Peanut Noir

Today at work I attended a webex (shared screen) and teleconference meeting with about 90 other people.  The meeting was almost aggressively content-free, and irrelevant to my job or the tools I need to do it.  But it counts toward my development plan, so I was all like whatever and clickety click there I was.  To pass the time, I browsed metafilter.com and from there found a link to a very dark and funny mashup between Frank Miller and Charles Schulz.  Well, here:  http://www.cinematical.com/photos/frank-millers-charlie-brown/1419750/

That loosely inspired the following, but I took it in a little bit different direction (I love productive meetings):

Peanut noir

The silhouette of the small kid with the big round head trudges with resigned determination up the mudslide to the pitchers mound. The rain, the endless rain, pelts the players, but no one has called the game, and no one ever will.  The kid wears a yellow shirt with a black jagged slash like lightning across his scrawny chest.  He eyes the thumbsucking blanket-hugger in the on-deck circle, and thinks about how that kid is sweet on his sister, and he grinds his teeth and thinks melancholy thoughts.  He thinks about the years of therapy, the endless pile of nickels spent on psychiatric bills with the shrieking harridan of a shrink.  He thinks about the years of having his foot get just…that…close… to the sweet spot on the oblate spheroid, only to have that god damn football get yanked away at the last minute.  Every single time, it gets yanked away at the last minute, and he ends up on his ass, feeling like a total chump.  He thinks about the dozens and hundreds of kites tangled up on power lines and trees, with the kite strings macrame’d into an asphyxiating stranglehold around his skinny neck.  He thinks about the years of being a patsy, a dupe, a schlemiel, a scapegoat.  His eyes are narrow slits as he prepares for his wind up.  Maybe this time, things will be different, he thinks.

Overhead, the players hear the drone and sputter and cough of a single faltering plane engine. It is losing fuel and altitude as the pilot returns from another of his endless missions.  That beagle again, with his tattered red scarf and leather brainbucket and shot-up flying doghouse and a hornet’s nest in his cranium, is flying another sortie over the ball field.  He is the lone remaining conscript from some deranged militia, fighting a battle in a war that has been over for almost a century, chasing a phantom enemy through the hollow skies.  No one else can see his arch-nemesis, but no one disputes that the bullet holes in his doghouse are real.  The little bird he meets on furlough is the only thing standing between him and a section eight discharge.

The round-headed kid winds up for his delivery.  He eyeballs the runner on first, a filthy dirt-covered messy little slob, who tags up.  The tinny plinking notes of a broken down piano play a forlorn passage from a long-dead composer, the sound wafting out over the infield.  No Hammond B-3 or mighty Wurlitzer blasting out the strains of “Charge” or “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” for this motley dead-end group of washed-up has-beens and never-weres.  Just the sad-sack strains of yet another Harry Connick wanna-be, sitting crosslegged at his little garage-sale piano, trying to stifle the sting out of his broken dreams of being signed by a big record label, passing the days picking up a little chump change out at the ballpark. “Buck a shot for pop tunes, and a fin for guided tours…”

The pitch floats in a lazy parabolic arc toward home plate, a little high and inside.  Just where the little thumbsucking blanket hugger likes it.  How far has he gotten with my sister, wonders the round-headed kid.   The bat connects and the ball takes off…

…His teammates are long gone, returned to their dreary dismal lives, working on homework for that crazy teacher whose voice sounds like a muted flugelhorn.   The round-headed kid stands there yet, in the rain.  He stands on the mud-slicked pitcher’s mound, his back to home plate, facing the spot at the edge of the field where the ball bounced and then rolled into the woods. He chokes back a tear and sighs, and thinks to himself “there is always football season…maybe this time, things will be different”.

Point/Counterpoint

So finally, here is my Operation Feed point-counterpoint:
Point:  Operation Feed sucks!

(excerpted from a rant I wrote a couple years ago, regarding the setup of a bunch of carnival-like team-building crap to usher in the op feed campaign):
This morning the “Good Morning Associates” guy blasted something on the p.a.  about the aroma of popcorn signifying the onslaught of Operation Feed activities.  Sure enough, a peek out the front windows confirms that the embarrassment (at least for anyone with a moderate sense of irony) has begun.  The tricycle street sprint summer nationals course is set up, as is a large inflatable Jupiter Jump-like apparatus that has been “tagged” on the side with a pictograph of a cloying cartoon elephant, as are all the other various accoutrements of such an extravagantly moronic endeavor.  Let’s think about Operation Feed for a moment, shall we?  Getting past the most egregious symbol of ironic stupidity, the pie toss—our ex-mayor, acting on behalf of the corporate legal staff, throwing comestibles *prepared just for the occasion* into the faces of other gainfully employed (and presumably not homeless nor hungry) coworkers—and moving right on to the subtler examples of cluelessness I witnessed this morning: a heavyset woman, with whom I shared an elevator, huffing with the exertion of trundling her corpulent self from clear over at the cafeteria, was toting two cafeteria to-go plates (one laden with belgian waffles, the other with a goddamn rasher of bacon and two small tubs overflowing with butter and syrup) and a 20 ounce bottle of soda.   The “congestive heart failure platter” was on special this morning, I see.   Tomorrow’s blue plate is the “Bury the needle on the god damn sphygmomanometer, why dontcha, Special”.   And then there were the two immense phocine people slaunched over a bench in the atrium, sitting splay-legged and helplessly recumbent amid a bunch of popcorn that had spilled out onto their clothes and the floor as they plunged their flaccid flippers into the bags and slammed handfuls of the deep-fried, chemical-saturated grain into their gaping maws.  As I glanced over they were each sucking the last trace of rancid salty gelatinous grease from a chubby finger, emitting squishy popping sounds not unlike those you hear when stirring a bowl of macaroni and cheese.  Yum.  You missed a kernel.  Make sure you get your daily quota of FDA Yellow #5 there.  Operation Feed apparently means you Feed your own gut-slung body with enough food for a third-world family of 12 to subsist on, then maybe you get one of those fat-sucking Operations when even the big-boy pants feel a little snug.   Some skinny kid from Franklinton with hunger pangs and dull eyes thanks you from the bottom of his heart.

Take a deep breath…

Counterpoint:  Operation Feed rocks.
I have volunteered at the Food Bank several times and have seen first hand what an impressive and remarkable operation it is. Even those volunteers whose primary motive is just to duck out of work for a couple of hours, end up doing a lot of heavy lifting.  Our company provides 34% of the meals and one out of every 4 volunteers for the Mid Ohio Food Bank, and is responsible for about 620,000 meals per year to hungry people in 6 counties.  So even though we do this partly by stuffing our own faces, taking the slim profit margins from food sales, and donating it to the Food Bank, that is pretty damned impressive.  So there.

Also–the department I work in has an Operation Feed pantry that is, to make up a statistic and a category on the spot, in the top .0000001% of all Operation Feed pantries in the western hemisphere.  I have seen the others.  A conference room table holding a pathetic array of granola bars next to a Dixie cup half full of loose change is not an op feed pantry, Marketing Department!  And you, over in HR?  What the hell is up with warm diet Fresca?  Get out of my sight!  In contrast, we have an entire kitchenette-like enclave that is literally brimming, chock full, of snackety and drinkety goodness.  We are in a new building two city blocks from the either one of the cafeterias where I work, so people flock from other floors in our building to marvel at the sheer magnitude of choices available.  We are even considering a full time pantry monitor to keep the gawkers and looky-loos from impeding the traffic flow and fucking with the feng shui.  The previous sentence is not in the least bit true.  But we do provide this veritable cornucopia of gastronomically delectable comestibles by making periodic trips–during work hours!–to haul the stuff back from Sam’s Club, by the pallet-load.  And that means mid-day road trips with Patti, Jason, Jamie and/or Conrad (depending on who’s available and whatnot), who are among the finest and most fun coworkers you could want to spend the time with …  So put that in your pipe and smoke it, hunger!

Black belt, my ass

A while back I stumbled across an interesting article on one of the intranet portals where I work.  It had the headline “Business Black Belts breaking down silos”.  I was looking for a link to information about my online W-2, and I almost wish I had not been so easily sidetracked.  Otherwise, I would have been left with my original, perfectly self-amusing impression:  a mental image of a circa-1970’s Bruce Lee movie fight scene, slightly altered to include a bunch of tough-looking badasses wearing business suits, surrounding the protaganist while loitering in threatening poses, each waiting his turn to get his ass kicked, while our man defends his family farm’s outbuildings from certain destruction.  (I know I could have gone another way, and inferred missile silos, but first impressions are what they are).  Curiosity piqued, I clicked into the article and read it.  It started,
“Seventeen Home Office associates now meet the highest standards for Black Belt testing, but you’ll never see them break boards or smash bricks. Armed with the knowledge, discipline and inner strength of a Black Belt in the martial arts, they’ll use their skills in a much different way – to reduce operations costs and improve service quality. These associates are Six Sigma Black Belts and they’re experts in a business management philosophy called Six Sigma. If you haven’t heard of Six Sigma, it’s a program to optimize system design and performance for virtually error-free business performance. With tools in hand, these Black Belts are on the offensive to eliminate defects through methods that emphasize understanding, measurement and processes improvement. These associates help manage a wide range of projects that will ultimately improve the development and delivery of products and services at xxxxxxxxxx. ”

First of all, wait just a cotton-fuckin’ second here.  I have a problem with anything calling itself a martial art that doesn’t include breaking shit or beating the crap out of people.  Even the dance forms carry at least a hint of menace.  What the seventeen people have mastered is not the ability to kill, maim, deflect attacks, throw razor-sharp stars into an opponent’s jugular, or even deliver a Maxwell Smart-style karate chop to the collarbone–no, what they have mastered is a “management philosophy”.  Let me state that again, while you pause just a second for that to sink in:  a “management philosophy”. It sounds like any vapid little douchetard or leg-humping weiner dog could could take this class, and not end up with even rudimentary self-defense skills.  In fact, I would bet that only a small handful of the seventeen could mount an adequate defense  against even such faux-tough guys as David Carridine, or Ralph Macchio, or Steven Seagal.

As for the rigorous training,
“The journey to achieve Black Belt status is not easy. The process includes five weeks of classroom instruction, four half-day exams and completion of at least one project that produces quantifiable return on investment. While the minimum acceptable test score is 75 percent, [these] associates have achieved an average score of 87 percent on all the exams.  Exams behind them, these associates are ready to think smart, drive results and enable operational excellence. ”

Ok, hold on a second…WTF?!?  The 17 Grasshoppers never had to snatch the fly out of the blind Shaolin Master’s hand before being allowed to move the urn of burning charcoal (which leaves a permanent dragon scar on their forearms, by the way); nor drill for weeks in Mr. Miyagi’s garden (“Wax on!  Wax off!”) as the elderly sensei belabored them about the thighs with his cane, leading up to a climactic and tense fight where they get a broken ankle but then hand the bullies their asses anyway; nor be demoted from Navy Seal to lowly ship’s cook before redeeming themselves and saving the ship from terrorists bent on world destruction.  In fact, I am having trouble imagining a scenario where a practitioner of this martial art would be called on to administer a roundhouse kick to the face of an opponent, causing said opponent to fly backwards across a–a what, a conference room?–and land on a table, snapping it to splinters.  Here is what they had to do, instead:  they had to attain a C average in a series of classes.  Now, I will grant that they prolly had to study real hard, and they should get credit for that, but if on the basis of their training they consider their hands lethal weapons, and subsequently begin taking nighttime strolls around the rougher parts of town looking for trouble they can quell, they will be sorry.   Being “…on the offensive to eliminate defects through methods that emphasize understanding, measurement and processes improvement” just won’t get you very far in a knife fight.

Finally:  I read the article twice, and there was not one damn thing in there about silos, either.  Context notwithstanding, if initial alliteration is what they were after, along with some kind of tie-in to our country’s agrarian heritage, the obvious headline would have used “barns” instead of silos, wouldn’t it?  I mean, wouldn’t it?

“Ug! Rent!”

I have three words for you, lady who sent that email:  Spell. Check. Er.  Now, I usually don’t get all fussy about it and fret, as would some of the real old guys I am related to, that the Mother Tongue is in irreparable disarray.  My dad was downright curmudgeonly about it, before he retired.  He used to whip out his red pencil and mark up his company’s printed monthly newsletter with carets and lines and arrows and corrections in the margins, and forward the corrected copy via interoffice mail to the Senior Vice President of whatever department was responsible.  Dad was a Senior Vice President of something else, which is how he could pull this off without consequences.  And my Uncle Bob, who by the way worked on the Shortridge High School (Indianapolis) daily newspaper with Kurt Vonnegut way back in the day (how cool is that?!), is a little bit of a language purist, too.  He wrote and edited for years for the Phoenix Sun and the L.A. Times, and was more recently a freelance editor for Arizona Highways magazine and the publisher/editor/chief cook and bottlewasher for a small newspaper in Prescott, AZ.  And Uncle Fred (smart-alec extraordinaire!) was a technical writer for General Electric for many years.  I come by my love of language honestly.

And so at work sometimes I am “the English major” by reputation and by disposition (and by the fact that I have a B.A. in English).  I am not a perfectionist, and I make my share of blunders, but there are things, mostly born of carelessness, that stick in my craw.  Some of those things I file in a folder called “Correspondunce”.  Just the other day I received an email with the words “UGRENT REMINDER” in the subject.  (Complete with the gratuitous upper-case shouting).  This memo was sent to several thousand home office employees, but if you put a gun to my head I couldn’t tell you exactly what the hell was being so ugrently conveyed.  Something about invoice processing I think, but I would not swear to it.  I just couldn’t get past the glaring typo, and my mind sped off on a tangent, conjuring up a Paleolithic landlord trying to get some deadbeat Cro-Magnon dude to cough up the vigorish on his monthly cave rental:

“Ug! Rent!”

“And Thag no get deposit back if make drawing on cave wall!”

Correspondunce.  More on that later.

Oh, hey.  It’s later right now, and I remembered something from a few years ago that made me laugh.  Our old mainframe-based email system had a feature that would automatically correct spelling errors according to some arcane non-context-sensitive linguistic algorithm.  A colleague sent an email demonstrating that no matter how foolproof you make something, the world can always produce a higher caliber of foolishness.  This fellow was trying to say “I apologize for any inconvenience” but his spelling was so far off the mark that the system autocorrected it to read “I apologize for any incontinence”.  We were all like “Baahahahaha!!” and “god damn it, peed on again…what the fuck, Barry?!”   Good times.