The Latest Numbers

Earnings for the Bank of Montreal (BMO:TSX) in 2006: $2.66 billion

Total compensation package paid in 2006 to its CEO, Tony Comper: $10 million

Number of employees that need to be laid-off because BMO says it didn't earn enough: 1,000

Number of words in a BMO press release explaining why they need to earn more money by laying off 1000 employees: 533

Number of words used in the same press release cautioning its shareholders that BMO may not neccessarily know what it is doing in order to avoid any litigation: 646

Dysfunction Junction

I have found a book, now topping the non-fiction bestsellers list, that could help us moribund metabloggers. It is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.

Here's an excerpt, courtesy of USA Today:

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is powerful and so rare.

A friend of mine, the founder of a company that grew to a billion dollars in annual revenue, best expressed the power of teamwork when he once told me, "If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time."

Whenever I repeat that saying to a group of leaders, they immediately nod their heads, but in a desperate sort of way. They seem to grasp the truth of it while simultaneously surrendering to the impossibility of actually making it happen.

And that is where the rarity of teamwork comes into play. For all the attention that it has received over the years from scholars, coaches, teachers, and the media, teamwork is as elusive as it has ever been within most organizations. The fact remains that teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.

Meta question

I was partaking of tea and crumpies with Aggie the other day -- she's good about pouring my tea into a saucer, at least tolerates the unavoidably rude slurping noises, and us coyotes always enjoy a nice bit of crumpet... O hell! I'm already digressing again, ain't I?

Anyway, I meant to say she let drop how disappointed she was, that all of her efforts on Elgin Street Muse hadn't earned her the coveted metablog scrutiny yet.

Whether she'd actually like it if she got it is a question for another day. She has a point. She's bustin' her butt over there. We're metabloggers, dammit! Just lately this has manifested as Aggie riffin' on 4th Dwarf riffin' on my gig. Now, I happen to believe the world needs more poets, and I fully support these worthy efforts. They're both brilliant. More, please!

But might this trend not also suggest a peril of swallowing our own metamythological tail until we disappear entirely? I admit to a certain ongoing existential worry in this regard.

Do we need to consider returning to our former Musely format, to metablog Aggie? We've done some of our best stuff on Muses... But what to label it? MetablAgging? MetabAggie? iMetaDame?

Wha...? 'Scuse me a sec, phone's ringing...

"Hello? Who? What? Mmmhmmm, mmmhmmm, mmmhmmm. I see... Well, your mom wears 'em too, I bet!"

Ahem. That was Steve Jobs' hideously-expensive team of Apple Inc™ lawyers calling from Cupertino. Er, scratch that last naming option. Seems it would suck us inexorably into an ruinous legal debacle that we would be sure to lose, one way or another. Damn, those guys are fast!

I'm back - with deep thoughts

Yes, it's been a long time since I've posted here. I may have a Publog report up later today. Why so quiet on the blog? Two reasons.

First, I've been trying to get somewhere with ESI merchandise. The holiday season reminded me that I promised a long time ago to come up with the Elgin Street Irregulars Boardgame.

Second, I read Agatha's Random Musings hmmph, I thought, I suppose Aggie thinks she's the only one who has deep thoughts like that. I know people think of me as the comic relief around here, why else am I the only one who gets left hanging out to dry and blamed for everything that gets wrong? But I have deep thoughts too, you know.

And I have been compiling them for you:

1. If the people who make CSI can show you the path of a bullet going through a person's torso shattering organs and blood vessels at a microscopic level, how come they can't make the wheels on cars look like they're rolling forwards?
   


2. If I wrote fan fiction, I'd write: Harry Potter and the Mature Students Association. Harry goes back to magic grad school in his 40s. Ron and Hermione tease him about his 25-year-old classmates.
   


3. If Howard Epstein, the Nova Scotia MLA gets his An Act to Repeal the Treasure Trove Act passed, will it be a good thing or a bad thing? (A) With the act repealed if I find pirate treasure, I get to legally keep it all, but (B) I'd keep it all anyway, because since when does a pirate tell the government about finding another pirate's treasure, and (C) suppose I bury some treasure in Nova Scotia, the repeal of the Treasure Trove Act might make law-abiding non-pirates go treasure hunting because it will be more lucrative for them. So... bad thing. If only we pirates were better politically organized.


4. If I ever suspect that someone I know is a space alien, I will invite them to a birthday party. If they bring a gift in a box that you can open by just lifting off the nicely wrapped lid, I will know for sure they are an alien because only people on TV wrap gifts that way and space aliens learn how to impersonate us by watching TV. Also if they use words like "rassin-frassin" to swear, I will know they only got broadcast TV and not cable.


5. Should the ESI game use a spinner? or giant dice?

Speaking of the the game again, it looks like my best ideas have already been taken by an Asian company:



[Explanation available at short pants, long story]

[p.s. I've posted another brilliant Google Poem]

Present and unaccounted for

Hangovers. Nagging colds. Relationship woes. In our workaholic culture, none of these nasty things will keep folks from showing up at the office. Shunning Aggie's advice to take a mental health day, the suffering drones are present in body but barely in spirit.

Painted Stick recently pointed out the term for this phenomenon is presenteeism.

Word Spy defines it like so: presenteeism (prez.un.TEE.iz.um) n. The feeling that one must show up for work even if one is too sick, stressed, or distracted to be productive; the feeling that one needs to work extra hours even if one has no extra work to do. —presentee n.

Statistics Canada has even noted this sister condition of absenteeism in a report on depression and work impairment.

So the next time you feel like like you're running on three cylinders, it might be wise to pull over to the side of the road. And take a nap in the staff lounge.

Supersized

Overheard on Sunday...

First woman: I have six at home.
Second woman: I have eight. I wanted 12. But my husband only wanted six.

What were these ladies discussing? Bagels? Lawn chairs? Place settings?

Nope, kids.

In a world where small or even childless families seem to be the new norm, there are at least a few couples out there prepared to pick up the slack.

Further casualties

With all of this blue-skying about saving Winterlude™ with megaQuonsets and peeing en masse into the canal -- yeah, like that doesn't happen already -- we have overlooked the fate of the symbolic, perpetually perky, porcine heart and soul of the festival. I allude, of course, to the National Capital Commission's™ legendary Ice Hogs™.

I mean, if global warming burns their natural environment, indeed, their entire raison d'être, into sodden raison toast, these guys just ain't gonna make it.

Their job is to skate up and down the frozen Rideau Canal and schmooze. When you consider that each of their Body Mass Indices include, conservatively, about a hundred pounds of highly absorbent foam rubber and fun fur, trying to make them swim laps in their melted venue will send them to Davy Jones' Locker™ faster than you can say 'Spongebob'™.

Oh, the, um, humanity. Or whatever...

So we need to stop global warming. C'mon people, ideas! Don't let the Ice Hogs™ drown! Think of all the children world wide who dream of Ice Hog Time™!

Why, just the other week, the ESI™ Research Director was telling me emphatically, if a tad ungrammatically, "Iceswine has become incredibly popular". Oops. I think he also said, "Iceswine is very tasty."

We'd best leave him out of the search party when they founder...

Image: The Good 'Ol NCC™

Winterlude: Three Ideas

It looks like Old Man Winter will finally show up in the nation's capital. I predict a fully functioning Rideau Canal skateway before Ground Hog Day. In the meantime, the NCC should work at some Plan B's -- which I believe they have already started, seeing that global warming is likely more than just a fad.

Here are some strategies in addressing this urgent matter.


Idea #1 – Physics 101 or Don’t Eat the Yellow Ice

Remember from your grade 11 physics class when that wacky guy at the front with the curly gray hair who claimed to be a teacher made that preposterous claim that hot water cools faster than cold water? And you thought, “Yeah. Right. Someone has been sniffing too much mimeograph ink in the teacher’s lounge.” Well, actually, it’s true – I’ve empirically tested it with martini ice-cubes. I won’t bore you with the details, but it is a scientific fact. Something to do with efficient heat transfer, thermodynamics, loss of mass, etc. Google it, if you don’t believe me. So all the NCC has to do is warm up the Rideau Canal, and then it will freeze faster. How to warm it up, you ask? Well, we could start by peeing in it. That’d work. Half the booze-hounds leaving the Byward Market on a Saturday night are already on-board.


Idea #2 – Swee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-p

If any of this global warming stuff is true we may as well give up on the whole outdoor skating thing. Of course, we have a winter tourism industry that’s largely based on those 50 days a year that one can skate on the World’s Largest Skating Rink® so we can’t just close up shop on this matter. Now that the LRT project is dead, we could try to get that $400 million from the government to fund the next big thing for Ottawa – the World’s Longest Curling Rink®. As for a space to build it, I suggest we erect a Quonset hut over the Canal between the National Arts Centre and the first bend at Concorde Avenue and then add some refrigerant pipes under the waterway. That’s roughly a mile in length. That surely must make it the World’s Longest Curling Rink®-- though I’d have to check with what currently exists in Saskatchewan – you never know. Ottawa could host some serious bonspiels. Real Men bonspiels. The Rideau Iron-Man Invitational Bonspiel: One skip, two sweepers, a paramedic and a heart defibrillator. Something like this could bring a newfound respect to a sport that for most of its history could be simultaneously played while smoking and drinking.

Idea #3 – Winterlude: Ottawa’s Annual Tulip Festival

Wouldn’t it be wacky if we celebrated our winter splendor with an aquatic theme? Bathtub boat races in the unfrozen canal. Polar Bear Swim-a-thons. A flotilla. Wait a minute --- we already have some of this. It’s called the Tulip Festival. But if I remember from a few years ago, we actually got snowed out for one of the concerts at Tulip Fest. Maybe that’s the problem: we’ve got things backwards. We need to keep the events but swap the dates. Though I heard recently that the Tulip Fest is bankrupt. That’s what they get for not having an ice carving competition.

Wankitudinosity

The Irregulars know from wank. And if there's one thing we at ESI Inc. believe we deserve, it is the acknowledgement, nay, adulation, of our peers.

Or not, especially after being stiffed so often in the past by multiple blog awards committees, undeserved slights that have all been chronicled in excruciating detail by our (very short) resident conspiracy theorist.

So I note with complete bafflement, appalled alarm, etc., that we were unaccountably omitted from this week's "Top 100 Wankers of the Year" list, in the newstand issue of Frank Magazine. (Shurely shome mishtake...? --4d ) Not only were we bumped from first place -- a clear error on the part of the judging panel, and one that would lead me to question if they were: a) sober, or; b) bought off -- but we didn't even get on the damn list! Outrage!

Granted, winner of the coveted Number One position is Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, who has acquitted himself admirably by putting his foot (and possibly other body parts...) into it, on a buncha well-documented occasions over the past coupla years. Then denying it. The Hon. Peter is a palpable wanker.

But c'mon! Anybody who reads us regularly -- or who drops by only once, totally by accident, for that matter -- knows that wankitudinosity is a major part of our brand recognition. (Um, okaaay, it's all of our brand recognition. Now shaddup, go away, and stop buggin' me, kid.)

Image: Possibly Vancouver Sun, or maybe Radio Canada... jeez, there were were a lotta photographers watching him blubber that day....

Emergency Meeting: What's going on here?

It is 6:52 a.m. I am up because my cat decided to come home at this hour. It's sad when your cat has a better social life than you do. But, that's another posting... I thought I'd take this early bird opportunity to give an update on what's going with the ESIs. I called an Emergency Meeting at the Usual Spot on Friday to discuss the ESI's failure to blog. While we did not take formal minutes, here is the gist of what I got from our meeting.

Present at the Meeting: Aggie, 4th Dwarf, Coyote, The Chair, Conch Shell, Harmony, Audrey, and Painted Stick. The IO informed us that he is "fighting something" and was unable to attend.

Reasons for non-blogging:The Chair had a health breakdown over the holidays -- a really really really bad cold. We suspect the IO is currently fighting that really really really bad cold.

Harmony has been busy performing with Painted Stick. She's also been tending to the sick, including one with a really really really bad cold.

Aggie, Coyote and 4th Dwarf suffered from their own special versions of some kind of holiday existential crisis. Aggie tried to remedy this with Christmas baking, but that failed miserably.

Conch Shell has time to show up for Emergency Meetings to drink, but has no time to blog. She continues to be busy with important world-saving stuff.

Audrey suggested we have a party to which each of us would bring a stranger. A stranger to the others, that is; not a complete, fucking stranger. But, the rule would be that we wouldn't be permitted to talk about our blog or blogging. We all agreed that this could be a useful exercise for us right now.

Other topics of discussion: How we hoped for a political sex scandal. Inappropriate pinching to determine body fat index.

The Usual Spot: There were complaints about the crowdedness, the body heat wafting off of the hoards, the crankiness of the staff. We agreed that more publogging needed to occur.

Sightings: the Goddess. Fortunately, we didn't have the usual argument over which of us she desires most: ("She wants me." "No, it's me, she wants...You see the way she smiles at me" etc., etc..) Lots of mojo flowing from the Goddess, as always.

Second sighting: the Crazy Woman. This is what broke up the meeting. Aggie, Coyote and 4th Dwarf fled. Coyote was the first to spot her, and was the first one out the door. We couldn't see his ass for dust.

Aggie's favourite band: Bob Marley and the Waiters

I have never been in a band. That would probably require at least a thimble full of musical ability. Too bad. Because, as the Bucky Awards understand, one of the best things about forming a group is choosing a name. Here's my shortlist of contenders, in case I suddenly find myself in a sonic collaboration:

(*) The Unhappy Campers
(*) Generation Zed
(*) The Frickin' Wallendas
(*) Johnny Resfellow and the Community Standards
(*) Blogworthy

Beijing punk rockers Brain Failure
Photo: www.covertbooking.com