost positive that I've seen it used before), 'what does that mean?'

Toothsome, toothish, full of teeth... biting as in mordant, darkly witty, acerbic, or acidic? Long in the tooth as in wise or insightful? Something dense and ripe and swollen that can really be chewed upon happily for awhile? Toothsome...

Suspecting all the above could be bent to have a bit of the correct about them, I looked it up (I grew so sick of that admonition as a kid asking parents who knew the answer what a word meant, and they directed me instead to the dictionary), googling first, then webster. The answers from both: agreeable, palatable, delectable, delicious, or with strong sexual appeal. Both offered the example 'a toothsome blonde'... Guess most of my guesses were pretty far off.

Toothsome shouldn't mean delicious, should it? I get how it could mean something you could metaphorically sink your teeth into but teeth don't taste, and therefore can't judge anything but hot, cold, and chewy. Nor should it be used to describe someone attractive; there's no salacious pleasure in rolling 'toothsome' off the tongue as there is with 'sizzling,' 'voluptuous,' or even 'built like a brick shithouse.' I hear toothsome and think horse-faced. A toothsome woman? Who says that besides the guy who wrote that review? Though he did, I guess, also use the more enjoyable but equally obscure phrase 'cockle-warming'...

Jan 13, 2007

"I'm hungry. Let's get a taco."

One more reason why I wanna have Tim Berners-Lee's baby.

Jan 10, 2007

naming convention

When entering record stores (and forgetting what I want), trying to pick up girls in bars (and forgetting I'm funny), or sitting in front of a nameless blog or email account, I've always been immediately and utterly abandoned by everything that would be appropriate or cool, and I'm left to wonder later what in the hell I was thinking. Case in point, this blog, which started out with a name so stupid but which seemed very clever to me at the time. After not too long I deep-sixed the name (but not the URL) and asked for input, hence the current recursive blank of a name. But this morning, it dawned on me - why not use the same label I've used for other things (gear bags, cellphones, etc.)? A quick search indicates the closest item easily found is another blog, but it's called Bad Bad Juju (funny, too - on the first page you can laugh at a guy who accidentally shot himself a mile with a tree catapult, a palindrome about Teddy Roosevelt, a picture of a drunk dog, and an f-bomb-riddled story about the panicked shotgunning of wildlife).

I've always liked bad juju because it sounds like what it is. That's not to say that this renaming will make this wedge of the blog-o-pie any more edgy or bad, but if I stuck to a name that described it perfectly, I'd probably have to call it the 'The Eclectic But Not Polymath-ic, Run-On-Sentence-o-rama Surrounded by a White Picket Fence.' I like bad juju better, and it doesn't include any questionable words like polymath-ic.

So now that you've witnessed the endless pathetic hand-wringing that goes into every tentative step I take in the world, you'll be excused just this once if you strike me from your RSS reader - no bad juju if you act now. Tomorrow... you won't be so lucky.

Jan 8, 2007

WWWWD?

Two articles about completely unrelated news drew the same type of bile up into my throat this morning: China's pissed that we're letting Taiwanese President Chen land in SanFran for less than a day, and a marathoner's Bahraini citizenship was revoked when he won a race in Israel.

I hadn't known that the US refused permission in May '06 for President Chen to stop over on his way to Costa Rica. That is so piss-poor I can't even stand it. 'Pragmatism' doesn't even begin to explain away the crass, sniveling, un-Americanness of it. Good indicator that your power is on the wane: a country you still dwarf economically and militarily dictates who unofficially visits your soil.

Consider Bahrain, one of the more progressive countries (or at least less ideological) in the Middle East. Some guy isn't born Bahraini, he comes to your country and changes his name and asks for citizenship. Then he goes to the land of your sworn enemy and kicks their ass (though he did it in the spirit of living together, kumbaya, etc.), and you're still so pissed about it you kick him out. Face it Bahrain, you're not exactly chock-full of world class athletes; you should keep the one you have. had. The kicker is that Bahrain is one of the other stratospherically-rising economies in the world (finance, in their case) and if you're anyone you'll be vacationing there in the next ten years (BTW, if you are anyone, why are you reading this?). So, like China, Bahrain gets a pass for things like petulant outbursts and imprisoning people for questioning authority.

Makes me wanna paint my face blue and moon someone.
Take this, bikehugger!

Seeing as they removed the leg muscles, I couldn't even guess whether that person rode a bike when they were alive. I kinda hope they did though he or she'd probably be happier on a carbon fiber frame and some blazing fast wheels, something you'd be proud to ride into eternity.

Jan 5, 2007

elephants

Our friends were just on a safari and Leah recounted something (and took a picture that) I wanted to post.
during our final game drive [in Tanzania], two elephants walked within arm's reach of us (we were in an open-topped land rover - i attached a photo of one approaching the vehicle). i was so tempted to touch their wrinkled, leathery skin as they strolled past, but either one (an adult and an adolescent) could have easily rolled our vehicle off the road and down a hill. so, i didn't take the risk.

to be so close, to see each eyelash, was an awe-inspiring moment. several other elephants came up behind the front two, but the third was a baby who didn't feel comfortable passing us. it was fascinating to watch him register anxiety and then face a decision - walk past the fearful obstacle to join the front of the herd, run back to his mother, or find an alternate route. he paced back and forth, turned a few times and even suspended his front leg in the air for a moment, unsure where to place it. finally, he veered off the road and into the woods. the rest of the group (perhaps 4 or 5 others) followed the baby's lead and rejoined their fearless leaders a safe distance behind our vehicle. it was amazing.
In other elephant news, I caught a very cool anim-docu-drama-crime-story awhile back. I was lucky enough to catch it after it had started, so I didn't know what had been mysteriously killing rhinoceroses in South Africa's Pilanesburg National Park (not killing like dying from a disease - killing like running over with a tank). The story unfolds as if it's a big mystery, and I was amazed by the realization of what was killing them; thankfully I hadn't known the title. Regardless, it's a watch worth penciling in at the end of January. This guy describes the episode with more expertise than I, and adds some other elephant stories to the mix.


Jan 4, 2007

but how do I benefit?

From treehugger, a blurb about the recent okay by the FDA to sell cloned meat mentions some of the drawbacks, including a low success rate and defects that bring to mind the gruesome scene in the last Alien movie when Ripley stumbles upon the lab containing all the botched attempts at making her.

I'm not even particularly against cloning per se (as opposed to most genetically engineered crops); I just don't see how it's going to be that much better for me than a cow grown the old-fashioned way. Is this a solution in search of a problem? Like genetically modified crops and the Iraq war, the rush to market and corporate desire for secrecy (or at least obliviousness) should be flags enough to merit caution if not outright rejection.


So what've you done lately?

Fourteen-year-old Michael Perham just finished his six week solo crossing of the Atlantic in his sailboat Cheeky Monkey (fans of Mike Myers the world over are giggling).

He understandably says "it feels absolutely fantastic being back on dry land."

Jan 2, 2007

your lunch break affirmation

three days since i shaved and looking like the total dumb schlub that i am (little sleep for days, covered in drywall dust, bandana around my forehead and, i shit you not, masking tape holding cotton balls in my ears like a stupid trailer park frankenstein (don't ask)), i sat down to eat some lunch and catch another twenty minutes or so of the DVD my wife got me for christmas, flogging molly's whiskey on a sunday).

listening to the band members talk about their work and their experiences, and listening to their music, i got a flash of a reminder about the importance of doing something singluarly satisfying with your life. these guys and gal are doing it - playing what they love, not being bashed into the round hole people wanted to fit them into, being great.

this dovetailed yesterday (or the day before?) with some old pix i found - i'd been cleaning out the basement, which since we moved in has been the repository of everything old not yet unpacked and everything new that can't go in the garage: a mess of carpet, knicknacks, dishes, half empty paint cans, baby gear, clothes, and orphaned hardware. i stopped to leaf through a stack of photos* and was reminded how long it's been since whatever, and how much has happened, in spite of the fact that if you ask me what's going on i'll answer, like anyone, 'not much.' (that's almost always a lie, though, because a lot has been happening, much of which we don't even remember the next day and the only problem i have with this is that some of the stuff worth remembering gets mixed in with the stuff that isn't, so we're lucky if there's a photo around or some mention from someone that reminds us.) in just that couple of minutes i got to think about a bunch of stuff i hadn't in quite awhile, and it felt good to be reminded not just of those times, but of the context in which i need to keep my life: a lot has happened, and there's hopefully still a lot of time for more, and right now, and the worries of right now, are actually a lot smaller than they've felt lately.

what all this boils down to is the thing we know, but too easily get distracted from: don't spend more of your short time here than you absolutely have to on things which about which you're not passionate. someday very soon you will be dead. it'd be a shame if all they had to remember you by was 'not much.'


* while i love that after a certain point our reams of photos reside on a hard drive and not in shoe boxes, there are lost opportunities to stumble unexpectedly across a rubber-banded set of memories and kill a few minutes being reminded of something you hadn't thought of in a long time while putting off whatever you intended to be doing.