Buddhist Marketer

What to do when your flight is delayed three hours

Play tag!

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Wow, facts about me; this is my least favorite game ;)

1. I was a thumbsucker
2. whose security blanket was a blue striped turtleneck I gripped from my mother
3. and promptly named ‘Fuddy’.
4. In nursery school at The Church of Christ, Everett ‘Exit’ Peters poked me in the eye, which prompted classmate Keegan Rauen to beat him up (or do the three-to-four-year-old equivalent of beating someone up).  Keegan, as it turns out, went on to become a state-level wrestler.  I promptly dropped out of nursery school.
5. I also dropped out of HeadStart.
6. I like to swish carbonated beverages around in my mouth in order to feel the bubbles going wild.
7. I am working on growing my hair long again.

Now I tag seven other peeps:

1. Ari, who needs something to do during the holiday lull at the office
2. Bomee, who is an infrequent blogger and needs to step it up a notch
3. Cait, who was the first person to ever introduce me to to sushi
4. Mills, who is a brand-new blogger who may not yet know the term “meme”
5. Rachel, who introduced me to the wonder that is A Beach Vacation
6. John, who is the awesomest Earlham grad tech geek dude ever
7. Jenn, who stopped blogging as soon as cooking school ended and that’s lame

Elizabeth Warren

… and all the other clowns that I’m watching on C-Span right now make me want to gouge my eyeballs out.

Oh how I loathe the in-love-with-self academic who hasn’t spent any real time in corporate America yet professes to have all the answers.

Don’t they realize that only one person has all the answers?

Why I won’t cancel my Dopplr account

The first sentence of a 12/18/2008 email from Dopplr, subject line

You took 12 trips to 9 cities in 2008. Personal annual report coming soon.

reads

One of the most popular requests we’ve had from our travellers is for Dopplr to summarise your year of travel in the form of data and graphs. So that’s exactly what we’ll do. We’ll be sending you your personal annual report in January.

to which I must say, “Oh yes.  Data, baby,” followed by, “Wait, is Dopplr Brit?”

(Turns out they have core members in both Helsinki and London.)

(This reminds me of the year-end summary of charges a la American Express.  When I was at Citi I wanted to create a card that had a purchase-data RSS feed for cardholders, in case they wanted to create a blog badge of stuff they were buying as they bought it (and/or run their own data analysis).  (Of course I wanted to tie in some rev-share as well on top of it.)  I do think that the me-ness of society — perhaps in opposition to the grammatical fiction of the I of the totalitarian regimes of societies past (see Rubashov in Koestler’s Darkness at Noon) — will continue to desire services such as self-reflective, self-affirming data feeds.  All your 10101010110 are belong to … you!)

Holiday gift ideas

From “‘Tis the Season!!  A Degenerate Student’s Guide to Holiday Shopping” by Jon Meketansky in The Graduate Vice:

Idea #1 - Make a gift yourself

… Making a gift means you care more, not like those bourgeois imbeciles who actually “buy” things with their “money.”…

Idea #2 - Do something nice for someone

… Become a Secret Santa for the creepy old woman next door by keeping the blinds open and letting her watch you undress…

Idea #3 - Three Magic Letters - IOU

As a lowly Baruch student, you can’t afford any Christmas presents this year.  But wait!  I think I know who can afford those presents.  FUTURE YOU!

Here’s hoping the gifts I ordered get here before my flight outta town on Tuesday morning, else I may have to bust out the glue gun.

Driven

I was reading an interview with John Jost regarding political psychology over at fave read The Situationist while devouring some I Can’t Believe It’s Not Beef Boca Lasagna (on sale at your local Fine Fare for $2.99!) just now.  In it Jost talks about conservatives being more resistant to change and more comfortable with inequality than progressives, and conservatives being more likely to be fear-driven than progressives.  Reading this reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while:

Are progressives motivated by guilt and obligation?

Which is to say this:  there’s a correlation in general between higher standardized test scores and having a progressive political outlook.  Peoria Pete might think, “Well, if you’re smart, you clearly know that progressive policies are the way to go!”  Hmm. Having personally occupied nearly all political outlooks simultaneously, I no longer think this relationship is causal in the way that Peoria Pete does.

Having been granted the “Gifted & Talented” moniker early, it’s always been branded into my brain that possessing more than average gifts of intellectual resources comes with a concomitant obligation to give back.  You’re smart, the school puts you into a special little class and/or school, and you will in turn take your natural talents and give back to society because It Is The Right Thing To Do.  At the Academy, my public residential math-science magnet high school, community service is a graduation requirement.  At the freshman address at Yale, President Levin reminded us that we were the leaders of tomorrow.  At every step of the acculturation process for the mainstream person with above-average intelligence, we’re indoctrinated with the values of giving back to society, and the notion that our talents are not ours alone to enjoy.

Do you see where I’m going with this?
I suspect that if you’re identified as smart early on and treated as such, you’re forced to believe that the fruits of your talents aren’t really your own, and that it’s only fair that you should share your talent-fruits with the rest of the world in larger proportion than those who are less able.  I suspect that this informs why smart people adopt progressive values:  they have been brainwashed into thinking that this is How Things Are.

I suspect that this lifetime acculturation is why progressives are okay with wealth redistribution, with progessive taxation, with subsidizing other people who simply aren’t interested in actually bettering their own lot.  Because they’ve been taught to feel a little bit guilty about the fact that they’re naturally more talented than others, and to assuage this guilt they’ll write a check in one form or another.  Because they’re used to doing the work of the entire study group (if they actually divide the labor of the team project equally, it will not be of the quality of a project that they, by themselves, would have done).  Having been raised on years of doing other people’s work for them, why would a progressive act out now, in Real Life?

I haven’t quite wrapped my arms around all of this but this is how the clay-lump looks at the present moment.

Signed,

Get your paws of my talent-fruits, you dirty commie

Eat me!

I just custom-made my very own nutrition bar, “The Flexitarienne”, at YouBars.com.  They’ve got an easy interface that guides you through all the variables and keeps track of nutrition info for you if you care about that sort of thing.

If you want to give it a whirl, you can get 10% off using code “xoxoanp”.

Let me know how yours work out.  Haven’t actually eaten one yet so cannot attest to the tastiness, but I definitely plan on stuffing my creation into some stockings this holiday season (hi family!).

Marketing info:

• I saw a flyer on Facebook
• As I am a fan of bars and nutrition, I clicked
• I liked, I bookmarked and filed under “wishlist”
• My daily linkroll posted to my old blog
• Apparently the YouBars’ founder saw a trackback ping and commented on my old blog
• This motivated me to take action now rather than in some theoretical future
• Since the userflow was not heinous I’m sharing with you

Now that President is the new black …

One of my brown friends today tweeted the equivalent of

While I was using the GPS application on my blackberry last weekend, my Black girlfriend (who was driving) made me turn the audio off.  She didn’t like a white woman’s voice telling her what to do.

Ok ok ok -

• Wait, so, you’re sure the voice was white?  Maybe it was Asian.
• Does this mean my mom is not a racist when she asks me things like, “Does he sound black?”
• When do we know that whiteness is no longer related to being a member of the over-class?
• Can’t we all just get along?
• Actually I just think this is all sort of amusing.  Is that wrong?

The headshot that didn’t make it

Curiously enough, the NYU Stern doctoral program application allows applicants to upload their head shot.

I was briefly tempted to upload my picture from The New York Press cover (the existence of which I did duly note under “List any awards, scholarships or other types of recognition you have received”), but even more tempting was uploading this Hallowe’en charmer:

I think it has just the right amount of, “I come wearing random white headdress-thing and bearing caramel apples; just think of what I’ll bring to the weekly lunchtime seminars!” don’t you?

You’ll be proud to know that I exhibited some restraint and uploaded instead the “preppy” shot of me that I currently use as my default profile pic.  Unfortunately in this picture I’m smiling, which I’ve been advised against.  (”Smiling is not sexy.”)

But let’s be honest:  admitting Anittah Patrick into your business school’s doctoral program?  Smiles or otherwise, it’s good for morale!  Vote for morale; vote ANP(hD)!

Has anyone else ever been asked for a picture on a grad school app?  What was your strategery?

Target photo logo

I saw this logo on a Facebook flyer while, um, gathering anthropological data regarding usage of social networks (yeah, that’s it):

I don’t understand why Target doesn’t just swap out one of the ‘o’s in photo for Target logo.  Perhaps this is their style guide for all departments, and thus a convention that cannot be used across the board (for example, the pharmacy lacks an ‘o’)?

Any of you branding / logo jockeys care to comment?

Back to data collection …

Thanks, Emmy B.!

On Saturday night I amortized my holiday outfit (which included, but was not limited to, a sequined blue tunic) by attending a festive dinner party hosted by my friend Emmerlante and her beau Hal.  Hal’s loft takes up a full floor in Gramercy and is filled with art and ephemera from his international travels.  No surprise, Emmy Dexter cooked up a storm (including legitimately vegetarian lasagna) and tastefully decorated a tree* in white bulbs.**

I had a great time catching up with many girlfriends and also enjoyed chatting with one of Em’s friends that I never had the opportunity to chat with before.  I was also reminded, thanks to the sloppy antics of a 25 year old boy going through a divorce, that I am very glad to no longer be in my twenties (though I wouldn’t edit one moment out for the world).

I am, however, a little curious as to how Emily keeps the sugar cookie dough from curling up and/or sticking to the cookie cutters?

If you are within one degree of me on Facebook, you can click here to see a few pics from the party.

Thanks, Emmerlante!

——————-

* BREAKING BLOG UPDATE! An expert in matters of taste, who was in attendance on Saturday night and wishes to remain nameless, reports this regarding the decoration of the non-denominational Christmas tree:

I inspected the tree closely while everyone else was inebriated on bonhomie because it was so tasteful and well done and I wanted to get some ideas.  While the lights were indeed soft white, there were also mini bulbs of frosted silver, red and white.  Plus there were these delicate wooden snowflakes that I’ve never seen anywhere before.  Perhaps Emily can share her secret source?

As I was born in the metaphorical barn that is Indiana, and also busy chomping on Emmy’s literal cookies all night long, I can neither confirm nor deny the intricate specifics of this claim regarding the tree decor.  I can, however, attest to the overall excellence and warm glow that it contributed and have no reason to believe that this tree decoration expert is not 100% correct.

** Em, if you’re wondering what the random bulb with the velvet ribbon is, I had it attached to the bottle of wine I brought and Hal placed it on the tree.  I recognize that it throws the entire balance off and allow you to put it on the back of the tree or remove it entirely!