Tuesday, October 02, 2007

A complete list of the Kings of Israel

Today I received a poignant crise de foie from my most loyal blog fan. OK, I know that should be cri de coeur, but in his case a crise de foie (crisis of the liver) is much more likely. So, I wish to apologise to him, and to my other fan, for my recent silence. It has been occasioned by my total preoccupation with finishing The Book and coping with the terrible moodshifts that accompany it, moods which veer from the merely anxious to the deeply desperate.
So, to make up for my silence, here is a complete list of the Kings of Israel. Well, not really, but a friend of mine, who was at a religious-foundation university doing chemistry, but where theology was a compulsory subject, answered his first-year theology examination paper by writing "I have no idea how to answer these questions, but here is a list of the Kings of Israel." The examiners failed him, just as their imagination failed them. Today, he is a very rich plumber.
My forlorn fan is suffering from a boss who delights in sending out deeply meaningless memos designed to "motivate" the workforce. These memos consist of ready-made phrases which substitute admirably for thought, and give the impression of a man who has raised diarrhea to an artform. Here is a sample:
We recognize the incredible market development efforts going on all over the world, and we committed to taking the necessary steps to globalize our brand, product, and channel development efforts to improve information sharing, benefit from common platforms, and accelerate growth. We realized the importance of sound processes to better attack the market opportunity and to better link market needs to production planning, and we committed to develop a more robust, more multi-functional product development process and to utilize our newly-launched planning process to enhance product innovation and customer service.
Personally, I would rather read a list of the Kings of Israel.

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