Marlon Brando. R.I.P.

Damn. He was fine in his youth. He was tortured and brilliant throughout his career. He was the size of a small village at the end, but he'll always be Terry, from On The Waterfront to me.

Or the mincing, lisping Fletcher Christian.

Ah, well, another icon, down. Think I'll watch Guys and Dolls this weekend.

This is what was driving through the hospital campus today while I was at lunch.



You can't see the writing on the side, so I'll include the literature they were handing out of the head pig.
"The largest pig shows the financial cost ($200 billion)1 of America's attack on Iraq, including the projected minimum cost of reconstruction.

The smaller pig illustrates the annual federal spending on K-12 education ($34 billion)2.

The wee little pig shows annual federal spending on reducing world hunger and poverty ($10 billion).3

For the same amount of money that we're spending on the war in Iraq, we could:

provide Head Start for all elibible kids,

provide Healthcare for all uninsured kids,

build 2,500 new elementary schools, and

reduce grades 1-3 class size to 15 students

for the next 5 years.

1) Eric Schmitt and Robert Pear, New York Times, Feb. 3, 2004. Also see Congressional Budget Office, "Estimated Costs of a Potential Conflict with Iraq," September 2002.
2) U.S. Budget, FY 2004
3) U.S. Budget, FY 2004

For more information, visit www.TrueMajority.org/pigs"

And just think, this was going to be a post about the lousy customer service offered up by Circuit City.

I am so loving the little pink i-pod. I have new regard for the a-holes I see everywhere with headphones on. I am now one of them, and I couldn't be happier.

Today I was listening to the greatest song in the world, ever. Period. End of discussion.
Layla. The original recording, by Derek and the Dominos. Eric Clapton and Duane Alman exchanging licks. Both at the height of their youth, not that Duane ever got past it. First one, then the other, delivers up these wailing guitar solos of the pain that comes with love. With headphones on, and cranked up so loud that the entire train could hear the music leaking out of my head, it was a wonderful way to start the morning.

It put a rhythm to my step. It put a smile on my face. I didn't care that the PHB accosted me before the last notes died to ask a typically stupid question.

I was one with the greatest song ever. Until tomorrow, when it may be a bootleg cut of Bruce Springsteen from 1978, doing the extended version of Rosalita.

I'll see your emergency project and raise you a crisis.

Please drop the extremely urgent project you are working like a dog on, to do a quick graphic link for another urgent project that someone else has been assigned to complete, at the expense of their previously most urgent and emergent crisis project.
Because I'm the boss, and I committed all of you to do it, that's why.

We are all rats on a sinking ship, and my boss's new management mantra is the same as my old boss's:

It doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done.

My mantra is: This isn't my ship. I don't care if it hits the reef, as long as I survive the shipwreck.

That pretty much sums it all up. I'm back, and my PHB did, in fact, manage to screw things up during my absence. Shocking. Just shocking.
The hospital continued to lose money. The Herald continued to report it. The PR department continued to not communicate about change to the employees. The hospital's president sent out a memo to upper management complaining about the Herald's reporting of our dirty laundry.

Yep. It's a bitch being a government entity having to do your business in the sunshine. It justs sucks, don't it?

The only thing that amazes me about all of this is that no disgruntled employees have forwarded that memo to the Herald. Or maybe they did, and the Herald chose not to run it. But that is so far removed from the realm of possibility that I must discount the premise.

Ah, well, it's been fun, but I must go off and update the most important page on the entire hospital site: our cafeteria menus.

Sad, isn't it? My life: creating electronic ephemera.

As if I needed any proof to points 1,2 and 3 below, I came home from my little vacation to discover that my e-mail had been rendered null and void by the simple expedient of my brother (who has his undergraduate degree in computer science, by the way) sending me a 3mg file of photos...
My in-box being filled by that largesse, there was no room for any other communication. A fact I discovered upon my return, because, as I told everyone, I would not could not pick up my mail while I was on the other coast.

Thanks a lot. I was only expecting communications from a commission, an update from Blog Moxie on the new, secret redesign, my usual riff raff of friends, meeting agenda and papers for Tuesday's board meeting, and like that.

All bounced. All lost. All requiring re-registration to mail lists, no doubt.

The irony is that the same thing happened to me last year, when my friend known as the King Geek (because that is his actual job in life) sent me a 5mg photo of his son. Like I don't see the kid on a regular basis.

And both he and my brother did this on the first day of my vacation.

In any event, I am rested, tanned, well fed and even got in a baseball game. Florida Marlins lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But it was another ball park in my life list, and a nice, albeit domed one, at that.