Dallas Dreaming

Seeing as i'm in a Dallas hotel room, doing nothing, I figured I might as well check in. As uncle Rico said, "I might as well do something, while i'm doing nothing". Working out was an option, but flying 3 hours seems to suck the life out of you. Even with two episodes of Naruto to keep you company.

This book idea is becoming a significantly imposing task. I realize that I'm going to definitely have to change my habits. Unfortunately this may mean postponing my goal to be 'king of all media.' I will definitely have to get more disciplined about chucking books that take a million years to get into. I simply won't have the time.

Take the Calvino book for example. I'm reading it now, even though I can only take about 10 pages at at a time. Unfortunately, it just saps all the energy out of me. Its almost like it contains a small sedative. Maybe my brain is just slowly turning to mush. It might be time for the generalist to go back to school.

P.S. Airline food, is still nothing to sing home about. Even in the front of the plane. Just so you know.

P.P.S. Starship Troopers is a criminally underrated movie. For pseudo social-commentary, it definitely gets the job done.

Quotables

I save quotes I enjoy for a slow posting period...I'm currently in one of my longest with no end in sight.

This one comes from someone whom I would deem as a kindred spirit for my boy because I think my boy is on his way to rocking pink capri pants just like C-Po. If you couldn't tell, I love this quote especially because I imagine how he would say it among his boys.

"To live like I ain't never lived before. If y'all see me in the news, and I make the news for something that I ain't got no business making it for, don't bash me. Say it was a young guy living." - Redskins Running Back Clinton Portis, on his plans for the off-season


And this one, well this is one of the most gangsta lines I've ever heard, both in terms of content and cadence. Context: Bernie Miklasz wrote that he was disturbed by "infighting and politics" within the St. Louis Rams organization, and said executives owe any head coach their support. "Be it [Mike] Martz or another man, I don't care who sits in the head coach's office at Rams Park. The head coach should be backed, not back-stabbed, by associates," Miklasz wrote.

Samir Suleiman, a Rams team executive, responded with a voicemail to Miklasz.

If this were a rhyme, the flow is as sick as the lyrics:

"Tell your source that I'm not a back-stabber, I'm a [expletive] throat slasher, and he'll know the difference before it's all said and done."

Gangsta...its in competition with Q's nasty quote.

hurricane coverage

...of course its friday night, and the generalist is sitting in a hotel room enjoying the best of hurricane rita coverage. ahh, the joy that is my life...

If it wasn't for Diana Taurasi giving me vitamin water (3) in my hotel elevator, Dikembe Mutombo saying hello to me walking down the hall, and the Kenneth Cole saleswoman being exceptionally nice to me in Georgetown, today might have been a wash....

quote

"I'm curious about everything. Even the things I'm not interested in" - Alex Trebek

Now I'm extremely frustrated. I just missed the fucking season premiere of Lost, after working a 15 hour day. Damn. Maker's Mark Whiskey time.

Instead of packing

Instead of packing for a 7 day marathon trip, I've decided to procrastinate just a bit longer, by writing about the future of work. Wherever I go, it seems like everybody is talking about The World is Flat. Although the hype is dying down a little bit, it semed like every meeting I attended, every policy student, and every garden variety news magazine was either hyping it as the second coming, or trashing it for being inexplicably redundant. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but there was something that caught my eye.

In describing the worker of the future, Friedman mentions four categories of people who should do okay in the new millenium. Everybody else is pretty much fucked. Your job will be in either India, China, or Eastern Europe in 20 years. The four categories are:

1. Special - Workers who are special are people like Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, and Barbra Streisand. They have a global market for their goods and services and command global-sized pay packages. Their jobs can never be outsourced.
2. Specialized - Lawyers, Accountnts, and brain surgeons. Their skills are in high demand and are not fungible (substitutable).
   
3. Anchored - Jobs that must be done in a specific location, involving face-to-face contact with a customer, client, patient, or audience (barbers, chefs, plumbers, nurses, electircians, cleaning folks, etc.)
4. Adaptable - Friedman, says this is the category you really don't want to be in. But if you can't get the first three, this one will work (albeit barely). "You want to constantly acquire new skills, knowledge, and expertise that enable you to constantly create value... Being adapatable in a flat world, knowing how to "learn how to learn, " will be one of the most important assets any worker can have, because job churn will come faster, and innovation will happen faster". Guess what category generalists are in?
   

Book Idea

I've been playing around with the idea of reading a book a week for a year. The plan probably won't go into effect into the beginning of January 2006, so you've got time to get into reading workout shape. Yes, I'm talking about you. Although I can't say this is a totally original idea (see exhibit 1, exhibit 2), it isn't a bad one. I would definitely have to sacrifice a couple things in my life to get it done (probably video games, around the horn/pti, and some sleep), but I think it's worth it.

Last year, I read 13 books (which is a far, far cry from 52), but I've read 6 in two months, so I'm starting to get back into fighting shape. Ayn Rand really slowed me down last year (Atlas Shrugged - 1100 pages). I mean, 20 pages of single paragraph small text, of straight laced polemics about the evils of identity politics, will do that to you. Getting through that, should really count for 4 books of my favorite genre, sociology lite: (see Blink, The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds, The Paradox of Choice, Freaknomics, for examples).

But enough excuses, we'll see if I have the balls to pull this off. By the way, if you aren't listening to Sufjan Stevens, you should be...

Motivation Number: 9/15/2005 .81% [oh yeah, you're looking right. that number did drop from 1.09, although, if i get this t-mobile sidekick it might inch up a little bit]

Pervasive Insanity

I've come across some crazy stuff recently - given recent events I'm sure we all have - a lot of it concerning the Gulf Coast tragedy. To that point, I picked out two things that particularly caught my attention.

According to this Washington Post article, "Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved. About two in three Republicans rated the federal government's response as good or excellent, while two in three Democrats rated it not so good or poor." WHAT???

Come on folks, I understand one's natural instinct to paint "one's side" in the best way possible, but let's get real. When I brought this up to The Generalist, which was almost a week ago so you can guess those results particularly bother me mostly because of how it tells about human nature, I believe we summed it up well. Paraphrased: I don't see how anyone can honestly say that 5 days - 5 long damn days (see the K-Otix track below) - is a reasonable amount of time for people in the most prosperous country in the world to receive critical services. Truth is truth, man, regardless of your affiliation. The Generalist could have been running the recovery efforts and I would have said the same thing.


As crazy as that was to me, we now venture into the unfathomable. In Tim Keown's "The List" article, he gives short blurbs, some literal some tongue-in-cheek, about the recent happenings in the sports world. I have nothing against the Williams sisters but they just happened to be my attention grabbers for the week...from the article:

• Serena, apparently, is the newshound of the family: Asked to comment about Hurricane Katrina while at the U.S. Open, Venus Williams said, "I don't really watch the news. In some ways, I'm very unaware of the latest happenings in the world."

Ummm...what??!?!?!??!? This is the biggest news story since 9/11. Can you imagine someone saying they hadn't really heard much about 9/11? Was she really saying that she knew so little about it that she couldn't even give the typical, "it's a horrible situation down there...my heart goes out to them...etc"??? Even if her actual answer is correct, and there are plenty of folks who don't stay up on the news (say, kids engrossed in the college bubble), I just think she could have said something. That goes for most anybody not just Venus Williams.

But what's crazier to me is Venus' response given her SISTER, Serena, who she PLAYED in the U.S. Open, promised to donate $100 for each ace she served the rest of the year. In all seriousness, if Venus is able to isolate herself that well from the surrounding world, I need to shadow her and learn...and learn well.

On another note, given Serena's performances recently, I don't think there is too much variance (any?) between her contribution and mine.

Weekend Preview

Firstly, while I very much enjoy the track provided by the co-con in the previous post, K-Otix - George Bush Don't Like Black People, I definitely feel I should use this space to push my mans Woo Child track, "Guilty." While K-Otix takes a sincere, but more lighthearted approach, Woo Child approaches it from the first person perspective of President Bush (who currently has an approval rating of 39%! - you do realize the election was only 10 months ago). As Woo said himself, he wants people to hear the track for the track's sake and not to hear him, as its "Bush's punk ass" speaking not him. I feel that.

You can check the track out at Woo Child's website, and here is the direct mp3 link.


If you are a sports fan, this is a good weekend - a lot of big names involved. Its currently early afternoon on the East Coast and you currently have Notre Dame vs. Michigan, Red Sox vs. Yankees (yes, overexposed at this point, pre-playoffs), and the event I hope you have not slept on, the U.S. Open Men's Semifinals - the men's side has been great great great tennis. Texas plays Ohio State tonight and of course, tomorrow is the open of Sunday NFL Football. It looks like your boy won't have to spend money on entertainment this weekend.


Most importantly:

Mom, I hope you have a wonderful day today. September 10 is synonymous with you. Taking a cue from this post, I Love You.

cartoon...

Check this out. My favorite song of the moment. It's a fitting tribute to the worst president in modern American history. Jimmy Carter is nipping at his heels, but i'm giving it to Georgie in a close one. At least Jimmy didn't get two terms...

K-Otix - George Bush Don't Like Black People

Hurricane Katrina

As the country tries to regain some sense of normalcy after this terrible tragedy, it's important to remember just how short life can be. Tell somebody you care about that you love them...

The Kanye link for those who haven't seen it.

Where's The Good News?

Not to push back the previous post which I believe holds much lasting power but damn folks, is there any good news???

Hurricane Katrina - Belabored enough, or actually - incredibly, maybe not enough really, but today's development...a hot damn SNIPER??? WHAT? I mean given all the circumstances someone found it in their best interest to snipe down folks. I suppose that anyone who has a disposition to be a casual sniper in the first place may not really give two cents about the terrible situation but ummm...I don't know...just hard for me to fathom.

And while it is obviously horrible for a hurricane to devastate any area, if there was ever a worse place, I think it would be New Orleans - given its infrastructure (levees from...oh...well, before planes flew), city layout, and poverty. Speaking of poverty...

Poverty - From this Washington Post article, "Even with a robust economy that was adding jobs last year, the number of Americans who fell into poverty rose to 37 million - up 1.1 million from 2003 - according to Census Bureau figures released Tuesday." Asians were the only ethnic group to show a decline, while statistics for blacks and Hispanics were flat...the growth stems from an increase in impoverished non-Hispanic whites. The median household income stood at just over $44,000 which won't do any good given inflation, the housing bubble, and of course, raising gas prices. Speakin of gasoline...

Gasoline - I read another article on CNN, and I didn't link it because there are stories on every single website that legitimately covers the "news," that gas may soon approach an average price of $4. 1..2..3...4 freakin dollars.

"WE...CAN'T...AFFORD...NO GAS...SO-WE-AIN'T-DRIVING!" - Broke Phi Broke (K. West)

If that is the case, I may never leave the Big City of Dreams. Speaking of the Big City of Dreams...

Big City of Dreams - To my knowledge, all's well in Gotham, but my desk is made of wood and I'm knockin' on it.