Archive for November, 2008

Madame Secretary, anyone?

November 24, 2008 - 1:38 pm No Comments

Is it just me, or do you get the feeling that we are constantly being manipulated by brilliant political handlers?  I think my public relations background has made me perhaps a little more skeptical than the average Joe.  

Why are they dragging this Secretary of State announcement?  The longer it takes for it to be confirmed, the more certain the outcome.  Floating Hillary’s name as bait for lazy news reporters and a gullible public hungry for easy gossipy stories keeps the spotlight off more important issues with far more dramatic implications.  

It’s a beautiful capitalistic model: The more suspense, the more interest.  The more interest, the more eyeballs.  The more eyeballs, the more money news organizations can make on easy stories.  

That leaves the politicians free to make final decisions with our money in the middle of the night (like buying CitiGroups bad debt – 4am Monday – last night while we were all sleeping!).  

It’s the economy, stupid.  Let’s just make sure you stay stupid, stupid.  They tell us what the problem is, and they romance us with what we should be interested in. They package stories with just the perfect amount of juicy tidbits for them to become “newsworthy” and then we all bite.  It’s an art form!  And it works every time…

Hey — how do you think Michelle and Hillary will get along?  Will they be able to keep Bill under control? Did GM sell its private jets? Water cooler chats for the next three weeks…  

Cuba’s got nothing on us!  HA!

Posted in Social/Political Musings |

Lucky me! I met the dreamy black Harvard attorney…

November 17, 2008 - 10:36 pm No Comments

So what are the chances, that on the rare occasion that my family flies together and one of us has to sit on our own, (lucky me) I get to meet the one and only!  Well, not only, as apparently there are two of them.

Yes, I met the handsome, tall black lawyer that looks amazingly like Obama, although I am quite sure this one’s about a foot taller. He walked down the aisle and sat next to me on the plane while Tom and the boys were a few rows behind.  He was quite friendly, and introduced himself right away, and we did not stop talking for about two hours.  

It was a little weird at first because I thought I was talking to the President-elect, but he was so candid and amiable that I immediately felt comfortable.  He was on a health kick, eating only raw things and it was slightly amusing to watch him pour all kinds of powders on his salad, and in his various drinks prior to consumption.  He carried with him a gallon-sized ziploc baggy filled with natural and organic substances which could not be farther removed from the perpetual colon cancer diet I follow (that would be colon cancer producing diet) on a daily basis.

He mentioned that he has been told that he has an uncanny resemblance to Barack, (“You don’t say…”) and that since Barack announced his candidacy people stop him and ask him questions.  Then when they find out he graduated from Harvard Law school, they are dumbfounded.  He was wondering how he could capitalize on it, and has decided to buy billboards on buses with his photo and a tag line like: “YES WE CAN… get you the money”. Call your own Harvard attorney today!

No really, I am not that creative.  One cannot make this stuff up!

Mr. X, as I will call him to protect his identity, as I know he will be famous soon, is in search of a new career.  He has big plans, perhaps a book, or a life coaching business, the “Innate Success Institute” (ISI for short), and this housewife had fun tapping into my old marketing brain to give him some pro-bono advice. I did let him know that he was a publicist’s dream, and then proceeded to spend a healthy amount of time detailing why.  

I am sure we will be in touch soon, and I could not wait to tell Tom about my great conversation with this intelligent, kind, hard-working, driven, and beautiful man.  “Don’t bother”, he said.  “I think the whole plane knows about it!”

Excellent…

 

Posted in Life with Tom |

Girls Want My Baby :(

November 17, 2008 - 12:12 am No Comments

Time flies, and I cannot say I am having fun.  At least not about this one.  What is up with girls today?  My baby is only 11 — what the heck?  

So Thomas and Gabo got invited to some friends of friends house tonight.  We had met this family the day before, and they had a nice ten year old girl and a teenage boy. Not a big deal, and Tom and I would get a few hours on our own.

So of course as soon as they left we are on the computer tracking their movements with our fancy GPS phone tracker – which they do not know about.  How fun.  OK, slightly disturbing, but hey – we all get our jollies somehow.

When they got back Thomas explained that he thought the girl liked him.  “How do you figure?” we asked. “Because she said to me: ‘Well, do you like me or not?’ “  

“What did you do?,” we asked, stunned.  “I just told her I’d let her know when I turn 16.”

There was some discussion as to whether they would know each other then, and then they just kept playing.

YIKES!

As I was tucking them in I tried to talk to them about it.  I let them know that they say girls tend to mature faster than boys, and they are interested in these things at an earlier age.  To which Gabo quickly added that Thomas was maturing faster than him because he’s liked girls since he was 8 and Gabo has no interest.

Of course, that’s because 9 year old girls do not look like Tori Praver!  He agreed.

Posted in Educating our kids |

Living in cyberspace…

November 16, 2008 - 10:58 pm No Comments

So Tom got me a new mac that’s all compact and cute.  The keyboard is backlit, and the screen has a nice black frame around it.  Sharp.  Then he went out of town.

So here I was, kids down, and I am in bed playing around with my new toy, and I kept hearing this little bell ringing.  Not a big deal as I tend to ignore non-threatening noises…

Turns out it was Tom trying to video chat with me, but since I had no clue that I even had a camera on this thing, or what was going on, he took control of my desktop remotely somehow (how DOES he do these things…) and answered his own video phone call and accepted his own invitation to video chat with me while cyber-impersonating me – is that even legal?

This was all happening behind some of my open windows so I really had no idea what was going on but I was glad that the annoying little bell thing resolved itself on its own, as most non-threatening noises in my life tend to do.
 
I can’t believe I can even verbalize this shit!
 
All of a sudden I coudn’t access my mouse and a little square pops up with my picture — except it was live and I looked ugly and horrified, because I truly was since I thought the computer was possessed.
 
Much to my surprise my picture started moving as I moved … then I realized it was me LIVE and then Tom’s photo popped up on a bigger screen behind me and starts yelling at me asking me how come I was ignoring him and didn’t answer the phone.
 
I screamed before I started laughing… It all happened so fast.
 
I felt quite violated …

Posted in Graying in a tech world, Life with Tom |