Category: thursday

Communicatin’

When I read that today’s Theme Thursday is communication, I had to laugh to myself.

See, communication is a great big part of my job. I wear many hats, but day in and day out I’m inundated with communication devices. In fact, stashed in the corner of my office I have a fully loaded box of very old cell phones. Due to a weird contractual issue, I’m not allowed to ditch them to a recycling company. No one wants these damn things (least of all, me) but I have to hang on to them until the contract runs out.

So when I saw today’s theme, I thought “hey, it would be cool to lay all those crappy old flip phones out in a cool design and photograph them.

A short Google search showed me that a man named Rob Pettit already had this idea. And he executed it so much better than I could have.

From Rob’s webpage:

“Rob Pettit, a 2007 graduate of the SMFA, creates cell phone art to high light (sic) the proliferation and waste of cell phones.”

I’ve got a big box of throwaway gear that backs his viewpoint.

Behold the intricate beauty of Rob’s work (visit his website or click image for full size photo):


These particular devices are what I have a’plenty in my office. Maybe when I’m released from contractual boundaries, I can ship them off to Rob.




Remember StarTac phones? They really work in the outer rings of this piece.




Who would have thought that ugly gray candy bar style phones could be so intriguing? This has an almost industrial, cog in the machinery feel to it.





Oh So Very Subtle

First posted here almost three years ago and it turns out it’s still timely.

Earlier today I had a long and spirited conversation with my boss about my need to spend a small amount to better support my organization. Any budget requests are generally rejected, no matter how small. So he and I plotted ways we could still accurately categorize the costs, but make the request seem palatable.

That ability to make it subtle is harder than it looks.

____________________

From a high level meeting I attended at work, during which we had an hour long debate about a difficult and political situation regarding budgets (if you haven’t done the corporate thang, then know that nothing gets hackles raised like budget conversations).

At the end of the meeting, the Financial Analyst said to the Senior Director,

“So, do I make it so?”

“No.” He replied, sternly. “Make it subtle.”

I had to write it down, it was just too good.





Jean Luc Picard facepalm found all over the ‘net. Let me know if this photo belongs to you and I’ll add attribution or remove.


Thursday is the Right Day for SPAM

Over the course of the last week, my favorite Theme Thursday word of the week and creative idea fueling site was down.

They’d fallen victim to an especially tenacious comment spam-bot, so they shut ‘er down to get it sorted.

And so of course, with that in mind, this week’s theme is, you guessed it, SPAM.

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM…lovely spam! Wonderful SPAM!

Well…where can one go with SPAM? It’s either nuisance email or it’s shivering pink gelatinous goo in a square can. One I ignore and the other I fry up nice in a pan and gobble with a touch of mustard.

So I took to the waters of Google to find something different and was rewarded for my journey.

SPAM-ku. Like haiku, only SPAMmier.

Select bits from the MIT (yes, MIT) website:

This was filed under the “addiction” category…


Desire overwhelms.
“SPAM, I must have more of it!”
Freud would be enthralled.


and


Gave up cigarettes
No more drinking, and drug-free
Hidden stash of SPAM


Wow…such SPAM angst. I never knew one could have such delicious agony over luncheon meat.

Let’s see…what do we find under the “sex” category (cuz you knew it was going to go there)?


In regards to SPAM:
Sexual hangups aside,
It makes me feel strange.


or


Autoerotic!
Open can, insert member:
Wham, bam, thank you SPAM!


and then there is


Beneath the armpits

SPAM gives one a manly scent

Drives all women wild


Um…ok. : looks around nerviously : That’s just…odd.

And I like odd, but wow. There are literally pages and pages of SPAM-ku on that site. I believe they have over 5,000 bits of verse devoted to SPAM.

I’ve been known to take my OCD too far, but even I’m unsure about this.

But then I read a verse that speaks to me:


SPAM, too, needs a wife.
What consort for my Pork Prince?
Ah! The Velveeta!


Whoa. I do love the Velveeta and I’m not ashamed to own it. Maybe I am starting to understand these strange SPAM poets.

Then I read the SPAM verse that seems to sum it all up:


SPAM: the perfect food
For people who study Zen–
Meat, and yet not meat.

Ponder that for a while, why don’tcha?

Meanwhile, I think I’ll just have a salad and a walk for lunch. My cholesterol went up twenty points just reading about lovely, wiggly SPAM.





SPAM art found at Strategic Public Relations blog.


The Id, The Ego and The Stick of Butter

Slept not at all last night and now I’m stumbling through the day. I’m in need of inspiration and Theme Thursday isn’t posted yet. Instead, I’ll take the Free Association route to help my weary Muse along.

I’ve pressed The Muse so hard lately, I can hardly blame her for being a skosh wilted.

But she’s still got a little left in the tank.

And away we go:


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  1. Decoder :: Reminds me of those kids magazines that print messages for the reader to decode. I never had a decoder ring, that’s a skosh before my time, but I remember trying to figure out the key to decode the message. Loved it!

  2. Cake :: What’s not to love about cake? However, here’s a sore point for me: I hate whipped cream frosting. It’s buttercream or nothing. That whippy stuff isn’t interesting, plus it melts off and gets watery. No. Oh, and when I say buttercream, I mean real buttercream, with, you know, butter. I’ll eat the shortening style, but it gives me a greasy feel. Real butter = good. Ok, I’d better wrap up, I can discuss butter and cake all day long.

  3. Sense :: “She’s as happy as if she had good sense.” One of my favorite colloquialisms. It’s used a lot by my best friend’s mom, and it makes me laugh every time. It usually follows some story about someone being blithely stupid. “So she went out and bought a new car even though she can’t make her mortgage payments. And she’s as happy as if she had good sense.”

  4. Geek :: You know, this used to be an insulting word, but now it’s taken on a certain hip cache. As a lover of language, I’m always fascinated when an unkind word is taken in and made into something of a source of pride. Granted, geek was not as harsh as some unkind language, but in the early days, it still wasn’t a nice thing to be called. Now people wear it with pride.

  5. Cousin :: My folks both come from fairly large families so I have lots and lots of cousins. The Good Man’s folks came from small families with few kids, so he has only a few cousins. I think sometimes the sheer vastness of my family sometimes gives him pause. Imagine a roomful of me or people like me. That would give anyone pause, really.

  6. Goggles :: On this cold, dreary grey June day, I’d love nothing more to have a blazing hot high desert day instead. I’d strap on the goggles, blow up my hot pink air mattress and flop down into Ute Lake for a cooling swim. Yeah. That’s a real nice thought. Instead I must see about my umbrella and a coat. Where is summer, again?

  7. Social media :: *sigh* That’s all I have to say about that.

  8. Butterfly :: Mmm, you know what would be tasty for lunch right now? Some jumbo prawns, butterflied out and sautéed in butter. Mmm. Butter. Butter = good. Did I already mention that?

  9. Search :: However, despite my professions of love for butter, I shall instead spend my lunch hour walking around the nearby lagoon and then I’ll search for a leafy salad to dine on. Butter = good, but costly in the hip and thigh region.

  10. Manicure :: I need one. A lot. Since times have been a bit leaner in the ol’ pocketbook, I’ve had to forgo professional mani/pedi in favor of managing it myself. I’m pretty good at it, but it’s always about finding the time for these pampering projects. I’m still totally in love with the Sally Hansen Salon Effects product line. Ok, much like cake, I can ramble on for a while about nail polish.

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Next up, ink blots. Tell me…what do YOU see……?





Image from the Synaesthesia Experiment.


Theme Thursday: Television

Ah but she was a beauty. With a light gray case, she sat upon a wobbly stand, gold tone painted spindly legs that ended in little plastic wheels. The early definition of “portable.”

The dial to change the channels was made of actual metal. It had saw tooth ridges on it. All the better for gripping and turning, I suppose.

The on-off button was also the volume knob. Tug that knob, and give ‘er a few minutes while the tube warmed up.

Soon a clear bright black and white picture emerged from a small dot in the middle of the screen. All three channels plus PBS!

“Karen! Change the channel!” Click, click, click. Turning the channel knob was a tactile experience.

That black and white Zenith was a purchase from the early years of my parent’s marriage. We’re talking 1950’s here. As a child in the seventies, it became a fixture in our living room.

One of my very, very early memories is from being toddler age. I would stand right in front of that television and grip its gray plastic bezel for balance. I didn’t grip too hard, because it would slide off, but just tight enough to keep gravity from winning.

I remember Walter Cronkite. He was giving a news update and showed a fairly clear film clip of soldiers carrying guns. This wasn’t a movie, it was the news.

I didn’t know what it was then, but it seemed bad. Walter’s face was serious. I stared at those men with guns rather intently. This image is still fresh in my memory. It took until adulthood to think back on it, on the timeframe that this must have occurred, to realize it was a news update on the war in Vietnam. I would have been three or so.

That Zenith with the stylized logo, the Z like a lightening flash, electricity zooming through the letters bring pictures to my screen, was where I stood too close to the screen and watched Dick Knipfing present the news of Albuquerque and New Mexico.

It was where I watched Sesame Street and soap operas and the Not Ready For Primetime Players on the first seasons of Saturday Night Live.

In the early 1980’s, my mom made a bold decision. It was time to invest in a color TV. This was long after most of our friends and neighbors had long since brought color screens into their lives.

Mom shopped and compared and finally she and Dad decided on a model from Sears. It had this fancy way of changing channels, you simply touched this little metal nub by the number of the channel you wanted! No turning a knob, simply a quick touch.

It was splendiferous!

And with the incoming color TV, the old Zenith black and white had to find a new home. So we carted it to our “Lake House,” really a single-wide trailer on a permanent concrete pad on a patch of land in Logan, New Mexico.

Logan is on the east side of the state, so the antenna on top of that trailer picked up the stations out of Amarillo. The Zenith black and white now reported ranch stock futures and the market price for pork and sides of beef. It entertained us after a day out swimming in the lake.

In fact, when my folks sold the place in Logan, that Zenith TV went with it. It still worked, by the way, though it took a heck of a long time for that tube to warm up.

They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.





Today’s Theme Thursday is: Television