Archive for June, 2004
Be Your Own Boss
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 06/24/2004
One of the cutest things on television is a line from many infomercials:
“Run your own business. Be your own boss.”
Now there’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one.
Long after his workers have gone home, the small businessman is still slaving away to please the hardest bosses of all: his customers.
Celebrity Condoms
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 06/24/2004
In case you are ever tempted to take celebrity brain power seriously, let me quote one.
On a talk show, this guy said, “I’m not afraid of AIDS. I use condoms. They block AIDS 98% of the time.”
The host responded, “So that means if you use a condom and have sex fifty times, you’ll get a fatal disease.”
The celebrity replied, “Oh. I didn’t think of it that way.”
My Brilliant Strategy
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 06/23/2004
One time I was suddenly informed of a Brilliant Strategy I had been working on for years. It turned out that the only person who didn’t know I had planned and executed this Brilliant Strategy was me.
I discovered this Brilliant Strategy one time when we were having a session on whom we needed to contact. One guy was particularly hard to reach, so somebody said, “Bob can get in touch with him. All the secretaries LOVE Bob!”
Everybody agreed. It turned out that I had been “cultivating” these secretaries and receptionists for years.
Actually, I had always been friendly with receptionists and secretaries. I like smart, competent people, and these women didn’t get where they were by magic.
By the way, in Washington the top “secretary” is not a secretary. She is Office Manager and she has a salary to match the title.
An office is not The Great Man Himself. An office is a team. While other people waxed apoplectic about “having to talk to the secretary” I spent the time I got talking to her filling her in on the situation and finding out the best way to deal with it. Often she would take care of it for me, including a quick check with The Great Man Himself. That was easier than me getting to the Great Man Himself and then having him instruct her on it.
And let me tell you something else. If I get to the Great Man Himself and he promises something, he might forget before he tells his “secretary.” If the Office Manager herself asks him, the result is not forgotten.
All the time, it turns out I was “cultivating” this office manager. Like any competent person, she liked to be treated like one of the team. So she liked me for it.
I just didn’t realize I was being so shrewd!
That “little receptionist” up front can tell you plenty that you need to know. Whatever you have in hand will be handed over to a staff member, and she knows who that staff member will be.
And she likes being treated like a human, too.
I knew all this going in. I didn’t plan it. But it turns out that everybody knew it was a brilliant strategy I came up with.
I can live with that.
Killer Apes
Posted by Bob in Political Correctness on 06/23/2004
Those of us who will admit it have watched lots of horror movies and mystery movies. In those movies, we sit in the audience and wonder when the people in the movie are going to realize that everybody who goes into that particular house or movie studio or whatever gets killed. But people keep going in.
As a ridiculously overeducated redneck from Pontiac, South Carolina, I have exactly the same feeling when I watch science documentaries or political debates: “When are those clowns going to realize the obvious?”
I was just watching a documentary on Raymond Dart’s theory that man evolved as a “killer ape.” Dart said that man began to use weapons to kill animals, and the more intelligent weapons-makers survived.
This offended the Ghandi School of Political Correctness which says that man is a peaceful animal. So they found that men had used their tools as scavengers, which proved men were just scavengers, not predators. Those tools allowed men to get the brain of dead animals, which were left because animals couldn’t use their teeth to get through the skull. Also those tools allowed men to get to the nutritious bone marrow which animals couldn’t get to.
Whew! That took care of the killer ape bit!
I watched other documentaries which exposed the old idea that hyenas were only scavengers, not hunters. Scientists discovered that hyenas do hunt, but they also scavenge. In fact, the scientists explained, ALL hunters are also scavengers.
So, like someone waiting for the horror movie characters to add two and two, I wait for the documentaries to add two and two. The killer ape was also a scavenger.
This doesn’t end the puzzle of man’s origins, but when the documentaries miss obvious stuff like this, it sure makes the movie seem longer.
The Paper Hat Crowd
Posted by Bob in Musings about Life on 06/22/2004
Someone was telling me about flying helicopters in Nam and I, as usual, thought of something funny.
I thought I might say, “HELICOPTERS? Yea, you spoiled brats had HELICOPTERS in Nam. But in Africa, we had no damn helicopters! One unit had an old defunct ‘copter we used to call ‘Wishful thinking with a propeller on top.'”
In Africa you went in on foot or by parachute. They offered me parachute training and I said, “You ain’t seen hand-to-hand (combat) until you try to get me out of a plane at five thousand feet!”
If I had said what spoiled brats they were in Nam to have helicopters, I could have been one of the paper-hat brigade, one of the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation, the one that talks about its Sacrifices, and how everybody needs to show them Gratitude, Gratitude, Gratitude and how about some Gratitude for a change?
Gratitude is the main lyric of The Song of the Greatest Generation. It gets them money. But the refrain is how easy everybody else has it. “We were raised in the great Depression, we fought The Great Big War,” they sing, tears in their eyes.
I have all the money I want, but I sure would enjoy doing some of that “You have it easy!” bit. It sounds like a lot of fun.
The paper hat crowd wears paper army hats. What kind of hat would an ex-spook wear? He could have on a paper Casper-the-Ghost hat. The trouble is that that looks just like a Ku Klux Klan hood.
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