A Rain of Frogs

I had an indifferent day today. The work wasn’t indifferent. There was a lot of it, actually, and a significant percentage of it was remarkably finicky. The reason the day was indifferent was because I don’t feel like anything was actually accomplished.

Like a drop of water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom, the more work I did today, the more piled up behind it. I like to have rewarding days. I try to accomplish a certain amount of work, partly because it makes my bosses happy, but mostly because it gives me a sense of pride.

None of that today. I feel good that I got so much done, but I feel bad that it was so much of the small, mostly meaningless variety that I couldn’t put a little mark beside anything on my list to indicate a task done.

I think a lot of that was because I was affecting changes that were originally conceived in the mind of the marketing department, weaned and schooled in the legal department, and finally beat senseless by upper management.

I suspect that the rise in power of the marketing manager is directly proportional to the amount of television North American’s watch, perhaps with a modifier based on our consumption of fast food. Whether or not that’s true, sometimes we get fascinating glimpses into the inner workings of today’s modern corporations, and find ourselves scratching our heads wondering how the hell they make any money at all.

When you sit down and really think about it, it is distinctly possible that television destroyed (and still is destroying) North America.

Really, aside from music, what has North America really achieved since the invention of the television? We put a man in space. We put a man on the moon. We tested the limits of our rights to protest publicly.

We gained the near perfect vehicle for passive entertainment, a medium which requires us only to press a button on the device in our hand. Click – television on, brain off.

I think that that sort of brain-off behavior breaks people’s minds. I think that enough exposure to television makes the lines between television and reality a little blurry. I think people end up thinking Friends is real, and that if they move to New York, they too will be beautiful and live in a $6000/month loft, despite not having a job. I really do. We become entangled in those fictional lives we see on television. We lose perspective.

I more or less stopped watching television about the same time Friends was introduced. The networks had finally asked me to suspend disbelief by presenting me with a show in which that was impossible for me. Now I watch the news (mostly bad) and hockey (no season this year).

I can’t figure out how people who watch 4 hours of television a day get anything done. I DON’T watch 4 hours of television a day, and my days are already about 16 hours too short. On those rare occasions I do sit down and watch television with my family, I find myself feeling guilty, like I’m wasting time.

I believe North America has spent the last 50 years selling its collective soul one 30 minute sitcom at a time. It’s making us fat, its making us feel inadequate, and its making us slow thinkers. In a pair of countries so obsessed with return on investment, it boggles the mind to see us getting so little in return.

No, not for the alleged President of the United States, but for a rain of frogs, my personal site, a place for me to blow off some steam. So keep this in mind when you see crap that doesn’t look right (or good) on this site. It’s brand spankin’ new.

I’ve been exceedingly frustrated by my recent work on the largish community site I’m running. While I am actually happy with the way it looks, I’m not at all happy with the site itself. It doesn’t have a reason to exist, and that’s making it incredibly difficult to develop into something.

Gentle questioning of the sites loyal members has resulted in some interesting ideas, but no progress toward finding a niche for the site.

We have a great visual identity, in my opinion. And we have some fantastic members. I mean FANTASTIC. Talented, creative, and the friendliest, most supportive bunch of people I’ve met.

We just don’t have any reason for the site to be there.

Ah well. We’ll figure it out.