This is a great opportunity for a motivated and talented person looking to crack the world of business wide open.
The internship would require organizing and filing for a busy personal assistant. Must be familiar with the "Getting Things Done" (GTD) method of productivity. I will be passing on highly confidential communications from my boss, who is an executive assistant to a Deputy Regional Sales Manager. Right now, this manager's main project is consulting for a start-up firm that is the brainchild of one of the co-founders of Kozmo.com.
Typical duties include:
- prioritizing tasks
- prioritizing e-mails
- prioritizing appointments
- organizing out-of-office replies
- researching ideas
- researching ideas to better prioritize tasks based on e-mails about appointments
- coffee
Must have a sense of humor, high familiarity with Microsoft Office (particularly Microsoft Access version 2007), a car, and a willingness to work weekends.
The job requires 15 to 20 hours a week to be flexibly scheduled based on the availability of the personal assistant, the executive secretary, the Deputy Regional Sales Manager, the Deputy Regional Sales Manager's wife (some light cooking chores may be required), and the CEO. Hours will be self-scheduled by the intern based on e-mailed priorities and appointments, subject to approval by CoreStaff, an outsourced HR and payroll tax firm that is consulting on this internship project.
Bachelor's or Master's degree preferred. Equal Opportunity Employer. Compensation and benefits determined by performance at the end of the internship (no more than three years). Serious inquiries only.
Mind: Whoa, what is this?
Body: What?
Mind: This. The scale. I didn't authorize this.
Body: I thought we might go up for a while.
Mind: Up?
Body: Yeah, get a bit bigger. Just to see what that's like.
Mind: Bigger? Really? I kind of had smaller in mind. Just to see what that's like.
Body: Smaller would mean lots of exercise.
Mind: Ah, point taken.
Body: And a healthier diet with fewer calories.
Mind: You convinced me with the part about exercise.
Body: But you would have more energy during the day...
Mind: Energy to what? Exercise?
Body: So bigger it is!
Mind: That's not what I said.
Body: I don't follow.
Mind: I was thinking, maybe, just staying the same forever. You know, keep the ol' driver's license accurate.
Body: No way.
Mind: Why not?
Body: Look, you're a brain, right?
Mind: Mostly, though some philosophers believe that—
Body: And, as a brain, you have endless ways of entertaining yourself, right?
Mind: Sometimes I think about ladybugs.
Body: But being a body is way boring. There's nothing to do but get bigger and smaller. And since we're fully grown, there's no, like, productive bigger to get. It's all recreational from here out, buddy.
Mind: Can't you find something else to do? Fight disease?
Body: You want a disease?
Mind: Okay, well, what about bowel movements? Those are fun.
Body: You realize you're way more into those than anybody else, right?
Mind: Dude, look, we're not getting bigger, okay?
Body: Exercise.
Mind: Wait, I have an idea.
Body: Exercise?
Mind: No, hear me out. What if we stayed basically the same, but you could get bigger and smaller on a whim, to keep things interesting for yourself?
Body: You lost me again.
Mind: Like, every day, within a reasonable five pound range, you could just go up or down at random. Surprise me.
Body: Five pound range?
Mind: Right. Then we're essentially the same, but you still get to have a little sport.
Body: Make it a ten pound range.
Mind: Wow, ten? That's ... ambitious. But okay. Everyday, at random, you're allowed to weigh something within a ten-pound range of now.
Body: And I can go down even if you spend all night eating ice cream?
Mind: Sure!
Body: And up if you exercise all day and eat right?
Mind: Within ten pounds, but okay.
Body: And it doesn't have to make any sense?
Mind: The less sense it makes, the more fun it is for both of us.
Body: Deal.
Mind: Let's shake on it.
Body: What are you going to shake with?
Mind: I'll control the right, you control the left.
Body: Oh, cool. Good idea.
Mind: Wait, how do we...
Body: Yeah, handshakes don't fit like...
Mind: Maybe if I turn mine upside down...
Body: What and kind of make a claw?
Mind: There!
Body: Agreed!
Mind: So you want to go take a poo now?
Body: You need help.
We're still committed to squeezing a baby out without any medicine, but that doesn't cover herbs. Today's "GET IT OUT OF ME" visit to the midwife yielded a massive herbal regimen. I don't know if these are going to work, have a placebo effect, or just get Veronica very stoned, but for your edification, here's a list of the ingredients in just ONE of the pills she's taking now:
- Alfalfa
- Lobelia
- Black & Blue Cohosh
- Spikenard Root
- Spirolina
- Thorny Pussywart
- Goat's Cum
- Acai Berry
- Loganberry
- Partridgeberry
- Dave Matthews Berry
- Gymnasium Sweat
- Banana Leaf
- Sycamore Dreams
- Labia Majora Juice
- Bacon Fat
- Sodium Pentothol
- Krokodil
- Calfskin Leather
- Corinthian Wheat Germ
- Hops
- Vaccine of Polio
- Tangible Benefit Sauce
- Silly Cobra Belly Mud
- Flatulence
- Hardened Snot Salts
- Jungle Boogie
- Jedi Dandruff
- Eye of Newt
- Cinnamon Spice
- Sporty Spice
- Everything Nice
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
In rough order of bother:
- Date and time of baby's birth;
- Outside air temperature;
- Migratory decisions of cockroaches;
- Michele Bachmann;
- Lack of rain;
- Student loans;
- Movable Type's administration interface;
- High school students driving to school again on my road ... my road;
- Krokodil;
- That noise the person who sits across from me makes;
- Having "Puff the Magic Dragon" stuck in my head;
- The time zone difference between Austin and Sydney;
- How long every minute takes to pass;
- The fact that a hair keeps growing out of the side of my ear;
- Mattress prices;
- Gas prices;
- Chocolate prices;
- Ice cream prices;
- Steak prices;
- Potato prices;
- Tomato prices;
- Cheese prices;
- When the cafeteria opens;
- Life and death;
- The ability of my iPhone to pick up the building's wi-fi signal;
- Hugh Jackman's face;
- My face;
- The fact that I didn't buy $1,000 worth of gold like I wanted to in 2002;
- Writer's block;
- Worker's block;
- Bullet lists.
People who don't even know me keep telling me, "You'll be a great dad." How do you know? I'm not even sure I'm a good person. I'm rude to bank tellers sometimes. I'm actively indifferent to cats, even the cute ones. I don't tip at Chipotle and I react to compliments as if they are insults. Maybe I'll be an okay dad. Maybe I'll be a terrible dad. Don't jump to conclusions.
When I said all this as a response once, the person replied, "Well, all it takes to be a great dad is showing up." That sucks. That sucks because if I do turn out to be a great dad, I want what every mother in the world has: the ability to use that greatness to judge others. I used to think that men were more enlightened members of parental society because they were less judgmental of each others' actions than women, but now I think we're being wusses. I've seen women completely destroy each other on a playground with one raised eyebrow and a pair of seemingly innocent questions. "Is that string cheese? Huh. How old is he? Huh." The mom on the receiving end of that is going to spend the rest of her day and at least one hour of Internet time trying to discover what could possibly be awful about giving string cheese to a four-year-old.
I want that! I want to see terrible dads and call them out on it! And if I am doing something terrible as a dad, I want another dad to come up to me and employ passive aggressive judo to knock me into place. "So, you drink beer in front of the kid? Huh." "Excuse me, but you are aware that the diaper should be facing the other way, right?" "Have you had her checked out for that speech impediment yet?"
"But!" I can hear moms screaming. "That's awful! Anyone who walks up with unsolicited parental advice is a bitchy rude bitchenheimer!" Yeah, probably, but also kind of a valuable resource.
I feel like dads have devolved because we let one dude in the '50s get out of housework by pretending to be bad at it, and now we're all stuck acting incompetent to keep the lie alive. It led to this myth that all a dad has to do to be good is show up. With all due respect to anyone whose dad didn't show up and was therefore a failure on even that minimal scale, I think we need to recalibrate. Showing up is just step one. That gets you an F+. Not hitting or molesting gets you to a D-. From there, if you want an A, check out the moms and try to live up to that standard. And don't let the moms turn around and condescend to you that you're an "amazing dad" when you know you're pulling a C+ at best. Instead, get into the game.
Me: Wrestling a screaming half-dressed mud-covered toddler with entitlement issues into a car seat.
Random mom: "You're being such a great dad."
Me: "Is that your four-year-old eating string cheese?"
For the people who do know me pretty well and are telling me I'll be a great dad because I'm obviously freaking out and thinking about it way too much ... thanks. Just promise me you'll mention when I'm fucking up, too.
My fingers are black because I'm digging through hundreds of alternative newsweeklies and throwing away any pages without my name on them. It feels as narcissitic as it sounds, but I've been hauling around an entire issue of every publication I ever wrote for or edited, and the box count is up to "fill a small closet." Since we will soon need our small closet for our small person, it's time for me to scrape through every Go-Go and Good Times and just keep ... whatever it is I need (?) to keep.
I know I need to hold onto this stuff for myself, but in my head it's for my offspring. I imagine them pushing open the stuck door to a musty attic, waving hands through the floating motes of dust and clapping eyes on a trunk that's covered with stickers. They undo the clasps and lift the lid to find half-crumbled broadsheets from the early 21st century. I picture them poring through every issue, carefully absorbing the words I wrote on water redistricting, light brown apple moth spray, Pajaro Valley Unified School District's deputy superintendent, and the rave scene in late '90s Denver. Then they'll know how cool I was.
Or, if they're anything like me, they'll skip the articles and gaze in wonderment at the advertisements, the prices on things, the silly looking outfits, the fact that words were struck on filthy paper at all and distributed freely in the streets on the off chance that a newspaper might make someone want to buy an ice cream cone.
Truth is, my words are only precious to me, and I suppose that's fine. These articles are my sea monkeys, ossified in the bottom of a dry fishbowl but each one still with a fake name and a fake personality. I also stumbled upon a thick green three-ring binder full of baseball scoresheets for simulated tabletop baseball games I played, solitaire, for the better part of a decade, complete with elaborate statistics and team records. This would be charming if it were a relic of my childhood, but this was something I played and made in my twenties. I spent the healthiest, most energetic decade of my life entranced by a random number generator for a fictional sports universe. That binder was the hardest thing for me to throw away.
Up next: how to catalogue and store the ephemera of an ex-marriage.
Now that we've got the third-largest state by population on board, I suspect the gay marriage movement will accelerate. The remarkable thing about this victory, to me, is that it was achieved through lawmaking by duly elected representatives, instead of by voter referendum (too dependent on finicky election turnout) or judicial fiat (as was disasterously attempted in California). I believe this will make the victory more permanent and unassailable, and provide a real platform for incorporating America's change of heart about homosexuality into further laws based on justice and equality.
However, as fast as the primed areas of the country may adopt to change, there are going to be areas where minds and hearts are still hardened with fusty ideas about homosexual love. What I think we're fighting for here is a kind of equality that doesn't just impact homosexuals, though they obviously benefit from this particular civil right advance. What we're fighting for is a government that doesn't allow religious dogma to dictate civic tax breaks and family rights, while simultaneously preventing government from impinging upon religious freedom. (I haven't studied the religious amendment of the New York law, but the headline of it sounds like a reasonable compromise bone to throw to the fearmongers.)
Given that we all have an interest in civic marriage being distinct from religious marriage in order to ensure justice for every loving couple, can we try to stop calling it "gay marriage" (which also has an unfortunate male-male connotation that ignores the ladies who are just as shut out of the system), and start calling it "universal marriage" to reflect that we're just throwing the doors open?
The Universal Marriage movement has a nice ring to it. Good powerful marketing monicker to counter whatever soft peddled version of "Scared of Queers" campaign the religious right comes up with next.
I had an intense dream last night that was plotless and evocative. In it, I was hosting a party in a house, a pretty nice one with hardwood floors. I was wearing a sweater and khaki pants and socks, and I was walking around filling people's wine glasses. I was wearing glasses that were a little too big for my face (this dream happened in a weird third person way where I was watching myself) and I had an exceedingly soft but full mustache.
There was music playing, maybe Christmas music, and everyone was having a good time. The house was crowded, but not packed. Voices were loud, but not shouting. There was no point to anything but conversation and drink and warmth. Like I said, plotless.
Despite the complete lack of wife and/or child, I feel like this dream was my brain fully embracing dad-hood. Yes, it's a pretty swinging '70s version of dad-hood (probably because I've got a pretty swinging '70s dad), but there was something in the caretaking aspect of moving through the party and refilling wine that felt ... dad-like. I'm not usually that kind of party host. But that kind of party host, well, he will not only make sure everyone is having a blast, he exudes a powerful musk of can-do, like he'll either charm or roundhouse kick any intruder who comes to the door with a crowbar. He'll tell risque jokes that never offend, perform corny party tricks that don't take too much time or attention, and magically always have another bottle of something in the kitchen or the cellar or the garage.
Manhood, done right, appears effortlessly in control. Nice dream, if you can get it.
This NYT piece on an alternative to student loans just blows my mind. Instead of making student loans essentially great big unsecured debts to unemployed adults in which the government guarantees the lender (such a backward financial transaction it baffles my mind that it exists), they become insurance pools that encourage employment and have the potential to depress runaway tuitions.
In exchange for $8,530 in financing, Sneider agreed to repay 14 percent of his salary for 118 months after he graduated. At that point, regardless of how much he has paid, his obligation terminates. Although this might sound similar to a loan, an “income contingent” repayment plan like this is far less risky for a low-income student like Sneider. If he has trouble finding a job or switches careers and earns a lower salary than expected — very distinct possibilities — his payments will drop automatically. The terms are, in fact, determined based on his expected earnings. If he ends up earning the average salary for nurses in Colombia, he will end up paying the equivalent of an interest rate of 17 percent, which is the average rate in the country for a student loan. And if he ends up doing better, he will pay more, and Lumni will share in his success.
...
So how do we finance something that is extremely valuable both for individuals and for society — something that, in most cases, should happen, but often won’t happen because the risks are too high?
The best way is to spread the risk. That’s how insurance works. In Lumni’s case, students share the risk with investors, who make more or less based on how well the students do. But they also share it with one another. Lumni pools its investments into funds to balance out the risks. They know that some students will run into difficulties, some will achieve average success, and some will do very well — but they don’t know in advance how any individual student will fare. And students don’t know this themselves. Through diversification, however, their funds can achieve stable returns.
Imagine Lumni and companies like it become the default financing option for college applicants. These companies could deny funding for certain colleges and universities based on poor actuarial outcomes; if the University of Southwest Alaska has a poor track record of graduating employable adults, Lumni won't subsidized its tuition rates, and students will have a choice between traditional Faustian loan bargains or, crucially, other schools that Lumni determines do a good job of creating jobs.
This would accomplish two goals -- increasing higher education outcomes in relation to graduate job prospects, and reducing financing as the primary determination of college choice -- while still allowing young and inexperienced adults to spread the costs and risks of attending college out over time.
It remains to be seen if this model scales up with its remarkable 3 percent default rate (and that's servicing exclusively low-income and first-generation college applicants!) but I can emphatically say I wish this type of financing was a choice when I was going to school.
With CD sales tanking, what is the major labels’ plan?
We’ve got to go to subscription. It’s the only model that works. Getting a little from a lot. Hell, people don’t have a problem with buying Netflix subscriptions now, even though so much is unavailable for streaming.
—Bob Lefsetz via ritholtz.comUh, when home movies first became possible with the advent of VHS/Beta, movie studios charged arm-and-leg prices for home copies of the movies. Almost immediately, the video rental business came about, offering a for-profit lending library to a nascent industry. Meanwhile, "home music" had already been around for 70 years or so, and consumers were accustomed to building a music library, not renting one.
That switch isn't any easier to flip just because another 30 years have passed. There's no barrier to entry when you ask people to rent movies, which is why Netflix can transition from one form of movie renting to another without skipping a beat. But consumers are used to owning music or getting it for (ad-supported) free. Otherwise, Napster (corporate version) would be the market leader in streaming music, not Pandora.
You can't undo generations of retail conditioning just by waving a magic "it's on the internet" wand. Right, Pets.com? You have to fill a specific niche that consumers haven't had before. Right now, too many sites are offering streaming at no charge, in accordance with the radio business model. Milk's free. Ain't no way you're going to get rich renting cows.
Cf. Hulu Plus. That's how powerful entrenched consumer attitudes are. "I'll rent movies and entire seasons of TV shows... but I'm not so sure about this paying money for TV episodes mularky." Until Hulu makes itself feel like (and become a replacement for) basic cable, they'll face the same barrier any music rental service does.
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