Random Access Memories

My co-worker recently sent out an email with the following in it:

“Something I have said for many years, if your job seems easy, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

I dispute this. As this comment stands it implies that no matter how hard you work you will never finish your tasks at hand. Furthermore it suggests that there is something wrong with being good at your work so that it is easy to accomplish a days work and that if that work is easy you simply should have been able to accomplish more.

I tend to go by the saying below:

“Work smarter, not harder”

This implies that the goal is to accomplish the work at hand in the most efficient and easiest method possible. Making sure that the attainment of the goal is the first priority, not the increase of the sweat on one’s brow in accomplishing that goal.

I realized something wandering around downtown yesterday that struck me like a brick upside the head.

As I was searching for menswear in Nordstrom and Macy’s I saw that the women’s fashions were of extensive varied colors and patterns, with a myriad of cuts, shapes, florals. etc.

However upon entering the menswear department I was suddenly and completely transported to 1950 or thereabouts. The colors were drab and boring and the cuts of the suits, shirts and shoes were indistiguishable from those being in fashion 60 years ago.

As I stood taking in this realization I was approached by a member of the sales staff who intoned “Is there anything I can help you find sir?”, after a moment to realize it was me he was speaking to I responded “Yes, variety”, his quizical stare and raised eyebrow making it clear he had no idea what I meant I added “This is all very, very old, where is the new men’s fashion?”.

Without any hint of sarcasm or comedy he replied “Men’s fashion does not, and will never change sir”.

Needless to say this was not an answer befitting my state of mind at the time so I took my leave of the place, but the issue still hung in my mind, “Why is men’s fashion so stagnant?”.

When I returned home I started searching for something different or new in men’s fashion trends thinking that the web (which obviously knows everything and has connected several billion people) might show some promise.

I then realized the horror of my situation, that almost all the variety in men’s fashion is lumped into “alternative” fashion. You know this type of fashion, the looks that your parents thought were completely unacceptable and that somewhow 99% of adult men grown out of upon exiting high school or college.

I believe I shall have to find a custom tailor and begin my quest to write this terrible injustice that men now suffer, or (lord forbid) do the unthinkable and learn to sew myself.

This has got to be one of the silliest things I have seen in a long time.

I saw this on the street as I was driving along today.

Seriously who the hell expects to find a girlfriend by advertising your website on a street corner?

Alot has been made lately of the possibly “protectionist” agenda of the Obama administration.

Supposedly if we do not allow completely free trade with countries like China then it will be bad for the USA.

But how exactly? The only people I see losing out are the ones making millions in CEO positions because they choose to ship manufacturing off to where there are no worker rights and where wages are paid in cents not dollars.

I hardly see the current trade situation as “free”, in previous times we called it “exploitation”.

The need to bring jobs back to the USA to make things for US use and export to other nations is a basis of a stable economy.