The Power of the Sandwhich Thin

I walked by a man working on a presentation yesterday. I couldn’t help but notice that the title of the slide was: The Power of the Sandwich Thin. The power indeed. It was in that brief passing moment that I truly grasped the absurdity of my job. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am sure that were I to read the presentation, I would discover that Sandwich Thins don’t get enough credit for the sales they generate. I’m sure they are like the unsung hero of the bread aisle. Everybody just assumes that the standard loaf is the where the action’s at, but they don’t see the numbers behind the numbers. They don’t see the Power.

I work in a field where it is your job to convince others that your Product A, any Product A, is the answer. And it doesn’t really matter what the question is.

Profit not where it needs to be? Have you looked at our Sandwich Thins??

Not getting the right basket ring? Check out the retails on these.
Can’t get Health Care Legislation passed? How about you invite the House and Senate over for Turkey and Cheese Sandwiches, served on our new line of Sandwich Thins. That’ll get them working together.

Can you feel the Power?!

In general, I do a pretty good job of not thinking too much about the industry I’m in. Because on one hand you can argue that it’s all a big meaningless game, and the person who sells the most stuff – regardless of what it is, wins. And in its defense, it can be a very interesting game. Every day in my world, there are millions of dollars in play. It can be very dramatic and very exciting One could also argue that the people who buy and sell these goods are passionate people who care about good retailing and good product. Some do. Others….not so much. And the really good ones enjoy the game and accept it for what it is.

I enjoy the game sometimes, and then sometimes I remember that I am getting all worked up over the equivalent of a piece of bread. A thin piece of bread, shipped in a plastic bag, made in a factory by underpaid workers and focused grouped until some marketing person feels comfortable enough to generate a slide entitled The Power of Sandwich Thins. And when I see that slide, I feel anger and a silent but persistent hunger for something….more. We spend more time on our jobs than most any other developed nation. We’re only given so much time on this planet and we squander it sitting under fluorescent lights designing ridiculous power points for the things that nobody really needs.

I have friends who once stated their goal was to work as little as possible. I laughed at that notion a few years ago. I thought it was both un-ambitious and perhaps a bit lazy. Now I realize they were geniuses, prophets, and visionaries of the highest order. Of course, my enlightenment comes after a large mortgage, 2 car payments, 2 kids and other miscellaneous debt. So it looks like I’ll keep making those stupid power points a bit longer. But someday, someday I will break these shackles that bind me to my laptop. I will crush my mouse beneath my feet, throw my blackberry down the dimly lit corridor and shout to the mottled ceiling tiles “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, free at last!”

Time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet...

Like everyone else, I have a Facebook account. I find it both fascinating and frustrating at the same time. Picking a profile picture is nothing short of an exercise in self-psychoanalysis. What image of yourself do you want to project to friends, acquaintances and random strangers?

Do I go with one with the goofy smile: Hey, look at me! I’m a fun guy!

Maybe me and the wife: Hey, look at me! I’m happily married!

No, me and the kids: Hey Look at me! I know all of you dads got World’s Greatest Dad Mugs for Father’s Day….but seriously I’m the real deal. Your kids/spouses….they all lied.

No wait….Me with my shirt off in black and white: That’s right! All you ladies who passed up on this are so…so…sorry now!

Every picture you post says something about you. What if I say the wrong thing? I recently posted a picture of my kid in a Storm Trooper Helmet. But all you could see was the helmet and the blaster rifle. Which basically says: Yup…still a hopeless dork.

Then there are Status Updates. I wish my life was so interesting that I had something to say that I thought anyone would care about. Mine are usually something lame like:

I just ate a huge burrito.

Or, because I am supposed to be funny I spend 5 minutes composing a 1 sentence witticism that usually isn’t that funny. For Example:

Chris is pulling like crazy…the data that is.

I spent 5 minutes writing that update. It was dumb and mostly gross and didn’t get a single comment.

In the guise of making a page about you and your life and keeping everyone up to date with what’s going on in said life, you come to realize, there isn’t a bunch going on.

And then it hits you. Wait…..I’m boring?

After looking at some other people’s pages, and all of their mundane updates and the little details that make up their specific versions of life you come to the conclusion that all of your lives are kind of the same. You work, you raise your kids, maybe you go out occasionally. My life appears to be just like the lives of everyone else out there.

Then the walls really come tumbling down. Wait…I’m not special?

Facebook’s insistence that I update my status and in turn see other’s updates has left me searching for more interesting things to say about my day than my “friends’” days and I have come up dry. In doing so, it has created a small hole in the insulating balloon that is Chris’s Theory of Inherent Specialness. Which has existed since roughly 1st grade and basically states that I am more special than you or anyone else for that matter. Your awareness of that fact and the veracity of the same are in no way connected. In fact, if you can’t tell I’m special, I’m sorry but you obviously just don’t have an eye for such things.

I’m not sure how to deal with that puncture. It takes years to build a good defense mechanism. I’m not sure I’m ready to abandon Inherent Specialness. This isn’t some moth-eaten teddy bear or a tattered blanket we’re talking about, it’s an integral piece of who I am. No, getting rid of it simply won’t do.

Luckily though, I don’t have to. The fact of the matter is, because of the accessibility and openness of Facebook, the really interesting things, the really juicy things are kept secret. As they should be, I might add. Because you never know who’s reading. Just because I look boring on my Facebook account, doesn’t mean I really am. Yes! This might work! There’s so much going on, you don’t even know! I am so cool, I can’t even write half the shit I’m up to because it’s just too much for the general public. My boss, and two ex-girlfriends are “friends” for crying out loud! They couldn’t handle this kind of intensity. Do I feel bad that I cannot freely share the awesomeness that is my life? Sure. But it’s the right thing to do. I don’t want to make the rest of my friends jealous or feel as if their lives are less meaningful or less fulfilling. What kind of “friend” would I be if I constantly displayed my superiority with killer profile pics and hysterically funny Status Updates? The answer is not a very good one.

The New Guilt

My friend, who greatly enjoys poking fun at my liberal tendencies, tends to send me news pieces that highlight the absurdity of some of my positions on things. In particular, he has seized on Global Warming and the growing hysteria surrounding it. He makes a very adroit observation that popular media and popular media consumption habits tend to greatly distort the facts surrounding phenomenon such as Global Warming. He often mentions disposable diapers as an example. Some of you may remember hearing news reports years ago about what overwhelming percentage of the world’s landfills would be composed of these ecological dirty bombs, and at the time, some of the reporting conjured images of streets in the near future filled with diapers and nowhere to put them because the landfills were already packed full of Pampers. He could very well have also mentioned Killer Bees. In 8th Grade I was ready to move to Canada because I was scared to death that Africanized Honey Bees were swarming my way. His point is valid; we have a natural tendency to make things bigger, more dire than they really are. Maybe it sells papers, maybe it gets attention of research dollars or government money, and maybe it feeds our need to have something to worry about.

The most recent article from him, see link below, deals with the high carbon footprint of eating beef. Due to the energy it takes to feed, transport, and cook and the by-products of all those things, Beef has a disproportionate ratio of pollution to nutrition. By eliminating beef, the article suggests we could cut emissions by significant amounts.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e36a67d49c1127a8c17cc38ed4a4c27e.211&show_article=1

While the research is interesting, I cannot help but find it tiresome. Does everything have to be viewed now from a pair of Carbon-Value Glasses? How far away are we from buying and selling things in a new alternate currency based on Carbon Credits? The goal of the Environmental Movement should not be to grind eco-responsibility into everyone’s face over every decision they make. All that will do is engender resentment and eventually the worthwhile message of conservation will fall on deaf ears. The goal should be, and it is in fact what is being achieved to date, is a raised awareness of Environmental Issues. Being more efficient, being more conservative of all of our resources is good corporate and good individual philosophy – especially in this economic climate. One could argue that common sense and the environmentalists have finally found common ground. Walk into a Kroger and see the number of people using canvas bags, look at the sales of CFL’s. (Although one could also argue we need a return to robust “Fuck It All” American consumerism – if just to lift is out of this current morass.) Regardless, my point is people are getting the message; let’s not nag them to death!

Academic funding is shifting more and more to “green” topics. Scholars who need papers published continue to find more and more obscure things to study, and the news media will pick up the juiciest ones - the more dire, the more sensational, the better. Polar Bears: Extinct In 10 Years! New Orleans: Melting Ice Caps and A Modern day Atlantis! Killer Bees Nesting In Millions of Disposable Diapers! And we will continue to eat it up, eager to feel shittier about ourselves and our world.

I have been puzzling over what drives this phenomenon. This collective need to feel bad about something. Or more specifically why did we all start caring about the Planet? When did a formally small cause, exclusively the domain of so called Hippies and Tree Huggers, become a middle class obsession? What makes a significant percentage of the population rise up and suddenly exclaim, “Oh we’re so bad, punish us! Tell me more about how bad for the Planet my actions are.” Why did all of the sudden people start caring about the Planet? Why do I see 30-50 year olds using canvas bags and buying Hybrids?

Then it dawned on me. Much has been made of the so called “generational shift.” We just elected a black man to the Presidency; the Boomers are stepping down and making way for Gen X or whatever we are. That ushers in all sorts of new things. It’s more than Obama taking the White House Business Casual. We’re going to put our fingerprints on this era in countless ways. Among the countless things we need, we simply must have our very own Guilt. Our Parent’s had Racism. That was OK, but we’ve always wanted our own thing. Besides, our work there is done, just look at who our President is. No we need something else, a new white liberal guilt for a new era.

I got just the thing…the whole world.

In Defense of Bow Ties

In his new book, David Sedaris disembowels the bowtie by calling it an announcement to the world that you can no longer get an erection. I both love and despise Sedaris because he’s a very good writer, but I feel compelled to defend the bowtie.

I have worn one occasionally. It’s an odd choice, I know. A 80 year old saleman I had the pleasure of knowing once gave me a bowtie as a thank you gift. I wore it in his honor, and kind of liked it. I still wear it from time to time, but I still struggle with it.

It’s geeky to be sure. Certainly I don’t believe it would qualify as sexy. Unless of course paired with a tuxedo. But for daily wear, it’s anachronistic, dorky with a certain Orville-ian under tones. I get a range of responses when I wear one. I get bemused looks, stares. Some will say it’s fun. Some will say, “It’s you.” Which I think might be a back-handed insult.

I’d like to think it marks you a different, thoughtful…the smartest guy in the room. Or perhaps, the geekiest. I remember once in elementary school, at the beginning of my descent into unpopularity, the other kids started calling me a nerd. I was wounded but more so, I was outraged. I thought that secretly I was just as good if not better than any of them. It was ridiculously unfair and innaccurate to call me such a name. I decided after one particularly brutal bus ride home that if they wanted a nerd I would give them one. Clearly they didn't know what a real nerd was. Perhaps I could help them see the difference. And so in deaf to my mother’s pleading, I parted my hair down the middle and spackled it in place with palmful after palmful of mouse until my hair gleamed like plastic. Not satisfied with the effect and eager for more self-inflicted pain, I taped up the nose of my glasses. You want a nerd? You got one.

It was a terrible decision. A classroom of fourth graders is like Lord of the Flies with Erasers and Notebooks in place of Conch Shells. Nobody understood the statement I was trying to make, it only served to cement and justify the original verdict. I never recovered socially and served out my time in public school with the other freaks and geeks.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that I wasn’t really a nerd, that was the label they assigned me. I was much, much more, they were just too blind and stupid to see. In my wildly dramatic pubescent years I would imagine the most popular people in my class realizing the error of their ways in a variety of convenient scenarios. One week it was a terrorist attack at school where I saved the day. Another it was an earthquake or a tornado, always some cataclysmic event that up ended the social structure and created an opportunity for me to shine and recreate myself. To my dismay, the apocalyptic event I fervently wished for never happened. Embittered, I took solace in my own company. While painful at the time, it freed me to some extent from the tyranny of the herd, but also fueled a compensatory superiority complex. Overtime, as my wife and most people who know me will tell you, I fell quite in love with myself. An affair which continues to this day.

Maybe that’s part of what a bowtie is to me: defiant, self -segregating, a little arrogant. I’ll wear a bowtie if I want to, I’ll blaze my own fashion trail. You’ll come to appreciate both it and me if this building’s hit by an asteroid.

Just knowing how to tie one, enforces a feeling of superiority. Men will ask, “Is real bowtie?” I’ll smugly reply, “Yes, it is…I tied it myself. I know lots of things. Grand things. Things you’ll never know because while you were with all the other cool kids, I was at the library….becoming awesome.”

Notes from Abroad...

Today is the last day of my Portland adventure. Portland is a different kind of town, with different kind of people. I knew I was in a foreign land when I was walking through the concourse. I have never seen so many dreadlocks, artificially colored hair (in obvious shades of black, pink and blonde), stupid hats on members of both sexes, patchwork skirts, Birkenstocks, Doc Martens and other post-punk /hipster/hippy essentials.

Some other observations:

Station Wagons are cool. Waiting for my ride to the apartment, every other car was a Subaru Outback. A guy in the office has one. I could probably make a fortune buying the things in Cincinnati and shipping them into the Northwest. I also saw people driving glorified golf carts on busy highways, they looked like little Luigi’s from the movie, Car’s.

But as much as they love their Subaru’s and alternative electronic vehicles, the roads are really meant for cyclists and pedestrians. Heaven forbid you turn do anything they perceive as a trespass against them. Hippies may still exist in Portland, but they’re angry hippies. The Peace Sign is apparently a tired relic, the middle finger and salty language rule the streets.

Also you don’t need a crosswalk, its common practice to walk into the road wherever it suits you, apparently cars have to yield. Too bad I almost took out a Patchouli Wearing Dipshit before someone told me that.

The Natural Look is in. I cannot wait to go back to Cincinnati and see a girl in make-up, with her hair combed and in clothes that don’t look like they came from the wardrobe department of Reality Bites.

I was talking to a girl at Starbucks. Apparently there is a Stagnant Air Alert for the whole metro area. As she told me this with a dead serious look on her face, napkins were blowing off the countertop from the breeze.

It’s a neat city. Great people watching, great food, full of natural beauty. But it’s time to come home before I dye my hair or start shopping for glorified station wagons.

Ahhh...Travel

It’s been almost a year since I have been a business trip. Foolishly I have been looking forward to going. I miss travel. Or maybe I missed the idea of travel. All I know is, as I started the 2 hour drive to Indy to catch my flight, I was excited.

The ride up was uneventful and I arrived in plenty of time. I went right through security, and found a seat near an power outlet. To the novice traveler, finding a power outlet in an airport to keep your laptop and blackberry going is critical and usually impossible. I plugged in, powered up and prepared to enjoy the free Indy Airport WiFi. Again, another plus because most airports you have to pay for a day pass. Well, you get what you pay for. I had at least 3 tasks which I was counting on delivering while I waited, all of which required broadband access to send. I logged onto the wireless, and was rewarded with a blazing 2MBPS connection. That’s about as slow as dial-up. My browser wouldn’t even open let alone send anything.

To make matters worse, either through cunning planning to discourage siphoning free power or just bad luck, my power supply was right beneath a loudspeaker. Every page, every announcement shook the fillings in my teeth. They also had this strange military style naming convention.

“Can Mr. Jones come to Checkpoint Bravo to retrieve a lost item”

When did I enter the Green Zone? Don’t do it Jones….it’s a trap

“Would the owner of the black Ford Bronco come to Checkpoint Alpha?”

Fuck…are they going to detain him?

I worked away, and as the endless stream of pages and announcements blared on, the blood slowly trickled from my ears.

But, the plane left on time, and I had an exit row so it was all good. Until I landed in Denver.

I had an hour between flights. I always check my departure gate and time off the screens just in case there was a change. Then I physically check the gate. Both my ticket and the screen said B35 – there were people waiting, we had a plane parked outside but no gate agents. I decided I had time to grab a quick plate of dinner. Driving and total transit time to Portland was going to be 11 plus hours, better eat while you can. I grabbed some Chinese Panda or whatever the fuck it is, and sat down at the gate. While I ate some indifferent fried rice and a slimy, sickly sweet honey chicken, I noticed the gate still wasn’t manned. That’s when the fun began.

I walked to the nearest manned Frontier gate.

“Excuse me, where is the flight for Portland?”

“Portland?! That’s Gate 50, you’ll have to hurry?”

Gate 50 was on the other side of the Concourse. I took off running.

Past the foodcourt. Past Gates 40-49. Down a set of stairs. Down a Corridor. All the way to Gate 50.

“Portland?” I ask breathlessly.

“Portland? That’s up at gate 33! You’ll really have to hurry?

“I’m sorry, my hearing was damaged in Indy and I’m still recovering. Did you say Gate 33??? Are you sure?? I was just up there, they sent me here.

“Yes, you better run!”

I blindly followed her command.

Off I went. Down the corridor. Up the stairs. Past gates 49-40. Past the food court. Past Gate 35, where I just was, to Gate 33.

Really Breathlessly and with no conviction whatsoever, somewhat pleadingly, “ Portland?”

“Portland?!”

“Yes… What Gate?”

“55, but you’re really late”

“I was just down there, the screen says 35, they sent me here.”

“I have no control over the screens, the city controls those. It’s definitely at 55,and you need to hurry”

At the time, I was thinking, “Lady, I could give a shit who runs the screens, I don’t need a lesson on airport politics, I need oxygen, a bag to throw up in and perhaps a golf cart!” But I was too winded to fight, and I didn’t have the time.

“Fuck. Call them and tell them I’m coming!”

Off I go. By now, people openly pointing at me and the polite ones are smiling in disbelieve. The assholes are flat out laughing hysterically. None of which I can get upset about, as this made the third time I had sprinted by them, uttering profanities between gasps for air and Chinese belches.

So, back down the stairs, up to Gate 55 (just on the other side of 50 by the way), I get on the plane, and just as I am congratulating myself on making it just in time, the Pilot comes on to announce the flight is delayed. I spend the next 5 minutes catching my breath and convincing my stomach not to forcibly eject the Honey Chicken and the next 20 waiting to take off.

Ahhh, Travel….

The Urban Appalachians

My office is in a questionable part of town. Occasionally there is the odd shooting or stabbing down an adjacent alley or inside the local bar. The local community is a blend of recent Hispanic immigrants, black people and the people I recently discovered should be called Urban Appalachians. Now when I hear that term, I think of a fashion movement like the Urban Cowbody Movement, except the fashionable sort in this part of town aren't wearing coonskin caps or over-alls. Neither are they filling their days moonshinin' or outsmarting the Revenuers. The only the thing vaguely Appalachian about these people is an accent and speech pattern that might have originated in the mountains, but on the way here was drug through several trailer parks and an Eddie Murphy special.

Regardless of what you call them, they do make for great people watching.

The window from my cube over looks a parking lot for a Check N Go, which must be some sort of rallying point for several of the local Urban Appalachians. Most days around 4:00pm, if I am lucky, I'll see a 12 year old Maroon Chevy Lumina, all beat to shit, with no hubcaps and a busted tail light .

The last time I saw it a few weeks back, it sat there idling with the windows cracked. I could see at least 4 people in the backseat, and two in the front, The girl in the front seat's probably 14 and she's bumming a cigarette from her mom. Everyone in the car is smoking in fact it looks like the car's smoldering from all the smoke wafting out of it. Up comes a two more people to the car, one on crutches. The passengers get out, more smoke billows from the doors, everyone but the girl is overweight, the women have terrible bad highlights. They look like a pack of fat hyenas.

To my surprise, they all try to pile back into the car. Now there's 5 people in the back seat, some one riding in the lap of the front passenger seat but they can't close the door because the crutches are in the way. Not to mention they're all sizable people.

So they pop the trunk, and the trunk is so full of junk that stuff literally springs out. Clothes, cans, pop bottles, paper. The wind catches a plastic Walmart bag and a few empty cigarette cartons and they swirl around the parking lot. Nobody makes an effort to pick them up. The injured party hobbles to the back, and tries to jam the crutches into the trunk. The girl, cigarette clenched between her lips, hops out with her school back pack and helps her force down the trunk lid. They all pile back in and lurch into traffic.

I often wonder where they were going. Why they all needed to go there, and why they all needed to be there at the same time. The bus stop was on the opposite corner. I'll tell you right now, if I walked up to that car, and it was my ride? No way. I be all like, "Look, there's already 4 of you fat bitches in this backseat. My ass is hurt. I'm on crutches. I don't need this shit. I'm taking the bus. I'll see you at Denny's in 15 minutes."

I wanted a image to go with this entry. By the way, you won't believe what comes up on google if you type in Fat White Bitches. I had to go wash my eyes. Now the images below, aren't what I wanted but you might need to see them