Woman at party describing parenthood: “I survived it and it was more fun than I thought.” Uh, I’ll pass.
Category Archives: Quotable & Notes
Tom Jones Syndrome
Barb warns you must be of a certain age to appreciate this. And we are. Halley has more.
“Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.'”
“That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome.”
“Is it common?”
“It’s not unusual.”
Marketing 101
You see a handsome guy at a party.
You go up to him and say, “I’m fantastic in bed.”
That’s Direct Marketing.
You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy.
One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, “he’s fantastic in bed.”
That’s Advertising.
You see a handsome guy at a party.
You go up to him and get his telephone number.
The next day you call and say, “Hi, I’m fantastic in bed.”
That’s Telemarketing.
You’re at a party and see a handsome guy.
You get up and, Give eye contact.
You walk up to him and pour him a drink.
You say, “May I,” and reach up to kiss him, and then say, “By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.”
That’s Public Relations.
You’re at a party and see a handsome guy.
He walks up to you and says, “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.”
That’s Brand Recognition.
You’re at a party and see a handsome guy.
You talk him into going home with your friend.
That’s a Sales Rep.
Your friend can’t satisfy him so he calls you.
That’s Tech Support.
You’re on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all these houses you’re passing.
So you climb onto the roof of one situated toward the center and shout at the top of your lungs, “I’m fantastic in bed!”
That’s Spam
Source unknown. Found this on Halley Suitt’s blog in 2003
What Should I Do with My Life?
I really liked Po Bronson’s first two novels, “The Nudist on the Late Shift” and “The First $20 Millions Is Always the Hardest.” And he’s written countless articles about technology, Silicon Valley, Dot-Com boom and bust. The title of his latest book, “What Should I Do with My Life?” almost turned me off. I’m not all that keen on non-fiction to begin with. But I really enjoyed this book. I found so many “take-aways”…but I’ll only give you a few:
When you’re passionate about what you do, time disappears.
People who don’t have passions don’t struggle.
Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever. It is so much harder to leave a good thing.
Don’t pretend what you do doesn’t shape you.
People who love what they do are much more productive than those that are doing it for the paycheck. If we can find work we care about, our productivity will explode. Our value will increase radically. We will be the source of good ideas. And we will be rewarded.
“If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and opportunity can lock you in forever.” Or “if you don’t like The Inevitable Cocktail-Party Question (What do you do?), maybe it’s partly because you don’t like your answer.”
From William Gibson’s blog
William Gibson has a blog. I’d like to know if having a website (and blog) was something his publisher pushed or if he was enthusiastic about the idea. One interesting (and discouraging) item from his bio:
“I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here.”
Cursor-cursed funeral parlors.
“Today’s sorry newsrooms–silent, smokeless, boozeless, cursor-cursed funeral parlors–bear no resemblance to the divine hell-holes that persisted at newspapers and wire services until the mid-1970s. They were seas of grunge and debris…a universe of controlled chaos, suspended in a perpetual stinking fog of cigarette smoke and worse.”
— Diana McLellan, journalist, former gossip columnist, and longtime Washington editor of Washingtonian magazine
You might be from Kennett if…
A friend of mine, who happens to live in Kennett, Missouri, received a call from a woman this week but couldn’t hear her because of the chainsaw in the background. She said “Excuse me, I’ll go outside.” When he asked about the chainsaw in the house she explained “I needed something fixed and his skillsaw was broke.” Makes a guy homesick.
“a virtual, centralized grand database”
“Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as “a virtual, centralized grand database.”
From a William Safire Op/Ed piece in the NY Times.
Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel
I’ve spent the last few minutes of the last few nights on my back laughing so hard tears trickled down to my ears. I’m highlighting my way through Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams.
“You can ignore almost everything that is asked of you and in the long run it won’t matter. Either the tasks will become moot or your boss will forget what he asked you to do, or someone else will do it.” Or, “If you stall long enough, every corporate initiative ends, even layoffs.”
I particularly enjoyed the description an encounter with a salesman for a local radio station that was trying to convince Adams to buys advertising for the resturant he co-owns. Adams asked the sales person how many listeners the radio station had.
“The sales weasel explained, ‘You have to spend money to make money.’ I pointed out that he probably knew the number of listeners and that I could decide on my own if it was worth knowing. The weasel responded by explaining how many human beings lived within listening range of his station, i.e. weaselmath. I asked how that mattered if they weren’t actually listening, just potentially listening.”
“Then he explained that it’s much more expensive to advertise on other radio stations on a cost-per-relevlant-listener basis. I asked how he knew that if he didn’t know how many listeners he had.”
“He explained to me that some of my competitors were advertising on his station and they must be getting some benefit or they wouldn’t be doing it. I pointed out that most of my competitors weren’t advertising on his station and if not advertising wasn’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it. It wasn’t a good meeting.”
God help us if radio listening ever becomes as brutally measurable as the Web.
The Curse of Competence
“People with more of an attitude of “whatever it takes” wind up taking on more and more of the jobs no one wants and thus have less and less time for the jobs they really want to do. I call this the “curse of competence.” … Oddly, in a time of real resource constraints, it is not good to become known as the person who can get things done no matter what. If you did it with “x”, the organization doesn’t say, “well, I’ll bet he could be spectacular with ‘2x’.” Instead it says, “He did so well with ‘x,’ we bet he can get it done with ‘3/4x’ too.”
— From blog called Middle Monkey, via Halley Suitt