For Sean

I just came across this: http://www.danschawbel.com/personalbranding.htm

And if you read even the first 2 paragraphs you will swear it is an article from the Onion or an SNL skit. But its not, apparently Dan Schawbel, "personal branding expert for gen-y" is a real person with a real service.

In addition to being immediately exhausted by Mr. Schawbel's existence, the site made me think of Sean and a game we used to play decades ago when we were right out of college and living the high life as a ubiquitous yet totally amorphous consultant we used to play a game called Consultant Bingo (yeah yeah, lots of people did just I only played it with Sean). This game (at least between us) really just entailed being vigilantly on the look out for the inane consulting jargon that was infesting even the smartest and most well intentioned of people.

When we came across such nonsensical verbiage we would, in our heads of course, yell bingo and then would email the nonsense to each other. It was really a way of making sure neither of us actually drank the cool aid and succumbed to the paradigm shift of wasting our bandwidth on inside the box thinking. BINGO

Anyway, back to Dan Schwabel, just for a moment. Read the first two paragraphs of his web site and see if you can figure out what this guy is pedaling. He uses about 300 words and so far as I can tell says precisely nothing. Its brilliantly vapid and my guess is that he is actually making money personally branding gen-yers.

It of course saddens me to think that gen-yers (whoever the heck they are) feel the need to create a persona for themselves instead of just actually being themselves. That they believe that Dan Schawbel can craft a better version of them then they actually can just by being whoever it is they really are. But then again how successful can someone who's self proclaimed Major Accomplishment is having interviewed Philip Rosedale and Gina Bianchini. Who are they you might ask? I have no idea but I bet the are very adept at facilitating collaboration among information architects. BINGO

In case you were wondering, I do find the idea of a personal brand somewhat intriguing . . . in a purely for entertainment not in a for profit sort of way. If you had to come up with a marketing slogan for yourself what would it be . . . today ; )

The Nutter is Back

Ok so long story short, the wife of ESPN Sports Writer Bill Simmons gets a mini column of her own in the middle of his weekly NFL pick column. It is approximately 500 words of pure random hilarity. She is literally one of the funniest people I have ever read, not met, would love to meet.

Anyway, her mini column appears in Simmons' column every Friday. I missed last week's entirely and caught this past week's late. So, here are the past two week's columns:

NOTE: you can find the Nutter's column in the right hand side about halfway down the page. They call it "Sports Gal's Rant" but she never really talks about sports and although it is often times a rant they completely missed the fact that she's delightfully insane, so I just go with The Nutter.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/080904

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/080912

Enjoy!


Nichole usually provides me with her favorite lines of each post but she's pretty busy this fall so in case kingergarden trumps liesure blog reading . . .

In case you were wondering, here are The Nutter's weekly gems:

Week 1: "There should be a fantasy handicap that works like golf handicaps. Bill writes about sports so he should have a minus-5 handicap. Someone unemployed should be a minus-10 (BTW, I have no idea how golf handicaps work)."

Week 2: "Pursuers plan Vegas weekends or baby showers; pursuees just show up."

Lists, I Love Lists

Wanna know if your city has one of the Top 10 Worst Commutes?

According to a study conducted by the Texas Transportation Instititue, which examined the fuel and time commuters waste because of congestion, overall traffic congestion wastes 2.9 billion gallons of fuel and 4.2 billion hours.

So, wanna know where your commute ranks:
http://climate.weather.com/articles/gotgas2008a.html?page=2


While we're at it, how about the 25 best places to find affordable houses near the water and other desirable activities: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/moneymag/0809/gallery.bpretire_affhomes.moneymag/index.html

Some of the places seem like viable options. North Augusta, SC seems rather delightful in fact. That said, the fact that a Human Pyramid on water skies or proximity to Jackson, MS are listed as high points makes me question that these folks really share my definition of entertainment and culture.


In case you were wondering, yes I find the photos selected in that Top 10 list to be exceedingly odd and somewhat horrifying. Not that accidents don't cause congestion but they certainly aren't the day to day reason behind it and regardless I don't think photos of grisly car accidents are necessary.

September 11th

There is nothing and everything to say about this day. I have my thoughts and feelings and I am guessing you have yours. And honestly I can't really find a way to express myself. Everything starts to sound trite, or preachy, or maudlin, or melodramatic. So, I decided not to say anything.

So, you might wonder why I would even bother with a post today . . . when, on so many other days that I have nothing to say I just wantonly abandon the blog. Well I guess the one thing I do have to say about today is that it is September 11th and that should always matter. It should always be noted. . . in whatever way you want to note it.

Me personally, I'll note it a few ways today. One of which will be a visit to the newly opened Pentagon Memorial: http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/2008/0708_memorial/index.html

If you happen to live in the DC area or are gonna come by for a visit some time you might want to add this to your list of sights - I wouldn't pack it in with a visit to the Holocaust museum or The Wall but perhaps after some paddle boating around the Jefferson and a wander through Air and Space.

Anyway, it opens to the public tonight at 7pm and will be open henceforth 24/7.

In case you were wondering other things happened on 9/11, and they were good things. Namely JB and my Uncle Frank were born today.

Success?

So the mouse is dead. I caved and got a trap that kills and it did the trick. Dead mouse, check.

In other news, I finally joined Facebook. I finally realized after yet another get together with friends I thought I was in touch with that there is this whole other level of "in touchedness" that I am not part of. But like it or not Facebook is slowly killing off such totally useful but now obsolete things like email, IM, and cell phones. All the ways we used to keep in touch are now secondary, dare I say tertiary, to Facebook. And b/c I like keeping up with my friends and seeing pictures of Chandler's first day of kindergarden, I joined. Sheep, lemming, in touchedness, check.

That's all for now. . . I have to go count my friends and figure out what the heck Mob Wars is.

In Response to a Comment

So, I actually do read the comments you guys leave . . . I love them actually. They make me feel like I have sort of hung out with you a bit, like we sort of had a conversation and touched base.

ANYWAY, Dave's recent comment about sponsoring a competition to build/design a humane mouse removal system made me laugh because it reminded me of one of my favorite stories about one of my favorite people. Let's call this favorite person of mine Dot. .

Approximately 50 yrs ago when I was in college, I took a wood working/sculpture art class. Dot . . was in the class with me and we had the greatest, hippy dippy pot head, free spirited, prof on the planet. I am pretty sure her name was Willow or Pond Frond or something like that. She really might have been the very definition of "Art Professor at a Liberal Arts College" . . . only maybe more so if it were circa 1972 and we were at Berkley. But whatever you get my drift, she saw beauty in everything and applauded all effort regardless of talent.

Well, one of our assignments was to build a trap. In her free spirited way she didn't define the assignment any more clearly that that. As you can imagine this made me nearly apoplectic and made Dot . . just ignore the assignment. So a few weeks went by and on presentation day Dot . . appeared in class frazzled and holding what sort of resembled a mini McDonalds constructed out of scrap wood and covered in still wet paint. The ensuing conversation when something like this:

me: what is that?
Dot.. : a mouse trap.
me: it sort of looks like a McDonalds
Dot.. : it is. its a McDonalds mouse trap
me: how does it trap mice?
Dot.. : they smell the delicious fries, come through the front doors and get trapped b/c the doors only open inwards.
Dot.. : shut up
me: and who's making the fries in there? other mean spirited mice? i mean you can't fit a cat in there.
Dot.. : shut up

The greatest part of this story is that Willow Pond Frond completely overlooked the fact that there was a drive thru (let alone a staff of hair netted misanthropic mice) thereby completely negating any sort of effective trapping and gave Dot . . an A on the assignment.

So, Dave the most humane of all mouse traps has already been designed. I just need to staff it with meanie mice, teach them how to make fries, and put a mini pylon cone in the drive thru, and I am all set.

In case you were wondering, my trap was the Corporate Trap. It consisted of a business suit and button up shirt purchased at Goodwill that I converted into a straight jacket. It was my short lived rebellion against grown ups asking me what I was going to do after college.

Arguably the best trap was crafted by a female classmate who dragged a lazy boy recliner into the art studio, put a cooler of beer and a bag of chips next to it and surrounded the whole thing with a shower curtain covered in taped up pictures of Victoria Secret and Sport Illustrated Swim Suit models. She called it, The Man Trap.

Metaphors

I recently learned where the term Humble Pie came from and its gross. Not as gross as that guy's butt cut-mustashe combo but close.

The term comes from "umbles pie", umbles being the innards or leftover parts of cows, sheep, goat, whathaveyou. So umbles were what was left over after all the good stuff went to the rich folk. Ergo, someone who was "eating umbles pie" was so po they had to eat icky leftover parts.

Some how in the olden days, eating left over remnant animal parts was humbling. Today you'd pay $6 for the tubular equivalent at a ball park and feel all American pastimey about it.

Humble Pie is also a band from the 1970s . . .


In case you were wondering, it is definitely a mouse eating my maters. I found wee little poops on the stove the other night (this definitely rules Kelly out). It is also apparently on steroids, because despite the placement of a rather heavy (by mouse terms of course, I mean their arms are like a half inch long) ceramic plate the pest got into the tomatoes and ate half of one leaving the rest to goo out all over the others.

I have still not entirely warmed to the mouse trap idea but I'm getting there.