I’ve attended probably hundreds of meetings during my years as a cog in the national workforce. I’ve attended weekly meetings, and monthly meeting, and special meetings and secret meetings. I’ve attended meetings where we discussed what we should meet about in our next meeting, and I’ve attended meetings where no one seemed to have the slightest idea why we were even meeting.
My default behavior when attending roughly 90 percent of the meetings of the past, has traditionally revolved around coming up with innovative ways to keep from falling asleep. Generally, this has involved playing with my pens, or writing down notes to myself, such as “Remember: You’re pretty awesome,” or “The sound of one hand clapping would be pretty quiet,” or “Even if I were President of the United States, I’d probably still be in a meeting right now.”
For me, meetings have always seemed more like a waste of time than time well spent. I could probably count on one hand the number of meetings I’ve attended that actually seemed to accomplish anything. Granted, I’ve basically been a minor player when it comes to the vast majority of the meetings I’ve attended, so my opinion of years of accrued meeting time is skewed towards the negative spectrum, to put it mildly.
This week, however, marked a turning point in my meeting experience. Up until this week I was used to meetings where I sat around a table with co-workers, talking into a speaker phone to other remote co-workers who basically couldn’t hear us because of the terrible connection, so everyone had to repeat everything they said roughly 20 times, thus ensuring everyone could clearly hear whatever useless information was being uttered.
This week threw all my previous meeting experiences for a loop, as I sat in on my first-ever video conference meeting. For the first time, I was able to see co-workers attending the meeting from across the nation. . . as well as a separate screen devoted to those of us on-site. Which. . .
It’s hard to explain, exactly, what it was like to be sitting in on a meeting where I could actually see myself sitting in on a meeting. It was like being confronted by nearly a decade of meetings and seeing exactly what a fidgety, restless and entirely bored person I’ve been all these years.
Of course, since the meeting dealt with items largely unconnected with me, I spent most of the time obsessing over the behavior of my video doppelganger, which is to say I tried to tone down and tame all my years of habit-hardened mannerisms. I tried not to fidget with my pen but, failing that, I opted to put it away so it wouldn’t tempt me.
That, of course, just left me with a pair of hands with nothing to do, so they seemed to automatically go to my face, so I spent all sorts of time with my chin in my palm, or with a thoughtful-looking thumb under the chin, with an index finger on my cheek. When I caught a glimpse of myself on the big screen, I thought the pose made me look far too engaged in the conversation and put me at risk of possibly being called on for input, so I tried folding my hands on the desk in front of me, which I decided made me look alert, but not overly so.
I found myself hoping someone at one of the remote locations would start speaking so I’d have a reason to look up at the screen and more adequately critique myself. My back posture needed a slight tweaking, I found, and I discovered I spent a lot of time chewing my lower lip, which needs to stop.
All in all, I think video conferencing may be my unexpected ticket to self-improvement. As an added bonus, I’ve finally discovered a valuable use for meetings.
Make way for the Presidency!
Say hey! The Presidency!
Hey! Clear the way, both near and far
Hey you!
Let us through!
It's a bright new star!
Oh Come!
Be the first on your block to meet his eye!
Make way!
Here he comes!
Ring bells! Bang the drums!
Are you gonna love this guy!
Try to see, the Presidency
Of Barack Obama.
Genuflect, show some respect
Down on one knee!
Now, try your best to stay calm
Sterilize both of your palms
Then come and meet his spectacular coterie
Try to see,
The Presidency,
Of Barack Obama!
He will pen, again and again, bills of folly.
He'll face foreign policy hordes!
A hundred mullahs with swords!
He'll give them medal awards!
Presidency!
Science says he's evolution's top mammal
His Obama-cock?
Hangs down to his knee.
It's coated in the finest enamel.
What about his poo?
I'm telling you, it's a world-class brand of feces!
Just try to see, a Presidency, of Barack Obama
Within a week, we'll all speak Greek.
Thus he'll decree!
He's the answer to all our prayers!
You're atheist? Hey, don't despair!
You can still wonder at an Obama Presidency!
There's no question this Obama's alluring
Never ordinary, never boring
Everything about the man just plain impresses
He's a winner, he's a whiz, a wonder!
He's about to pull your heart asunder!
And you'll absolutely love the way he dresses!
He's got ninety-five million dollars.
(He's got the dollars, let's see the dollars)
And to hear him speak costs a hefty fee
(He's charismatic, so charismatic)
He's got worshippers, he's got servants and flunkies
(Proud to work for him)
They bow to his whim love serving him
They just want to see His Presidency! Presidency!
Presidency!
Amorous he! Barack Obama!
Heard his wife was crazy, but a sight lovely to see.
And why, good people, is he getting dolled up and dropping by?
With sixty handlers, reporters galore
With his buses and limos
An airplane and more
With his forty fakers, his kooks, his takers
His supporters that warble on key
Make way for Obama's Presidency!
A good Lileks screed should be savored like the smell of spring's first bloom.
Ryan says: Okay, I just had a good laugh.
Autumn says: ?
Ryan says: So, I'm updating doctor bio information for the radiology department.
Autumn says: Uh-huh.
Ryan says: In the bios, there are sub-heads that include "Interests."
Autumn says: Ok.
Autumn says: Is it cock-sucking?!
Ryan says: Most of the interests are "Emergency Department Radiology," "General Body CT," and stuff like that.
Autumn says: Good thing doctors are interested in those areas.
Ryan says: One doctor had the following "Interest."
Ryan says: Breast Imaging.
Autumn says: LOL!
Ryan says: I'm like "Hey, ME TOO!"
Autumn says: LMAO!
Anyone who is at all familliar with the Internet in its current iteration knows it's rife with neuron-depleted Internet commenters that range from the obsessive compulsive, to the grammatically challenged, to indifferent chain-yankers to the downright mentally challenged. Sometimes, there are commenters who manifest symptoms of all the above. By and large, most Internet commenters should be, and are, mostly ignored.
Nick Coleman columns in the Star-Tribune, for a brief while about a month or so ago, featured a comment box that ran wild with commenters either fawning over Nick's latest attempt at a point, or those calling out Nick for the intellectual and logical fraud he's always been. In short, I thought my work here was finally done, at least as far as ripping on Nick Coleman columns went anyway. Why fisk something that's being ripped on by dozens or hundreds of people AT THE SOURCE, after all?
Well, as far as I can tell, the Strib has halted commentary on their columns, and it's not hard to imagine Nick howling like a spider monkey and getting his way on this, probably making the claim that Internet commenters on his columns only serve to sully his craft, such as it is.
But, whilst the Strib has deemed Internet comments on much of its content taboo, for whatever reason, Nick has apparently decided that Internet commenters on other newspaper Web sites are somehow fair game when it comes to making yet another of his wildly off-the-mark "points."
Tribal fishing video spawns bigotry, attack on news site
By NICK COLEMAN, Star Tribune
Last update: July 20, 2008 - 8:20 PM
Bigotry on an online video? Oh noes! Such a thing has NEVER happened before. And, as we'll see, the "attack" on the news site may have been nothing of the sort. Come with me, dear reader, as we explore yet another Nick Coleman column that's little more than thinly-veiled bigotry in its own right, meant to poke the ribs of those "shucky darn" rural yokels living in the watery wilds north of the enlightened Twin Cities.
Somebody tried to kill the Messenger last week. It didn't work.
The Mille Lacs Messenger is a weekly newspaper published in Isle, Minn., on the southeast shore of Lake Mille Lacs, a fertile area that seems to spawn conflict, especially if you are one of this state's walleye worshipers. The paper has a circulation of 5,000, and an online site (www.millelacsmessenger.com) visited by another 5,000 or more a month. Unless fish are in the news: Then readership rockets.
That's what happened in May, when the paper posted a video on its website showing fishermen from the nearby Mille Lacs Indian Reservation removing walleye from tribal gill nets and cleaning the fish for eating. Normal, legal and part of Ojibwe culture for centuries.
True. Gill-netting is part of Ojibwe culture. However, the MODERN methods of gill-netting are a bit. . . different. . .from a few centuries ago, shall we say? But, we won't get into that. Suffice it to say, Nick's holding back a bit on some of the "stuff" he knows.
But seeing it on YouTube made some walleye lovers angry, especially the bigots who posted vicious rants on the site. More than 18,000 visitors have seen the video, which amazes editor Brett Larson.
As far as I can tell, this is a little bit of Nick's sleight of hand. He makes it sound as if there have been over 18,000 visitors to the Messenger, when in fact it's 18,000+ VIEWS of the YouTube video in question, and YouTube videos have a tendency to go viral from time to time, some far more viral than others (18,000+ is pretty mild traffic, virally-speaking). By extension, the rest of this column isn't talking about comments made to "the Messenger" Web site; it's talking about YouTube comments which, as anyone with half a brain knows, are completely ridiculous. Yet, here we have Nick Coleman fashioning a column about them. Good God.
"I was stunned," Larson said Friday. "I thought we were beyond this racist stuff, but clearly we are not. You can oppose tribal netting and not be racist. But some of these people make everyone look like an idiot."
Yeah, it's a YOUTUBE COMMENT THREAD. Collective IQs have been known to completely implode within YouTube comment threads. Why is Nick writing a column about something that's been a running joke now for nearly three years? Oh, and by they way, look at that quote again, and now look at the following YouTube comment thread quote written BY THE SAME GUY:
This is appalling. I would remove it, but it shows that the most vile forms of racism still exist in this country — a fact that many seem to dispute. You can oppose tribal netting without being a racist, in my opinion, but this type of post makes everyone who opposes tribal netting look bad. And you should learn to spell. Brett Larson, editor, Mille Lacs Messenger
What, Larson can't think up new material while being interviewed (Nick quotes the same YouTube comment later on, blithely oblivious to the similarity, as were the Strib editors, apparently)? And I just LOVE his admonition that a YOUTUBE COMMENTER should learn how to spell. Is he even remotely familiar with how YouTube "works?"
"Most of the comments were like, 'Indians don't do it [fish] our way -- our way is holy and theirs is horrible and we don't like it,' " says Larson.
Yeah, and one of the other comments? I shit you not:
dookiepants12
Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
That's some hard-hitting commentary for you.
But some were far worse.
ARGH! Yeah, it's YouTube! People yank chains and brain drool for sport on YouTube! YouTube comments should not be taken seriously BY ANYONE WITH HALF A FUNCTIONING BRAIN.
Tension between the tribe and non-Indians in the tourism-dependent area is not new. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld tribal fishing rights in 1999 and the controversy has raged in area newspapers, including the Messenger, for years. Two years ago, military veterans from the reservation were booed and spat upon during a parade -- an incident denounced by the Messenger as a "disgraceful display."
Wait a minute. What just happened here? Nick was talking about the Supreme Court upholding fishing rights, and then in the next sentence he's talking about military veterans from the reservation being booed (were they being booed because they were veterans, or because they were Indian veterans? Nick doesn't feel he has to explain that; he'll just assume).
Larson says feelings have calmed, but that there are flare-ups once in a while. The tribal netting video caused one.
No, it didn't. It caused a minor viral hiccup on YouTube, which is viewed NATIONALLY and even worldwide. From a YouTube perspective, the gill-netting video is NOTHING compared to the video of the exploding whale. NOTE: If you simply MUST read YouTube comments about the exploding whale, there's this version.
"This is appalling," Larson wrote next to one of the worst-spelled and nastiest comments posted on the site. "I would remove it, but it shows that the most vile forms of racism still exist in this country."
Nick Coleman: Copy and Paste Journalist Extraordinaire!
Onward! To the nefarious "attack."
The Messenger's online site is hosted by a server that publishes 200 newspapers. Last week, the Messenger was the only one under "attack," the target of an online assault that knocked it off line. Larson said there was no proof the attack was linked to the fishing controversy, but there was no shortage of suspects.
This is just plain ridiculous. Why would somebody attack a newspaper Web site, when doing so would do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the YouTube video? Is Nick being intentionally obtuse, or does he have absolutely no understanding at all about how the Internet works? So far, this column has completely flown in the face of Nick's claim to "know stuff." This has so far been the most aimless, misleading, uninformed piece of technological ignorance ever penned by man or monkey.
"We've got lots of people who don't like us," he said. "I have a hard time believing this is a malicious attack, but maybe I'm naive. Somebody has been trying to shut us down."
This guy is a freakin' moron, nearly on a par with Nick Coleman. The fact a newspaper editor would even enter the morass of YouTube to post a comment tells me he probably shouldn't have further access to the Internet until he's taken a course or two about it.
Non-Indian readers, Larson said, complain that the newspaper's coverage is soft on tribal controversies, and that the paper should be more critical of the Indians. Meanwhile, tribal members complain that reports about crime on the reservation feed stereotypes. The paper, he said, tries to play it fair, but not everyone -- sometimes no one -- agrees.
Ooh! Let's play a game! Let's tweak that paragraph a bit:
Non-liberal readers, Coleman said, complain that the Star-Tribune's coverage is soft on DFL controversies, and that the paper should be more critical of the DFL. Meanwhile, DFL members complain that reports about liberals feed stereotypes. The paper, he said, tries to play it fair, but not everyone -- sometimes no one -- agrees.
"In the early days of the tribal rights issue, our official stance was not to have a stance -- we knew it could get pretty ugly, so we didn't want to take a position. The general consensus in the community was that we were 'pro-Indian.' But tribal members thought we were anti-Indian. The assumption on both sides was that we would unquestioningly support the [non-Indian] angling community. So everyone was mad. We must have done something right."
As impossible as it seems, this column has become even more meandering and pointless. My head is actually starting to hurt. Hey, I know! Let's get back to the malicious Web attack that probably wasn't:
The attack on the website seemed to be waning by Friday, and a software upgrade may protect the Messenger from future attacks. The assault may have been random. But if it was a deliberate attempt to "kill" the Messenger, it might take Agatha Christie to find the culprit.
Or it maybe wasn't an attack at all! You know, I understand Nick is given gobs of leeway when it comes to his topics of column choice and his "writing," such as it is, but this type of completely unsubstantiated conjecture is just downright bullshit.
There are a lot of suspects.
And now Nick just goes in for some mean-spirited character assassination based off a "joke." Seriously, you will barely believe the segue you're about to read.
"Who knows, maybe it was the mayor," Larson joked. He wasn't really accusing the mayor, just trying to find humor in a situation where almost anyone in a small town might have an issue with the newspaper. Or a big town, for that matter.
Got that? It was a "joke" at the mayor's expense. Obviously, the mayor wouldn't have the technical know-how to crash a newspaper Web site, let alone any motive stemming from a YouTube video of gill-netting. Har har! He's obviously not a suspect. It's a joke! Relax. Okay, Nick, segue away, you fucking asshole:
The mayor of Isle, Mike DeCoursey, didn't like the way the newspaper covered a tussle he got into with a sheriff's deputy during last summer's Isle Days festivities.
The mayor was accused of punching an Isanti County deputy when a fight broke out on a dance floor in a beer garden. Don't pretend it's never happened to you. We've all been there, haven't we?
Okay, once again, what the HELL just happened here? This was originally a column about bigoted Internet commenters, or something, and now Nick is just dabbling gossipy bullshit, no doubt having a good laugh with the Messenger editor at their little media dig at the mayor.
"I'm the [bleeping] mayor, you can't arrest me," the mayor allegedly said. Apparently, he was right: After the deputy and the cops were surrounded by an angry crowd, the mayor was released. Assault charges weren't brought until last fall. But he was acquitted by a jury last March, and is seeking to have the charges expunged.
And I'm sure we'll see a full apology from Nick Coleman if those charge ARE expunged. Mmm, hmm.
"Welcome to Mille Lacs," editor Larson says, wryly.
"It's an interesting area."
Man, I've fisked some Nick Coleman doozies in my day, but this. . . this was BY FAR the worst piece of steaming nonsense ever to make the Strib press run. I usually laugh a little bit after tearing his crap apart, but I'm actually a little bit mad about this one. It's a bit crazy how bad that column was. I mean. . . wow. . . what an asshole.
Apparently, there's a new movie that came out last weekend that's the most important thing to ever happen in cinematic history.
Now, as everyone knows, the most important thing to happen in cinematic history prior to the release of this new movie was "Team America: World Police," which had the audacity to state the obvious sentiment of "America. Fuck Yeah!," so this new movie obviously has grabbed my attention.
However, if the trailer for this new movie is any indication, the main bad guy sews chaos and basically acts like an anonymous dickhead, so my thinking is they modeled the villain after any number of Internet comment trolls.
And, honestly, do you really want to see a movie that brings a comment troll to life on the big screen, no matter how well-acted and accurate the actor was able to portray him?
If I were given a choice between watching a hyperactive comment troll, or simulated scat sex performed by marionettes, I know which movie I'D want to see.
But hey, that's just me.
