Today's Sales Meeting Doodle

Round and round it goes.
In the war of Finance versus the Humans, the Spiral Man is the Ethical
Governor.
Fictionalizing it just makes it spin faster.
Gaze deeply, graze often.
Round and round it goes.

PKOW! Doodle

Smashing.
Continued after next page...

Don't Go Shopping Day Starts Right After Thanksgiving

Don't forget, Don't Go Shopping Day starts right after Thanksgiving.
In fact many stores will be closing their doors to reckless spending even earlier this year.
So stay home with your loved ones, avoid getting trampled and extend your days of Thanksgiving or get an early start on your Yule, Solstice or Christmas Season in peace and quiet.  You will save a ton of money and frustration.  And discover that real satisfaction can't be purchased at a store.

Giving Thanks

I am truly thankful for lots of things:
Friends who are honest with me.
Smart, sexy women.
Giggling until your eyes leak.
Snuggles on a cold evening.
Swapping stories.
Watching birds at the feeder.
Seeing your kids grow older and wiser.
Loving & being loved back.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Still playing in the snow

It is supposed to drop to 9 degrees tonight. Chillin does not
adequately describe it.

Green Man?

The green man is telling us that winter is early this year. Not even
Thanksgiving and we are already getting snow. Could be a long winter.

Electronic Geese Flying Home for the Winter

The Christmas decorations are up at the Chicago airport. Big electric
geese. I'm sure there is a meaningful metaphor about business travel
in there somewhere. But I'm just glad to be home.
Honking at you electronically whilst trying to stay in formation.
From the iPhone.
Jay

Man eater?

Fiberglass shark at the Bass Pro Shop in Chicago.

Brain Drain Doodle

Continued after next page

Shark bites man. 50 million years ago

I thought there was something odd about this ad in an old comic book.
(1976, so don't send money.)
Then I realized it would be hard for a shark to be a man eater 50
million years ago. No men then. Plenty of sharks, but no men.
Unless.....they were time traveling, man eating sharks (with frickin
laser beams attached to their heads)! So keep an eye out.

Ready, Set, Go...

Off to Chicago Tuesday.
Helping the Captains of Industry to run their Rat Race.
Round and round we go.
But I'm feeling pretty upbeat about it....
See ya on the return trip.

Continued After Next Page

I always wondered about those message at the bottom of the comic book
pages. Did they think I would read the ads and think they were part of
the story? Did they think I would stop turning pages without
instructions?

His name is Knick

Don't Knack It.

How?

Look Who's Coming to Town...Again

Big Chief says, It's time to fly to Chicago Again.

 I'd better book my flight.

 And put my man pants on.

I wanna make a good impression.

Oh, no...they say I've got to go.  Go, go, Godzilla.
Whoa, oh, ew-oh...

Return of Squid Face

A second version of squid face.
What does it mean?
It means that when sales guys are talking
I get bored and doodle...

Squid Face Doodle

A many tentacled doodle from today's conference call.

From the iPhone.

People Used to go to Prison...

"It used to be that if you committed a major financial fraud in the United States, you went to jail. In the late 1980s, there was, what was then considered a major financial crisis, caused by the collapse of the savings and loan industry, a collapse which had been brought about by a large quantity of fraud. Several thousand financial executives went to prison in the late 1980s. Several very senior Wall Street executives also went to prison for having assisted in this -- Michael Milkin, Ivan Boesky -- a large group of people went to prison.

Then in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble fewer people went to jail, but some people did go to jail. When Enron collapsed, the people who ran Enron went to prison, and the CEO of WorldCom went to prison. He's still in prison. Those things were far less extreme than what occurred here, with far fewer consequences.

... I think what's happened over the last 20 years roughly the financial industry has acquired so much political power that it now has impunity. Since we started having deregulation and financial crises, with each successive crisis the consequences were more severe and yet, fewer people went to prison."

--Charles Ferguson, Director of Inside Job

From the Emily Wilson interview.

What game are we playing exactly?

 When I've been a dick, why do I feel foolish?

Can I take time to clear my head?

 Can I resist the rantings of the male monkey mind?

Maybe I should take up a more pleasurable hobby.
Anyone want to play?

------------------------------------
Echoes: Those were not rhetorical questions.
Peace...

Well, That Was Interesting...

Well, That Was Interesting…

Interesting in the sense used in that old Chinese curse:
May you live in interesting times.

Election night was interesting.
And the next couple of years are going to be interesting.
Buckle your seat belts because I don’t think the Citizen’s United Corporatist are done with us yet. This is just the beginning of the next chapter in America’s new plutocracy.

Do I sound bummed out and depressed?
Maybe I am. But mostly I am disappointed.
Up until the votes were counted, there was hope.
Hope that my fellow citizens were not as ignorant of history as the Tea Party Express wanted them to be.
Hope that my fellow citizens were not as shallow minded and cruel as the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove’s 3 big donors wanted them to be.
But they were and probably will be again.

Mostly I am just sad, because I know what this political landscape looks like.
I have lived most of my adult life from this position.
With a government flooded with representatives that represent the richest people and corporations in the world while aiming their social marketing at well meaning but misguided tribalists and fundamentalists who will vote against their own interests just because they have been trained to jump when people say “freedom”, “god”, or “patriotism”.
I feel pretty sure I have a solid grasp of the direction history has been moving in the last couple of hundred years. And I am pretty sure expanding human rights and a growing intellectual capacity to overcome brutal tribal tendencies to xenophobia and violence are the way things are trending in the long run. We are growing in empathy and reason on the whole.
So it is disappointing to only have a few advocates of the same progression in the government, while the majority fights evolution and progress in the name of the rich and powerful.
It is frustrating watching conservatives fight against evolutionary trends.
But evolution is not always elegant or kind.
I know what kind of minority I am in.
And I am used to being in that minority.
And I am used to looking long term.
And I am used to trying to do the right thing, the thing that will help humanity grow as a species, even when it is not the popular thing or the most advertised thing.

So the last 2 years were a strange political anomaly for me.
It was weird seeing so many progressive issues pushed forward.
But the pendulum is swinging again.
The pendulum will swing again, and again, and again.
And each time some small amount of progress is made.
Each time we have at least the opportunity to grow as a people.

If conservatives had won every political fight there would be no women in politics.
If conservatives had won every fight there would be no “minorities” in politics.
If conservatives had won every fight there would be no weekend for workers to recover.
If conservatives always got their way, there would be no America—we would still be British.
I know my conservative friends think that This Time, they are on the side of right; that this time they must draw that line in the sand, the line that cannot be crossed.

But things keep moving forward.
And the next generation of conservatives will one day be saying: “Of course there are gays in the military and everyone has a right to health care. We are not contesting that; that’s a given. But we are drawing a line in the sand on this issue. On this particular issue we will not budge.”
And progressives will help them across that line too. Because it is the right thing to do for everyone. And what is good for everyone, is good for everyone—even if it costs you an election now and then.

We live in interesting times.
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Now that my rant is finished, you may return to your regularly scheduled life.

Election Proximity Collage

Maybe it has all been a misunderstanding?

Mark 11:

¹² The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. ¹³ Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

So there you have it: God hates figs.  F. I. G. Figs.
Maybe we can correct the spelling on those other signs now?