Month: December 2010

The Devil’s Own School Bus

School Bus of Fear

On a side street in a wealthy suburban neighborhood overlooking the water, we see: a schoolbus, unmarked, plugged in to someone’s power, clean and obviously customized, with spikes on the front hubcaps. Possibilities include:

  • Cool awesome extreme sports anti-drug mobile extreme awesomeness vehicle!
  • Purpose-built vehicle for school bus races.
  • Intentionally scary Freddy Krueger type schtick by horror movie aficionados/Coil fans/over-the-top leather guys/Turbonegro fans.
  • Bro mistake.

You make the call.

Slavoj Žižek

I am fascinated by this guy, but a huge mass of shifting, pudding-like terminology defeats me.

Is there an introduction to his thought in baby talk for those of us who haven’t spent years reading Hegelian, Marxist, and especially Lacanian texts? I’ve always had a difficult relationship with philosophical and sociological jargon. The kind of writing where words like “motion” and “face” and “violence” turn out to mean “black walnut ice cream,” “Terry and the Pirates,” and “egg.” Until the next page, where they all mean something else.

If it’s worth it to nail down enough terminology in advance to read the Zizzer, what’s a good prep?

I’d really like to read more serious intellectual stuff. The jargon factor just stops me and leaves me flailing in the pudding.

Update on critical talking points

All:

First I want to thank the entire team for the hard work and dedication you’ve shown this year. As we approach the holidays, the Management Team wishes to express thankfulness and emphasize that the entire org chart is vital to our success.

It’s time once again to review our key focus matrix and hone in on the heart. The points we’re about to list are non-negotiable and I can’t estimate their importance. Let’s hammer in with a laser-like focus on these.

  • The threat of refinancing: how lower rates drag us all down.
  • The hidden links between skateboarding and Hepatitis C: do we know enough?
  • Zoning reforms necessary to encourage urban fish farming.
  • End ethnic set-asides in the mortuary industry.
  • Phrenology in the public schools: is Medicare responsible?
  • Hogs for Heroes: soldiers need to know we have a pig for them.
  • An America Without Simony: If not now, when?
  • An end to subsidized quahog farming is the beginning of free trade in bivalves.

All of us need to drill down into the meat with a laser-like focus here. Let’s stay on message and be forceful. The Management Team knows we can exceed our own expectations, and we expect that.

If you have any questions or comments, speak right up! My door is always open.

The Mgmt

The day room takes it to the next level

BBQ outside Starbucks

When you show up at a Starbucks in Orange County, and Mike of the gray ponytail and the long drug history, who lives in his van, is there with his free ‘n’ easy girlfriend of a certain age that he met at the San Diego Thunderdome Sex In The Bushes Swap Meet, and everyone is high on good weed, and Mike is grilling, and someone has brought lemon meringue pie, and the stoner gamer kid is playing the GTA:Vice City music really loud on the usb mic from his laptop, and Bob is there in his union suit arriving via tandem bike, and the people driving by are smelling the grill and seeing the freaks and nearly crashing with surprise, and no cops show up and the people at the mall couldn’t care less, and then there’s apple pie too…

Then it’s another night on the corner.