shed dander clips cuts shredded gift voodoo
scented soap fetishes crink nipple eye lock
fashion skin scraps
pinched laughter traps
bone shadows
black hollows
fake numbers
lost tatts
cloudy
flirts

] need.

“D” is for “Direction”

The most important quote for marketing, imho, and when looking for a job is from “Alice in Wonderland:”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” [said Alice]

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Or as a VP of mine used to say: “If you succeed, and you don’t know why, it’s an accident and probably won’t happen again. If you fail and don’t know why, you’ve learned nothing… and that’s just a waste of everybody’s time.”

I’m not saying you need to know what you want to be when you grow up before hunting for a job to keep the wolves at bay. I’m saying you need to have a plan for even the most random-ass job search or you won’t get anywhere, except somewhere random ass and less interesting/profitable than you’d probably like.

So here are some very tangible, very measurable things you can do to help at least face in some direction when searching for a job:

• Set written goals based on this list and any other activities you hear about. Lots of people know more than me. Write down what they say.
• Get a friend to keep you honest. Tell him/her/them what your goals are. Ask them to beat you with a frisbee if you don’t do what you said you’d do.
• Write down all the possible different job titles for all the different jobs you might possibly accept. This will help you when doing job searches online. Keep the list updated with new titles you find during your search. This will help you learn what other people call what you want to do.
• Write down the names of twenty (at least) companies that you think you might want to work for. This will help you check their websites every week for job openings (some of which you won’t find on the Monsters of the world).
• Contact the HR departments of each of those companies. Explain you’re searching for a job and that you find the idea of working at their company something to aspire to. Ask for their advice on how to best present yourself for future jobs. Don’t ask for a job at that point; you’re making a new friend, not pimping (yet). Ask what you can do to make yourself more attractive as a candidate. Ask if you can stop by sometime and meet with them and/or get a brief tour. You are doing all this in order to have someone at the company besides the hiring manager of a future job as a contact there. HR people are good at this. They want you to like their company, and they want to help you get a job, even if it’s somewhere else… because their stock-in-trade is referrals. They might send your resume to someone you’ve never considered, because they’re better at thinking about jobs like that. Do this until you’ve got contacts at all 20 (or more) companies. Then make a point to re-contact each HR person you’ve heard from at least every 3 months. Or if you know of someone else who might fit a position they’ve got posted. Think about the relationship from their point of view.
• Go back and do that last thing. Seriously. If there’s one tip I have on this list that will bear fruit, it’s the cultivating HR friends thing.
• Set some stretch goals. If you find you’re getting comfortable sending out 3 resumes a day, try doubling that.
• Have both a “designer-y” resume and a “boring Word resume” available. Art directors and heads of agencies will want to see the pretty-pretty one. HR people want the Word one.
• Think about the next job. Not the one you’re going for, but the boss of that one. Look for those positions in the job listings, too. If they’re hiring a new art director, odds are they’ll be asking him/her to hire some designers. When you find those jobs, add them to your HR contact list from above.

Looking for a job is a job. Most jobs provide helpful people called “bosses” who set directions for you. While looking for work, you’re your own boss… which basically sucks. I know. I’ve done it. I’m sorry… there’s no help for it. Get together with a group of friends once a week and report what steps you’ve taken. Celebrate with each other, even if you don’t have jobs, or don’t have the one you want. Why? Because you’re a designer… a creative person living in the Age of Content. You rock and your talent will be rewarded.

Sooner rather than later, if you set yourself some directions.

These tips are not meant to be exhaustive or fool-proof, obviously… but they also conform to the main rule of the Hypocratic Oath: first, do no harm. I don’t think any of these ideas can hurt your job search. Many of them just make sense… but aren’t regularly applied.

Anyway… good luck on your job search. The document version of all these tips is available as an open Google Doc here: http://tinyurl.com/ABCjobs4designers. So if you need something portable, give that a whirl.

ABC = Always Be Creating

Please note that I did not say, “Always be creative.” Everyone is creative (that’s another set of blog posts, I think). You need to always be creating things, though, if you want to earn a living as a designer. If your day gig doesn’t let you (which may happen), you need to do it on your own time. If your day gig forces you to be minimally creative in ways that seem to deaden your soul while actively making your artistic spirit hurt… same thing. Go home and be one with your canvas, clay, charcoal, ukulele, dancing, etc. You need to keep doing stuff or your creativity will wither and die.

That’s the real difference, I think, between people who say that they’re not creative and those of us who believe we are: doing it.

When you’re trying to sell yourself as a designer, you will invariably be interviewed by one of two types of people: another creative person, or a non-creative (business person, manager, etc.). Here’s the thing — in both cases, you need to be doing interesting creative things to impress them.

Why? Because if the other person is a creative, they get it. They understand how hard it is to remain inspired and purposeful in our arts. And they want to work with someone who can do that and who, maybe, might even rub off on them a bit. I have met very few truly creative people who are jealous of other creatives’ talents and achievements: we tend to be impressed and supportive of them, since they are often unique.

[Note: that's a difference between some people who are very money-oriented and those who are more creative/art oriented. A buck is a buck is a buck. If your business activity made $2 and I made $4, I'm twice as good as you. Doesn't work that way with creativity. There is no zero sum: we can both be twice as creative and can use that to inspire each other, not take away.]

The other kind of people — those who generally believe themselves to be non/less creative — are always super impressed by our hobbies, our ongoing learning/dedication to craft, the outputs of that, how we externalize our muse. It’s like magic to many people.

So… either way, you want to be able to talk about stuff you’re working on, even if you’re not working. Some of it should, obviously, be related to what you want to do for a living… but it doesn’t all have to be. Lots of it can be only marginally related, but it shows that you are dedicated to improving the artistic center of yourself, which is really what you’re selling when you’re trying to get a gig: your ability to create.

Some specific thoughts on how to stay creative when you’re not working (or when you are, but aren’t being particularly challenged/stimulated):

• If you’ve gone two weeks without learning something new about your craft(s), do something about it
• Improve design around you
• Do work for free; church, civic organizations, family, friends
• Put yourself on a schedule for trying/creating new things: one new (whatever) per day, week, month. Set goals and stick to them (or do them ahead of time)

When I first developed this presentation, for example, and decided to organize it around the alphabet, I decided to learn new Photoshop tricks for each of the slides’ main graphics. So even though all the slides are, essentially, just letters, I made myself do more than just illustrate the letters in ways I already understood. Do a search on “Photoshop tricks” and you’ll find about a bzillion responses. I did that, found about 15 that I thought looked cool, and worked them into the slide graphics. They’re not fantastic graphics or stunning pieces of art… but the process helped my learn Photoshop that much better.

Some resources that might help provide inspiration:

• http://presentationzen.blogs.com/
• www.visual-literacy.org
• http://krazydad.com/colrpickr/
• www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html
• http://drawn.ca/
• www.smashingmagazine.com

So your homework for today is: pick a project. Something you haven’t done before. If you haven’t written poetry, go do that. If you can design a logo for something weird in your life (your pet, lunchbox, pet’s lunchbox), do that. But, today, figure out what the next thing you’ll create should be. And then get to work.

Heisenberg is not your friend.
Would you want, in the end, to know
both

where?
and
when?

No such luck. Bend
to see the object, hot and bright,
of your desire. Your movement
changes light. Your eye, warm metal,
glides like wind. Unseen but stiff enough
to stretch and send dry leaves against
the wooden fence. A scratch heard faintly
by the one you stalk.

Walk
slowly, softly past.
The warmth of want
will alter orbits, warp fine lines
and change the curve and comfort of her path.

A reason for hope in this economy? Yes. I think there is. I’m beginning to see signs that people are wakening to realization that the real question is not “how much?” but “why?” when it comes to the idea that money is the quintessential measure of human value.

Since the Baby Boomers hit adulthood (see: Yuppies, Reagan, “The Secret of My Success”), there has been (mostly from the Right, but also from the technocratic left) a growing belief that the chief purpose of being an American is to contribute economically. Perhaps it is even the sole purpose. Success as a human is a measurement of wealth, and vice versa.

The kids of the Boomers are now becoming young adults, and have grown up seeing how this attitude affects their parents; divorce, depression, disillusionment. I’ve read a couple articles about how Boomer parents, having raised their kids to be super-achievers, are surprised to learn that their children want to do things related to community, education, non-profits, service, etc.

Let’s get one thing straight before this goes any further: I am a capitalist. I believe in the free market, venture capitalism, the general sensibility of the model and the idea that people should benefit from their work. I believe that the universe is unfair, and that it is not the job of the government to even everything out. I don’t want the government involved in any area of my life where I’d be better off on my own or working with folks in the private sector who have their own reasons — economic or otherwise — for being involved. That being said, I do think that we’re all better off when we cooperate on certain large-scale projects that have national or very widespread influence. We can argue about which of those projects is sensible — armed forces, healthcare, education, highways, etc. — but I don’t hear anyone sensible arguing that we need no government; just that we need smart government.

So what’s my beef? If I like capitalism and I like money (and I do), why would a benefit of a shitty economy be the realization that money ain’t the be-all and end-all of existence? Is it just sour grapes on a class level? Moral justification or compensation for being less well-off than we thought we be? I don’t think so. I think it’s deeper than that.

Money, as we know, is useful stuff. I like my gadgets as much as anyone. When we look at the Cold War, we can see lots of justifications for our economic model vs. socialism; money helps not just be a counter in the game, but it’s the score. If a company can build the same product for less money, it’s doing something better. That’s the basic idea of a market economy.

Again: no argument that money and capitalism is good. But it’s not the only good, and it certainly isn’t the chief good. Why? Here’s the first quotable moment for you:

When the central idea of a country — or a life — becomes fixated on economic value,  we greatly reduce our potential for learning, friendship, creativity and joy.

Example: I think that the Web is, at its heart, a wonderfully enabling technology across many levels of participation. Yes, it helps giants like Amazon be more efficient. But it also lets me, personally, do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with making myself (or, really, anybody else) rich.

I’ve made new friends on these here tubes . I’ve written more poetry in the last 10 years than in the previous 20 before that, chiefly because I have found people to share it with. I used Lulu/Amazon to layout and print my father’s book of meditations before he died, which was a great happiness to him and our family.

None of these things has anything to do with being wealthier. A couple of them cost me a few bucks, but I never did any of them with the idea of making more money.

The Web helps us realize: we are more than the sum of our bank accounts.

Wall Street, Washington and Hollywood are scared of us figuring that out; hence all the DRM, “three strikes,” SOPA nonsense. If we find more and more ways to be content, productive, accountable, flexible, transparent, engaged, creative, vocal and — dare I say, happy — that do not involve spending money, they lose a hold on us. They lose power and the ability to monetize our self worth.

Part of the current reaction to our growing income inequality isn’t just “it’s not fair that you have so much and I/we/they don’t,” but another, more visceral objection: “It’s not doing you any damned good to be that rich. It’s toxic. It’s stupid. It’s not making you happy, and the systems you’ve set up to defend your inexplicably unhealthy attitude are robbing others of some really important stuff like education, health, human rights and basic economic security.”

My Dad, the shrink, used to say, “Neurotics build castles in the air. Psychotics live in them.” For the last 30 years or so, we’ve been operating on a collective neurosis that says money is what makes an individual worthwhile, what makes our nation great, and is what deserves authority. What we’ve begun to see in the last few years is how that neurosis — which manifests in a variety of unhealthy ways for those suffering from the disorder — has progressed to psychosis: a loss of contact with reality. And when those with the most economic power are enabled to act on their delusions, they impact us all.

Cue the second quotable bit:

It’s one thing to make the argument that my riches are more important than yours. It’s another to defend the idea that maintaining my psychoses takes precedence over your basic welfare.

That’s what we’re seeing in the OWS movement; a questioning of the basic order of systems that no longer make sense unless you buy into a highly structured, almost magical set of rationalizations about money. This isn’t class warfare; nobody is saying it’s bad to be rich. What we’re saying is that it’s unhealthy to try to frame every challenge in terms of promoting personal (and corporate), monetary wealth. Let’s look at some examples:

• Newt Gingrich’s recent ideas about child labor. What’s most distressing to me is not that he thinks children should work, but the assumed ideal that work is the cure for what ails needy children. It’s as if you went to your mom because you were being bullied, and she suggested you pay them off. It’s a focus on economic value, even as a hallmark of development.
• The Copyright Term Extension Act (aka, “The Mickey Mouse Extension Act”). In order to protect fictional works from possible loss of future profit, we borked the entire system that our Founding Fathers put in place — the one that, you know, helped make the US one of the greatest hotbeds of invention in the history of the world.
• Buckley v Valeo. Money = speech in terms of political contributions. For those of us who really believe in the inalienable rights of humans, this one is like a firecracker in the pants. How in heck can money be speech, if there are people (and companies) who have billions of times more wealth than others? It is entirely fair that money = power in terms of economic leverage. That’s the point. If you have $100,000 you have the right to buy 100x more stuff than someone with $1,000. But the idea that you have the right to 100x more speech?

That last example is one of those truly bizarre judgments that begins to really point out how we’ve moved from a widespread, chronic neurosis (the idea that money is the most important thing) to an acute psychosis: those with this mental illness are making changes to the systems we all rely on in order to support their particular, flawed view of value, values and national identity.

I will take just a moment for a quick shout-out to my fellow Christians to ask the following:

Do you really believe this? Do you believe that God loves the rich more? Are you less of a worthwhile person if you have a job that you really enjoy, but that makes less money? Did you have children chiefly so that they would take care of you, monetarily, in your old age? Did you marry your spouse because he/she was a capable breadwinner and apt to provide good cost-benefit balance to the relationship? How often do you smile, laugh or feel warm about “money stuff?” Does spending it really make you happy? Does earning more of it give you particular pride? If, as Christians, we are meant to emulate Christ, can you point to one verse in the Bible that suggests he owned *anything* let alone was wealthy? Were His friends the well-off types? Did he ever say, “Blessed are the dough-makers, for they shall inherit major stock options?” I challenge anyone who calls themselves a Christian to back up the idea that money matters AT ALL to God, except in how we use it to help others.

We all know the end of this scripture, but here’s all of 1 Timothy 6:7-10: For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

That’s what we’re seeing on our national and global stages: ruin and destruction, brought about by the temptations and traps of money-centric morality, philosophy and politics.

I’ve never cared that much about money. Like I said, I enjoy it. I’m glad I can earn a good living doing something I enjoy. But I truly believe that you can’t buy happiness. Some recent research confirms this: beyond a certain point, having more money doesn’t make you any happier.

I get the feeling that lots (most) of the people I care about feel this way: money ain’t the center of our lives. That it has become the center of our republic is a kind of national schizophrenia that, I hope, we are beginning to recognize and can, therefore, treat.

I will say, though, that geekery isn’t what it used to be. When I was growing up, it was hard to be a geek, nerd, etc. Harder than today, I think. And this isn’t just a, “When I was a boy, gravity was heavier,” kind of thing. Patton Oswald said it better than I could in his Wired article about ETEWAF (Everything There Ever Was, Available Forever). I’m also not sure that it’s just an adult’s pining for the past, or the fact that it is generally much easier to be an adult than a child or teen.

I was a geeky child… but as Patton says in his article, many of the things that set me apart as a geek are now much more mainstream. I liked Dungeons and Dragons. I was one of about nine kids in my HS class of 400 who did. Now something like 10 million people play WoW and another gazillion (including my son and I) play Magic the Gathering. I read Tolkien and Narnia by the 6th grade. I knew one other kid who had done so. Now every kid (and their parents) have read Harry Potter, the Twilight books, the Percy Jackson novels, Lemony Snicket, etc. I played computer/video games when all we had was the TRS-80. Everyone plays the Wii now, including my mom. I programmed computers when that was entirely weird, new, odd. I sang in chorus at school and choir at church and was routinely called a “music fag” by other kids because of it; now “Glee” is incredibly popular, as are all those various talent shows on TV.

As Patton says, I’m not sure if I should be glad because we, the geeks, won… or sad because the geeky kids of today don’t have to try as hard at it, and therefore can’t feel as much joyful, ironic separation from mainstream culture.

About the only two geeky things I did that still seem somewhat out-there to me are Latin and poetry. And I stopped studying Latin in college when it became clear that I was really very bad at it. Poetry, though I stuck with.

I’m not saying that kids don’t take crap for off-kilter pursuits anymore. I’m sure many still do. And I’m not saying that something has to be socially shunned for a hobby or interest to qualify as geekery. You can geek out on something as “cool” as motorcycles, art films or cajun cooking. Being a geek is more, I think, about intense, inward-focused interest than giving a rat’s ass either way what others think.

I’m just saying that it’s very odd for me that when I tell my friends’ teenage kids that I build and play mountain dulcimers, they routinely reply, “That’s so cool! Can you show me how? Where can I get one?”

Hunh? First of all, you should be shunning your parents’ friends. They are not cool; we are not cool. How did it happen that parents and teens now hang out? It started happening awhile ago. I played GURPS with some friends, and quite a few of their teen kids played with us. We all got along very well. The kids seemed pleased to be allowed into the mix, and the adults were glad to have a new generation to share and play with.

To repeat: hunh? When I was a kid, I had a great relationship with my parents. We did things together, sure. My dad and I loved bad movies and canoeing. That was OK. But having them hang out with my friends while we played Avalon Hill board games? Nope. No thanks. And I think my dad would have felt the same way.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m pleased. My son and I play MTG with his friends. I think one of their dads plays, too. We should have a “generation wars” event [They already, Dan and his friends, arrange "Magic the Gathering Gatherings," which cracks me up]. I hope we can continue in this way all through middle and high school. It’s nice to be friends with your kid and his friends. It’s friendly.

But it, too, takes some of the shine off the geek thing, I think. It just seems too… normal? Happy? Well-adjusted? Functional?

So… I’m left with poetry. For years I didn’t mention to people that I wrote poetry, because the face they usually made translated roughly to, “Oh. Sure. Well… you’re not going to make me read it, are you?” Then, about fifteen years ago, I would bring it up once in awhile: still got a reaction as if I said that I liked to shave Disney characters into the fur on the back of my dog. Which, frankly, pleased me. As my other geeky pursuits became mainstream, having one, special, lonely thing that set me apart kind of felt… right.

I remember when, around 1995, I started talking about computer games around someone I’d just met and he said, “Oh, I’m a huge fan of ‘Sid Meier’s Civilization!” And I thought, “Wow. That was unexpected.” Since then, I know all kinds of people who game. It’s the new normal. Same for fantasy books, music and being computer geeks.

Poetry? Not so much. Once in awhile a student of mine will ask to share some poems they’ve worked on. Or I’ll mention that I write to a friend and they’ll confess that they, too, have sometimes dabbled. The people I actively talk about poetry with are ones I’ve met online in dedicated poetry forums.

Which, I need not remind you, didn’t exist when we were kids. Unless, by “we,” it turns out someone reading this is actually still a kid. Then… never mind.

Part of what has made me internally (to my mind) strong, morally consistent and emotionally hardy was that I’d spent so many years trying to reconcile the enjoyment I felt in my pursuits with the general disregard in which they were held by the world in general. In the main, I’m “glad we won.” I’m glad that my kid can do geeky things without being picked on. That people can pursue a wide range of interests in very odd (seeming) corners, and find like-minded friends pretty easily on the Web. I know that bullying still happens, but it seems that it’s more isolated and less tolerated.

But some strange, quiet, secret part of me still enjoys the fact that I get the, “Oh. You’re a weirdo,” look when I say, “I’m a poet.” Not all the time. And less frequently these days. But it’s still a joy, some days, to be a weirdo.

My hat’s off to those kids (of any age) whose pursuits give them great pleasure, but make them targets of ridicule, abuse or just loneliness. You aren’t alone. We were never alone. And we aren’t now.

Take some comfort in the fact that your hardship will, one day, be the foundation of your joy.

This goes back, in many ways, to the great bit from “Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision” by Stephen R. Donaldson that do so love to quote. It’s long, but this is my blog, so there:

For convenience, history is often viewed as a conflict between the instinct for order and the impulse toward chaos. Both are necessary: both are manifestations of the need to survive. Without order, nothing exists: without chaos, nothing grows. And yet the struggle between them sheds more blood than any other war.

The instinct for order is an expression of humankind’s devout desire for safety (which permits nurture), for stability (which permits education), for predictability (which permits one thing to be built on another)—for equations of cause and effect simple enough to be relied upon. Indeed, without resistance to change, growth itself would be impossible: resistance to change creates safe, stable predictable environments in which change can accumulate productively.

The instinct for order is therefore aggressive. It actively opposes any alteration of circumstance, any variation of perspective, any hostility of environment or intention. It fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.

The impulse toward chaos is a manifestation of humankind’s inbred knowledge that the best way to survive any danger is to run away from it. This instinct focuses on the resources of individual imagination and cunning, rather than on the potentialities of concerted action. Its most common overt expression involves an insistence upon self-determination (freedom from restriction), individual liberty (freedom from requirement) and nonconformity (freedom from cause and effect). However, such insistence is primarily a rationalization of the desire to flee—to survive by escape.

Therefore the impulse toward chaos is also aggressive. The very act of escape breaks down systems of order: it contradicts safety, avoids stability, defies cause and effect. Like the instinct for order, it fights to create and defend the conditions it seeks.

Nevertheless stability and predictability themselves would be impossible without chaos. Chaos exerts the pressure which requires order to shape itself accurately. Without accuracy, order would self-destruct as soon as it came into being.

For these reasons, the struggle between order and chaos is eternal, necessary—and extremely expensive.

Maybe corporations don’t scale well because they are top-down, with an over reliance on order (management). Cities grow bottom-up, through chaos (craziness not just tolerated, but nurtured). Crazy = chaos. Management = order. Too much of either, you get no growth. Too much crazy = anarchy. Too much order = stagnation. Maybe corporations start out somewhat chaotic (at the level of entrepreneur), but order ends up being imposed on them both internally  — as we fight to maintain some kind of status quo — or externally, as outside forces such as laws, competition, market changes and time push us into more rigid forms.

So… the question may be less, “Why don’t corporations scale well?” and more, “How are cities different than individuals?”

It may be that looking at a corporation may be more like looking at any individual in a city. One person (or many) may (will) fail, fall sick or die in the process of a city’s growth. We don’t say, “The city is bad because it killed one person.” And people (as animals) don’t scale well. Maybe in this metaphor, the entire industry or the market or an entire economy is the city. And corporations are doomed to live and die, succeed and fail, more as individuals.

So… how do cities differ from individuals? Sounds like an odd question, but if corporations are more like people (and we call them corporations, eh?), maybe understanding the city vs. person dynamic would help corporations grow better/happier.

Perhaps cities scale better because they are made up of many more individuals with very different overlapping, intersecting goals. And those purposes touch/influence each other. In “Emergence” Steven Johnson talked about places like the salons of Europe and scientific coffee houses of the early Industrial Revolution; places where very diverse ideas got a chance to rub up together. Emergence — that is, major intellectual growth — needed a hothouse where very different types of thought had to jostle each other. If you read any of James Burke’s books (“Connections” is a good start), you’ll find that many great inventions were built out of odd, dissimilar mash-ups of ideas.

Which makes me wonder: would a company that did a few (or many) very different things end up doing them all very badly, or get remarkably better at some/all of them? And by very different, I mean like a software company also bottling fruit juice. Or a hospital also running a baseball team.

As long as I can remember reading about businesses, I’ve heard it accepted as God’s truth that you shouldn’t (as a company) try to do to many things. “Stick to your core competency,” is pretty much gospel. And, “Pick one thing and be great at it.” But what if you want your “one thing” not to be product, service or industry-specific… but passion-specific? Or artistic stance-specific? Or metaphor specific?

I read recently (can’t remember where; sorry, would love to cite) that the reason Apple has done so well is that it didn’t define itself as a “company that made computers,” but as a “company that loves to please customers with great industrial design.” OK… well… sure. And that’s why they could make iEverything and do OK, because people went to that well for one thing — good, human-centric design. Which could be manifested in desktop computers, laptops, phones, MP3 players, tablets, etc. You’re not buying i[Thing]. You’re buying design.

What if your company’s main product was laughter? Or peace? Or (alternately) fear? Or relaxation? Let’s take that last one for a spin…

If I wanted a company that produced relaxation, where would I start? Would I buy a successful bed or furniture company? Or license/produce some really mellow music? Or look into what foods are conducive to relaxation? Or which exercises/meditations work best? Well… I’d probably do all of those things. Eventually. Or work to tie together companies that did them in a way that increased relaxation for all their customers (who wanted to relax, that is). I would probably end up doing lots of very different things, from an industrial standpoint; but if everything I did helped my customers to be more relaxed… we all win. And maybe that would scale better, because it wouldn’t rely solely on building more efficient beds or better/cheaper IP lawyers, or working with specific insurance companies. What we used to think of as specific products/services would become part of a more meta (sorry, you can’t get a post this long from me without a “meta” thrown in) supply chain with something much less tangible, but much more… important?… vital?… interesting?… at its core.

Maybe corporations don’t scale because they make their core competency a *thing* and not an *aspiration.* I do not mean this in any kind of soft-hearted, wishy-washy, hippy-dippy way. I’m not talking about “let’s build a joy factory!” I’m talking about a hard-heated approach to a business where the main product… the main metrics… are more about an effect than a widget.

Maybe that’s why Starbucks and Disney do so well. Starbucks is mostly about coffee, sure. But it’s really about treating yourself to a mini vacation. So you can also get expensive little cookies there and off-beat CD’s. And Disney isn’t about any single product: it’s about fun. Whether that’s at the movies, the theme parks, the TV shows or through toys and games. Disney sells fun.

If that’s the case, then many corporate metrics are measuring the wrong things. Efficiency is great (in the case of a city), when you’re thinking about your commute. Good, fast, safe, short route. Lovely. But when it comes to… dating? Dining? Entertainment? Shopping? Architecture? Friends? Civic spaces? None of those things are judged in terms of efficiency.

In short, maybe corporations are cities made only of roads. Easy to measure, easy to understand. But way less likely to attract tourists, artists, bands, and newlyweds.

Thanks, JP. I haven’t blogged in a long time. This was an interesting topic to think-out-loud about.

Time to care for useless weeds.
Time to force conformity.
Time for our mad hierarchy
of measured, soft suburban warfare
fought with gestures, eyebrows, jokes and sighs.

You can’t fight. At best you might
retreat the field for condo life or fob the job
on pros and neighbors’ kids. But that’s not peace.
The grass still wins.

Until the day she lay down flat, barefoot, stretched out
on her back, closed her eyes, tipped back
her head, sighed deeply, smiled and said,

“I love the feel of fresh-mown grass.”

An armistice? Perhaps.

Eyes swollen, pressure kissed,
or eaten by the curious
fish who want to taste last sights.
Synesthesia, second hand.
Pearls of life dissolve,
melt on tiny tongues.

A child’s game, the rumors pass
from lips to ears to lips,
stirred by confection, convection, consensus.
Rattle, final, homogeneous,
uninteresting and petty.

“Yes, there is sky. It’s where
they make the dead.”

Which is kind of a metaphor for the whole film.

I liked Saoirse Ronan’s performance in this movie very much, despite the fact that her name confuses my brain. It’s Irish for “freedom,” though, so points for being ethnically interesting and not just having parents who wanted to make up a u-neek spelling for “Cherise” or something. So the name thing cancels out.

She was good. Fun to watch. Did a nice job. I would *especially* like to thank everyone involved in the film for managing to create a strong, physical, beautiful young girl character who is almost 100% entirely un-sexualized. She is very pretty. She moves very well. You spend almost the entire movie looking at her. She is almost at that age when her prettiness will begin to be an adult beauty, and you can see that coming through. Unfortunately, many moves simply can’t seem to show us beautiful, pre-adult girls without turning them into sex objects. That happens in real life, too, of course. And so it’s not necessarily inappropriate… especially if one of the film’s themes is the over-sexualization of young girls. When it’s simply a way too titillate and sell tickets and ramp up the sexy factor of a movie, though… that can be troublesome. I don’t have a problem with sexy women in movies. But under-age girls who are gotten up in skin-tight leather or vinyl… I usually find that psychologically or culturally troubling.

“Hanna” doesn’t do that. She’s a girl, yes. And pretty and physical. But at no time is she presented as a sex object. In fact (mild spoiler), there’s a scene where she approaches a sexually charged moment and shies away from it really interestingly.

Now… some will say that the character’s lack of socialization is a major part of the story’s arc. And that is true. But I can certainly see a universe (it’s right over there… yes… there… behind the Denny’s. Right. Yes, that one) where this movie got made, kept the story the same, and tarted up the character and made her “innocent seeming sexuality” a major selling point of the movie. Bravo to Joe Wright and David Farr and Seth Lochhead for not doing so. It would have cheapened the movie.

So Saoirse did a great job. And Eric Bana was as dreamy and hunky as ever and did just fine. And Cate Blanchett, whom I adore… well… she’s my main problem with this film.

She’s the bad guy, which you’ll know if you watch the trailer, so don’t blame me for any spoilers there. She’s a terrific actress, but somehow seems to have pasted this particular performance in on top of herself. There’s no depth there, and we don’t understand why she’s so dedicated to the bad things she wants to do. If she’s just following orders… meh. That’s never very interesting. And…

The hair and the accent.

Three things all together: 1) a bad, poofy haircut that may be a wig; 2) said hair/wig being bright, screaming, unnatural red; 3) an awful, thick southern accent. Any one of those things I could have taken. Lumped all together, they were a giant distraction every time she was on screen. Much of the rest of the movie seems washed in sepia and the tones of a dull, grey winter. But then in comes Cate and her clown hair and Southern Belle voice and it just totally yanked me out of the magic circle.

Film/art grade: B-. Nothing really wrong with it, but the script could have used some major tightening and some more backstory. Also, while Hanna is supposed to be kinda super-special, that never came out as much as it could have. She seemed special, but not super. And the bad guys were all pretty hollow.

Flick/fun grade: B. Solid movie, lots to enjoy, but some pacing issues. The scenes with the nice British family were too long, and could have been replaced by some more training scenes with Eric Bana, as those were terrrific.

Verdict: wait for it on Netflix, but then definitely give it a rent.