Category Archives: Wondering - Page 19

Great Observations

Posted by on February 27, 2010 No comments

Following up a previous post on financial voyeurism, here’s the headlines for stocks for a period of time:

  • Monday: Stocks close lower on caution about economy
  • Tuesday: Stocks retreat after disappointing consumer report
  • Wednesday: Dow slips on Greece, domestic concerns
  • Thursday: Stocks backtrack but still fall on economic fears
  • Friday: Dow Rises 4 on Good GDP Data, Bad Housing News

The lesson here is: the stock market reacts to bad news in a bad way and good news in a good way.  Who would have thought such a thing?

The “have it” habit

Posted by on December 1, 2009 No comments

At dinner tonight, I had the opportunity to train a new employee.  Not directly, but because nothing I ever do is simple, they got to experience exceptions to the order-taking routine.  At the close of the transaction, I was going to say something to the effect of “Enjoy your employment, lucky person” but decided against it.

As I ate, I considered this a little further.  I’m (still) employed.  I’m doing ok.  But at the same time, I’m a responsible employee and a quick learner.  I could have that job!  And since I’m still employed, I’m more desirable to employers because it shows I can keep a job.  I should have that job.

But what kind of flack would I take for doing something like that?  I’d be taking jobs away from someone who really needs one.  “You already have a good job.  Stop hoarding the jobs, jerk.”  This transitioned my thinking into class warfare: the “have’s” and the “have not’s”.  I think this needs revision.  It’s the “have not’s”, the “have enough’s” and the “have more’s”.  See, I want to advance from “have enough” to “have more”.  And I could, because I’m not currently in the “have not” crowd.

But like I said, that’s not really fair.  The rich get richer, as they derisively say.  I would be suppressing the “have not’s” – the class below me – from advancing to the “have enough’s”.  So, in order to spread some of the wealth, I will take that job.  And another.  And maybe another.  Then I will outsource my jobs to another person who could not get the job on their own.  Wait, it’s not really outsourcing, is it.  Insourcing?  No, not that either.  No, it’s reverse subletting.  I am going to sublet my jobs at a lower wage and take the difference as a “convenience fee”.  It works for property, why not jobs?

But as usual, I’m so far behind the times.  Of course, this is already done with day laborers, contract positions, and other temporary positions.  But those are all handled by businesses.  Businesses run by rich people.  The “have more’s”. Once again, I’m getting held back by the man.  It’s so hard to get ahead anymore.  Woe is me.

Philosophical Murder

Posted by on November 27, 2009 No comments

Man: “I can’t date a woman who smokes.  Do you smoke?”

Woman: “Only on a rare occasion.”

Man: “Then you mean to say yes.”

Woman: “Ok, wiseass.  I can’t date a man who has killed another person.  Have you killed anyone?”

Man: “Gee, I don’t know.”

How would you know?  I let that big SUV cut in front of me on the highway.  Did that give the driver the extra time needed to get to where that pedestrian was run over by a big SUV?

Cannibal Toast Crunch

Posted by on June 29, 2009 No comments

And this past weekend I’m having lunch at a restaurant and see a commercial for Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  A couple of pieces floating in the milk, then a third piece swims around like a shark fin.  The first piece gets sucked under the surface, then the second piece frantically tries to swim away and gets pulled below.  The third piece surfaces and licks his lips.

I think I get it.  The message is that the cereal is so good it eats itself.  Cute.  Then my imagination kicked in, which never ends well.  I only wish I had the artistic skills to realize my visions.  That really would not end well.

So, cue the eerie music on a scene of a gingerbread house in the woods.  As it slowly pans in, you hear frantic, gasping breaths and some struggling.  Cut to a close scene of a Teddy Grahams bear tied to a decrepit examination table.  Pull back to see another Teddy Graham bear standing aside wearing a dirty, stained smock.  A makeshift nametag crookedly hanging on the smock reads “Dr. Ted”.

imageDr. Ted passes his hand over an assortment of sharp and pointy implements and settles on what seems to be a bone saw.  He takes the tool, places it at the wrist of the restrained bear and slowly begins sawing.  The victim screams and struggles in vain.  No blood.  They’re cookies, for god’s sake!  Ok, maybe a close-up scene of some crumbs falling to the floor and the screaming and sawing continues.

The paw has now been separated and Dr. Ted holds it up.  The victim is in shock, staring at his own sawn-off paw.  He (or she.  A female would be so much more dramatic.) musters enough strength to scream “Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Ted pauses for a second and stares blankly – as only Teddy Grahams can do.  Then a distorted smile stretches his face and he replies softly, “Because you taste…so…good.”  At which point he takes a savoring bite of the amputated cookie.  “Mmmm.”

Fade to black, then flip on a weak hanging light, flickering, showing an excessively shadowed box of Teddy Grahams seemingly trapped in a corner.  Maybe the box will shiver a little.  I don’t know. 

I suppose a lot of people wouldn’t appreciate my sense of humor.  Maybe it was because I was in a crappy mood because I got supremely drenched on the bike on the way to lunch.  Nothing catches people attention in a restaurant like a person soaked from head to toe (except I wear a helmet so my head was dry).  Ride bike=get wet.  I wonder if I should be renting myself out to some drought-stricken communities.  As long as I keep my mouth shut, I suppose I’d be fine.

Motivation – To be the best you… what were you saying again?

Posted by on June 12, 2009 No comments

There an inherent problem with anything that is claimed to be motivational and that is the cynical counterpoint.  Dilbert has done a pretty good job of poking holes in many motivational mantras.  The de-motivator meme has obviously run its course, but had some very good ideas early on.

Motivational messages are processed differently by different people, not unlike candy.  Some people gorge on motivation books, videos, seminars and have nothing to show for it.  They are useless without another fix of motivation.  Others only need a bit of motivation to keep them going – a quick pick-me-up.  Fortunately, I find myself in the latter camp.  I generally only need a reminder every once in a while of why I do what I do.  That’s not to say I don’t have slumps or have a cynical outlook on “business as usual.”  I try to not let the external influences get me down. 

But anyway, I did a quick Youtube search for motivational videos and watched the first one.  Somehow this was supposed to inspire me.  The video was about some football players that didn’t think they could beat their next game, so the coach tried to demonstrate “giving your all” using a couple players.

The coach made this guy carry another guy across the field.  The subject didn’t initially think he’d be able to make it half-way.  To prevent him from giving up when he met his mental finish-line, the coach blindfolded him.  Then, as he started to falter or complain, the coach encouraged him as only a coach would: by screaming and yelling in his face.  Finally the guy collapsed and the coach said proudly, “You made it to the end zone.”

So if you were to use this video as motivation for your employees, what exactly would you be saying?  My primary take-away: we want you to work yourself to exhaustion.  We don’t care if you are completely useless after that.  There is no sense in saving reserve energy.  If we feel you have any energy left in you, we will harass you until we wring it out.

From a psychological standpoint, I enjoyed the blindfold trick to keep the player from giving up.  But from a practical standpoint, it maps out poorly.  If you set a mental goal, that should be a realistic checkpoint to evaluate what you’ve accomplished and how much more you can do.

The bottom line is, motivation comes from within.  It can’t be fed to you and it can’t be beaten out of you, although many would disagree on that.  I think I’m going to have another read of Gung Ho!, a good example of how people motivate themselves.

Financial Voyeur

Posted by on December 30, 2008 No comments

I am developing a strange addiction to watching financial news.  It’s sadly like other people’s obsession with celebrities.  I say that because financial news is generally crap.

It just seems that the headlines take the current headline and use that to explain the days movement of the market.  Like yesterday it was "Oil rises above $40 on Mideast tensions" and today it’s "Oil drops below $40 over world economic concerns".   I don’t think they have any clue.

I know it’s unhealthy to watch the markets daily, but like a voyeur, I never take action on what I see, it’s just filler, junk, vapid nonsense.

So anyway, that’s my confession.

Auto Bubble

Posted by on November 4, 2008 No comments

Detroit makes me imagine a crazy person locked in a room somewhere making and churning out dozens of ugly teddy bears a day.  Each day people come to him and say "All the kids already have teddy bears and  even if they do want a new one, kids don’t want ugly teddy bears." 

But the crazy bear maker won’t stop.  He makes bigger, uglier teddy bears and pushes pile after pile of bears out the door.  The people carry heaps of grotesquery off to showrooms where the bears sit unwanted and unsold.

The bear maker is proud of himself.  His whole life has been making teddy bears and he feels he is vital to the well-being of children everywhere.  Whenever it is argued that his bears are unwanted, his response is "Look how busy I am!"  He never stops, he must be afraid to.

And sadly, after all these years of building bears in isolation, he discovers he has neither the skill nor the tools to build better bears.  He will need to be retrained or replaced.  We’ve already committed to pay for retraining and retooling.  Time will show whether he has no choice but to be replaced.

The State of Food

Posted by on August 9, 2008 No comments

It’s actually kind of pathetic, really.  My life has primarily become about food.  There was on old stand-up routine where a comic was pointing out how different people gave directions.  The religious guy would say things like "Go past the Catholic church until you get to the Methodist church.  Then turn left one block past the bible store."  The fat guy would say "Go down Main street and you’ll see a gym on your left.  You want to keep going right past that.  Don’t even slow down.  You’ll drive past a Pizza Hut, Burger King, and when you get to the Wendy’s, which has great food, slow down.  You’ll see the place on your left."  Well, that has become me.  All my reference points are restaurants.  I know where to find the food I like in every location I frequent.  I know where most Longhorns are in about a 100 mile radius.  Geez.

So, how did this happen to me?  Simple.  That’s my hobby.  If you ask, I also know where most pawn shops are in a hundred mile radius.  When eating alone, it’s usually easier and arguably cheaper to eat out.  So, I visit the same places many times, in many different places.  Like my white-collar/blue-collar post, I look for these landmarks when I am in a new locale.

I take a bit of flack for eating the same things over and over.  I can count the number of entrees I eat on my fingers; it’s pretty limited.  But my viewpoint is that it’s not the same meal.  Eating a burger at Chili’s for lunch and a burger at McD’s for dinner are different.  They taste different.  That’s my variety.  And I can identify the differences between all burgers that I eat, the fries I eat (including the texture of the salt), and the syrup/water/CO2 mixture of the Coke per location.  I’ve been on the fence for a very long time as to whether it’s a good or bad thing to have the server ask "the usual?"  It depends on my mood whether I get annoyed or not.  Also, I’m not sure about getting personal with the staff.  That makes me feel like I’m paying for attention.  Whenever money is involved, I don’t believe in sincerity.

Lately, our area has seen a compression of eating locations.  Within the last few months we lost: Roadhouse, Sam Seltzers, Lone Star, Bennigan’s, Don Pablo’s, Steak and Ale and Ruby Tuesday.  I guess the economy has hit the casual dining market hard, but then again, I never visited these places often (except Roadhouse), so maybe it’s my fault too.  I guess I can’t save the world, one restaurant at a time.

Random thoughts

Posted by on May 10, 2008 No comments

It’s a little late and I’m a little light-headed and headachy from primer fumes in the room getting painted next to mine, so I thought I’d type out a random grab bag of thoughts.

Capital One wants me to go paperless with my statements.  That would work for me since I do everything electronically in Money, but what about the people that would print out their statements each month from the online site?  That doesn’t help anything.  I think Capital One should reduce the paper ads they put in their statements and double-side their statements.  That would cut paper usage more than half right there.

I was thinking one day about a borderline neurosis I had growing up.  Thanks to my short attention span, it never really developed.  I used to anthropomorphize everything.  I used to imagine chairs clamoring to have me sit in them, and the rest would be disappointed.  Some items I owned would be proud that they have served me so well, and others would be sad that I don’t use them enough.  I’m sure some psychologist would say I had some disorder that I couldn’t accept the fact that it’s impossible to please everyone.  Then I would get drugs – that’s a given anymore.

One of the creepiest and most disturbing thoughts that I thought up in my youth and still have to force myself to not think about is:  No one really knows what happens when you die.  What if you are just trapped in your body?  Not so bad for humans – you die, you get put in a box and you rest until you decompose and you disappear.  But what about animals, specifically roadkill?  You get hit with a car and die.  Then someone else runs over you and you feel the impact again.  And again, and again.  Slowly, you start to disintegrate and the pain becomes less with each passing car.  Finally, you are not much more than a spot and you begin to decompose and disappear.  Physiologically, I guess that’s not possible since the nerves couldn’t transmit the sensations to the brain, still it’s a morbid thought.

I’m bugged by Circle K’s new ads with the line, "Gotta buck?  Get a snack."  I don’t have any problem at all with informal speech in ad copy, but if you’re going to do it, it needs to be correct.  "Gotta" is not short for "Have a", it’s short for "Have got to".  Idiots.

My previous complaint about Mercedes radio ads has been continued with a Lincoln ad.  I guess the dealerships are owned by the same person, or the marketing company got both as accounts.  More pompous people talking about how other people think their car (and I guess the owner by extension) is so great.  I really don’t think the customer testimonial idea is so great.  Maybe it is, though, and I’m just not their target market.  Thank god for that.