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Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Monday, June 27, 2005
A Poem by James Wright: Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota
One of my favorite poems by James Wright, a powerhouse mid 20th century American Poet.
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
- James Wright
---o0o---
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
- James Wright
---o0o---
My Worst Jobs No. 5 - Design Insanity - Hype, Shuck, and Jive In The Dot-Com Years
Design Intelligence was formed in the middle of the dot-com boom. D.I. was something of an anomaly in that dot-com bubble. . .software was blase. Everyone was doing a dot.com, and if you weren't, well, you and your company were schlubs. Even the most gossamer and flimsy crackpot schemes were nailing down fat first and second rounds of serious capitalization. Some of the kookiest web sites were even going public (like the sock monkey site and a web site that sold dog food). People were streaming into Seattle faster than in the Yukon gold rush of '97.
Design Intelligence was a well-funded startup poised to create a Pagemaker-slayer. It would be the first commercial software with a web-based browser interface. Design Intelligence
had serious artistic underpinnings; they liked to think of D.I. as a heroic foray by artists into real software. A lot of time and money was spent nailing down patent rights to the underlying technology. A lot of time and $$$ was spent on green crystals [1] and the U.I. while the guts of the project languished. Between securing patents, trademarks, and copyrights, and mounting a glitzy and facile marketing campaign, people sort of forgot about the software we were supposed to create.
On the face of it, the software was exciting because it used "design intelligence" to create good looking print and web pages. The user did not have to be a designer. We did all the thinking for you and then formatted your input into a gorgeous document! It looked like a license to print money. I wanted on the gravy train.
Working there combined a bunch of things I liked: art and photos, typography, book and document making, publishing, story-telling, internet linkage, and software. In the end, the designers and powers that be decided we couldn't do all the thinking for you, and rather than doing the designing for you, we reverted to the old dreaded mode of garbage in, garbage out. . .e.g., if you didn't know what you were doing, your output might look terrible. This is exactly what happed like SALSA!, it was impossible to protect the end user from themselves (without spending a lot more money), although the marketing blather never told you that. Because you could not protect end users from themselves, it became a power users tool and anyone less than a power user would just have to pound sand. Alas, the power users who could create gems with iPublish wouldn't use it; it didn't have the power user features they needed because it was designed to be used the average Joe.
The enterprise was shrouded in a mantle of secrecy. There were paper shredders all over the place. I remember specifically being urged not to discuss anything with my family.
My nominal boss was reluctant to hire me (wisely as it turned out for him). But I wanted in and I called them, and emailed them and "pinged" them daily. They finally relented. I took a huge pay cut, and jumped from being a senior manager at a public company to an individual contributor role in a startup. I was stuck in a dark room with two other bizarre testers and one normal one (Mark Ferkingstad).
It wasn't long before I realized it was all a cheap facade. Once you stepped behind the painted stage flats, they were inventing it as they stumbled ahead. The people who weren't just blowhards were locked into seriously delusional thinking.
They built the company using every bad consultant, corporate leech, huckster and flim-flam man you'd ever met. They talked about who knew whom, regaling each other with past war stories and blew smoke up each others asses until they all believed they were about to change the world. It was an exercise in mass delusion . . . guys pulling down six figures dropped by a couple days a week to pontificate about typography, or about their multi-tiered marketing scheme. vPeople smelled money and everyone was searching for their piece of the pie. The rest of us hoped to get through it, and maybe even cash in some of our modest stock options, if we ever did succeed in pulling it off (which was still up in the air). It was not easy to drink the Kool-aid tm.
Everyone was half as smart as they thought they were, and in particular, me. I had walked away from another project with many of the same delusions and organizational insanities. I couldn't see the handwriting on the wall; I didn't want to see it. So I hopped on board.
As is often the case in a startup with grand plans, there was not nearly enough money to accomplish what we set out to do. So they decided to put out something that would pretty much work, and really make it good in version 2 (Software Startup Delusion No. 5). Version 1 either so damages your reputation so badly that you can't possibly recover, or it it stiffs and you are left with no money.
I bailed right after they released Version 1. DI offered more stock, money, and a promotion two bumps up the ladder. It was like being handed the helm of The Titantic an hour after they hit the iceberg. It was everything I wanted, a year too late and with no possibility of changing anything. I headed for greener pastures.
[1] OXYDOL: Detergent w/ green crystals. One of our marketing people at SALSA often told the story of Oxydol...a detergent that sold poorly until they added those famous green crystals. The green crystals had nothing to do with laundering clothing...they were nothing but some harmless material colored bright green. We had to be ever alert for our own green crystals. I never actually heard the marketing guys ask for or think about features in i-Publish. They just wanted to identify the presence of green crystals and then flog them in the marketing materials.
---o0o---
Design Intelligence was a well-funded startup poised to create a Pagemaker-slayer. It would be the first commercial software with a web-based browser interface. Design Intelligence
had serious artistic underpinnings; they liked to think of D.I. as a heroic foray by artists into real software. A lot of time and money was spent nailing down patent rights to the underlying technology. A lot of time and $$$ was spent on green crystals [1] and the U.I. while the guts of the project languished. Between securing patents, trademarks, and copyrights, and mounting a glitzy and facile marketing campaign, people sort of forgot about the software we were supposed to create.
On the face of it, the software was exciting because it used "design intelligence" to create good looking print and web pages. The user did not have to be a designer. We did all the thinking for you and then formatted your input into a gorgeous document! It looked like a license to print money. I wanted on the gravy train.
Working there combined a bunch of things I liked: art and photos, typography, book and document making, publishing, story-telling, internet linkage, and software. In the end, the designers and powers that be decided we couldn't do all the thinking for you, and rather than doing the designing for you, we reverted to the old dreaded mode of garbage in, garbage out. . .e.g., if you didn't know what you were doing, your output might look terrible. This is exactly what happed like SALSA!, it was impossible to protect the end user from themselves (without spending a lot more money), although the marketing blather never told you that. Because you could not protect end users from themselves, it became a power users tool and anyone less than a power user would just have to pound sand. Alas, the power users who could create gems with iPublish wouldn't use it; it didn't have the power user features they needed because it was designed to be used the average Joe.
The enterprise was shrouded in a mantle of secrecy. There were paper shredders all over the place. I remember specifically being urged not to discuss anything with my family.
My nominal boss was reluctant to hire me (wisely as it turned out for him). But I wanted in and I called them, and emailed them and "pinged" them daily. They finally relented. I took a huge pay cut, and jumped from being a senior manager at a public company to an individual contributor role in a startup. I was stuck in a dark room with two other bizarre testers and one normal one (Mark Ferkingstad).
It wasn't long before I realized it was all a cheap facade. Once you stepped behind the painted stage flats, they were inventing it as they stumbled ahead. The people who weren't just blowhards were locked into seriously delusional thinking.
They built the company using every bad consultant, corporate leech, huckster and flim-flam man you'd ever met. They talked about who knew whom, regaling each other with past war stories and blew smoke up each others asses until they all believed they were about to change the world. It was an exercise in mass delusion . . . guys pulling down six figures dropped by a couple days a week to pontificate about typography, or about their multi-tiered marketing scheme. vPeople smelled money and everyone was searching for their piece of the pie. The rest of us hoped to get through it, and maybe even cash in some of our modest stock options, if we ever did succeed in pulling it off (which was still up in the air). It was not easy to drink the Kool-aid tm.
Everyone was half as smart as they thought they were, and in particular, me. I had walked away from another project with many of the same delusions and organizational insanities. I couldn't see the handwriting on the wall; I didn't want to see it. So I hopped on board.
As is often the case in a startup with grand plans, there was not nearly enough money to accomplish what we set out to do. So they decided to put out something that would pretty much work, and really make it good in version 2 (Software Startup Delusion No. 5). Version 1 either so damages your reputation so badly that you can't possibly recover, or it it stiffs and you are left with no money.
I bailed right after they released Version 1. DI offered more stock, money, and a promotion two bumps up the ladder. It was like being handed the helm of The Titantic an hour after they hit the iceberg. It was everything I wanted, a year too late and with no possibility of changing anything. I headed for greener pastures.
[1] OXYDOL: Detergent w/ green crystals. One of our marketing people at SALSA often told the story of Oxydol...a detergent that sold poorly until they added those famous green crystals. The green crystals had nothing to do with laundering clothing...they were nothing but some harmless material colored bright green. We had to be ever alert for our own green crystals. I never actually heard the marketing guys ask for or think about features in i-Publish. They just wanted to identify the presence of green crystals and then flog them in the marketing materials.
---o0o---
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Bomb Shelters, Inc.
click the card to enlarge
When I was growing up, people were building fallout shelters everywhere, although I never actually saw one. The poor folks in the valley just didn't build them. But, up on the hill, you heard about people actually building them in their houses. At the very least, a lot of them were, as my friend Kevin Curran once said "sandbagging the jam closet."
---o0o---
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Woohoo! Let Their Breasts Swing Free!
Workers at the Dept. of Justice have removed the blue drapes covering the "naughty parts" of the aluminum statues at the Department of Justice.
The Spirit of Justice, with her one--quite attractive--breast exposed, and the shirtless male Majesty of Law, are finally freed from Attorney General Asscraft's fig leaves.
The drapes were installed 3 1/2 years ago--at a cost of $8,000--because former Attorney General Aschcroft (a fundamentalist prig) lived in fear he might be photographed with a winsome breast peeking over his shoulder, as he indeed was in this early photograph.
---o0o---
Friday, June 24, 2005
The Twins: August & Althea Back To Back
click photo to enlarge... Photograph by Del Brummet June 20, 2005
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Democrats Demand That White House Adviser Karl Rove Apologize Or Resign For Accusing Liberals Of Wanting “Therapy And Understanding” For Terrorists
click image to enlarge
Go here to read the full article on MS-NBC. Save the apology, Karl, just resign. . .
---o0o---
If Congress Wants To F*** With The Constitution, Repeal The Second Amendment
click to enlarge
The House of Representatives today approved an ill-conceived measure giving Congress the power to ban desecration of the American flag. They debated whether this would impinge on the Constitution's free-speech protections and decided it would not.
These attempts to protect "Old Glory" go as far back as 1984, when a flag was burned outside the Republican convention in Dallas. Five years later, in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that a Texas law outlawing flag burning violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech. It came to a vote again in 1995. It always passes the House, and gets hung up in The Senate.
The Senate has defeated the bill previously (narrowly), but this year. . .who knows? We may get the 28th amendment. I don't actually know if it can be challenged in court before it is enacted.
It's not popular with the Republican stormfront, but flag desecration is protected speech and legitimate expression (referring again to the 1989 decision by The Supremes). It's an unhealthy sign that we want to ban it. Someone needs to remind our knuckle-dragging Congress that the flag is a symbol; a symbol of us--We The People. And We The People are strong enough to watch a symbol take a little abuse.
If Congress wants to amend the Constitution, they should repeal the second amendment. The proposed 28th amendment is good for nothing except as salve for our bruised and misdirected jingoistic pride. Attention Gun Nuts: don't write, telling me how many lives guns save. If you want to use your gun, try it out on the man in the mirror.
---o0o---
Camille Paglia Is Right Again: Joni Mitchell Is A Poet
The poetry "community" has been debating whether Camille Paglia's elevation of Joni into the pantheon is legitimate. Yeah, it's weird, but poets and scholars debate things like this. Like most controversies in the community, it is a tempest in a teapot. Joni Mitchell writes better poetry than virtually everyone involved in the debate. There are dozens of examples, and here is one of many. Case closed. The Jungle Line is laid down on a foundation of Burundi warrior drums, a warped bass line and Joni's amazingly biting and weird lyric.
The Jungle Line
Rousseau walks on trumpet paths
Safaris to the heart of all that jazz
Through I-bars and girders, through wires and pipes
The mathematic circuits of the modern nights
Through huts, through Harlem, through jails and gospel pews
Through the class on Park and the trash on Vine
Through Europe and the deep deep heart of Dixie blue
Through savage progress cuts the jungle line
In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer
Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear
Those cannibals-of shuck and jive
They'll eat a working girl like her alive
With his hard-edged eye and his steady hand
He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines
And he hangs a moon above a five-piece band
He hangs it up above the jungle line
The jungle line, the jungle line
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
Coy and bitchy, wild and fine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
Charging, chanting down the jungle line
There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
Poppy poison-poppy tourniquet
It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
And metal skin and ivory birds
Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line
---o0o---
The Jungle Line
Rousseau walks on trumpet paths
Safaris to the heart of all that jazz
Through I-bars and girders, through wires and pipes
The mathematic circuits of the modern nights
Through huts, through Harlem, through jails and gospel pews
Through the class on Park and the trash on Vine
Through Europe and the deep deep heart of Dixie blue
Through savage progress cuts the jungle line
In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer
Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear
Those cannibals-of shuck and jive
They'll eat a working girl like her alive
With his hard-edged eye and his steady hand
He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines
And he hangs a moon above a five-piece band
He hangs it up above the jungle line
The jungle line, the jungle line
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
Coy and bitchy, wild and fine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
Charging, chanting down the jungle line
There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
Poppy poison-poppy tourniquet
It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
And metal skin and ivory birds
Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line
---o0o---
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
The Only Joke I Know By Heart
A Texas business man came to Japan for business meetings, and, of course, golf. His first night in Tokyo, he employed the services of a beautiful young Japanese woman as his companion. The Japanese girl spoke only broken English and the businessman spoke no Japanese. They got down to business, and, in the heat of the moment, she began yelling "Ungawa! Ungawa!"
The businessman knew he had pleased his female friend and soon afterwards drifted off to sleep.
The next day, playing golf with his Japanese colleagues, one of them hit a hole in one from 170 yards away. Everyone went nuts and began yelling excitedly in Japanese.
Wanting to impress his friends, the Texan joined in and began yelling, "Ungawa! Ungawa!"
Suddenly everyone became quiet. After a moment of silence, one of the Japanese turned to him and asked "What do you mean wrong hole?"
---o0o---
The businessman knew he had pleased his female friend and soon afterwards drifted off to sleep.
The next day, playing golf with his Japanese colleagues, one of them hit a hole in one from 170 yards away. Everyone went nuts and began yelling excitedly in Japanese.
Wanting to impress his friends, the Texan joined in and began yelling, "Ungawa! Ungawa!"
Suddenly everyone became quiet. After a moment of silence, one of the Japanese turned to him and asked "What do you mean wrong hole?"
---o0o---
I'm 18 And I Vote!
It was thirty-five years ago today that President Richard Nixon signed the 26th amendment to the constitution, lowering the voting age to 18. I was able to take advantage of it in 1972, and vote for George McGovern for President, the first in a long string of half-baked candidates my beloved party would offer up for my delectation.
---o0o---
---o0o---
List No. 7: The Fifty Most Frequently Shoplifted Items
This is a real headscratcher...the Food Marketing Institute’s list of the most frequently shoplifted supermarket items. I thought wine and steaks would be right up there...it looks like when people's hearts turn to larceny, they head right for the pharmacy department...
Most Frequently Shoplifted Items in Rank Order
Product Name
Advil tablet 50 ct
Advil tablet 100 ct
Aleve caplet 100 ct
EPT Pregnancy Test single
Gillette Sensor 10 ct
Kodak 200 24 exp]
Similac w/iron powder - case
Similac w/iron powder - single can
Preparation H 12 ct
Primatene tablet 24 ct
Sudafed caplet 24 ct
Tylenol caplet 100 ct
Advil caplet 100 ct
Aleve caplet 50 ct
Correctol tablet 60 ct
Excedrin tablet 100 ct
Gillette Sensor/Excel 10 ct
Gillette Sensor 15 ct
Monistat 3
Preparation H Ointment 1 oz
Similac w/iron concentrate 13 oz
Tavist-D decongestant tablet 16 ct
Trojan ENZ 12 ct
Tylenol gelcap 50 ct
Tylenol gelcap 100 ct
Tylenol tablet 100 ct
Vagistat 1
Advil caplet 50 ct Advil gelcap 50 ct
Advil gelcap 24 ct
Advil tablet 50 ct Aleve tablet 50 ct
Anacin tablet 100 ct
Centrum tablet 60 ct DayQuil liquicaps 20 ct
Dimetap tablet 12 ct
Duracell AA 4 pk
Ecotrin tablet 100 ct
Ecotrin tablet 60 ct
Energizer AA 4 pk
Excedrin tablet 50 ct Femstat 3 app
Gillette Atra 10 ct
Gyne-Lotrimin 3 app
Monistat 7
Motrin caplet 50 ct
Motrin tablet 24 ct
Oil of Olay 4 oz
Preparation H Ointment 2 oz
Schick Tracer FX 10 ct Gillette Sensor/Women 10 ct
Sudafed tablet 24 ct
Visine drops 1 oz
---o0o---
Most Frequently Shoplifted Items in Rank Order
Product Name
Advil tablet 50 ct
Advil tablet 100 ct
Aleve caplet 100 ct
EPT Pregnancy Test single
Gillette Sensor 10 ct
Kodak 200 24 exp]
Similac w/iron powder - case
Similac w/iron powder - single can
Preparation H 12 ct
Primatene tablet 24 ct
Sudafed caplet 24 ct
Tylenol caplet 100 ct
Advil caplet 100 ct
Aleve caplet 50 ct
Correctol tablet 60 ct
Excedrin tablet 100 ct
Gillette Sensor/Excel 10 ct
Gillette Sensor 15 ct
Monistat 3
Preparation H Ointment 1 oz
Similac w/iron concentrate 13 oz
Tavist-D decongestant tablet 16 ct
Trojan ENZ 12 ct
Tylenol gelcap 50 ct
Tylenol gelcap 100 ct
Tylenol tablet 100 ct
Vagistat 1
Advil caplet 50 ct Advil gelcap 50 ct
Advil gelcap 24 ct
Advil tablet 50 ct Aleve tablet 50 ct
Anacin tablet 100 ct
Centrum tablet 60 ct DayQuil liquicaps 20 ct
Dimetap tablet 12 ct
Duracell AA 4 pk
Ecotrin tablet 100 ct
Ecotrin tablet 60 ct
Energizer AA 4 pk
Excedrin tablet 50 ct Femstat 3 app
Gillette Atra 10 ct
Gyne-Lotrimin 3 app
Monistat 7
Motrin caplet 50 ct
Motrin tablet 24 ct
Oil of Olay 4 oz
Preparation H Ointment 2 oz
Schick Tracer FX 10 ct Gillette Sensor/Women 10 ct
Sudafed tablet 24 ct
Visine drops 1 oz
---o0o---
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
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