Tag Archives: Quotable

Weinerschnitzel adjustment

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“Now sometimes a pair of briefs – for reasons I cannot understand – have the most annoying characteristic you could ever imagine: In the course of normal walking and sitting, the wearer’s weinershnitzel ends up poking halfway through the flap hole like a turtle coming out of its shell. And before long, the most sensitive part of your body is wedged between your briefs and the harsh denim material of your pants. As I walked toward the departure gate, I was choking Private Johnson and giving him a noogie at the same time.”

— Scott Adams

Phone Whores

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In case you are not familiar with a term that I just made up, a phone whore is a woman who goes to the airport with no magazines, laptops, books, puzzles or other means to entertain her. All she has is a phone, and she’s going to use it, no matter how many people are annoyed.

The phone whore is motivated by the desire to talk with people. The phone asshole (male variety) is motivated by the need to have everyone on the flight know he’s negotiating important business deals and that he has staff members that must receive his wisdom.

— Scott Adams

 

Scott Adams: Flag burning

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“It seems to me that the great thing about the flag is that it symbolizes something inherently indestructible: the concept of freedom. You can burn the flag as many times as you want and the concept of freedom is not only still there – it’s stronger. I like that about my flag. I would go so far as to say it’s my flag’s best feature.”

The Long Tail (Book)

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If you loved Chris Anderson’s Wired article (Octoboer, 2004), The Long Tail… you will love his book (same name). I’m just a couple of chapters in but finding “hmmm” nuggets on every page.

Most of the top fifty best-selling albums of all time were recorded in the seventies and eighties (the Eagles, Michael Jackson), and none of them were made in the past five years.

Anderson provides a deeper understanding of why Amazon and Netflix, et al. are so popular. This might be a two-highlighter book.

Blogging isn’t a business

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Doc Searls was one of several blogger biggies taking part in BloggerCon IV (“Celebrating the art and science of weblogs”), this weekend in San Francisco. Looks like all of the sessions are available as MP3 downloads and I’m looking forward to the one titled “Making Money.” Doc’s take on blogging and business makes a lot of sense to me:

First, blogging isn’t a business, any more than emailing or phoning are businesses. It is, however, becoming more important to many businesses. And to the nonbusiness lives of millions. This is an example of what I call The Because Effect. In the Making Money session yesterday, John Palfrey called this “making money Off blogging” (“as opposed to making money by blogging”).

Most people aren’t funny

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Lt. Steven Hauk’s (Bruno Kirby) wonderful line from Good Morning, Vietnam. It was brought to mind by this observation in a story about Ze Frank:

“Most people aren’t funny, and most funny people are not funny most of the time.” — Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University (interactive telecommunications program)

For my part, I’d rather be funny than know how to fly.

What will the boss think?

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Seth Godin calls this the most important “marketing pothole”:

Great marketing pleases everyone on the team, sooner or later. But at the beginning, great marketing pleases almost no one. At the beginning, great marketing is counter-intuitive, non-obvious, challenging and apparently risky. Of course your friends, shareholders, stakeholders and bosses won’t like it. But they’re not doing the marketing, you are.

JPod

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The flyleaf describes Douglas Coupland’s new novel as “a lethal joyride into today’s new breed of technogeeks.” I very much enjoyed two of his earlier works, Microserfs and Girlfriend in a Coma, and offer these nuggets from the introduction to his latest novel:

Life is a contest between you and everyone else.

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless poor people.

TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

You can’t fake creativity, competence or sexual arousal.

Nobody has ever been happy in a job they obtained by first handing in a resume.

After a week of intense googling, we’ve started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless. — pg. 248

I think computers ought to have a key called I’M DRUNK, and when you push it, it prevents you from sending email for twelve hours. — pg. 386