1. I recently submitted this ironic headline to Fark and was hoping to be rewarded with a "Page One!" but no joy. "Students burning the -Mexican- flag presents rare dilemma for progressives" I really was in the mood to rake some muck, no luck.
2. Presenting the worst cover of all time: The Final Countdown Heh.
3. Have any of you seen the 1980s flick "Streets of Fire"? Looks like some essential 80s knowlege for the ol' grape. Funny how I got there. I was looking up background on the soundtrack from "Bubblegum Crisis," (same kinda genre as "I Need a Hero," what is that called, allegrissimo?); which said it was influenced by Streets of Fire; which said Streets of Fire was a seminal work for the 80s despite low sales (a kind of Grease, Little Shop or Rocky Horror?).
The Fixx, gods of English new wave music and featured in the credits, have always been a force in their own right. With all of their uniqueness and range, it would make sense that something on the cutting edge like their "Deeper and Deeper" would have found its way into a movie of this kind of significance, even though I was suprised by their appearance. So, I'm hoping the movie won't be a disappointment. I don't always look at movies in the straightforward way: "Bob is here. Bob gets in a pickle. Bob saves the day. The end." I'll be looking for cool cues from the period, looking laterally for influences, whether I like riding the vibe 'til the end...
4. I'm pi$$ed off at Wal-Mart and their mega-pals as usual. I'm working on an editorial on the banality of a fifth Petco coming to town. We are a country that can't avoid steering into the most mordant irony.
People say, "Let the consumers decide," but there is no way that even the anti-WM crowd could gain a foothold in stopping them. There are too many dregs that would still go there even if they flew a red star.
5. I'm a centrist, but the presidential burger outing a few days back was inappropriate. If I had just had this somber, solemn meeting with one of my at-war generals and relieved him, I think I would eat in that day. Jiminy freaking Christmas. Aaaaand - with that off my chest, I'm back to refraining from political posts again.
6. QOTD context comes from a discussion on incorporating lawyerly negotiation skills in dealings with tribal leaders in Afghanistan.
Lawyers spend years learning how to be adversarial. Very few law schools offer any training in mediation whatsoever, and the few that do only train their students in evaluative mediation (focused on property settlements).
They learn NOTHING about dealing with the human factor in a negotiation (such as when one party feels they need an apology from the other party before they can move forward w/ the negotiation in good faith).
If successful negotiation is what they want, they need people who have spent years learning how to resolve conflict in a cooperative way that can address the emotional content of a conflict as well as the material aspect, not attorneys who will likely stay so focused on the letter of the law that they will lose sight of the spirit of the law and inadvertently make matters worse. - "fyrewede"
People seem to have this idea that "they" (for any given value of them) are aliens, with strange, unknowable, and often irrational motives; certainly, with nothing in common with "us" or our motives and ways of thinking. Instead, we ascribe stereotyped motivations to "them" and expect that if we believe hard enough, things will work out the way we think. "They" will welcome us as liberators. "They" hate our freedoms. "They" want to see the poor suffer. Pick your "they", pick your irrationality, and have at it. It's a surefire route to guaranteed failure.
Winning, whether it's in the marketplace or on the playing field or on the battlefield, requires knowing your enemy. You have to know how he thinks. How he reacts. What his motivations are. What his goals are. What he's done in the past to achieve them. If you don't study those, if you assign him some self-generated (and often irrational) motivation, you're going to lose, because you're not fighting the enemy -- you're fighting your own straw man. The enemy doesn't have to deceive you about what he's going to do and why; you're doing it yourself. You're the best player on the other team.
It's true in relationships, too. "She just likes driving me crazy" ... how often have you heard that? (substitute "he" as needed) Do you like driving people crazy? Well, this is Fark, that might not be the best question to ask some people here ... but in general. Do you like to drive your friends, lovers, family, etc., crazy, just for the sport of it? Unlikely. So why ascribe a motive like that to someone else? They're no more likely to be trying to drive you crazy than you are to do it to them. By blinding yourself with that false image, you're totally missing whatever is motivating them to do whatever is driving you crazy ... which means you can't fix it ... and in the end, you've got a broken relationship and a therapy bill; you lose.
It's easy to spot who's never served in the military in comments like that. They're the ones who start the name-calling and peen-waving at any mention of any tactic other than unrestrained slaughter. They're the ones who think wars are about killing, not about winning. - Worldwalker
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