My New Resumé

I am not currently looking for work. Nor do I have a compelling need to update my resumé. I can, however, reduce my resumé to the most essential information you need to know about my working self:

Tim Adkins
Media Guy/Creative Type/Professional Empathizer

Skills:
Can give a very sincere shit about any problem you have and will collaborate with you thoughtfully and artfully to create a solution that leaves you feeling good about yourself and profoundly satisfied with whomever or whatever I have been tasked with representing.

Salary:
Six figures gets you a conversation. Seven figures gets you a meeting. 18 figures gets you my soul for half of eternity. 36 figures gets it 'til the end of all time.

Opening Day

With the Lakers-Celtics Finals and the Olympics, there's been very little time for many hoop fans to feel like our lives have been missing anything so far in 2008.

But it has been, like, two whole months since Team USA vanquished the Spaniards to claim this year's Gold.

Thankfully, basketball is back. Are you ready? This guy is:

The Message Is the Message

Yes, I know Marshall McLuhan is spinning in his grave. Which makes this Thursday no different than any other day that someone has invoked or remixed the most famous sentence that ever emerged from McLuhan's typewriter.

To support the title of this post, I'm sharing two clips from my favourite show on anything, C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

Before I do, I want you to put your own personal opinions on these terrifically divisive subjects on the shelf and really listen to what each of the panelists is saying. Taken together, the following clips provide a master class in message discipline.

This one, on both sides I think, is how message discipline is done well:

Washington Journal 10.22.08
Frank Schubert, Yes on CA Prop. 8, Co-Campaign Manager & Kate Kendell, No on CA Prop 8 Campaign discuss California's ballot initiative on same-sex marriage

This one, also on both sides I think, is how tangential elements of your argument can subsume the core of it:

Washington Journal 10.23.08
Crystal Clinkenbeard, No on Colorado Amendment 48 & Bob Enyart, Colorado Right to Life, Director focus on Colorado Amendment 48, known as the "personhood" amendment, defines the term "person" to "include any huan being from the moment of fertilization."

In the case of the second clip featuring the folks from Colorado, Mr. Pro appealed a little too much to the emotions associated with his debate and, though extremely bold in places, he also came off as a lil bit irrational to me. Mrs. Con, on the other hand, raised her hands in defense, but failed to counterattack what she called mischaracterizations with any substantial data of her own.

Having said all that...I hope both measures are soundly defeated. Like the Celtics crushing the Lakers in Game 6. (Yes, I think I'm finally over the NBA Finals.)

"You have one ___ message."

There is a voicemail message currently residing on my work phone that was left for me two Septembers ago. Which should tell you three things:

1) I'm a pack rat.

2) I've been collecting paychecks from the same place for a while now.

3) It's one helluva message.

Actually, it's not necessarily the message so much as the person who left it. The guy's surname is Teodorescu and with his accent from wherever it is that he comes, the message begins with him saying what sounds like "to the rescue".

Which is fantastically silly. And never ceases to crack me up.

Especially on those days that feel like they last a week. Or during those weeks that feel like they last a decade. Or during those decades...

Lord, I hope I don't spend 10 years in the same place.

Scissor Me

No, this isn't about South Park.

It's actually about coupon cutting.

And a woman who might be the best who ever did it.

NPR's Morning Edition reports. Circa yesterday.

(Oh, but if you want to see that episode of South Park again, go here. Season 11. The D-Yikes episode.)

Playing Hooky

There is a pretty famous Englishman who theorizes that public schools often kill creativity. Here's his argument:



Personally, I think he's on to something.

Which is, in part, why I played hooky from work today. Sorta.

Early this week, I got an e-vite for this event.

Which was quite timely as I had just finished reading this collection of mini-essays.

Since Friday is normally my work-from-home day, it presented the perfect opportunity for a field trip.

So I took one.

Naturally, I learned some cool new stuff. Notably from the guy who runs this organization.

Then I wandered DC a lil bit. Checked out a couple book stores. Furniture stores. And some sneaker spots, too. It was, after all, a truly blue sky autumn afternoon in the nation's capital.

Now I'm home. Getting caught up on email. Flirting with some of the "work" I missed this afternoon. And I'm thinking that I've stumbled onto a new rule that would make Sir Ken (the guy in the video up there ^^^) proud.

Everyone should play hooky from work once a month.

It does a body--and a spirit--good. Lotsa good.

The catch, though, is that you probably shouldn't simply sit at home and watch The View. Or ESPN Classic. Or a My Name is Earl marathon.

This rule should have a clause that you have to do something that inspires you. Doesn't really matter what it is. Or even what it inspires you to do. Just that it gets the neurons in your brain firing. That's all.

'Cause the thousand paper cuts of death that await you in the cube farm don't actually need to succeed.

No matter how important that TPS Report is.