Hot damn.
America, you are a truly great and wonderful country.
Archive for the 'Profound Thoughts' Category
via the fine folks at TwitterVoteReport
Table top ads, originally uploaded by david parmet.
This ad is running on every table top in the food court of the Trumbull (CT) Mall.
Forget for a moment the fact that there aren’t any REAL ads running, only ads for the ad shop. What I’m wondering is why interruption a still the default model for the ad industry, as opposed to engagement?
Is peaking through every crack, every nook and cranny of my attention really going to get my attention? Or is it just going to annoy me?
Ad people, please chime in….
I have a very strained relationship with religion in general and with Judaism (the religion I grew up with) in particular. I’m an athiest, somewhere beyond Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams but not quite as cranky as Christopher Hitchens. My own personal beliefs are closer to Zen Buddhism and maybe someday I’ll have the courage of my convictions to actually live it in my own life rather than live it as an abstraction.
Complicated, I know.
There are however two traditions in Judaism that speak strongly to me and have impacted the way I try to live my life. One is the customs and traditions around death that emphasize the fleeting nature of our own existance. The other is the tradition of asking for forgiveness at Yom Kippur.
In Jewish tradition there are sins against Gd and against our fellows. And Gd can only forgve us for the sins committed against Her or in Her name. Acts of person against person can only be addressed between those two people. Gd has nothing to do there. We’re really on our own.
As Savvy Auntie Melanie reminded me last week, the sins they do add up. Like dust bunnies under the bed they are there and rather than get out the broom, get down on our hands and knees and clean the damn bedroom we just look the other way.
I’m certainly guilty of not cleaning out the dust bunnies of life from under the bed of fate. I’ve let a lot of things slide in the past few months and I’m going to try harder in every part of my life to do a better job in the New Year.
So if I’ve let you down, bored you, annoyed you or otherwised pissed you off… forgive me. I’ll try harder next year.
David in the City
I’m sitting in the middle of New York’s Bryant Park - a green oasis in Mid-Town Manhattan. My Dad used to work right around the corner from here - on Fifth and 43rd - and back in those days this park was one of those places that sensible people (at least people not looking for a fix or to be mugged) Did Not Go In There. Now it’s an urban garden on steroids, modeled after Paris’s Jardin des Tuileries, complete with chairs and WiFi.
Fortunately though, the mall-ification of New York begun under the Guiliani regime hasn’t really altered the landscape between Times and Herald Squares. Mid-Town West is still the place where most of the World’s tschotkes pass through before they end up in gift and souvenier stores. The fashion district is still the fashion district and the names of the coffee shops and delis may have changed but the quality of the coffee hasn’t. And even if we’re all working on-line, here cash and a handshake are still king.
It’s kind of reasuring, all things considered.