Tuesday, March 26, 2002
selections from the 101 dumbest moments in business: 2. A dozen Burger King marketing execs suffer first- and second-degree burns while walking over hot coals as part of a team-building retreat in October. One of the injured, a VP for product marketing aptly named Dana Frydman, tries to put a positive spin on having her feet flame-broiled like so much ground chuck. "It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything," she tells the Miami Herald. 10. With the slogan "Sometimes wetter is better," Kimberly-Clark (KMB) introduces Cottonelle Fresh Rollwipes premoistened toilet paper -- or, to put it another way, baby wipes for adults. 16. "No one will deny that Sony is a world-class hardware company, and no one would deny that Microsoft is a world-class software company. Nintendo aspires to be neither one of those things." -- Peter Main, a Nintendo marketing executive, to the San Francisco Chronicle 23. Italian jewelry company Bulgari pays British novelist Fay Weldon an undisclosed sum to extol Bulgari products in her next book. Weldon complies, offering descriptions of "white gold and pavé diamonds, cold metal intricately, beautifully worked, lain heavily against the cool, moist flesh of wrist and throat...." The book's title: The Bulgari Connection. 28, 29, 30. Great Moments in Privacy Part 1: In June 2001, the Georgia Student Finance Commission accidentally allows more than 18,000 scholarship applicants' personal information to be released onto the Internet. Part 2: Not to be outdone, Eli Lilly sends a mass e-mail in July to users of its antidepressant Prozac but neglects to use the "bcc" header, further depressing its customers by disclosing their online identities to one another. Part 3: Trumping Eli Lilly, in October a graduate student at the University of Montana accidentally posts to the school's website more than 400 documents relating to the psychiatric treatment of 62 children, including names, addresses, descriptions of sessions, and diagnoses. 57. Houston, We Have a Problem, Part 8 (Innocent Bystander Department): For an onscreen caption during an interview about the Enron debacle with Republican consultant Niger Innis, MSNBC accidentally misspells his first name in the way that one would least want to misspell it. "It's not the first time it's happened," Innis says, "but hopefully it's the last." 85. Still Partying Like It's 1999, Part 3: Peter Chung, a newly hired associate at the Carlyle Group, sends an e-mail to his friends bragging about his lavish new lifestyle. The e-mail -- in which he boasts of the "hot chicks" he's bedding and concludes, "CHUNG is KING of his domain here in Seoul" -- is sent to thousands of other people and eventually makes its way back to his bosses. Chung, no longer king of his domain, is summarily fired. [by the time this e-mail got to me, a picture of him had been attached, the caption reading "if this guy comes around looking for an interview (because he will inevitably be fired) DO NOT GIVE HIM A JOB!" it could not have taken more than 20 minutes for his e-mail to reach all of wall street.] 86. A Finnish textiles conference, intending to invite a representative of the World Trade Organization to speak, instead accidentally invites Andy Bichlbaum, an American antiglobalization activist-prankster. He delivers a speech in which he expresses sympathy for the South in the Civil War, describes Mohandas Gandhi as a "rabble-rouser," and disrobes to reveal that he is wearing a golden spandex unitard featuring a 3-foot-long inflatable phallus. --The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business, www.business2.com
"Leaders of downtown churches complained yesterday that the inaugural DC Marathon had tied up traffic and caused plummeting attendance at their Palm Sunday services, despite efforts by city and race officials to avoid disrupting worship at the start of the holiest week of the Christian year.... 'This is one of the biggest Sundays of the year. The churches lose money as a result of that, that you never make up,' said the Rev. John Mack, of First Congregational Church, at 10th and G streets NW." --mary beth sheridan, "for churches, d.c. race an unholy mess", www.washingtonpost.com. i know that alex posted this first, but i found it so appalling that i had to post it as well. Monday, March 25, 2002
'The Academy sensed this attitude was lurking like a murky cloud of spiritual unease over Middle Earth, and it is my (admittedly hostile) perception that they said to themselves, "Well, the Oscars are already fucked this year, so let's honor our Negroes! It's been a while. Call Whoopi." I used to call it the "Noble Cripple and Spade Year" -- it comes around every five years or so. When the Oscar Winner's alumni circle starts to look like the meeting table in "Judgment at Nuremberg," the Academy devotes a year to not looking like racist, Aryan-celebrity-eugenics-worshipping, cracker peckerwoods, and either gives an Oscar for the best dribbling retard performance, or jerks us off with a big, obvious, Slather-the-African-Americans-With-Trophies orgy to make up for the previous insulting, five-to-seven-year-stretch when barely anybody of color was recognized at all, for anything.' --cintra wilson, "oscars 2002: somebody make it stop!", www.salon.com. Thursday, March 21, 2002
this morning i was trying to find out exactly what the difference was between an ophthalmologist and optometrist. for ophthalmologist, www.dictionary.com gave me the thoroughly uninformative answer of "a physician who specializes in ophthalmology." (thanks for the help, Captain Obvious.) so, upon looking up ophthalmology, i find out that it’s "the branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, functions, pathology, and treatment of the eye." much more useful. trying to learn from experience, i look up optometry as opposed to optometrist. the definition: “the practice or profession of an optometrist.” i don't like bad omens at the start of the day. ("...i'm a victim of society!") Wednesday, March 20, 2002
"But the Harvard Business Review has never pretended to be anything other than what it is -- a mechanism for making business sound really, really complicated, and for making business people feel as if they are deep thinkers. And in any case, so many business journalists have figuratively crawled into bed with Jack Welch for so many years it seems less a shock than a satire that one intrepid woman [Suzy Wetlaufer] did it literally." "I think I know exactly when Jack Welch remembered why he married Mrs. Welch in the first place: when she demanded her divorce. If Mrs. Welch, a former attorney, was so shocked and hurt by her husband's infidelity, she might have acted when she discovered it. But she waited at least several months, until the scandal hit full steam in the press, before she notified her husband that she wanted not only her freedom but half his money, which came to roughly half a billion dollars. At this point, the sort of people who might have publicly risen to defend her husband -- and smear her -- could only sound ridiculous." --michael lewis, "GE's Neutron Jack Gets Nuked by His Wife", www.bloomberg.com.
do you got game? ah, but what kind of game do you have? church-game versus real world-game instant messenger game instant messenger game, part 2 if you liked those, here is the rest of his site. n.b. even though we both went to the university of illinois, i don't know scott. but the church he now attends at school is the same one i went to while in urbana. Tuesday, March 19, 2002
i've been meaning to plug beau sia. i think he's lyrical. i know he's really funny. i like him because he can monkey kung-fu any slam poet's ass in cut time. in time he can cut the cool of any ass poet's monkey kung, fu (fool? like mr. t). and he's dope. check out this haiku. this one is pretty groovy, too. for the nyc crowd, he does urbana poetry stuff, as well.
"As is often the case in science, the find was rooted in serendipity, hard work and productive dreaming. At one point, not unlike the oracle herself, the scientists were stimulated in their musings by a bottle of Dão, a Portuguese red wine." --william j. broad's 03/19/02 nyt article fumes and visions were not a myth for oracle at delphi about the discovery of new evidence that petrochemical fumes were the cause of delphic revelations. Monday, March 18, 2002
mean things that happen in small group: for trey's 28th birthday, we got him a cake with big "3-0" candles. his biggest fear is turning 30. we thought we'd let him know that it's useless; turning 28 is just as bad as turning 30. it's all downhill from here. sorry, trey.
after small group last week we made easter cards. here is mel (with what i believe to be an unintentional scary look) showing off her easter art work. after making them, she commented that "it's probably a good thing i put 'he is risen!' as opposed to 'he is not here!' because that might sound too much like a reference to bin laden and al qaeda." she also has a tendency to (1) want to squish little people, and (2) make her sister sit on the floor of the station wagon. it was also in her small group that we had the ice breaker question "which would you rather have: three boobs or just one boob?" a discussion on boob arrangement inevitably followed. she is also going to be a deaconess. here are the slackers who didn't do a damn thing. they just sat around, drank beers, and critiqued the latest issue of vanity fair. it's good to know God is willing to accept all kinds of people into his kingdom. because i'm pretty sure buddha and vishnu would think that our small group is really, really weird. Saturday, March 16, 2002
look at how cute morris and bev are!!!! check out their www.theknot.com site! p.s. my ex-small group leader, mel, is a stalker.
i just came across this website, www.killingthebuddha.com. i haven't gotten a chance to look through the whole site, but i agree with the spirit of their manifesto. a brief excerpt: 'The idea of "killing the Buddha" comes from a famous Zen line, the context of which is easy to imagine: After years on his cushion, a monk has what he believes is a breakthrough: an experience of nirvana, the Buddhamind, the big pay-off. Reporting the experience to his master, however, he is informed that what he has experienced is par for the course, nothing special, maybe even damaging to his pursuit. And then he is given dismaying advice: If you meet the Buddha, he is told, kill him. 'Why kill the Buddha? Because the Buddha you meet is not the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed he will only stand in your way. 'Why Killing the Buddha ? For our purposes, killing the Buddha is a metaphor for moving past the complacency of belief, for struggling honestly with the idea of God. As people who take faith seriously, we are endlessly amazed and enraged that religious discourse has become so bloodless, parochial and boring. Any God worth the name is none of these things. Yet when people talk about God they are talking mainly about the Buddha they meet. For fear of seeming intolerant or uncertain, or just for lack of thinking, they talk about a God too small to be God.' the people i love most in life tend to be christians. however, the people i can't stand the most also tend to self-apply the term 'christian' as part of their identity. (ironically, for the christians i can't stand, i probably fall into a similarly hated category. i don't think jerry falwell would think me a truly reborn child of God.) i don't know if the people who run www.killingthebuddha.com claim to have a faith, but at least they ask a lot of interesting questions. Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Monday, March 11, 2002
to beverly and morris: congratulations! it was an absolutely beautiful wedding, and i wish the best of God's graces and blessings upon your life together. bev, welcome to the family. you make me look a little more normal by comparison. morris, thanks for putting the pressure on bert and myself, the only two Li Family cousins to not get married. grandma won't stop asking when it's my turn. and the new rumor on the street is that bert might be gay. (gotta have at least one gay cousin in the family.) but for reals (oh my, only three days in CA and it's already affecting my speech), i hope you may come to experience only the best of everything. congrats, again. Friday, March 08, 2002
mark your calendars, folks. tonya harding versus paula jones. vanilla ice versus 'willis' from different strokes. oh yeah, baby! let's get ready to rumble!!!
i'm playing in LA!!! out of the office, no laptop to worry about--i think they call this emotion happpiness. Wednesday, March 06, 2002
stay by coal (most famous for its brief but powerful cameo in chasing amy. the lyrics aren't the most ingenious, and it definitely loses something without the music, but i just had to post it. don't ask why.) Don't have to lie about where you've been We both know you've been screamin So why don't you give your little voice a rest And crawl on up inside my bed And just pretend you need me You don't have to lie about what you know We both know you've been suffering And I don't need to be your only one I don't need your comforting I just need you with me Stay, stay, stay with me Stay, stay, stay with me Stay and don't you ever run away from me Stay with me And if she ever lets you down After she's run out all your money Well just crawl on back to me I'm the one that sets you free And I'm the one that needs you And if she ever lets you go Without knowing what you needed And if you need somewhere to rest Somewhere to lay your head You'll know where to find me Stay, stay, stay with me Stay, stay, stay with me Stay and don't you ever run away from me Stay with me Tear out all the headlines Emptyin' the ashtrays Sweep out the anyway of what's left of our time Well, you can use my body To do what you have to But stay a little longer Stay with me Tuesday, March 05, 2002
'But if praise from Fred Cohen is a rare thing, praise for him among associates and former staffers isn't all that common, either. "He not only thinks he's smart, he thinks he's smarter than everybody else," says one banker, echoing the views of three of Cohen's former colleagues. And his lack of an extensive base of friends in the business could come back to haunt him. "It doesn't matter how good an originator you are," offers a former colleague. "If you fall down because you can't sell [the bonds], you will never be successful."' --Investment Dealers Digest article "Fred's Way: Fred Cohen yanks BofA into high yield's upper reaches by hook or by crook" by Mairin Burns, from 12/03/01 about the head of my group. 'my main complaint about that article is that it's wrong. i don't think i'm smarter than everybody else, i am smarter than everybody else.' --fred cohen, as heard on the floor 'accounting shouldn't be a major; it should be a class. i've only taken one accounting class, and i've never ever had a problem with it since. accounting is a discipline that revolves around only one concept: matching.' --fred cohen on settling an argument between the high yield analysts concerning the usefulness of an accounting degree
one of my managing directors just walked by going, "boom sha-ka-la-ka-la-ka, boom sha-ka-la-ka-la-ka...." kind of odd for a 37-year old man, ya know? Monday, March 04, 2002
'[Ozzy Osbournes's] wife, Sharon, is a formidable talent manager in her own right who organizes the popular Ozzfest summer concert tours. She leaped to Ozzy's defense at a recent news conference when a reporter asked whether MTV would close-caption Osbourne's occasionally indecipherable dialogue. "Who said that?" she demanded. When the reporter stood up, Sharon swore at her.' 'There's trouble with the neighbors, too. The family next door plays music too loud and it's driving the Osbournes crazy. They're nothing like one of their former neighbors, Pat Boone and his family, who were "the best neighbors we ever had," Sharon said. "We had Pat Boone on one side and Meat Loaf on the other," Kelly recalled. "It was sort of like a Satan sandwich," Ozzy said.' --cnn/ap article introducing mtv's new family sitcom starring ozzy osbourne et al.
"I'll never forget one day during my Administration," says former President Bill Clinton, "[Treasury] Secretary Lawrence] Summers comes in to my office and says, 'You know, some guy just came in to see me in jeans and a T shirt, and he just had one name, but he sure was smart. Do you know anything about him?'" --time magazine article about Bono's mission for debt relief. 'At 1:30 a.m., exactly five hours after his bravura Super Bowl show, Bono is exercising the rock star's fundamental right to be ridiculous. At a celebratory post-game dinner in the French Quarter with his band mates, the U2 management team and actress Ashley Judd (an old friend), he throws back some red wine, tells a few stories about Frank Sinatra, leaves a rambling cell-phone message for Judd's husband gently informing him that his wife has been kidnapped by a rock band, and then sneaks off to the bathroom for a cigarette. (Bono thinks the rest of U2 doesn't know he smokes; they know.) After 15 minutes, guitarist the Edge, who adopts a kind, paternalistic role toward his childhood friend and band mate, glances toward the bathroom and says nervously, "Bono's allergic to red wine." Sure enough, Bono has passed out on the bathroom floor. U2's deputy manager, Sheila Roche, is unconcerned and continues sipping her drink. "He's probably just taking a nap. He's an excellent napper," she says.' --same time magazine article, but not dealing so much with debt relief.
i need to get a haircut before my cousin's wedding this weekend. anyone have suggestions on hairstyles? (i messed up the tags on the last post, so the link is broken and i haven't figured out how to fix it. grumble grumble....)
i need to get a haircut. if anyone has any suggestions on asian hairstyles (male, preferably), please e-mail me at joseph_s_yang@yahoo.com. Saturday, March 02, 2002
Friday, March 01, 2002
'A "shadow government" consisting of 75 or more senior officials has been living and working secretly outside Washington since Sept. 11 in case the nation's capital is crippled by terrorist attack, government officials said Friday. Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in the first hours after the terror attacks and has evolved over time, said senior government officials who provided details of the plan.' --ap article. apparently bin laden & co. have managed to do what the u.s.s.r. never could--follow through on a threat. before, it was all a bluffing game. this time it's for real, and we're having to face that fact that for all of our technological boastings, we may have been bluffing without knowing it. computers at our "shadow government location" at least two or three generations behind, not enough phone and fax lines, food rations from the eisenhower administration--maybe the image of being prepared was enough to keep the soviets at bay. but now someone is calling us out.... i do think it's interesting, though, that the amount (and kind) of media attention china received before and after 9-11 has drastically changed. for a while it seemed that "W" needed to artificially manufacture an enemy to do things like repay campaign favors through--oh, i dunno--an increase in defense spending (see lyrics to ani difranco's "to the teeth"). now that we really do have someone who hates us--and is willing to risk life and limb to prove it--china is only above the fold in so far as it pertains to the war against terrorism. and even then they're now shown as our friends, as opposed to crazy pilots who like to crash into our spy planes. you don't want the country to think we have too many enemies, lest the public starts to believe the left's accusations that the rest of the world really does hate us, and that they have good reason to. i kind of feel like i'm on the inside of the ministry of truth, peace, and love. or maybe it's because i'm just dying for a fag. time for a smoke break.
"Get ready for a reality show with a twist: Twelve teenagers drive around California in a Winnebago, get to know each other, bicker about what music to play — and spread the word of God." --fox news article about TruthQuest:California. i'd like to give a shout out to jyc for the link. that was "hella cool" of you. |
