Wednesday, February 02, 2005
BALLOON ON A STICK
There’s a balloon on a stick taped to the wall of my VE cubical.
My predecessor told me, that her predecessor told her, that the balloon on a stick was there when she started. (That’s at least 4 generations of VE Education staff!)
It’s a Mylar smiley face balloon, with a great big (really big) red nose and multi-colored hair. (Sort of scary) I’m thinking about taking it down - it’s not exactly my style. (Besides it could be a bad luck charm that’s been spreading bad karma throughout the education dept. without us even knowing it - - you know --kinda like the necklace that Bobby Brady found when the Brady bunch went to Hawaii).
My VE-partner-in-crime, however, says I can’t take the voodoo balloon down - It’s a VE Education tradition (besides, she thinks it could be a GOOD luck charm!)
And there is the great divider of humanity.
(You didn’t know a dumb balloon was profound enough to divide humanity did you?)
The way I see it, there are two types of people. The first type of person loves the way things are now (or the way they have always been) and hold onto now as tightly as they can. They scream “Change is bad!” anytime anyone offers a new way of doing something.
The other half of humanity embraces change just for the sake of doing something new – even if the new things are just hyped up garbage. They scream “Change is Good” anytime someone wants to re-do something (even if it’s a bad change).
If you want to see both ends of the spectrum, come sit on my planet for a while and watch this 89.3 radio station “debate”. Half of my life is spent around classical people that are weeping and wailing over the death of a really great classical radio station. They are sad, and angry and say things like “M.P.R. = Mediocre Public Radio.” They hear the “I Love Minnesota Rap Song” and immediately discount the entire station. They don’t like the changes to the Morning Show, get angry quickly, and don’t like the young punk kids taking over their airwaves.
The other half of my life is filled with the hip, cool demographic that is supposed to fall head over heals in love with The Current. (You don’t have to look very deep into the blogsphere to find them – some fell in love before it launched). These folk are already clamoring for bumper stickers and t-shirts. They want to be “founding members” and are doing the underground marketing street team thing. Some of them are even dissing (“dissing” that’s a hip, cool, sort of word) the “classical snobs” that used to live at WCAL.
Me??? I’d like to think I was somewhere in the middle – a balanced person that gracefully accepts new things, but doesn’t buy into the hype of every new-fangled contraption; I'm the observant one that declares everyone else insane while sitting in my Little Miss Superiority chair and staring at a voodoo smiley face balloon.
(BTW, The Current provides rotten news coverage and they removed my favorite part of the Morning Show).
But they play Joseph Arthur which almost makes up for it).
There’s a balloon on a stick taped to the wall of my VE cubical.
My predecessor told me, that her predecessor told her, that the balloon on a stick was there when she started. (That’s at least 4 generations of VE Education staff!)
It’s a Mylar smiley face balloon, with a great big (really big) red nose and multi-colored hair. (Sort of scary) I’m thinking about taking it down - it’s not exactly my style. (Besides it could be a bad luck charm that’s been spreading bad karma throughout the education dept. without us even knowing it - - you know --kinda like the necklace that Bobby Brady found when the Brady bunch went to Hawaii).
My VE-partner-in-crime, however, says I can’t take the voodoo balloon down - It’s a VE Education tradition (besides, she thinks it could be a GOOD luck charm!)
And there is the great divider of humanity.
(You didn’t know a dumb balloon was profound enough to divide humanity did you?)
The way I see it, there are two types of people. The first type of person loves the way things are now (or the way they have always been) and hold onto now as tightly as they can. They scream “Change is bad!” anytime anyone offers a new way of doing something.
The other half of humanity embraces change just for the sake of doing something new – even if the new things are just hyped up garbage. They scream “Change is Good” anytime someone wants to re-do something (even if it’s a bad change).
If you want to see both ends of the spectrum, come sit on my planet for a while and watch this 89.3 radio station “debate”. Half of my life is spent around classical people that are weeping and wailing over the death of a really great classical radio station. They are sad, and angry and say things like “M.P.R. = Mediocre Public Radio.” They hear the “I Love Minnesota Rap Song” and immediately discount the entire station. They don’t like the changes to the Morning Show, get angry quickly, and don’t like the young punk kids taking over their airwaves.
The other half of my life is filled with the hip, cool demographic that is supposed to fall head over heals in love with The Current. (You don’t have to look very deep into the blogsphere to find them – some fell in love before it launched). These folk are already clamoring for bumper stickers and t-shirts. They want to be “founding members” and are doing the underground marketing street team thing. Some of them are even dissing (“dissing” that’s a hip, cool, sort of word) the “classical snobs” that used to live at WCAL.
Me??? I’d like to think I was somewhere in the middle – a balanced person that gracefully accepts new things, but doesn’t buy into the hype of every new-fangled contraption; I'm the observant one that declares everyone else insane while sitting in my Little Miss Superiority chair and staring at a voodoo smiley face balloon.
(BTW, The Current provides rotten news coverage and they removed my favorite part of the Morning Show).
But they play Joseph Arthur which almost makes up for it).