Suspended Animation

First of all, let me be clear from the outset. This post is chaff. Just a throwaway thought to keep honest Anonymous Alex at bay. Somewhere in my e-marrow I can feel he's been prepping another Your Blog Is Dying missive, so I'm going to cut him off at the pass. I'm going to nip him in the bud with my arsenal of mixed metaphors. Here is a post. The blog is alive.

I've been working at my new job for about five weeks. I've resisted blogging about it because while the old job at ________ Consulting Group was temporary, a consequence-free way of earning a living, without having to have a career, the new job is not temporary. It cannot be shrugged off with a midday fro yo, and some clever banter with Adam over gchat. The new job has big-C Career written all over it, and I am trying my best not to fuck it up. That is to say, I'm trying. Part of trying means not blogging about every stupid fucking thing my coworkers do. There is an obvious element of self-preservation in checking myself in this manner. But it also suggests some delusion on my part as well. This blog, read by a discreet and gifted few, will never make its way to the web browsers of the employees at _________ LLP, my new professional home. I would have to morph into an opposite-marriage-supporting, LOL cat with a crush on Obama to achieve the kind of broad internet fame that would bring this blog to the attention of my colleagues. Still, you never know who might stumble here, who might crack through my nom de guerre, my made-up names, and expose me to the world.

So, I've hemmed and I've hawed about how to talk about my job, if at all. But now I've come to this conclusion: what made the old job tolerable, what, believe it or not, made it fun, was knowing that I could catalogue all the day's ridiculousness in these pages. Why deny myself that? Still, I am not going to blog about my new job without first imposing some stringent security measures: Because the new job has me doing some very un-hero-like and very specific kind of lawyering, I am not going to talk about the work itself -- and this is for the best; also, in addition to continuing to invent names, I might try on some composite characters and Hills like reality script tweaking. I expect no love from Oprah Winfrey.

Now, the only question that remains is this: Will I have anything to blog about? These days. I go to work in an office that is mine alone. My sliver of a window provides me with an angle on a tiny section of the Bay Bridge. Work comes in. Discussions are had. I try not to make a fool of myself. I eat sandwiches. I ask the Secretary outside my door questions about formatting documents in Word. I tell everyone how to pronounce my name correctly, and then the next week, tell them all again. I put post it notes on my sandwiches before putting them in the Fridge. I struggle to remember how to make .pdf's. I made an early play for a seemingly unwanted plant before anyone else could score it, and pumped my fist when it became mine. I stare at the dull canvas of beige in front of me and think about putting up something on the walls, but probably won't. Do I really want to make this place homier? Do I want to acknowledge that it is, in fact, my new home? I don't know the answer to that yet.

I do know this. The other day right outside my door, two junior associates, one of whom is quite friendly and the other quite sour, meditated loudly and passionately on whether or not one must have two spaces after a period. The sour one could not imagine a world where teachers and parents alike did not beat their children senseless for their cavalier and lustful use of the one-space. The other was somewhat more charitable, arguing that, "you know, there's no real reason you need two spaces," but conceded, ultimately, only a diseased mind would bunch his sentences together so brazenly. This was about 8 PM on a Friday. I felt overwhelmed by sadness for everyone involved in the discussion, myself included, as I was right then beholding it. I packed my things and scurried off between the two stalwarts of classical debate, and recalled with great joy that morning when I passed Dick -- you remember, Dick, he of ________ Consulting Group fame, he of the extended vowels ("401kaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy") on my way to work. It was about 9:30 and he was on his second or third cigarette break of the day, circling the block. Suddenly two low-flying pigeons swept in lightly towards his head, but to Dick they were like spray from an M2 Carbine. Their legs lightly grazed his hair. He dropped his cigarette and crumpled to the sidewalk like the first unlucky bastard out the boat at Omaha Beach, and mumbled "shit," mirthlessly and with no emphasis on the vowel. He sat there as I walked by -- I thought it best not to exchange pleasantries . Stunned, he remained half-splayed on the ground for a goodly while. His cigarette burning, wasted.

What fear does to us to a man.

__________ Consulting Group, you are the gift that keeps on giving.

what we're talking about when we're talking about the economy (aka what the eff is david brooks yapping about - part 3)

in this part 3 of what appears to be an infinite-part series, i again examine the latest and greatest david brooks column in the new york times and ask the question we've all been wondering: what the fuck is david brooks yapping about? [Ed note: finally, i came up with a photo to illustrate just how i feel about david brooks.]

i swear i approached today's david brooks column with a somewhat open-minded stance. everyone knows i hate him and that i think he makes no sense...pretty much EVER, but i told myself today: i'm going to take a deep breath before i start silently screaming.

he begins the column by delineating two ways we can talk about the recent and ongoing turmoil in the markets: the greed narrative or the ecology narrative. oooookay. i'm not sure whether he came up with these brilliant names himself, but the hostile nature of the first moniker vs the benign, almost warm & fuzzy image invoked by the second pretty much lets me know which one he prefers.

he gives a scant two paragraphs to the so-called "greed narrative", using inflammatory and over-the-top descriptions like, "absurdly overpaid zillionaires" and "obscene bonuses". apparently all those who express any cynicism or disdain for how the market has been operating of late are sugar high teenagers. don't describe paul krugman that way. please.

then he moves on and devotes thirteen paragraphs on his "ecology narrative", with sweeping generalizations like "Everyone seeks wealth while minimizing risk" and "The U.S. has enjoyed 25 years of strong economic growth". not to mention, apologizing for the recent volatility in the markets with this type of benign and naive explanation:

Most of the time, the complex new instruments diversify risk and serve the public good. But life requires trade-offs, and, as we’re being reminded this week, the innovation process involves a painful adolescence.

When a new instrument enters the market, it takes a while before people understand and institutionalize it. Whether the product is high-yield bonds or mortgage-backed securities, there’s a tendency to get carried away.

In the first stage of this adolescence, investors look around and see everybody else making money off some new instrument. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford notes: “They assume they are fine because they see everyone else buying it.”

indeed, i think mr. bloom is describing GREED. as in, thinking only about their own gains and not about any of the possible consequences of their actions. if i can withhold my anger and use david brooks' jargon, the so-called "greed narrative" is merely a subset of his genteel "ecology narrative". anyway, brooks' basic stance, surprise, is that the government shouldn't do anything to intervene because that just hampers innovation in the financial markets. and tsk tsk, these guys just got "carried away"! don't reprimand them and don't attempt to change the status quo. following his whole adolescence into maturity metaphor, what type of overzealous adolescent reigns in his/her behavior without some supervision and/or discipline? on that note, i'd like to meet his kids.

sounds of silence

if a dimunitive ethnomusical folk-singer campaigned for a fourth-tier candidate and nobody showed, does it fill the campaign coffers?

A Misspent Youth

Here's the first photo from the Indiana Jones 4 set. This is the moment where my level of excitement begins its Kilimanjaro-high trek to fever pitch. Yeah, I use mixed metaphors--jealous? Obviously, the movie will be a spectacular turd, but unjustified, unreasonable hope springs eternal, or at least until the Transformers movie comes out, and said hope starts flatlining. And then I'll watch the the live action Thundercats movie and that'll suck, and I'll accept finally and forever that I am but a consumer and Hollywood will stop at nothing to make the joys of my youth fodder for its shit-mills--granted, the mixed metaphor there doesn't make much sense, but you know what I'm saying.