Blunt Wit

I thought this an appropriate NEW YEARS POST. Here’s too everyone’s health and happiness in the upcoming year!!!

I might be considered a late bloomer as I did not find alcohol all that appealing until my early twenties. In my teens I think maybe I held myself in too high moral regard. While she cavorted with my friends, I smugly watched them fall under her spell. Or maybe it was sheer indifference. Either way she eventually caught up with me and extracted a painful retribution for my youthful insolence.

Not in my twenties though. Those were the halcyon days when our relationship thrived. I developed a penchant for sultry foreign beers that tickled my tongue and went down smooth. I was a promiscuous little jack-o-nanny. I experimented with luscious reds and soft liqueurs. The kinkiest I ever got was mixing Kahlua and vodka in a fit of frenzy. But I always came back to the warm embrace of beer. In those days we enjoyed each others company in relative moderation.

Then came my thirties and China. Things got a bit out of hand. I suffered abuse and bear wounds that still plague me to this day. I got caught up in the vortex of China’s rush to modernize its wireless infrastructure. Growth in the business was akin to shooting Koi in a barrel (I know that’s Japanese, just testing your oriental knowledge).

The key moment in any business negotiation came down to ‘The Dinner’. After long, tedious negotiations it always distilled into two or three sticking points that ‘the bosses’ had to resolve over a meal. Thus I would sit at these grand banquet tables and engage in a sadist ritual: see who could get the other drunk thus impairing his or her judgment and winning better terms.

The weapon of choice … Laojiu or a clear liquid that makes rot gut whiskey seem like bottled water. I think the old lady doubled as rocket fuel in the budding Chinese Space industry. She smelled of trouble. Older, experienced, with a harsh acidic burn as she went down. You didn’t drink her as much as inhale her. Small glasses. Large thimbles. They seemed harmless at first. But with each ‘ganbei’ or bottoms up, the thimble got heavier, the room swirled faster, and I lost my steadying grip on reality.

Eventually my morning sickness signaled something had gestated in me. I visited the doctor to find my stomach lining had just about been eaten away by her lavish attention. An ulcer just months away from birth. I took medicine to control it. But my job required the dance. So I improvised (but that’s a story for another day). In the end she had her way with me. My stomach has never fully recovered.

I’m now to the point where I can drink a beer or wine or two. If I let myself go to that third, however, I begin to sense that gnawing feeling again. So I live under a kind of a forced peace. A balance restored in the relationship by fiat at last.

How about you? What is your relationship with alcohol?

Yes, car dancing!

or this …

So I’ve driven up to San Fran from waaaay down on the Peninsula like a million times. Some days you zip up there in the veritable blink of an eye. Other times it seems to take days. Predicting the traffic patterns is akin to anticipating a woman’s (or read here significant other’s) behavior: erratic (note: I did not say erotic) on a good day.

So the other day I headed up to one of those high power VC soirees on the Pier by invitation of a friend, the Philmeister. Wouldn’t you know that on this day like some latter day Moses parting the red sea of traffic, I somewhat miraculously sailed through and arrived a full twenty minutes early.

So I parked my car on a side street near some restaurants and apartments and….shhhhhh…tried to ‘borrow’ a loose wifi signal to hook in to the net. Alas, nothing. So I wandered into a super market just as a tall, well-dressed African American male (model type) was completing his purchase. I thought his shoes might crawl off his feet, the alligator skin looked that fresh.

I asked the gruff looking Pakistani cashier if there was a nearby café with wifi –in my best Pashtun. Ok, in truth, maybe I just imagined I was speaking Pashtun. The attractive customer (ok, yes I admit he was handsome) chimed in to suggest a café a few blocks down. I thanked him and hit the road.

I found the café, went in, ordered an iced tea, fired up my connection and hunkered down to get some work done. I had just gotten comfy when out of the corner of my eye I spotted, Mr. GQ walking in. He ordered his half-calf/half-decaf skinny mochachino and then sashayed over to make sure I was “OK” and began to chat me up.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t gay since he was so damn hospitable. And truth be known, I was trying to get up the nerve to ask where he got his shoes.

So after some polite conversation, I begged out to go to my event which was just across the street at a nautical-themed home décor wharf. A place where you normally buy scented biodegradable soaps, Alpaca handtowels, kayaks and I’m pretty sure, whale blubber. The VC, who has an office one wharf over had rented it for the evening.

You see these days the Web 2.0 conference was lighting up the San Francisco conference center. Eight thousand people applied and a lucky 1000 were actually invited. This was one of those fabled “after parties” for all the technogliterati. I figure Norad must have picked it up on their radar due to the concentration of high power electronic devices.

I got a florescent blue nautically- themed drink with rum in it (the drink was a manly skipper’s drink since it came sans umbrella) and started to mingle. There were hundreds of professor types triangulating on moneyed Mr. Howell VC types. I met the guy who writes a top 50 blog (worldwide and yes it’s techy), a hulking 6′7″ guy who used to write for Forbes and now drives mini’s cause they’re easy to park in SF (I know I had a hard time imagining it myself), and a famous VC in a wolf’s costume. Or again maybe that was my imagination getting the best of me.

Just then two booth babes, kind of hot Ginger types distinguished by their stunning looks and vacuous demeanor, sauntered up and diverted his attention away from moi.

Anyway, I digress. Sorry, it’s the rum. I swear. Gin might make you sin but rum makes you dum.

Eventually I struck up a conversation with the event organizer. She had a quaint Mary-Ann quality about her until I asked her if I might not be able to get some whale blubber to go. She screamed, “You’re such a Gilligan!” and chased me out.

And I spent the next two hours in a traffic jam driving home.

So being a previous big-time, high-falutin executive and serial entrepreneur (not to be confused with serial killer) I know a thing or two about managing through tough times. So as we find ourselves swirling in the vortex of uncertain economic waters, I thought, “Why not share a few crumbs of knowledge, insight and wisdom as to thriving in chaotic times to a hungry crowd such as you.”

So whether you are CEO of Exxon, getting bloated on the pain and suffering of others, or just your own family, when the economy tanks you must learn to adapt. The first thing to do is to tighten your belt. Reduce your burn. Cut expenses:

1. As any good manager knows 70% of expenses are in headcount. So, if you’ve got a child under the age of 18 you can drop them off, permanently, at any Nebraska hospital under that state’s ‘safe haven’ law. This will vastly reduce your current and future outlays of cash. Just think, you can now use little Johnnie or Janie’s college fund to buy beer and a new widescreen to help you weather these turbulent times. Ah, and Greyhound even offers reduced one-way child fares direct to NE hospitals.
2. If you’ve got a mortgage don’t pay it. Live off the largesse of the US Gov’t teet. Nowadays Uncle Sam is altogether too squeamish about evicting folks so why be a patsy and pay your mortgage in full, on time. Just hold out for more favorable terms and reduce your debt burden away.
3. Visit the animal shelter often and cook more at home. Notice I’m not directly suggesting you fricassee Fido or parboil Pus’n’boots although they are excellent sources of protein for growing boys and girls. Just say it’s chicken if asked.
4. Visit your local hospital trash bin and pick up a pair of scrubs today. They come in all sorts of vibrant colors and can be worn around town. Just think of the inflated prestige you will feel as passers-by mistake you for a doctor.

So besides cutting your burn, the other sure-fire way to survive a recession is to create extra sources of income:

5. Convenience store robberies, while a bit risky, can help augment your funds. You need only a puffy jacket under which to fabricate a gun. Just pray the owner is not packing heat. And even if you subsequently get caught the resulting footage on Youtube might give you instant notoriety that you could easily translate into a talk show appearance (and cold hard cash).
6. If, like Sarah Palin, you have any kids around 18 years old you could ship them off to Iraq and pocket their monthly allowance. This has the added benefit of (1) above.
7. Pan handling is another way to make Starbucks money. Just hang out on a busy street corner and look pathetic. Badger passers-by incessantly until they drop loose change into your tin cup. Throw your vaunted pride out the window, it’s a recession silly.

Anyway, I hope you find these tips helpful. This recession, unlike previous ones, looks to be around for a while so I figure if at first you’re not convinced, you will be back!

Can you think of any other helpful family tips to help weather a recession?
How long do you think tough times will hang around?