1. Sit.

2. Check your BlackBerry, but never when someone superior to you in the pecking order is speaking.

3. Draw on the pad provided on the corporation for your take-away.

4. Go to the bathroom, but never while someone on a higher branch of the corporate tree is tossing apples down from his or her great altitude.

5. Eat and Drink. Food will be provided at certain times, and coffee, cookies and berries at other times. Do not eat throughout the day. This will make you feel sick by 2 PM. And watch out for too much coffee, which can produce a variety of bad behaviors over the course of an entire 8-hour session, depredations ranging from overly-aggressive posturing to psychotic need to get out of the room and use the facilities to an extent that is inappropriate and noticeable.

6. Present findings. At some point, presumably, you will have to provide a reason for those in the room explaining why you are there. If you are senior enough, no such rationale is necessary, of course, but for many this will mean taking the floor for a time. So always go into these things with a small agenda for yourself and make sure it gets played out, even if it’s not germane or useful to the rest of the gathering.

7. Feign interest. Options include: nodding, assiduous and ostentatious note-taking, occasional exclamations and eye contact with others.

8. Avoid sleep. This is more difficult than it looks for some of us afflicted with meeting narcolepsy. Solutions include: a sharp pencil in the palm (if overdone, can lead to blood poisoning, which is certainly not sleep but should probably be avoided), the drinking of beverages both hot and cold, the acquiring of foodstuffs and/or implements, strolling around thoughtfully, leaving the room while glaring at one’s BlackBerry to simulate crisis mode, even, when all else fails, light dozing with one’s eyes open, a skill that is mastered only by those with long tenure in the realms of gray.

9. Entertaining use of wireless communication. Many is the long meeting these days that is lightened by continuous passing of digital “notes” to guys in the room as frizzed out and bored as you are. Dangers abound, however. Particularly to be avoided is joke-related sniggering while deplorable financial performance is being discussed by the CFO.

10. Hobnobbing. During breaks, you may have the opportunity to rub shoulders with guys you rarely see outside of these things. Don’t forget to do so. These interchanges may in fact be the actual purpose of the meeting. All day-long sessions have a subcutaneous reason for being — team-building and camaraderie. So laugh and scratch with the boys and girls. You may make a friend. And you know what those are worth these days.

11. Do breathing and stretching exercises. This may include extending your foot to touch that of your neighbor, but only if she is very cute and at least on the same pay and grade level that you are.

12. Collect ALL your “notes,” that is, sketches, rude graffiti, inelegant detritus, etc. NEVER leave your space festooned with evidence of what you were actually doing during the time allotted. I’ve seen quite a few people wrecked after leaving behind a scrap of paper featuring a hilarious and derisive a doodle of the chairman, complete with horns and drooling fangs. People get childish after a while, even at such serious and essential events. Leave no evidence of your inner child behind.

NEW YORK, April 29, 2008: Observers of the business scene were aghast today, when it appeared there was in fact no breaking news to fill the pipeline. “There’s news,” said one analyst who declined to be named because he was unauthorized to speak by his senior management, which is now considered an adequate source by most of the print media. “But it’s not really breaking. It may be doing other things. But breaking? No.”

A quick scan of the headlines revealed the unique situation. Stories covered as if they were breaking by a variety of media outlets included:

• Foreclosures rocketing up more than 100%;
• American Airlines losing millions of dollars a day;
• Mars buying Wrigley for $23 billion;
• Fed expected to lower rates again;
• Oil down a bit on easing of supply;

“Each of these events, while interesting, cannot really be classified as ‘breaking news’ per se,” said P. Spagnold Verbalot, the media pundit best known for being a media pundit. “Take the news on foreclosures, for instance,” he continued. “That’s really not breaking. It’s sort of seeping out and collecting in a gooey mass around our feet. And American Airlines (AMR)? It’s been losing money just about every day for a long time. The fact that somebody estimated the loss may be news of some sort, but not breaking news, possibly cracking, or rumbling, but breaking, I think not.”

Similarly, analysts analyzing the paucity of analyzable material opined that while Mars purchasing Wrigley (WWY) is in fact news, it was reported yesterday, when it actually “broke,” making today’s coverage simply that — coverage of information previously noted, with some augmentation of data to fill up space that would, in happier times, be dedicated to advertising. The same could be said for the rest of today’s reported news both in the political, financial and lifestyle arenas, where much was written about, but little enjoyed genuine breakage.

“We’re hoping for a better day tomorrow,” said a spokesman for the American Society of Journalists Exhausted by the Incessant Need to Fabricate Breaking Stories (ASJEINFBS), “but it’s difficult to predict when anything is going to break again. We’re hopeful, though. And pretty good at doing it the other way.”

Good morning. Happy Monday.

Okay, enough with the niceties. We begin our week with a tiny bit of paranoia offered by G of San Diego, who was trolling back in old Bing Blogs (get a life, dude!) and found something additional in what we might learn from the current crisis (as I saw it last August, when things were so much merrier, and we weren’t all sitting around waiting for the final quarter-point cut from BenCo).

It has to do with gas prices. This past weekend, I was in the Bay Area near San Francisco, and Regular was going for around $4.00 a gallon. I saw Premium for as high as $4.29.  Amazing sight to somebody who once used to get Merit for 23-cents a gallon — and I’m young, I tell you. Young!

As always, the gas is higher in affluent areas, which might make a person cynical if they didn’t believe in the fairness and probity of fuel companies and the Feds who oversee their evergreen efforts. They tell me that gas prices are still low in Texas, so that’s something.

At least, one would hope, you get your $4.29-worth when you sidle up to the fuel dispenser.  But this note from G  suggests otherwise. I don’t know about the accuracy and fairness of his or her research (there is no discernible gender to the letter G), but it seems worth passing along…

“The Gasoline Octane and how they are ripping off consumers per-gallon, and they can’t even see it happening to them,” G writes, searching for a subject and verb. He continues…

“As a consumer you should be aware of the following when purchasing a “Octane price” of gasoline in San Diego, CA.

Note
92- $4.12 /gallon
87- $4.09/gallon
84- $3.50/gallon

However, after filling three test gas bottles with different octanes of gasoline - 92, 89 and 84 – and after testing each octane with a octane tester, we found that most of the octanes of each gasoline were marked with the wrong octane of the gasoline, [which] was found to only to have a 87 Octane reading gasoline at some gas stations.

Most of these readings were tested more than three times…

What we have found… we paid $4.12 for something that was only worth the price of 84 octane fuel, which should of been only $3.50. In truth it showed a loss of 62 cent per gallon. As for the loss of a 20 gallon fill up, I lost a whopping $12.40.

Now I am thinking of hiring some consumer affairs attorneys to file a lawsuit on three gasoline companies for my losses since the the gas crisis started. Any Ideas of any attorneys that want to go up against three major gasoline companies?

I am happy to say that I know no such attorneys. I am, however, interested in the topic as a consumer.

Is this an urban legend? Could some small part of it be true? Is it a local gas-station issue, or something being foisted upon us as a gigantic corporate trend? Or is little G giving the big G gas companies a bum rap?

Anybody out there have a clue? If so, pump it up the pipeline, will ya?

We’re all drinking a lot less for business reasons now, because… well, I don’t really know why. We just are. You go to lunch and a proud phalanx of sparkling water bottles festoons the room, and everybody is munching on salads like giraffes. This is sad for two reasons. First, sobriety is not a congenial condition in which to do serious business, and second, this leaves far more drinking to be done on personal time. As far as I’m concerned, this is ass-backwards. There are solid reasons why the majority of imbibing should be done on company time.

Here, in my view, are the excellent functions alcohol provides within a business context:

1. Grease the wheels: It is a well-known fact that growth rates have plummeted since we all stopped drinking at meals, particularly breakfast and lunch. In the 1980s, many a fine deal was hammered out while we were.
2. Builds friendships that last a lifetime: How many of us are really interested in the stuff that our peers are involved in? My pal builds boats. Do I care about boats? I assure you I don’t. I, on the other hand, collect ancient guitars that once sold in Montgomery-Ward for $2.99. Does he have the slightest interest in that? But put us together with a couple of beers, three or four scotches and a few after dinner drinks and I assure you we love each other, and have for almost 20 years now.
3. Makes golf possible: Think of what that stupid game would be like if we didn’t have booze before, during and after it?
4. Meeting facilitator: Okay, you don’t need a couple of stiff ones to survive a two-hour meeting with PowerPoint. But these all-day things they put us through a couple of times a year at least, or the annual squeeze-fest with 300 senior managers in Boca? Without booze? You sit in those things and the martini in your mind coalesces at about 10 AM and stays there all day, a beacon of hope amid the gloom and forced collegiality.
5. All-purpose topic of conversation: The tedious things that business people talk about! Lord! Interest rates! GAAP. Monetizing prospective revenue streams! Phooey! But when the conversation moves around to wine? Or single malt scotches? Or what booze goes well with mongoosse? Everybody’s an expert in one way or another, and even those who are not can quietly watch the blowhards blow while tending to an aggressive cab with a big nose and huge shoulders.
6. Anesthetic: As we get on in years, or engage in sports no human was ever meant to pursue, our bodies begin to attack us. Shoulders ache from improper employment of a 9-iron. Elbows throb from repetitive tennis activity. Me, I’ve been wracked with some kind of back pain brought on by over-use of my mouse. You could take percodan and blow up like the Hindenburg, like Jerry Lewis did, or blow your mind on other crazy substances now popular in Los Angeles, but a warm glass of gin never met an ailment it couldn’t soothe. A few weeks ago, a small flagon of warm port cured my flu. I report that fact now in hopes it will be picked up by medical authorities and pursued with responsible vigor.
7. Sleeping potion: Right after that, I fell asleep, by the way. True, those who use booze for this purpose are likely to awaken at 3 AM when its effects wear off. This is different than the usual waking at 3 AM, which I do every night anyway. In the latter case, it’s harder to fall back asleep.
8. Excuse: You can’t do it too often, of course. You get a reputation for yourself that can make people doubt your stamina and probity. Unless, of course, it’s a recourse shared by your entire corporate culture. Which is probably why I miss all the guys I came up with at Westinghouse.

Hi, guys! Remember the good old days? On second thought, I bet you don’t!

As any reader of this space may be able to tell by now, I’m a big fan of bailouts. Some believe that the markets should go through the pain of what they have wrought on themselves in order to come out the other side cleaner, stronger, faster. Not me. If there’s an easy way out, I’m for it.

I liked it years ago, when they bailed out Chrysler. And when the S&Ls needed help? That was a terrific one, wasn’t it? Countrywide (CFC)? Same deal! Why not? And when BenCo moved to… I’m not sure “help” is the right word… whatever they did to Bear Stearns (BSC), I was all for it, too.

Coming up, if and when Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) sink to their pretty knees under the weight of all those loan guarantees, I’ll be right there to support the first trillion dollar bailout ever! A new record — until the next one.

The tsunami of assistance being offered to institutions large and small is always explicated in the same terms: This is the way that the larger eco-system can make sure that smaller fry aren’t destroyed when the big fish get caught in the net of destruction. By helping the large, we are protecting the small. Right. I get that.

Destruction is never the best option, even if comfortable and sometimes nasty people prescribe it for the good of the system. If stuff can be saved with money, well, that’s what money is for, I think. This is possibly why, when I’m personally depressed, I always help my emotional infrastructure with the expenditure of disposable income. This in turn improves the economy and creates the need for new mercantile establishments, like the Container Store, to contain my effluvia. Money may not be able to buy happiness permanently, but as a short term solution to all kinds of problems it really can’t be beat.

This emphasis on top-down help, however, does have its limits if you look at it hard enough. Why are the big always propped up when the small are allowed to get flushed into the drink? Those who raise such questions are often accused of naivete, which is to be distinguished from the outright stupidity that smart people seem to have suffered while creating our current debacle. The risk managers, hedge fund moguls, debt-mongers and analysts may have been the idiots who got us into this. But they don’t stop giving advice, and they’re not naive enough to think that helping little folks can do anything to protect their packages.

This is why it’s refreshing to see someone who has some success in the financial arena articulate what to many might seem a simple, naive and hopelessly humanistic idea. Enter George Soros, cited in the May 15 edition of the New York Review of Books.  Here’s what the always opinionated and controversial Mr. Soros had to say when Ms. Woodruff asked him how long the housing crisis was going to last:

“Well, it depends on when the authorities wake up, because you need to reduce the number of foreclosures. You need to keep as many people as possible in their houses so that they don’t come onto the market. You need to arrest the decline in house prices, but you also need to prevent human suffering and social disruption because it’s going to be very, very severe. Certain communities are already hurting and it’s going to get a lot worse. So action will have to be taken, but I don’t think it’s going to happen during this administration.”

Wow. Preventing suffering. Keeping people in their homes. Trying to work from the bottom up to save the system from the mistakes of its proprietors?

Nah. Not this gang.

Let’s just bail out another big loser, shall we?

Have you ever noticed that the rudest people are often the most touchy about any slight to THEM?

This is an executive trait, of course. People who feel particularly comfortable yelling at others, but whose feelings are incredibly sensitive to any kind of slight. I once knew a guy who routinely screamed his head off at the slightest provocation. The entire corporation tiptoed around his temper. One day one of his lieutenants flew into Chicago from Denver for a meeting and was greeted with a faceful of noise from the big cheese.

Tired, jet-lagged, upset at being gored so early in his visit and without even the faux-polite preamble often afforded visiting dignitaries, the sub-executive exploded at the boss. The content of his diatribe is unimportant. He just blew a gasket, got red in the face, and expelled fumes at his vast and powerful superior. Then he left and went back to his visiting office, fully expecting to be decapitated.

He was not. In fact, he was never punished. For the rest of the day, the CEO was very quiet in his corner space, which was roughly the size of Soldier Field. Every now and then he would call an associate and, in a hurt tone of voice, say, “Barry yelled at me.” When asked what the heck he was talking about, he would simply reaffirm, in a voice as tender as a grass-fed steer, “Barry yelled at me. I brought up the current performance of his division and he completely went off on me. I’m the CEO. And he yelled at me.” Those who received such calls claim there was even a bubble of tears behind the boss’s quiet and injured tone. But that seems impossible. CEOs don’t cry, do they?

I bring all this up in order to relate a brief anecdote that occurred to me personally yesterday evening, one that made me consider this issue in light of my ongoing study of executive malfeasance, obnoxiousness and dementia.

I was at the fish counter of my local supermarket. There was a long line and nobody was being served. The line grew. The fish guy was busy, his back to us, deboning a plank of salmon. Finally, he finished his job, turned to all of us, and began serving each, one by one. As he was about to wrap my order, a woman with wild hair came up beside me, saw what was going on, and screamed at him in a shrill peal that cut through the quiet store like a buzzsaw: “What are you doing? Where is my order!?”

“I was deboning it and now all I have to do is wrap it up,” said the fish guy.

“You’re serving other people!” she yelled, impervious to the curious gazes of all of the “other people” who were now looking at her with amazement and something approaching fear. Madness in others is scary. “You haven’t completed my order and YOU ARE SERVING OTHER PEOPLE! Stop!”

“Okay, okay,” said the pescatorial server. “I’m sorry.”

“I have places to go! I have things to do! I can’t wait here all day!” Interesting, I thought. The fact that she was getting her way wasn’t appeasing her at all. “Serving other people before my order was done!” she continued. I could feel her red face behind me, even though I wasn’t turning to look at her. “I just think that’s SO RUDE! You owe me some kind of APOLOGY!”

“Sorry, lady,” said the fish guy.

We “other people” just looked at each other. Nobody said anything. The woman got her fish and, without a word of thanks, left. An air of calm and relief settled over us.

“Who’s next?” said the guy.

“I believe you were about to wrap that salmon,” I said. “But take your time.”

I woke up yesterday morning and found myself paralyzed. I lay in bed and couldn’t move. I didn’t even know what I was worried about, I was so worried. Eventually, I got myself up, shaved with trembling hands, and made my way to the office. I got to my desk and read the headlines. Then I really couldn’t move.

 A steely hand wrapped its skeletal fingers around my windpipe and would not let go. “Eek,” I said, since it was the only thing that would emerge from my ratcheted esophagus.

All day yesterday I sat here in a cold sweat. Now I figure, what the hey. I can’t be like this forever. Perhaps if I articulate what’s got me so freaky-deaky, it will pass. Or not. Either way, it’ll be better than this emotional and professional rictus.

Here’s my list:

1. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I never really even knew how important Fannie and Freddie were, but their collapse, or even, like, if they got a cold, would possibly force the Federal Government to lose its credit rating. Think about that for a minute. No, on second thought, don’t.
2. The Bank of America: (BOA) Earnings were down. More losses are being reserved against. Deeply disquieting.
3. Other banks. We all saw what happened to Bear Stearns (BS) in two or three days. Once the whispering campaign got started, their goose was cooked. Now every day I hear from the newspapers and the online writers and the bloggers and the guys getting soup across the street and nobody has a single thing to say except, “What’s up with that billion/trillion/gazillion dollar bailout?!” How long before we all make it happen?
4. Saturated fat: Up until recently, I was pretty much saturated with fat. Now I’m less saturated, but I’m not completely unsaturated yet and I get a sense that if I don’t get there soon I may not have much longer to try. I got some ideas from Michael Pollan’s excellent book, In Defense of Food, which basically says we should “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It’s sort of working, except I’m still working out whether vodka can be considered a food. What do you think?
5. Global warming: I don’t worry about it as much as I used to, because I have replaced 20% of my concern in this area with anxiety about Freddie and Fannie. I only have just so much capacity to freak out and then even I run out of resources.
6. Google (GOOG): I feel a little bit better now that their earnings were so impressive. But consider. If Google stops being the outer skin of the balloon, what else do we have to be inflated about? Things that have sort of gone by the wayside as a source of hysteria include: alternative energy sources, recombinant DNA therapy, cloning, robots, nanotech. We all need something to believe in, future-wise. What’s that gonna be?
7. Ben Bernanke: What’s he do for fun? What’s it like to be Ben? When you have a glass of wine at a party and Maria Bartiromo says, “How ya doin’?” do you have to think, “What will the impact be of my statement to Maria here, when all I’m really trying to do is get a smile out of her?”
8. China: Forget all the dubious stuff now under scrutiny from the nation, its army, arms dealers and toothpaste and heparin manufacturers. How about the reaction of the Chinese themselves to people and organizations that express opposition or even mild criticism of their various ventures? Boycotts! Censure! No more business for you! Sure, that’s their right, but a worldwide economic war between China and its allies and everybody else would be something to keep us all up at night.
9. The dollar: I can say no more.
10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac again. The article raises the specter of a trillion dollar buyout, which might drive the credit rating of our nation itself down a notch or even two. The pundits in the posting do say that such a thing is unlikely. But if it’s so unlikely, why mention it? Why scare everybody? When one knows the power of even the slightest negative wind to move markets and crash enormous battleships of enterprise? Why bring it up? Why put a headline on it? Why publish it at the top of the page?

You know what? When bad stuff happens, let me know. Until then, I’m going to try to remember some things: It’s spring. We’re alive. And bonds are still doing okay. I think.

Just a short note today because I’m a little worried about myself. I wonder if you guys out there can figure out this phalanx of symptoms:

• Overall tightness in my neck and upper back;
• Achy elbows, particularly my right one;
• Pain that radiates from my elbows up my arm and downward into my forearms;
• Pain increases the moment I try to push a mouse around;
• Pain begins when I start working my thumbs on my BlackBerry.

The horrifying thought has occurred to me that I have some computer and BlackBerry-related ailment that will cut down on my ability to spew out words and electronic messages without discomfort.

Have I worn out the nerves that run from my neck into my arms? Is this all in my head? What if a person becomes incapacitated not by a work-related accident or a vehicular incident, but is wrecked by the continuous on-the-job usage of muscles and nerves that were never intended to be utilized with the frequency and intensity to which we put them? Do these symptoms ring a bell with any of you?

Is there a doctor in the house? And… on you are my plan?

This is just a note of condolence to Jeff Immelt. I have no comment or thought on the business difficulties being faced by General Electric right now, beyond to say that it’s a tough market, that everybody is in it, that nobody is feeling very good right now, and that I wish them long life and good future health as a shareholder.

Could they be doing something better? Maybe so and maybe not. There are certainly any number of brilliant, sagacious, perspicacious and audacious financial journalists sitting on their comfy fannies right now, pounding away on the poor multinational conglomerate, acute observers of the scene who are willing to offer their gaseous emissions on that subject, critics in the shadow of whose acumen I tremble.  So I’m going to let that be.

What I can tell you is how much tougher it makes it, when a company is in difficult circumstances, for a high-profile showboat former CEO to wade in and add to their troubles. You all know the story so far. GE (GE) fails to deliver its promised numbers, shocks the street, which is already in a state of mouth-breathing frenzy right now, shakes the foundations of global capitalism to the rafters, becomes the poster child for what-is-to-become-of-us thinking. That’s bad.

I can assure you – and I don’t know any of those guys personally over there – that nobody at that corporation was walking along whistling a happy tune as their particular crisis reared up and whacked them upside their organizational head.

Just as the most acute part of the media feeding frenzy was ebbing and the company was starting to get back down its knitting – here comes Jack Welch, the emblem of executive excellence and rigor for decades, a fine leader of that very company for a long, long time, and one of the most visible profiles in American business.

He jumps on the wounded animal’s back and starts hitting it over the head with his own very personal whammy stick. He is sure, he tells a somber gloom-meister on the Company’s proprietary cable network, that such a lapse in credibility and performance will never happen again… and that he would be prepared to take out a gun and shoot his hand-picked successor if it did. Waves of drool explode from the financial press and the news cycle starts again.

Ugh. I can tell you how that feels from the inside. It feels lousy. It feels like a guy you trusted and looked up to just put the last knife in to Caesar’s body. It feels like: Thanks, Brutus.

Was Jack helping GE by doing this? Is there any objective, rational reason that such statement be made as the company is trying to fight its way out of a problem that we are ALL suffering from at this point?

In a word, NO. Jack gets back into the headlines. Jack reminds us all of what a great CEO he was. Jack distances himself from the Company whose hardships he has no desire to be associated with. And in so doing, I think, he makes the final morph from business person to pundit.

Not a winning transformation this time around, is it.

It’s an Ask Bing day today. I admit it’s been a little while since I stepped up to the bar and answered some of the many questions that pour into my digital mailbox every day. There are several reasons for this, I think.

First, a lot is happening every day that needs scrutiny, and Second, most of what’s going on makes me feel somewhat ill equipped to give advice. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s going on half the time anymore. What kind of directional guidance is worth anything in a sandstorm?

That was how I was feeling anyway. Then I dipped into that trove of trouble, anger, humor and resentment that is my e-mail. There I found peace and solace, because you know what? Some things are eternal. GE (GE) may disappoint. Sharper Image may close. But some stuff never ever changes.

There will always be violent, abusive, insulting and infantile people who rise to be our bosses, and people to ask Why?… There will always be young folks trying to break into the life of challenge, misery, sleeplessness and glee that is the full-blown business career, each of them with questions on how to kill their elders and move into their ergonomic chairs… There will always be those who allow their jobs to invade their hearts and souls, Prometheans chained to the rock of their employment, condemned to eat their own entrails (or drown them in vodka) for eternity.

Thank God for such people! They show us an underlying truth of all human life, one that actually makes me feel good in times of raucous change and confusion like these. And here it is: The more things change, the more they remain the same. To which I say: Viva consistency!

Take a look at some other people’s trouble today. You’ll be glad you did.

Several years ago, at a mall in Westchester County, New York, I went to my first Sharper Image store. My memory is kind of hazy on it now. I remember, I think, a gigantic rubber and metal mannequin of The Predator you could purchase for thousands of dollars.

There were many chairs that could essentially perform the same functions for you that a visit to the Emperor Club did for Eliot Spitzer. There were many, many mechanical massage units of varying sizes whose purpose was shrouded in mystery but also seemed vaguely suggestive and alluring in a pleasantly undefined way.

There were personal grooming products – mirrors that enhanced your looks, shavers that went places no shavers had gone before. There were dispensers that served up bottled beverages, and free-standing hammocks, and sound systems of assorted shapes and sizes, and scooters that could transport a toddler-sized James Dean to school on his or her own,and a thousand toys and gizmos that promised entry to the Sharper Image lifestyle.

That’s what every weird objet d’art in the establishment presented: not just a toy, not just an heretofore undreamed-of appliance, but a portal to a shiny universe in which all fortunate consumers one day would live. In the 20^th Century, the Sharper Image granted those who could afford the ride a visit to an imaginary future where life was easy and stylish and sharp.

Well, we’re in the future now. And it looks like this, with retail establishments of great and long standing closing all over the place. These closures represent more than a bunch of mercantile establishments going the way of all flesh. They are part of who we are, and as they go those little pieces of our selves flake away and are washed away in the tide.

It’s no big deal, right? We have other places to go to, and the comfortable world of online retail, which is fast replacing the grocery, department, book, video rental, and music stores where we used to wave to each other on the way to the cash registers.

Hey, pretty soon there won’t even be any cash registers, because there won’t be any cash. Just plastic.And one day no plastic, either, just little debit chips implanted in our index fingers. Wait. You’ll see.

So anyhow, last Saturday I went to a Sharper Image in downtown San Francisco. Everything in the store was on sale, but that was no big deal, really, because there was very little in the store. There was still a chair that probed your sensuous desires, a few high-tech vacuum cleaners, a sad light-saber or two, and some iPod-friendly home entertainment systems that, even at 50% off, were still way overpriced. The entire place seemed lacking in… spunk. Even the Predator was gone. It was just plain goddamned sad, and that’s the truth.

What was perhaps the most melancholy aspect of the situation, I think, was not the paucity of shine, not the tumbleweeds in the aisles, but the realization that all that stuff? The chairs, the grooming products, the robot vacuum cleaners? I didn’t want them anymore. I didn’t want any of this stuff anymore. Why had I ever wanted it?

On the way out of the place I spotted one of those cybernetic dinosaurs that are designed to be a cute, heartwarming pet. It was soft on the outside, and green, and looked like a little friend, for sure. The box said it was designed to respond to a number of verbal commands. I gave it one. It did nothing. I turned it over and saw that its battery compartment was empty. I gently placed the little fellow back down on its display shelf and left, leaving the possibility of a sharper image behind forever.

On the corner was a shoe store. I was pleased to see it wasn’t on the verge of closing. I went inside to see what they could offer, but the cheapest pair of shoes in the place was $400 so I went to get a hot dog in Union Square. That was only five bucks. Pretty good deal, I’d say.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story today that has implications for us all. “U.S. retail sales took a surprising turn upward during March, a promising sign for the economy given the punishment consumers have absorbed,” says the daily chronicle of the American dream, going on to add that “… Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires estimated a 0.1% decrease in overall March retail sales. The actual, 0.2% increase could be seen as bright news, considering many analysts argue the U.S. has gone into recession…” 

What’s interesting to me is not so much that retail sales are better. That may be a passing episode of economic flatus. What’s truly essential to note, I think, is the word surprising.

Consider how many prodigious things the punditry industry and its counterparts in the real world have recently found surprising.

To Alan Schwartz, the head of Bear Stearns (BSC), the sudden collapse of his city-state was surprising. I know some guys who were with him just a couple of days before his house of straw came tumbling down in the idiot wind of the whispering campaign mounted against it. He was upbeat. There’s no reason to believe he was doing anything more or less than any leader under stress: he was defending what he thought was a great company in duress, one that would make it through. Boy, was he surprised.

To all the experts who lathered over Google (GOOG), for good reason, in days just past, it’s stock swoon is pretty surprising. Wow! If we had only known when its upward hockey stick would bend in a different direction. I sure wish I had. I bought that puppy at $700.

And weren’t we all surprised by GE (GE), just the other day? Of course we were. Just as we’ll be equally surprised when sometime soon it turns around does a whole lot better.

Closer to home, wasn’t my adviser at my bank surprised when the Huge Growth Fund he got me into lost me 20% of my money in about six weeks!

Come to think of it, wasn’t everybody pretty surprised by this stagflationary recesso-depression? the banks! The lenders! The real estate brokers! Everybody, I guess, but the financial media that’s paid to scare people, the way weather guys on TV are compensated for turning every rain shower into a tsunami to pump up ratings.

We’re surprised when things are so so bad. We’re equally surprised when out of the blue something slightly good pops up. We’re really good at sacking the quarterback after he’s already on the ground.

I have an idea, then, given this general tendency to be standing around with our thumbs up our noses when it comes to actually prognosticating the future of just about anything.

Let’s not be surprised one way or another. Let’s just presume to know a little bit less. And be a little more hopeful at the same time. That way when good things start happening we’ll a whole lot less surprised and just a little bit more prepared to make the most of an improving situation.

It’s Friday. But then, you know that, unless you’re in Hong Kong, in which case it’s tomorrow, which is Saturday. In either event,  I’m done.

It’s been a pretty lousy week. No, nobody melted down in a dramatic flume of spume, but after a while the drip drip drip of the cruddy business environment kind of gets to you, drains you of the will to laugh, let alone live.

So rather than rail at American Airlines for the wiring in its planes, or poke at Gentle Ben about the bullish Bear (BSC) bailout, or give a huge shout out to the Dalai Lama, or wonder about what’s up with this recesso-deflagstation,  I’ll just say have a good weekend.

May the bluebird of happiness fly up your Blackberry, and silence it for the next couple of days.

I’ll be back on Monday, looking forward with a bright and bushy tail to all the good things the new week has to offer.

What do you suppose that could be? 

Deaths from allergic reactions to the blood thinner heparin have risen to 62, up from 19 a month ago. This news, disturbing to just about everybody, was reported widely yesterday, and did not go unnoticed in the one sector that might find it reason for a bit of grim good cheer. This would be, of course, a newsletter aimed at personal injury attorneys, Personal Injury Lawyer America, a publication from the law firm of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP. This goes to prove, I guess, that there is a silver lining for somebody inside of everybody else’s black cloud.

The active ingredient in heparin is derived from the inside of pig intestines, and is produced mostly in…

You guess where, given the situation as it now stands, with the global supply of this drug now possibly contaminated.

If you guessed China, you win a year’s supply of expired cheese food. Let’s look at where things stand in that regard:

• poisoned toothpaste
• poisoned toys
• poisoned pet food
• purloined movies, music, etc.
• bad air and water
• censorship of the arts and journalism
• Darfur
• Tibet

All that and the Olympics, too. I’ve heard it said recently that we are no longer in the American century, that the next 100 years will in fact belong to China. I suppose that’s good news for somebody. Other than lawyers, I mean.law.

Word comes from Megan in Chicago, one of our most valued and assiduous correspondents, that this humble blog has been blocked by the IT police of her company. Megan writes:

I can tell you one thing that is going the wrong way. Bing’s Blog page has been officially blocked at work with a code of “Social Networking”… Stanley baby – can you pull a few strings and help the numb nuts in IT understand that I need this site in my daily work life? How can I possibly put in a full 10 hours without a spoonful of delicious irony! I’ve explained that this is a very useful site which quite often covers business related topics. I’ve stated my case that while the site is not essential to doing my job, it does help me do my job better. They’ve claimed that they will review and let me know – *sigh*. I’ll miss you sweetheart…

I’ll miss you, too, Megan! It’s all so unfair! A social network? Us? Could that be? Every day we have as serious a discussion of current business-related events as the facts warrant! Sure, a lot of the time we focus on the ridiculous and outrageous, but that’s a direct effect of the times in which we live, right? Just look at the following issues we’ve dealt with in recent months:

• Guys who play golf and bridge while their city-states are flailing, and are then super-compensated upon their departure;
• The collapse of huge banking institutions that stupidly gave loans to people who couldn’t repay them when belts tightened even one teeny notch;
• The most aggressive Fed in living memory, moving dynamically to do who knows what?;
• Utter confusion on the part of experts and pundits of all stripes, and a general sense of incapacity and weirdness from all over;
• The usual insanity pertaining to mergers, acqusitions, divestitures and other organizational hooey in organizations from Apple and AOL to Yahoo and whatever companies that start with the letter Z you can think of;
• Intense activity in the digital arena, including the geometric growth of online retail while brick and mortar stumbled;
• The worst performance by the airlines industry since Howard Hughes attempted to commercialize the Spruce Goose;
• Other (your peeve here).

We’ve covered these terrific business trends and stories just like a responsible information source should, with aplomb, sagacity and no little amount of sang froid. We’ve also looked extensively at your bulls**t jobs and crazy bosses, and even occasionally offered some advice in our Ask Bing sector. And if, in so doing, we have also attracted a witty, savvy, saucy, snazzy, slightly snarky group that get together with some regularity to comment on the general situation? Does that make us a social network worthy of blockage? Well! All I can say is…

Thanks for the promotion, IT dudes! Now come on! Free the blog! Lift the blockade! Let freedom ring!

CNN Money reports that, according to a survey to be released Tuesday, Internet sales of cars, computers and other retail items will increase by 17% this year in spite of the current economic wilt.

“Retail sales online, excluding travel purchases, are set to grow to $204 billion in 2008 from $174.5 billion last year,” the story goes, “fueled by sales of apparel, computers and autos, according to a survey conducted by Internet analysis firm Forrester Research for Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation trade group. That projection is below the 21% increase seen in the prior year, but industry officials attribute it to the maturing of the business, not the sluggish economy.”

There are, I think, two factors at play here. The first is my personal experience with Forrester Research, which has always existed to pump up the jam on all new media, offering quote monkeys, studies and other background in support of the digiteri. Sometimes their studies are right. Sometimes they are wrong. But like all consultancies, they tend to tip generously toward the portion of the mercantile animal that’s offering them the greatest nourishment. So I always take such studies with a grain of salt.

Still, the findings make sense. This year, instead of going to bookstores all the time, I’ve shopped on Amazon (AMZN) more often. When I needed film for a retro-photo project I was contemplating, I went to B&H Photo online. I even got my rugs from some guys on E-Bay (EBAY). Paid 99-cents for a beautiful room rug, plus $160 in shipping. Okay, I know they made their money on the shipping, but still… what a deal! And obviously, there’s always the Apple (AAPL) iTunes store, which has probably eliminated all entertainment stores single-handedly. There used to be a big FYE on the corner near my office. Now it’s gone. I’m sure it will be replaced by either a bank or a super drugstore, the two great ubiquities of contemporary urban life.

We are now entering a zone where it’s quite possible that there will be two parallel realities, as there is in a quantum universe. In the real world, the one where real people move about in actual space and spend physical green money to purchase hard objects they carry home with them, there will be a dead economy, with low growth and high unemployment. In the virtual world, however, things will be terrific, as virtual funds rocket across imaginary counters, ringing fictional cash registers while providing digital goods and services. In the real world, the commercial zones of our cities lie empty except for drugstores, banks and chain coffee shops. In the virtual universe, a cornucopia of colorful opportunities await!

Of course, the time may come when we all run out of even virtual money. Then what will we do, I mean… really?

I thought I would begin the week here by taking a moment of silence for all the good folks at Yahoo (YHOO), now under assault by the great and powerful conquistodor from Redmond (MSFT).  Today Yahoo management found it necessary to combat comments made by Microsoft top pate Steve Ballmer to the effect that the company was in serious trouble and would probably tank in the very near future without the timely rescue now under consideration. This could be seen by some cynics as a blatant attempt to lower the value of the property Mr. Ballmer and team are looking to acquire, but you won’t find any cynics here. Just sympathetic skeptics who have been there and done that.

I personally have been part of a merger/acquisition scenario more times than I care to contemplate. It’s like a flu. You feel it coming on. Then you either get it or you don’t. Unfortunately, much of the time once you get that first tickle in the back of your organizational throat, it’s already too late. You’re going down. First the headache. Then the fever. Then you’re flat on your back for a long, long time, with the possibility, unless you get some appropriate treatment, that you may die. This is particularly true of very young and very old people, just like in a merger scenario where the lowest and highest monkeys on the corporate tree are the most likely to be expunged by either friendly or unfriendly fire.

While you are falling into this particular viral swoon, you’re not at your best, because your mind is taken up with a myriad of nightmares and obsessive thoughts that have nothing to do with the price of digital bananas. Herewith, two brief lists:

What People At Yahoo Are Thinking About

1. The price of their stock as it relates to the value of their enterprise;
2. Where their offices might be if/when a “merger” takes place and their corporate home is destroyed;
3. How lousy the job market is right now;
4. How high their mortgage rates are, suddenly;
5. Who they know at Microsoft they could potentially suck up to when the time is right;
6. What a yutz Steve Ballmer is to say such negative things about a company he is supposedly in love with;
7. How much they would like somebody to come along with a competing offer to shove down Microsoft’s craw;
8. Whether they have enough to retire yet;
9. General miasma of free-floating anxiety attached to unrelated matters, like whether the garage needs weatherstripping;
10. Life is short and then you die.

What People At Yahoo Are NOT Thinking About (At Least As Much As They Probably Should)

1. How to maximize opportunities in a tough advertising market;
2. Long-term innovative projects that could pay off down the road a bit;
3. Creative use of expense accounts to make new friends and influence people;
4. How to compete with Microsoft and others for positioning in the marketplace;
5. Having fun.

In short, I feel for them and you should too, just the way our hearts go out to all the good people at Bear Stearns (BSC) who must now ask JP Morgan 9JPM) dudes for permission every time they want to visit the restroom.

There but for the grace of God, you know. And soon, too, I think. It’s been a little too quiet for a while now, and anybody who’s been around for a while knows exactly what that kind of quiescence means.

It seems incredible, but our diverse, fractious, contentious nation is virtually united on one key issue: The vast majority of us believe this nation is headed in the wrong direction. More than 80 percent, in fact, say so, according to a new poll on the subject from The New York Times and CBS.

This is an amazing level of unanimity – unprecedented, really. We don’t agree on the Iraq war, we don’t agree on race, we don’t agree on executive compensation or whether we’re in a recession, and we don’t agree on whether our property taxes should be raised to support public education.

Now if we could all agree on what the right direction might be, wow… what a concept. It’s hard to see that happening, though. It’s a lot easier to agree on what’s wrong than figure out what’s right, isn’t it? More fun, too.

What do you think, my fellow web-cruisers, blog-runners, misanthropes, pessimistic optimists, conservative progressives, and resentful newshounds? Are we on the wrong track? Are you among the disgruntled 81 percent who see the road signs all pointing to a place called Do Not Enter? On this cold and introspectively rainy Friday in New York, take a moment and  let me know.

Oh, and by the way…What should we be doing instead? Ha! That part’s not so easy, is it?

As we all search for reasons that we’re in this economic mess right now, one obvious solution has evaded notice, I think. Until now.

In this morning’s New York Times, Cheryl Gay Stolberg offers us a possible answer. Up until now, George W. Bush, our first MBA President, a graduate of the august Harvard Business School, not to mention Yale, has been on the sidelines. Obviously, he’s been doing other things, like going on international junkets more than half a dozen times, or locked up in meetings engaging on other important issues, presumably.

“For a man who came into office as the nation’s first M.B.A. president,” Ms. Stolberg writes, “Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch. As the economy eclipses Iraq as the top issue on voters’ minds, even some Republican allies of the president say Mr. Bush is being eclipsed and is in danger of looking out of touch.

“He’s over there arguing about who should get into NATO, and the American people are focused on what’s in their pocketbooks,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan in his second term. “He has talked about the economy, but it is not viewed as being a satisfactory response. Unfortunately, the lasting image is of not knowing of $4-a-gallon gas.”

The idea that the President is out of touch may seem implausible to those who have come to expect Mr. Bush’s traditional level of insight, zeal and impartial sense of balance on key matters of state. And it is true, unfortunately, that Crawford’s favorite resident did recently evince shock at the current price of a gallon of gasoline, much as his father failed to recognize a state-of-the-art supermarket scanner lo those many years ago.

Those who make too much of this kind of thing are missing the point, however. The Bushes, perhaps, are not the best multi-taskers in the world. But when they train their laser focus on something, stuff definitely happens.

Given the way things are going, it just might be time for the President to swing into action, bringing the kind of leadership to this matter for which he has become justly renowned worldwide.

… on the other hand… things are ALL that bad yet, are they? I mean… they could still get worse, right?…

Laissez-faire, Mr. President! That’s the ticket!

Could you lower the interest rates some more? We’d like there to be more money in the system so we can borrow it. Also, the private capital and hedge fund guys could use some easy money, too. How else can they keep on generating wave upon wave of unnecessary, destructive acquisitions and divestitures?

Could you give all of us a break on our existing mortgages, too? Like, if we can’t pay our monthly nut, could you do it for us?

Could you make it easier for us all to get more mortgages after we default on the ones that those mean and stupid bankers gave us a few years back, when they were trying to make a quick buck by fooling us into taking big loans we eventually couldn’t repay?

Could you do something about the dollar, too? Those mean Japanese and Europeans have currencies that are getting more and more expensive against our own. This makes it very difficult to buy their goods and services at the kind of prices to which we had become accustomed. Like, many of us can’t afford two weeks in the south of France anymore. And England is no bargain, either. There must be something you can do.

Could you also see about the price of gasoline? I know you work very closely with Mr. Bush. His family has tremendous contacts in the oil-producing part of the world. Perhaps you could put a word in with him and he could speak to them about easing things up a bit. Pretty soon it’s going to cost nearly $100 to fill up my SUV. That hurts! After all, it only gets 8 miles per gallon. Maybe you could spare a couple of thousand for each of us, so we could turn our cars into hybrids! How about that idea?

Speaking of cars, people are now buying way fewer of them this year, partly due to the fact that car companies have been advertising less because they’re strapped for cash. It’s a vicious circle! They don’t advertise… they don’t sell cars… they make less money… they choke off their marketing and advertising budgets even more… you can see where it’s going. Perhaps if you provided $10,000 to any American who wanted to use it to buy a car? And subsidized the advertising budgets of auto makers at the same time. A key driver of the economy would immediately perk up and thank you bigtime!

Could you at the same time give us all a few thousand dollars to spend at Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and other retailers who are right now having a tough time, too? Helping the big chains that motor our mall-based economy is just as important as helping the big banks you seem so concerned about. How about a $10 trillion bail out for retail?

Mr. Bernanke, you have all the money in the world and apparently the will to wrestle this darn situation of ours to the ground. These are just a few suggestions. I’m sure others could come up with more. You don’t even need to think out of the box. You own the box. Expand it! Dress it up! Make something happen!

It happened again this morning. “Boris Nofziger has invited you to connect on LinkedIn,” said my inbox. Hm, I thought. Boris Nofziger. Who the frig is Boris Nofziger. Perhaps Boris Nofziger is a person who will one day do me some good. Why shouldn’t he be part of the vast community of business associates and former colleagues who are in my LinkedIn network? 

I Googled Boris Nofziger. Nothing of note emerged. So there he sits now, in my LinkedIn inbox, festering.

The thing is? I’m not LinkedIn. Nor am I likely to be. I came close, though.  

At first, as you may recall, I put in my name with a completely bogus resume into the database, just to see what would happen. I believe I put in that I had graduated from the University of Bratislava and was a bicycle salesman. Within five minutes, a huge screen of fellow grads from that remote institution had invited me to join their circle.

Many wrote me in a middle-European language that was unfamiliar to me. That scared me and I changed my info back to something approaching the real thing. Within moments, about a dozen names from my past lives announced themselves. Mike Navatsky, who led a radical group in my college days and was now a periodontist. Melanie Spatz, my co-star in several little theater productions back when.

I was suddenly swept with a powerful desire to be anonymous again and belong to no community that would have me as a member. Having skated close to the brink, I have come to realize two things: I am not in the psycho and demographic for whom the utilization of social networks for social purposes makes sense.

When I was a boy, there were always two parents who wanted to smoke pot with the kids. Some of them wore flowers in their hair, headbands and bell bottoms. We laughed at them. Today, when I occasionally find myself on MySpace or Facebook and see some pudgy boomer trying to look all Emo and cool, I get the same chucklicious shudder. Some things should be out for the old folks over 35. We don’t wear tee shirts that say “I’m With Stupid” anymore either, do we?

Then there are the networks reserved for grownups, the ones with serious business purposes, like LinkedIn, which does a really good job networking people. I have nothing against them. But the idea of using a social network for career purposes also leaves me feeling kind of squishy. Whenever you go to a cocktail party, there are always a couple of needy people who use the gathering to hand out business cards, massage potential contacts, make time.

To me, this violates the essentially hedonistic and frivolous nature of the cocktail party qua cocktail party, whose purpose is to fritter away time while getting pleasantly loaded. I once knew a guy who worked his friends’ kids’ Bar and Bat Mitzvahs to drum up business. Squeezing career benefits out of a social network sort of feels like that to me. I’m sorry if I sound uncongenial in some way. But we don’t use forks to comb our hair, either.

I suppose this means I should erase myself. For some reason, that also seems hard, why that is I have no idea, but I guess it must be done. Now, lest I seem rude to you guys who have been kind enough to think of me, I’d like to issue an apology to all of you who have been languishing in limbo for the last months, your invitations collecting digital dust.

I’m sorry I never answered your invite, James and Ryan and Andrew and yet another James and Jayne and Cheray and Jesse and Bill and Clive and Bernie and Mark and David and Donna and Cheryl and Rob and Karen and Stephen and Peter and Jonathan. I remember all of you from one time or another and would be happy to hear from you at any point in the future, if and when you feel like having a drink or something. I’m sure you know where to find me.

Until then, sayonara. In just a few moments, I’ll be gone from your electronic neural community, never to return. Before I wink out forever like a black hole in the center of this self-sustaining mini-universe, I do have one question…

Boris Nofziger? Who the frig are you, anyhow? And is there anything you can do for me?