Hurry Up

The gold standard of service here in New York City is efficient and friendly.  I suppose that’s true anywhere, but there’s a special empahasis on efficiency here.  In many places, a lot of friendly allows customers to cut you slack on the efficiency.  Here, efficiency is king, with friendly optional.   Why?  Because time spent waiting in line is time that is not being used to make or spend money.   And being nice is no precondition of success in New York.  Everybody knows that.

Some juggernauts are exempt.  This weekend we went to the IKEA store in Red Hook and waited in lines for ungodly amounts of time.  Efficiency was not on anybody’s mind.  But IKEA knows that there is nowhere else to go for IKEA-type shit.  And so we waited… and waited…

Which, I decided, was my comeuppance for shopping at a store that changed the face of one of my favorite neighborhoods forever.  Yes, I felt guilty, even if you could make the argument that the IKEA was good for the area, economically.

I used to host an Amateur Variety Hour at a bar-that-used-to-be called Lilly’s on Beard street.  Beard street used to be a desolate cobblestone street  running by warehouses and packs of roving dogs and one lonely fisherman’s bar called Lilly’s.  People who discovered the bar always said they felt like they had come to the middle of nowhere.

Now that nowhere is IKEA drive.  It really does me head in.

That Old Tapdance

Even though I had to intention of voting for him, it still bugs me to see McCain flipflop right on over to the dark forces that brought us eight years of Bush catastrophe. The Bush administration really captures all nuances of the word “misleading.” It misled us into a war in Iraq, misled us into a deregulated economy that allowed sharks to feed and eventually ripped a big hole in the boat. (Excuse the mixed metaphor).

So for “maverick” McCain to swallow his bile and get into bed with the forces that he must know on some level are responsible for the tattered state of America is either sad or pathetic. Sad because McCain has some impressive legistation under his belt. Sad because there was a time when McCain did buck against pernicious forces in American politics, even when it was not in his best interest, because he knew it was right to do so. His latest tack is a rejection of his long career, and even ardent conservatives are suspicious of his pandering, even if it’s for their benefit. The Straight-Talk Express has become the Bullshit Local, and I’ll lay money it’s going to stop short of the White House.

Honestly, the guy’s not really up to the job, which is becoming painfully obvious. He doesn’t have a policy. He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t even have a burning agenda, like Bush did. Sometimes, he doesn’t have a grasp. What he’s got is a record of accomplishments, and now he seems willing to toss it all for a chance at the presidency. It’s a devil’s bargain.

Evangelists on the Subway

I understand that evangelism is part of many sects of Christianity. Spreading the Word has been around as long as the religion itself.

But why’s this guy on subway gotta yell in my face about it? I get on the “A” train and there he is, the crack-to-Christ preacher, getting ready to tell us (or yell us, better said) about his transformative journey from the destructive drug to everlasting salvation. Except that this guy kind of acts like he didn’t really give up the former… he just brought Christianity into the act. So then he launches into it, all the way from 125th St. to 59th street, screaming in everybody’s face about how much he loves them now that he has been enveloped by the love of Jesus Christ. Now is the time to embrace Christianity, because YOU COULD DIE TOMORROW. The way he delivers that line seems to suggest you could die straight away. I’ll grant him this: having a huge man scream in your face that you could die any minute makes you think about it.

But what does this achieve?  Is anybody scared straight into the nearest church for some quick salvation? It’s obvious nobody there really appreciates it. Some people voice their discontent at being yelled at on their morning commute, to which he replies “you can hate me but I LOVE you, brother!”  If this is the love part, I’m sure as hell glad you don’t hate me. And if you manage to make everybody pissed off on their morning ride, how exactly is that going to inspire them to head to church on Sunday for the first time in five years?

What’s the efficacy rate on this?

Well…

These guys are a bunch of users

Here comes the flag pin

Well, it is the 4th of July, so it’s no surprise that Obama has donned the American flag pin in a proper show of patriotism. Now the FOX News network can and assuredly will say that it was responsible for making Obama toe the line of proper displays of patriotism. Maybe just to outdo his competitors, he should wear a bigger one.

And of course, the Unity, New Hampshire event. Some staffer is really patting herself on the back that she found out about that place. “OMG, it’s PURfect!” Ah, politics. Some of the rules never change.

Anyway, the Obama campaign is making the right choice. If Obama is proud of America in the way he claims to be, then wearing a flag pin is certainly no compromise. And if it makes an Amerkin feel a little better about voting for him, then what’s to lose. Karl Rove knows that symbols are every bit as important as words, and moreso for people who don’t read.

Publish Your Own Mag!

I just go goofy for new Web 2.0 communications technologies. The latest I’ve found, via Photojojo is a free online magazine publishing site called Issuu.com. You just upload your PDF and next thing you know, you’ve got your portfolio/screed/babybook in a really nice format for online viewing.

It’s not all that different from just having your PDF on your site I suppose. Seems like modern browsers worth their salt have a PDF viewer embedded. But the thumbnails, zoom and view tools on this are pretty cool. And, hey, it’s free.

Welcome

Hi, you’ve reached the site of Ben Ratliff, still trying to learn how to add some stuff.