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Results For "Day: March 3, 2005"

Answer 200

Thursday 3 March 2005

In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more?

“There’s a reason the good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth,” the saying goes. You learn more from listening than from talking, but that’s not the reason I often find myself sitting silent in groups, listening and not participating. Kinga says I should make more of an effort, but the problem is, I’ve found that many times people are talking about something I know nothing about, or (worse) care nothing about. And so I sit and let them do the work of keeping the conversation going.

One-on-one is a different story, though, and Kinga will tell you I can talk up a storm when I’m inspired (read: irritated).

Question 165 Are you well organized? How often do you have to look for your keys?

Group conversation, though, just baffles me. When I first returned to Poland, I thought it was a language issue, that I just wasn’t following everything. I went back to the States the summer of 2002 and one evening, found myself at a bar with a few friends and their friends and other friends of friends–mostly strangers, in other words. My attention drifted from one conversation to another, and I realized that it wasn’t the language in Poland that was messing me up. I’m just not good at “small talk.” I listened intently to what pairs and trios were talking about, and even then I’d have been hard pressed to nail down a sort of thesis statement for the conversation. I simply had no idea what the hell they were talking about.

Small talk is an oxymoron.

I’m not saying that all conversation needs to be about something “deep” (whatever that might mean), but it does need a grounding for me. What that means in practical terms is that I’m very quiet when I’m with a group of people I don’t know. Once I know that someone shares the same interest as I, I begin opening up a bit.

When I do begin talking, I guess I like talking about something meaningful. I once had a very long conversation with a friend of a friend of Kinga’s about forgiveness, what it means, and whether we can truly forgive another person. It was a Highlanders’ party, and Polish Highlanders are like me, squared: very distant and silent (cautious, even) until they get to know you. In that sense, the two of us had a bit of an impetus to our conversation.

Robbed! Robbed, I say!

Thursday 3 March 2005

I once worked at an internet start-up. A “dot-bomb” as the cliche goes, for it eventually fell flat on its face.

I worked in IT the last six or so months I was there, and so I got email from folks I’d never heard from while working as an editor — including the marketing director.

Almost four years ago, I wrote the following in my journal (names changed):

Nothing particularly interesting happened at work this week. In other words, no one got fired. We were induced with ice cream Friday afternoon to be a focus group for “[TheCompany]’s vision” and mission statement and all that jazz. It was David Gordon’s doing – he’s the new director of marketing (or marketing director – I forget which term he prefers and made me correct all references on the web site to). Even if I didn’t know what he does for a living, if I read a couple of his emails I think I’d fairly quickly guess that he’s in marketing. Everything he writes smacks of it – every other word seems to be from some book that might be called Power Words for Marketing Professionals or Words to Make People Remember You, both of which in fact would be filled with cliche© and ridiculous writing. Concerning the “About Us” page on our web site, he forwarded me an email exchange he had with Susan in which she said something about the existing text not achieving the desired effect, to which he responded, “I’ll wordsmith something better.” As I told Eric, it takes a hell of a writer to use “wordsmith” as a noun (which of course it is) and not sound ridiculous. To use it as a verb is absolutely ridiculous. “I’ll wordsmith something”?!?! I can just hear some guy with a comb-over in a marketing class saying, “Don’t ‘write’ anything – wordsmith.” Perhaps he also added, “Don’t ever ‘crap’ – poopsmith.” He also had me put the following punctuation in the email that professors get after getting a free trial:

The double colons are something, as he put it, he picked up recently. You don’t “pick up” punctuation. You pick up gimmicks; you pick up a gallon of milk on your way home for work; you try to pick up women – but you don’t “pick up” new forms of punctuation. He would probably argue that it makes you stand out. “Wordsmith” also makes you stand out, but certainly not in a positive way. And I don’t think profs are going to be sucked in with “clever” (ab)uses of punctuation. Maybe we could end all our sentences with a dash- That would make us stand out- aND THEN WE COULD REVERSE CASE IN EVERYTHING WE WRITE- lASTLY. WE COULD PUT PERIODS WHERE WE NORMALLY PUT COMAS. AND INTENTINALLY MISS-PELL WERDSS TU HELP PEOPLE REMEMBER US-

Username :: WE3F3KJD
Password :: YIRJ3L2N

To be fair, the double-colon thing is fairly common now. I have even used it — gulp. Guess he was vindicated.

But there’s no vindication for me. The Brothers Chaps stole my idea of poopsmith and are making millions with it. Well, at least a living.

Homestar Runnner, I hate you…