When I was about 17, I bought a cheap electric guitar and a small amp, and began trying to emulate the music I listened to. I wanted to play loud rock and since it was my angry-young-man phase (which, now that I think about it, lasted far longer than it probably should have), playing guitar loudly was part of the persona, I thought.

I met a jazz guitarist who told me that if I wanted to play most rock songs, I’d have to start with the blues. I really wasn’t interested in what sounded like scratchy recordings and simple, repetitive lyrics but over to Tower Records in Greenwich Village I went, searching for some blues records and an education.

I didn’t really know many blues artists by name, but I did, however, recognize some songs by people like Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Robert Johnson who, for me, was particularly intriguing since there was this mysterious legend surrounding his life and death. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past 20 years (give or take), the word “Zen” has been used liberally in association with some personal, commercial or business concept to suggest that the concept in question can be “mastered”, usually through a “formula” that someone “discovered”. Typically, though, this mental elixir is alluded to in a self-help book (or eBook), DVD or seminar — which, of course, will cost you some money to acquire.

Typing in “the zen of” (with quotes) in Google alone results in over 742,000 sites out there talking about the Zen of something. So if the true ideas about Zen as a distinct school of Buddhism are distilled to loosely — if at all — apply to anything from MP3 players to how to close a business deal “better”, it would only make sense that “meditation” would become the next logical buzzword that would be touted as a let’s-get-happy meme. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems to me that the euphemisms and rhetoric used in everyday corporate double-talk are not really examined for their potential humor. It’s always about penetration, size, growth, multiple partners, hands-on, delivering the goods, etc. Sometimes it’s even about “getting in bed with…”, usually referring to an undesirable vendor or competitor.

So, with all the sex not being discussed, it seems inevitable that it would be expressed visually. Recently, an article in The Register pointed out that new the logo for the Office of Government Commerce — OGC — looks like… well, that they had taken things into their own hands.

Here’s what the logo looks like as intended for things like stationery or their website:

And here’s what it looks like on things like pens or mousepads, which can be viewed both horizontally and vertically: