37 studios points to a video of someone who fills Moleskines with prettier stuff than I do…
Link to A peek inside Moleskine notebooks by artists, designers, architects, etc. - (37signals)
“It’s a question that has vexed the finest human-shark hybrid minds of every generation, Percy, my friend — is there anything you shouldn’t eat?” Well, for one, there’s your shiny new junior sales associate trainee, unless you want to go back to carrying your own luggage. Once I got my VP to transfer me from phones into field sales, the world became my, well, prey, and my rapacious focus on deal-closing took me to a record quarter. Plus Finance could breathe a little easier, too.
So Ed (this was a while back, before I ate him) gave me Percy, viz., a promising new junior sales associate trainee, with instructions to train him up in the Secrets of My Success and also Not Eat Him. It hadn’t been hard, though, to fit not eating Percy into the larger sales philosophy I was constructing and on which I was now expounding.
“So listen close, Grasshopper, because I’m going to tell you about the two skills you need to develop to sell the ass off human-shark hybrid services, and Get Paid,” I said.
“…get paid,” Percy mumbled. His note-taking technique consisted of writing down every fucking word I say and mumbling to let me know when he’s done. It was kind of a passive-aggressive way for him to control the conversation, which I disapprove of on principle because as a shark I have more like an aggressive-aggressive approach to things. But in the first place I was concentrating really hard on Not Eating Him because in the second place I’d have to carry my own luggage, which takes me back to the core of the thing.
“Ri-ight,” I said, letting him know I was getting a little annoyed with the whole mumbling-notetaking thing. “Two skills. Number one, and super important, know who you have to eat.”
“…eat.”
“And number two, just as important but a lot harder to learn, know who you have to not eat,” I said, grinning a little, to put a little humor into it and also make sure he hasn’t maybe forgotten that he’s trapped in a small vehicle sitting next to a fucking shark.
“…not eat…” Percy mumbled.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Perce,” I said, taking one hand off the wheel and rapping him sharply on the top of the head, “I am not in any way being metaphorical here. It is my experience that nearly all sales contacts can be put into one of those two buckets, although,” I grinned again, “the bucket holding the sales contacts you have to eat can be a lot smaller, since there’s not as much left of them, know what I mean?” I reflected a bit on my experiences of the last three months. “Like, there was this one guy who must have swallowed a bunch of ball bearings, fuck, I don’t know why. Biggest fucking surprise of my life, let me tell you.”
Percy was squeezing himself up against his car door, but being totally nonchalant about it so maybe I wouldn’t notice he was half shitting himself. God, I love my job. “Um, ah, Mr. Selacchi? Can I ask a question?”
“Sure, Perce. And, hey! Call me Bob.”
“Uh, sure, Bob.” Percy licked his lips. “I was just wondering? Don’t you ever worry about, I don’t know, getting into trouble, with all the people you eat?”
I shook my head firmly. “Not at all, Perce, but I’m glad you asked. Once you get the treatment, you’ll understand. For now, though, just let me say, sharks don’t worry about hardly fucking anything.”
“…fucking anything.”
Again, scritch-scratching away in the notebook. I gritted my teeth, a couple of them breaking loose and falling into my lap. “Let’s walk you through a couple of cases, Grasshopper. Say I’m making my first contact with a guy at a prospective company, first time I’ve talked to anyone at this company, and I’m not getting anywhere with the guy. He called us up, some reason, but now that we’re talking, he’s not interested anymore. What do you do?”
“…do?” he mumbled, his voice even rising at the end because he was mumbling a question. I snatched the notebook out of his hand and ate it. The metal spiral got stuck in my throat, so I reached in, pulled it out, and tossed back into his lap.
“We’re not writing a book here, Perce, and you’re not studying for a fucking test,” I said. “What do you do?”
“Umm,” he said, screwing his face up like he was thinking really hard. “I could eat him?”
“No, no, no,” I said, but not getting angry at all. “That’s an easy mistake, though, because that’s a very frustrating situation and a big waste of time. For you, first of all, you can’t eat the guy, because with those little pearly whites you could only like gnaw on the guy a little and totally piss him off, probably get arrested. For you, this is future stuff. But after the treatment, you still can’t eat the guy, as big a relief as would seem to be. Why is that?”
Percy’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know, Bob.”
“It’s the first time I’ve talked to anyone from the company, Grasshopper. If I eat him, it’s like I’ve written off the whole company because one guy pissed me off, which makes no fucking sense at all. It’s what a real shark might do, but that’s why we don’t hire real sharks in Field Sales. So, before I eat the guy, I try to put him at ease, get him talking about his situation, like I’m his friend and I’m here to help him. Fucker!” I shouted, running over some chick who was trying to cross the street. “Find out the name of his boss, other people in his department, other departments that might need some human-shark-hybrid services. Perce, I’m talking to you here!” Percy was turned around in his seat, looking back at the chick I’d just run over. “But there’s a right way and a wrong way to ask the question, you know? How would you ask about other departments, Percy? Pretend I’m the guy, and you’re trying to ask me about other departments.” You got to do the roleplaying things before the treatment, because afterwards you’ve got like zero ability to identify with the other guy.
“Um. So, Bob, what other departments in your company do you think might need some human-shark hybrid services?”
“Wrong!” I sing, swerving around another pedestrian, for Percy’s sake, so he won’t get distracted. “You say, who heads up your Collections department? Collections always wants to talk about human-shark hybrid services, believe me. That kind of seeds the conversation, let’s him know what you’re looking for. Gets the guy involved in helping you. Also, the longer he talks to you, the more he’s going to start to get scared of you, the more he’s going to want to do you favors so you won’t eat him. Don’t ever discount the importance of that,” I said, taking a left through speeding traffic into the parking lot. “A client who’s afraid you’re going to eat him is the best kind, because he’ll like do anything to keep you from, you know, eating him. One thing, though, and it’s absolutely crucial.” I pointed a finger at him so he knew I was serious. “Don’t threaten. Can you ever imagine me saying, ‘get me a purchase order or I’ll eat you?’ ”
“Um, well, kind of, Mr. Selacchi. To be honest.”
I shook my head. “Not my style, Percy. He’s going to know I might eat him from the moment we shake hands. I’m a predator, Perce, and predators don’t threaten. Prey threatens. And which do you want to be, Percy?”
Percy was silent for a little while, then he mumbled something so quietly I couldn’t hear him. “What’s that, Perce? I couldn’t hear you.”
“Predator,” he mumbled.
“I still couldn’t hear you, Percy!”
“Predator!” he said, just a little louder than normal.
“That’s how food talks, Percy!” I shouted, so loud the rear-view mirror shook. “If you want to be a predator, Percy, let me hear you roar like one!”
“Predator!” he squealed, as loud as he could.
I nodded admiringly. “That’s the fucking spirit, Perce!” I laughed. “OK, school’s out, let’s go sell some sharks. I’ll let you lead the conversation, but if it comes to eating anybody I’ll take care of it.” My stomach growled. “When it comes to eating anybody, right? Now, what are you going to be?”
“Predator!” he squealed again.
“Totally fucking adorable,” I said, pinching his cheek. “You’re so cute, I could just eat you up. Let’s go.”
Let me clarify a few things some people find confusing. When most people first hear that I’m a human-shark hybrid, they immediately assume I’m speaking metaphorically.
“I’m part shark,” I say.
“Yeah, you’re a killer!” they say, and clap me on the shoulder, viz., thinking that I’m speaking metaphorically. Then I clarify that I’m literally part shark, which I do by biting off their hand. “Aagh!” they say, or words to that effect.
FROG IS BEHIND U reached the enchanted circle of the magic dozen!
Or was named a winner. The very first LOLCAT I ever attempted.
Given that I did several more thereafter, I guess I peaked early.
In other news, new human-shark hybrid story coming soon.
[inspired by the unknown searcher who came to my site from the Google query, "human-shark hybrid walking the earth"]
Episode I: Wal-mart doesn’t understand me
I needed some AA batteries for my radar detector. I could go to CostCo or Home Depot if I wanted a package of fifty, but I didn’t want a package of fifty, so I went to Wal-mart. Also, Wal-mart’s parking lot was a right turn from my office, which meant I wouldn’t have to wait for a traffic light. I have to keep moving or I get short of breath.
“Welcome to Wal-mart. Can I help you find anything today?” It was this guy my dad’s age or older, just inside the door, wearing a little apron. He was polite and seemed harmless, but I was feeling a little peckish, so I ate him. That caused a bit of a ruckus. People screamed and ran away, which is really stupid because it totally sets off my pursuit reflexes. I would have chased them down and eaten them, too, but I remembered what I had come in for. AA batteries, for my radar detector. I’m a human-shark hybrid, but that doesn’t mean I have to act like a shark all the time. I have some self-control. Plus I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.
Over at DeepGenre, David Louis Edelman muses thoughtfully on whether hard science fiction is itself at risk because our current times are already so SFnal.
So maybe that’s the problem with science fiction these days. We’re losing market share because we’re losing our capacity for wonderment at the future.
The question of why SF is losing print market share while it’s doing pretty well on TV and film is very interesting - see Jason Stoddard’s thoughts on the subject, for one, or my own, for that matter. I can sympathize with some of David’s sentiments; after all, at the moment, I’m blogging over free wireless in a cheap hotel on a Tablet PC that’s three years old. I’m in a small town in New Jersey (exit 5) for a wedding. The future is here, and it’s completely small-M mundane. Wireless internet is everywhere, but Trent the Uncatchable isn’t a gengineered interplanetary hacker revolutionary –he’s some dude who blogs about playing Farcry.
By the way, The Long Run is absolutely the greatest cyberspace-hacking-revolt-against-the-UN novel you’ve never read.
David’s commenters have hit some of the obvious responses to David’s argument. Is he talking about science or technology? If we lose our wonderment at science and technology, does that mean we can’t still write compelling commercial fiction about human interactions? However, David’s post sent me on an interesting chain of thought.
I think that it’s relatively rare in fiction to come across characters who spend any amount of time reading, in any genre whatsoever. Entertainments about people consuming entertainment being somewhat difficult to make entertaining, as it were. It’s really unusual in SF&F to find characters absorbing entertainment, though, because SF&F protagonists are uniformly heroic. With very few exceptions, SF&F heroes are unique, or uniquely important, in the scope of world. They’re the fulcrum of what’s happening not just in the story, but in the whole world. Let’s look at the last ten Hugo-winning, novels, for instance.
2006, Spin, Robert Charles Wilson. Main character is intimately connected with people who are running much of the world, does things that almost nobody else does.
2005, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susannah Clarke. Main characters are the only wizards in the world.
2004, Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold. Main character is selected by gods as demon-removal agent.
2003, Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer. Haven’t read it. According to the Pub Weekly summary on Amazon, it’s about a Neanderthal physicist who crosses between timelines and…. nuff said.
2002, American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Protagonist buddies up with Odin for refighting of the war of the Gods. Simple little slice-of-life story, in other words.
2001, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling. Through luck, accidents of history and heredity, and a knack for being in the right place at the right time, main character is the main bulwark against the triumph of evil in the world. Nonetheless, a fair commercial success. 
2000, A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge. First trade mission to newly-discovered alien civilization uncovers solutions to the technical problems that have stagnated civilization in the galaxy for centuries. [Vinge is one of the great hard-SF authors like Reynolds and Stross whose works pose particularly formidable learning curves to people who don't read a whole lot of science and SF].
1999, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis. A time travel agent get mucked up in paradox-avoidance in the middle of a routine ancient-building-parts retrieval mission. So far, the least extraordinary protagonist in this list, but still - he’s a time-travel agent spending a lot of time avoiding world-ending paradox. Also, the only comedy, and gut-bustingly funny [possibly even funnier, though, is its inspiration, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men and a Boat]. Is this the only Hugo-winning comedy ever? Topic for another post.
1998, Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman. Haven’t read it, again going from the summaries on Amazon, the protagonists save the solar system from… never mind. Heroes again.
1997, Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson. In the liberal’s answer to Moon is a Harsh Mistress, centuries-old Nobel-winning scientists synthesize new forms of government for the terraformed colony on Mars. Movers and shakers
1996, Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson. OK, the main character is basically a really, really good engineer, who does a little moonlighting for an important client. But the project winds up altering the political fabric of China and nearly, as a by-product, destroys the e-commerce infrastructure of the entire world.
SF&F novels embrace great and global themes. Some SF writers destroy the world in every single book - I’m thinking of Jack McDevitt and Stephen Baxter, right off the top of my head. The greatest SF novels also are moving portraits of human beings, as well; Wilson’s Spin may be the finest combination of character-driven story and hard SF I’ve ever read, and I’m a huge Kim Stanley Robinson fan.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with embracing great themes. War and Peace is about not just the defeat of Napolean, but the very nature of history itself. I think, though, that the dominance of truly heroic themes says something about SF and its traditional markets.
Going through the list of the last ten Pulitzer Prize winners (right here), I don’t see a single story that concerns global cataclysm, or characters who change nations. Not one. The Road shows characters in reaction to apocalypse. The Hours is an interesting case, since one of the characters is one of the century’s greatest novelists, and it’s a rare case of a novel in which the nature of fiction itself is important. The heroes of these stories are heroes only in an intimate, personal sense.
It’s not that non-SF books don’t destroy the world, or the country; Robert Ludlum risked the republic in every book he wrote. Thriller writers blow things up all the time, and their heroes always prevent worse from occurring. The difference is that the world of mainstream fiction does not value the huge drama as highly as does the world of SF. I think that the preoccupation with the larger scale may be the hallmark of genre fiction.
Ian McDonald’s River of Gods is a beautiful, passionate exploration of a future India that turns into a novel in which AI’s force zero-point physics to provide them a way off the planet. Was I the only one who found that conclusion frustrating and disappointing? Not because of its lack of resolution (which I’m OK with) but because a sensitive novel of people and cultures suddenly turned into one of physics?
Peter Watts’ Blindsight does more than any other SF novel I’ve read to explore the different consciousnesses of altered or impaired human brains - but does it in the context of an alien first contact. I’m tempted to compare it to The Corrections, a novel which probably goes further to explore the impact of Parkinson’s on consciousness than any other, but in the context of its impact on the self and on a family around one of its victims.
This contrast has to be important. The mainstream of fiction is blowing up families, and science fiction is blowing up the world. I think the principle holds out when we look at some of the more obvious SFnal works to gain mainstream acceptance, like Infinite Jest. Despite all its outrageous near-future satire, the real appeal of Infinite Jest lies in the touching dysfunctions of the Incandenza family and the pathos of Don Gately’s struggle to stay straight. And the fact that David Foster Wallace totally ownz0rs the English language, of course.
Interestingly enough, one of the major exceptions I would highlight is Infoquake, by one David Louis Edelson. Infoquake concerns the experiences of a young wizard brilliant military strategist madman entrepreneur who takes over the world starts a new company so he can take over the world make some money using alien technology skills he learned apprenticed to a mad genius his father. In order to succeed, he has to master alien technology a deadly martial art based on wheat germ marketing. And yet, there’s a compelling story and characters we can care about.
Maybe we’re trying to do too much.
In honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, if a little late…
The Right Word
By Skott Klebe
I am the king of timing.
Take this morning, for instance. Zexic, Inc.’s annual shareholders’ meeting, about two hundred people in a dark auditorium listening to the careful whitewashing of a mediocre quarter. You remember when the CEO, Craig what’s-his-name, Blank, was saying, “…we continue to reap great benefits from leveraging our unique technology…”, blah di fucking blah. I know, you don’t remember it, because who can ever remember that kind of crap?
But suppose he’d said, “…we continue to reap great benefits from leveraging alien technology.” You’d remember that, wouldn’t you? Suppose he hadn’t even noticed he’d said that? Suppose that every time he used the word “technology,” he’d kept on saying “alien technology,” up to the moment when Zexic, Inc.’s board chairman dragged him off the stage and kicked him to death?
You’d remember that, wouldn’t you?
That was one approach I considered, believe me. Would have had much of the desired effect, plus giving me the opportunity to laugh my ass off. Which I would also have enjoyed. I mean, imagine it: “Excuse me sir, is this your ass?” “Thanks, I must have dropped it while I was laughing so hard!”
And I could have pulled it off, mind you, but it was too early in the presentation, and too strange. It’s not like I was going to follow Craig Blank around for the rest of his life, making him say ‘alien’ all the time, right? The minute I’m out of the room, Craig’s all normal again, probably trying to figure out what happened. I can’t change what he thinks, only what he says.
Instead, I chose a more, uh, minimalist approach. I waited for the CFO’s speech, and then, every time he mentioned a financial result or projection, or any other time I sensed the opportunity, I simply made him add the word “not.” You do remember that, don’t you?
CFO: as expected, Zexic’s Northeast new-customer sales did…
ME: …NOT…
CFO: …not meet forecasts. Zexic fared similarly in Southeast, …
ME: …NOT…
CFO: …not succeeding against the aggressive targets set by comparison to the prior year. On the other side of the ledger, cost-control measures were…
ME: …NOT…
CFO: …not successful, so we did…
ME: …NOT…
CFO: … not achieve our goal of four percent reduction in G&A. In the end….
You get the picture. Timing, I tell you, is everything.
You know how it turned out, of course — Craig Blank chases the CFO off the stage, takes over the presentation, then proceeds to muff the very same details as his loyal CFO? I couldn’t have planned that. Priceless. Well, actually, not priceless. Zexic plummeted from 54¾ to 12½ in about an hour. I covered my short sale at 18, then when it got to 13 I bought again, because at that price they were probably undervalued. So I’ll collect twice on that one. Quit drooling, junior, it’s not the time for you to call your trader just yet. Put down your phone and listen.
So just stipulate that I have fabulous timing, OK? That, and I can also make anyone, anyone at all, say exactly one word whenever I want.
ME: …RUTABAGA…
“Rutabaga.”
See? You weren’t planning to say the word ‘rutabaga,’ were you? You can’t stop me, either, even when you’re expecting it.
ME: …RUTABAGA…
“Rutabaga.”
See? No, sit down, damn it, I’m not done with you yet. I’m telling you this for a reason, and you are, by God, going to hear me out. I don’t walk around telling everyone that I manipulate shareholder meetings of public companies for personal gain, and I wouldn’t be telling you now without a damn good reason.
I’ve told you I’ve got a couple of things going for me, and there’s one more: besides this freakish little power, and fucking awesome timing, I’m also a pretty good listener. So when the maitre d’ put me at that table right next to yours, and I could see two things: the back of your head, and your friend Rita’s face. And a nice face that was, maybe not Hollywood beautiful but pretty, and intelligent, plus the added bonus that she never once took her eyes off you the whole time you were eating. I could also overhear what you both were saying, and, as I said, I’m a damn good listener.
So what did I hear? I heard the things you said, all about ROI and zeta and beta and all that crap that you legitimate investors think is so important. I heard all the things Rita said, which were all about how amazing you are, and how great you are, and how right you are about everything, except when she corrected you on that paragraph in the 10Q, which, by the way, you obviously didn’t read before you came here, schmuck. And you slapped her down, said it wasn’t relevant, said you thought she was misreading it, la di fucking da. Made her feel like dirt. And you’re like what, twenty-six? You’re not married, you’re probably working forty thousand hours a week. You have no life but money. Listen to me, you arrogant little shit. You know what you are?
ME: …dork…
“Dork.”
Exactly. I thought about fixing it for you, making you seem a little more friendly. I thought about giving you that one right word, here and there, to make everything all right. Maybe I make you a little more affectionate, and I continue to help you out here and there; you don’t know why it’s happening, but you find you and Rita are liking each other just a little bit more, until maybe you get to be a little bit more than friends.
Might be more than you deserve, but it seems like it would make Rita happy. At least for a while. But I know where that would have put you, not knowing where the words were coming from, not knowing why you were saying them: in the end, you wouldn’t trust yourself, and in particular you wouldn’t trust yourself around Rita, so you’d fuck it up. And rightly so. That’s why I don’t indulge in that kind of crap any more.
Listen, man, I’ve got one word for you. Trust, man, it’s all about trust. That’s why I’m leveling with you here, why I’m telling you to clean up your shit instead of doing it for you. Trust.
Me, I’m done with trust. Can’t hack it. I keep thinking, what if I’m not the only one of me around? Suppose that there are people out there who can do two words? Or three at a time?
God, what I could do with three words. I’d be the fucking President of the U.S. of A., right now. And I do mean the fucking president, know what I mean?
But you, man, you have a chance. Forget this zeta, beta crap. Buy, sell, short, long, put, call, oh, my fucking God, what terrible words. Get some new ones.
ME: …TRUST…
“Trust.”
ME: …HOPE…
“Hope.”
ME: …LOVE…
“Love.”
Hey, man, those are some great words! Give ‘em a shot, why don’t you? Before it’s too late.
Look, she’s coming back. The rest is up to you — we never had this little chat, right?
