The Corporate Games People Play

[hrj]

I spent the day at the obligatory “Operational Excellence” training session – one of those motivational/efficiency/team-building things. Enough said. Ok, not quite enough. I can cope with people regurgitating a random mixture of all sorts of motivational writers and Japanese business-management buzz words, but when they start mangling ancient Greek philosophical terms I can’t take any more. It wasn’t so much the mangling as the nonsensical claim that “because philosophical term X can’t be translated directly into English, we modern American’s can’t understand or implement philosophical concept X”. Philosophical terms don’t normally translate well – this is why we borrow them directly. Oh, and this was right before the speaker asked for volunteers to define the word “virtue”. It took all my self-control not to raise my hand and respond, “Manliness; that set of qualities and behaviors that are appropriate to and expected of a male human being as contrasted with a female human being.” But I was good. I even volunteered for the manufacturing simulation.

I’m trying to get some momentum up this week to get projects started. You know, one of those weeks where you end up completely exhausted but get a lot done? The whole living room stasis thing is starting to really drag me down. I got a couple of projects started at work, but I think all I’m going to get done at home is the prep work for this weekend’s classes, one on the Llangors embroidery and one I’m assisting with on spinning flax. (Some day I’ll update that Llangors article with the version I ended up publishing.)

In my not-quite-a-review of Pirates of the Carribean, I neglected to mention my absolutely favorite scene (which anyone who knows me could probably guess): when Pintel and Ragetti (yes, I had to look up the characters’ names) are discussing the proper pronunciation of “kraken”, including reference to the Old Norse.