Saturday, October 16, 2004

The lump on his back?  What about the droop in his jaw?  I'm intrigued by the War Room suggestions that Bush might have had a stroke sometime during his tragic presidency.  I want to look up other Internet sites that might have photos of Bush with his strokey-looking drooped jaw.  But I just can't imagine that I'll type "bush" and "stroke" into Google and come up with anything about the 43rd President. 6:45:42 PM     Speak up!  []

Emusic - still better than sliced bread. EMusic just posted Tom Waits' new album, Real Gone.  (Apparently there's about a two-week lag time between release and posting.  Elliott Smith's new disc isn't available net, even though it's on the same label.)  Oddly, some of the songs are listed with incorrect.  I tried to play "Day After Tomorrow," a somber ballad about a young man gone to war, and instead, I got a screamer blues called "Make It Rain."  Eeek!  I've gone back and corrected some of the titles on my computer. For all of you cutting-edge hipsters, they also have A.C. Newman's album The Slow Wonder.   The critics are killing themselves trying to heap praise upon this man, who goes by Carl Newman when he plays with a little band called the New Pornographers.  (By the way, both of their albums are also on EMusic.) Some of my friends who read this (I do have friends!  Stop being mean!) have asked if EMusic has low quality MP3s.  Every once in a blue moon, they have an album they can distribute only in 128KB format.  Almost all of their albums, though, are in variable bit rate (VBR) format, meaning it is flexible depending on your needs and player.  As they describe it, "eMusic's file format (VBR) provides the highest quality fidelity of any of the major digital music services."  It all sounds good to me, but I'm not one of those high-fidelity audiophile maniacs.  10:47:46 AM     Speak up!  []

Dead, Dead, Dead The board has considered all of the best options, and chosen another really stupid one that they made up on the back of a McDonalds napkin. They're going to pledge us around $20K, but here's the catch: it's not really money that we can spend. It's money that gets put into a special bank account that only the board can access, and it's only to be used to close the organization. Nothing else. Message: we don't trust the staff, and it's their fault we're in trouble. They've decided that all of us are going to be cut to 30 hours a week. For two of our staff people, that's practically a 30-40 hour cut, because they never work 40 hour weeks. I can't afford this cut, and neither can the other staff people. If it was a temporary cut, and we would go back to full-time at some point, that might be all right. But there's no suggestion that this will ever change. But the best part of this cockamamie plan is their idea for an end-of-the-year fundraising pitch. Let me explain. A couple weeks ago, I put together an aggressive fundraising plan aimed at everyone who had been members in the last four years, but stopped giving us money for some reason. Using percentages I thought were realistic, I calculated that we could raise between $10K and $20K. $20K was the absolutely highest we could raise, because a lot of these people hadn't given us money since 2001. These are practically cold calls. Anyway, the board knows more than I do about fundraising, so they've decided to write a special fundraising letter, telling people that's it's urgent, but not telling them exactly how urgent it is. The board will help me write this letter, because it has to be worded exactly right to present the proper message. Message: we don't trust the fundraising guy to do his job. Oh, and this special fundraising letter is going to raise $23,000, more than even my best guess scenario. Message: the fundraising guy's numbers were wrong. Oh, and this letter will also talk about the heroic sacrifice that the board's making toward the organization. Because the board really thinks that's going to inspire people. (Meanwhile, we're sacrificing 25% of our salary. But the board is sacrificing. Even though every non-profit board knows that part of the deal is that they contribute to their non-profit financially, whether it's through fundraising efforts or direct contributions. They help bring in money. That's the deal. Our board actually signs contracts saying that they'll contribute a certain amount of cash.) So in a word, it's dead. It's dead because the board doesn't know what they're doing. It's dead because the board doesn't trust the staff, and has decided they're going to micro-manage us. And it's dead because rather than trust the fundraising proposals of their hired fundraising person, they're making up plans that don't make sense. There's other reasons why we're at this point. There aren't experienced fundraisers on our board, and nobody has made any effort to recruit veteran fundraisers. Our board president is emotionally immature. There is a desparate lack of leadership there. And I'll admit, our executive director wasn't keeping enough of an eye on the books. But when we hit the crisis stage, we needed to pull together to get through it. And instead of pulling together, the board has decided to stab us in the back. So it's over. 10:07:43 AM     Speak up!  []