2011 May | Periscope Depth

From the Blog

May

head at your feet, fool to your crown

Posted by Perich at 7:54 am

If you’ve been reading for a while, you might remember this defense of my stupid boycotts on stupid principles:

You used to be able to buy Claritin-D without showing a government photo ID, if you recall, but the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 changed that. Because pseudoephedrine – a powerful decongestant – can be used to cook up some crank, you now have to present ID when buying it. This will supposedly diminish meth production (even though it hasn’t).

This shouldn’t bother me, right? After all, I’m not a drug dealer, and I have no guilty intentions.

First off, that’s a variation of “if you’re not guilty, you don’t have anything to hide,” a disgusting maxim that’s been used to justify every invasion of privacy from Octavius’s triumvirate to the PATRIOT Act. And second, it’s not even true. You can get arrested and convicted for buying large quantities of cold medication, period, full stop. Not for manufacturing meth. Not for intent to distribute. Simply for owning large amounts of cold meds. William Fousse was sentenced to a year of probation for such a crime. A man who bought up to the legal ration of allergy meds in a month was arrested when he bought some for his child. This is not paranoia; this has already happened to real human beings.

This is a useless law that will not produce results, and with which compliance merely facilitates a charade. I will have nothing to do with it.

This past Sunday I fucking caved.

After 48 hours of a dry convulsive cough and nasal congestion that made my nose feel like a brick, I went to CVS and asked a pharmacist for help. “I’m taking loratadine,” I said, “and gualfenisin, and tussin at night.”

“You’ll definitely need some pseudoephedrine,” she said. “Can I see your photo ID?”

And I fucking gave it to her. I let her put my fucking name in some fucking database like a god-damned criminal. I had to sign the fucking release stating that I wouldn’t try to buy more than 9 fucking grams in a 30-day period (good thing I don’t have a child who suffers from allergies). Now I’m one accounting mistake away from a fucking jail term.

It’s not her fault, of course. She’s just doing her job. And it’s not the DEA’s fault, because they’ve been given a mandate to lower meth usage in the U.S. and this is the quickest way they can think of to do it. And it’s not Congress’s fault, because they’re accountable to voters who might kick them out of office if they don’t look “tough on crime.” And it’s not the voters’ fault, because no one would vote against an otherwise unimpeachable candidate just because he voted for one stupid, harmless bill, right? I mean, how many people use pseudoephedrine, really?

(15 million, says Big Pharma. Compared to the 1.4 million meth addicts in the U.S.. But this isn’t the time to be reasonable. Better that 15 million should be put at risk of wrongful imprisonment so that 1.4 million can be inconvenienced. That’s an Oliver Wendell Holmes line, isn’t it?)

The pharmaceutical companies bucked when the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act was introduced. Allergy sufferers complained. But no one’s going to war over it. After all, it’s not like pseudoephedrine has been made illegal. You just have to show an ID for it, like when you board a plane or when the cops pull you over. And if you buy more than a trivial amount, you can go to jail. Nothing to freak out about. If the War on Drugs has taught us anything, it’s that you have nothing to fear if you’re innocent.

An institution isn’t a living organism. But it might as well be, given how intelligently it advances an agenda and defends itself. The War on Drugs has sunk its hooks into the social order by coming down hardest on the marginal members of society – poor minorities – and by putting up a glamorous, dangerous front. This isn’t the result of a conspiracy put into play by William Sessions. It’s the result of people at every level – voters, members of Congress, members of the permanent bureaucracy, the DEA and pharmaceutical companies – making the easiest decision without regard for principle.

And now that I’ve handed over my ID for my month’s ration of pseudoephedrine, I’m one of them. Fuck.

May

four signs the Groupon bubble will burst

Posted by Perich at 12:20 pm

1. Groupon’s Competitors Have Flooded The Market

The existence of a near dozen competitors – Groupon, LivingSocial, BuyWithMe, Dealfind, Tippr, Thrillist, Yipit, Jasmere, AtCost, DealMap, DealOn – isn’t a bad sign in and of itself. But it’s a bad sign when they’re nearly indistinguishable. What does Dealfind do that LivingSocial doesn’t? If this many companies with identical missions can find funding, then the market for “social coupons” is being overserved.

“But what if the demand is just that high?” you ask. It probably isn’t (see #4).

2. Groupon Gives You A Lien on Participating Businesses

Say you get a social coupon for a restaurant that expires in 6 months. What happens on day 181? Is the money you spent on the coupon lost?

Nope. Check the Groupon Terms & Conditions:

According to applicable law, the Merchant may be responsible for allowing you to redeem your Voucher for the cash value based on the money you actually paid for your Voucher (i.e. if you paid $20 for a Voucher which gives you $50 of value to the Merchant, the cash value that you paid is $20, not $50), for a period of time that extends beyond the expiration date on the Voucher. While the expiration date on the Voucher dictates the last date that you can use your Voucher at Merchant for the promotional offer stated on the Groupon, applicable law may provide that the Merchant is responsible for honoring the cash value that you paid for your Voucher for a period of time beyond the expiration date stated on the Voucher. In other words, you should be allowed to redeem the cash value (or purchase price) of your Voucher up until the greater of: (1) the Voucher’s expiration date; or (2) the minimum length of time allowed by applicable law for a Voucher to expire.

Meaning, if the coupon expires, you’re probably still entitled to its cash value up through a certain period. In Massachusetts, for example, that period is five years.

Do you, as a small business owner, want to put a whole bunch of five-year liabilities on your books? Is it worth that much to get some added foot traffic and Facebook cred?

Groupon clearly has enough customers who don’t mind this sort of thing. But all it’ll take is a few horror stories about businesses paying out for unclaimed coupons to start driving folks away.

3. Groupon Exposes The Margins

(I owe this point to Ilkka; can’t find the post, though)

You get an offer in the mail. $100 worth of accessories at a local boutique for $50. Your first reaction: “Sweet! What a great deal!” Your second reaction: “Why would I pay $100 for that many accessories under other circumstances?”

Offering a Groupon for your goods or services tells everyone who cares that you have a 50% margin built into your price. That’s not a crime; it’s not even a sin. But it does give away more information about your pricing structure than most business owners might consider wise.

For a service industry, like a massage spa or a beauty salon, this probably isn’t as big of a problem. But for retail stores? Do you want your customers to know that your sweaters are only worth half of what you charge?

4. Groupon Only Works Once

But let’s say, contrary to my points #2 and #3 above, Groupon turns out to be a success for your business. You move $10000 worth of fashion accessories at cost. In doing so, you build a word-of-mouth buzz that results in added foot traffic and more loyal customers. You’re thrilled with the results. Six months later, your Groupon sales rep calls you up and asks if you’d like to do another.

You laugh and hang up the phone.

What is the added value of a repeat Groupon? Why would anyone offer a Groupon for their business more than once? If it works, then you’ll have a new pool of loyal customers. If those new customers dwindle to nothing once the 50% coupon is no longer available – and anecdotal evidence suggests that’s common – then isn’t that solid evidence that Groupon didn’t work? And if your new pool of customers sticks with you, then why bother with another Groupon?

Unless I’m missing something, Groupon probably has zero customer retention. And considering the army of identical competitors, the pool of potential customers – small business owners who haven’t done Groupon once already – can only diminish over time. By 2013, everyone who’s interested in some sort of social coupon will probably have tried it.

May

let me steal this moment from you now

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

My friend RJ was the best man at my friend John Serpico’s wedding this past weekend. After a few drinks to help him over the expected nerves, he pulled out his notes.

“I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find an appropriately humorous anecdote describing John and Kim,” RJ told the crowd. “Until I was reminded that they’d met online. Specifically in the ‘Boston’ community on LiveJournal.” And RJ took out another sheet of notes and preceded to recount the bride and groom’s first tenuous conversation.

It was a touching story (“I can has friend?”). And it makes me wonder how frequent these stories will become in future weddings. So much of the social palimpsest happens in a digital medium now. The first date can now be documented with Facebook photos; the first kiss as an ambiguous Twitter update. The story is both firmer and hazier at the same time: rendered in chiaroscuro rather than watercolor, but still not quite the real thing.

This isn’t a lament for a hokier era, though. Increased documentation, when done right, is a good thing. Machines should do the grunt work for us; social machines should do the grunt work of social documentation. Who was at what event with whom. Human memory, after all, is the weakest medium for art. That’s why we stare at the “Mona Lisa,” even though we’ve seen it a million times. That’s why we listen to our favorite songs on Repeat. That’s why we laugh when our best friend tells us the story of how we met.

So keep chatting, posting and Twittering. Just choose what you say carefully. This is for posterity, so be honest.

serpico-wedding

May

everyone will leave at exactly the same time

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Morning all! Taking advantage of WordPress’s post-scheduling feature to leave you this note. By the time you read this, I will no longer be present on this Earth. Unbeknownst to you, I took a half day on Friday and got myself saved in advance of the Rapture. So now I’m kicking it in Heaven along with the other 144,000, or however many it’s supposed to be.

“But Professor,” you’re saying. “Why would you, an unrepentant atheist, embrace dispensationalist fundamentalist Christianity?” To hedge my bets. If Pascal’s Wager means anything, then a one-in-a-quintillion chance that an 89-year-old engineer with a radio show has the goods on the afterlife is worth any amount of foolishness. Plus, I’ve grown tired of using reason, intuition and the evidence of the senses to rule my behavior. What good have they done me so far? Sure, I’ve got a great job, a loving girlfriend, supportive peers and a sweet car, and my health, and a 401(k), but doubts still plague my heart. Whereas, if Harold Camping’s to be believed, I can accept Christ as my savior and wash those doubts away.

Those if you who saw me pre-ascension this weekend might have noted that I hadn’t stopped my drinking, swearing, or otherwise radical lifestyle. That’s the beauty of dispensationalism: I don’t need to! Merely being baptized, accepting Christ as my savior and admitting that I am an imperfect creature in constant need of his guidance will vouchsafe me a place in Heaven. There’s been a lot of debate in history over whether faith alone or faith and good works will save a sinner. But trust me: just faith.

If you’re reading this, then you weren’t one of the elect. Sorry! I’d tell you to come to the fold, but it’s too late at this point. Everyone who’s going to be saved has been. For now, all you can really hope for is a painless death. I suspect things get extra bad for the ones who engrave the mark of the Beast on their foreheads, but I’m not positive. Like I said, I’m still new to all this!

So long, friends! It’s been fun! I hope at least some of you are in Heaven with me, otherwise it might get boring.

Update: disregard.

May

the rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor

Posted by Perich at 11:34 am

television

What sort of gilded age do we live in that The Borgias is the worst of the half dozen shows that I watch regularly?^* (That’s praising with faint damnation, by the way – it’s still a fun show, if a bit hollow)

Why watch movies anymore? Or at least for the next six months? Anything I’ll miss?

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* Game of Thrones, The Killing, Treme, The Borgias, Modern Family, Community and the occasional 30 Rock. And Breaking Bad’s coming back in a month.

May

baby, I have no story to be told

Posted by Perich at 2:18 pm

“All right, you’re gonna have a quick conversation with my man Adele,” the salesman told me. “Real quick. Only a couple of words.”

“Adele?” I said. “Does he know he’s famous?”

I stood in the mirrored alcove of a Men’s Wearhouse, wearing a suit over a T-shirt. Joseph Abboud, single-breasted, taupe with dark buttons. Light but not summer weight.

A tailor emerged from a back room. Squat, Balkan, bald, thick glasses. He wore a dress shirt and a vest and he carried a small square of chalk, the size of four postage stamps, in one hand.

“Technically, it’s Adel,” the salesman said. “We just call him that.”

My conversation with Adel was only a few words, but it wasn’t quick. He looked me over in my suit and nodded. “Okay, my friend.” Then he turned me around by planting his hand in my back and pushing. He pinched the cuffs of my pants together and made tiny marks with the chalk. They felt like quick cuts: a Czech knife fighter bringing me down to his size.

He clambered up into the mirrored alcove with me and tucked a thumb into my waistband. “Good?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He gave a snort, looked to the salesman and shrugged. “Good? Half inch?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here,” I said.

“He’s saying it’s kind of snug,” the salesman said. “If it’s comfortable for you, it’s fine. Just don’t eat too much.” Having always been a skinny motherfucker, I didn’t see any problems.

Adel stepped back down off the platform. He produced a laminate card with three cuff length options: casual, business and dress. He pointed to each and grunted. I indicated the middle path, recommended by Aristotle and endorsed by generations. He nodded and knelt in front of me, marking a II on each cuff in chalk.

“Hands,” he said, and I gave him them. He shook them out as if to wring water off them, then hung them back at my side. With a small wooden ruler, he measured the length of my thumb.

“Okay, my friend.” And that ended it. Adel gave some of the measurements he’d taken to the salesman. Then he retreated to the back of the store. I don’t know what a Central European tailor does between clients. Maybe he reads magazines, or writes to the folks back home, or watches Sports Center, or eats Goldfish. My guess: when you’re the difference between feeling okay about a $600 suit and feeling fantastic, you can do whatever the hell you want.

May

unbadass

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

If you spend any time on the small theater circuit, you’ll be treated to a variety of one-woman shows where a comedian recounts her quirky childhood, tosses in some personal tragedy, and then emerges from the end as a stronger person. Unbadass differs in that there’s no tragedy and that the author (Laura Clark, director of comedy writing for ImprovBoston) hasn’t quite emerged. She’s embraced her total lack of edginess and (we hope) is better for it.

Clark excels in bouncing from character to character: now the confident narrator of her past, now the awkward teenager pretending to smoke pot, now the disaffected teens asking where her (fake) dealer boyfriend lives (“uh … Groton?”). She makes a life free of danger sound colorful by investing it with vivid details. What it takes to make her cry at work (surprisingly little). The haircut that was going to make her queen of 8th grade (a mullet). How her parents nearly caught her when she came to dinner stoned, and the baroque Utne Reader reference she made to wiggle out of it (which I won’t spoil).

I caught an abridged preview of Laura’s show at the IB Nightcap this past Friday. If you want to catch the full thing, show up at ImprovBoston’s Open Comedy Jam on Sunday, May 29th at 7:00 PM. It’s cheap, it’s hilarious, and it’ll hopefully comfort you in your unadventurous life. It has been a great comfort to me.

May

good god, y’all

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

There’s something like fifty centuries of wars in recorded history, at varying stages of mythology and historical record, including but not limited to the Trojan War, the Akkadian conquest of Sumeria, the Peloponnesian Wars, Alexander the Great’s empire-building, the Mithridatic Wars, the civil wars that ended the Roman Republic, the Yellow Scarves Uprising, the Battle of Adrianople, the Islamic conquest of Persia, the Korean Wars of unification, the Crusades, the feuds between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Hundred Years War, the Hussite Wars, the conquest of the Aztecs, the Ottoman-Safavid War (both of them), the English Civil War, the War of Spanish Succession, the French and Indian War, the Boer War, the Crimean War, the Great War, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War and the Afghanistan War. And I skipped a few.

Any single textbook on War as a human occupation would, of necessity, leave several fascinating conflicts out. Any college course on War would be too brief for its subject matter. The effects of war – brutal deaths in combat; deaths by infection; deaths by exhaustion, starvation and famine; deaths by bureaucratic action or inaction; ruining the land to deny provisions to the enemy; smashing art and infrastructure that took years to create; rape so extensive that one could call it an industry; torture of prisoners by both sides; enslavement of children; the looting of a generation’s stored wealth; deceit in the form of propaganda; the scouring of personality that’s required to turn a generation into unhesitating killers; and, if I haven’t said it already, the hollow meaninglessness of young men holding their intestines against the holes in their stomachs, screaming for aid that won’t arrive in time if it’s even coming – are better documented than the tides.

Yet any time someone suggests that war is a bad idea, the inevitable response is “Well, what about World War 2?”

And of course there’s no answer to that. Try it. If you suggest that invading Iraq is a poor response to terror cell attacks on NYC, someone says, “I guess you would have just rolled over after Pearl Harbor, huh?” If you say that the U.S. has better things to spend its ~~money~~ credit on than picking sides in a Libyan coup, someone will say, “But don’t we have an obligation to prevent another genocide?”

It’s the perfect response, blending so many argument enders into one moral stew: appeal to authority, non sequitur, post hoc ergo propter hoc, false analogy and, depending on context, maybe even a little gambler’s fallacy thrown in. Should America send young men and women great distances at tremendous expense to kill foreigners? Yes. Why? World War 2. And thus the discussion ends. It’s not like you can argue World War 2 didn’t happen. What are you, a Holocaust denier? Some cheese-eating surrender monkey? Huh?

Which isn’t as funny as I make it out to be, because The Deuce is not the exception that proves^* the rule. It’s not the one war that humanity got right after fifty centuries of trying: thousandth time’s the charm. It’s not an argument for war. It’s an argument against war. It’s an argument against crippling war debt and command economies. World War 2 is an argument against letting a government run itself into debt by building up a massive standing army, all the while fostering a sense of its own national exceptionalism. But nobody remembers that bit.

Of course, comparing present actors to Nazis is just as tacky as comparing present causes to World War 2. So let’s call a cease-fire. I’ll quit using WW2 as an example as soon as everyone else does. Deal?

(P.S. I had this post on the spike before Jim Henley posted his excellent ‘Cosigned: Fuck War’ post the other day. It got me thinking about how ‘pacifism’ became a slur. Probably because of its association with hippies and Buddhists. If the anti-war crowd laid off the pansy-ass Jesus tip and got some real anger in its voice – think Ted Leo or full-throated Edwin Starr – then we might turn some heads)

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* “Proves” in this sense meaning tries or tests, in the sense of a proving ground, or material that has been tested against fire being fireproof. An “exception that proves the rule” is an instance that challenges a rule. This idiom is almost never used correctly.

May

when you reach the part where the heartache’s gone

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Someone put a leash on the journalism majors at Boston Magazine:

CHATHAM BARS INN

If Fitzgerald had created Jay Gatsby today, he might have installed his protagonist at the Chatham Bars Inn. The 1914 hotel’s foyer alone, with its polished floors and columns, is irreproachably classy.

Because if I run a B&B on Cape Cod, I want customers to associate it with manic-depressive bootleggers. “Want to bask in the tepid warmth of opulence while seeking the romance of lost youth? Visit our renowned spa!”

I wonder how the author’s other reviews read.

GIACOMO’S
If Little Caesar had been made today, Edward G. Robinson might have been murdered outside this fabulous North End ristorante.

TREPHIN SALON
Norma Desmond might have made it back into show business after a blowout and bayalage from Nate Prescott.

FINALE
Pick up some sweets for the Nora Helmer in your life from this Harvard Square chocolatier.

TUPELO
Don’t go in the ocean, Ms Pontellier … until you’ve tried this authentic fried catfish and N’awrlins gumbo! And even then you’ll want to wait about 45 minutes.

BOB’S DISCOUNT FURNITURE
If you buy a new mattress before checking the prices at Bob’s, you will gouge your eyes out, have sex with your mother and solve the riddle of the Sphinx (maybe not in that order).

May

come talking that trash and they’ll pull your card

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Ilkka recommended the following blog post about hacking the status game a few weeks back. The “status game” in question is an improv exercise, in which every player takes a playing card and puts it to their forehead, face out, without looking at it. Their status corresponds to the value of their card. The object of the game: to guess your own status based on other people’s reactions to you.

Almost every person correctly guessed the number on his or her forehead, or was off only by 1! Could this mean that it wasn’t a game we were playing for the first time? Could it be that we’re playing that game over and over every day?

We went to that stage preconditioned to accurately guess how we stack against others based on how they spoke to us and treated us. And that random number that we were holding on our foreheads didn’t just change how we deal with others, it changed how we perceived ourselves when others reacted back to it.

What was equally fascinating was when I decided to go against my guess, and acted as higher status than the other person no matter what their status was. A person who was confident he was an king and went around stage acting like one, started yielding when I consistently used a high posture and tone of voice during the conversation. Another who was a 5 suddenly started taking advantage of the situation when I lowered my voice and avoided eye contact.

The author goes on to talk about the ways we visualize status in work and relationships: posture, eye contact, tone of voice, and the like.

I imagine most people who read that article (including Ilkka) (no offense, man) took away the idea that smart players can hack their own status. Just walk around all day like you’ve got an Ace plastered on your forehead and the world will fall into line behind you. It’ll take some coaching, perhaps: staring at yourself in the mirror with a deck of Bicycle cards in your hand, soundtrack to the latest Guy Ritchie film blaring from your Macbook. But eventually you’ll be able to bulldoze the betas and get the 9s and 10s falling into bed with you, right?

I took something different. To me, learning that you can hack status means learning to esteem yourself.

The sorry news: you will not be the Ace in every situation. You can surprise people with confidence, perhaps. But there are times when existing hierarchies, the current circumstances and what you had for breakfast that morning will keep you from rising to the top. If you’re going on a sales call with a new supplier and you’re the junior executive – the least necessary person in the room – rolling in all flash will confuse more people than it impresses.

Or let me give you a more concrete example:

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I haven’t been down to jiu-jitsu as often as I’d like. My technique has been slipping. Everyone can sympathize with this. If you don’t go to the gym for a few weeks, your body feels mushy and stiff. Dried Play-Doh. But add to that the fact that my “workout” at the “gym” consists of black-belt level material. Counters to techniques I learned four years ago. Advanced grappling. In the hands of a samurai these things take years of practice to master. And I was a clumsy enough child that I got my hand shut in a car door, through sheer absent-mindedness, twice. So I’ve got work to do.

Last week I made it down. I found myself with a rare opportunity to get some detailed coaching from the ranking senseis on the things I need to see. This was after I’d read the Khella article above. I realized I needed to shed my pride, admit I needed work, and ask the stupid questions. I needed to watch these techniques with the wide-eyed wonder of a brand new student.

Tonight, I thought, I’m going to be a 6.

Seriously. I visualized the six black clubs held up to my forehead. And my night improved as a result.

I’m convinced that status messes with people not because they don’t like their position, but because they don’t know what their position is. Nothing’s scarier than uncertainty. You show up at a new job: what sort of behavior are these people cool with? What’s expected of me? How soon can I kick back and show my “true self”? It’s the uncertainty that kills you, not being new. Being new isn’t a mystery. You know you’re new. That’s what it says in your e-mail.

So the next time you find yourself lost or confused in a social scene, pick a card. Any card. Pick a status and own it. If you want to be humble, be humble. If you want to be proud, then strut. But don’t fake it. Everyone can tell a phony. Commit to a character (to bring this back to improv advice) and enter the scene.