Uncategorized | Writing Boots

Twitter, unwitting

02.09.2009 by David Murray // 1 Comment

An e-mail exchange today between two brothers I know, both about 60.

Brother One writes,

Tony:

On Saturday Weekend Edition, Scott Simon had a story on social networking.

The story made me look at Twitter, which I then unintentionally joined, and was then surprised to find you there, at [Twitter address] .

Tony replies:

Oh, God no. I don’t have any idea how I got signed up with Twitter, if, in fact, I am. It’s the last kind of intrusive nonsense I need. How do I get out of this?

Who can help these poor men?

A brand new CEO groaner: you heard it here first

02.09.2009 by David Murray // 6 Comments

In a Financial Times article today, Unilever CEO Paul Polman said this, about how he's reshaping his company:

“If there’s a lot of wind, even the turkeys can fly. If there’s no wind, only the eagle can fly. I know what I want to be.”

A windbag, who makes his own.

You ever read Algren? Well, read a little this morning

02.06.2009 by David Murray // 4 Comments

Nelson Algren wrote short stories and two great novels set in the 1930s and 1940s in the Chicago neighborhood that I live in. The Man With the Golden Arm is the most famous of the novels.

But how has it taken me so long to read Never Come Morning, which contains passages like this description of his young, poor 17-year-old protagonist, Bruno "Lefty" Bicek:

His life was a ceaseless series of lusts: for tobacco so good he could eat it like meat; for meat, for coffee, for bread, for sleep, for whisky, for women, for dice games and ball games and personal triumphs in public places. Day and night, one or all of these rode him, and was never fully satisfied even for a while; they could no more be satisfied than they could be evaded.

If you read anything better than that today pass it along.