Last dance

I was really saddened to hear the news about Donna Summer’s death yesterday. She was 63.

It’s easy to laugh at disco—the era of really bad clothes, bad hair, Charlie’s Angels, the Bee Gees. Disco has a lot to answer for. In two words: “MacArthur Park”.

I thought it was cringeworthy even when I was in the midst of it.

But Summer transcended it all. In fact, disco didn’t do her voice justice; it was all strength, purity & vivacity. She could knock a melody out of the park.

Listen to her take on “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”. I’m not a fan of the Lloyd Webber turgid, overblown style of songwriting; but Summer’s version is personal, not pompous. (An amazing feat.)

I’ve had many of her high-energy covers on my workout playlist for years. (Turns out there is a reason for disco—the beat is great to crank you up to full cardio use.) Seriously—there’s nothing like “She Works Hard for the Money” or “Bad Girls” to get your treadmill strike going.

Just hearing “Last Dance” is enough to make me suit up & go for a run. Really—you can’t sit still with her energy all around you.

& you cannot sit around feeling stodgy & crabby when “Unconditional Love” is playing. That one’s pure joy.

Ignore the quality of the video & listen to her voice. That glorious, vibrant voice.

The folks who made "friend" a verb

While you’re trying frantically to click the “Buy” button to get in on Facebook’s IPO today, you might want to multi-task, and read this “Letter from Mark Zuckerberg”, by Andy Borowitz.

Really—nothing to add. I invest my money in wine futures. And not too much in the future, if you catch my drift. Like—only as far as it takes me to get the cork out of the bottle.

We’ll see who does better in the end.

Thinking inside the box

If you’re feeling in need of an anti-stressor, I give you Maru. & boxes.

Maru never met a box he didn't love.

But this one is kind of heart-breaking. Until Maru takes his revenge.

Linking wonder, Part 3

LinkedIn is the online equivalent of a hair salon when it comes to inspiring stories. You’ll never be at a loss for “WTF” moments if you spend even ten or 15 minutes on discussions at the networking sites.

Here’s one that you know I had to gather unto me & then share with you. The poster says on her profile that she’s “Director Strategic Marketing” at a vague organization in Spokane that I can’t find. Her previous position is listed as “Manager of Commercial Operations & Analytics” at a company that likewise doesn’t seem to exist.

& she claims to have a “Masters, Management Consulting, Marketing” from the Harvard Business School. No date.

So I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that the“discussion” she started on “The Essentials of Script Writing Jobs” should be…somewhat less than confidence-instilling when it comes to, you know, mastery of writing.

The first graf alone wanders around like a puppy in a room full of dropped canapés in the aftermath of a cocktail party. & maybe the puppy lapped up a few spilt martinis, too.

Seriously, I was going to highlight the really nonsensical parts, but the whole thing qualifies.

Keep reading. When you get to her bullet points, you start to wonder if perhaps English is not her first language. (In which case she can qualify for the product manager job I saw listed last week.)

I will say, I haven’t bothered to follow the link to her website where you can “Get Paid For You [sic] Writing Potential”. Really tempted, but I'm running low on my supply of vodka.

Lest you think she was just having a bad day, I came across another of her shilling-for-traffic efforts:

Here she proves beyond all question that she knows as much about the business of writing as she does about writing itself. She probably scraped data from other sites.

The penultimate graf is the kicker, where she assures the reader that to attract business you must be simply impressive & charge less than everyone else. I especially love it when she urges us to “offer them with unlimited revisions.”

Yeah—that’s definitely the road to success.

But I’m waiting for LinkedIn members from the Sub-Continent to start posting replies asking her for job details so they can apply.

Linking wonder, Part 2

Further to my observation about responses to a LinkedIn job posting (all the replies were requests for the poster to email the full job description, even though they only thing you have to do to get it is click on the link), I came across another posting:

Well, fine.

But in the three months since the job was posted, here are the four responses:

I repeat my question from the previous post: why would anyone hire a product manager too stupid to even read the posting of a PRODUCT MANAGER OPENING, or click on the link to find out the details?

&, if these people are indeed getting hired, that might explain some of the software you see out there.

Linking wonder

I get emails from my various LinkedIn groups, which usually contain (among other things) job postings. I clicked on this one because it mentioned Paris, but because I am definitely not the Tommy Hilfiger type, I was ready to close my browser when I took a look at the comments.

  

At the time I took the screen shot, there were 45 responses (at least 75% being from India/Pakistan). But every one of them was asking for the poster to email details; which I though interesting, since all you have to do is click on the link &, you know, see the full listing.

The question that occurs to me is, Why would anyone hire someone too stupid to click a link? Much less relocate that person from India?