Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist

From an amendment to my car insurance policy:

b. There is no coverage for bodily injury that results from:

1. Nuclear reaction;
2. Radiation or radioactive contamination from any source; or
3. The accidental or intentional detonation of, or release of radiation from, any nuclear or radioactive device.

Wait, you mean that, if I get hurt because a nuclear bomb goes off while I’m in my car, my car insurance policy doesn’t cover it? That’s ridiculous!

As the second hurricane in a month is building up power over the overheated Gulf of Mexico, this is my projection as to what President Bush may be thinking:

Well, the problem is that the water in the Gulf is too warm. Too warm. Too warm. Hrm. How do we cool water that is too warm? We use ice cubes! We need to put ice into the Gulf to cool it down so that there will be no more hurricanes and I stop getting bad press!

Ice. Huh. Where can I get ice? Wasn’t I talking about ice recently with Karl? Oh yeah, we were talking about that place in Alaska with the oil, what’s it called, the, um, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? There’s ice there – I remember my oil buddies complaining about how hard it would be to get to the oil with the ice in the way.

Wait a second! I have it! If I take the ice from the refuge, and use it to cool the Gulf waters, I’ll help my oil buddies AND look good to the voters! I’m a genius!!

If this is one of those times when my cynicism gets matched by reality, I’ll definitely weep for America.

A little while ago, a friend of mine was complaining over IM about their stupid coworkers. In a moment of levity, I replied “Welcome to the world, young grasshopper. You must bend with the stupidity as the reeds bend with the wind. Stupidity is an unstoppable force – it can only be diverted, not ignored or blocked.”

I was pretty amused by myself, and think that there’s plenty of opportunity here for a Dilbert-like book on Cubicle Zen, the art of applying Zen to the pointless life of cubicle existence, with lessons on the path towards pure Zen unthinkingness being eased by the cubicle environment, etc. Over the next few days, I tried a few more quips on my friend, such as:

My friend (talking about a coworker): How stupid can they be?
Me: One can be as stupid as the day is long, my student.

Ending with this entertaining exchange:

Me: You must let the stupidity wash over you like the wave washes over the reef.
My friend: But that’s how reefs are destroyed!!
Me: Oops.

Anybody want to ponder more of these with me and put them together into a book? Or at least an amusing web page? (cubiclezen.com is taken, but zencubicle.com is still available).

Last week, I read this Chronicle article about the growing popularity of mashups,where DJs take different songs and meld them together. I’ve listened to the Sixx Mixx when I happen to be in the car, and I like it a lot. I may be looking for more places to download such stuff, besides Party Ben’s site.

Last night after our warmup, I decided to listen to the first half downstairs so I could continue reading the Latour – it’s a bit rude to be sitting up in the hall reading. While I was listening to the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, which includes a delicate duet between violin and viola, a trumpet player entered the practice room next to where I was sitting and started practicing some of the Haydn Harmoniemesse. It created this wacky classical mashup effect, where his practice music and the Mozart almost worked together, but not quite. He’d be playing an arpeggio as the two soloists were playing an ascending line, and they’d be mostly consonant, because everything was major in those days, and then they’d diverge and produce an interesting dissonance. If somebody had played me the combination and said that it was a piece by John Cage, I would have said, “Oh, sure.” Makes me wonder what other possibilities are around out there. I’ve been told of the Berio, where he overlays his stuff on top of Mahler 2. Anyway. The idea of classical mashups amused me, so I figured I’d share.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week about good ads. In particular, we were reminiscing about the original Coors Lite ad with the twins. The one with the lyrics “I… love… playing two-hand touch, eating way too much, rooting for my team…” It was a really good ad. I’d love to see it again. And I can’t. It’s not available from the Coors website. It might be available from adcritic.com, but I’m not going to subscribe for a single ad. It might be available on a download site someplace, but it’s too annoying to try to find content on those sites. Plus, I’d actually be willing to pay for this.

So I speculated that there might be a business model lurking here. Selling video downloads of ads piecemeal for $1 or $2 each. I can think of at least 5 or 10 ads off the top of my head that I’d pay for (the Barbie Nissan ad, the Coors Lite ad mentioned, the Coors Lite Wingman ad, not to mention classics like the “Where’s the Beef?” ad or “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”) (and I’ve never seen the 1984 Macintosh ad – I’d pay even more for that) (and I’m sure more would occur to me as I saw what was available).

If I actually were going to do this, I’d pitch it first to Apple. Tie it into iTunes, since they already have demonstrated they can handle similar downloads and payments in a scalable fashion. Launch it with the video iPod to have some fun content available to help promote video content. And of course, it would also be available to dorks like me for download onto our desktops.

If that didn’t pan out, I’d go after cell phone providers. They’re looking for ways to promote video content to encourage people to buy higher bandwidth (and higher priced) phones. They also have demonstrated they can handle small payments. And given that people are happily willing to pay $1 for a ringtone (in fact, I read that ringtone sale revenues exceed those of CD singles now (this story alludes to it)), $1 for a well-executed 30 second movie sounds reasonable. You’d have to do some work with compression for download purposes, but it would be reasonably synergistic.

Of course, if that were all there were to it, I’d be off finding VC funding right now. Unfortunately, the issue of licensing all the different ads pretty much dooms this business model. Unlike the music industry, which has standard licensing practices as developed for the radio, the advertising medium has no such global agreements. So I don’t think this is viable. Alas. It had potential. I bet that three paragraphs ago you were thinking “No, that Coors Lite ad was lame, but I would totally pay for a copy of (insert your favorite ad).” And that should be the indication of a business model.

I was talking to my co-worker yesterday, and we picked up on the thread of that conversation we had about management by conversation. In fact, the same thing happened as what I described in that post, except that he was the one doing the asking; he walked over to my cube, and asked me a question. While he was clarifying the question, he realized what he needed to do, and went back to his cube, without me having to contribute anything of substance other than a couple interrogatories. After we commented on the joys of being able to manage without having to know anything, he mentioned that at his previous company, it was a running joke that the CEO only had four questions to ask: “How long will this take?”, “How much is it going to cost?”, “Can you do it faster?”, and “What can go wrong?” The CEO didn’t even have to listen to the answers; just asking the questions forced people to figure out their plans.

In light of that, and in light of the teddy bear story I previously related, we were thinking that we should get one of the infamous “Math is hard!” talking Barbies, replace the messages with those four questions, dress her up in a sharp business suit, and sell CEO Barbie. I can see the sales pitch now: “Tired of paying millions of dollars for your latest and greatest CEO candidate? Just hire CEO Barbie for $29.95 + shipping!”

A few days ago, I instant messaged my friend Wil to ask what he was up to. He responded “Working on a visio graph”. Recently, it seems like he’s always working on a visio graph, or a powerpoint presentation, or an excel spreadsheet, or a word document. He’s getting involved in project management, so it’s not surprising. But it’s still kind of funny. Hence, my response: “Go, go, Microsoft Office Man! Use your M.O.M.-power!” A couple seconds later, I remarked “That has the makings of a demented Dilbert-ripoff web-comic – The Adventures of Microsoft Office Man!” I can just picture it now. “M.O.M.! The board just called an emergency situation and need the newest numbers on the budget!” “Never fear, my trusty sidekick Project Manager! I shall use the automatic linking functions of Excel, and export to a Powerpoint presentation! Voila! Witness the power of Microsoft Office Man!” Okay, I can’t make it funny, but I bet somebody who was more bitter than I could.