Is there some sort of late-night rickshaw competition for which you can begin training your kids? That would solve two problems.
We really need to find you a bike route that works all year.
Or a protective perimeter drum circle.
4: Ooh, that's good. That way they can even cut across any of the park's ponds or streams—drum circles being flam-buoyant.
You can't put a drum circle in a bag which means she can't take it to work. A bag of guns, by definition, fits in a a bag and is thus portable.
A bag of bags of guns? Where's the ammo?
There's an opportunity here: drum circle escort service. No not that kind. You make an appointment, and they gather up half a dozen of so people to take across the park, on the half-hour or whatever. Dancing across the park is much better exercise than just walking.
You can deploy them offensively, too. Twirl faster to fling the drum circle outwards towards attackers.
Maybe you could get the kind of drum circle that comes with a dozen or so capoeiraistas. Capoeira has never looked all that devastating to me, but there's strength in numbers.
Or you could leave your office at the normal time and take your work home? I'm told that you can get portable computers nowadays that fit in a backpack, and you can rig up some wireless contraption in your apartment to connect you to the intertubes. Just an idea.
That's crazy talk, chris. I can barely fit a difference engine in my autogyro for trips to my geodesic dome in the country, much less the many towers and cables required by Mr. Tesla's local affiliate.
12: I don't know about this specific case but state governments are generally opposed to that type of thing on data security grounds and because it implies unpaid overtime.
Capoeira has never looked all that devastating to me
OT: Simple, elegant business cards are pretty damned expensive. I was tempted by the Ocean's Eleven (name, nothing else), but reasonableness prevailed and I added a phone number and e-mail address.
15 is so awesome I can hardly believe it isn't faked.
re: 17
It's from a movie, I gather.
12, 14: Yeah, I had the same thought. I fully accept that a state-gov't job would be better in almost every respect than my current firm job, but the fact that I almost never miss the baby's bedtime (because I can easily bring work home and continue after dinner) is a major perk.
I have a hard time thinking that the state's data-security people are any more paranoid than the firm's, though; I'd suspect it's more that their budget won't run to the kind of systems they'd need to make it secure.
20: ah, sure enough. That... makes a lot more sense.
state governments are generally opposed to that type of thing on data security grounds and because it implies unpaid overtime.
What are you, some kind of socialists? Over here anybody as senior as LB would work the hours it took to do the job, and she'd have been given her VPN dongle on her first day in the job.
I saw a real fight (from some shady sub-UFC event in Hawaii) that was something close to the opposite of that once; the matchup was fearsome dude with a reputation for stomping on down opponent's heads against hilariously fruity thai kickboxer who came into the ring wearing a special headband and, like, reverently attended to each of the four corners of the ring in some sort of pre-match buddhist ceremony. Then fruity kickboxer launched a high spin kick and flattened scary-the-headstomper.
It was distinctly awesome.
Obligatory fighting-related cartoon link.
They are expanding teleworking*, at least in the federal government, but that generally means normal hours with an issued laptop.
*Certainly more accurate than "telecommuting", but I find it grating, possibly due to the root-mixing. Telelabor?
That's actually part of the problem: I can work at home, but I have to email documents to my personal email -- there's no way to get access to the servers here, and I'd have to go through some elaborate application process to be allowed to get at my work email from offsite. But on this case specifically (although similar issues come up fairly often) the issue is that I need to find some reference in three or four bankers boxes worth of documents every ten or fifteen minutes: schlepping the documents home isn't going to happen, but I have to be in the same room as the boxes to get much done.
re: 26
Judging controlled contact s4va/ te events, I've seen similar, on a less dramatic scale. Someone trying to win through pressure and basics -- boxing plus just enough barely legal kicks to avoid getting a warning -- getting nailed by someone doing the full on spandex-ballet stuff.
27: there was a notorious bout in on of the first UFCs where one of the combatants (a practitioner of made-up bullshit martial art "Joesondo", and who if I recall came into the arena hauling a cross) endured something like thirty-seven consecutive punches to the groin. Shortly afterwards they banned those.
It looks a lot like a scene from Ong Bak, but I don't remember the camera being pulled out that far.
There are apparently daycares for sick kids who aren't allowed back to their regular daycare yet, which cost an arm and a leg and are located in places like Austin. That's got a similar "lucky to get to pay so much money" feel to it.
It also costs a hefty chunk to employ students all day long. I'm even relying on my department chair for part of the time.
33:Only thing useful I know to say is "This too shall pass." It's maddening, but it's not going to be that long.
IIRC, you were planning a couple more kids fairly quickly? If I'm right about that, have you run the numbers on if and when a full-time babysitter gets cheaper than daycare?
9: That was my first thought, and then I remembered that LB lives far enough up that there's no way there's cabs by the subway there with any frequency.
How about a scooter? Easy to travel with on the subway, gets you home from the subway faster than walking and thus is safer.
We are, and we haven't. I don't know how to say this without sounding like I'm privileged*, but my parents are helping out with daycare costs. The thing is that aside from the shits, I really love this place. It's associated with a state university, and they just pack it to the gills with neat innovative ideas.
*Of course I am.
At this point we're going to swap out formulas and play with his diet, and also according to Dr. Sears, apparently roto-viruses can take several weeks to work themselves out, so maybe he really just has had a bug for the past month.
Anyway, I am getting really jumpy every time the phone rings that it will be daycare calling to say "SURPRISE! Your next two days will be unproductive! Spend them scrambling to cover childcare!"
How about a scooter? Easy to travel with on the subway, gets you home from the subway faster than walking and thus is safer.
Or a segway?
This is really the sort of thing where I shouldn't be griping, because it's absurd. I'm literally two blocks from the subway, it's just that the only reasonable route is through a park where someone gets mugged at least every month or two, and Buck's really unhappy about my walking through it alone after the evening rush-hour street traffic thins out.
If spending the money on cabs bothers me enough, I should tell him he's being silly and just come home on the subway; if it doesn't, I should stop complaining.
Is Sally old/responsible enough that Buck could leave the kids for a few minutes and come pick you up at the subway, since he's the one who's uncomfortable?
It always impresses me how, when I put a little effort into stating my problems clearly enough to communicate them to other people, it becomes obvious that the real solution is that I should stop whining about them.
Send the documents to the Cloud, LB!
I think the federal government is actually cracking down on working from home. They might be officially designating more jobs as work from home, but they have instituted a policy restricting everyone else from doing it when they had been working from home on an informal basis.
So, net result: less of an ability to work from home.
39: Huh. Leaving the kids alone in the house certainly isn't a problem, but that hadn't occurred to me.
41: They allow a lot of patent examiners to work from home, probably using that official designation. I've increasingly talked to examiners and heard kids screaming in the background. We interviewed a guy who wound up taking a patent examiner position while living in Utah. He got to make 110k, which is an excellent salary in Utah. In exchange, he had to fly to the Patent and Trademark Office only twice a month.
If it's only two blocks run a rope from the subway station to the apartment and if you get in trouble along the way, pull on it.
I dont disagree that there are lots of jobs for professionals like that. I know some immigration lawyers who do the same thing that you mention.
I believe some of it has to do with the distance that you live from your job.
I just know that the VA has cracked down on it.
16: my brother has both tasteful business cards such as you chose and smaller visiting cards, name only. the kind you leave on a silver salver if the person whom you intend to visit isn't home. and each one has a thin piece of tissue atop it which you discard. he had all his stationery done at once so it appeared to make sense. FUCKER. that little slip-off tissue thing nearly tore it for me. I was about ready to go american psycho on my own brother. it's not enough that he has the family signet ring with the seal, no, he has to have fucking 100% rag cotton whatnot to put it on. grumble the patriarchy something. he should at least write me more.
31: Joe Son, victim of Keith Hackney's repeated groin strikes, defeated via penis pump by Austin Powers, now doing life for rape.
47: What does he do with them? Is there anyone in the world left who expects to receive a visiting card from people?
49: Seriously. Does he ride around at 11am and leave his card on the silver tray of the acquaintances he knows to be "at home" but on whom he does not truly wish to call?
Does he know the corner-folding code? I don't, but I know there is one.
Maybe there is a secret WASP world where people still do this stuff?
there's a truly small number of people on whom he could conceivably pull this manouver, but he's got the cards should the occasion arise. I can only think of like 9 people in the world. he is currently a gentleman of leisure, but will hopefully be re-admitted to Penn soon so he can get the 3 credits he needs to graduate.
A newer band I'm playing with was just talking about creating mask-like business cards to hand out at shows for promotional purposes. And then we got into how to create them ("Tim can screen print them, but where do we get the masks?") And then we wondered quite seriously whether the mask business is more profitable than the music business, and, if so, whether we should just start wholesaling masks.
[LB: There is no hidden pun in this comment; I'm relating a semi-relevant anecdote.]
48: oh, holy crap. I knew the "austin powers actor gets life for horrific rape" story, but I hadn't made the connection that it was THAT Joe Son.
three or four bankers boxes worth of documents
Could you have them scanned?
Not easily enough to be worth it.
will, this is a general thrust. The "working at home" that is problematic with the VA is probably related to PII stuff.
I think he memorized the fold thing because he's like that. it was undertaken in the spirit of an (expensive) joke.
51: The Gentleman's Guide to the Calling Card
[H]e is currently a gentleman of leisure....
That's my line.
You should leave cards on each other.
Sometimes I wish I could get away with a symbolic calling card like the Joker or Simon Templar, the Saint.
Everyone should have Carte de visite. With elegant black and white photos on 'em.
I imagine Halford's like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KinmanUofCBerk.jpg
I thought I was been a huge tool when I got stationary with my name on it.
I try and remain mobile, mostly, although it's hard with a desk job.
63: I affected signing notes and such with a stick-figure lizard in high school and college. Luckily, my friends were mostly as unbearable as I was, so they didn't mind.
Coming up with a quickly sketchable icon for yourself isn't easy, though, if you don't have an obvious name. How do you draw flippancy?
63: The Saint looks as if he's either limp-wristed or using a sock-puppet. Or both.
How do you draw flippancy?
Maybe a hydrogen molecule, for the "lighter than..." implication. Sadly, more probably a dolphin or performing seal, neither of which is quite the thing to strike fear into the hearts of criminals.
The Saint's stick figure is more saucy-looking than fearsome, but the original Leslie Charteris stories are generally quite light in tone.
Maybe a hydrogen molecule, for the "lighter than..." implication.
It's not flippant if you burn it into your forehead.
Just because it seems relevant, Mark Twain on the finer points of visiting card etiquette.
performing seal, neither of which is quite the thing to strike fear into the hearts of criminals
Criminals friggin' hate being compared to a kiss from a rose on the gray.
I have a quickly sketchable logo. Seems like an important thing to have.
Just carve a giant "F" into the drapery with a fencing rapier. That will be your mark and your calling card.
How do you draw flippancy?
If you want to do it in rebus form, you could draw a hand with the middle finger extended, a minus sign, and a bird.
It's not flippant if you burn it into your forehead.
Mumble Promethea seemed pretty flip for something that took cabala seriously mumble.
I loved the George Sanders 'Saint' when it was reshown on TV in my early teens. Lots of suave lurking on car running boards. One of the best movie voices, ever.
"So the criminal leaves a calling card? What is it?"
"In this case it seems to be a... calling card."
I love it that I've created a pseudonymous life in which 64 is possible.
I got a single-name visiting card once, from this creepy seedy elegant gay dude who was purportedly (I believe, falsely) a Hapsburg descendant. I don't think it had the thin tissue on top.
Yes, the tissue flap seems de trop.
You don't leave the tissue around, do you? I thought it was just supposed to protect the surface of the card, necessary if it's actually engraved. (So, having the little flap of tissue indicates that you have engraved rather than printed cards, making you better, but I don't think anyone else is supposed to see the tissue.)
Like the unbearable young LB, I tried out something along the lines of 63 in hs.
80: Hmm. Didn't the creeper who pretended he was a Rockefeller first pretend (in LA) that he was some ill- favored member of an old Euro- aristo line like the H's?
If you have to put "the Saint" after "Simon Templar", Flippanter, you're probably running with the wrong crowd.
83 -- nah, it wasn't that guy. Just this weirdo friend of my ex's, probably in his 60s.
Anyone ever read "The Toff" series of thrillers? They were kind of terrible (aristocratic detective, maybe 50s or 60s?), but the guy did have a sketchable icon: tophat over a monocle and cigarette holder.
One likes to be courteous. Did everyone get my Dornford Yates/E. Phillips Oppenheim references of a few weeks ago?
A few people have mentioned Dornford Yates, and I probably need to fill that gap in my reading, now that I've completed my study of the oeuvre of John Buchan.
The Dornford Yates novels are pretty good, but for God's sake never read the biographical sketches in any of the recent reprints; the man seems to have been a genuine and devoted asshole.
Reminds me of Parkaboy in Pattern Recognition whose card reads:
Middle-aged White Guy
Since 1962
OT: Mumble Kim Kardashian mumble I don't feel comfortable with people on the Internet throwing around the word "whore" quite so insouciantly mumble.
I get very confused by people with strong negative feelings about that class of celebrity. I can understand being entertained by them, or not interested in them, but what's the point of paying attention to them at all if it's not something you enjoy? I suppose it's about enjoying the process of loathing them, but I'm always surprised that it's worth the effort.
I think the federal government is actually cracking down on working from home.
Jesus Christ are they going to start demanding actual carbon paper copies of all their documents next? Mrs y (employed by the British govt) logs in on a VPN from anywhere in the country she happens to be and gets access to all her files, email etc. as a matter of course.
It's no less secure than logging onto the wide area network in her office and it's hardly rocket science. In the company I worked for till this year home based was the default.
The place where I got the cake for my 4 year old's birthday did Kim Kardashian's wedding cake, and they had lots of pictures of the happy couple on display. I guess those are coming down now. Sad.
re: 88
I'm always reminded of Viz magazine's 'Raffles, Gentleman Thug'. Which is a reference US readers won't get.
re: 96
Yeah. I mostly work in the office, but have a VPN connection I can use to get in remotely. Although X-forwarding is _slow_ if I need to use any of the X stuff, rather than just Remote Desktop.
93: I now tell myself that most of these people -- the various Kardashi, Spearses, and Lohaneem -- are performance artists. This makes me feel better about the decline of the culture, somehow. I mean, if they're just subverting the dominant paradigm, it's okay, right?
I'm afraid this doesn't directly speak to the issue of whether they're whoring or should be called whores. The answer in the first case is unclear -- it depends on how rigid a definition of whoring one wishes to apply -- I think, though in the second the answer is surely no.
They're not whores, just industries.
Until this week I'd never heard of Kim Kardashian and I'm still not quite clear who she is. Without wishing her any ill, can I forget about her now?
It always surprises me how slow X-forwarding is, given how old it is. Though I guess few people were forwarding X over 14.4 modems.
I thought I was been a huge tool when I got stationary with my name on it.
The thank-you notecards that we ordered along with our wedding invitations have both of our names on them. But that had the practical purpose of reminding people that I still have the same last name as before.
Wasn't Raffles a burglar, as well as being a national- or international-quality cricketer?
I've completed my study of the oeuvre of John Buchan
I've been idly looking around for things to read, and it looks like many John Buchan books are free in the Kindle store. Are there good and bad ones, or a sensible starting point, or should I just choose at random?
Wasn't Raffles a burglar, as well as being a national- or international-quality cricketer?
Indeed. "The Gentleman Cracksman", hence the Viz reference. In Edwardian days, people with stately homes used to put on top class cricket matches in their grounds to entertain their weekend guests. Raffles' scam was that he got invited as a cricketer, put up in the house because he was an amateur - a "gentleman", and then cleaned out the safe and the family silver before driving back to London on Monday morning.
Are there good and bad ones
IMHO, The 39 Steps and downhill all the way from there. In some of them the racism is too much to handle even if you keep telling yourself about autres temps having autres moeurs.
103: I tried to do that once. Didn't work so good.
Although kind of fascinating as a historical document. Greenmantle is too weird, at least for me, to wave off the racism and read for the plot, but reading it as documentation for what came across as ordinary and acceptable in light reading is interesting.
107: One hesitates to offer that a gentleman does not rob his hosts.
108: The Saint stories are occasionally anti-racist, perhaps because, if memory serves, Charteris was himself Anglo-Chinese (missionary parent); in at least one, Simon Templar receives a letter from a publisher rejecting his submitted adventure story on the grounds that Brits didn't want to read about a "[old-fashioned but still offensive ethno-racial slur for people of southern European origin]."
Hmmm, I looked up something about my name and was surprised to learn that I could almost legitimately use a Joker as a calling card. Thing is, you have to make a bilingual pun to get there. So I guess I probably shouldn't. Next option from there is a chess piece, but I don't play chess. After that is some version of Cyrus the Great.
93: MGK agrees with you.
108, 110, 111: Hm, interesting, thanks. Even the Amazon reviews hint at that sort of thing, with the hero of one of them uncovering a native plot to kill all the white colonists or some such. I've got four or five of them downloaded by now (including both The 29 Steps and Greenmantle) and will see if I am interested in reading even that far.
It always surprises me how slow X-forwarding is, given how old it is
I think that has to do with protocol additions to make some of the fancier stuff possible. The protocol has bloated somewhat from the old days. I do find using NX client and server to help a lot with the slowness. It makes X over a WAN usable.
My symbol is a jesus fish with vertical banding that spells out "tweety" hirschfeld/nina style. I thought about getting car doohickeys made, or making stickers, but maybe calling cards would class things up.
Re: working from home, my understanding is that it's partially a crackdown on unpaid overtime, and if so is admirable for once. Don't want people putting in extra time that they aren't being paid for just because their boss doesn't have things organized properly and/or it's the office "culture". My office in a government bureaucracy makes work from home easy for most people (not me, as a certain kind of contractor I must be "supervised" by a government employee, but some people), but they aren't doing it on evenings or weekends as far as I can tell.
95/98: I work at DOJ and have noticed no crackdown on working from home. We are all issued "thin clients" and one of those random number generator token things so we can log in from home.
I have noticed some client agencies (esp. HHS) being more concerned about documents containing personally identifying information. So, I can see that if your way of taking work home is copying stuff onto a thumb drive and using your home computer, that would be frowned on.
I'm surprised by the crackdown on unpaid overtime -- the sorts of jobs where I'd expect people to be working from home are also the sorts of jobs where I wouldn't expect them to be paid overtime. (I mean, I'm in some bureaucratic sense paid by the hour, I fill out time sheets that say I was in the office thirty-five hours each week, but my actual working hours are whatever it takes, no overtime pay.)
one of those random number generator token things
The recently completely compromised SecurID token, by any chance?
So, I can see that if your way of taking work home is copying stuff onto a thumb drive and using your home computer, that would be frowned on.
And rightly so, because that's the wrong way to do it. I'm all for cracking down on unpaid overtime, believe me, but if your work is driven by external dynamics, such as the working patterns of a demanding politician or the deadlines for a lawsuit, then you have to do the damn work. Which is why senior civil servants and specialists like lawyers get paid more than the office grunts. But in recognition of that fact, if the organisation can't do the simplest thing to facilitate their senior people putting in the extra effort, I think that's pretty shameful.
119: Yep. We got new ones last month, allegedly manufactured since the breach. So, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about now!
Although kind of fascinating as a historical document. Greenmantle is too weird, at least for me, to wave off the racism and read for the plot, but reading it as documentation for what came across as ordinary and acceptable in light reading is interesting.
Try reading some of the later books by this guy, once he stops bothering to include mysteries in the plot and just writes about amusing incidents in the detective's life. I swear he was intentionally writing novels just to illustrate what he thinks is a typically French thing to do, a typically Russian thing to do, a typically Italian thing to do, a typically American thing to do, a thing that indicates that someone is pretending to be French but is really revealing her essential Polishness, etc. This is circa 1987.
Until this week I'd never heard of Kim Kardashian and I'm still not quite clear who she is. Without wishing her any ill, can I forget about her now?
Of course. You're supposed to be thinking about Katie Price, not our version.
121: you know, there probably isn't as far as that goes. I don't think they fixed the theoretical flaw (I don't think they can, from my understanding of it), but the current tokens are probably as secure as the previous tokens were before the breach.
There's a theoretical flaw? Do you mean that it's possible for someone to steal the seed database again?
125: what I mean is that they could steal the same thing they stole last time (was it actually the database of seeds? or was it the seed generation algorithm?) and clone more tokens.
From the wikipedia article I skimmed, I think it was the database, and the generation algorithm had already been reverse-engineered. But my reading comprehension, salt, take together.
I'm always reminded of Viz magazine's 'Raffles, Gentleman Thug'. Which is a reference US readers won't get.
Joe Son apparently also killed his cellmate while imprisoned. The guy was just starting a relatively short sentence for failing to register as a sex offender.
the primary function of Wasco State Prison-Reception Center is to provide short-term housing for new inmates while they are being processed. The facility also serves to determine inmates' "security level" while evaluating their physical and mental status prior to transferring them to permanent institutions.
Can you imagine going into your cell as a new inmate for processing and seeing that monster?
PGD, I can't tell if you keep missing my repeated entreaties to email me, or you keep ignoring them.
it's k****t_r******t@yahoo.com
I keep missing them! Life is intense enough that I am somewhat of a hit and run commenter now.
He's a pretty small monster; I think he's like 5'4".
[Self-redacted as a poor idea]
135. And has obviously never seen a steroid in his life.
How much awareness is your boss showing of her role in your hassle? Has she realized? Is she sheepish?
He's a pretty small monster
I challenge him to fight my pikachu.
[Self-redacted as a poor idea]
LB maybe after you've got the drum circle perimeter all set up you could get your hands on a flare gun.
[Self-redacted as a poor idea]
[Self-redacted as a poor idea]
138 is only applicable in certain circumstances. 137 is broadly applicable.
She's just maddening as a manager.
If you can manage one of those flying Chuck Norris-style roundhouse kicks, you can call it a "360 Review."
Could you get her to acknowledge that it matters? Is it worth it? Or are you taking the bargain that I would take: incompetant manager that likes me in exchange for her not noticing that I read the internet all day?
[Self-redacted as a poor idea]
I thought stays affected the volume of air you could inspire, not the quality of the air.
. . . so it's no longer true that everyone has a pending request for a transfer away from her, but still.
That isn't good. My experience (thankfully limited) with those sorts of situations is that she isn't likely to improve.
Dude. Probably just coincidence, but three days after Port of Long Beach enforced their new truck rules, my sister and I happened to talk to a guy from LA who spontaneously marveled at how clear the air had been for the past two days. We looked at each other, wondering if it could actually be that direct and evident.
Re: Kim Kardashian [I had thought this was in the Google thread, but no!]
100: They're not whores, just industries.
Apparently. Kardashian got married recently, I understand; a recent radio news piece explained that she, or her family or her business, made $65 million out of it in the end. How on earth? Well, for example, she had her bridal shower or something at [some club somewhere], and she'd entered into a contract with the club to do so, which included a clause requiring that she tweet the entire experience, from the club.
... Profit!!
The news piece explained that this was part of the newfound monetization of Twitter, that Kardashian was brilliant it, etc.
My somewhat educated guess is that the $65 million figure is massively exaggerated (my guess would be in real dollar terms you'd need to divide that number by at least 10), but, yeah, that's how it works these days.
I should say that my guess would be that she received no more than $6.5 million in revenue from the wedding, not profit. Depending on what she spent on the wedding, she could have used up most or all of that just on the wedding alone.
Bad managers are a surprisingly intractable problem. It seems like there should be something you can do about them, but in practice it seems like you're stuck unless you quit and find another job (where you might have a terrible manager and there's no way to know until you get there).
Rhymeswithmaria has had a series of terrible managers. In one case she and a coworker spent a year of concerted effort which eventually led to the manager being demoted. But it took a solid year, and he was terrible at his job. Her current shocking dilemma is that they've been paying her the wrong salary for the past year (discovered when they tried to give her a raise *to the amount she was told she was going to be paid*). It's not that much money, but it's not the sort of thing that happens with competent management.
Who fucking knows. She may have monetized absolutely every aspect of the wedding, from photographer to dressmaker to hair-doer to shoe designer to wedding invitation maker to decorator to florist and on and on.
Whatever. It's obviously grotesque, as she is grotesque, frankly.
Also bad manager situations seem to run into the "AWB dating stories" problem: bad managers routinely do things that outside people simply won't believe because it's too ridiculous of behavior.
Well, she may have gotten freebies, and maybe even comped a small amount for big ticket items like the dress, but it's hard to monetize things like the florist. The big-ticket items would be the sale of the wedding photos plus exclusive rights to the first story, plus whatever contractual bonus from a wedding-themed TV special.
If you don't like this way of monetizing entertainment, there's always the option of paying for books, movies, or records.
Anyhow, this isn't a very financially significant area. Kardashian probably netted from the wedding what some asshole at Goldman Sachs makes every three days.
He's saying that it's this or HBO.
Who paid Bulgakov, or more recently, why did Bon Iver record that first record?
I daydream about managing people and not sucking at it, but I never have done much in the way of supervision, so I don't really know whether or not I would suck.
Give her section's responsibilities and staff to someone else, defund her to 0, and leave her managing the buggy whip litigation?
The old use of celebrity was as to promote the sale of a tangible good -- a book (rarely), a ticket to a movie or a copy of a record (much more often), and were constrained by those promotional goals.
Since those avenues to money-making are now in significant decline, one way of making up for lost profits is to monetize every aspect of celebrity life. It's also important to create one-off major events that can be sold as such to advertisers -- the Kardashian wedding is one. In this respect the Kardashian wedding is like an NFL game.
The week says that Kardashian spent $10 million on the wedding and earned $18 million. Fifteen mil came from the TV rights alone.
164: Managers who suck at managing truly do range the spectrum from bright people to morons to angels to assholes, etc. (And conversely, so do managers who are good at managing.) We had this conversation recently, but it seems really hard to predict by looking at external variables.
Those numbers look like bullshit to me, but you'll just have to trust me on that.
Indeed trying too hard to do something, does seem to make matters worse long before they might get better. In the case where they eventually succeeded in getting the manager demoted, things got worse for a long time first.
16: Vistaprint is pretty cheap. They'll give you one box for $6. I bought some for myself using a pattern a colleague created, because my work is too cheap to get them.
I sometimes think about getting personal cards as a way of exchanging information in networking situations. It feels super cheesy though.
I had a guy in his 50's try to pick me up the other day. We were waiting by a bus stop around 4-ish with all the loud kids, and we started talking about work. He was a welder, and I mentioned all o fthe fences that never get repaired.
He kept trying to continue the conversation on the bus, and I kept trying to shut him down. We both got on the same subway card, and as I got off he gave me his employer's business card--a particularly dirty one--and said, "if you have any welding needs."
He'd written his name and personal e-mail on the back.
Doesn't the decision whether to oppose a stay belong to the client?
158: I'd believe almost anything. I'm actually seeing a great example of bad management these days, where respective managers of people on my team have (rightly) differing priorities, so that one guy really cares about the deadline but half a dozen more want to get a good product (for a flexible definition of "good", but that's beside the point) and don't care about it being exactly on time so much. The problem is that individually they're doing their jobs, but collectively they're totally dysfunctional.
They could agree to a compromise, they could elevate the issue to the guy who supervises all of them, they could ask the lawyers or economists to give them a formal opinion on how important the deadline is, they could do all kinds of things, but they aren't. They just keep on putting new stuff in or revisiting old stuff that we thought was settled and giving us an extension on the deadline to make that happen... but still setting the next schedule really short and aggressively and assuming that this time, nothing more will come up. We're now expecting to be 10 months late on this.
I find it fascinating and funny, but that's because I can be detached by it, and because my supervisors are reasonable and understanding about the limits of the possible. Unfortunately, a friend of mine reports to the one person who cares about the deadline, and she's going insane. (The bad management is far from the only problem with the project, though.)
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Also fuck.
On my way to work this morning, somebody walking someone else's dog was playing frisbee. The dog ran straight into me as I was walking along the path and knocked me over. Most of the impact was on my butt, then my elbow caught the fall, but my head did touch the concrete.
I loaded up on ibuprofen, but my head does hurt slightly. My BF is terrified that I might have a concussion. I don't think I do, but ugh.
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Yow, that's a big dog, to have gotten you all the way off your feet like that. Must have been scary until you processed what was going on.
I wouldn't worry too much about the concussion possibility -- I mean, I'd avoid contact sports for the next month or so, but you were going to do that anyway.
Sorry you got smacked. I doubt the concussion is a worry either.
179 is how the McManusolution starts, you know. You can all look the other way if you want, but don't say you haven't been warned.
179 would put me out for the day from sheer terror. Big dogs off leash scare the shit out of me since an incident when I was a toddler.
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Am I right in saying various people here have had experience of CBT? Info would be appreciated obo a friend (email as per sig if you like). What it is and what it's good for, depression? weight?
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Also, 166 is pretty interesting [/has Robert Halford painted on eyelids and blinks a lot in class]. I buy the idea that that's the way celebrity used to work: open a movie or a restaurant, sell a book or an album, whatever, using your big name. But I don't know that I buy the link between declining movie/book/intellectual property sales and what the Kardashians/Lohans/everyone else who wants to make it big but doesn't have traditional talents to sell is doing these days. I mean, sure, I buy the idea that that's what the bloodsucking, bottom-feeding filth like Halford have to tell themselves about their vocational choices, but I think the issue is probably more complicated than that. Somewhere along the way, somebody -- the editors of People magazine, reality TV producers, bloggers? -- realized that celebrity, on its own terms, sells. That there doesn't have to be a product, in other words. Or maybe that the glimpse of the lifestyle is the product. And I'm not sure that has anything to do with declining revenue from more traditional sources. Which is to say, I question the causation you present, paleo boy.
Even then, 186, the sellers of products are just doing the same old thing at one remove (by placing ads in the same Us Weekly and on TMZ or whatever).
HEY, AT LEAST I CAN SPELL.
I hadn't thought about the monetization conundrum* w/r/t the Kardashian wedding/divorce; I'm just a little leery of the word "whore," notwithstanding the mother's likeness to panderers, procurers and pimps of song and story.
* Available next month in hardcover and e-book formats from Eric Lustbader and Robert Ludlum Properties LLC.
166: to promote the sale of a tangible good -- a book (rarely), a ticket to a movie or a copy of a record (much more often), and were constrained by those promotional goals.
Were they really though? I feel like what we're seeing is more a question of degree rather than kind. What about all those celebrity photograph magazines they used to have? And their successors like People and Us? After the early '60s, was Elvis really selling records, or just more versions of himself? Lennon and Ono tried to detourn the process with the Bed-In for Peace and that kind of thing, but that was, I think, largely unsuccessful. Yes, many of the new batch of celebrities don't have any particularly interesting talent, but who was hiring Marilyn Monroe for her talents? Also, there's plenty of new-mode celebrity also-rans, like the doofus tax-evader guy from the first season of Survivor. This all seems to me like the same old Hollywood machine, just ever so slightly more crass.
My only sources about the Kardashian divorce were people proclaiming they couldn't care less about it.
Somewhere along the way, somebody -- the editors of People magazine, reality TV producers, bloggers? -- realized that celebrity, on its own terms, sells.
Didn't Andy Warhol have this figured out by about 1964?
166: Wait, how is capitalizing on your celebrity to sell a movie different from capitalizing on your celebrity to promote a TV show?
I don't really see lumping Lohan with the Kardashians. Lindsay modeled, did a ton of commercials, and actually had major roles in a number of mainstream movies. Obviously all that got derailed by addiction but it seems fundamentally different from Kardashian who basically just hung out with Paris Hilton and then released a sex tape.
192: And they named a bridge after him for it.
186, 192, 193 et al.:
Here is the difference as I see it in daily life. In the olden days (i.e., before about 2000), celebrities would have a lot of leverage with the studios and their primary concern was getting decent contracts with their studio. Ditto for recording artists/record companies. The reason was that celebrities were seen as the key marketing vehicle for films (or for records) These days, the studios and record companies pay extremely little and the celebrities have little leverage. The reason for this change is that there's simply less of the pie to go around, and the value of the celebrity in marketing the product has declined significantly. The response of a lot of artists has been to come up with a lot of more creative ways of monetizing their image. It's not like celebrity culture didn't exist before in some sense -- it's that figuring out creative ways to monetize your celebrity itself (as opposed to using celebrity to get juicy contracts from content providers) has now become a major financial force.
194: I was thinking of her mom and little sister. And I agree that Lindsay was relatively talented before her addictions brought the big top crashing down upon her. I find her story, much more than most of the other Behind-the-Music narrative arcs that we see unfolding on a daily basis, very sad.
186: I don't entirely understand how new this is. "Life Styles of the Rich and Famous" was on for years.
It's not like celebrity culture didn't exist before in some sense -- it's that figuring out creative ways to monetize your celebrity itself (as opposed to using celebrity to get juicy contracts from content providers) has now become a major financial force.
True enough. I can't help but notice that the most obvious practitioners -- Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin, Kim Kardashian -- aren't actually artists whose studios don't pay them enough. So we're in Stage 3 of your story: non-artists see $$$$ and run slobbering for it.
I've given it some thought, and have finally decided that I'm willing to publicly release a sex tape of myself in exchange for a few million dollars.
My parents won't be proud, I know.
You're an innie, urple? That is embarrassing.
200: urple, from some of the stories you've told about your Mom, I can't help but think that she might have been proud. I mean she brought a male escort to your wedding, right?
I am somewhat jealous of LB's ability to self-redact.
Sometimes I go back into the archives and change entire threads. Remember the Innocence thread? It's about bimetallism now.
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I'm finding this week beyond exhausting.
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Wow, that is a lot of self-redaction. I'm glad I read it when I did. Of course, I'll probably forget it within 48 hours, but still, this is why I refresh this blog like I do.
And now I'm exhausted AND curious.
LB has some questions about the effectiveness of her boss's management style. But she likes her boss and doesn't really think that it's worth the possible ill will that would like come of confronting her with these questions. Also, she linked to the sex tape she made with urple. You know, the usual.
There. Now you're up to speed. Feel free to delete this after you read it.
I'm just now sitting down to do all the work I would have gotten done in between meetings and teaching today except Hokey Pokey was with me, and no one is here to help me procrastinate? Cruel website.
211: after learning that urple is an innie, I stopped watching. So gross.
Also, the problem with this whole innie thing is that I originally meant outie, which is a belly button style I don't really appreciate when it's on the hoof. But now I'm locked into using innie instead. My commitment to my craft is astonishing, isn't it?
Now I'll never know why I woke up with a sore back.
You don't like outtie belly buttons on hooves, but you said innie by mistake, and in order to be true to yourself, you're sticking with that.
Did you shit-kit your baby yet, heebie? How is the Hokester?
We scooped the shit into three little vials of liquid, only knocked one of them over onto Jammies' pillow, and successfully dropped 2 1/2 little vials of shit-liquid off at the doctor!
Does cloven hooves refer to the belly button?
220 to 218.
Also, if Jammies didn't see the spill, just let him sleep on the pillow and see if he gets the runs. Probably cheaper than the lab.
I think the devil drives a coupe de ville.
just let him sleep on the pillow and see if he is furious at me when he gets the runs. pinkeye.
Also, how's your ruptured disk, Oudie?
Actually, Jammies gets pinkeye all the time, and is maniacal about washing his hands, and I find it hilarious that his eye doctor is totally condescending and really spells it out that Jammies shouldn't shit directly in his hands and then rub his face, and maybe even think about a bar of soap once in a while.
So when you sanitize the toilet seat at Chili's, you bring you eyes close enough to the bowl that the stronger germs can leap into your eye.
Is this descriptive or normative?
I don't even know where a Chili's is near me.
224: Better, I guess? I am not doing anything I was told to do (take to bed for 3 days wacked out on muscle relaxants and never pick up the baby), so we shall see.
225: I thought pink eye was staph, usually? Or sometimes viral, as when people with colds get it?
Because you took your glasses off during the process?
Huh, Jammies and I both have heard a running joke about farting on someone else's pillow to give them pink-eye, so I think we just assumed that was the primary source. According to the web, that doesn't seem to be so common.
That old joke. Sure, everyone has heard it.
233: Yeah, it's in Knocked Up, but I'd never heard of that vector before.
231: After my hernia surgery, I thought I would like sitting on the couch taking painkillers, but I got pretty restless pretty quickly.
Now periodically my scar hurts, and I fear it means Voldemort is near my crotch.
I still think it was in Knocked Up.
If you want to see it, try Knocked Up.
I think the next movie I see will be the end of Deathly Hallows when it hits Red Box.
239: Nor do I, but we actually went to see Page One in a theater tonight. A school night, no less! Sort of recommend it for anyone with the typical love/hate relationship with the NYT as long as you don't expect a lot from it other than a few peeks behind the scenes.
243: I saw that.
Oh, well, then you know all about it and what a terrible country it is. Nothing but desolate wastes and fierce beasts. And the poor little Oompa Loompas were so small and helpless, they would get gobbled up right and left. A Wangdoodle would eat ten of them for breakfast and think nothing of it. And so, I said, "Come and live with me in peace and safety, away from all the Wangdoodles, and Hornswogglers, and Snozzwangers, and rotten, Vermicious Knids."
Is that the one where R. W. Apple gets a prosthetic fin so he doesn't die?
39 42
Requesting Buck escort you might put him in an awkward position. If he is uncomfortable with you walking through the park he might not care to walk through it himself (though being a guy may be loath to admit it). And you would be doubling the exposure by requiring two trips through the park.
I find her story, much more than most of the other Behind-the-Music narrative arcs that we see unfolding on a daily basis, very sad.
I see a lot of this at work. I've got a stretch of area in my beat with several shady motels that's the last stop for broken lives from addiction. Like, crack addicts giving 20 dollar bj's broken. Took one girl to jail on Monday that's just starting to really gain the momentum into that final horrific descent. She's struggled with drugs for a few years, been arrested for fraud and such, but has some college, usually had an apartment, etc. Hadn't seen her in a bit and thought maybe she got clean. But she turned up at the worst of those dive motels. About 30 now and still looks fairly normal except that she's smoking so much crack I can see her hip bones through her shirt. Probably won't have all her teeth much longer. She went to a local credit union and tried to cash a check she wrote to herself from a checkbook she stole from a john.
Those really are all much sadder than the Kardashians.
Damn there's a lot of redaction in this thread.
I have come across another ridiculous name, but it is kinda-sorta identifying, i.e. even with google-proofing, if I wrote it here it would be more pseudonym-killing than I am comfortable with. Suffice it to say that it consists of two unusual names, fairly innocuous in and of themselves, which, when placed in proximity to each other, are extraordinarily suggestive of two terms for the female pudendum. The person afflicted with this name lives far enough out in the hinterlands that I wouldn't be surprised if most of her associates never make the connection.
Some of those are actually getting close. Not super close though, so you'll have to keep guessing.
Perhaps I can specify that only half the name resembles a slang term.
266 is moving more in the right direction.
First name's gotta be Regina, right?
It seems wrong to return to the original topic at this point, but what about taking the subway to 59th or 96th or 125th or whatever and then a taxi?
279: We used to call Jenny, our golden retriever, "Jenny Tailia."
231: you were handed a gold-plated excuse to spend three days in bed wacked out on muscle relaxers and you turned it down? that's crazy talk. wait, I'm working even though I put my back out and I've had a fever for like a week now, maybe I am not a font of wisdom in this respect. re: cartes de visite I suppose the slip of tissue was only there because my brother was showing me the stack, but still. now I'm just racking my brains as to what clever sketch/symbol can be used to represent flippanter. also I wonder what's wrong with LB's boss.
I'm not buying a horse from VW.
Good decision, they make cars.
I find her story, much more than most of the other Behind-the-Music narrative arcs that we see unfolding on a daily basis, very sad.
And she's back in gaol as of today.
I always miss the good stuff before it gets redacted. Still don't know what the legendary SEK thing was about. I'll just form all kinds of implausible crazy beliefs about LB in lieu of knowing what she wrote.
This wasn't anything amusing, I'm just not anonymous enough to bitch about work in any kind of detail.
Too late, I've already decided you're a masked vigilante who spends her nights frightening Wall Street plutocrats into giving every cent they have to charity.
I find her story, much more than most of the other Behind-the-Music narrative arcs that we see unfolding on a daily basis, very sad.
And now it's been redacted, so the world will never know the details.
290: those who are interested can email me at realfirstname.reallastname@gmail.com for a copy of the SEK thread. it is so, so worth it, though when it was unfolding in real time it was obviously way more hilarious/making you wonder if SEK was going to get shot in the face. I guess you'll have to figure out my s33kr1t identity though. my alameida email is bouncing back...
How about a rebus for "flip and tear"?
An acrobatic ant with ears?
