Shortie Sortie – today’s little fly-by items…

Good-bye bar codes; hello, Alien Technologies…

Looks like labeling is moving from pull to push in the near future.  An entire shelf will virtually scream its inventory level to the supply chain manager using RFID.

Here’s what I want to know: if they can track a single box of Jello pudding, why can’t they do the same thing on my luggage?

Huh?  Hello, Samsonite?  American Tourister?

p.s. if Alien Technologies goes public, I’m buying…

McDonald’s bridging the anti-American gap…

Maybe we should ask McDonald’s franchisees to work out the dispute between Germany/France and the U.S.; looks like they’re holding their own around the world (pandering might be a strong word for making your customers happy).

Selling an American hamburger in the Middle East might actually be the more difficult task.

More than a year later, Enron still chaps my chops…

No income tax paid?  For multiple years in a row?  Didn’t anyone in the IRS clue about this at all? 

Oh, don’t give me that outmaneuvered argument…this company only paid $388 million in income taxes over nearly 12 years.  I’ll guess right now the IRS would have recovered more money from Enron than from individuals if they had put 1/3 of their analysts on this one company.

In the mean time, Bush is mulling over cutting eligibility for school lunches because we need to tighten out belts.  The next conservative that tells me the tax structure of this country screws corporations and the wealthy gets a big fat slap along side the head with a brick.

2:46:57 PM    comment []

Happy V-Day…

Pink.  Fuschia.  Red.  Purple.  Sickening sweets.  Little shreds of cellophane, twist-ties, ribbons.  A flurry of cards and more cards.

Whiny child refusing to sign his cards because he doesn’t know how to spell the names of all twenty of his classmates.  Can’t understand why he can’t eat the chocolates earmarked for his class aide.

Twittery child flitting around, giddy with an excess of pink.  Whipping about boxes of chocolates and conversation hearts in a fuschia frenzy, eager to get her cards and goodies distributed amid tittering gossip.

No wonder at all about the popularity of anti-valentines and the vigor of protests.

10:58:05 AM    comment []

How the hell did we get here?

It’s cold outside, been cold, not getting better for some time.  We’re in the deep of winter, no way out but through it.  The prospect of warmer temperatures nearer to freezing brings nothing but trepidation in anticipation of the frigid muddy slop that will surely come with the alleged warmth.  I’ve reached a point where I am heartily sick of it, exhausted by fighting off the chill and slogging through slush to go anywhere in search of respite.

But that’s a futile search in itself, there is no respite to be had, not at the store, not at the library, nowhere.  Winter drapes itself over everything, ice-cold flesh over frozen bones.  I could get on a plane and try for warmer climes, but my family is here.  I can’t leave them behind to warm my flesh.  My spirit would still be cold.

More than flesh and spirit, winter isn’t just a phase of seasons.  It’s a state of mind.  How did it get to be so damnably cold everywhere, regardless of the latitude or longitude?  How is it I don’t feel I could find relief in beloved Paris, or in Rio for Carnival, or in Singapore?  None of these places offers me a sigh of relief as I think of them.  In the past, mere daydreaming about travel would reprieve me long enough to refresh me.  Even planning a trip in the distant future would heighten my spirits as much as actually taking the trip.  But there’s nowhere to which I can flee.

It’s winter, inside and out, at a quantum level.  Every quivering strand of sub-atomic string taut and brittle, threatening to snap at the slightest provocation.  A shudder, a shiver, and it all falls in crystal shards to the frosty ground.

Winters past all had a dark heart, wherein one doubts that sun and warmth will ever come again.  The darkness only lasted momentarily, long enough to take pause and think on how much the light is missed.  No sooner than the loss was acknowledged, the atmosphere changed; the light lasted longer, the birds sang more heartily, the air quivered, snow mass shrank under one’s gaze.  This year is different; the dark heart is a black hole, from which no light will emanate, where even the thought of summer is ripped away.

I wish I could say I was alone in this, but I’m not.  No one I know sings with joy nor of the promise of happiness.  Everyone wears this haggard, pale look of sickness; some appear aged years in just months.  They don’t stay to chat or linger; they look over their shoulder and scurry on, as if chased by ghosts.  Too many word-wealthy and gab-gifted people, finding now only snow and ice and fear to share.  Nothing but icy stone soup on which to sup.

How the hell did we get here, to this place in some parallel universe, without hope, without Spring?

9:46:53 AM    comment []