I See What He Did There

I'm through page 73 of For the Win, Cory Doctorow's 21st Century novel of multi-player virtual reality games and their intersection with bands of far-flung, carbon-based humans facing real, increasingly precarious predicaments.

Already, in fewer than 15% of the novel's rapidly readable pages, FTW has called to mind George Orwell's 1984, Norman Jewison's pithy short story, "Rollerball Murder" (later made into the violent future-sports movie, "Rollerball"), and Thomas Friedman's breathless economic globalism treatise, The World is Flat.

Then, without warning, Doctorow executes a perfect educational ambush and explains how financial arbitrage led to the mortgage and banking crisis of 2008, without ever using the words mortgage, banking, or collateralized debt obligations -- without even mentioning the historical events of 2008, in fact. He accomplishes this in only four pages, written at an eighth grade level, using vorpal blades, gaming gold, and other virtual treasure as currency to illustrate.

I'm now fully convinced of the author's powers. I'm hopeful that if I keep reading, I'll learn how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without using the word Jerusalem. I'm pretty sure a vorpal blade will be involved.

Consulting and Sales

Watching "Clean House" and "Hoarders" on cable has spurred me to sort through voluminous storage boxes of books and donate or sell many of them. Where did they all come from? Who let this happen? Why wasn't I informed?

Many of these treasures followed us like shipboard rats during three long-distance moves in four years, only to wind up within six miles of where they started. Most have sat for two or three years since then in unopened boxes. It's not only time to sort and cull them, it's also highly therapeutic to toss each disposable dead tree into a burgeoning heap on the couch and yell "Heraus!" for each miscreant tome in my best Sergeant Schultz voice.

There's a side benefit of a clearing-out, if you look at it with an anthropologist's eye: you get an opportunity to see in one place a collection of that which was once valuable and is no longer.

I haven't decided which of the following titles to keep, sell, or pitch from a banker's box labeled "Consulting and Sales", but the motley collection as a whole represents an intriguing catalog of entrepreneurial life in the 1990s and 2000s:

          Competitive Intelligence
          The Complete Book of Consulting
          The Consultant's Guide to Proposal Writing
          Consulting
          Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-
                    Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
          Earning What You're Worth?
          Going Solo
          Hanging Out a Shingle
          How to Be a Successful Computer Consultant
          How to Start and Run a Successful Independent
                    Consulting Business
          Independent Consultant's Q&A Book
          Infopreneurs: Turning Data Into Dollars
          Making It in High Tech Sales
          Million Dollar Consulting
          Non-Manipulative Selling
          The Power of Consultative Selling
          Proposal Planning & Writing
          Quality Selling Through Quality Proposals
          Renewable Advantage
          Secrets of Question Based Selling
          Secrets of the World's Top Sales Performers
          Selling Dreams: How to Make Any Product
                    Irresistable
          Selling in the Quality Era
          Selling Skills for the Nonsalesperson
          Solo Success
          Successful Large Account Management
          You Can Negotiate Anything

Apparently, as with woodworking, my hobby is reading about it rather than doing it. Had I followed the advice in any three of these worthy volumes assiduously, I'm sure my tax return and bank balance would be more like what the author of Million Dollar Consulting had in mind.

I looked up each of these books on Amazon.com. Astonishingly, most of them are now available used for one penny plus shipping and handling, and all but two are priced under a dollar. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Cartoon from Whack Your Porcupine . . . And Other
Drawings by B Kliban. Copyright 1977 by B Kliban.

Three Card Wenceslas; or, Tegwar Revisited

Ten years ago at a family reunion, my sister and I started to play a game that we called Three Card Wenceslas. We'd never played it before, but we both picked it up fairly quickly and, before long, became totally absorbed in a spirited contest.

Three Card Wenceslas has no rules. We made it up as we went along.

She would play a pair. I would meld. She would draw from the deck. I would raise. She would knock. I would discard. And so forth. Complete and utter improvisation. Complete and utter nonsense. Even the name of the game was phony. But we played confidently (and loudly!).

Our mom's cousin wandered over. By that time, my sister and I had progressed to Three Card Blind Wenceslas, played with eyes closed. I think I was holding a card to my forehead. The improvisation continued, with plenty of trash-talking between us.

Our cousin took this in for a while. Finally he asked, "How do you know when someone wins?"

"We just did," I said. Ba-da-boom!

A bit of a lowlife prank to pull on a relative, granted, but at least we didn't scam anyone for money (I rationalize). However, it turns out the cosmic joke of the situation has been on me all along, and I've only just realized it.

You see, I've just finished rereading Bang the Drum Slowly, the touching, tragicomic 1950's baseball and mortality novel by Mark Harris. It was the first time since my early teen years, when I was a budding baseball geek, that I'd read the book. Also, by chance, the 1973 movie version starring Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro was shown the other night on Turner Classic Movies.

Both are terrific, the book moreso than the movie, but that's not important now. What is important is that the fictional ballplayers played a fictional card game to scam unsuspecting bystanders in hotel lobbies out of their fictional spare cash. The ballplayers' card game was called "Tegwar", and it had no rules. The play of the game was eerily familiar, right down to the trash-talking!

Buried like an intelligence mole in the Early 1970's quadrant of my baseball-addled subconscious, "Tegwar" had been lying in Wait (so to speak) for decades. It reemerged ten years ago as "Three Card Wenceslas" -- the T-W letter combination is too improbable to be purely coincidental, don't you think? When I came across the Tegwar bit in Bang the Drum Slowly recently, the realization of what I'd likely done sent chills up my spine. Cue the Twilight Zone tones!

We'll see our cousin again this summer. Hopefully he'll get a good laugh at my expense when I tell him the "Tegwar" story. It still might work out for me in the end, though; I'm pretty sure I can sell my remaining inventory of "Three Card Wenceslas" rulebooks on eBay.

It's Our Bloggerversary!

Dear Friends (and the occasional "Next Blog" clicker),

One year ago today, I posted a timid entry regarding the number of days remaining until the start of baseball spring training. Thus began a rapid disgorging, ceremonious and unceremonious, of every wee little intellectual twitch I had that I thought might look good in ASCII characters. I had two rules: I had to express a unique take or personal angle on each topic chosen; and...I forget the second rule. Whatever. Oh, right, that was the second rule: Whatever. My internalized Assignment Editor would be checked at the door, or preferably into the boards.

I only violated the spirit of these rules a few times, as with a rather generic recent review of the new Sherlock Holmes movie. That's the neat thing about having a blog, though: I can flout my own rules at will. In the immortal words of General Al Haig: I'm in charge here, yo ho ho!

Since My Two Innings was initiated, I and my Beloved Spousal Unit (take a bow, dear) have rescued ourselves from the brink of Denver employment and happily scurried back into the warm embrace of Milwaukee's economic malaise. This represented the closing leg of an epic, four-year tour of America's most benighted, yet reportedly above-average cities -- all of which seemed to involve driving large trucks through Nebraska to get there.

Meanwhile, through the secular magic of Blogger, I've indulged in numerous obscure references, ignored highly sensible educational requirements that one should meet before engaging in art criticism, and decried the downfall of third-rate sports teams that were never really as good as second-rate to begin with. Baseball, Hockey, Movies, and Music have all been featured prominently in these scribblings, naturally, but who knew at the outset that Bowling Alley Demolition, Equestrian Feats, and Male Hereditary Characteristics would also become tagged entries? Free Verse, even -- twice. Talk about indulgence.

I don't want to give you the wrong impression. It's not been all Pulitzer Prizes and mid-six-figures book contracts. Distractions from a more dedicated commitment to the blog and to writing generally have included a foray into the lamentable, lazy man's world of Twitter; a randomly occurring, sudden spate of gainfulness carrying with it the strangely alluring appeal of a paycheck; and the predictable development that it took only two months in the beginning to use up all of my passably tolerable stories.

Even so, I've managed to prove once and for all, in this media-slogged millenium, that an amateur blogger's two best friends are an ergonomic keyboard and a low readership count.

So here we are again, only seven weeks until pitchers and catchers report. At the rate things are going, that's either three blog posts, two soul-crushing Pittsburgh Pirates salary dumps, or one exceptionally long drive through Nebraska. My money's on the Nuttings, as they haven't disappointed me yet. Good luck on your picks, and Happy New Year to you and yours!

All Tomorrow's Parties

What happens if a bunch of humans are stripped of their rationality and critical thinking abilities, electrified beyond the point of recovery with high-voltage music (and non-music), and let loose en masse to collide into one another for several days in a village?

I think I just caught a glimpse of that unsettling scenario tonight at a Milwaukee Film Festival offering. All Tomorrow's Parties, a feature-length documentary, captures the annual U.K. rock festival of the same name, for which various leading bands "curate" each year's acts. Named for a Velvet Underground lyric, the ATP festival was conceived as a counterreaction to the creeping corporate control of youth culture and music -- so sayeth the painfully inarticulate kid interviewed in one clip -- and by the usual metaphoric extension, as a critique of all society, man.

Staging a festival without overbearing corporate sponsorship is laudable. When you do that, however, the best act you can get just might be Iggy and the Stooges. That's okay; the real action in ATP is in and around the decrepit resort dormitories, which look like the worst two-level, exterior-entrance motels that you've ever stayed in. Here, beyond the obligatory Intermittent Spontaneous Musical Occurrences, we're treated to clips of drunken post-partiers wandering around aimlessly, peering into other people's rooms, and falling through cheaply constructed second-floor balconies. Before you can attend tomorrow's parties, it would seem, you have to survive today's first.

Anarchic and chaotic as the music festival itself, the documentary cobbles together miscellaneous film clips gathered from numerous attendees and participants over the years. Like the festival, the film seems not so much curated as thrown together. The only concession to the left-brain that craves information and a semblance of order is the briefly displayed band names, with curator and festival year, for a number of leading acts. The director overuses a multiple-windows technique for concert footage; somebody must have thought it looked really cool back in film school.

I didn't like many of the bands, but so what; it's no longer my generation's turn. Choppy editing aside, All Tomorrow's Parties is a fair depiction of a significant youth music gathering, now sprouting offshoots around the globe. A cultural time capsule, I suggest it be suitably buried for posterity. Perhaps in velvet. Definitely underground.

You Never Can Lose, You Always Win

I'm not a jazz musician on a Saturday night bandstand. I don't have the talent to improvise nine or ten riffs around a recognizable theme before powering up with a Big Band flourish on the last verse while the beloved, Italian-American bandleader croaks out the familiar lyrics, wails out the climax, and takes a warm bow to scattered applause in the room.

But if I were, I'd arrange an 8-minute jam to the Schenectady Savings Bank's 30-second television commercial of the 1960's and 1970's, the one that's still lodged in my cranium like a crowbar:

          Get the most,
          Get the most,
          At Schenectady Savings Bank!
          It's the most,
          Yes the most,
          That's Schenectady Savings Bank!
          You never can lose, you always win
          When Schenectady's the bank you keep your money in!
          Get the most,
          Get the most,
          That's Schenectady Savings Bank!

God forbid this should be the last tune going through my mind when I pass away, but based on the commercial's reach and frequency when I was growing up, not to mention its penetrating melody and vocal harmonies, I wouldn't bet against it. It's not a bad little tune, actually; the syncopation is rather catchy. I'll take it over that cloying, ubiquitious Jared Jewelers jingle anytime. A toast to the composer -- wherever he may be banking now.

As for the lyrics: the careful observer will notice that there's some serious public policy embedded in the song's bridge, resulting in today's claims in perpetuity on taxpayer dollars. I'll bet Bernanke and Geithner wish they could musically improvise on that "never can lose" line right about now.

Schenectady Savings Bank eventually merged with Hartford Federal Savings & Loan in 1982; the combination was federalized and renamed Northeast Savings. Northeast Savings was bought out by Shawmut National Corp. in 1994; which merged into Fleet Financial Group in 1995; which in turn merged with BankBoston -- itself a 1996 merger of the Bank of Boston and BayBanks -- to form FleetBoston Financial in 1999. All of which was acquired by Bank of America in 2004.

In 2009, Bank of America, too big to fail, received $20 billion of taxpayer money and $118 billion in government guarantees against toxic assets.

Get the most? I'll say!

Wait's Second Law: $800 is the New $500

There's no greater buzz-kill for the new college graduate than having to spend part of your first adult paycheck on a vacuum cleaner. It's the first tangible sign that post-collegiate life is not all beer and roses. But at least it's only $100, unless you succumb to some highly alluring infomercial (in which case, I maintain, you didn't learn very much during college).

Before long, however, you learn the real truth. It's known as Wait's Law, and it's a universal law of economics: Everything in adult life costs $500. Plumbing repair? $500. Dishwasher gives out? $500. Replaster the kitchen ceiling when it caves in? $500. Your 10-year old buggy's right front CV joint clatters? $500. Attend your high school reunion? $500 for the plane ticket, overnight stay, drinks, guilty phone calls home, and dry cleaning afterward. Anniversary dinner and a show -- in New York or Chicago? Well, we don't want to sit in the back row, do we? Not after that reunion! $500. Doctor bills for two lab tests and a prescription? $500. Somehow, some way, "Baby needs new shoes" will translate into a $500 outlay. Iron law. Guaranteed.

Wait's Law was originally formulated in the 1980's and held throughout much of the 1990's. Since the turn of the millennium or so, however, there's been a disturbing trend documented in the scientific literature. Exceptions to Wait's Law have been increasingly reported, with the statistical bias clearly on the upside.

Our beloved 1992 Camry, a.k.a. The Silver Zloty, is indicative of this recent challenge to Wait's Law. Just one month after $800 in engine work, it then needed $800 in exhaust system repairs. The mechanic further recommends a replacement of the engine mounts. $800. (This last one will have to wait: thereby illustrating a second meaning of Wait's Law.)

We live farther from our respective hometowns now. Two round-trip tickets to either home for the holidays? $800. Hard drive crash? You can't really justify sinking more money into old technology, can you? New computer. $800. That plumbing repair back in 1999? Did you really expect it to hold for ten years? $800.

Evidently the world has changed. How can we reconcile these new data points with Wait's Law? Easy. Wait's Second Law: $800 is the new $500. Problem solved; universe explained. Alles in Ordnung.

Ask me about Wait's Third Law after the bank bailout is done.