Nov.6-08You know, with more and more of my friends being fired, it's totally increasing my productivity. I'm so petrified of it happening to me, I've been working harder than ever. Anyone else doing that?
@__: If you shoot one horse, don't the rest run faster?
@__: Who fires HR people? The God of Karma?
Why do people still bring personal effects to work? Seems insane in this environment. My desk is spotless and empty - my exit will be the quick rustle of my coat on my way to the bar.
@__: I've got a couple of tons of engineering books and papers. Other than that, just pics of the kids to keep the gun barrel out of my mouth.
Yea, my family in Israel were part if Irgun. In fact, my aunt's parents met in jail! Her parents also happen to be the nicest most benign people I have ever met.
And before people start bugging out, guess what? We did this, too. It's called the American Revolution.
@__: You know, I bet there are a lot of nice and benign Palestinians who are part of or sympathetic to Hamas. But we're trained in America to view them all as "evil."
I wonder what Folke Bernadotte's grandkids might think about your "nice" and "benign" relatives? He was a hero during World War II, negotiating the release of 10,000 Jews from concentration camps -- saving their lives. After the war, he was deputized by the U.N. to forge a cooperative settlment to the exploding situation in Palestine. Of course, Irgun and the other Zionist terror groups wanted no part of a "cooperative" settlement -- they wanted all of the land. So they assassinated Bernadotte.
Such lovely people.
@__: Zioterror doesn't count, much less exist, for Americans.
@__: Exactly. I wonder what would happen if every Palestinian who died at an Israeli checkpoint while trying to get to a hospital received the same coverage in the U.S. media as every launch of a crude rocket from Gaza.
@__: You are really treading on thin ice here. Those rockets were launched every fucking day I was in Israel this year and the media did NOT report it. Stop saying the media is biased towards Israel - IT IS NOT. It is biased towards Palestinians. Visit Israel before you run your mouth.
Aren't there special places you can comment? Like, say, some anti-semetic website? You forgot "Death to Israel" in your little rant.
@__: Please, please, please do not reduce all criticisms of Israel to anti-semitism. __ did not advance an anti-semitic argument. I know you have a vested interest in Israel (family, right?), as do I, and I hate to have to plead, but can we please not go down this path?
@__: denouncing zionist terrorist groups is not the same thing as being anti-semetic and the sooner you figure that the fuck out, the sooner you'll stop coming across as a raving racist every single time this topic comes up.
@__: Shut the fuck up about your commingling of anti-semitism and criticism of Israel. Nobody cares about your emotional connection to the land and that special feeling you get from seeing Jeff Seidel wandering around HaKotel no Friday afternoons. That type of kneejerk bullshit is a bigger obstacle to meaningful dialogue than anti-semitism is. @__: You make some sound points, but to be fair, the checkpoints wouldn't be chokepoints if they weren't targeted by suicide bombers posing as dialysis patients and whatnot. Doesn't make them just, nor does it mean that the media bias isn't a problem, but it is helpful, like my homeboy Rashid Khalidi to consider some of the Palestinian contributions to the problems.
Anyway, fuck you both for dragging me into this.
Nov.20-08
2:06 - Puppy cam perspective makes Shibas look like deliciously browned breakfast sausages in a large, round pan. POPE NOW HUNGRY FOR SAUSAGES.
2:09 - Shibas motionless. The anticipation of motion leads me into a trance like state where I understand the Tao. Motion without motion. Energy without movement. Always ready to move but still, like the clarity of water in a deep pond. Still hungry for breakfast sausages though.
@__: They're all lined up sleeping (again) but I think they left a gap for you to crawl in.
Pink slips are the new black.
You left out the part where one CEO raised his hand and Rahm leapt from his chair, hurled it across the room, kicked the CEO next to him and shouted "Does it look like I'm anywhere near finished spreading your wealth yet?!?".
Nov.22-08
I saw this at 7:00 PM on Friday night - the epicenter of the teenage girl vampire riot. My thoughts on the experience:
1.) If you're a teenage boy, go see this. Girls your age will outnumber you 20:1. Free advice: put on a black hoody and go stand in line for this.
2.) Virtually every scene involving Richard Pattinson arriving or doing something sexy/heroic will elicit a shriek from the audience. If you can't stand that, go when the little 'uns are past curfew.
3.) Suburban/semi-urban parking will actually be quite good, because most of the audience is being dropped off.
4.) The movie is 121 minutes, and you will feel every excruciating second. The book is interminable, and the movie has opted to keep that dynamic. Bring your iPhone/BlackBerry/laptop/cyanide.
5.) Kristen Stewart is the most wooden actress I've ever seen get this much screen time. She has fewer facial expressions than Ben Affleck.
6.) For the menfolk/ladies in search of lipstick: they have a tremendously attractive woman named Ashley Greene playing one of the vampires. Perk up if you hear the name "Alice." She's off-the-charts beautiful.
7.) You know what the star of this movie is? The Volvo C30. The car had me swooning. Perk up if you hear tires.
8.) Drink beforehand. It helped.
Nov.29-08
Nearly 200 Dead
I suppose it depends on how you define terrorism, but 200 dead is a drop in the bloody bucket of India's ongoing Hindu-Muslim-Christian circular firing squad. [...]
Dec.05-08
I go to the same pubic hair combover stylist as Mr. Trump, and I can assure you that there is at least one bill he pays on time every week.
But for serious, this might actually be close to the end of the road for Don. His "borrow-default-sue" scheme has made it impossible for his to do business in Atlantic City. Banks won't loan to him anymore without collateral, and his only collateral is real estate which is now all underwater from previous borrowings/equity lines. Service providers (IT, construction companies, etc.) will only do work on his casinos if they are paid in advance because he's burned so many people with defaults. The Chicago building loan probably came on the heels of the success of the first Apprentice, but that gravy train dried up pretty quickly.
I'm probably full of shit, but I really, really hope I'm right.
Jan.23-09
I have seen the good and the awful side of Six Sigma. In quantifiable verticals, I felt some of the managers and practices might be good medicine for smokestack era companies that have become torpid.
But, in creative, agile, rapid response solutions practices, Six Sigma zombies were the numero uno poison pills in the cocktail.
I had to make an agreement with some of the older consultants that maintained their own client books that if we got hassled and blocked by the Six Sigma koolaid, we would break some kneecaps in the parking lot.
Feb.08-09
Christie's Auction Girls
These ladies will be laughing all the way back to mommy's house when Christie's lays off hundreds of staff this year, largely because... wait for it... all the finance money that was fueling the art boom has dried up.
I wonder if they and their ex-banker friends talk about how many jobs Christie's could have saved if they hadn't given alpha-finance-douche Dick Fuld $20 million worth of guarantees on works from his collection that had to be bought in by the house during last fall's disasterous sales? [...]
Apr.27-09
What I don't understand, though, is why Conde Nast insists on neglecting the only hedge it has against the decline of print. With the resources they have, they should be making loads of money off the web--and putting the rest of us out of business. I get that they don't necessarily *need* to (i hear you, Peter Feld) but if the opportunity is there, why not take it?
@__: Hi- I can shed a little light here. The reason that Conde, and every other magazine co, are effectively absent from online as a cultural force is that they have a problem accepting the narrow (if any) profit margins that online media businesses return. At this point in time, readers won't pay at all and ad agencies will only pay less than they did last year (per individual). As the job of the heads of these companies is to grow profits, not just audience, you really won't see them making the kind of websites that they are capable of until there's real money to be made. numberwrangler
Peter Feld: @__: That is a good analysis. To be fair to Conde Nast, few if any other print publication companies have really solved the web puzzle. They get too obsessed with making print and web "work together" when they don't, and can't - if there's one clear fact about the web audience, it's that they don't want your magazine, and if there's one clear fact about the print audience it's that they aren't interested in your website. Audiences are more stratified by media habits than they are united by common interests.
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