Better than Ice Cream

It is Monday. Sarah Maclachlan croons. Something about her voice is so comforting. Like warm syrup on banana pancakes.

It rained last night so I wasn’t able to get groceries so I did the only logical thing: I ate an entire pizza. That wasn’t the best idea as in the AM I can feel the starch and cheese and meat settle into my lower intestine in a delightful ball of muck. What was it SARK said?

Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.

Yeah.

Kitty is walking around the house with a pen in his mouth. His ‘kill’ for the morning. Usually it is a sock. Now he’s playing hockey with it on the kitchen floor. Often, he’ll walk around the apartment with a sock in his mouth, focused and determined, yet undecided on exactly where to hide his quarry. I swear he furrows his brow in concetration.

Read some more of American Theocracy yesterday between computer work sessions. I was glad I started with the debt chapter because that simply scares the hell out of me. I think ‘it couldn’t happen here’ is the ultimate hubris and maybe I’m just being alarmist. Maybe I’m just ignorant of economics. But you can’t argue that foreign-owned debt isn’t the most stable part of a nation’s economy. What happens if suddenly petrol is pegged to the euro? What if other world currencies no longer have confidence in the US dollar? What if foreign debtors lose patience and cash in? What if the real estate boom doesn’t correct gradually but quickly? Could the whole Argentina style collapse happen here? Do you ever look around you and wonder what it would like if we were thrown into financial crisis?

I was glad to read the opening sentence of that part of the book that ‘moving money around’ had replaced manufacturing. That’s how I felt when I first worked in the insurance industry. I felt like one person in the company was actually doing any tangible work and the rest of us were tracking it and building work around it.

It does speak to my current work in IT and so-called infoproducts which to me always meant ‘shitty PDF you ripped off from other sources and peddle on Clickbank.’ But I’m the guy that sold my ebook for big bucks into a book so I can’t complain. I get a little prickly each time I read more about prison labor in the United States and my ‘grand unified theory’ of employing the nation’s incarcerated to compete with overseas manufacturers. Why enslave a third-world when we can enslave good old fashioned Americans who have committed crimes? Isn’t that the gift of zero tolerance towards crime?

What does chill my fiscal humour is that many of the controls implemented after the invisible hand bitchslapped us into a Depression have slowly been removed. The free market is not almighty.

Ron and I were delighted to find the book had moved from the front table to the top shelf of the ‘business motivation’ section at Barnes and Noble – right next to ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ – they have six copies of it. I need to come out of my shell and go see if I can sign some of those copies for them. The big secret about ‘autographed copies’ in bookstores is the bookstores can’t return them to the distributor as remainders.

‘Morning smiles… like the face of a newborn child…’

What has been ultimately rewarding the book has been the overwhelming goodwill for my success. Maybe I worry too much what other people think of me, but it is important for me to be perceived as un-asshole-ish – well, to actually be un-asshole-ish during this process. Maybe that makes me a whiny liberal simp, I dunno. Or a pantywaist. Or what’s that other word – oh – milquetoast. Words I learned from Bloom County.

I watched a special on E! about Hugh Hefner and I’ve realized how much I’ve always admire him. He created a business out of thin air. He created a lifestyle based on what he liked. He created a brand based on who he wished he could be – and then he became it. I was telling Ron about the Bunny Mama and how she’d lay the smackdown on errant bunnies and how the meticulous training reminded me of flight attendants. I’m hoping next time he’s serving first class, he’ll do the Bunny Dip when he does the liquor service. To look at the bunnies then and the women now is to see such a different take on female beauty. Very strange. Plus, I always admired Christy Hefner for taking up the family business and working so hard to restructure the company in the face of the mainstreaming of hardcore pornography brought about by VHS and the internet. Lately I want to work for Amazon, Google or the Playboy company.

‘Doesn’t mean much… doesn’t mean anything at all…’

Plus, I always liked Hef’s commitment to free speech and continuing to demystify sex – even in the face of religious radicalism, AIDS and other maladies.

Maybe I can have the Blogwild Boys or the Blogwild Beauties. Ron is already thinking of our booth at Market Days. I wonder if I can get branded poppers.


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2 responses to “Better than Ice Cream”

  1. Beastmomma Avatar

    you should do a signing that would be great.

  2. Lyle Avatar

    Hey… dude.

    Have you ever considered a road trip/book tour to the Rockies

    Canadian version, that is.

    We even read books here.

    When we’re not crewing movies like Brokeback Mountain.

    Love thyself as thyself is.. and could be.

    Lyle
    http://www.LyleLachmuth.com/

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