The Difficult Meaning of Meaning

One of my students challenged me a couple of weeks ago to tell him what, in all the world, meant something.

This student, a rather intelligent one, ascribes rather heavily to the "speck of dust in the universe" philosophy that in the grand scheme of things, one tiny person in one tiny city on one tiny planet in one tiny galaxy can't possible be a part of anything meaningful. As the Animaniacs put it so eloquently in verse a couple of decades ago, "It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny." Such is the curse of intelligence, I think: if you're as bright as my student (or the Warner Brothers), these are the kinds of questions that plague you, because only with intelligence can you really comprehend just how tiny you are in the grand scheme of things. I imagine that this would be a source of great anxiety for me, as well, if I were that intelligent. Happily, I'm not.

After probing him a bit to learn the source of the question and attempting to get him to answer it for himself, I finally gave my own interpretations of why we matter. Unsurprisingly, he was not convinced. My meaning is not his, nor is it yours.

I'm Just Not Geeky Enough

I am a geek. I've pretty much always been a geek, and I've never really been ashamed of that. I spend an inordinate amount of time with my Playstation. I own Optimus Prime and Blaster transformer toys. There is a barrel of monkeys on my desk at work, nestled amongst my four monitors. My kids have Star Trek, FFA, and Metallica onesies. I can name the pilots and colors of the five Voltron lions (I miss Sven). I have Jim Henson's autograph, and I'm staring at a statue of Kermit the Frog right now. I have a large collection of Alice in Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. I listen to gothic rock. I often say things like, "Why am I still talking while there's science to do."

Yes, I'm a geek... but this weekend, I learned that I'm just not geeky enough. What taught me this? Why... Dragon*Con, of course. (note the asterisk - some people seem to get a little snippy if you leave it out or replace it with a hypen. I'm not sure how you pronounce the asterisk, though...).

Some Things I Learned at the Academy of Management

Worth mentioning: the title above originally was missing the word, "Some," until I realized that would make for a blog post even more ridiculously long than usual.

The Academy of Management, admittedly grandiosely named, is the world's preeminent association for those interested in management and its study. Although the majority of the organization's membership is academics - professors, deans, students, and the like - a healthy chunk of the membership is made up of actual managers. You know, people who run businesses and have management positions in what we laughingly call "the real world." Go figure.

This weekend the Academy had its annual meeting, (or rather, Meeting, as they frame it) and I had the honor of both attending and presenting my paper on authentic leadership (for a bit of the logic behind the paper I presented, check this old post). Here are a few things I learned this weekend, in bullet-point format as you guys seem to like that format...

Feedback and Volunteering in Organizations (with the Muppets)

Maybe if I type up all of these research-oriented thoughts in my head, then I'll be able to assemble them a little more clearly. On the other hand, even if it doesn't help with my research, it might ease my guilt over not blogging lately. So let's kill two birds with one stone. Unless of course you like birds, gentle reader, in which case I will be doing no bird killing today. In that case, we will be... ummm... hitting two... targets?... with one... ummm... you know what? I'm no good with metaphors. Asking me to write a good metaphor is like asking Kenny Chesney to be a decent human being. Wait, that was a decent metaphor, wasn't it? Never mind.

In modern workplaces, whether they be offices, retail stores, schools, small businesses, large firms, or non-profits, the concept of "going above and beyond" is becoming increasingly important. There's research backing that statement up, and plenty of it. Organizations expect their team members and employees to not just do what is explicitly listed on their job descriptions, but also to do other things that benefit the organization, the people who work there, and the customers they serve. Many organizations even manage to work these "things-that-are-not-in-the-job-description" into the job description itself, oddly enough. They do this by including a line at the end of the official list of duties that says something like: "Employee shall also perform other duties beneficial to the company outside those listed here, as determined by management." When I was in the corporate world, I called that "The Auschwitz Clause," because under language like that, the company could direct you to do just about anything, from killing innocent people to selling yourself into slavery to buying Kenny Chesney albums.

Ruth's Chris and the Usual Diversions

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T FIND MY BLOGPOST DRAFT?!? I WAS ALMOST DONE WITH THAT POST! IT WAS BRILLIANT! IT HAD BABY PICTURES AND BANANAS AND PAC-MAN AND... and... seriously, it's lost? Dang it. You mean I have to start writing it all over again? Ugg. That really sucks.

Hey, wasn't Ugg that little purple guy from Q*Bert? I LOVED that arcade game. It apparently made a great babysitter, because my mother would drop little nine-year-old Jim off at the university arcade for an hour or two with just a dollar in his pocket, but that dollar would be more than enough to keep me playing and entertained the whole time I was stuck there. I miss arcades.

The post I began yesterday that somehow got erased was about some of my experiences at Ruth's Chris steakhouse. Don't get me wrong: I'm not the kind of guy who eats a lot at places as fancy as Ruth's Chris - I'm much more likely to be found at your local neighborhood Popeye's. Although I tend to get confused every time I go to Popeye's, now that you mention it. There's a reason for my confusion... a good one, I think. It all started a long time ago, back to even before I was kicking the SLU undergraduates' butts in the local arcade.

Speaking of....

Well, it's good to be back. I don't see why I've been the only one catching hell for not visiting the NeverTown over the last couple of months... where have you been? And more importantly, am I the only one who cleans up around here?? There's dust all over everything! It's kind of cute... a fine layer of NeverDust covers all of the buildings and streets of the NeverTown. I guess I should start cleaning.

The last few months have been ludicrously busy (which has no connection with any rappers - instead, it's the level of 'busy' that comes after 'light busy' and 'ridiculous busy', and leads from there into the plaid zone), with kids, papers, classes, and anniversary preparations. And poop. Lots and lots of poop. But I guess that's tied in with the kids. Seriously, we could solve all of our American energy problems if someone would just invent a line of cars powered by my kids' poop. We could all ride for years oil-free and save the environment... but I hate to think of the smell emerging from the exhaust pipes.

Lo, They Shall Inherit Many Transformers, and a Pinball Table

And so, as those of you who actually know me and are hooked up with me on Facebook already know, it has finally happened. At the stroke of midnight early Friday morning, my wife was taken from me so that a huge needle could be stuck in her spine and her lower belly could be cut open. I hid, along with her head, behind a curtain as she held my hand tightly and I did an impromptu comedy routine to help alleviate our fear. The doctors and nurses laughed quite a bit more than Debby did. And there was this huge lamp in the room that looked just like the planet-destroying laser on the Death Star!

At 12:35am or so, we heard crying. I stayed with my wife until the crying erupted a second time. Then, with her permission, I disengaged from her and moved ten feet to the right to take pictures and see my sons for the first time.

To be honest, it wasn't quite like I expected. The babies weren't awe-inspiringly beautiful, glowing, or even paradigm changing. I did not look upon them and see a different world or a different future. I didn't see them and think that suddenly my personality would be completely different. I didn't even look at them and think they were beautiful; my first thought about appearance was probably something along the lines of, "Wow, they're covered in slime."

The Blogs I'll Never Write

• I will probably never blog about Chick-Fil-A again. Honestly, you only got half of the story about Chick-Fil-A a few months back. There's more to the story... a lot more... both in terms of fascinating culture and trade secrets that they were remarkably free with. But due to corporate professionalism and friendly confidentiality, the rest of the story must sadly remain a secret.
• I will never finish that personal entry I started a few weeks ago. I have part of a blog written about some odd changes in my personality that have taken place over the last year or so... confusing changes wherein I no longer see the glass as half-full or half-empty, but instead I wonder what the glass is made of, or what exactly the liquid is, or I just get distracted and wander off to watch the people go by. I find I have absolutely no expectation, for good or ill, regarding major events in my future. I had no idea if my move to Atlanta would be good or bad, and I didn't wonder about it at all. Same for grad school. I don't even have strong expectations of any kind regarding my impending fatherhood. The future is just... open. I've never been like this. Isn't that curious?
  

Life Is Good

• Sandy Springs (where I live) and Atlanta (where I work) are beautiful in the month of September. Every day is a good 10 degrees cooler than it is back in Louisiana, and clouds are a rarity rather than an omnipresent expectation. For the first month and a half here, at least, it seems like a beautiful place to live.
• The Saints defeated the Vikings in regulation, owning 3 quarters of play and limiting Brett Favre to mediocre statistics. And then the Colts lost....
• At last, my Pandora station is customized sufficiently so that it no longer plays Nickelback.
• I have finally found the opportunity to award my first nickname to a deserving party at Georgia Tech. There is a young lady in one of my classes who, although I've never met in person, is undoubtedly deserving of her new nickname. This is because she has demonstrated in class a remarkable capacity for asking questions related to a complete and utter misinterpretation of simple concepts. For instance, after a teacher says, "Two plus two equals four," she might be expected to reply, "Why do you say that two plus two equals fish?" Thus, her nickname is Fish. I'd be more patient with Fish, I promise, if she wasn't always ignoring the professor and talking to one of her friends.

Some Things I've Learned So Far in the Doctoral Program

• It's shocking how little I know about science, how much I thought I knew about science, and how much bad science is out there. Almost all of my classes have been about how to do good science, and it's been eye-opening. And obvious, in hindsight, but aren't most things?
• Kerry is really smart.
• I remember how in elementary school my teachers would warn me about how much more attention I'd need to pay in junior high school, and how the classes would be a lot harder. Then I got to junior high, and classes weren't really any harder... but I was warned that high school would be insanely difficult. Then high school wasn't a big deal at all... but I was warned that college would be ridiculously difficult. Then college wasn't really all that bad at all... but they all said how rough grad school would be. So far...? The pattern seems to be continuing.
• I'm sure that in a month or two I'll look back at that last bullet point, cackle insanely, and ask for more cheese on my shirt, please. This will get tougher, no doubt.

An Enormously Complicated Topic: Part One

For some reason, I've been thinking an awful lot lately about science and physics.  This is odd for me, as usually the things I think a lot about are related to music, talking puppets, or my wife's expanding belly.  And further, if it's something serious and not one of those things, it's something like leadership and marketing, as you may have noticed in this blog.  But recently my mind has been going off on weird and headache-inducing tangents into the realms of theoretical physics and infinity paradoxes.  Along the way, I've thought my way through something that seems to imply that the universe and everything around us is not really what we think it is.  More likely than not, my conclusions are a direct result of me not sufficiently understanding that which I'm thinking about.  But indulge me.  Maybe it'll be educational for both of us.

I suppose I should predicate this discussion with an admission that I am a Christian.  Some people would likely say that my religious nature makes it impossible for me to rationally discuss science; however, I humbly submit that I am a Christian because of science, not in spite of science. 

Today is Not my Unbirthday...

... which is odd, given the fact that I have three hundred and sixty three more Unbirthdays than I do Birthdays, which in turn makes me much more used to Unbirthdays than I am to Birthdays.  I love celebrating my Unbirthday, and I try to do it as much as possible.  In fact, that celebration often spills out, as I'm constantly learning of other people who share one Unbirthday or another with me.  Perhaps that's why I like Unbirthdays so much as opposed to Birthdays; it's a lot easier to share your Unbirthday.

(And lest you're thinking that my preference for the Unbirthday is driven by some kind of insecurity in my advancing age... well, think that if you want, I don't care, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I can't even remember how old I am half the time, which means (a) it really doesn't matter to me, (b) I'm really old, or (c) both.  I'll leave it to you to pick the correct multiple choice.)

Birthdays really have little true significance besides an anniversary in an arbitrary human calendar system - it's not like some lever gets switched in our bodies that makes us instantly older, wiser, or more wrinkled.  You are as old as you believe you are, I think.  I know several sixty-year-olds who are younger than most thirty-year-olds I've met (here's looking at you, Doc!).  I was wished a happy twenty-sixth birthday at lunch today, after which the well-wisher hoped that she hadn't pegged me as older than I actually was.  Life remains good.

The Princess is in Another Castle

As I type this, I'm watching a close friend die repeatedly in a video game.  Said close friend is playing the part of a rather portly mustachio-ed and overall-ed plumber who remarkably has the ability to jump to obscene heights and float through the air, spit fireballs after eating flowers, and grow to enormous sizes with the ingestion of mushrooms.  There's a beautiful fairy princess in a pretty pink dress who is inexplicably interested in the hairy, rotund plumber, and that's who the plumber is chasing.  Seriously, I had friends in college who had acid trips like this.  So did the Beatles.  When did this become mainstream video-gaming?

Mario serves the purpose of teaching kids about persistence, I guess... if you die again and again and again, the secret to success is just to keep trying. That's good; I like that. Unfortunately, he also teaches kids to be players, and not in a good sense.  Last time I checked, he had two princesses and a seriously hot chick named Pauline in his little black book, simultaneously.

I'm not sure what all these gorgeous ladies see in him, other than his never-ending patience with constantly rescuing them.  And if they didn't have any interest in the portly plumber, maybe that would stop the endless string of abductions from the likes of Donkey Kong, Bowser, Wart, Lord Blek, Cackletta, Fawful, et. al. (and yes, I had to look up most of the names on one of the many, many wikis out there. Scary.)  For some reason all of these villains think that the best way to annoy Mario is to kidnap one of his many girlfriends.  Me, I'd just do it what I call The Ismael Way: find a big pointy stick and whack him with it.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by how they react to a crisis situation.  You'll either see the best or the worst of people in the scariest possible moments.  If the building's on fire, will you help the little old lady out, or push her aside to get to the door (here's looking at you, George Costanza!)?  If your grandmother wants to take a plane trip to Florida and you're a multi-bazillionaire, do you take her yourself or put it off for a decade or so until Oprah agrees to pay for it (here's looking at you, Kenny Chesney!)?  If your friends are in trouble, do you help them out, or do you abandon them?  How do you deal with problems?

Well, in Mario's case, you deal with your problems by either jumping on their heads, or bashing them with a hammer.  Repeatedly.  Which, I admit, is kind of cool in a way, but it's not exactly the best long-term problem solving method (and eventually your hammer or your shoes will break).  And it doesn't help if all of Mario's friends think he's really great because he jumps on things and hits them with hammers: they're just enablers.  

Lots of kids love Mario, but you know, I'm just not sure he's all that great of a role model.  I think I've already discussed his cruelty to animals and his tendency to antagonize innocent apes (checking... yup, I have, right here: http://blog.nevertown.com/2010/04/trapped-in-convention-center-and-bored.html), and I just mentioned his womanizing ways.  There's also the fact that he cheats at every single sport he's ever played.  Want to play baseball with Mario?  He's going to use controlled illegal substances (like mushrooms) to boost his performance.  Want to play tennis with Mario?  Watch out that he doesn't set the ball on fire first.  Want to race him in a go-kart?  Prepare to have him chuck turtle shells at you while you're driving.  Seriously. Turtle shells.

I seem to be that very rare breed of video gamer who enjoys video gaming, but doesn't really care for the big fat Italian fungus addict. Just don't tell my godsons.  They'd probably disown me.  I wonder how my own boys will feel about them?

Which reminds me:  Debby has also vetoed Mario, Luigi, and Donkey Kong as possible kid names.  Maybe I should try Pac-Man?

CTSO's, Children, and Canned Unicorn Meat

Happy Sunday, faithful readers!

This is the longest I've gone without blogging since I started the blog, for which you have my apologies. The life of a freelance-consultant/father-to-be/guy-who's-packing-up-the-house proves busier than expected.  No deep leadership insights at this time for you... I've made little to no progress on my research over the last week.  Instead, I've been spending my time reading up on organizational behavior research techniques, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how much of it I'm already at least familiar with.

Instead, I've got new kid pictures, which is quite an accomplishment considering that the light of day has yet to ever touch my babies-to-be.  But before we get to that... a few words on the National Pork Board.

One of my favorite websites is ThinkGeek.com... because, yes, I'm a geek.  Recently they were served a cease-and-desist letter (my favorite kind!) by the good people at the National Pork Board.  Now, normally I'm behind the Pork people no matter what... after all, they're the group that promotes bacon.  But this time... not so much.  Here's a pic of the ThinkGeek product the Pork People were prepared to sue over:

That's right... unicorn meat.

See, every April Fool's Day, ThinkGeek rolls out a bunch of fake advertisements for joke products that don't actually exist, like an E-Z Bake Oven with USB connectivity, or Spazztroids Caffeinated Breakfast Cereal.  This year they went with unicorn meat, calling it "The New White Meat."  The National Pork Board, seeing their trademark of The Other White Meat in jeopardy, immediately moved for legal action to prevent Thinkgeek from selling... canned unicorn meat.

It's a bit of an embarrassing situation for the plaintiffs (you can read all about it here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/blog/2010/06/officially-our-bestever-cease.html), but the moral of the story is this: we should all just lighten up.

Speaking of lightening up, that's exactly the opposite of what Debby is doing right now.  Instead, she continues to grow her baby-filled girth to mammoth new proportions... which, when you're pregnant with twins, is a Very Good Thing. Recently we got new ultrasound pics of both of them, including one 3-D model of Baby A!  Unfortunately, Baby A wasn't too happy with his picture session, as Baby B kept kicking him in the face. Cutest darn thing you ever virtually saw.

Baby A

Baby B

Sadly, there are not yet names beyond the alphabet for the two boys:  Debby steadfastly refuses my suggestion of "Nathaniel" and "SuperFly" despite near unanimous agreement from our friends and family. Heavy sigh.  We're still taking suggestions (and in case you were going there, she's also vetoed Bill and Ted, Bugs and Daffy, and Voltron and Optimus Prime).

Last week I had the honor of training the Louisiana CTSO state officers in Baton Rouge, and I learned quite a few things from them. I'll close with some life lessons from the conference:

• Leadership is best demonstrated not by certain behaviors, not by certain traits, and not by certain appearances... but rather by the ability to actually get amazing things done.
• I heard one of them listening to a Kenny Chesney tune on their iPods... I resisted the urge to throw the offender out of the training!
• Never underestimate FCCLA.  Those girls (and one guy) are tough competitors.
• The Technology Students of America should add acting to their list of exciting new innovations.  I've never seen so many buy so much, when absolutely nothing was for sale!
• Louisiana DECA continues to amaze me with their propensity for an almost frightening degree of intelligence.  If you haven't heard about these guys yet, you will.  A simply amazing team.
• I'm very disappointed that FBLA, of which I am a former national president, was only able to send less than half of their officer team. Where's the love? But despite that... that was a heck of a balloon tower, wasn't it?
• And, okay, sure, FFA didn't win the CTSO Cup.  But FFA is and always will be My People: in the words of my old National Vice-President, they'll rock your momma's booty somethin' awful.

And speaking of mommas, I saw mine last week for the first time in years. She looked very awkward at the chance meeting and made an excuse to leave as quickly as she could, before I had a chance to strike up any kind of conversation.  She didn't seem to want to talk to me, but despite that, I learned that I apparently have a little half-brother now. Who knew?