CRACKBERRYRANTZ

2009-03-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

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2007-09-29T09:00:00.001-07:00

Job References You Can't Control - WSJ.com

2007-09-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

Job References You Can't Control - WSJ.com

How To Win the Presidency

2007-09-19T05:15:00.000-07:00

Forget about Hilary,health care issues, her revised plan, raising taxes, lowering taxes(right?), Hispanic vote, thirteen foot ladders,candidates, republicans, democrats, elephant, donkey, snake, pig, mmmmmmm bacon.....liberal,progressive, conservative, socialist, Buddhist, Presbyterian, Mormon, reformist, Whig, I don't care what they are or who they represent, they are all after the same thing, your attention. They want to be the topic of conversation at neighborhood block parties in suburbia across the nation. The place of "business" is the number one place for politics to be discussed, and put into action, you know who you are, don't play dumb.
They want people to like them, convince the would be voter that they would be fun to hang with, you just need to get to know me and ultimately wants you to get out on election day and vote for them.......and get other people out voting too.
If they want to win then they need to create a portion of their platform that it's so mass appeal that if you don't get out to vote or "forget" to vote for this guy your neighbors will hate you and your father will call you a "lazy procrastinating ditch digger", again. The platform that would guarantee a 4 year gig running the country with an option for another term and a severance for life would be one based on "Summer Fridays" all year long. During the biggest stop on the stump or during a debate suggest a bill about "officially extending the weekends", how about a whole new, never done before, early release program, it can be called the "Thanksgiving Wed Program"(refereed to by the acronym, "TWP", for the remainder of this rant, not to be confused with "WMD"). The "TWP"would be designed to work both with leading corporations and business leaders in the US to Darren Weinstein, the owner of Bagelmasters in Shrewsbury, NJ, from the Fortune 500 to "coffee station Fanny" in the 7-11 by my house to make every Wed of the year "Thanksgiving Wed". People are let go from their job at 1pm every Wed! "1/2 a hump day" initiative. The voter support for any program like this would skyrocket! Volunteers coming out of the woodwork, "soft money" , wink, wink, nod, nod, would pour in, not that there is anything wrong with that. I don't care how they pay for your marketing and their election, if someone, anyone, can get someone else to "back" their "business plan", then more power to them, the more money you "raise", the more you spend! Who cares? If your successful in the end, it doesn't matter, ask Mayor Bloomberg.
If people with money, who, by the way, are successful for a reason, want to donate to a politician that they support then who cares. The donor, or angel investor, is investing in a person, a franchise, that he or she feels can make a difference with issue(s) they feel are perhaps flawed or outdated. Finally, someone living up to "put your money where your mouth is". The "TWP" would win the election, hands down, guaranteed.
So what if the pundit is laughed right off the stage when they propose this. An announcement like this would create a flurry, maybe blizzard, of press? That every late night show host would comment on it, Fox , Rush, O'Rielly, Imus,oops, sorry, even Randy Rhodes-Manzo on Air America would pick this up, why not, this idea is going to the Onion and the Nation, I'm sure they would run it.
My point is it doesn't matter if it's accepted as a serious platform or not, if it is,then great, let them run with it, let the other candidates take a position on it. If the people running for office can communicate to the general public, the working "Joe" or "Jo", that they know about " the man keeping them down" and they understand and give a shit. Politicians want to increase family values, what better way then to have the family together for dinner at least one night during the work week. Incentivize businesses that adapt the "TWP" with a cool tax break that is a sliding scale, the level of net rev would determine percent of tax benefit. Happier workers are more productive so over the long run a company would be more successful, with an impressive employee retention rate, increased profits and a greater tax benefit. This is a winner all around, Obama, The District Attorney from "Law and Order"or whomever gets elected based on this portion of their agenda, Americans are happier in the workplace, they get more time to do the things that they want to do and businesses thrive. I have to imagine that unemployment would be impacted positively. The potential for positive outcome on this issue is endless. I understand that I am a bit Utopian in my thought process, but what the hell, throw it out there Ron Burgandy and do with it what you like!

I wanna be a rock superstar

2007-09-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wrting is terrible. Plain and simple As a non writer, that should be the whole blog, but for the purpose of humor we will move on. The "art" or writing in my view is basically taking an idea or thought that can be communicated orally in 1 sentence and turning it into 2 pages. I am not talking about communicating by writing( email, IM), this is often pleasurable and use full. I am talking about the long drawn out process of "writing " You have to do fucking 3 drafts, and everything has to be gramaticly correct or what your saying is not valid. has anyone ever heard of a thing called context. Does an accent effect the point of a story? Does a guy living out of a blazer calling your mom fat, mean anything different to you then some sweet professional from Boston. The message is the same, someone is an ass. Then why is it such a big fucking deal if you write Fat or Phat out of place. Its the same point people. I think we need to give writers a lot less credit. There basically unintelligent and just work hard at " writing" "writing" doesn't make your smart, it makes you a good writer. And does anyone want to be even be a writer anyway?. DO you want to make news, or be a journalist Write screenplays, or be a Hollywood movie star. Do you wanna be a lyricist or a Rock Star? For all your Bernie Taupin's out there, your all a bunch of Elton johns.

A Very Liberal Right of Way

2007-09-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Living in one of the country's most liberal cities sounds on the surface like it would carry a less-stressful lifestyle then most other places. This couldn't be further from the truth. It was a typical morning commute from my Pacific Heights apartment to my office in the Financial district of San Francisco, or so I thought.

As I ventured along on my normal route I found myself stopped at an intersection behind a driver making a left turn. I checked my mirrors and even turned behind me as I went to move around the paused motorist. I was sent into instant shock when some douche bag messenger (might as well have been named puck) on a 10-speed runs directly into my front driver side tire catapulting him air born 12 feet off his bike and into the middle of the intersection.

As he lay there I found myself in instant shock telling myself that I was going to jail for manslaughter. My first observation was that tree-hugger messenger boy was not wearing a helmet of any sort which meant that I not him was double fucked. Puck miraculously jumps up out of the middle of the road, grabs his now mangled bike and proceeds to the side of the busy street. I immediately pullover to assess the situation offer my apologies etc.

It turns out the mid 20's male is not seriously injured but has only suffered a minor scrape and scratch and only asks that I buy him a new bike tire. In my current state of shock I agree to the tire pretty much admitting fault for something that obviously is not my fault sending him on his way with one of my business cards. Keep in mind this guy was riding down the middle of the road in the heart of San Francisco rush hour traffic and runs into my car and NOT the other way around and regardless it is my fault because I'm the big bad driver of a German O-Zone depleting automobile.

Long story short the asshole waits two weeks to call me about his bike tells me the whole frame is bent and I need to buy him a new bike. For fear of lawsuit and traffic violations my driving record can not afford I agree to buy him a new bike putting me deeper into debt and helping America's tree hugging messenger fucktards everywhere. Practice swallowing your teeth Puck, I'll be over in a minute.

Congratulations! You've Lost Another Customer

2007-09-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

This morning I decided to give the fruit stand on my walk to the subway a shot and buy a nectarine. Keep in mind I pass this stand every day but am reluctant to buy due to my shear aggravation of the congestion it causes in the middle of the sidewalk. As a first time (and last time) customer I was quick to pick up that the stand manager was a very rude individual and the prices are inflated (almost double of the prices in the Village Farm next door to my apartment).

Either way I figured what the heck I'll get a piece of fruit, how bad can it be? It be bad man. It was the single worst piece of fruit I have ever eaten, it was like sinking my teeth into a rubber bouncie ball that had been soaking in Lysol Citrus Scent overnight and it was so dry it was an hour shy of becoming potpourri.

When I got to work and verbalized my frustration regarding this situation an optimistic co-worker offered her unnecessary opinion and told me that nectarines are out of season right now. I'm sorry but I didn't graduate from Culinary Fruit Harvesting Community College and if they are not in season then the D-Bag stand manager shouldn't be selling them.

Apple iphrustration

2007-09-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Give me a fucking break, iphone just sold their 1 millionth phone, hmmmm let me do the math, $600 times, I mean $400 multiplied by one million(# of iphones-in case you were confused where the million came from) okay that's 400 million worse case scenario, that's not accounting for the three months the iphone was $200 more expensive, what if only 50 percent of them were $600 and 50 percent was $400, that's still $800 million! And the press is marketing the fact that people, investors, analysts, are starting to question Apple, today they announced a price cut, but if you waited on line in the beginning or paid full price recently don't worry, we are giving you slackers $200 dollars in rebate and the die hard consumer who waited forever thru all the early year hype and the demanding lines on launch day, will also get 100 buck store credit. How can you question the success of this company! Is ipod a forgotten success? That's still a cash register. How many companies can boast 400 million in sales in three months?

What if Steve Jobs walks out tomorrow and says this was the marketing plan all along, the teasers in January, the build through the end of May and the phenomenon that occurred in June! The plan includes how they will create demand for 6 months, with enticing ads, cool ads that make the six year olds come out in all of us, "I want that, I wanna be first, I wanna be the spoiled little rich kid around the corner for once” So I am going to budget and put away such and such a month and by the time June comes I'll have enough and....bullshit! It's go time, you have rationalized for all this time do I get it, it's expensive, it's awesome, can my anal retentive self deal with all the smudges, what is the mark that my sweaty ear left, will it have a dollar key instead of searching for a stupid symbol button and then finding the $ key, sorry RIM that drives me crazy.

June comes and you get it and you are hooked and for three months; an elite group gets to flaunt the goods, the new drug on the street that everyone wants, but it's just a little too expensive, just out of reach. When seeing a friends you flash back to the first time you wanted to ride your buddy's new bike, but the kid doesn't want to give it up just yet, so he says, "my dad said nobody could ride it but me......sorry". You know the feeling, dashed, extinguished hopes. End of discussion, but this time your buddy gives you the quick demo until he says, "try it" no way! You handle this iphone like the gun Paul Zimmerman stole from the cop he used to baby-sit for in eighth grade or the first time you smoked pot; that nervous, exhilarating, nervousness, which almost makes you pee in your pants, only a little though.

You having this thing in your hands it's almost like a hurricane whizzing around in your skull ricocheting off the shell of the brain, what if I drop it, what if it goes off, what if it breaks, I don't wanna get busted is the same feeling as spending the six large for this weapon. Buyers remorse is one thing, but how about the ball busting you get from your wife, the old “this is one of the things we talked about last time”. It's worth it this time, forget about having the conversation first and discussing it, because the first time there is even a hint of mention of this incredible new toy, Apple is practically making the Porsche affordable to me with this product, that's how cool it is, and the woman who keeps J Crew in business is telling me I can't have it, we can't afford it, it's impractical. Another rant for another time, trust me on that one. So you say this is cool, but it isn't cool enough for me to switch to Cingular, I mean the new AT&T. I am not going through the hassle of switching over phone services after I just finally, I think, I hope, I pray finally got straightened away because I got the fios and bundled my cell with it and it is finally okay, more so the problem was on the fios product and not the wireless, ask me one day about my on going frustration with the Verizon fios product. That experience is still unfolding for me, mystery cancellations, installers showing up at your house unannounced and bills that look like an expense for a emergency room visit. Let me finish this apple thing before I get off the train.

I would never leave Verizon wireless again. So that's one reason, the other is, I still don't have an ipod, but I really have procrastinating since last X-Mas. So finally Jobs goes over the finer points of the plan, the reduction in price at the peak of the back to school stage, campuses across the country are calming down after returning from the summer vacation, parents missing their kids and want to do something special for them, the holiday is right around the corner, this is genius. This is a sign of successful business plan/product launch that crushed the market initially and after three months needed a nudge, a tap a push, and bam, one million sold. Wait until he announces next month, that since that sixteen year old kid broke the code that other networks could work on the iphone, he is, In conjunction with AT&T, making the iphone to another phone network, maybe Verizon, (please?please?please?) and another two million are sold at $400 before the end of the year, successful, I say so! Another 800 million but we cut AT&T a little more or back, whatever the case is and let Verizon have the product too. Who cares, the fcc will never let their only be one cellular company, so do, big biz, what you can to make everybody happy, but do it in a way that all partners in the deal, including, us the end user, can walk away feeling like we got what we deserved in the end.

Homeless People

2007-09-12T20:34:00.001-07:00

Homeless people are generally no good, as far as I'm concerned; they ask you for money on nearly every street corner, they smell offensively bad when you get too close to them on the subway, and they burst your bubble of day-to-day complacency by making you acknowledge that they are literally, totally, and completely fucked in life. These are the people for whom the whole "things will be better in heaven" church thing was created.

For one, I think that this total disregard for my desire to continue on with my life while pretending that nobody would ever dare eat my half-eaten tuna salad out of the garbage is unfair.

Now, you might think I'm being unfair, and maybe even heartless, but that's not the case. I'm actually driving at a bigger problem in America, and the hobos just happen to waft the smell of it in my face. The problem is that people in America are always looking for handouts, including the bums. Beggars are apparently, finally, becoming choosers. They are choosing what they will do for money, and they've decided to simply ask for it. What ever happened to working hard for your money, and saving up for that brand new Cadillac? What I mean by this is...

What ever happened to sucking dick for crack?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't want a 55 year old homeless guy to suck my dick, regardless of whether he is looking for crack money or not. But, I do want him to at least offer.

I want him to say: "I'll suck your dick for crack."

Ultimately, then I can walk away and think to myself, "At least one homeless man in New York remembers that this city was built on the services industry."

Seriously though, consider that most of them have no teeth. It might not be that bad.

Just food for thought.

Why Hipsters Need Dictionaries

2007-09-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

While there are many aspects of "being a hipster" that truly make me want to cut my balls off to distract myself from my disdain, I have finally figured out what I hate most about hipsters.

No, it's not that I am convinced most hipsters are from well-to-do suburbs, and that their bohemian lifestyle is undoubtedly subsidized by their corporate lawyer fathers. (By the way, don't get me wrong: I have no problem with corporate lawyers -- I just have a problem with who I presume to be some corporate lawyers' bullshit pseudo-intellectual, Sex Pistol-loving, smelly, NYU-attending, pretentious, temporarily-pierced, 4-years-away-from-moving-back-to-Fairfield, hipster kids).

And no, it's not that I am blown away by the irony of hipsters' "non-conformist" intentions. (I literally think it is impossible for a group of people to conform to each other's style and tastes more than hipsters do -- it's as though these assholes all simultaneously handed in their dignity for a standard issued pair of black jeans, pointy black shoes, and an ill-fitting 70s button-down).

What I hate most about hipsters is that many of them have the audacity to wear t-shirts that read "Anarchy," which brings me to the title of this post: the next time a hipster goes to his or her favorite second-hand East Village book store, because NYU's bookstore is too mainstream, that hipster should buy a dictionary.

Let me explain myself.

According to Dictionary.com, "anarchy" can simply be defined as "a state of society without government or law." Basically, anarchy defines a time and place where hipsters have absolutely zero chance of survival. If hipsters owned dictionaries, they would know this.

If hipsters owned dictionaries, they would know that if we lived in a state of anarchy, the first non-hipster that walked by a hipster on the street could rip the hipster's shoe off and shove it pointy-end first up the hipster's ass at will. There would be no possible consequence.

If hipsters owned dictionaries, they would know that if we lived in a state of anarchy, they would not be able to defend themselves because no one over 115 lbs is allowed to be a hipster; weighing more than 115 lbs would make it too difficult for the other pussy hipsters to conform to the "fat" hipsters image. Such a weight violation would disrupt the way of things, so hipsters diligently obey their limitations.

Why, might you ask, would a random non-hipster want to shove a pointy-toed shoe up a random hipster's ass? There are many reasons why.

Maybe it's because the non-hipster has always wanted to whoop the shit out of one of these pretentious hipster douche bags milling all around the city's super-chill coffee shops. Or, maybe the non-hipster is hoping to find the hipster's corporate lawyer father's credit card in the hipster's chain wallet.

I don't know, but either way, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that someone alert these retards to their retardation, because otherwise the hipsters of the world might get what they ask for: we might find ourselves in a state of anarchy, and all hipsters will find themselves sucking pole in side alleys just to stay alive.

Do your part: give a hipster a dictionary today.

CRACKBERRYRANTZ - What are they? Where did they come from? And what they could become?

2007-09-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

Mostly everyday of every work week I commute into NY to go to my job as a seller of digital media, woo hoo, I know, I know you wish you were me, and every Monday through Friday I spend anywhere from two and a half to three hours a day going to and coming from this prestigious of positions in the ad media world, yes, I am the pain in the ass on the phone that has some new exciting media that you have to see and have your client involved in, yes that’s me, the Mad Director of Digital Sales.Anyway, during this part-time weekly job that I call commuting, I have time to devour the daily newspapers, mostly the WSJ and NY Times, although I find the journal much more appealing, I read that one from the far left top column on the front page all the way through the last book review in Personal Journal, and I admit that I chuckle at the daily Salt n’Pepper. I sometimes never even get to the times because the Journal stories keep me engaged and get my mind working, working like crazy, working so hard on the next best whatever and how I am going to be part of it and how I am so tired of working for the man and schlepping my ass into the city, it blows.

Sorry, I have a habit of writing tangents or rants, or what I call rantz, because a marketing article that I recently read reports that if your business or name has a “Z” at the end then consumers have greater recall and it’s cool. at the same time. The times either gets thrown away or I skim over the Business Day, quickly browse the newly created “today in business” section on page 2 and see if they have any new or different articles than my Journal. I check out the Media and Advertising columns, to see what Stuart Elliot is up to and lastly will check out the addenda to see if there is anything happening at any of my clients that will impact my sales and thus, my income.

Usually, more in the morning, or maybe I just notice more in the morning because by the time I get on the train to go home I am spent, mind is mush, that’s why I invest the twenty five cents on the NY Post, the mindless content in that publication is just like when Goldilocks tasted baby bears porridge, it’s just right, not to hot, not too cold, just right.Page six and Paula Frolich, the cover story, the weird news column from all over the world, the local sports coverage is okay and the entertainment related ca-ca near the TV listings. That usually gets me through the majority of the trip home that always seems so much longer, that one extra stop in wherever, that extra couple minutes, killer.So once I fold the post and put it under my seat I grab the old blackberry and see if I need to reply to any messages or if anyone is looking for me. After I holster my weapon of today’s business world I know I got another 15 minutes to waste before my stop so I figure I will walk back to the last car because, one there is usually a bathroom back there and, two, that exit is the closest to where I parked my car in the morning. Another goal that can be achieved with this maneuver with 15 minutes to go is that I will see someone that I know and spend the final moments on the train chatting. It’s a 60/40 split, I usually end up gabbing and wetting my pants.

But the morning, that is where I thrive, I can’t sleep on the train, I got my coffee, newspapers and an hour and fifteen minutes at a minimum to catch up on yesterday’s happenings and figure out how any of these reports have anything to do with me? How will it affect me? How can I benefit from this news? Is there a business model that would work? Or, is the train going to break down? Will it follow a local? Are there delays? How will the outcome of this commute affect the rest of my daily existence?