Tipping Point

The lead actor for the hit television show CSI Las Vegas is a fellow named William Petersen. This irony cracks me up for a lot of reasons, although my last name being Peterson doesn’t begin to tell the half of it. Over a decade ago I wrote an article about the crime lab here in San Diego that was published by the local weekly newspaper The Reader. A few weeks back they republished something else I had written for them back in 1995. I wouldn’t have even known that they did this if a check for 100 bucks hadn’t appeared out of the blue (the check was blue . . . ha ha) as I don’t read The Reader that much anymore. It’s hard to read something that you probably should be writing for.

My boss’s boss is having us read Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” to prepare for a meeting we are going to next week. He’s an interesting fellow. I once knew a professor who said that whenever he was correcting a paper with arguments in it he detested or thought were bullshit, he would write in the margin “that’s interesting.” I don’t think Gladwell’s book is crap, but I sure as hell am not exactly surprised by anything he says. It’s an interesting reminder I guess.

Being five years ahead of the curve is not something that is worth much. It’s interesting. I wrote a blog entry for my company and Israel Mizrahi thought it was the shit. He’s mentioned in Gladwell’s book and when my boss’s boss saw this he was pleased I think. My boss pretty much shit all over my enthusiasm and I swore to myself I wouldn’t ever give a fuck about work again. The corporate world is filled with half-bright interesting fuckwits who are certain about something and love to look at themselves in the mirror. Certainty, ego, knowing other like minded people, enthusiasm, appearing to do things that matter, manipulation, aggrandizement, obsession, lack of introspection, etc etc; these things are the coins of the realm. For now.

To be fair . . . I’m not really interested in fairness. I’ve never really been interested in being loved by all and lauded for my beauty. I was raised by a physicist, not a salesman. Reality is not something to be spun. And money is nice to have and I’m glad for my unusual corporate job that pays squat. Squat is enough actually, especially if it comes with medical benefits. But not caring about my job is really starting to get to me. I’ve started caring again and I want to make the folks I work with see that they can play the corporate game and still save their souls. In fact, they are already working for the man so they would do well to remember that it is a game and frankly nothing they do is really that important so they might as well do it well. I am maybe ahead of the curve again. And if I get run over one more time . . . .