Hey, did you hear this?

Next week I’m doing an interactive video about speeding up the process within a company. The imaginary company created to use as an example is a call center for tech advice for cameras, but it could be anything.

In real life, it most likely would be located somewhere in India, but that’s another story.

The interesting part is what I’ve learned from reading the script for this project, that while I always thought I was listening to what the other person was saying, what I was really doing was waiting for my turn to speak and seem brilliant, not actually paying much attention to the content of what was spoken.

I had learned this lesson years ago when I took a coaching course from a guy named Paul Roth at his Coaching Exchange in Westwood, CA. The Coaching Exchange’s logo is CEX, which a Russian speaking person would pronounce as SEX, but that’s a story for another day. As I learned,Paul is a true genius, a guy who for whatever reason wanted to help people at the expense of his own financial betterment. This concept was one of the best things I got out of the class, and also one of the first things I forgot about as I moved on with my life. So it goes.

What I found was that you can’t use information that is given to you if you choose not to really listen to it. You need to take in each word and the examine the context of it as it’s given to you.

Try this: The next time someone speaks to you on a subject you know nothing about, really try and see if you can come away with a new feeling about that subject, or maybe take something from the talk and use it in an unrelated area of your life. Once you do this, you may find that an answer to something that you have had on your mind for a while will appear in the conversation, and this is true even if when it’s about an unrelated subject.

You have questions, others have answers, it’s just a matter of matching them up.

4-25-07: A Day That Lives In Infamy, Like The Rest.

In a news report today, Gen. David H. Petraeus (it’s sort of a coincidence, but it rhymes with Betray Us), the commander in Iraq, still insists that everything is O.K. and the war effort is going well for us there. Somehow, nearly 20 percent of the population of America will continue to support the commander in chimp in whatever he says, goose stepping their way to 2008. I’m starting to lose hope of seeing Dubya frog marched out of the White House along with his partner, blood clot boy.

Marching in that same conga line, Republican Senator John McCain has formally launched his next US presidential campaign to nowhere. Long ago, I had some respect for him as a former prisoner of war who made it through several tough years, now I view him as either an updated “Manchurian Candidate” that has had his implanted orders start taking effect, or just another burnout political whore who felt the need to embrace the christian right wing and become the new leader of the Dubya base idiots. Either way, I wish him well and fast travel on his way to oblivion.

Still blooming in the news, our war heroes are shown to be just humans with slanted or fabricated news coverage made up to take the attention away from what a terrible decision it was to launch this war based on lies. Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch are (so far) the featured pawns in this game, it’s long been known that Tillman was killed by friendly fire with the details obscured by fellow Rangers that were ordered to lie, the true story in the news today as his brother faced the press. And Lynch, caught up in a cover-up where the true story was whitewashed to hide what really happened, is finally trying to get the real story told.

Sniff my fingers and you’ll find which one controls “W”

As the truth of these and other Bushwar problems continue to surface, I have to wonder if we will ever find out what keeps our resident (I still can’t call him president) in the very white house from being impeached. If nothing else, the videos shown today of his frantic dancing, if you will give him the benefit of the doubt as to what was going on, on a stage where with a lot of spastic movement it seems that he was trying to drum his way out of trouble, just off screen Laura glances at him with her resolution fading by the moment.

To those that live in the rest of the world, try to understand that most of us here in the U.S. are truly sorry. You have no idea exactly how very very sorry, but please forgive us for the next few years. I just hope that we can make it until then.

And, so it goes………..

N.B., The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and / or quotes above (including those of my own) belong to the material’s creator(s). Credit is given when it’s known, but as we’ve found, success will have a million parents and failure will be an orphan.
Feel free to ignore any ads that are shown below this advisory, I don’t get to choose them and even more sadly, I don’t make a penny off any of them, so in the holy name of capitalism I rebuke and don’t endorse or support any of them, unless of course they’re made of funny stuff…..
P.S., check back for occasional updates and rewrites….
FAIR USE NOTICE: THIS SITE CONTAINS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL THE USE OF WHICH HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. I AM MAKING SUCH MATERIAL AVAILABLE IN MY EFFORT TO ADVANCE UNDERSTANDING OF ENVIRONMENTAL, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, ECONOMIC, DEMOCRACY, SCIENTIFIC, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, ETC. I BELIEVE THIS CONSTITUTES A ‘FAIR USE’ OF ANY SUCH COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AS PROVIDED FOR IN SECTION 107 OF THE US COPYRIGHT LAW. IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: HTTP://WWW.LAW.CORNELL.EDU/USCODE/17/107.SHTML.  IF YOU WISH TO USE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM THIS SITE FOR PURPOSES OF YOUR OWN THAT GO BEYOND ‘FAIR USE’, YOU MUST OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.

The ultimate full (3 card) monte

I read that our decider in chief has a new plan to help us, I’m already grabbing my ankles. He has this plan, you see, to give tax breaks to help us normal, non-CEO type people pay for medical insurance, great idea huh? The problem is that this does nothing to stop the obscene profiteering cashflow that the insurance and pharm industry reap every day, it only reroutes the cash directly from the U.S. budget, instead of you and me. And where does that money come from? Yup, taxes paid by you ‘n me, assuming that you’re not part of the “haves” or the “have mores” that make up the Bush base, and more or less get a pass on taxation.

I suppose that the large donations that were made by the above corporations might have contributed (no pun intended) to this plan, but under it all is the ongoing uber-conservative drive to bankrupt the economy so that whatever few dollars that might still be left in the Social Security bank account can be sucked out, causing it to fail and keeping the debtor class intact as a way of life for all, until death shall they part (with their money). This has been on the right’s agenda for years, and so it’s yet one more win-win deal for them and a enlarged boning for us.

Here’s the logic trail for those that didn’t get it:

Insurance and Pharmaceutical companies take in a lot of money….
Some people can’t afford it or don’t qualify….
Government pays it for them….
People (one way or another, including subsequent generations) pay the government….
Go back to step one……

Pass me the Astrolube on your way out will ya!

A Non-Kosher / Halal Stop To Islamic Suicide Bombings?

A while ago I was reading one of the always brilliant and usually pee-in-your-pants funny editions of the Dilbert blog created by Scott Adams, and in that one he wrote about the feeding of the remains of murder victims to pigs done by lazy killers that didn’t want to have to clean up the blood, transport the body, dig the holes, etc….

Cleanup on aisle 3? I got you covered!!!

Well hey, if someone were to take the blown up remains of these suicide bombers and feed that mess to the hogs, and also shoot a video of the whole deal from the scrape up start to the flatulent finish, I’m thinking that there would be an immediate end to all of the ongoing martyr creation once it were to air on Al Jazzera.

Are we at aisle 3 yet?

Just how many of those 72 virgins do you suppose would still give a warm welcome to what’s been transformed into a steaming pile of hog shit to spend eternity with it?

Forget about those other 71 babes, I promise it’s just you and me

Would Allah put out his hand (even his left one?) to shake the non-halal hands or whatever other parts that may have survived the blast, once they’ve passed through several linear meters of menudo?

Do Allah’s messengers fly coach?

N.B., The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and/ or quotes above (including those of my own) belong to the material’s creator(s). Credit is given when it’s known, but as always, success usually has a million parents and failure is an orphan.
Feel free to ignore any ads that are shown below this advisory, I don’t get to choose them and even more sadly, I don’t make a penny off any of them, so in the holy name of capitalism I rebuke and don’t endorse or support any of them, unless of course they’re made of funny stuff….. 
                                         

FAIR USE NOTICE: THIS SITE CONTAINS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL THE USE OF WHICH HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. I AM MAKING SUCH MATERIAL AVAILABLE IN MY EFFORT TO ADVANCE UNDERSTANDING OF ENVIRONMENTAL, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, ECONOMIC, DEMOCRACY, SCIENTIFIC, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, ETC. I BELIEVE THIS CONSTITUTES A ‘FAIR USE’ OF ANY SUCH COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AS PROVIDED FOR IN SECTION 107 OF THE US COPYRIGHT LAW. IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: HTTP://WWW.LAW.CORNELL.EDU/USCODE/17/107.SHTML.  IF YOU WISH TO USE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM THIS SITE FOR PURPOSES OF YOUR OWN THAT GO BEYOND ‘FAIR USE’, YOU MUST OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.