Spirits among us

Well, dunno what to make of this story from NPR about shifts in liquor consumption.

Seems sales of spirits rose last year, but mostly because people are going for the cheap stuff and shunning the high-end.

So that means Scoresby instead of Glen Garioch, Sauza instead of 1800 Añejo.

Does this indicate the triumph of American adaptation to hard times or of an innate preference for quantity over quality?

I mean—we’re talking nationwide sales, not just frat houses.

Me? Well I’ve bought pretty much nothing in the way of spirits since I moved to Washington and I discovered that there was indeed a place that offered higher prices and less selection than the state-run liquor stores of Virginia. I did buy 500ml of Tanqueray last month, but that was for a recipe for flank steak with gin and spice sauce.

But posting this has given me a thirst. I think I’ll have just a wee dram of the Speyburn I brought with me.

Sweating spirituality 2

Further to my post of last October about three deaths in an Indian-manqué sweat lodge: the self-styled shaman who charged nearly $10K per head for the experience has been charged with three counts of manslaughter.

As of this writing James Arthur Ray has been arrested and tucked into the Yavapai County slammer. Bail set at $5M.

Let’s see how the guy who earns $9.4M per year putting on retreats (as well as seminars, DVDs and possibly Amway and Tupperware parties) deals with the intense experience of being in a cell with the Arizona branch of the Crips.

It’ll bring new meaning to the term “spiritual warrior”.

Disorder in the courts

As an antidote to the whole “you vill haff positive thoughts und you vill enchoy it” thing in the corporate world, I offer this report from the LA Times: seems a County judge (now retired) has been slated by the State Commission on Judicial Performance for getting a little whacky when presiding at the final hearing on a settlement in a civil lawsuit.

The case involved a woman suing Windsor Fashions for requiring that she give personal information when using a credit card. The case was settled in the plaintiff’s favor; she was awarded $2500, her lawyer got $125K and other customers who appeared in the case got $10 gift certificates from the store.

What Klein did was order that everyone—plaintiff, attorney and ancillaries—be paid in $10 vouchers from the shop.

(No word on whether there’s an expiration date on them, or if there are service charges deducted every month the cards aren’t used.)

A couple of things are interesting about this—well, aside from the obvious deviance of his ruling.

First—his pronouncement happened in January 2009. He retired last November. And the Judiciary Commission only got round to censuring Klein now.

What exactly were they deliberating in this matter? I mean—they’re all de facto lawyers themselves on that commission. Is there no honor amongst mouthpieces? Or at least a common desire to scotch the precedent that could start the profession on the slippery slope to payment in Betty Crocker coupons?

Next—did no one notice before it got to the commission that by ordering payment of judgment and fees in store vouchers Klein was in essence making the store’s outlay a wash, since they have to be redeemed in the, you know, offending shop?

Third—I’d really like to have seen what a lawyer who gets 125 large in fees on a $2500 case would find of interest in the shop in question. No mention of whether said attorney is male or female, but the merchandise on offer in this place is hardly upmarket. Perhaps if s/he is outfitting a bridal party of 11 bridesmaids and a flower girl, plus 16 prom dresses for the neighborhood. Uh, and costumes for a community theatre revival of Saturday Night Fever. And two road companies.

I have to say it’s stories like this that make a native Angelena positively qvell.

Corporate crock

The WSJ reports a new trend in corporate approaches to keeping employees contributing to the bottom line—those employees not getting $500K bonuses from Goldman Sachs or AIG. Rather than treating staff with consideration (given that those remaining after multiple rounds of layoffs are expected to do the jobs of their sacked colleagues), acknowledging their work, giving them a share of the results, and like that, management are sending them to thinking happy thoughts seminars.

I swear I’m not making this up. It’s in the Journal.

I suppose paying $10K for a “happiness coach”, sucking up the four hours of staff time and diverting a few plates of pastries and fruit to the seminar is more cost-effective than actually paying them for the work they do.

Plus, it has the advantage of putting all the onus of attitude adjustment on the employees. Hey—you’re feeling down because we’ve given you more work than can be humanly done, slashed your salary and; cut your benefits: suck it up and think positive. See? All fixed.

Yeah, right.

If they really cared about happy thoughts they’d stock bars on every floor with Stoli, Oban and Asombroso Añejo.

This working life

You know, every time you think you’ve reached the absolute pinnacle of management dysfunction, you find you’ve only made it to the base camp & you have another 8000 feet to go.

In this case that translates to my corporate group changing “strategy”, again (it happens on average every nine months), with all hands to the enterprise clinical systems pump. Meaning they’ve turned their backs on consumer applications. Understand: they’ve blown hot & cold about them for as long as I’ve been here, but still.

&since there are three product management groups—one already in the enterprise space & one with applications that lie on clinical systems—that leaves the consumer-only one out in the cold. Especially since my own manager has managed to get up the noses of engineering, program management & the group VP.

At the hastily-called all-hands meeting last Thursday, they cheerily announced that a new loosely defined product management & marketing department would be under the direction of two people.

Yeah, because co-emperors are always so successful.

But there wasn’t any information about who sits in which organization. & our previous GM (now one of the co-GMs) assured us that they’d work out the details “over the next two weeks”.

Anyway, truth be told, this hasn’t turned out the be the best match for my skills. I’m not comfortable with committing to building products based on someone shooting from the hip (or blowing through their butt) about what the market needs. I like to do some actual, you know, research to scope out the real need, the competition, etc. My mantra is: is it real; can we make it; can we make a profit with it?

That is not the group way here.

I don’t know how much time we’ve got, so I’ve been scoping out the job boards, pinging my network (such as it is in these parts). Found an opportunity that practically shrieked, “Bas Bleu, come on down!”—product manager for a telecoms-facing CRM service. Seven minutes after I sent the recruiter my CV he replied asking to talk that afternoon. & that went well. He sent me the full JD & a link to the client company so I could customize a new version.

& then the next morning (before I sent the new one) he emailed me to say the client really wanted someone with carrier experience & “handset manufacturing isn’t relevant to their business.”

Excuse me? Handsets? Alcatel built the switches, routers, pipes & network management software for carrier-grade networks. Our customers were all the big boys—BT, SW Bell, Telus, Deutsche Telekom, etc. & it was my job to know what carriers needed & how to pitch to them. (Okay, they did make some handsets for the mobile market; they looked cool but had lousy UX.)

I did push back on the recruiter, & sent my new CV. I also plan to call him & ask him to schedule a meet with the client; because if I have to get out the sock puppets, I’m going to need face time.

& I’m trying not to let fear drive me, although it’s a challenge. I was laid off once before, also in a crap economy, & it’s not pleasant.

So perhaps now’s the time for me to think about a complete career change. Like becoming a torch singer. Now that most indoor spaces are non-smoking, I could really get into drinking more whisky than is entirely good for me & crooning about the pain of loving bad men & wearing high heels.

As far as stability goes, it would certainly be three steps up from where I am now.

Movie truth

I’m feeling in need of some amusement these days, and this came via the marketing star at Soapbox Marketing.

I have to say, these are pretty much spot on. But I could add a couple:

Valkyrie: “Yet Another Vanity Vehicle for a Vertically-Challenged Legend-in-his-own-Mind to Perform Histrionics”

(Okay, probably too long to fit on a poster. How about “Gott strafe Cruise”?

Sherlock Holmes (2009): “Mindlessness over Matter”

Avatar: “Not for the Color-Blind”

What are your nominations?

Leaving a bad taste

The WSJ reported this story about how much harder it is for big-headed chefs to smuggle contraband meat into the country in the wake of the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber.

Oh, boo-hoo.

As with most travelers who think US Customs & Agriculture restrictions are 1) quaint; 2) not applicable to them; or 3) an intellectual challenge to be overcome on principle, these clowns don’t even bother to show any sort of chagrin about their activities. This isn’t smuggling, they say; smuggling = drugs. We’re engaged in, in…educational endeavors. Yes, this is educational, not criminal!

(Educational in the sense that they’re trying to pirate proprietary product information from European artisans so as to improve their own revenue stream.)

The reporter seems to admire their escapades, giving them a Peck’s-Bad-Boy-meets-Robin-Hood patina. He buries the little fact that the bans on importing this stuff is for the protection of, you know, the American people & our own agriculture business. The sausages & salamis they slip down their socks can contain all sorts of nasties like bacteria that can spread disease much wider than their restaurant patronage.

Naturally, the chefs don’t comment on that little fact, nor does the writer ask them about it. “So, you’re saying that knowing which spices go into coppa di Testa so you can have a new menu item three months out of the year outweighs the spread of disease throughout the domestic pig population?” No, that might be awkward--they might not comp him a meal if he did that.

Way to focus, egotistical morons; way to show your civic values.

Order in the court!

Well, welcome to 2010, the year of reason, intelligent systems & justice for all.

A grey-&-white tabby cat has been called to jury duty in Boston. I am not making this up.

Seems Sal Esposito’s humans included him on their last census form, in the pet category. The Suffolk Superior Court spied him & issued the summons.

Although Guy & Anna Esposito have tried to ’splain to officials that Sal’s a cat, & even requested disqualification by checking the “does not speak English well” box (evidently you have to check a box, no free-form excuses), the court is unimpressed, & Sal is to show up for service on 23 March.

I don’t know about the origin of the jury duty call—most places I live cull their rolls from voter records & the DMV, not the census, which takes place only once a decade. (In Virginia, when you get a driver’s license, you’re in the jury duty pool.)

Also—it’s been a while since I filled out a census form (I was out of the country in 2000), but aren’t ages associated with any names recorded? You’d think Sal would be disqualified as being too young if for nothing else.

But this being America, Sal may be forced to serve. I’m waiting to see what kind of human-feline language interpreter they bring in so Sal can follow the court proceedings. & if licking his butt in the jury box causes an uproar & calls for a mistrial by the defense.

I’m not worried about jury tampering—opposing counsel could bribe him with cans of tuna & catnip mice all day long. Any self-respecting cat would accept the tribute & do whatever he damn well pleased anyhow.

So maybe this is an improvement over biped juries?

Driven to distraction

We’re experiencing a long spell of wet weather; not much of a surprise. What is odd is the fact that Seattleites don’t seem to be able to drive in the rain.

I mean, they’re mean, selfish & idiotic drivers in fair weather; the worst I’ve run across in three continents & all the lower 48 states. Their specialty is waiting until the last possible minute to get into the exit/merge lane. (To the point that, on highways where traffic is moving at 50-60 mph, they come to a complete STOP while trying to squeeze into the 15 mph traffic exiting onto another highway. Even buses do this. In fact, I was run off the road once by a semi whose driver had waited until the last minute to get onto the exit ramp, where I happened to be, & he just pulled over with complete disregard for that whole physics law about two objects not being able to occupy the same space at the same time.)

They do the same thing conversely, too: when entering the highway they stay in the merge lane until they run out of room & then swoop into traffic. Because that way, of course, they can get two or three cars ahead of where they’d be if they drove reasonably.

In fact, sometimes they swerve into the merge lane from main traffic that’s obviously moving too slowly for them, speed a couple of car lengths ahead & then barge back in.

& don’t even get me started about driving & talking on mobile phones.

None of that changes when it’s pissing down rain—they’re still as irresponsible as ever. It’s as though they think they’re immortal.

What I’ve also noticed—and this boggles the mind—is that no one feels obliged to turn their headlights on in the rain, making their shenanigans all the more dangerous. Evidently it’s not an actual law in this benighted state—in Virginia, if your wipers are on your lights have to be, too. Because, you know, it’s harder to see things the rain.

I checked the Washington state driving laws. They suggest that you turn on your lights in the rain, but don’t require it. (They also suggest that you turn on your lights when it starts getting dark & keep them on until it’s turned light, even though the actual law is turn them on 30 minutes after sunset & off 30 minutes before sunrise.)

I’d like to know what accident statistics are in this hole; but I know that I drive in a constant stream of adrenaline trying to anticipate what boneheaded thing the morons around me are going to pull next. Fair weather or no, their driving’s foul.

2009 redux

I’m a bit behind times with this, but considering the way 2010 is starting out, it’s a good thing to look back at last year through Dave Barry’s microscope.

I’ve always admired Barry’s perspective & his writing. It just about broke my heart when he left his syndicated column to start writing children’s books. So any scraps of his zaniness is balm to the soul.