Social motivation

Y’all know how much of a kick I get out of people on social media, especially on the Twitters-dot-com, where you’re constrained by the 140-character limit. It’s really impressive how much self-promotion people can cram into so short a space.

I’ll bet that the most frequently used descriptor there is “expert”, which pretty much has debased the coinage.

I was struck, for instance, by this woman’s rather contradictory profile:

She describes herself as an “Author and expert on #motivation”, but her banner proclaims that motivation has apparently been superseded by something she calls “The New Science of Leading, Energizing and Engaging”. This makes me throw up a little in my throat: both the part about being a motivation expert and the claptrap about engagement.

Because “engagement” is the corpspeak mot du jour. Last week I had to keep a straight face on my head while telling 400 of my colleagues that the goal of internal communications is to “Connect, Inform and Engage” employees. Repeatedly.

But what actually drew my attention to Ms. Motivation was not her expert-ness, but her claim to authorhood. Because her tweets demonstrate with dreadful clarity that being an “author” does not in any way mean you are a “writer”.

Also: you really should not depend on spellcheck to watch your back.

Oooo-er...

As I mentioned yesterday, I made a Costco run at the weekend. And apparently it is not too early to be thinking of decorating your yard for Halloween:

They've got several racks of costumes; superheroes are obviously expected to be big this year.

And there was a whole table of…well, garish, fluffy little child skirts. Which, now that I think of it, might look quite fetching on that skeleton.

I suppose I should be grateful that I didn’t see any Christmas stuff. I expect that’ll start coming in before Labor Day.

Flight of fancy

I misjudged the opening time of the Arlington Costco on Saturday, so I took a walk around the neighborhood to kill half an hour.

The neighborhood in question is Pentagon City. It’s across I-395 from the actual, you know, Pentagon, but it’s kind of Pentagon-themed.

Apparently it’s a creation of the Metro system—when the Blue Line opened its Pentagon City station in the late 70s, it was onto an empty field. There were old neighborhoods nearby, but not at all what you might call happening, which is the way it’s promoted now.

Since then it’s been thoroughly developed: high-rise office buildings and apartment blocks, trendy restaurants, parking meters and the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City—a substantial shopping mall with all the usual chain and department stores that you’ll find a few miles away in Tysons Corner. Actually, when I lived in Northern Virginia before, the only reason I ever came to this part of town would be to go to the Nordstrom at Fashion Centre. And I didn’t do that more than about twice.

Well, as I said, the built-up area is Pentagon-themed. The apartments and parking garages that are part of the Pentagon Row strip mall adjacent to Fashion Centre are designated by branches of service: Air Force, Navy, etc. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised on my walk around the Costco area to find a little patch of green between the très expensive Millennium at Metropolitan Park apartments and the newly-opened Whole Foods with this sculpture:

I didn’t notice any other representation of our military might. I suppose there might be a tank somewhere, or maybe a multicolored submarine. Or perhaps those are for future development phases. You never know.

Paid parking

Being a fourth-generation Californian, one of the certain unalienable rights that should be self-evident to all is the fact that tax money supports the building and maintenance of roads. Therefore it’s an abomination to God and man to charge highway tolls or parking fees on public streets.

Arlington County obviously thinks differently. I don’t believe there’s a business district in South Arlington that doesn’t have either parking meters or pay-and-display devices, and every one of them burns my bacon. Even the parking lot between the Aurora Hills branch of the library and Virginia Highlands Park has meters at every space.

But what crisps me even further is this slogan that you find on all the meters:

I just cannot believe they paid money to slap up that piece of snottery on every single post.

Gratitude Monday: Sacrifices

Yesterday was Purple Heart Day, being the 234^th anniversary of the establishment of the Badge of Military Merit by George Washington. Over the course of the last century, the Purple Heart became the mechanism for recognizing members of the armed forces who have been wounded in enemy action.

The wounds can be catastrophic or they can be…well, I was going to say “minor”, but wounds—like surgeries—are never minor when they happen to your body. They often involve blood loss and broken bones, but they can also be invisible and misdiagnosed.

Every Purple Heart awarded represents a sacrifice made in the service of the United States and its citizens. For many of its recipients, it was the ultimate one. In any case, it’s something to be recognized and honored.

Today I’m grateful to the men and women who have put their lives and well-being on the line and who have been awarded the Purple Heart.