The Master Plan, Vol. 1

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See, it wasn't bad, evil or destructive. It's informative! Now you can see how I see you all on Facebook. More to come. 

Psychic iPhone

I spent the early evening in San Francisco last night attending an AIA (American Institute of Architects) event and found myself with a few free minutes to walk around my old stomping grounds between the financial district and Union Square. So I popped out my iPhone and took a few signage pics, as I am wont to do. Now how did my iPhone know it created a before and after set of my point of view when visiting this particular establishment in times past?

Social Overload

As the Facebook phenomenom continues to grip the world and I spend my spare minutes at home correlating information for the Master Plan, I have taken time to reflect on the ramifications of social networking on the human phsyche.

For those of us who have spent a good part of our lives without online computer social networking, including the thousands of years of humanity that lived prior to Al Gore's magnificant invention, life was a story with many characters involved in your own personal plotline. Some were major characters with whom you invest time and interest in and are important to the overall arch of the story. Other characters are minor, there to turn plot points, provide comic relief or add a small subplot. This is not to demean them as people, for they have their own starring roles and you were probably a minor character for them as well. In the end, minor characters come and go from your life and eventually become smiles on your face and a warm memory of a moment in time.

Which comes to my quandry about Facebook. Is it good for the human phsyche to keep all your minor characters online and in-tow? Isn't our limited brain powers better spent focusing on the people in front of us at this moment in time verses re-establishing yourself with the woman who once was the girl who sat across from you in 7th grade English class and was the primary reason for you discovering boobs? Isn't she better off being that pretty young girl in your thoughts verses the middle-aged divorcee with two kids and crow's feet you see now?

This whole FB phenom seems to be breaking the system of how life should work.

I try to look at this from the perspective of people who grew up in one place and decided to stay and settle there. Now those people do have a more continous relationship with minor life characters than those of us who had decided to go abroad from our hometowns. These people are proof that life-long social networking works but, then again, they have a constant connection to these people. For those like me, Facebook has been an instant flood of past memories and it's a bit jarring. This fact has been tough to deal with, especially since I pride myself on being open-minded to new ideas and technology.

Not that this situation has been all bad, I have reconnected with a few people from the past who really should never have walked off the stage of my life. It has also been a nice reminder (actually a revelation), that a lot of my attitudes and humor are still regional and youthful experience-based. Facebook Friend "BK", who now lives in North Carolina and hasn't lived in our shared hometown (same part of town, same catholic schooling) for the same amount of time as me (16 years) has the exact same "personality quirks" as I do. Besides feeling bad for his spouse, it's been pretty cool chatting with him and only Facebook provided that venue.

Despite those few exceptions, I think I am finally showing my age and realizing the what the new generation gap is going to be about. Based on going back to school recently and interacting regularly with young adults technically old enough to be my kids, I do believe that there is a real shift in humanity's ability to deal with ramifications of online social networking to the point where there are no ramifications. Much like the ability to read long passages of text on a computer monitor verses on hard copy (which I prefer), you are seeing the rise of a new human being, one who see no difference between friend and online friend. Who they went to kindergarten with will be a continuable acquaintance of theirs even if they move to Nepal and raise sheep on the side of a mountain or just move to San Ramon with a new job...

Basically, those of us in our 30's and 40's are stuck in a transitional generation. We, along with said genius Al Gore, may have invented the internet and all it's possibilities, but we are the last generation to actually remember living our lives without it.

The Master Plan (Spoiler Alert)

Most people know me as a rather gregarious fellow with a heart of gold but also a penchant for push-button language. I'm also a bit of a fan of Facebook, which has been a great tool for connecting, however vicariously, to people I have lost touch with due to moving forward in life. The social network has been especially good for reconciling my life prior to moving to California in 1992 to where I am currently.

It is also good for building a network based on common interests with people whom I do not know on a face-to-face basis. Some people, mostly of an older age, find that an odd thing but the newer generation takes online friends as common and acceptable. It's the future, people, get used to it.

While my wife also enjoys Facebook, she doesn't quite feel the same affection for "collecting" Facebook friends, that I do. I have read that this difference is a function of gender. Men can bond over a beer and a football game and be friends for life. Women tend to bond over deeper emotional issues, thus are a little more reserved to opening themselves up to people online unless the connection is "real" and deep.

Over the last few months I conceived an idea of what to do with my Facebook connections in commemoration of gaining 400 people. Since Facebook is not a working network, why not have fun with the whole thing. Being the born provocateur I am, I decided to add a bit of brashness and mystery to my pet project by announcing my countdown to 400 Facebook friends on my status line, nicknaming this venture as "unleashing my Master Plan." When someone inquires about said plan, I respond with the famous Fight Club quote of "The first rule of the Master Plan is NO ONE talks about the Master Plan!" I am even keeping a log of friends reactions for a future use as will be explained below. Now god bless these friends, some are giggling, some might even be freaking out, some are actually threatening to de-friend me in hopes of me never getting to the magic number. Honestly, who doesn't love a little mystery in life? I love it and I hope they are all having fun with it as well.

Oh, but I've gone too fast here, so let's step back a bit.

I am a graphic designer and have an affection for visual information. For the last few years I have truly enjoyed the blog of Craig Robinson, a british designer, world traveler, baseball (Yankees, yuck) and Liverpool (Yay!) fan. He is dynamite with info graphics and I love his breakdown of seemingly ubiquitous material and repacking it all in fascinating ways visually.

Which brings us all to today. I had decided that once I reached the 400 friend plateau (Update: Friend 400 was confirmed on Monday, 8:36pm), I would start a series of info graphics breaking down my Facebook friends into catagories from the easy (male to female) to the sublime (Friends who knew me as a smoker verses those who knew me prior to meeting my wife Johanna). It's going to be a laborious but very fun exercise and one that I totally owe a great debt to the Craig. He's the man.

So I give you, my loyal readership of 3 or so, the inside scoop. Call it an easter egg blog posting. I am not going to blow up the world, hack Facebook or destroy the world's credit history, ala Tyler Durden, though that might not be such a bad idea right about now...

Cheers!

Tobacco

I was hanging out with an old friend of mine last night (after seeing a presentation put on by the Barack Obama campaign's graphic design team, but that's a different post for a different blog). He owns a tobacco store in San Francisco's Chinatown district. This has been a fairly recent venture for my friend as he is actually a licensed electrician and carpenter. Three years ago an opportunity was presented to him to buy this business which was considered profitable. Now, my friend has no ethical qualms about smoking, he believes that everyone has the right to do to their bodies what they see fit, including smoking. As long as you know the risks and not harming others, why not. Funny that he has never smoked in his life...

Needless to say, running a small business, especially one considered "undesirable" by the PC Police, is quite tricky and frustrating in the City of San Francisco. A few months ago, his business was tagged in an undercover operation by the SFPD, who sent in a 15-year old boy with an altered ID to buy cigarettes at his shop. The register was being attended at the moment by a retired man who is employed part-time by the store. The man has cancer is enjoys being useful with the time he has left. Unfortunately, the retiree got a bit confused by the wording on the ID given to him (he did ask to see it) and sold the boy some tobacco.

Next thing you know, the police and the department of health invade the store with a pricy ticket for the employee and a notice to appear for the store owner. My friend ended up battling the city over this "bust", as he has never had this happen before in the three years in business. His last appearance to determine a fine was in front of the Board of Health supervisors, of which he needed 4 out of 5 votes in his favor to drop the charge against the shop. He got 3 out of 5. His fine? $1000 and a 15 day suspension of his license to sell tobacco! This may very well put his business under as his clientele may flock to the many illegal tobacco selling stores in Chinatown that go unchecked (now that's another story as well).

What bothered my friend (and myself) even more was that the two supervisors who voted against him made it known their disgust with smoking still being legal in this country and the deception the tobacco industry laid upon the American public. This was a vote against Big Tobacco, not a struggling small business man with one little mistake! Even worse was the hearing prior to my friends was a liquor store that had sold a large quantity of alcohol to a minor. That fine? $1,500 with no suspension. Considering the profit margin on booze as compare to tobacco, this was barely a slap on the wrist.

Have we gotten to the point where tobacco is considered worse than alcohol? Who is more dangerous to society and others, a teenager with ill-gotten alcohol or one with a pack of Camels? Now neither is great but the punishments handed out do not seem correct to me.

For the record, I am a former smoker and a social drinker. I did have a fake ID at 18 and purchased alcohol quite regularly with it. As a teenager, never did I think about getting a fake ID to buy cigarettes.

Feel free to argue about this.

A Post A Day

Though no one is reading this blog just yet, save you Mr. Bryce, I have decided to be as disciplined and insane as possible to make sure I post at least once a day. I will only make exceptions if a) I win the Lotto and am off purchasing a house in Barcelona. b) I am on a cruiseship to Mexico (less than a month away!) or c) We all come to our senses and decide the information superhighway is eroding our society and social skills.

The point of this blog is to finally have a semi-legitimate outlet for my stream of conscious and observations and to spare those within 10 feet radius of me after three pints of my very convincing arguments. I feel that my life has given me a unique perspective from the haves and have nots in the world and the differences that lie in-between, hence my need to be contrarian and libertarian (though a liberal one at that). I do keep another blog that focuses on graphic design and other visual-related thoughts but I seem to only get to that one every month or so, so prepared to be disappointed...

I do want to clarify that this blog shall not be "Things not to be said or TMI over the internet" as some have wont to do in their blogs. I really hate those people...

Floral Ground Zero - Someone Must Pay...

Once upon a time, man discovered that picking flowers and giving them to the woman of their affection increased their standing in their paramour's eyes. As modern man got more sophisticated and less connected to nature, they discovered that a certain professional, known as the florist, would, for a price, pick and arrange flowers for these men to give to their equally more sophisticated women. The increase in cost was definitely worth the saving of time and increase in quality. .

Life was good.

Suddenly, with the emergence of women as staples of the work office environment, a landmark moment happened. Some less than secure fellow who was hanging by a thread with his object of affection, decided to have an arrangement of flowers sent from a florist directly to his woman's' place of work. Now, in it of itself, this was a brilliant maneuver by said fellow, who I will now address as "Floral Ground Zero" or FGZ for short, as his woman was now the envy of every other woman she worked with, if not every woman in her building. My guess is no matter what his romantic status was, FGZ got some action that evening and good for him!

The bigger concerns of FGZ's actions though was the chain reaction he set off so many years ago and is still spreading like a virus to this day. Every woman present that day FGZ's woman received her flowers at the workplace went home to their men and demanded to know why they were not getting flowers at work "like Betty did from her boyfriend." Suddenly all men were on the defensive and the florist phones must have lit up in the following weeks with the same request, "Can you deliver to the financial district?"

Due to this one man, FGZ, men must now make at least one to two calls a year to have flowers sent to their romantic partner's office or workplace. Most likely a birthday or anniversary and definitely Valentine's Day. God help the man who has to come home to a woman who was the only one in cubicle row C not to get a spring bouquet!

Sadly, the flowers at work routine is not about having something cheerful to brighten up a drab workplace or as a reminder that someone loves you. It is, and I know you women know this, to show off to her coworkers that she has someone who would do such a thing and that the coworkers do not (God help the unattached women in the office on Valentine's Day). Women have turned FGZ's act of romance (or cowardice) so many years ago into an event to show off their inner princess (or bitch, if you aren't offended). We men are also made to suffer as we are now paying premium money for flowers we will never see or even get to see that moment of joy on our woman's face when they are first presented to her.

Sending flowers to your woman's work is about as romantic as paying your mortgage online. It's expected and it's done...

That all being said, this Floral Ground Zero, FGZ, must be exposed and made to pay for the plague of action he has set off on this society. Perhaps he is quite old now and living in a retirement community and sending flowers to his wife over at the Game Hall on Golden Girls Lane. He still must pay. Perhaps he even looks like the guy up above...

Remember, men, the next time you feel obligated to call a florist for your Martha over in Building 1 of Chevron's corporate office, it's all because of one man on one day and one phone call.