American Fez

A Shell Of One's Own

So many homeless crabs stagger sideways across the beach, seeking makeshift shelters in shanty towns of seaweed and driftwood. The rip tide of pebbles here is strong enough to crack any crustacean in half in a flash. Predatory gulls circle overhead and there are callous children with nets and buckets. Meanwhile, luxury rocks pools like these pictured below are vacant and unused all summer long, bought up by speculating mussels and clams as investment properties or second homes. No wonder poor crabs are forced to carry their homes on their backs from shore to shore when they'd much rather settle down in some sandy cove. Where's the justice? 

Ink Stains

At work, but not busy, I look up from my newspaper and see the puzzle page reflected in the faces of my coworkers: He has a Sudoku frown imprinted on his forehead; she wears a full-body crossword; they collaborate to connect letters in the Word Jumble. And I sigh, knowing that soon everyone will be cheating, surreptitiously glancing the answers printed upside down on the following page. Only I attempt to solve the daily chess problem. It takes me all morning until I'm finally checkmated by the classified ads.

Frankly I'm surprised we still get the newspaper delivered. Our subscription is surely an unnecessary extravagance in an age of cutbacks and economies. Yet it arrives at the reception desk each morning without fail (the only thing around here that doesn't fail, if I'm honest). It's a relic from the antediluvian past, as ancient as a fax or a carbon copied memorandum; a Memento Mori reminding us that we, too, should perhaps be actually doing something worth reporting, instead of immediately turning to the funny pages to kill a little time.

But actually doing something is not so easy when your company's entire business model is as dynamic as a fly trapped in amber. Which is no doubt why we still subscribe to the newspaper. The medium is the message, of course, and this message is: your processes and methods are as obsolete as the printing press. You are still thrashing about in sheets of A4 when you need to be zooming across the digital Cloud. You are distracted by unfunny cartoons and bamboozled by irrelevant puzzles. You go to shake hands with potential clients only to find your fingers are covered with newsprint ink stains.