Update on Background Noise

Here I thought that as a fresh business school grad (made the Dean's honour list on two separate years), I would be ahead of the curve. I thought that all of my knowledge, handed down from on high, would aid me in becoming a business leader of tomorrow; I thought I could become the next entrepreneurial wonder, a man that wasn't just another smarmy young schlep in a cheap suit.
I am supposed to be a good business man.

So you can imagine how I felt when I realized how embarrassingly antiquated, how unbearably last year, my most recent post was. Several real business men/women heard the market's call and responded before I even got my paddle in the water. I've found websites that offer streaming white noise, though most seem to fall short of my idea to go beyond simply providing "relaxing" noises. My brother found an application from Apple offering a cornucopia of terrific atmospheric noises that help the listener to feel lifted out of their status quo.
I am crestfallen.

The only way I can finish this idea is to make a suggestion of a noise that I thought of recently. You're in a hotel, either in the pool area or walking down an adjacent hallway and you can hear it, just a little. It definitely has a water slide, and what I want to hear is that screeching of children flying down the slide in arrangements that are against the rules.

Hear it market? That's a call for something, now answer it.

8000 a year to learn how to write Case Studies

We like to believe that our world is increasingly chaotic, fast-paced, and stressful. I'm not convinced that it is or is not true, but I recently got thinking about the retail world of relaxation.

One of the most (in my opinion) fantastic stress relief agents were the CD's with things like ocean noises, or the sound of a stream running calmly. These don't seem to be as popular anymore, and I think that's a terrible, terrible shame. How do we explain it? One argument is the most obvious, change in technology. People simply aren't buying as many CD's anymore, thus people aren't buy CD's that have the sounds of nature on them. As well, the proliferation of noise machines that produce everything from thunder storms to plain old white noise (I own one), has rendered the former form a little bit, well, useless. This argument has an implicit counter though, the pairing up of what I believe to be the original market for these CD's and what will be the last market to continue purchasing CD's long after you can easily purchase a CD player: middle-aged women.

The second argument, the one which I believe is more plausible and will further expound upon presently is simple, they lost their edge. Any business student worth his weight would tell you that producing the same product, without adapting, forever will end a lot like that business student's very first time in the sack: shortly, awkwardly, and perhaps with some crying.
Background CD's have to wedge their way back into the home relaxation market, and position themselves by exploiting an important part of relaxation: helping us forget about how much the rest of our life sucks.

You see it doesn't necessarily need to make us feel like we're in the jungle, or at the base of a waterfall, or sitting under an umbrella during a storm. We just need to be taken to a place where we didn't just get a massive Visa bill, where we don't hate our job, and where self-actualization isn't a bullshit concept atop a pyramid, but actually sort of fun. So why stop at only calm, consistent, relaxing noises? Why not move into the complete background noise market? No longer sell simply an easier experience, but a different experience than our actual lives.

List of Great Background CD's

"Restaurant noise" The clanging of the kitchen, the buzz of the eating and beverage-ing public, the whisk of the automatic front door opening and closing, the polite voice of an underage (though you'd never guess) hostess, and the smarmy red-wine attitude of the floor manager, all in this compact disk for you to bring home.

"Crowded bar just before a band goes on" - The murmur of a crowd, the sound of drinks being made ice-liquor-mix-enjoy, ice-liquor-mix-enjoy, the light background music that should be slightly shittier than the band we're going to see (like when a batter practices with extra weight before going up to bat), and perhaps even a sound man Test-test-heyo-creo-jambo-jambo-test-test into the mic. Why leave it at the bar when you could listen to it as you drive, sleep, eat, or work?

"The sound of basketball (or other court shoes) squeaking on hardwood floors" Maybe you're an old jock, or maybe you just think it's a neat sound. At first its very annoying, but after a while it takes on a strangely relaxing rhythm, as the feet move up and down the court. Feel yourself be pulled from your shitty reality, to court side seats, one quarter at a time.

"Someone working at a laptop computer beside you at an airport bar" Delayed flight, layover, 8 minutes to kill before boarding: these are all reasons I have stopped into an airport bar for a pint. The faint sound of a game playing on tv, flight calls broadcast over the airport P.A. system, and of course, the undeniable clickety-clacketing of today's business travelers on a laptop computer beside you, trying to work for 20 minutes while shoving down a Smoked Meat Sandwich. You don't need a boarding pass to get passed security for this gem.

Old CD's of nature sounds = old hat.
New CD's that transplant you to another place and time = fucking awesome.

More to come.

I got this joke on sale.

Question:
Why did the corrupt accountant have a heat lamp installed above his desk?

Answer:
So he could cook the books.

Whatever, it's funny.

I always wear that ring on my right hand, why do you ask?

Upon receiving this month's credit card statement, I noticed a delicious little surprise in the top right corner. My credit limit has been not just extended, but doubled. Why, thank you MasterCard, you shouldn't have.... oh MasterCard, (insert delighted shriek of laughter here) you know just how I like it. But it's not all good news, for alas, I have a moral dilemma.
When my credit is extended, I get this feeling like I'm at some woman's house, I don't know who, just a woman who's house I'm not supposed to be at. Some sort of indescribably sexy temptress that my mother, or my wife, or both, have warned me to stay away from. Nevertheless, I am there, in the doorway, about to try and leave.
What's that sexy temptress? oh...yeah, I suppose I could stay for a drink, what's the harm in that? What's that? Oh no, I'm comfortable in what I'm wearing thank you.
I put on a cool front, but I'm terribly nervous, because I know that it is not possible for any good to come of this.
What's that you say MasterCard? I can leave even further beyond my means? I suppose I can buy one more pair of shoes, what's the harm in that?

Spring time, when winter's silence is ruined by the sounds of love

What do dorm rooms, bathrooms, furnace rooms, and broom closets have in common? All of them are a better place than a coffee shop for a couple to make out.
Today, as is typical of any Tuesday between 11:30 am, and 12:50 pm, I was enjoying a coffee and catching up on some reading in one of the coffee shops on the Concordia campus. Just 12 minutes into my blissful midday routine, in walked a young couple. A thin young man and what I presumed to be his "best girl", sat down at a table near mine, and readied a laptop computer for what I had, in vein, assumed would be some sort of work session.
What actually took place requires no exaggeration on my part. A very, very serious make out session quickly got underway.
I am sort of a libertarian at heart, believing that whatever you must do to get your kicks is none of my business, should it not impugn the ability of myself, or anyone else, to get our kicks. Moreover, I am a reasonable man. I can understand a tender moment between two kids in love, so overwhelmed by emotions and so bereft of consideration for anyone else that a tender, loving embrace may seem reasonable in a public place. But this was beyond an intimate moment. There was heavy breathing. There were sucking noises. They had a rhythm. This was foreplay, as in, that which could occur before sexual relations, you know... coitus.
And my trouble begins here. First, because their foreplay is none of my business, but second, because every reasonable man knows that foreplay is for bastards, suckers, and politicians. The only thing more disgusting than the sound of this suckface session, was how long I stayed there, stubbornly refusing to be ousted by a couple of kids with no self-control.

He who walks among us.

In one of my classes, specifically which one shall remain a secret, there sits a young man behind me that has helped to set the benchmark for the dumbest things I've ever heard. So dumb, in fact, that I wonder 2 or 3 times per lecture if I'm on some variety of "candid camera" show, or perhaps, as I live in Montreal, "Just for Laughs: Gags". The nature of this class requires the use of elementary calculus, the particular application being quite simplified. Now I am not particularly adept in mathematics, and the list of who I had to sleep with to pass university calculus may induce vomiting for some, but even I can comprehend taking a partial derivative. So of the array of hurdles that might prove difficult in an intermediate economics class, I would certainly not have guessed that the most trying of these is dividing by fractions or, what resulted in a frustrated 5-minute long explanation, square roots. How does such a man get to this point? How is it possible that the university administration allowed this specimen to slip through the cracks for so long? How does he manage to find his own ass in the morning so that it can fill the seat behind me? Moreover how is he not so frustrated, and so bewildered that he hasn't burned all of his books in a massive ritual surrounded by a hundred drumming men, with torches and guns and people in masks screaming profanities...and stopped attending?
Such questions don't have answers and so I beg of you, the facilitators of this cruel joke, come out from your places of hiding. Explain that this has all been an elaborate scheme, a hilarious yarn, because frankly the entire study of economics depends on it.

Why Lionel is Now Eating Off a Napkin

Lionel says: "I got these dishes, you know, plates, bowls, smaller plates, the works. Anyway, they're made from clear glass, you know what I mean? I mean they're glass, but they're completely clear. I'd say I love them, but since I put them away I haven't been able to find them."