Month: November 2008

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Yo quiero un cerebro

In today’s WSJ (likely $ required), there’s an article on how Taco Bell is trying to make a global push. In case anyone thinks that idiotic American culture is something the rest of the world as outgrown, the article begins with this image:

Earlier this month, a Taco Bell opened at a massive Dubai shopping mall. Patrons waited as long as four hours to buy beef gorditas and chicken chalupas at the chain’s first location in the Middle East.

In a feat of Baudrillardian self-cancellation, we learn that Taco Bell is a success precisely because it isn’t Mexican:

[David Novak, Yum’s chairman and chief executive] says the lack of authenticity in the chain’s Mexican cuisine is an advantage. “It owns its own category,” he says.

Still, it’s lack of Mexicosity isn’t enough for it to triumph in Mexico, as it turns out. The chain has made a run for the border only to find that “[t]he transactions in Mexico are not yet where we want them to be.”

(All this is just an excuse to link to that Achewood strip about Taco Bell’s secret menu.)

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My very unique synergistic solution is unstoppable

I was fortunate not to work in a company that employed idiotic jargon to cover up a lack of substance; my lack of substance is right out in the open. But during the dot-com era, Bullshit Bingo was one of my favorite concepts.

In that spirit, I was quite happy to receive an e-mail yesterday promoting a whitepaper entitled, “Mastering Innovation: Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation Using Strategy Driven Innovation.”

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Compliments for fishing

The conference I’m attending here in Atlanta had an opening reception at the Georgia Aquarium last night. I took a couple of pix of the event for my magazine, but also tried to get some neat pix of the fishkes themselves. My dad was a photographer for much of his career, but I don’t think he ever had to shoot catfish from below. Anyway, enjoy the set!

Some of the guys I was walking around with argued over whether piranha (above) would actually go for prey as large as an overweight person, and I wondered whether you could get them to stop after they whittled away some of the fat.

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What It Is: 11/17/08

What I’m reading: You Know Me, Al, by Ring Lardner. A pal gave this to me for my birthday a few years ago. I haven’t read it, but I noticed that it’s available on Manybooks for my Kindle, so I loaded it up for this trip. Oh, and I finished Book Two of Montaigne’s essays, which means I’m heading into the home-stretch. Zowie. But I was too busy this weekend to write about it, so Monday Morning Montaigne is on hiatus this week.

What I’m listening to: Radio Retaliation by Thievery Corporation, La Radiolina by Manu Chao, and OK Computer by Radiohead. But not Radio Radio by Elvis Costello.

What I’m watching: Ricky Gervais’ standup special, the first half of Dog Day Afternoon, and The Savages. Gervais was a hoot, but I found it even funnier that I have no idea who “he” is, in relation to his two best-known characters.

What I’m drinking: G&Ts with this Q Tonic, a high-end tonic I picked up. And boy, are they awesome. Down with corn syrup!

What Rufus is up to: Probably pining away for me by now. And it looks like he convinced one of my neighbors to adopt a greyhound when her husband retires and they get a new dog.

Where I’m going: Atlanta for the AAPS meeting. In fact, I’m in Atlanta right now!

What I’m happy about: I had The Realization about the novel I should write. Now I gotta get writin’!

What I’m sad about: Being away from Amy & Rufus.

What I’m pondering: Whether I was tempting fate by time-stamping this post for Monday morning right before getting on a plane Sunday.

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Wrestling with coach

A few years ago,I had a run of bumping into semi-famous athletes at airports. The “hightlight” was John Rocker.

At the gate for today’s flight to Atlanta, I suspected that the cowboy-hatted, muscular, tattooed man standing beside me was “somebody.” When he took his hat off, I realized he was WWE rassler Shawn Michaels.

You’ll be pleased to know that a man who has taken so much physical damage in his career gets to fly first class.

Update: Plenty of guys on the flight recognized him, but we were all afraid to go up to him and ask for a pic. He was a few rows ahead of me, so we ended up on the escalator down to the airport monorail a few steps apart.

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Too unnerving an idleness

I feel guilty when I don’t manage to write for a day or so. It’s not like there’s a massive audience hanging on my every post, but I get mad at myself when I fall out of the habit of offering up at least a daily snippet of my psyche.

Yesterday, I was pretty swamped with work and bad work-vibes. This morning, I decided to read some Montaigne rather than engage in my usual routine of scanning through the 400 or so items in my RSS reader. I’m pretty close to finishing Book Two of the essays and, while I don’t feel as though I’m in a race, I did find the final three essays pretty compelling and complementary: Of three good women (pp. 683-690), Of the most outstanding men (pp. 690-696), and Of the resemblance of children to fathers (pp. 696-725).

I’ll try to write about them this weekend (I’m still working on the last one), but I’m traveling to Atlanta on  Sunday for a conference, so I may have to pare back. Regardless, M. managed to help me get over my guilt with his intro to Of the resemblance . . .:

This bundle of so many disparate pieces is being composed in this manner: I set my hand to it only when pressed by too unnerving an idleness, and nowhere but at home. Thus it has built itself up with diverse interruptions and intervals, as occasions sometimes detain me elsewhere for several months.