Monthly Archives: December 2012
Vox populi
“The Voice” on NBC; American entertainment at its best.
Tee Vee is a strange phenomenon. Some say what we watch as Americans speaks to something deep and disturbing about us as a people. Or possibly, it’s just a reflection of what entertainment has become in these latter days.
Our Tee Vee watching is Balkanized like just about everything else—how we gather news and information; how we select and listen to music. Everything is just one big personalized smorgasbord, part and parcel of our vapid 21st century lives. Continue reading
Zig zag
Zig Ziglar passed away nearly two weeks ago at the age of 86. I’ve been meaning to get up a post about Ziglar because I first encountered his personal brand of positive thinking at a time of my life when I wasn’t positive about much. In fact, being positive used to be something I never put much stock in. I had no truck with optimism, instead finding it easier traveling the paths of cynicism and negativity. When appraising any situation, I always saw a glass that was half empty.
Ziglar was part of a pantheon of 20th century positive-thinking gurus that included Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, Og Mandino, and W. Clement Stone, to name just a few. All of these men believed that people had the ability to change their circumstances as a result of the power of the mind and their attitudes. Continue reading
Candy and popcorn
When I’m working a seasonal assignment, it’s for one thing and one thing only. “Show me the money, man!” Perhaps that’s why I’m sensitive to efforts to turn work into a carnival, or something approximating “Romper Room.”
Let me start out by saying that I’ve never been much on employers plying me with non-financial incentives. I’m not overly covetous (I don’t think) and I’ve had jobs that paid shit for wages in my past, but living in the U.S. of A. takes some ka-ching to keep a roof over your head and wheels beneath you. As much as I enjoy cycling, I can’t see the practicality or the feasibility of a business trip from Portland to Presque Isle by bicycle. Continue reading
Looking for a sign
Signs are ubiquitous. They inform, invite, beckon, and some signs say “stay away.”
From the National Park Services Technical Preservation Services, in Preservation Brief #25, “American sign practices originated largely in Europe. The earliest commercial signs included symbols of the merchant’s goods or tradesman’s craft. Emblems were mounted on poles, suspended from buildings, or painted on hanging wooden boards. Such symbolic signs were necessary in a society where few could read, although verbal signs were not entirely unknown. A sheep signified a tailor, a tankard a tavern.”
Some are familiar and even iconic. They speak of commerce and capital.
Continue reading
Overcoming cynicism with action
Over and over again I hear people poisoned by cynicism, believing and uttering negative messages like, “it doesn’t matter,” or, “there’s nothing I can do about it,” and the worst and most cynical of the lot; “one person can’t make a difference.”
One of my favorite Christmas programs is “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” If you know the show, you know that part where Linus counters Charlie Brown’s bemoaning of Christmas and its commercialization with his Whitey the Man blast. Continue reading
Dialing while drunk
Last night was the second in a series of what will be nine contiguous nights chasing the moonlight as a seasonal employee on assignment. I’ve been doing this work just long enough now that I’m able to really focus on the callers, as well as my surroundings, and less on the technical components of navigating the order fulfillment system. It’s what I refer to as “being in the zone,” at least when it comes to being an order taker. Continue reading
Carpe diem
When the lights go down in the city.