Ask 8 Ball: Ten Big Questions

Q: Should I assume that Governor Nearly-Elect Cuomo will reform politics in the city known as Albany, since he has spent many years there working in state government, is the son of a former two-term governor, was once married to a Kennedy, and also worked in Washington D.C.?
A: Not necessarily so.

Q: I have never been to Portugal and do not speak Portuguese. Why should I care about Portuguese debts and deficits? What is the big problem with their economy?
A: Plastic corks.

Q: If I burned toast this morning right before potential buyers toured my house, will it help sell the house?
A: Not likely.

Q: Workers, especially government workers in Greece, Spain and Portugal are striking in protest against efforts to reduce their pay, benefits, early-retirement rules, vacation  and pensions. Shouldn't they be working and saving even more?
A: Jawohl.

Q: Like the banking and insurance industries, oil-drilling may not be truly regulated.  Gulf-coast "regulators" were found to have been watching porn on government computers instead of regulating. Do federal or state agencies really regulate anything except motor vehicles?
A: Pornography.

Q: If Bush was the one responsible for the cheap or free mortgages, lax banking regulation, coddling the auto companies and the cozy relationship between oil-well regulators and drillers, do his failures have a statute of limitations?
A: When things get better.

Q: When we were growing up, even stockbrokers didn't talk about the "market" so much. What should I tell my friends who obsessively talk about the "Dow?"
A: Put a Portuguese cork in it.

Q: What were those pols in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain thinking about, when they got themselves into all this financial trouble? What was their model, for goodness sake?
A: A place called Albany, near Rome and Ithica.

Q: What are your thoughts on the new electric cars?
A: Re-Volting.

Q: I will get a new job that I really like very soon, right?

A: Write.

Ed Note, just in case you want more answers to your own questions, go to:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi

"I'm On The 6:17; Where Are You?"

"Every advance in the history of communication has brought us in closer touch with people far away from us, but at the expense of insulating us from those nearest to us."  - Ted Wurmer, Fortune, 6/23/97

We all love stories about Magic Lamps. We love the idea of the lamp itself, the hapless person who "discovers" it, but, most of all, we love the Genie inside.

Why? It is not because he/she is cute and witty; it is because Genie is going to fulfill our desires, most commonly in the form of Three Wishes.

And so, we find ourselves staring all day and, some of us, part of the night, into our little magic lamps: BlackBerrys, iphones, laptops, and now, ipads.

And, I'll bet that most of us, perhaps even the most intense lamp-lookers, have been wondering: what are we looking for? Well, we are looking for Genies, that's what we are looking for: our little people-genies who can fulfill our wishes, do things for us, give us things, tell us something we think we really need or want to know. 

Like, "Honey, I'm on the 6:17; where are you?"

Where are you, indeed, as the great Zen teacher, Alan Watts, might have said. Most likely, Honey is not available because he/she is busy looking into a lamp-screen for a significantly different message about her daughter getting into Princeton, his Ford stock reaching a new high/low, or the house of dreams finally coming onto the market. You've been  taking the 6:17 every evening for nearly twenty-five years, and, here's news, this does not make you a Genie, at least not The Genie.

"A wealth of information 

creates a poverty of attention."- Herbert Simon

What are we looking for? What in this world or another are we looking for that causes us to risk our lives and lives of others, while we read or even write texts while driving an automobile? This is the first time in the long history of lamp-gazing that we insist on moving fast through traffic while doing it. Even Aladdin didn't try to arouse his djinni, while flying at 80 mph on his carpet!

We have all seen the men and women of their mutual dreams sitting across from each other in trendy restaurants, wearing ensembles perfectly chosen for the moment. Are they gazing into each others' dreamy eyes? No! They are looking intently at the screens that they have carefully and strategically placed on the table next to their respective knives and spoons.

Lately, I've been re-reading Orwell's 1984. Passe' you say? Not a bit. In the opening chapter, Winston Smith sits in his own living room, positioned so that the telescreen cannot see him. He is about to commit a fatal act, beginning a diary (for the younger audience: a diary is an early form of personal blog, composed on real paper with a real pen and meant to be strictly private. No, really, it's true).

That scene made me wonder: do we have any real conception of how much more The Genie inside our updated telescreens knows about us than we know about Him/Her? Are we rubbing our Lamps and fulfilling our Wishes? Or, are the Genies rubbing us instead, in order to get valuable information.

In other words, who is really in charge of the Wish Factory?

We cannot provide a solid answer here, but, perhaps we can do a service by raising the question itself, and offering some advice, naturally in Wish form:

 

1. Once a day, at least, we wish to turn our Lamps completely off for a minimum of one hour. Our boss, spouse, offspring, BFF's will get over it. 

2. Or, we wish to pick one day per week or perhaps a morning and an afternoon, and do the same. 

3. Or, since we are truly brave: we wish leave the Lamp at home. (Yikes!)

We agree that this exercise is much harder to do than we might think. After all, most people cannot even ride across town with their car radio/cd player turned to Off. Still, we think it's a healthy exercise. 

Who knows, upon closer inspection, the people living nearest or with us, might even turn out to be the best answers to the best Three or More Wishes we ever made. And we might begin to look pretty good to them as well.

Ed Note: My copy of 1984 is a Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1999, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. I recommend reading it again, if you have not done so for a while. If you never read it, turn your Lamp off for three days and do so. Orwell is not the smoothest fiction stylist; he was much better as an essayist, we think. But, he still has a lot of relevant things to say and, yes, there are sex scenes.

Transition: The Sounds Of Silence

                                    "....And in the naked light I saw
                                     Ten thousand people maybe more
                                     People talking without speaking...."
                                        -Simon and Garfunkel, the Sounds Of Silence

It took me nearly fifty years to catch up to my friend Paul, but I've finally done it.

In high school, Paul was in an Honors Class; I honestly forget whether it was Greek or Science. He often wore the gold or blue braid of an Honor Roll student, and later became a senior officer in the cadet corps. Oh yes, we attended a Jesuit-military school; you do not need to be a devout Roman Catholic to realize the redundancy in that term.

While Paul was excelling, I was treading academic waters near the bottom-third. Only athletics kept me from drowning in that culture. Our basketball team (Swear: I did play) was fodder for bigger, taller teams, but my tennis team was, perhaps, the school's most consistently successful one.

After graduation we attended the same college, a perfect match for Paul, less so for me. He naturally graduated in four years; as I have implied in a previous post, it took me a bit longer and three colleges. Okay, it took me a lot longer.

We parted ways for a while after that. Then, we both became executives at the same media company within a year of each other. He was on the executive floor, explaining some of the company's more quixotic moves to other media, while I toiled in Administration, caring for executives' toys like corporate suites and jets, among other mostly enjoyable duties.

A new CEO, his third, made Paul an offer he couldn't refuse, and he went away. It became clear, over time, that this was good for him, as the job had changed from protecting the company's brand to protecting the CEO's brand, an all too familiar story today.

He landed in the NFP world at just about the time that the company eliminated my job, splitting most of it between two very capable and much younger colleagues. I hit the job market, then the job market hit me. The NFP parted ways with Paul.

So, there we sat yesterday over sushi in a midtown restaurant, both 62 and eager to get back to paid work, sharing our war/search stories. He was mostly hopeful still, and, due to a recent upswing in interest in me, so was I, I think. But, there were also two shadowy themes present in our stories: the lack of professionalism and courtesy in the HR/Corporate search industry towards candidates of any age and the odds against the over-60 candidate, man or woman.

The latter shadow-theme is painful, but at least understandable. We live, after all, in a culture designed so that we can work, many of us at jobs we dislike, so that we can afford medical care and build a nest-egg, allowing us to retire as soon as possible. Some of us who accepted those terms may like them less now, since events beyond our control coincided to significantly alter the retirement equation, even for the most prudent savers. While we were out searching for work, other mammals with terminals and algorithms may have eaten chunks of those nest-eggs.

Boo-hoo for us. Get over it.

The other shadow theme is far less understandable. Weeks, even months may go by for millions like Paul and me without a word of response from prospective employers' HR staffs, search firms, and some network contacts. For those who think this is simply Sour Grapes, you should know that these Sounds Of Silence often happen to the most hopeful, energetic, talented and realistic ones currently searching. All of us experience support from people that lifts our hearts and souls every day, but too often even the best of us experience senseless discourtesies and indignities each week at the hands of  those who are meant to be professional people-people.

Amazingly, companies do not yet get that the way they treat all job candidates reflects on the quality of their brands and services. CEO's do not think very much about HR frankly: just ask Paul, who knows a lot about what they do think about. Today, as you read, the companies they lead through HR departments,  headhunters, or hiring executives have opportunities to engage directly with thousands, perhaps millions, of current and potential customers in the hiring/not hiring process.

Question for CEO's: How do you think they'll do?
Answer: Evidence  mounts that you may lose thousands of customers today without being aware of it.
Question: for CEO's: It's 10am, do you know where your job candidates are?


CEO Memo to Staff: Please treat each job applicant or inquirer as if they were our best customer today and every day. Thanks.

Paul and I exchanged resumes and he kindly passed me a job description he had found. We agreed to be on the lookout for opportunities for each other.  But as he walked away to his train and I to mine, our mutually bright and hopeful thoughts were realistically tempered by the shadow of those long odds and especially those Sounds of Silence.


Ed Note: After reviewing an earlier version of this post, "Paul" sent word that he liked it. Then, he proceeded to list about a dozen "edits and nits," all of which improved the post. I guess I still can't keep up with the guy. Also, a global financial company, which interviewed me last week, called to set up another meeting with additional executives, arranged as promised by the original interviewing exec. I will always see that company in a positive light, job or no job.

Q and A: The Greek Calendar Explained And Other Stuff

Q: How many months are in the Greek calendar?
A: 14. In addition to the traditional 12, the Greek year includes two fully-paid vacation months, Ouzember and Sleepober.

Q: Who will be the Next UK Prime Minister?
A: A male who will make John Major seem like Lady Gaga.

Q: What does the term "nearly a trillion" mean?
A: It means a number between 2 and 3 trillion. Politicians universally believe that the larger bailout sum will be far more palatable if taken by citizens in small bites, as when a parent cuts a child's meat.

Q: What would the US be like under Tea Party rule?
A: A combination of Greece and England with very good, cheap dry white wine and a steady diet of bangers and eggplant.

Q: How can a stock fall from $40 to a penny really, really fast?
A: We honestly do not know. We asked a dozen highly successful financial executives over the weekend, each of whom gave a different, long, indecipherable "explanation." The only unifying thing we noticed was that each of these gentlemen (apparently very few women are allowed to be highly successful financial executives) was very short.

Q: Did you see Betty White on Saturday Night Live?
A: We did not even know that Betty White was alive. Now that we know, we would have preferred Betty Crocker.

Q: Hey, what ever happened to that Icelandic volcano?
A: It is still there, spewing ash and  disrupting travel. It is not nearly as important as Lawrence Taylor's private life or the seventeen ways BP (Big Problem) have tried to get their thumb in that hole.

Q: Why is the traditional media, like the Times, so boring?
A: As you can see today, their idea of real excitement is a Supreme Court nomination announcement, as the entire rest of the world focuses on the possibility of another global financial collapse. They are obsessed with the Court's election of W, and won't rest until they get revenge. Ho hum. More cake for us.

Boomers: Five Things To Avoid In Resumes

The Thirdgarage staff ponders our own real life histories (we couldn't make this stuff up, if we tried) and shares some advice on what to leave out or cleverly conceal in those Boomer resumes:


1. Seven Years of College. Technically, someone could make a case that it's really nine years from your first year of attendance to the day the BA scroll arrived in the mail at your beach house. This can all be easily explained, but why take the chance that the interviewer, who was born after you entered your first college, is one of those four-straight-year types? If you must discuss this, take the Horatio Alger approach, rather than alluding to a Jim Morrison technique. Emphasize that full time job in the Exploitation Dept. at a film company to cover the rent on the fourth-floor walk-up. Do not try to explain what "draft-avoidance" means or that you "were catching up on lost sleep due to jungle-themed nightmares." Obviously, you should not mention the actual expulsion letter from one college or the one that your third, alma mater, forgot to send. It's best to conceal all of this from your college-bound children too.

2. The Three Missing Years Of Your Life. Obviously, these would read like some of the best years to reasonably fun people; however, it is very unlikely that anyone interviewing you will be one of those. They will do the math and find that from 1974-1977 you apparently did not exist. As if! You would have to call these years: The Beach, The City, The Mountains, which sounds like the novel you probably should have been writing. You could call this "graduate work" and it wouldn't be a total lie, but why go there? And why try calling it a "writing internship?" Internships only occurred in Dr. Kildare re-runs in those days. Do not, repeat, do not list real jobs held like: pottery shop clerk, short-order cook, census-taker, nightshift porter, ski-lift operator, laborer for masons/landscapers/sheet-rockers/sandblasters, or for goodness sake "Orange County weed-chopping fire-protecting crew." That last one may sound like a prison job, despite actually being mostly for released prisoners, who wrongly assumed you'd also just "been sprung."

3. Some Best, Worst Or Almost Jobs. Okay, so operating the cider mill was truly cool, but it will distract the professional resume reader, who will think you're a flake. Dropping the museum security guard gig is a no-brainer too, even if it was at The "Frick Collection", which may sound like foul language to some. Finally, it's about time that you got over not taking that Forest Ranger job in Placer County, CA. Nobody cares and neither should you.

4. Living With Your Parents At Thirty. Many people would assume that, if even some of the things mentioned above were true, they may have caused you to wind up living with your parents at an advanced age. Don't bring up the result, if you're going to avoid the causes. You cannot  successfully explain this to potential employers, despite the fact that this phenomenon has become much more prevalent again during the past three years. This period is easily concealed by the entry called "free-lancing." (Note to young job seekers: The corollary to #4 you avoid is: Your Sixty-Year Old Parents Live With You).

5. What Truly Motivates You. It is not going to be good enough to tell the truth about your always having loved a great story. You cannot say that you won't jump off the job search train without finding out what happens next. Only one person out of hundreds will care what happens to you next. When that person reads your resume, you will know what happens next: you will get a job offer. Then you can really begin to worry about some of that stuff listed above, but do not think about this now.

We hope this helps. It did for us; we wound up here, covering the Transition Era for you using Truth (mostly) and Humor (sometimes).

This Just In: Virtual World Tree-Mendous!

A Word From The Trees

Humans are often
such scary creatures,
especially when believing
they're Creation's main feature.

But, once in an oak ring
they get it just right,
despite long odds
and their lack of foresight.

This digitizing of magazines,
newspapers, books,
snarky notes 'tween teens
has got Trees thinking that perhaps
we really love all of these new apps.

Now, paper money may be extinct,
as iphones, BlackBerrys, and who
knows what link.
Humans may now be saying,
"In igods We Trust," when
Jimmie Choos or JCrews
become to-die-for musts!

Book-huggers, editors,
stationers, counterfeiters bemoan
a virtual world,
in which they feel all alone.

Well, boo-hoo, for them.
Hoorah for the Forest and the Trees.
We humbly dip to our barky knees.
Thank You, Kindle, ipad
and the new "cash bumps,"
from our rings, sap, leaves and trunks!