for 1 April 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Filler: When Techno-Love Dies

Don't dis Pascal! If it wasn't
for strongly typed,
structured languages, we
wouldn't have "the Web."
Besides, Object Pascal is
still used by Delphi, a damn
fine application builder from
Borland.

<pbeards@monad.net>

Um, OK. No more dissing
Pascal, I promise.

Polly

I consider myself up on
cynical words - being quite a
cynic myself - but suddenly
feel out of the loop when
reading Filler archives. What
does "piss boy" mean? I've
come across it so many times
but still don't have a
working definition for it.
I'd appreciate your help.

Carrie

A piss boy is a male,
preferably somewhat
attractive, with springy leg
muscles for leaping up and
doing one's bidding at a
moment's notice. This term
can either refer to a male
executive's assistant, or to
an attractive male that a
strong-minded woman keeps
around for ease of living.
The latter sense of the word
is obviously somewhat
whimsical, used mostly to
demean men and make them feel
cheap and dirty.

Important: A good piss boy
always knows exactly how you
like your latté. Deluxe
piss boys, also known
as house boys, are more highly
paid for their knowledge of
deep-muscle massage,
psychotherapy, cookie baking,
and radical feminist theory.
Naturally such house boys
have an extremely low
turnover rate, and are
impossible to find.

However, mention the existence
of such specialists to a
relatively unskilled piss boy
(or just a regular man who
needs to feel cheap and
dirty), and you'll invariably
encounter hostility, followed
closely by an increase in his
commitment to quality
service. Mysterious
creatures!

Polly

Once again you seem to be
right on top of the
collective consciousness.
Almost scary how you do that.
Are you psychic?

Todd M. McGuinness

Yes.

Lose the Hush Puppies. They
look ridiculous on you.

Polly

Err Travel

Nice piece, and thanks for
reminding me why I opted for
feet-on-the-ground and
Times-Square-Only-
on-Summer-Vacation living.

As a former New Yorker,
happily relocated to San
Francisco, I can envision the
staff at the NY Times not only
writing the piece before the
interviews were conducted,
but also sending out a clutch
of interns to pre-interview
the folks in O'Hare to make
sure that the "real reporter"
would hear what was expected.
Of course, the Times would
never break the results before
hand: It is an honorable
paper. Still, one is left to
wonder what it was that
prompted the story in the
first place: If nothing else,
reporters for the Times are
roving, even if on
pre-appointed rounds.

On the other hand, what needs
to be noted is that the
business folks who are
loosing their lives to the
global order should realize
that if some portion of their
travel budgets were spent
finding ways to avoid travel,
we'd all have a happier
world. The sort of business
that requires more time in
the air than air time (as in
teleconferencing) is
uselessly sacrificing not
only the planet's resources,
but its own human and
financial resources. My
mother spends only a weekend
or so in the air every month.
She visits licensees of her
company's product in order to
- get this - check to see if
the colors are right on a
given article of clothing.
Surely a scanner and some
decent monitors purchased
from the travel account might
make this easier! Of course,
if she didn't travel so much,
I wouldn't get to see her
once in a while, living 3,000
miles away, but the lack of
stress might be better on
her. That lack of stress
might also work better for
the many other families
affected by this method of
doing business - a method
that hasn't changed since
Columbus thought that
chocolate would be a nice way
to make up for the lack of
gold in the new world.

Issues of class aside for a
moment, if all those
traveling sales folks stayed
home to earn and spend their
bread, wouldn't local
economies benefit more from
the system? And wouldn't
"downtown" find all that
stay-home money a better tax
base than the current need to
build air strip cities so
that harried business folks
can find none of the comforts
of home right next to the
terminal?
Yours,

Bill

The sagging little irony here
is that it seems like quite a
few of the business travelers
losing their lives to the
"global order" are going out
of their way to do it; more
than a few of the folks in
the NYT story, and pretty
much all of the business
travelers I know personally,
wear their anomie as a badge
of honor: Hey, uh, you'll
have to forgive me if I'm a
little distant, today, but,
uh, you know, I've just been
in Hong Kong. Boy, I sure do
hate all that darn
globehopping!"

And the whole discussion about
local economies is way too
long to even start. Although
we do encourage others to
follow the Suck example and
support your neighborhood
bar.

Oh, oh, OK: The thing about
the color swatches gives me
just an excellent opportunity
to tell one of my favorite
stories from recent weeks.
(Exciting!) A friend in Los
Angeles worked as a temp in a
Disney office for a week,
assisting a licensing exec
who was trying to choose
colors for, I think, a doll's
dress, something of that
nature. Not important. But!
My friend's job, for a week,
was to make color photocopies
of cloth swatches, one giant
stack after another, for
review by other Disney execs
out-of-town.

Hey, fax me another look at
that Ginger-Peach - I thought
it had some promise....

Ambrose Beers

Especially like the quote
about living in a parallel
universe where nobody knows
you. Seems to me it's more
parallel than he thinks since
it would be likely that
nobody knows him in the
universe he calls home.

Liked the notion of tossing
off other cultures as "got
that one licked." Reminded me
of the Japanese execs who
came over to set up
co-manufacturing plants with
American auto makers. They
would wear cowboy hats and
say, "We are gonna be big
winners, buddy!" to everyone
with a TV camera. What a
crock. They struck me then,
and now, as jazzed-up,
well-coached Willy Lomans.
Too bad they and their
other-national (including
American) counterparts are
wandering the globe with
pockets stuffed with hard
currency. Makes it all seem
so real, don't it! Gosh,
maybe I need that MBA after
all? Naaaaaah. I'll just
stick to freelance
copywriting, the most
delectable bottom-feeding I
can find. And writing poetry.
An exercise with no place in
the world of commerce. To
those who observe "There is
no money in poetry" I offer
"And there is no poetry in
money." It is a wisdom that
has comforted me many times.

Question: why are the ceilings
of airport terminals so high?

Sincerely,

Jack

To those who observe "There is
no money in poetry," I offer,
"If I write a check for the
rent, can you maybe hold onto
it for a few days?" It is a
wisdom that has angered my
landlord many times.

Airport ceilings are that high
to prevent prisoners from
breaking out through the
ventilator shafts. We're
gonna be big winners, buddy!

Ambrose Beers

Just a momentary thought on
your response to the Times
article....

As a former wannabe business
traveler, I can both
understand and appreciate
your disdain of the seemingly
willful malaise and
existential crisis the Times
report brought you through,
but I think you summed things
up just right. We are living
on the whole world rather
than in it. I used to travel
to enjoy a new place, now I
travel to get through a place
with the least disturbance to
my old life. When I first
started business travel, I
would schedule a few extra
days in a new place; now I'm
lucky to get in a few extra
hours and some sleep.

I don't know what to say about
it except that, while in the
industrial age work took people
from their families 9 to 5, in
this information age they seem
to be gone weeks at a time.
It's bad enough to have large
chunks of your days stolen by
the industrial beast, but
large chunks of your life? My
former boss gets postcards at
the office from her two kids.
Wow. Yeah, you can opt out,
but what can I opt into?
Stuffing envelopes?

Granted, there will always be
workaholics, and as the
technology is developed to
make a person appear in the
room when they're
geographically hundreds or
thousands of miles away,
maybe some of this angst and
existentialism will
evaporate. But, I think that
we need to be self-reflective
about this - as global
business develops - or it
could at once be everyone's
greatest fantasy and the
greatest atrocity known to
man.

Thanks for your reaction to
the articles and good luck
with your writing....

Gia Medeiros

I know what you mean. I, too,
used to travel to enjoy a new
place, but now travel mostly
to escape from the
authorities. Not so bad, once
you get used to the truckstop
food and the endless cries of
"There he is - the one we
seen in the newspaper!"

Pretty sad that your ex-boss
communicates with the kiddos
by postcards (geez, email is
so much quicker). Have you
seen the AT&T ad that goes
on, warmly, about how parents
will one day be able to tuck
their children in at night
... from exciting airport
videophones?

Ahh, that makes me feel good.
Love you, mom, despite the
pixel distortion around your
edges.

Ambrose Beers