Weddings are friggin' weird

I went to a wedding recently. It was, as I have stated, friggin' weird.
Seth Godin, in his new blog for his new book, "All Marketers are Liars", says this about weddings:

The American bride's worldview is a twisted, scary place. It's not only about creating a special day, a day just for you, a day that you'll remember, a day that you've dreamed of forever, a day where you are the princess you'd always like to be, but it's also filled with doubt and self-esteem issues.

Why do we "need" $9,000 worth or flowers or a dress that averages $799? (Aside: if the average price of a wedding dress is $800, that means that most brides are spending close to their entire annual discretionary income on an article of clothing that will be worn exactly once). The reason, of course, is that on this day, the way you feel is everything. Nobody NEEDS a wedding. And the way you feel is largely driven by your expectation of how others expect you to behave.

The entire wedding industry is built on a lie. The lie is a story that says, "if your wedding doesn't include at least all of the standard items, you're not special."

Read Godin's whole post.

The Joys of the Corporate World

Today my boss told someone to write a procedure on how to write a procedure. When relating this to another employee, they responded by saying that they wanted to go into the boss's office and exclaim, "I want to take a leak, but I don't know how! There's no procedure!" Sad, but true.
This is the same boss who tells me what he wants, waits for me to do it and then ALWAYS suggests something requiring a ton of additional time and effort. Not a minor modification, but a substantial revision.
Corporate IT is a fluorescent hell.

From the brain of Marshall Brain

From his book (most of which is available for free online), "The Teenager's Guide to the Real World".

"Part 1 — The Hard Facts. These are the basic facts of life that you must understand before you can do anything else. Most of these are hard because they will force you to break down fundamental assumptions that you may have about yourself and your world right now. Start with them."

That's the right way to start off any self-help book. I'm interested in reading this. I think it's going to be my sister's birthday present. Nothing says sweet 16 like breaking down your fundamental assumptions about yourself.
Of course, I'm asking for her to turn into a capitalist if I give her a book where the first chapter is titled, "Money Really Matters", but I think she's a bit young for Marx & Engels.
Yes, I really need to find better things to read while at work...

The Downing Street Memo

House Representative John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat, is asking for letters to the President to answer questions asked him by Conyers and the other 88 members of Congress. Read more and sign the letter at www.johnconyers.com.

Four Tet

I like Four Tet a lot. He's releasing a new album, "Everything's Ecstatic" in a week or so. It's already out in Europe. There's a really interesting interview with Kieran Hebden from July '03 courtesy of www.soundonsound.com. The description of his live shows makes me salivate with anticipation. Has he ever done a US tour? I think I really need to see him. He also talks a lot about his process for creating music and mentions that one of his main tools is AudioMulch. And there's an interview with Ross Bencina the creator of that tool at www.em411.com, which stands for Electronic Music 411 and seems pretty derned interesting.
AudioMulch doesn't seem anywhere near as geeky as SuperCollider, a music programming language. But SuperCollider doesn't want to run on my Windows machine. One day when I'm a ruthless dictator, I'll have a Mac in addition to my other computer to avoid such inconveniences.
Read! Listen! Enjoy!