later nerdz; it’s about techgnarlogy

My flight took off a little late from San Francisco. I was surrounded by children, for whom I had found new affection. Typically, I would consider being surrounded by children on a plane a red flag for a horrible flight. This time, I found myself cheerfully happy with them when they noticed me and surprisingly un-annoyed when they cried. I wondered why so many children were flying to Atlanta from San Francisco. I guessed the families were beating Thanksgiving Day traffic but that was a weak hypothesis. It was probably just my lucky day.

In Atlanta my flight was delayed. This didn’t seem like too bad of a situation until I realized all of the rental car places would be closed. I paced around the crowded concourse weighing my need to stake a claim to a power outlet with my need to urinate. While squatting at a power outlet, a guy came over and awkwardly stretched a power cord across the isle. He seemed to identify with me as a college student and asked where I went to school. He seemed eager to mention he was coming back from Miami after a medical school interview. He did things like make sweeping generalizations and start his sentences with “I don’t assume to know, but…”. He had what I like to call “condescending nerd syndrome”. He can talk about, or segway out of, anything you bring up to either a very poorly constructed opinion based on crappy generalizations or something about himself. I wondered if I was like him at all, completely self absorbed. I guess that is the point of this writing. At least no one has to talk to me. They only have to witness it in the way that I dress, carry myself, smirk, nod, page through the new yorker, handle my cash, use my iphone, write on this miniature laptop that no one has seen before and smile to myself at all the cute things midwesterners and southerners do.

Of course he was seated next to me on the plane. Everything he did, from the way he complained, without empathy, to me about “people who bring too many carry-ons and hold up the deplaning” to the way he addressed the flight attendant, made me want to kill him. We were in the emergency exit row and I wanted a small emergency to happen just so that I could watch him freak out like a child, like I knew he would.

Because my flight was delayed for two hours, the rental car services were closed in Dayton. I had to get a cab reservation. I am still worried they won’t pick me up. Laurens parents house is in a gated community. I’m afraid they won’t wait for me to come to the gate. A taxi drivers job is incredibly simple. I imagine all of their energy goes into finding point A and point B. What goes in between is not important, it’s just driving. My great grandmother drove until she passed away in here 90s, but she didn’t know where she was going or where she was. Surprisingly, many taxi drivers are unable to achieve the most strenuous part of their job, finding point A or B. So I am worried. In a town where rental cars cannot be found, and taxis are something from “the big city” will my taxi driver be able to find me? I sure hope so because $90.00 is a lot of money. Of course a dispatcher called me for directions in the morning in a thick southern accent which did not exactly quell my fears. I snapped at him with my A-to-B bit and he hung up on me.

I am in the Atlanta airport. I am in the bathroom, surrounded by the noisy expulsion of semi-solid shit. The sounds give the sense that this was a stop at the bathroom for a high purpose and these guys are getting their money’s worth. I am writing as my legs go numb. I am a pretentious jerk from San Francisco who loves exotic beers, dressing up, talking about current events and politics. Do not talk to me about football. I’ve distributed my books and magazines, jacket and bag, around this stall. This is my new office and the sounds are the birds outside my window. From my new cubical I can see the people on the otherside of the door in the reflection on the floor. I imagine one of my neighbors may hear my keyboard tapping and wonder to himself “Wow, someone is working their ass off.” Just like my office at home, I am sitting pantsless and hoping to myself that this will be the off-brand activity of mine that will surface an untapped reservoir of talent and transform hidden potential into a new career.

Barack Obama won the election mostly because he was able to transfer his own leadership into many other people and empower them. He declared a clear goal and clear communication from the top down about why it was important and why everyone should help. Then he empowered people to do more than simply say “I agree.”

There was a lot more to it than everyone rising up. A lot of people had to go back down. From executives to designers, some people did not work at the strategic level they were used to. I suppose some people rose up over their repressive egos to do manual labor when the collective goal called for it.

I just wonder what everyone is going to do now that they’ve been empowered like this. Will everyone be able to stomach the fact that not everyone can rise up and become #1? Will this reinforce the narcissism and entitlement already plaguing my generation of 20-somethings? Will the next campaign just be a clusterfuck of self-interest?

Probably not. The thing about this campaign was that many of us willingly laid down our individual banners in the name of this one. We organized together against problems that seemed so interconnected and large that only a large movement such as Obamas could solve it.

The thing is now that we’ve started, what is next? I have found myself asking this question over and over. Can we hold this together? We need a new monster to slay that looks as big and bad and that is something that could come from many places and in many forms. Let’s hope it’s an honest one.

Please chime in with comments.

End transmission

Maybe this giant plunger will be able to unlodge billions of American tax dollars for saving failed financial businesses.

Lauren bought this print from Crown Point. It’s a Wilson Shieh print. The framing is super nice. She got an awesome deal.

Go Jon Stewart!

read more | digg story

Hot dogs
Dirty clothes
Bad cologne or perfume
General bum smell

On the 47 headed to work. An R’nB song is playing on someones headphones. The only part coming thru is the whiney muffled voice of a male singer and the familiar slow boom/clap rhythm. Boom- , boom-clap, boom boom.

This boom/clap rhythm takes me back to middle school, a time when I listened to boyz 2 men.

This wasn’t the same though. After a while the pattern changed to include more claps. Boom-, boom-clapclap, boom boom. Then more until it was more clap than boom. It slowly turned into nothing but rapid fire claps. More of a Clappity-clappity clap-boom-clap. This was a musical transition that left me thinking “where is this going?”

I watched two documentaries today. One was called War Made Easy and was all about the reoccuring narrative of American wars. Pretty interesting but also very anti-war biased; Not much coverage of why war may be nessesary. The other one was Where in the World is Osama bin Laden. It was very interesting and brought up the point that for the most part everyone in the middle of the war on terror doesn’t want to be in war. It also covered many opinions that terrorism is largely created with poor foreign policy. I definitely agree with that.

It brought to mind a couple concepts. First of all is choose your battles and what that means. Choosing your battles is essentially deciding when to make a stand and when to take things in stride. I believe that America could choose its battles better and this would allow us to keep our friends close and our enemies closer.

That’s another saying that I think’s pretty smart. It doesn’t literally mean be closer to your enemies than your friends. Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer means keeping them within friendly smalltalk range. For instance, sometimes there are people that you have to work with who you just have to tolerate and it’s easier to tolerate them than to battle them at every pass. Doing this manages perceived threats.

Once a relationship has a lense of a perceived threat, it changes everything. Being a perceived threat redefines your position in a relationship. For instance, have you ever seen a close friend do something that completely changed your perception of them, and changed how your friendship worked? If you can’t put that past you, the relationship is pretty much kaput. If that perceived threat keeps coming up then the relationship is set back.

So I think limiting perceived threats by choosing your battles and keeping your friends close and enemies closer makes a better strategy than going out bullying the world. You can’t change minds that way and it’s no way to lead in the workplace or in the world. It makes taking a stand, and the relationship in general, much more meaningful.

“The process of bringing our wants and our needs into realignment,” says Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg, “is going to involve years of savings and frugality.” Or, to put more it more simply, “there is an anti-bling thing going on,” says Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer of Porter Novelli.

Party’s Over is the general theme of this article about how Americans are realizing that a reductionist lifestyle is easier and more fulfilling. Finally, I can confirm that I made the right decision staying a renter. Yes!

http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2008/08/08/the-end-of-credit-card-consumerism.html

Well this was after I put rice on it. Basil in SOMA, service sucks but the ribs were good.

I hate to say I told you so.

The economy is still in a tailspin and I read that India has got a similar problem with predatory lending.

Two documentaries that I saw a couple years ago turned out to be on the money. One was Maxed Out. It told about the gross amount of debt that Americans are in and how our economy depends on it and the growth it creates. The second movie was a peak oil presentation that made my girlfriend cry it was so fatalist. But the things predicted in that presentation are coming true. I don’t think it’s going to happen as stock-up-on-guns-and-gold quickly though.

I proposed writing a piece for frog Design’s designmind publication. The piece would be about how many current events are driving Americans toward design and it’s related priciples. I really hope it gets in because I could write ad naseum on the topic by now.