Month: February 2014

Luddites eventually cave and ramble in blogs

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Moments like these, so very quiet and all alone, climbing into bed, I am not sure what to feel.

I think too much, which leads nowhere. Taking words at face value and wanting to believe them but second guessing belief and churning through aspects of disbelief, not even sure why there would be cause for someone to mislead. The doubt is always there, pervasive and tiring, nagging at me as I try to go to sleep for just a few small hours.

The quiet masking the noise in my brain, an onslaught of rapid-fire thoughts: reflecting on weird things like how people throw around the word “sapiosexual” as if it will win them points. How youth’s wildest women turn out to be soccer moms who throw tame Super Bowl parties. How it’s so French to make references to corporate suicides en masse (thanks to dismally unhappy employees of Renault and Orange offing themselves in short succession). How there is a difference between communicating because you want to tell someone something and communicating just to put a salve on your guilt about how you failed to communicate at some point before. How much time I have wasted trying to be polite and preserve harmony when all I wanted to do was get rid of someone. How frightening people’s eyes can be sometimes. How I may once have been a luddite, but there is no turning back after you embrace technology.

Age perception and sex for the aged and ages

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Yesterday was an unusually rich day for reading about age – in particular how women are perceived as they age. Both by society and by oneself.

In one article discussing turning 30, the writer describes the arbitrariness of how women’s ages are perceived. “Age is a weapon society uses against women. Each year that you gain comfort in your own flesh, your flesh is seen as worthless.” A woman’s age, she writes, is never right, but a man’s age is always right.

And, she argues, it is not only about perception. It is also about keeping women down. If women really believe that youth is where it’s at – that everything fades away after 30 – they may not achieve all they can in life. If their worth is entirely wrapped up in the nubile sexual attractiveness tied to the “innocence of their youth” and the attached male attentions that come with it, what will they aspire to – will they ever ascend to the level of achievement that they might threaten the middle-aged male status quo in the professional world? “Better to tell women that youth is their best quality—that when their ass starts sagging and their face starts cracking, everything they love will fade away.”

But there is plenty of evidence that life doesn’t end (god forbid! “Older” people can still have a life!) at 30. The other article I happened across was a Slate article about women’s sexual lives and how women over 70 seem to be having their own sexual revolution. A lot of the women interviewed in the book the article discusses seem to have been very sexual creatures all along – or, in many cases, many embraced their sexuality only after hitting 60.

One woman stated: “…combination of feeling wild abandon and total comfort has been just amazing. After 70, there comes a sweetness about making love. We go slowly, there is no rush anymore. When you’re younger, it’s all about the orgasm, then it’s over. I love this suspended feeling, the absolute intimacy we have been able to achieve.” It is a bit much, perhaps, but if nothing else, the idea of looking at one’s intimate life (and all its facets) as striving for wild abandon, total comfort and this inexplicable suspended feeling is worthwhile.

I don’t want to sit around thinking about the septuagenarian set going at it, but we are all going to get there. Not to add that the Germans have already given us a film that removes any doubt about what elderly sex and relationships would be like (Cloud 9). It even covers this topic – where the main character, a married woman, has an okay relationship and active sex life with her husband, but then she meets an even older man and connects with him in a way that involves this aforementioned “wild abandon and total comfort” that is so rare in relationships at any age.

If the article imparts anything, it’s that you don’t wait for your 80s to try to find this kind of satisfaction and depth of feeling/connection.

Age is just a number, and I am fond of reminding people that it is never too late to do anything. As the writer of the Vice article on turning 30 stated, “The only real thing 30 took from me was the sense of limitless time.” There is thus an urgency to what we do, no matter what we do – at any age.

“I Remember Sex”

The changing workscape: Don’t miss the boat on remote

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Even my colleagues are in on it.

My penchant for writing about – and practically agitating for – remote work has even influenced some colleagues. One sent me a link to an article about surprising remote work possibilities and jokingly suggested I may have a future as a remote sports psychologist. Ha!

I don’t know that I got a lot of value from the article – nothing I did not already know. But it reminded me that sometimes the route to work-from-home possibilities is winding and indirect. Considerable creativity and thought can chart the course before you hit smooth sailing waters. Not many jobs are advertised or designed as remote-work friendly – but there is a lot of room in many jobs for negotiation. I recently negotiated for more work-at-home time, which comes none too soon for my sanity, productivity and the horrors of long-distance winter commuting.

And telecommuting makes sense. Another (former) colleague sent me an article about what differences telecommuting may make in the future of transportation and traffic.

“Telecommuting is occurring everywhere in metropolitan areas, from dense cities to their far-flung suburbs. The rise of the Internet is producing more at-home work, but not just, as once believed, by people who want to live far from their workplaces. Many telecommuters are likely only a few miles from their potential offices. What’s happening across the country that may explain these changes?”

One of the best parts of writing on this subject is many acquaintances jumping in and contributing bits of information and evidence. I love it.

Pile on Yahoo! I’ve got my shovel

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I am not sure where all my ire for Yahoo! came from. Sure, the whole backpedalling on allowing employees a work-from-home option pissed me off even though I don’t work there. I think technology companies moving backwards like this is always counterproductive, a bad idea and not a way to garner employee loyalty or happiness – especially if you are taking away something that employees already had and valued.

I won’t even start on the tech missteps – not even getting the basics rights, like major Yahoo! mail and other service outages and redesign debacles that basically just piss off loyal users.

What is the trend you’re sensing? Yes, Yahoo! keeps making big, grand changes that piss everyone off. They are not making anyone happy, they are investing time and money and yet always come off like – first and foremost – they don’t give a shit what their users want. They are stepping backwards or stepping on someone’s toes or taking things a step too far. Or two-stepping to long-dead trends.

Today I was researching Yahoo!’s move to hire respected journalist Katie Couric as the face of its “media empire”. Smart move in that Katie Couric is a smart, respected journalist. But is it a smart move in terms of what they can actually do or expect to gain? Is it a smart move in terms of what Yahoo!’s audience and users want? I am sure they have run their numbers (although I cannot imagine that they take into account user needs given all the disasters they’ve launched into the world in recent years), and I want to say first of all that going in, guns blazing on hiring Katie Couric is a move that, on its surface, looks like wanting everyone’s 60-something grandma to stand up and take note. It’s not going to impress or attract a younger demographic. It’s probably not going to attract the army of women Oprah Winfrey once commanded (Katie sure did not manage anything like that with her daytime tv talk show).

Women in the 35-65 group might notice just because Couric is a marginally powerful and highly visible woman (not unlike Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s beleaguered and not very likeable CEO – not that I think CEOs need to be likeable, and I don’t love bagging on a female CEO since there are so few of them – but, from my outlying half-observant distance, I just think Mayer is not particularly good at her job). I doubt that Couric’s presence is going to interest anyone – at least not internet users. Maybe Yahoo!’s target demographic is 65-year-old women because everything Yahoo! has done seems remarkably in line with what older audiences, just on the edge of not understanding the digital world but trying to, might be into.

Couric has also sort of failed at every major news anchor bid she’s taken on so far, so it seems counterintuitive to sink six million dollars a year on giving Couric an ill-defined, part-time gig that gets Yahoo! a few mentions in the mainstream and tech press. “Reading the headlines — Katie Couric, Saturday Night Live cast members, David Pogue all joined Mayer on stage — I wondered if it was 1999 again. Content as a core strategy rings of AOL in the early aughts. Let’s say it’s a good idea — are you really building a future consumer base on journalists from the most legacy of media? Probably not.”

Yahoo! might think that broadcast dollars will follow Couric to the digital realm and thus that’s the play. I have my doubts. “Faced with consistently declining ad prices, Yahoo needs a shot of exclusive, high-profile content to get viewers to stick around and advertisers — especially TV advertisers — to pay attention.” It’s thus not about the content the audience wants but more about ad pricing, which can be quite lucrative. From a content point of view (what viewers want), this seems like a really bad idea. From a revenue standpoint, it is more of a calculated risk – Mayer is probably betting that big-money advertisers and the types coming from broadcast media would be made of more traditional, possibly even conservative, stuff, and thus would put their money where Couric’s mouth is. Smart? Shrewd? Profitable? Remains to be seen.

The bottom line, as the cited Forbes article above puts it, is: “It’s one thing to acquire a demographic you want, à la the Tumblr acquisition, it’s another to find the developers who can figure out what that demographic wants next. If Mayer is going to win me back to Yahoo — and more importantly, those who never had the habit — it will be by figuring out what I want and need before I do.” (Emphasis mine.) It’s not sorcery. From my vantage point, it doesn’t look like Yahoo! knows or understands that – and it does not even appear to be the business Yahoo! is in.

Must I Paint You a Picture?

Word associations and inappropriate musical choices

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Watching on Al Jazeera a show about Colombian pilots flying perilous routes in rickety old DC3 aircraft through the Amazon  (apparently with clear and present danger of crashing and never being found again once the jungle overtakes the wreckage), I am struck by the background music choice, which seems entirely too whimsical and Calypso to be appropriate. As a narrator explains that the pilot/captain Raul must calculate his fuel needs precisely or else crash, there is this playful carnival music going in the background. Yes, nothing like frolicsome music to evoke the “fun” of a possible fiery crash whose remains we would never find. (Al Jazeera has a whole bunch of these “daredevil” shows where people are doing the craziest stuff to make a living. A few weeks ago I saw some Pakistani lunatics driving on narrow, twisting mountain passes in giant, ornate trucks. And I think my commute is a bad one.)

“You took off like a jet girl…”

Jet girl… jet ski! I had a hilarious conversation last night before leaving for work in which I was reminded that there was probably a cigarette ad that included idiots on a jet ski. I had my doubts, but my dear firewall was absolutely right.

Idiots advertising cigarettes on a jet ski

Idiots advertising cigarettes on a jet ski

Jet ski! … “Après ski”! ”This kind of evening could be life enhancing…” “She gets what she wants but still she ends up losing”

When I am not overdosing on sad movies or documentaries, I overdose on news. And this leads me to two thoughts – Ratko Mladic acting like a spoiled idiot child at Radovan Karadzic’s war crimes trial – refusing to take part in the “devil’s proceedings” and demanding that a guard bring him his dentures apparently (which makes me wonder why he went to court without dentures in the first place)? Second, the crazy urge for news outlets to be first with any news. I read somewhere that the news of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death was reported – not just by tabloids but by the Wall Street Journal – without any concern for whether his family had even been informed (never mind confirming the veracity of the claims).

Oh well I am too tired to analyze. Instead considering Donna Summer’s roles in alternate universes and hoping for just one day when the cars outside my office window will not honk. Since they built new tramlines and stoplights right outside, not a day passes without a lot of impatient honking (especially for Sweden).

Driven by film – at least it isn’t Danish

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When actors die suddenly, à la prolific and talented-beyond-words Philip Seymour Hoffman, I want to spend a lot of time focused on watching films – whether they include that actor or not. Just to enjoy the performances that exist.

When I get sad – for good reasons or no reason at all I am also tempted by sad movies (believing while watching the stories unfold that things could always be worse).

Yesterday, apart from watching a documentary on Mitt Romney (and see his whole Mormon family pray together), I watched The Hunt (Jagten). Great film – disturbing, great performance from Mads Mikkelsen and, in keeping with my preferred theme of “it could always be worse” – I can see that the story of a man falsely accused of child abuse is one such strand. Speaking and listening to Danish is the other such strand. Any language one speaks, s/he can console him/herself that at least it isn’t Danish.

We got so far and then there was nothing

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The slight heartbreak of little things piling up has hit me tonight. Already feeling a twinge of melancholy, the evening turned into a platform of little blooms of grief.

My friend’s poor cat passed away this evening. It was not unexpected, but the loss of a beloved pet – lovely, non-judgmental pets – always breaks my heart a bit.

Of course, understated but never underrated actor Philip Seymour Hoffman also passed away, and it just seemed so deflating. Such a waste. I often wonder about people blessed and cursed with so much talent. I discussed drug abuse with someone earlier, and he said something about famous people and their drug habits, but it struck me (without having any knowledge on the subject) that many of the most talented people probably already struggled with addiction issues before they ever dreamt of becoming “famous”. There is, I like to imagine, something so intense about embodying that kind of talent and losing oneself in one’s performances, that the temptation to lose oneself in drugs or some “altered state” is too great.

Eventually I succumbed to a discussion on the fucked-up things that happen to us as children and our helplessness about it and how those things influence (but hopefully don’t control) us.

Meanwhile I reflect on my own little, private issues and how I cannot bring myself to be open about them, even when there is something optimistic about them.

Now I am just hoping the Seattle Seahawks will not destroy the only good thing that can come of this day.

Where is my Firewall?

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman

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Like most people who love cinema, I am devastated that we’ve lost a master – one of those guys who disappeared into his roles, even in the worst films. Nothing I write makes a difference or will be much different from what everyone else writes. It’s just that it is so rare that someone has that kind of talent and can move fluidly and effortlessly across his characters, in a body of work that included everything from State and Main to Happiness, from Capote to Synecdoche, New York and everything in between.

With the outpouring of grief following his death, the only remotely positive thing (which is, granted, not a positive) is being reminded of his entire body of work. With almost no missteps – even in crap like Patch Adams, his work was stellar – it was easy to forget some of his roles. And when he turned up in films, no matter what, you could always trust that he would bring something great to the table.

He’s going to be missed. “Calm down, and shut the fuck up.”

The Changing Workscape: A Stance on Freelance

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Moving to new country is one way to force yourself to become a freelancer and small business owner. I catapulted myself to a new country once, long ago and far away, and having an in-demand skillset that was only really in demand on limited projects for limited times made me a shoo-in for the feast or famine world of freelancing. The timing made a lot of sense – technology had made possible a lot of the things in this realm – meaning I could keep clients I had cultivated even after I had started to bounce between Iceland and the US and later to other countries.

With services and websites, such as dedicated freelance platforms, oDesk, Elance, Microlancer, Guru, Peopleperhour and even general sites like Craigslist, and a variety of resources, including the Freelancers Union (one of the US’s fastest-growing labor organizations), and online networks, project management tools (like Basecamp, Trello) and blueprints and advice for helping put together a freelance plan, and even shared work spaces and incubator space, becoming a freelancer is easy. At least in theory – the tools are there, but no matter how good the tools, if you don’t have some crucial pieces of the puzzle, success is going to be a tougher thing to find.

A freelancer has to define what success means, which usually entails realizing that you’re doing two jobs – not just the freelance work you’re selling yourself to do – but also marketing and selling yourself, which takes a lot of time. You will network and introduce and offer up samples and shove your foot in all kinds of doors and keep it there even when there’s nothing for you there because there might be someday. Put your finger in a whole lot of pies – most of which you baked yourself to pile the sweet sugar right on in all the schmoozing and convincing you will devote yourself to doing!

In my own experience, freelancing might have been the only, or at least the early, route to success as a foreigner with a specific toolkit and work experience – but freelancing is also a competitive boon for women. Elance statistics show women outpacing men in freelance earnings. Apart from earnings, the online freelance marketplace seems to level the playing field, making merit and skill the most important factors in granting projects – giving women and men equal footing. The online freelance marketplace may not be “the great equalizer of the gender gap in tech” but it is one step in the right direction. All the talk about women struggling to be a part of the workforce, especially after having a family makes freelance options seem and feel like real options. (“As a working single person, I can only put myself in the position of a high-achieving mother frustrated by the options provided by the current work force. I can imagine, though, how frustrating it might be to have time to work but not the time when a traditional job wants me on the clock. I can imagine how frustrating it might be to have the skills and the drive and find the workplace unable to make use of them in the current structure.” Isn’t this the kind of argument I keep making about remote and virtual work?)

Self-employment is challenging, make no mistake. But it’s freeing and provides flexibility where the corporate world doesn’t. Set your own hours, set your own workload, set your own terms, pay and deadlines. And the corporate world actually has a growing need for this “contingent workforce”. It’s sort of win-win if you don’t want the full-time job with its demands and also do not need the benefits of having a full-time job – you and the company get what you want.

It’s all part of the whole changing, shifting palette of the economy. Markets seek to innovate and find ways to utilize talent and resources more effectively. Or maybe that is just the optimistic way to describe it. But, as an article in The Atlantic contends, the “gig economy” is the mainstream economy. The way we work, the jobs we take, our perception of how we will work and live our lives as employees – it is all in flux, in large part because people are starting to work independently and fitting work into their lives rather than fitting their lives into work. The article tells a story that makes the move to freelance sound like a revolution. To some extent, it is. “This transition is nothing less than a revolution. We haven’t seen a shift in the workforce this significant in almost 100 years when we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own. As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this “freelance economy.”” Of course this fails to acknowledge that the people who choose to go into freelance are in a position to choose it. Even if it seems like there are few alternatives (for example, when I chose to move to another country), there are options. Plenty of people in the messed-up economy of the day don’t have the experience, skills, etc. to capitalize on this “revolution”.

I don’t have to be a freelancer anymore, but it is hard to let go of the networks and client relationships. It’s clear that in this kind of economy, you need to be ready for everything.

Frying Up – Beyond Fried Wupa

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I don’t like frying stuff and am not a big eater of fried foods but today have this huge urge to do stuff like making Indian fry bread or Icelandic kleinur (a kind of cardamom-infused doughnut).

I will not do either but found a few recipes I might try when I have a willing taste-tester audience. Not sure I ever will – standing in front of a stove frying is not my idea of a good time.

Fry bread (Wupa bread, just for Naomi)
3 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
¾ cups milk
Enough water to get the dough to just come together
Vegetable shortening or lard (vegetable oil does not work as well) for frying

Whisk together the dry ingredients. Use a fork, mixing as you add the milk. Add just enough water to get the mixture to form a dough – but do not overmix. (You will probably need about ¼ cup.) Cover the bowl with a towel and let it sit for 45 minutes.

Get out a large skillet and heat about two inches of shortening/lard over medium-high. Make a medium-sized ball of dough in your hand and press it into a rough circle with your hands/fingers – start in the center on a clean surface, like a cutting board or countertop and press outward. When the circle of dough is the size you prefer, carefully put it into the skillet. Fry on each side until golden, about one minute. Carefully turn it over and fry the other side.

Move the finished fry bread to a paper-towel-lined plate and allow it to drain while you continue frying.

Serve warm with toppings of choice – cinnamon-sugar? Honey and butter? Powdered sugar? Taco ingredients?

Icelandic kleinur
1 kg flour
150 grams butter
250 grams sugar
3 eggs
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 teaspoons powdered cardamom
a few drops of vanilla essence
250 ml buttermilk or cream

Many traditional recipes call for hartshorn/baker’s ammonia, but I have never made this with it – so can’t really say what difference it makes.

Mix dry ingredients and then mix in butter, eggs and milk/cream. Add cardamom and vanilla. Knead into a soft dough but do not overknead.

Roll out the dough until about 3 millimeters thick, cut into strips about 10 centimeters wide. Cut diagonally across the previous cuts to make diamond shapes. Cut a small slit in the middle of each diamond and pull one end of the diamond through the slit to make the twist in the doughnut.

Heat the frying fat – it needs to be extremely hot. Canola or coconut oil will work – or vegetable shortening. It needs to be hot enough to cook each in about 1:30 minutes to a deep tan/light brown color.