See the fucker in glasses and light blue shirt in center of the photo below? He's the motherfucker who LOVES! conferences and workshops, who not only looks forward to mandatory conferences and workshops but actively seeks out and registers for conferences and workshops, it's the motherfucking highlight of his job.
He's also the fucker who nods eagerly and constantly and (he hopes) with approving wisdom of everything the speakers have to say (regardless the subject and/or the competence of the speaker), but worse, he's the guy who considers himself more expert than the expert and feels compelled to expand for the group on what the expert is saying with personal work experience anecdotes, the guy who adds half-an-hour to a fifteen minute meeting just by walking into the room.
See the woman in dark blue three chairs up left? She's the person at every conference and meeting who sits the entire meeting concocting what she thinks a sophisticated, paradigm-capturing question of breadth and depth she hopes you grasp, a question that was answered two dozen times in the last hour if she'd been listening, then asks the same question again in what she thinks a sophisticated, paradigm-capturing rephrasing of the question after not listening to her first question be answered. God save you if this person in but one rung below real power in your organization - they'll never go any higher; their bosses put them there for a reason.
See this guy?
He's the guy who does a good job but doesn't love (and doesn't hate) his job, the guy people who love work but don't do as good a job as he, who know it in their bones but will never consciously admit it, hate. He's suspect, scribbling in his notebook instead of the conference handouts, wishing he was outside hiking, throwing plastic, wishing he was anywhere but at this conference, or any conference, any meeting.
He also didn't have much time to read last night (not that there's a lot to read: Blegsylvania be dying, yo), so light links today, a poem, songs.
- Greece now, America soon.
- Secret history of Monsanto.
- Bleggalgazing.
- Brief observation.
- Please please please please please be GOP candidate, not because she won't will the election but because (heh, she might) it'll be fun!
- Another day in The District, or: Why talk of DC converting back to Maryland is silly.
- Bethesda is silly too.
- Mining the audio motherlode.
- Love fade.
- Emperor Tomato Ketchup.
- Woke up with this in my head:
Wislawa Szymborska
We are children of our era;
our era is political.
All affairs, day and night,
yours, ours, theirs,
are political affairs.
Like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin a political cast,
your eyes a political aspect.
What you say has a resonance;
what you are silent about is telling.
Either way, it's political.
Even when you head for the hills
you're taking political steps
on political ground.
Even apolitical poems are political,
and above us shines the moon,
by now no longer lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Question? What question? Dear, here's a suggestion:
a political question.
You don't even have to be a human being
to gain political significance.
Crude oil will do,
or concentrated feed, or any raw material.
Or even a conference table whose shape
was disputed for months:
should we negotiate life and death
at a round table or a square one?
Meanwhile people were dying,
animals perishing,
houses burning,
and fields growing wild,
just as in times most remote
and less political.
