beancounters

Tales from a coffee shop

It's Saturday, so you have time to pour yourself a cup and enjoy The Bean Mine's hilarious story. Subspace is that rarest of baristas, the Curmudgeon Whisperer.

You see, salt is the difference between fostering a burning rage at the old Curmudgeons and doing what I do: getting colder, getting a little distance, and then presenting the salt.  It's a little in the look in your eye, and a little in the way that you're standing.  It certainly has a great deal to do with your tone of voice (which must be more than slightly mocking) and what you say (if you revert to generic customer service mode all is lost).  I have wooed one Curmudgeon by sharing rhyme (he Shakespeare and me a translation of the Sanskrit Hitopadesa), and another by my appreciation for brook trout. 

And then there was you.

Friday Dog-Blogging: Name-Dropping

Sometimes people give their dogs lots and lots of nicknames. Did you know that?

"I've never heard of anything so ridiculous."
- Samwise "Butter Boy" Wildboom Don't-Call-Him-Chico J. Malmsteen, Esq.

I know - not a long list. But we've only had him a month; give us time.

On friendship

I'm having major writer's block this week. As evidenced (to myself, not you, obviously) by all the posts in my Typepad account that I've saved, half-finished, as drafts. There must be a dozen in here. I'll start them, but then have no oomph to finish.

I've been thinking very seriously about our little online community this week. The one you belong to - yes, you there in the back. I see you. You belong to this subset of the blogging web (among others, perhaps), where you post your thoughts, and then travel around and read other people's. You leave comments. Others come and leave comments with you. A few in-jokes develop among those of you who frequent the same half-dozen or so blogs. Before long, you start to regard each other highly. You even start to care.

And it even gets to a point where, when one of you suffers a painful loss, you feel an emptiness in your own heart. Whatever you'd been writing before seems trivial. It feels wrong to immediately go back to normal. You want to take a minute to process and also to share, along with the rest of your peers.

And all this emotion is concerning people you've never even seen face to face. Kind of mind-blowing.

Well, it's the 21st century. We're rewriting the very nature of friendship. This is not your grandma's social club! So let's be brave. Let's continue to rewrite how we reach out, make friends, and keep them close.

(I'm about to be brave and hit SAVE. Here goes.)

Bipartisan fun

Take your chances with the George Allen Insult Generator.

Now, one man

You've gotta see this:

The mother of all movie trailers. [via Growabrain]

We do this around the house all the time - we narrate ordinary household situations like movie trailers.

"In a world ... where a water filtration hose can break at a moment's notice ... just one man ... will have the courage ... to call a plumber."

Such things are best narrated from the doorway, in case the man in question is not a movie trailer fan.

Narrate this, pal

Class last night: We talked about the importance of narratives in the world of policy. How stories stick with you because they are easy ways to understand very complex problems. Sometimes the narratives stick so well that the public remains convinced the story is accurate, despite all-new evidence to the contrary.

What's called for in that case is not to present the new information as a critique (which usually cannot compete with the stickiness of the original story), but to present a counternarrative - a new story that goes further to explain the new facts than the old story could.

I was reminded of Wag the Dog. You remember - shadow playmakers create a war narrative out of whole cloth, in an effort to replace a story that made the president look too dreadful to win a re-election.

Then we presented to the class our "elevator stories". An elevator story is a narrative about anything - a plan, an autobiography, a situation - that has a beginning, middle, and ending, and is appropriate for telling during the course of a normal elevator ride. Mine was on local educational foundations - it was more the length of a taxi ride instead of an elevator, but people liked it.

Takeaway quote from our prof: "All of you should write an elevator story about your thesis."

Hey guy - how about an idea for a thesis first?

Validation of sorts from WaPo

Look what was in the Washington Post Offbeat section the other day. I caught this because the link showed up in my Technorati profile. Why do you suppose a link to the word "bean-counters" was made to lead back to my blog? I mean, apart from the obvious.

Well, heck. Maybe after three years, the internets have conceded that I am all things beancountery. It was in WaPo; it must be true.

Posted at  1:20 PM ET, 09/15/2006

Austrian Fecal Census

You've heard of bean-counters, but dung-counters?  On Thursday, organizers of the Vienna Dog-Dropping Initiative urged residents to spend 5 minutes counting turds on the streets of Austria's capital city, as part of an impromptu census.  The anti-fecal activists are planning to compile the figures and present them on Monday in an effort to pressure city officials to clean up Vienna's poopified promenades.

Movie challenge

It's Saturday, so you have time to find 50 dark movies hidden in a painting. You can begin playing immediately, but if you give your e-mail address, you can save your guesses and continue the game later, until you find all 50.

Also, you will be able to shut off the music at the first page, but I don't know. It sort of grew on me.

Courtesy of M&M's, which it seems is about to introduce a new dark chocolate version. Must check this out!

[via Aces Full of Links]

She blinded me with quizzes

You Are Somewhat Logical

Ok, so didn't get the majority of questions right But you did answer some pretty tough questions correctly Logic may not be your strong point, but you hold your own!

How Logical Are You?

I didn't get as many right as our resident Vulcan, Cmdr Sue, but here's my result anyway, in the interest of full disclosure.

Anthony - and everybody else! - take this quiz and report back here at once:

You Scored 55% Correct

You are a solid child of the 80s You'd never confuse Tiffany from Debbie And while you may not know Prince's first #1 hit You know every word to Little Red Corvette

How Much Do You Know About 80s Music?

Vow

If I am ever a public manager, and I make one of my staff members suddenly scramble to produce for me an Excel spreadsheet side-by-side comparison of responses from two different surveys, and she manages to email it to me well before my deadline of an early morning meeting ...

I will always be sure to take a few seconds to hit 'reply' and send a thank you. Even if the spreadsheet itself gives me what I consider to be bad news.

You would think that simple acknowledgement of a subordinate's work would be an automatic thing for managers. Even after all these years, I am still amazed that it is not.

Mulling over my reunion

I keep forgetting to fill out the RSVP for my __th class reunion that's coming up in October.

But maybe I don't really want to go, so maybe I need to put quotation marks around the word "forgetting".

But ... my friend George made me promise I would go. He even called, back in June, on his birthday, because a) he knows me well enough to remember I traditionally forget his birthday and b) he wants me to attend.

But ... it's going to be expensive. And it'll be on BB's birthday. And I'll have to buy a dress - and wear it! And the band will play "Come Sail Away", you just know they will. And it's so hard for me to face the number 25. Gah.

White trash haiku

The plant done closed down
My job and my man left town
I need me a beer

More double-wide lifestylin' than you kin shake a stick at, here at I Was White Trash When White Trash Wasn't Cool.

Please give me trouble, please

I sense doom in the emails today. Is it my imagination? Or is the fly swatter about to fall?

This agency occasionally offers the chance for low-level workers to "rotate" to different departments. It's a good idea, I think. It shakes up the status quo, offers people a change of scenery, and lets bosses acquire talent without the pesky inconvenience of having to interview strangers for days.

My last job claimed we were going to rotate staff for these same reasons. But the office culture was so steeped in paranoia, we believed (and rightly so, trust me) that the rotation was just an excuse to break up figurative terrorist cells of dissenting cubicle-dwellers. (Figurative, I say! Please don't send the NSA to my office.)

But this agency is much more functional than that. I believe when they say "rotate", their motives are pure; it's all simply an opp for workers to pad their resumes, and front-line supervisors to efficiently unload dead weight and acquire talent, period. Everybody's happy! Hearts and flowers! Green, green grass and little birdies!

So anyway, my tiny team in a staff meeting, right? and my supv. announces this rotational opp coming down the pike. She tells us she thinks we might be able to get a fifth person for our team. But oh, by the way, are any of us interested in mustering out?

Nobody says 'yes' but me!

So now I can picture the wheels turning in her mind. Frankly, I am sure I have not been an entirely pleasant subordinate to work with. I am not easy for her to talk to. And my productivity is adequate but not awe-inspiring. On the other hand, I am literally better than nothing. (Literally.) If she lets me go, she might not fill my slot - or she might get a new person she has to spend an entire ten minutes breaking down in.

Once again, I have put myself in the weird position of having let my supervisor know I don't like it here, yet remaining stuck in place. Like a fly in jelly. If I ever figure out why I do this to myself, I will be a much more secure person.

Ye'r off the Map, Miss Turner

Well, shiver me timbers good gravy, if everyone knows about it, then half the fun is gone!

:::sigh:::

On the other hand, maybe I am just being petty. After all, is half the fun of Halloween gone, just because every kid likes to go trick-or-treating? Even if it's guaranteed that half those kids will be dressed as Cap'n Sparrow?

Okay, okay. We'll play. Starting with my Talk Like A Pirate story:

Every morning I drive my daughter to school, right? It's the same route, down our little city's main thoroughfare, so it's possible to see the same cars and the same drivers every day.

One day, Bunny pointed out a distinctive-looking green Volkswagen. "That's Miss Turner, our long-term substitute at school," she said.

Miss Turner? I switched on my very best Captain Barbarosa (which is pretty good, if I do say so myself), and I yelled, "Welcome to the Black Pearl, Miss Turner!"

Maybe not very funny, but at 8 a.m. it was freakin' hilarious. From then on, every time we'd see her car, I'd yell "Avast! Turn ye car around, Miss Turner! Here, there be monsters! Yaaaar!" And Bunny would helpfully yell too. "Yaaaar!"

Thankfully, the windows were always rolled up. Though I heard tell that Miss Turner learned of our daily heckling through the grapevine. Maybe that's why she transferred to another school ...? Naaaah. She was a sub; the kids probably made her walk the plank.

Update: Quick, go and see what pirate-y things Keith has done to Scrine. Yaaaar!

Salon advice

Never discuss politics with the person cutting your hair!

I happened to get a stylist who is chatty (asking me where I work) and a consumer watchdog (happens to be mad because she knows that my agency is paying huge, huge fines to the Fed). In her concern, she became, shall we say, accidentally over-zealous.

And to make a long story short, I now have bangs again!

Friday dog-blogging: the whopper

Does this look like the face of a dog who stole a quarter of a chicken from the kitchen counter?

Does this look like the face of his confederate, who stood sentry while the crime was committed, and then ate a bunch of it herself?

Oh, no. No, no. It must be your imagination, Big She. What happened was, the chicken tried to fly away. Yes! Cooked chicken! Flying! We shit you not!

Without a thought for our own safety, we jumped in the air and caught it before it could fly away and perhaps do something naughty.

It put up a fight, Big She, it really did. But we finally caught it and killed it. And just to make sure it was dead, we crunched it up in our wicked, wicked teeth.

Hey, what's with the rolled-up newspaper? Ow. Ow.

Hail Eris!

LOS ANGELES (AP)—A distant, icy rock whose discovery shook up the solar system and led to Pluto's planetary demise has been given a name: Eris.

Well, fax me a beer. What a kick! As most of you know, this is my favorite goddess. This is THE Goddess, depending on your personal pantheism.

Unlike some, I don't think this naming heralds trouble. I mean, it's not like we accidentally visited the Brunswick Shrine or anything. Now that would be cateclysmic ...

Love note to Potato Salad man

Dear Potato Salad man:

Thank you for sending the color printer! I got your voice mail, your e-mail, and a visit from the security guard saying there were workmen at the door, all in the space of two minutes. You do take your time, but when you come through, it's like a beautiful symphony of bureaucracy. I take back everything I blogged about you previously.

BFF,

Pam

My LOC card

Make your own library catalog card here.  [via Verbatim]

Conversation with my kid

Bunnylou: Listen, Mom. [snuffles] Listen. [snuffles again] My nose is plugged. And at school? I kept sneezing? But now that I'm home, I've stopped. I think I'm allergic to school.

Me: Yeah, we were all allergic to school back in fifth grade. Actually, you're probably just reacting to the air. It's particularly smoggy and dusty this time of year.

Bunny: When will the air get better?

Me: Not until it rains again.

Bunny: When will that be?

Me: Like, late October.

Bunny: [goes to book a flight the heck out of Sacramento]