Animals in the news today. Palin's pardoned turkey gobbles while brother Tom gets the axe. Japs launch annual whale "research" expedition, which will collect close to 1000 whales using grenade tipped harpoons. Hamelin is again overrun by rats for the first time in 725 years, with no piper in sight.
Perfect irony, that piper, and a metaphor for the travelogue. Posit: we are all pi-ed pipers, believing the promise that our playing is rewarded when the rats (we are all given different challenges) are drowned. We pipe our rats to the river (you never get them all) and what's the payment? You keep your job piping, and then the mayor surreptitiously throws the pipers in the river along with the rats. Baby with the bathwater. The irony? We never pipe their children away. No need to. The mayors need no help in abandoning their offspring, and now the towns are crumbling under a new infestation with little progeny to offer hope. Today the piper is paid in preferred shares and warrants. Let's hope that piper doesn't become just another mayor of Hamelin.

An Alberta clipper blowing through the region this morning parochially frustrated those who didn't get the leaves to the curb last week. Uncharacteristically, it hit the west side during rush hour and the traffic eastbound stacked up in four lanes as I headed home with little delay. Two hours ago I found my east side destination with what is that truck doing to me the slush microsprayed coating the view bastard is taking my space just a quick let me take him on the right a quick cock of the wheel there we go control some difficulty how many friggin' Starbucks are there and right on time. Our conversation centered on art and science what do I database overlays channel conflict no damn full bladder focus notes eyes cedar strolls summer picnic usability they are not us consumers design bruchner transcendental planning the challenges of re-engineering a stolid institution into a consumer-centered revenue-generating ensemble, and how my bladder smile urgency foundation in consumer directed multi-channel sales will enhance the transformational self-fulfilling half and half sleeve pumpkin semi-bastard colon focus smooth transition journey found dead peterpaul with accountability and philanthropy moon on the bus this full committment over time ticket yes touch the fit suits.

Finally out. I had one leg still in until today but made the break amidst the company of friends.
Today I read of the anticipated downsizing of the pending NCC/PNC mash-up. Many friends there, too. Bankers piled high on the lakefront, it's a buyers market. Reinvent. From within.
Meeting for an unusual opportunity tomorrow morning early, expect much snow both from the sky and from each side of the Starbucks table.

With yesterday's terse mandate of sexy-business dumping (read between the lines), Citi has fired over 75,000 associates since 2007. The thought of that many bankers freed onto the shrinking landscape is unsettling (picture an upturned anthill), but consider also the implications exiting that many ancillary businesses has for the economy. Either bad things will happen, or the activities banks abandon will be assumed by others in a different way.
This reminds me of an Enron irony. Several years back before the bubble burst I had the occasion to break bread with an Enron executive at a supply-chain software conference. He gleefully described a new business that Enron was sinking development capital into: selling "weather insurance" to companies to hedge the impacts of adverse conditions to standard business cycles. So, for example, a ski resort could purchase a hedge to cover losses due to a late snow season. The exec also described an opportunistic secondary market for securitized weather hedges.
Great idea, huh? No wonder those guys dumped.
Needless to say, no one in the markets is insuring the weather today. Here's the WYSIWYG: whatever comes over the next 2 years or so as financial markets correct and evolve, all of us on the dole will vie for fewer traditional openings. We have to evolve our personas depending on which way the wind blows. There's no way to hedge that.

The power of pi...that's the juice that runs the real world...no circle can circle without it, no pie is sliced without it, and its transcendental, no boundaries, no repetition, no rationality thuggery makes it the bully of the block. THAT is the secret to building personal value in a business setting, become the pi, the essential component in the formula of success, the indispensable driver of the bus.
No, not indispensable, as Cassidy passed, but the trip, though no longer populated by bozos and bonzos, continues with an ecclesiastical urgency for all the yuks that endure.
Find simplicity:
Take 1/2 cup of key lime juice, three egg yolks, and a can of condensed milk, mix thoroughly and pour into a graham cracker crust. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, cool, top with fresh whipped cream and garnish with thin lime wedges.
Use the least complicated recipe for the best overall result. Sell the pi(e) that you are to the hungry people.

Daybreak. Another step in the life journey this week finds our hero near the end of his career, time-wise, and near the end of his time, job-wise. For the third time. From the same company. Outplaced again, no place to go.

Well, I'll brush up on those nasty behavior based interview questions and break out the good suit. If it fits.

What is most difficult is demonstrating the core competencies developed over the years and so magnificently described in the c.v., that balance sheet with no liabilities. There really is no public record, no published and memorized batting average, no Mike Schmidt-like memory of homers, RBIs, and Gold Gloves (or errors) for my mark to get fired up about.

So the sale goes forward, lipstick on a Mick, with the interested and the ignorant equally unwilling to call me back, let alone make a commitment to whine and dine me face-to-face.

One year to land. After that, back to the grill and the buffalo chopper, and the quick sucking vortex of the debt-ridden hand to mouth lullaby sung many years ago.

Come to think of it, that was a really sweet gig.

First interview Friday.