Category: Musings

One thing I’ve learned recently in a management course I’m taking at the office is that the goal of management (and business in general) is to train to a standard and manage the exceptions. I realized today that perhaps one of the main reasons why art and commerce don’t mix well is that the goal of good art is to be exceptional while having some standards and common points of reference.

It would then seem that art and commerce are diametrically opposed to each other. Polar opposites. Matter and anti-matter.

My friend Thelton teaches 6th grade and they asked me to give them my Top 10 Most Influential People in Human History. So here’s what I came up with. In no particular order. OK, maybe there’s an order. For me personally.

• Philo Farnsworth
• Isaac Newton
• Socrates
• Jesus Christ
• Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)
• Charles Darwin
• Thomas Jefferson
• Julius Caesar
• Adolf Hitler
• Alexander the Great

That’s the overriding thought pattern in my head whenever I’m working out in the small office gym we’ve set up. Our jobs are so physically undemanding, we’d turn to jelly if we didn’t work out. As a kid I remember thinking it was funny that astronauts in zero G had to work out regularly to keep their muscles from atrophying. But these days, in any tech-based job or other cubicle farmhouse, it’s only slightly less essential.

For whatever reason, it recently occurred to me that saying “I am the Alpha and the Omega” sounds so much cooler than saying “I am the A and the Z,” which is what a true modern translation would be. The former sounds like a weighty pronouncement, while the latter sounds like a bad advertising slogan. Just another great example of how important proper translations are.

In other news, I’ve categorized most all of my past blog entries for your convenience and my narcissism. See the bottom left of the navigation for links broken down by topic. Remember that once you click a category (or an archive for that matter) you have to click the title of the entry to see the full text.

Pictures from the weekend and the last week or two. The first half are all camera phone pictures, so that explains the haziness.

Recipe for a glimpse into an alternate universe: take one diesel tanker on one major freeway, and shake.

Such was I-630 (the inexplicably named 10-odd mile stretch through Little Rock that somehow got an “I” in its name) this evening as a diesel spill blocked all westbound traffic during rush hour. All traffic had to be moved off onto side streets. Creative commuters opted for the north route on I-30 and I-40, but were also stymied due to volume.

The importance of this is that, to someone like myself who had no idea what was happening (this was 6:00pm, after all the radio stations have ceased their regular traffic updates), the experience becomes a massive, uncertain, and vaguely paranoia-inducing shared experience with more people on the road than I’ve ever seen in this town. It’s especially bizarre for me because I commute from midtown to the hinterlands so I’m going the opposite direction of everyone else for most of my trip. When you’re seeing a solid wall of cars in the oncoming lanes for miles, you have to wonder if everyone knows something you don’t. The experience is what I imagine a citywide evacuation might be like. If some pre-apocalyptic event were to occur in Little Rock – alien invasion, poison gas leak, Godzilla – this was a sneak peek at its manifestation.

Or maybe I just had a long day at the office. Tonight I’m going to relax with my Chengwin DVD and some gourmet cookies.

Searching on “proud to be an American” in Google, I found 183,000 pages. Searching on “humble to be an American” I found 10.

Says a lot, doesn’t it? Maybe we’re 18,300 times more proud than we are humble

I’m thinking of getting some bumper stickers made that say “Humble to be an American.” Let me know if you want one.

I was thinking about Tetris recently and how it was the only video game I really enjoyed. I think the reason for my enthusiasm stemmed from the game’s elegant metaphor for existence: oddly shaped objects are constantly being thrown at you and you have to make them fit into the most solid, sensible patterns. If you don’t, they stack up quickly and overcome you.

This got me thinking about other video games, like Pac-Man. It has a vaguely materialist message: run through the maze of life and consume as much as you can. Avoid the spiritual beings. They only represent death.

Donkey Kong’s message is one of corporate ambition. Climb the ladder, avoid everything the guy on top throws at you, and you can make it to the top, where you’ll live happily ever after.

Are there any abstract video games anymore? Or games that invent their own reality? Everything I see these days is variations on virtual reality themes of combat, racing, and movies.

I have a few clients in the plastic surgery field, and as I was checking their search engine ranks I ran across Larger Breasts dot com. You’ll have to see the site to believe it – it’s for a breast enlargement pill called Vanity™.

I just enjoyed the fact that the pill was named after the appropriate character trait, or in this case, deadly sin (also called Pride, depending who you ask). I had to wonder what pills might be available under the names Sloth (downers), Wrath (uppers), Lust (Viagra), Envy (Viagra?), Greed (cocaine?) and Gluttony (Phentermine, or maybe Dexatrim?).

The other day I received a message from a Brazilian guy asking me for an Orkut invitation. Evidently I’m not the only person that received this message, because logging into Orkut I see that not only has this guy joined, but he’s already got 369 people on his Friends list (by way of comparison, I have 16). He must have done some serious hitting of the virtual bricks to get invited. Here’s the message I got from him today, in beautifully broken English.

Hello, this is an global message:

1) To: my new friends:
Thank you for invite me to your friend’s list at http://orkut.com.
I’ll be your friend forever. A star shine already illuminates
you. Sorry, I’m unable to reply your messages at this
time. Reason: I have 5,560 emails in my GMAIL inbox.
The same as my Orkut account. I will contact you personally
as soon as possible.

2) To: people that has asked me if i know you:
Not, i`m just a human looking for friends. Are you human? Why are you so prevented? Please add me to yours friends list.

Best,
JE

“It’s love, not life, the opposite of dead

I think it’s good for all of us to occasionally take a step back and ask ourselves why we are so prevented.