Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
Those of you who are well acquainted with my technology dyslexia will be very surprised by my most recent acquisition: I am now the proud owner of an e-reader. The method to my madness was to have a mechanism to deliver enough English language books to meet my reading needs during a two week vacation …
Anyone worth their steak knives follows the rule of ‘ABC’ (always be closing), but the true skill of the salesperson is how they finesse sealing the deal. There are many techniques in the sales manual, but none comes close to the power of the ‘puppy dog’ close. Even if you don’t know what I am …
I was watching the movie ‘All that Jazz’ on the plane the other week (the Classic movie genre being the only respite for frequent trans-coastal fliers who have already mined the not so deep depths of the new release offerings). Anyhow, it reminded me of how good a movie it was. And also of the …
I am once again spending lots of quality time in the U.S. and once again I am noticing the not so subtle differences introduced by the invisible line along the 49th parallel. Here are some of my observations. I do admit that I am mostly relegated to the suburban edges of the metropolitan areas (Redmond …
I just discovered I have missed the Broadway ‘revival’ of Glengarry Glen Ross, starring Al Pacino as Shelley Levine. This is a huge bummer. Not only do I love David Mamet in general, but I am especially fond of the lads of the swampland in Florida real estate agency. The thought of actually seeing Al …
Actually, I did little to no walking in Memphis. That’s because I was in greater metropolitan Memphis, such as it is, at FedEx’s headquarters at the intersection of two major highways. FedEx’s centre of world shipping domination is situated on South Shady Grove Road. In the true manner of all suburban street naming subterfuge, it …
It seems I have entered the demographic where people you know start to die. This is not a good thing, but it is a wake-up call to remind us that life is far too short. My friend Rudy died suddenly this week at the age of early 60 something. In Rudy’s case, suddenly was the …
For a winter nation, we certainly have a weird relationship with the season that others use to define us. Even those who pretend to like it slink away to Mexico at the earliest opportunity and there are entire colonies in Florida where you would be hard pressed to hear anything other than Quebec French between …
Apparently January is a great time to look for a job. Now that the holidays are over and there are no days off on the immediate horizon, it’s time to knuckle down and get some work done. This is when the slackers become blindingly obvious as there is no veil of general workplace levity to …
At this time of year, everyone is obsessed with two things: what happened this year and what’s going to happen next year. I have no problem with the rehashing of the events of the previous 12 months, except for the lame attempts to pick the ‘winner’ in various categories (e.g. worst mayor, most tragic tragedy, …