Category Archives: Business

PROMPT: Crazy Business Idea

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Daily writing prompt
Come up with a crazy business idea.
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I had a restaurant idea I was going to call “Git It Yo Own Damned Self.” It would extend the Korean Hot Pot / BBQ concept in which one has to do one’s own cooking to include getting your own food from the kitchen and then bussing your own table and washing your own dishes. I realize one couldn’t charge as much, but in the US I think you could still collect 20 – 25% gratuities for the imaginary waitstaff to offset the lesser meal cost.The best thing would be responding to bad reviews with: “Don’t look at me, they did it their own damned selves!”

PROMPT: Taglines

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Daily writing prompt
If humans had taglines, what would yours be?
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30% More Nuts.

PROMPT: Good Leader

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Bloganuary writing prompt
What makes a good leader?
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I don’t think I know, not really. But I don’t feel bad because I don’t think a lot of people who consider themselves experts do either. For example, one of the biggest cons in academia is that professors in business schools often get paid much more than their science and humanities counterparts on the presumption that they would go run businesses if they weren’t paid a higher salary than the others. Most of them would not. The idea that a thorough theoretical knowledge of the world of commerce and the operations of a corporation would translate into all the X-factors needed to head a company (e.g. charisma, risk-acceptance profile, creativity, and an internal emotional landscape that borders on [or is outright] psychopathic) seems laughable. If that’s the way the world worked a quartet of music professors would be outselling the Beatles and the ranks of Olympic gold medalists would be swollen with Kinesiology PhDs.

NOTE: I should explain the “psychopathy” crack. Many of us have quite enough angst from making decisions that seem to have the potential to ruin our own lives. Some can take a little more angst and are ok making decisions that might mess up not only their own lives, but also those of their children. It takes a special kind of reptilian-like nature (beneath the appearance of charm and polished interpersonal skills) to regularly make decisions that can screw up the lives of complete strangers by the hundreds or thousands.

PROMPT: Crazy Business

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Daily writing prompt
Come up with a crazy business idea.
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Well, as we all know that voice-activated “digital assistants” (e.g. Siri and Alexa,) have both become insanely popular that they and spy on you around the clock, gathering information to sell to “big data” marketing firms, I propose a service that would involve coming to your house and making noises and statements that would turn the collected “information” into disinformation. The best part is, the package could be tailored to your desires and preferences. If you’re a milquetoast person but don’t like that reputation, you could get the Orgy Pack which would make your house sound like a non-stop bacchanal. If you’re really a mobster, there could be the sounds of meetings to set up a church bingo night. The possibilities are endless.

Remember, until the Robot Uprising, don’t let yourself be punked by the machines. Subscribe to DISINFORMATION DAILY today.

PROMPT: Brands

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Daily writing prompt
What brands do you associate with?
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None whatsoever. I have no loyalty to a logo. If you want my business, you need to provide a product or service that I need at a price &/or quality better than the competitors — every single time.

BOOK REVIEW: Artpreneur by Miriam Schulman

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Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your CreativityArtpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity by Miriam Schulman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release Date: January 31, 2023

This book is about half pep talk on selling one’s art at a higher price and half guide to marketing and selling art. “Pep talk” isn’t meant to diminish what the book does. First of all, the author does offer extensive justification for higher pricing, both from the body of research and from anecdotal experiences. Secondly, this is a pep talk that needs to be delivered and is the most important function of the book, by far. That doesn’t mean the book doesn’t do a fine job with the marketing and selling bits, but there are so many books available on that subject.

The book is directed toward graphic artists, though some of book’s message is of relevance to musicians and poets as well. (Perhaps that’s why I found the pep talk part so important, because it’s broadly germane to artists, whereas sales are quite different for media where huge numbers of copies are made versus one-of-a-kind works.)

If you’re a struggling artist or would like to avoid being one, this book is worth reading.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Art of the Tale by Steven James & Tom Morrisey

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The Art of the Tale: Engage Your Audience, Elevate Your Organization, and Share Your Message Through StorytellingThe Art of the Tale: Engage Your Audience, Elevate Your Organization, and Share Your Message Through Storytelling by Steven James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This is a fine book on storytelling, storytelling with a focus on business presentations and speeches. That said, this is a topic for which the market is glutted. There are many books available about storytelling, and while this one doesn’t distinguish itself by being exceptionally bad, neither does it distinguish itself as exceptionally good. It’s a decent book on storytelling, and if you’re interested in stories for work presentations or speeches and haven’t read other books on the subject, you might as well try this one. However, if you’ve studied up on the subject, I wouldn’t expect to discover anything profound or novel in this book.

The book does focus on some subjects more than do others. One of my favorite parts was chapter 11, “Warts and All…,” because it addresses an issue that books tend to overlook or gloss over, and that’s how to deal with the skeletons in one’s closet (or in the company’s closet.) It offers an intriguing look at the dark side of Henry Ford.

One of the strengths of this book is that it summarizes key lessons and repeatedly revisits core concepts (e.g. the StoryCube, which is these authors’ outline for presenting the fundamental elements of a story.) The book’s greatest weakness is probably oversimplifications and banal statements, particularly given that the authors critique the simplifying statements of others. For example, they offer a criticism of the common distinction between plot- and character-driven literature that misses that there is something fundamentally different between Joyce’s “Ulysses” and “The Hunger Games” that is worth understanding, and – to the degree their criticism is true – much of this book could be similarly criticized as oversimplification or false dichotomization / categorization.

Reading this book helped me think about the subject of storytelling, particularly the non-written variety of story, but I can’t say there was anything groundbreaking or of unmatched profundity.


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Two Takes on a Bullish Limerick

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On Wall Street, there was a commodities bull.
The man knew finance, but could be rather dull.
He made the bacon,
until he was shaken 
to find foreign pork belly dumped by the shipful.
There was an oblivious bull of Wall Street
whose life was portfolios and spreadsheets.
His approach, academic,
missing news of pandemic,
he bet cruise ship line stock would increase.

Customer Service Limerick

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There once was a customer service rep
who spoke with a smile and great pep.
“That’s not my department,
but prepare for bombardment:
Your refund in twenty-six random steps.”

BOOK REVIEW: Radium Girls by Cy

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Radium GirlsRadium Girls by Cy.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Out: April 6, 2022

This is a graphic novel that tells the same story [based on actual events] as the similarly titled, but otherwise unrelated, popular book by Kate Moore. The “Radium Girls” were women who worked at watch factories, painting luminescent numbers on watch dials. Unfortunately, the luminescent material being used was radioactive, and the painting process that these women were taught involved touching paintbrushes to their lips between strokes, causing them to ingest minute amounts of it everyday, often over many years. In today’s world, a person who found themselves glowing in the dark from a job (without protective equipment) would know something was radically wrong, but this took place about a century ago and understanding of radioactivity was much less – though scientists clearly understood that precautions needed to be taken when working with radium.

This book captures the highs and lows of a small group of workers from one of the watch / clock factories involved, the one in Orange, New Jersey. Ultimately, this is a sad story of deteriorating health and premature death, but it also shows a relatively new phenomena of women holding jobs that allowed them to increase control their own destinies. By showing the women as they tasted the good life, the experience of the bottom falling out created a more visceral experience. The women did earn a good wage — not the kind of money that makes cancer worthwhile, but higher pay than the usual salary available to women of the day.

I thought the story was well told and touching. The art was in an interesting style – sure to be the cup of tea of some but not others – but nevertheless clearly conveying events of the story. I’d recommend this graphic novel for readers interested in the subject.


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