Stay Loose Blog

I Gave Pony Rides

2008-09-17T10:02:00.001-06:00

Once we landed from our flight I parked the plane and the Shetland pony whinnied and leaped out and there were some kids hanging around and I gave them pony rides then left the airport heading into town but the road was closed because of mud and so I got the pony to pull me through it on a cardboard box.

We got downtown where I dropped the pony off at my aunt’s place in a sleazy hotel and then I got a bite to eat of some stuff that Anthony No Reservations on TV likes for food. I had a large pig-eating worm for a snack and they took my Visa card and gave me back a Master Charge as change.

The waitress was cool so I said I can take you away from all this and she said how and I said just watch so we walked out of there and flagged down a man driving a limo and we got in and we paid off the driver and took the limo over to Wendover where we got one of those roast horse buffet meals with some fried sheep’s eyes for appetizers and my date the waitress gobbled them up like they were rotten eggs.

a face like hitler

2008-09-16T15:22:00.003-06:00

Once when I was an avid pilot I went out to the airport to fly and I thumbed a ride to get there. A lady said to me get into my car and she had huge lips they were so big you couldn’t see her nose and wanted to kiss me and gave me the big come on.

I shouted at her and said no through a bull horn that I had with me and it was battery operated and so she really got the message and swerved into oncoming traffic the noise was so upsetting to her. Finally she calmed down and I reached over to turn on the radio and she had a little cage filled with six rabbits where ordinarily a radio would be in the car but she didn’t seem to give a crap and kept feeding candy bars to the animals. Then she asked me if I wanted some and I said yah so she brought out a bag of dog chow and said “here chew on this,” in Chinese and I was stunned since she had a face like Hitler but not to worry I like roast beef.

So I finally made it to the airport where a buddy of mine with only four fingers on each hand was readying an airplane for me and I thought gee this is great and I got in it with my Shetland pony which was a pint sized animal and it loved flying and so away we went….to be cont.

DDS (Doctor of Dental Stuff)

2008-09-12T10:18:00.000-06:00

There’s this dentist close by who closes his office on Friday and on his phone says to call his home if you have a toothache emergency on a Friday but he doesn’t put his home phone number on the announcement and so when you call information you can get it but when you call it it’s disconnected and you have to STAY LOOSE at a time like this since it’s so absurd and the DDS is so stupid.

STAY LOOSE as a mental attitude comes in handy in the face of a sham so you leave a reply on the Dr.’s office announcement and you laugh of course into the phone all the while you’re telling the dentist how you don’t happen to have his number tattooed on your arm so you don’t have it handy and you’re laughing into the phone while you talk telling him how good this is cuz it’s so brainless.

But it’s material and you like to laugh and it’s high level thoughtlessness that creates a whale of a lot of laughs and you tell him to keep up the good work since what is it except top flight entertainment while you ache from laughing and the ache seems to be in your molar at the back.

Foreign Speakers

2008-09-05T18:31:00.001-06:00

There’s a sign on the door as you walk in. It advertises hiring new people and would the applicants please speak Spanish too. It would seem that this is to help Spanish speakers communicate. What’s bad is the assumption present. It says that you folks who don’t speak English are on the low end of the ability to speak English so we, the more able native English speakers will come to you. It’s easier for us to learn your language because we are learners and we know it’s hard for you to learn English because that would mean you’d have to work at concentrating. In a nutshell the assumption underlying the crafting of signs announcing that we speak Spanish too is that no foreign speaker has the brains to communicate in English so we’ll do the stretching. We can do this and we’ll handily learn your language seeing that you’re so unable. In fact we’ll set up our offices so you won’t have to broaden yourselves. It’s interesting to note that LDS missionaries learn languages in six months plus the actual truth that foreign speakers are not dumb. It’s terrifically funny. Signs touting that English speakers will learn your language pretty well always seem to suggest to the world that native Spanish speakers are short of verbal intelligence. Signs in a foreign language instead of common English say to foreign people you think you’re helping that they are not so smart and that you’re doing them a great big favor.

OJT Develops Gov. Palin's Talent

2008-08-30T12:16:00.003-06:00

This one guy California knew said to someone how come no one hugs around here and with that you could say he might be hug-conscious but he didn’t get around and so you might even wonder what he compared his immediate lonesomeness to as if he’d been finding out who hugs and to what extent and you could ask what is meant by a hug like is it when mites jump off a huggee to a hugger or back to the huggee and like is it a full front hug or one from the side sort of like it looked like Senator McCain gave Governor Palin and you’d be thinking just how huggable is a woman with only a little experience as a mayor and two years as a governor, but when you’d think how credible is experience anyway when what we really want is a massive truck load of talent and Palin has it in spades what with coming in pretty good in a beauty pageant and you know how cruel those are and just think of the cutting remarks she had to take from the other girls possibly and then going and stumping for governor and winning and that really takes tremendous talent and so you can’t say she can’t do it when she really can do it really well just given a chance because you know that the vice-presidency is absolutely OJT as is the presidency for which there are no courses offered.

Rapid Astute Rendezvous Euphoria

2008-05-29T21:24:00.000-06:00

A friend comes up and says he went to a RARE and it was to give a roomful of ladies some really quick smart insight into his usefulness for dating and so he sat at a table with three potential date women who looked him over and who then made some snap judgments on just what sort of a man he was and then measured him by a yardstick of sorts and then he went to the next table and told his story again in maybe two minutes to cram his life in their faces and then it was on to the next table to recount the same rehearsed story and let’s hope it was entertaining because you need to be if you want to get a date and by the fifth table with three females again scrutinizing him he had gotten figure on it pretty good at oiling up his story for speed and it was basically that he was a STAY LOOSE man who had once preferred marriage to a midget lady and that drew some staccato quick questioning which he fielded nicely and what the whole description of the thing later boiled down to was that the ladies were now hot after him and he had to put in ear plugs to keep out the tapping sounds on his window at night and the money slipped under his door at 2 a.m. and it’s all amazing to me the amazee how much dating LEADERSHIP he actually exercised.

Maybe She’s Good Looking

2008-05-28T17:25:00.000-06:00

This friend of mine comes up to me yesterday basically slobbering and says he met this girl she’s really good looking and I’m saying yah, sure, yah, yah, sure, sure, yah, sure, sure, yah, yah, she’s really good looking I’ll bet I’m saying to myself and when you see her she’s not good looking but maybe to him and that’s OK but think about the stock he’s putting into how good looking she is and he says she’s really young and he’s 75 and you wonder in six months if she’s gonna be asking him can I get this new boom box and can we go to the rock concert and I wanna see that show with American idol and he has no clue about a woman that he thinks is good looking but he would if he read DATING JACKPOT JANE since it would help in the STAY LOOSE department where he isn’t right now because he’s gone nuts over some face and why is it and you know why cuz his brain is run by his cajones and all he can gauge a lady by is what is she on the surface and if she’s really good on the surface it can only follow that she must have excelled in all the other qualities that are needed to make a relationship a good one but boy at 75 guess how much he still has to learn and in a nutshell I understand it but I don’t understand it.

Piano Movers or Not

2008-05-19T10:00:00.000-06:00

It’s hard to understand what goes on whenever someone tells you that they’ve been roped into moving a piano and you quickly think of a huge piano that could weigh maybe a quarter of a ton or more and why would you involve yourself in furthering along addle-brained behavior as seen in three or four men moving a piano that weighs an awful lot when they could have said aaah, no, and then recommended trading it in on a keyboard and you can get keyboards these days that are absolutely above and beyond anything that a weighty piano could produce music-wise or else why wouldn’t Paul Shaffer opt for a full sized huge behemoth of a piano with which to entertain millions as Letterman’s music man but no he definitely has not opted for the grand instrument simply because you can move a keyboard weighing about 15 pounds with ease there it’s done and you don’t have to hire a moving company with men in coveralls and matted mats with which to cover the piano and it’s because someone said earlier hey why buy a half ton piano when we can get the same effect and actually much better merely by exercising our consummate piano artistry on a keyboard thus changing our skill to that of excellent keyboard artistry and look at what we’ve done; a lot really, relieving ourselves of the worry of having to wrestle and roll and cart massive instruments around whenever we want to go someplace.

Scurrying Not Really Needed

2008-05-16T09:37:00.000-06:00

There’s this guy in the vicinity of where California Gibb lives who scurries a lot and he’s like these five other guys C.G. knows, one’s about 66 the other’s about 64 and one’s 67 and then there’s the 54 year old one and then another 67 year old and a ton of other guys that C.G. knows who scurry a lot and basically bust a gut trying to make do and get around when they know very well about DATING JACKPOT JANE the book or at least a summary of it but they continue on alone and not getting a complete balanced diet cuz they eat whoppers too often when they could STAY LOOSE using male LEADERSHIP and merely use the phone which maybe they don’t figure could help at a time like this but if a man only knows how much the knockout babes like to get a phone call from somebody who once he’s made the call won’t talk too much but will more or less shut up until the lady says I can pick you up for the dance and I’ve got this hamper I’ll put some cold cuts and Italian bread in and then you can only figure he’s doing the right thing and knowing C.G. he’d bet that the lady’ll pay his overdue utilities if he’d just shut up and listen to her and then dance with her at the dance, is this one for the mentally challenged or could it make some real sense.

Brushing While Moving as Pure Stay Loose

2008-05-15T10:49:00.000-06:00

Once in a while you’ll hear someone say that they’ve decided to start brushing their teeth again and you think why ever did they decide upon that gem of wisdom and it came to California Gibb because he’s a brushing guy, that that sort of inspiration could very well devolve upon someone, anyone, while one is driving down the street since it’s on the various boulevards that C. G. himself often puts his brush in mouth and begins to scour vigorously being that he knows the value of good dental health which would be conducive to overall health, and so it is while driving along noting with keen interest how folks do any number of things while driving, he dutifully reaches and retrieves his brush from alongside a pen that he keeps in case he needs to make notes and then he proceeds to pass people while brushing but which, you can imagine, could make some people go aaarghhhhh and vomit when they wonder what C.G. is going to do with the voluminous spittle as it accumulates via brushing and the answer is if you can STAY LOOSE using LEADERSHIP here he thinks of the man on a raft for 76 days in the book ADRIFT who ate every last morsel of any fish he caught and so learning from this and using every last bit of meat hidden between his teeth when he finds a fragment he swallows everything all at once and how hard can that be.

Outrageous Odd Program Situations (OOPS)

2008-05-14T11:51:00.000-06:00

California Gibb avidly watches TV and he sees strange stuff like too many women reporting sports doing the NBA or the NFL and you wonder shouldn’t they be doing women’s sports and then what C. G. would do is he’d STAY LOOSE and quickly prepare an application form and apply for the renowned post of Executive News Director at a local TV station and he’d use some interestingly potent LEADERSHIP secrets and keep the submission quite brief but the one thing he’d say would be that when he starts in he’ll hire men based on their illustrious ability to do testy male reporting and that’s because there is not one woman around who can do male reporting in the least, not being male, and so naturally you’d turn to the men commentators, like in the old days, to do the male reporting and actually if you look at it the men announcers are even better, pardon the generalizing, in reporting most all sports except for maybe when the women report the fancy swimming like when they pose in the water and that’s not a sport but in the application Gibb hearkens back to the old days when male sportscasters really got it done and it was done by men around the world but now females try but they can’t sound like men and never will because eventually a male listener will detect in the timbre of the voice that this here’s a woman reporting a man’s sport oh my heck.

Stay Loose Gist

2008-05-10T12:30:00.000-06:00

In a crowded hall walking along and not greeting friends going the other way while you stare straight ahead is the gist of STAY LOOSE but if you were to say hello to everyone which would include the unknown passer-by this, too, would likewise mark the individual as a STAY LOOSE champion but choosing to greet only those you knew socially to greet isn’t the way of a STAY LOOSE winner any way you can cut it so try it and see and just walk along the street striding to work with your head down and act really intense while walking and say hello to no one even if they firmly voice a hello over to you, perhaps more than once with an element of entertainment beginning to arise in the air and the people whom you ignore being just feet way will have something to talk about and they’ll say oh see California Gibb see how he is so earnestly on his way and he won’t say hi no he won’t and you figure he is about the most STAY LOOSE frontrunner you have ever seen to come out of BYU but he’s that way and someone will surely complain but you can say yes but that’s California but greeting people you don’t know is funny too although a little easier because you’re being sociable while a little wacko to everyone but it’s well within the STAY LOOSE parameter of acting outside of the strict, rigid, guidelines of convention.

Marking Time

2008-05-07T10:49:00.000-06:00

California was at this dinner the other night, a big one, and he walked out with a guy after who had to catch a bus to go to a singles dance and so California drove him there and the guy said he went to them a lot and California asked why he didn’t get the rich ladies to pick him up and take him there and then home and he said that’d mean I’m obligated and sure he would but only to be nice and conversational and who wouldn’t do that for a ride to a dance and Gibb said, because you could tell he didn’t cook, that they’d bring food over to his digs if he’d ask and they’d be happy to do it because the ladies are going to the dance to be held by the men but he didn’t get it because he’s just marking time and he couldn’t STAY LOOSE because if he was loose and into LEADERSHIP he’d ask the ladies if he could look in their purses and they’d laugh and some would let him and he’d start showing some moxie in dealing with gals that want his company if the men would only lead and not be like this one codger at the dinner who starts sitting down and asks his wife if this is OK and she walks further along and picks out where they finally sit and that’s pretty typical of so many man who’ve seemed to have lost their masculinity.

Getting the Voice

2008-05-03T10:54:00.000-06:00

Some TV commentator said the other day that Hillary was achieving her voice and that’s probably par for the course for anyone since most folks stay away from public speaking because it’s scary and when they get an opportunity to do a lot of it they get a lot better at it because they’re doing it so much and she probably had ample opportunity to speak in different situations when she was first lady but not for this huge job she’s applying for and so now she has to be in a constant debate with someone else who also wants the job and so instead of sounding strident and shrill she’s learning to sound more conversational and also having people around you who will tell you how not to sound can help a lot like Hillary you sounded crappy this morning and if a person can STAY LOOSE with that kind of advice they’re bound to change meaning learn how to become a better presenter and that’s probably what she could by now do pretty well with all the experience she’s getting going around pumping people up and into a frenzy saying we’ve just got to have you Hillary because you’re the one for us but anyone could get to that point by giving a speech everyday in their bathroom and pretty well you can do it if you use LEADERSHIP and practice as much as Hillary does and you don’t need to say anything so super-smart, just practice more.

Over to Fun

2008-05-01T09:33:00.000-06:00

California was leery about answering the phone because he had stayed away from work and he didn’t know whether to sound sick or not but he did the STAY LOOSE gambit and they asked for him by name and he said this is me and the guy on the other end offered him a job and C.G. up and quit his now job and took the new one and when he rode the bus downtown the next day to start in and got off to go to the new work it was situated smack across the street from the old job and even at the same stop but he already knew that because two months earlier he had sent a hand written letter to the new place applying for a job and he’d been looking at the new job place across the street for a while figuring oh well what’s the use I won’t be working there so I’ll just keep on working here but they gave him one because one day he didn’t feel like going in to work you know the feeling and so he stayed home and figured when the phone rang who the crap could that be on the phone and I’ll take a chance and bingo the man said would you like to start and he got hired at the new job and got affiliated for the first time in commercial radio with one of the big powerful flagship radio stations in all of Canada.

Voting I D

2008-04-30T13:28:00.000-06:00

These tan pants and white shirt California Gibb has have no pockets and aren’t made to shove a lot of stuff into to make you look bulky but once when he looked in the mirror he thought how possible it was going to become for him to show up at the local elementary school to vote and be refused because he couldn’t prove who he was and Gibb doesn’t carry much with him when he travels light so how’s a person to prove who he is unless he could use a little LEADERSHIP and put a picture on the clip end of a lanyard and laminate the actual photograph and then wear it around the neck so there’s a match between a face and a picture and then he could vote because it would attest to his declaration that yes I am that STAY LOOSE man California Gibb and it says so right on this tag and it looks nice doesn’t it and the ladies at the table would say yes and reach for the book and open it and give him a pen to sign in and he’d vote and do the right thing without being inconvenienced in scaring up some way of verifying to people who he is and was this easy and it was and there’s no excuse for not being able to bring something with you that will assure the folks who need rest assuring that people are not voting when they have no business voting.

Setting Up

2008-04-29T14:58:00.000-06:00

STAY LOOSE as a frame of mind is not just something that is there with no preparation. If you think about it you’ll see that you have to set up for it. You take a bizarre car chase with the cops hot on an idiot’s tail. If the cops want to STAY LOOSE while the chase is on what they would do is reinforce the left and right front quarters of their car. Sort of like a tank. Then any pit maneuver could be done without the least bit of worry about getting the car fixed and having it in the shop for a long time. Otherwise it’s el smasho for your own car if you’re a cop and now you’re out of a nice car for a while. When you’re chasing somebody it’s a good feeling you can only imagine since most of us don’t do this but you can imagine how good it would feel to know you can pit the fleeing idiot without so much as hurting your own car one little smidgeon. Maybe a scratch and that’s it. So the staying loose in the whole scenario requires preparation. Then you can relax on the job when extra-ordinary risks are put upon you by the retards among us. So in a nutshell, the LEADERSHIP philosophy of STAY LOOSE means that you have to bone up on it and work hard on that totally refreshing attitude that sees you always relaxed in the face of mind-numbing ridiculous circumstances.

Obama’s Fear

2008-04-25T11:02:00.000-06:00

On the radio there was a comment about Obama being afraid of women. Is that enough to make you laugh? Everyone’s afraid of a woman. I’m talking a real woman. You take a phony lady and what’s there to be afraid of. She’s not sincere so what is there to fear. A lot of guys won’t date because of a deep fear of dating a lady. Isn’t that a hoot? Whatever can Barack be afraid of? What can they do to you except not go on a date with you? Actually if you go dateless for the rest of your life that could be quite the threat. That could make you scared of a woman who could do that. ‘A real woman that is. You’d have to know how to tell the real women from the phonies. That would call for on the ball LEADERSHIP in your mind at least, plus then throw in a whole truckload of STAY LOOSE. For some men all women are scary. For others maybe only one. It would be fun to find out if a given man was afraid of women. It’s quite probable that many men out there are afraid of even the non-scary kind. Remember they’ll get back at you if you do hateful things. Maybe Obama is over-polite because he really wants to treat Hillary like dirt. Maybe that’s why he seems scared. You have to treat a woman like a client. Listen attentively and get yourself a favorable response.

Hank’s Bank

2008-04-22T19:32:00.000-06:00

This one’ll slay you because it’s in a bank and in a bank you’re trying to STAY LOOSE because everyone’s quiet and doesn’t want to be picked out on the security camera. But this one guy Hank speaks to me in this bank like hi. It’s because I said hi first and then he said hi and I said what’s goin’ on and he said with all this money sticking outta his left hand that he had to put money in his wife’s account or she’d be in trouble and the way he put it meant that she goes completely nuts using non-existent currency. I’m wondering oh, oh, here it is again a man with a wife with a dead brain stem. He looked fairly loose but you never know there could be a well of seething anger about to pop up. He seemed to STAY LOOSE OK acting like sort of a LEADER as if he was still able to walk past half decently all the people standing staring zombie-like in the teller line. When you see this you want to jump up and down in the bank. It’s so absurd so you want to make something of it. Here he is some poor brow-beaten male making sure a spouse stays out of jail. He mentioned keeping her out of lockup and here he is probably on a routine sort of money deposit I sure as shootin’ hope on time enough to keep her out of the pokey.

Portal Rituals Foretelling Dates

2008-04-21T10:02:00.000-06:00

While I was eating some salmon these guys walked past and went out the restaurant door. One guy opened it for the other by pushing close to the hinges. What is it about portals? Is there a minefield on the other side so you go first to see if it’s safe? What’s there to prove about a relationship by doing a door opening for someone. I saw a 97 year old man barely open a P.O. door for a 32 year old lady athlete and he scrambled to do it. Maybe he figured he could have a date if he did it. She was good looking. She smiled and thought here’s another one who’ll do the door thing because I’ve still got what it takes. He was no STAY LOOSE type. You can’t STAY LOOSE if you’re a bundle of nerves. Nerves running rampant translates into gross insecurity about being laid back. California Gibb saw a lady once with three children approaching a door and he looked her over and decided she was strong and prolific and did nothing to indulge her. A striking lady by the door said “California you impolite idiot why don’t you open that door for her,” and when he used LEADERSHIP and stayed loose standing there the looker lady did it on her own and California wished her well in her new independent work and they’ve been friends ever since. ‘Ever since California found out that she’d been a star in a skin flick.

Stay Loose Spontaneous Philosophy

2008-04-19T12:56:00.000-06:00

Let’s talk about what STAY LOOSE is. It’s a philosophy. It’s a way of thinking and behaving in all kinds of so-called unyielding and rigid situations where you think everything is set in granite. There is not much that is established in stonework. STAY LOOSE as a way of behaving with people or events suggests spontaneous flexibility. You would think that you must shake someone’s hand if they shove it out at you. Don’t you just naturally offer your hand too? It only seems right. The next time that happens try instead to keep your hand at your side. Now look at the other person carefully to see what they do. What they do is look at you and after two seconds lower their hand to their side and go on with what they were doing. There is only one good reason to not shake hands. It’s so you won’t get germs. A lady came to the door and had a name tag around her neck because she was selling something door to door and she offered her hand and California Gibb didn’t move one muscle except for looking at her and she went on with her spiel and dropped her hand and went away after about 45 seconds more of explaining her product into which C.G. did not buy. To STAY LOOSE requires that you possess the assurance to do it. A huge dose of quiet confidence can usually be found in a STAY LOOSE attitude.

Natural Beauty Without Corset

2008-04-18T09:43:00.000-06:00

This guy on TV was talking about his lady friend being a natural beauty and he said she didn’t wear makeup. So it’s clear that you won’t see make-up on a woman whose beauty is natural, or is of a natural state or of the natural world. How can females get away from unnatural and phony beauty anyway when there are so many different bottles of lotion everywhere you go except maybe in thrift stores. It seems like we’re being prodded to think that someone’s a slimy bag of guts if they don’t wear make up. It might be time to STAY LOOSE on this. Some women look slightly better with a dose of makeup. Other women don’t even need lipstick or a corset because they are so naturally beautiful. What is it with natural anyway? Maybe natural has more potency to it because it’s not fake. Just who are the natural, beautiful broads? Actually there are women who appear to be beautiful but if you got a wash-rag and cleaned them off they’d be ugly. Would you want to hurt someone like that? STAY LOOSE LEADERSHIP would be to plain say nothing. A good guess would be that there are an awfully lot of ugly women out there who appear to be beautiful because we don’t see them later when they take it off. Possibly too, the less a woman wears tends to make it easier to compare between one group of naturals and another group of repulsives.

Mindless Beauty Pageants

2008-04-17T20:36:00.000-06:00

There were these two news reporters talking the other day on how beauty pageants aren’t drawing the ga-ga audiences like they did 20 years ago. The women who were in the shows 20 years ago haven’t the same fitness today. Maybe that’s why people shun pageants now. They’ve learned that it’s all a big disappointment. The women get uglier through the years so why stare at them. Maybe that’s it. Maybe not. People aren’t into beauty like before. If you really liked beauty you’d watch these ostentatious processions because they are called beauty pageants and so they show-off good looks. If the parades draw fewer viewers it’s because people don’t want to see them. There are good-looking women on the net but you have to realize that they don’t pass beauty pageant muster. They are known as internet women. The only place you can see pageant beauty is at a pageant. That’s where prettiness is. It’s why women apply to exhibitions to get more exposure. They say to their friends “I was in a beauty pageant,” and so their friends will go oooh and think, “gee she was in some sort of a trade fair and is she ever beautiful.” The only reason the beauty spectacles lack a lot of spectators now is because the people with remotes won’t lead out and press the beauty pageant channel button. In this they are so STAY LOOSE. Maybe too much. Maybe to where they seem to admire the ugly.

A Survey On a Low

2008-04-12T09:21:00.000-06:00

It would take some personal adjusting to have a survey taken of your low. Even if you’d never had a high the drop to the depths would be a challenge. George Bush’s nose-dive to a 28 percent popularity rating could be upsetting. If a survey was done on twenty of your own acquaintances and six of them thought you were popular what about the mindsets of the other fourteen. Figure on four really hating your guts. The ones in the middle would put up with you and maybe not feel much either way. The ones’ who liked you might be suck-ups and so how accurate would their reports be. It would take some real LEADERSHIP to not get drawn into stressing about who likes you and who doesn’t. It’s the other end of the scale you’d fret about. Those folks with a real bad case of nerves just thinking about you wouldn’t be candidates to baby-sit your kids. You’d need to STAY LOOSE. How much credence could you put in someone declaring that they are going to find out who likes you and who doesn’t. Would you want to know? What would the percentage of women be who answered the questions? Would they be good looking and have any money? You’d want to know. Or not. Or would you just accept it when someone you know who doesn’t think much of you says “and the neighbors don’t like you either.” So what will you do at your next popularity low?

Points It Is

2008-04-12T09:07:00.000-06:00

The NBA is exciting to watch. Watching the NBA can get you into the game. A broadcaster will ask a colleague a question about what it takes to win. The play-by-play will say that it’s attitude and the color commentator will harp on playing hard and the coach talks defense. They ask California Gibb. He’s an expert in human affairs, which, at the moment, is the game. People would go after the secret of winning if they could find it. The play asks the coach what he needs to win. He says it’s down to defense.

Then he asks California what he thinks and gets “me?” and says yah you. California makes with the idea of more points even if it’s only one. It’s STAY LOOSE thinking but that’s California Gibb. Then the second broadcaster gets asked what’ll it take to win and gets back a dose of attitude. California says he doesn’t care as long as they get more points. It’s hard to see anything simpler than that. Out comes how hard are the Jazz going to play and someone opines that they need to play harder than ever. They ask California and he says I don’t care if they’re out of rhythm. At the end if one team has more points guess who’ll be declared the winner even if the other team was super polished and one of the announcers says who and California answers the team with the most points. Everyone’s amazed. California reveals a leadership secret.

Bejing's Phony Jump

2008-04-11T11:26:00.000-06:00

Bejing’s Olympics will feature a phony long jump. Ostensibly the take off before or on the board measures an athlete’s jump distance. It is a wrong measure since it short changes the jumper.

The jump is measured from the board. Some athletes have a hard time gauging distance approaching the board and fail at hitting it. Some take off well before the board and get no credit for airtime gotten before they crossed the board. Others take off beyond the board and get disqualified.

High jumpers can take off from where they like.

Let’s totally STAY LOOSE about this and use Olympic leadership. Lay out an area four or five feet long to use for take off. A jumper could leave the ground anywhere within the area. The measurement would be made from where the long jumper actually lifted from the ground. The jumper could leave the ground within an area sufficient to give him flexibility and then get an authentic measurement of his jump. He would run hell bent for leather and then take off. We’d have a true long jump measure to the point where he landed. This will give us a true ground distance calculation.

MANAGED SLAPSTICK

2008-04-04T18:20:00.000-06:00

I was watching a news report on MSNBC and the anchor female was interviewing a dame who had just given American Airlines her two cents worth after she received some sort of phony award she said. You should’ve seen it. The anchor didn’t interrupt near enough. I mean if you’re going to do it why not go hog wild. But she interrupted, surely, blabbing and cutting in. She kept telling the stewardess dame how much time she had left, like will you hurry the crap up we’ve got 10 seconds.

If you want fun watch breathless anchors juggle an interview. That’s entertainment. The interviewee wants to finish her most important thought and the anchor hacks her off. But the ploy that shows you’re a complete STAY LOOSE broadcast leader is to just keep on interrupting. Why stop? After all we’re not going to hear a complete thought anyway so why not lets just accept it.

News programs are actually underplayed slapstick. The anchorwomen are continually over-stressing their exact diction like they are in some sort of stage play and shouting at the audience. Why don’t they mouth their words even more you would think. Don’t do it halfway. If they’re going to do it, do it. Show us some leadership why don’t they and go hair-brained overboard. Remember if they take interrupting others to the max it’s a true exercise in headship because how many would think that could ever be leadership. That’s what STAY LOOSE leadership is. It’s taking something—anything, and going to the uttermost max with it. Do it with this and you’re a STAY LOOSE type as you lead doing stupid stuff.

Creep

2008-04-03T11:38:00.000-06:00

When I thought of how misnamed a plate of entrails is to be called lunch I was reminded of when I heard a news report the other day on Fox and the lady doing it was referring to a man caught with bomb parts getting on a plane, as a gentleman. Was she kidding us? Since when is a people blower-upper considered as gentle in his ways. Or how about anyone who tries to scare people with what he’s got in his satchel. Can a hooker be considered a lady? Can a male pimp be termed Sir. You wonder about that. I suppose a whore who has just given it all up thirty seconds before coming into your purview could be now in this precise instant regarded as a lady, since she’s no longer a whore.

I don’t know about using “gentleman” for someone who is a creep. You would think if you could STAY LOOSE in this scenario you would go right ahead and tell it like it is. The use of leadership in these situations calls for the brutal truth. A terrorist is a creep.

I wouldn’t doubt that when the entertainers go to the prisons they walk up to the mike and say gentleman it’s nice to be here tonight and we’re going to give you a great show etc. I suppose that would be a gentlemanly crowd. Or not. I’m thinking couldn’t the journalist in her report to anchor lady Harris Faulkner on Fox have said that the police took a creep into custody today for trying to get on a plane with bomb parts. Would that have conveyed the news. Could people envision a creep with a bag with bomb stuff in it. We certainly could since that’s what a creep has been known to do.

YUM YUM BIRD GUTS

2008-04-02T09:29:00.000-06:00

California Gibb has this striking good looking cousin and she sent him an email and said let’s do lunch and he thought well crap you know about noon time I get pretty hungry if I’ve been practicing my dancing in front of a full length wall mirror all morning and there’s this foreign food buffet that would hit the spot if you can stand it. Because she likes boiled bird entrails and red peppers and I don’t know whether they’re from a Great Hoary Bustard or a common Snow Goose and this could very well be what is meant by lunch. Is this lunch? You can go but will it be worth it to go.

Maybe not. But maybe it would. It could be worth it to go and have some lunch because she’s pretty good looking and then just wait and see how long it’ll be until you up and barf on the floor. That could be worth it because people are going to laugh and some will get sick and they’ll be waiting to see who slips on it.

That’s what would make the whole thing a STAY LOOSE caper. You have to relax in an atmosphere of bird guts. Maybe it’s Ruddy Duck. It’s leadership if you can clean your plate after and be grateful. That’s leadership. Being thankful that is. You have to lead because by hanging back you’ll never go anywhere and boiled entrails or not, here you can get together with a cousin you haven’t seen in a long time and talk about family. There’s good in this and it has to do with leading out. Think. You could be eating with Gwen Stefani and if she insisted that you clean up your plate you’d be hard pressed to stomach it but you’d do it because she’s popular. But the adventure in it would be there. You’d be thinking let’s see how long I can go with this steamy entrails plate without losing it.

TIME SPENT AT THE DANCE

2008-04-01T09:27:00.001-06:00

California Gibb found out that the time spent dancing does not detract from the rest of a man’s life. He discovered that actually you don’t have to know how to dance as long as you STAY LOOSE. If you can stay loose you’ll show some good leadership. Here’s how. The dance takes hardly any time. A few hours at a dance per week and that’s about it. If you’re good at it then guess what? You’ll impress the ladies and they’ll gravitate to you. If you can’t dance so what? Well then it would be important to sit down beside various ones and shut up until they get so frustrated they start talking to you. If it was Marie Osmond sitting beside you she’d probably ask you to dance and show you how as long as you don’t try to prove anything. That’s how you meet a lot of ladies.

But even if you can dance, just shut up. If you can’t dance, why of course, shut up. And why would that be? Because the ladies are sooo impressed by men who listen. Is this hard? It is for some people who can’t seem to control running off at the mouth.

Consider this. You can’t talk much at a dance anyway since the music at most places is near to deafening. So plan to smile, squint, wrinkle your face, shrug your shoulders and nod your head instead of saying anything amidst a din of blaring music. Live with it and you’ll be what a woman really wants: A listener who doesn’t have to say anything and therefore can be counted on to not tell too many lies.

Ladies just in case you’re wondering, this all applies to you too since this is a general principle in action at the dance. For example the above paragraph would read…because the men are sooo impressed by ladies who listen….

McCain's VP Mate

2008-03-31T16:19:00.000-06:00

We’ve touched on this before. It’s the SANDWICH PROTOCOL OF ACTIVE MANAGEMENT or SPAM. It’s critical to leadership and it’s important for staying loose in a proper way. What you do is treat the coming selection for VP in a sandwich manner. In other words you know precisely whom you will select. That’s the bread. The inside of the sandwich is not having a clue who you’re going to ask. Let’s say you choose Oprah Winfrey in a month or so. From that it would appear that you knew what you were doing. But then you change your mind in five or six days and choose Condoleeza Rice instead. You would appear uncertain for a period of time but then folks would settle down. That would be the middle of the sandwich—not knowing. But then it’s back to Oprah, and back to Rice. People would say to McCain how come you’re doing this? All he has to say is that he’s changed his mind as in “I don’t feel good about this.” And then do that four or five times. He can do it. He’s the nominee.

Remember, to make a good sandwich you’ve got to have a measure of knowing and then a dash of not having a clue. Changing back and forth gives you this aura. People love it. It’s entertaining, like seeing a tennis ball go back and forth, back and forth. People love uncertainty. It’s like a circus. It also gets the whole country going nuts thinking, hey this McCain is after a woman. ‘And a black babe besides. But then they don’t really know because he’s so undecided. But it all works for his good since in this uncertain yet certain going back and forth folks come to see him as making some pretty sure and unsure decisions slapped right next to each other as in SPAM.

In other words he knows but yet he doesn’t know and yet the subjects of his choosing are the right kinds of people that will bring him the presidency. Who’ll argue about Oprah? No one. Or Rice. No one again. Rice can beat anyone Hillary could throw at McCain and Oprah too would slip into office no matter who Obama had. Even if Oprah hasn’t given the Vice Presidency one bit of thought, she could do it. We know Rice can. But Oprah could too. McCain and either Oprah or Condoleeza could beat the heck out of any combo of Obama and Clinton, merely by McCain showing a huge element of uncertainty on the outside with a nice filling of certainty on the inside. ‘Want a sandwich?

WOULD HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON DO ANYTHING

2008-03-29T11:41:00.000-06:00

The other day Rush Limbaugh said Hillary Rodham Clinton would do anything to get this nomination. Anything, he said and he went to excess to over-emphasize the word ANYTHING.

You might think that comment would carry a lot of weight to it. But hold on. We need to take a look at it. It proves Limbaugh is normal. He uses language he doesn’t understand. Would Hillary take a trip to Banff, Alberta to get the nomination. Would she wear a bathing suit walking on Fifth Avenue. She might. But would she do anything?

Dish up a scrumptious plate of dog food ala beef chunks dinner. Would she eat it to get the nomination? It’s hard to see people doing anything to arrive at a result. Usually they only do what they want. Eventually though you would think if we went at this long enough we would get to something about which she would say I wouldn’t do that in a million years, not even to get the nomination. Can you think of what that might be? There are a lot of choices out there that could dissuade us from doing anything to get something. Rush is just another normal example of someone with a mike who likes whipping people up into a frenzy over an issue. I would say ANY issue, but I don’t really know that.

DATING LEADER LADIES

2008-03-28T09:38:00.000-06:00

Let’s put two good books to use. We’ll take a look at how an abject man could date a CEO WOMAN. She has the good corporate job and likely even owns the business and he, relative to her, has squat.

First read STAY LOOSE and then follow that with DATING JACKPOT JANE, both touted on this website and websites related to it. One man is miserable, one California Gibb, and he wants a date with a DISTINCTIVE DAME. This is what he could do. He would take a scrap piece of paper and write a note on it. “I’ll be having a soda in the food court at 9.45 Wednesday morning. If you can join me that’d be great—California Gibb.”

Well, TOP BABE is not going to do anything about that because why would she. The note was in No.2 pencil on leftover paper so in her world it would be wretched. But the dismal man is doing this same routine with twenty other women. It only takes one. He waits. Three weeks later he drops off another note to SUMMIT SISTER’S office. Do you think she’ll show up in the food court? No. Eighteen days later he writes another short note. “This Friday I’ll be taking a break in the food court at 10 A.M. It’d be great to see you. I’ll be wearing a brown leather jacket with a white shirt and tan pants and Burgundy shoes and white sox.” California Gibb.

By this time CEO BROAD is wondering what is going on. Her training in corporate sternness is beginning to crumble and she would like to show up without being made a silly fool. She does nothing.

In about another 17 or so days Gibb writes a new note and says that he’ll be in the food court on Tuesday about 10.15 in the morning and if she can be there fantastic. She doesn’t show while being curious. She may actually go to the edge of the food court to see from a distance just who the brazen man is. What she sees is a veritably good example of a man to be with notwithstanding he has zero resources. UPPER CHICK’S business strictness seems to leave her at this time. She walks over to the table and says who she is. She sits down and California introduces himself, too. And then he asks her how she is, and she wants to know who he is. But remember he is austere/bleak. So he says nothing other than oh no, let’s not talk about me, let’s talk about you, how is your morning going, and he is conversational and entertaining without going to excess. He shuts up and she talks. Everyone needs someone to listen. In twenty minutes he says I have an appointment and it is terrific to see you and I look forward to when I can see you again.” After another two and a half weeks have flown by he writes another note and she shows up. And it goes on for months until she can hardly stand it with these notes. Finally she says let’s go out and he says OK pick me up at my digs and we’ll get a milkshake and she says great. That’s how you get a date with LEADER-LEVEL LASSES.

Is Learning Leadership Worthwhile?

2008-03-27T10:12:00.000-06:00

Our good man California Gibb was reading one time. He took as his personal assignment to really understand more fully an article from a JAIMS catalogue (Japanese American Institute of Management Science) 1989/90 edition p. 16. It appears to have been written by Haruko Ozeki, Age 25, LL.B. Sophia University. She said something like how moving back to Japan from Hawaii made her appreciate her five months of Hawaii schooling. She noted how her practice of English and American management helped her and prodded her toward international management and legal affairs.

She indicated that it was even more than that. She got to know many people and she got some real treasures out of the experience, which she figured would always enrich her life. Among her treasures gotten were also a scuba-diving certificate and singing the Messiah as a member of the Honolulu Symphony Chorus. She thanks JAIMS for doing this for her with an exclamation point at the end of the sentence.

-------------------

NOW you see if California Gibb had been there he would have been able to see where the expert practice of management science can actually be complimented by STAY LOOSE leadership and how it can get you to stay calm. The thing to do is get lined up with a Scuba-diving school first off. Do it sooner not later just as soon as you arrive at the place. Take all the courses that they have. Keep taking the courses. Go again and again into the pool in your gear and have your picture taken and then put the caption underneath that says “California Gibb leads out in Scuba leadership and stays darn loose while hard at it.” And then take some more courses in Scuba diving. On the side you could laminate some chorale sheet music in waterproof see-through stuff and take it underwater just to see if you could make any improvement at all singing those serious songs three feet down. With practice you can, trust me, because I have pondered the whole question of STAY LOOSE. Doing it this way you’ll stay away from stuffy classrooms and learn a lot about SL leadership concurrently with a tank on your back. It’s a loose way of becoming a leader while picking up extra skill in submerged singing. You’ll never regret it and it’s all transferable skill.

All Walks of Life

2008-03-26T09:29:00.000-06:00

"Can I help you sir?”

“Yes, I heard on the radio that I could exercise in your gym with people from all walks of life.”

“That’s right sir, in this large room we have ex-cons, transients, folks with tattoos, bag ladies, gang members and wacko preachers, plus senators.”

“I heard that if I joined I’d be exercising with folks in all stages of fitness.”

“That is so correct sir, you see, right over there we have the fatties and flaccid right on up to the trim hard body.”

“I notice you’re pointing to the men.”

“Yes I am in your case, what else?”

“Would there be any possibility of exercising with just one class of people in only one stage of fitness?

“Well I’ve never heard that one before, like what?”

“Could you possibly show me a gym that has only stunning hard-body babes who are totally fit and only exercising to maintain their fitness who also happen to be BYU graduates in physical education?”

“You know I think we can do that, see, right over here, let’s just open this door, there they are all former pageant contestants hoping to get into another pageant and of course for the price we’re asking you’ll be assigned to their gym whenever you come in.”

“Golly gee there must be thirty of ‘em in there.”

“I would think so.”

“So that means I will not be working out with the diverse group?”

“Exactly, you’ll be put in a group with very restricted parameters.”

“Well thank you very much, I’m fairly narrow myself and never was much into any kind of diversity where I needed to make any adjustments.”

“Excellent let’s get your membership set up right over here.”

STAY LOOSE cover

2008-03-25T10:10:00.000-06:00

Loose Leadership

2008-03-25T09:17:00.001-06:00

In the way we use the term STAY LOOSE in this book it tends to take on a meaning of subdued like you might find in the life of a really relaxed person and they are hard to come by. Most people are going bananas. It’s a private mental state that is hardly ever really easy to come by. People seem to be working at it but you still run into incomprehensible senselessness if you happen to turn around. The whole world-changing idea behind a STAY LOOSE style of leadership is that you wouldn’t want to be caught going nuts over an event that doesn’t mean much. And so in the midst of the shouting you try to stay chilled out. STAY LOOSE means that you are entirely aware of the challenge of taking on a tremendous risk in how you go about accomplishing certain chancy tasks. A chancy move is a dicey one. One that is dicey is a situation where you decide to stay calm although it is expected of you that you should be terribly rigid in the circumstances. Yet, and yet you come off behaving socially OK but in a Stay Loose manner.

A SIT DOWN AFFAIR

2008-03-24T15:24:00.000-06:00

The idea behind a stay loose book is to keep calm. If you were a toilet seat salesman you’d have to keep calm if you saw a 20 foot high display wall in a hardware store covered with unsold toilet seats. I got a new one the other day and found out that the nerves in my buttocks were able to tell that it was relatively unused. The idea behind a stay loose book is to keep calm. If you were a toilet seat salesman you’d have to keep calm if you saw a 20 foot high display wall in a hardware store covered with unsold toilet seats.
I got a new one the other day and found out that the nerves in my buttocks were able to tell that it was relatively unused.
I used a seat in Torino just before the Olympics and found out that the seat was an inch higher off the floor. You can get mad over something like that. What makes the Italians think they can do it higher in the air. I know a guy who rented an apartment, a swank one, in California that had been used by a former California governor and this guy, and he was a funny guy, had to pretty well puff himself up with pride pretty good when he said he'd sat on the same seat as the Gov. This Stay Loose book is about that sort of stuff. It’s all real but some people won’t say anything about it although there are thousands of toilet seats sold every day and even used to frame pictures in.

PARK CITY STAY LOOSE RUSE

2008-03-22T12:01:00.000-06:00

It happened back in '82.

"Hi my name’s Merkley, what’s your name?” It was the way the unprompted ruse started out. It was in a supermarket in Park City. Merkley had turned to his date who was right behind him in the checkout line. She was the stunning Ms. Lourdes Carvalho 5’ 8” bombshell from Sao Paulo who went along with it immediately. With her tabernacle choir consummately trained voice she harmoniously announced her name in return.

“Hi, I’m Lourdes Carvalho,” she said in a practiced voice so rich why even try to resist it. She caught on to the spur-of-the-moment ruse fast, very fast. They shook hands like they were meeting each other for the first time and all the people in the checkout line are watching as these two people are meeting and striking up an acquaintance spontaneously. Or so it seemed. Everyone is held up for a quite entertaining few moments and they are all absolutely surprised. The cashier too is totally stunned because he doesn’t know what’s going on. He becomes somewhat mortified besides when Merkley and Ms. Carvalho the looker dish then slowly embraced and kissed each other a long time. ‘Long enough for the cashier to scan the bread and the cotto salami and then they slowly disengaged. They quietly paid for their own respective groceries with total composure separately.

Then they both walked out quietly and individually and not with each other like nothing happened. They played it totally straight like two people who did not know each other but met and then were kissing in the checkout line and then parted. Sixty seconds later they had an uproariously good laugh on the parking lot outside the store and could hardly stand up they were laughing so hard and reveling in the idea that they were actually loose enough to do it.

2008-03-21T11:24:00.000-06:00

I thought I'd throw in this.

SPAM

2008-03-21T09:38:00.000-06:00

March madness time the 21st day of the month.

This is a new entry and it's been a couple of months since there was one. It's going in because everyday some wacko will ask you to testify as to the veracity of some unknown idiotic fact and you're supposed to know it all. There's a way to handle this but you've got to do it deadpan.
It's called SPAM and we start off with a comparison to a yummy sandwich that you might find at one of those street vendors all covered with dust from the dried up manure on the road and coming too, from the passing animals and people.
SANDWICH ANALOGY So we have a problem. How is an individual supposed to appear like he has brains and at the same time since one is without the exact answer, get out of being expected to know it all?
We all ought to be using the SANDWICH PROTOCOL OF ACTIVE MANAGEMENT. It’s called SPAM for short. Here's how it works. You can say you do not know. That would be the outside of the sandwich, the two pieces of bread. That way you can end any more humming and hawing. But then you follow that up fast with “but I do know.” That would be the center filling of the tasty sandwich.
That too, could be enough, although once heard, it opens up further questioning. But then you can say again that you really do not know. It's the brown bread again. With that we are beginning to go through the back and forth routine, like someone opening up the sandwich more than once to see what’s in it. Keep in mind in all of this the following salient point: It is precisely what is needed. It is a type of response that stops an inquirer from either feeling that a speaker is not knowledgeable or that she acts too smart. In the process of replying to questions heard, you could easily follow up your first answer with a re-statement that you really do know a little something about what you're talking about.
Now an interesting element of balance is beginning to be heard by the other individual listening to your argument. For one thing he perceives that you are a tad loose to say the least. This moment of equilibrium in your reasoning takes a few seconds to begin occurring. In the going back and forth between the two positions a sort of loose balance is beginning to be perceived. Even though you are not totally sure about what it is you can share as an answer to the questions, you are, in some ways, quite sure.
SMART AND TASTY VICTUALS It is a good sandwich filling of tasty certainty between a couple of slices of chewy uncertainty. Wrap any and all thin slices of ignorance around spammy admissions of lucid comprehension. Or vice-versa. Either way. Two thin slices of knowing on either side of a hefty filling of inexperience also makes a satisfying intellectual victual.

In this way people are made to apply their own minds to the thing they ask of you. And if you’re in a Stay Loose mind set, it is definitely what you want. You might wonder how this can be. As they hear you carry on your own personal debate about whether or not you know everything or how come you know nothing about the question asked, almost always the inquirers have in mind anyway their own tentative takes forming on a forthcoming answer.

But now they begin to see that the questions phrased have more than one facet to them. Some people like a good cold spam sandwich with sandwich spread.

It is in the combining of prepared foods that appeals to them. Tuna with celery is fine. Knowledge and ignorance have always gone hand in hand. Tomatoes with pickles are savory. Wisdom with doubt is a winning combination. It all demonstrates that an accommodation can always be made to the questions asked even if there is not a complete pat answer being applied to the solution. Do you like dealing with a dummy? Or would you rather deal with a know-it-all? So which is best? The answer is only partly clear. How about seeing if you can get in touch with those irritating feelings that develop whenever you think of either one of these hard-to-take entities, the dummy and the smart-aleck. Look at some obviously thoughtless phrases by dummies that you hear uttered regularly. They are on the unthinking side of mouthing off. These expressions pop up daily at work and in casual chitchat. They represent an unawareness of what it is we say when we blab.

So that's it for now and you know what? Keep it in mind and try it out. There's going to be an opportunity coming at you faster than you maybe realize. signed, H. B. Merkley Salt Lake City

Do You Like Quotes?

2008-01-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

Quotes 3

"I don't know," Ken Taylor said, not sure what the summer held for work, standing at his locker across the hall from Merkley's during the last week of high school, never figuring he'd be the Canadian Ambassador to Iran, getting six Americans out by fixing them up with Canadian passports.

"If you go to Stanford you won't have to be 2nd class to anybody," said uncle Dr. Marion G. Merkley to Merkley before his unc became the Utah State Supt. of Pub. Instruction, who got doctored at Stanford U.

"Yah I remember you," says Frankie Laine looking at Merkley in Las Vegas as Merkley was introducing a friend to him.

"Nice to meet you Marv," says Mike Leavitt just before becoming Governor of Utah to the individual Merkley was introducing to him.
"Where do we go?" Petula Clark asks Merkley as she takes his arm and they head for a buffet at the Calgary Inn.
"I'd like to thank Prof. Merkley for asking me to speak," said Harry Walker, Regina Mayor, as he began lecturing one of Merkley's management classes.
"Oh, you're Dave's Dad," she says and it was Gwen Stefani of Grammy winning and Superbowl half time fame, sharing a hug and posing for a pic with Merkley, knowing his son Dave, who is pretty well connected.
"Do you sing second tenor?" she asked. It was Janie Thompson wanting to find out where to place Merkley in a minstrel show she was doing, and this was after she had been one of the great singers of the big band era with Skitch Henderson.
"Get the silly thing and get out," said the former U.S.Commissioner of Education, Sterling McMurrin to Merkley about finally getting down to work on his doctorate.
"Hey how are you?" Eddie Firmage, one of the smartest legal scholars in the world says to Merkley, and who used to be Merkley's wrestling partner when they were freshman at BYU with whom Merkley has second cousins in common, notably Nathan E. Tanners kids.
"It's the campus report," Sandy Gilmour, bigtime NBC news man says to Merkley in the days when he was calling Merkley at KALL Radio from the Univ. of Utah to give a report on the air of what was happening on campus, before he went big time.
"Nice to meet you," Governor George Romney says to Merkley at the airport on the Gov's 50th birthday.
"Hi," Mitt Romney, son of George shouts over at Merkley after Merkley shouted Hi prior to the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olymics.
"It's Brando," Glenn Olds, Pres. of SUNY and later Kent State Univ., says to Merkley about an original drawing on a hall wall at Old's house at Oyster Bay, for which Marlon sat and posed.
"Thank you," says LeGrande Richards, the oldest living great orator in the state, to Merkley, after Merkley had helped him on with his coat outside Snelgrove's ice cream store in Salt Lake City.
"The rent's pretty cheap," he said to Merkley. It was Louie Youngkeit, renting space in his house to Merkley when Merkley was a college student and years before Youngkeit became a fringe candidate for President of the United States.
"Boy that was scary," John Rains says to Merkley after a one hour radio interview, and bringing Merkley up to speed on the fact that Rains is the grandson of thee Claude Rains in the movie "Casablanca".
"Good pipes," Andy Bumatai, Hawaii's premier comic describes Merkley's voice at the Manu Lani Hotel during one of his performances and he's conducting sound byte interviews in the audience and he comes over and Merkley says a few words in the mike and Bumatai notes the dulcet quality of Merkley's state of the art tones.
"That was me," Charlotte Sheffield was telling Merkley behind his house in front of his old car on the parking lot in Hollywood after Merkley told her he saw her on TV last night as Merkley is being introduced to Miss USA by his roommate who is dating her.
"Where you been?" Merkley got asked upon his return to Calgary from Honolulu, by Sugarfoot Anderson, who had a part in the real, old, original movie of "Seabiscuit," back in the forties, and the same Anderson who played excellent pro football for the Calgary Stampeders.
"Will Ben Merkley please report to the control booth," said the announcer over the PA system at the Stampede Corral with 10,000 fans in attendance during the intermission of a Bill Haley and his Comets concert, which page had been set up to give Merkley some semblance of recognition."
# posted by B. Merkley @ 11:23 AM

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More Totally Profound Quotes

2008-01-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

Quotes 2nd group

"And now Capitol Records recording stars The Lettermen," said Merkley when he introduced them onstage to a screaming crowd at Lagoon.
"I really do like those glasses,"--Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator about Merkley's Porsche sun glasses. Hatch is easy to get along with.
"So whaddya teach?"--Premier Peter Lougheed of Alberta asking Merkley to admit to whatever it was he could possibly be teaching.
"No relation to the Bennett Glass people in Calgary"--Wallace F. Bennett U.S. Senator saying to me who he wasn't related to.
"Will this get you there?"--Calgary Mayor Don Mackay pointing to a white Chrysler Valiant Merkley was about to drive and wondering if it'll get to Red Deer.
"Use this,"--Lionel Aldridge of the Ut. State Aggies later of the Green Bay Packers letting Merkley use his student I.D. to enter the stadium, with a photo of Lionel who is black and Merkley's pasty white but it worked and L.A. played great for Utah State and then the Pack.
"Four dollars,"-- Melvin Dummar later of "Howard and Melvin" hoax movie fame, claiming he was picked up by Howard Hughes in the desert & a year before that asking Merkley to pay for the gas he had put in the tank at his Willard Utah station
"This is Keeley...expecting,"--Louis Prima introducing me to his wife Keeley Smith and Sam Butera in 'Vegas.
"No way I'm shakin' his hand," Merkley thought going into the men's room and he's coming out to get on his private jet on the general aviation side of the airport, is one of the world's richest people, Mariner Eccles.
"'Scuse me will yah,"--Lavell Edwards whom they named the BYU stadium after, the legend, asks Merkley at a Highland High school game he was watching on his way out and going past Merkley's seat from where he was sitting down the row in the stands.
"Amen,"--Tommy Hudspeth, Calgary Stampeders backfield coach, and later BYU and Detroit Lions head coach affirms audibly next to Merkley after someone at the front of the room finished off a prayer at a church meeting they were both attending.
"Where can I go to the toilet"--Charles Bronson asking Merkley's wife Haunani when she was a lobby hostess at the Westin Mauna Kea.
"You like mo' rice Merkley," said Edith Kanakaole after whom they named the stadium in Hilo home of the Merry Monarch Festival while Edith's daughter Pualani looked on shoveling in her third plateful.

# posted by B. Merkley @ 11:20 AM

Quotes to Assist Loose Thinking

2008-01-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Merkley's quotes. Yes these are actually here. Everyone has them but no one sees how important they are like Merkley does. It's trivia. But you know what? Trivia makes it, so Merkley records them.

"I can point you to some people you could talk to about getting a job," says Wm. G. Dyer to me and he's Dean of BYU's Grad. School of Business, as a good cousin would.
"Is this going down?" It was Hiram Fong U.S. Senator asking Merkley about the elevator's direction, that he was on when the door opened, in Honolulu.
"Why don't you come to Rexburg and visit?" asks cousin Sybil Ferguson founder of Diet Center.
"Enjoyed your program," writes Buddy Greco on a card after listening to a late jazz program Merkley was announcing on KSL in the early sixties and Greco's in a car crossing Wyoming in the dead of night.
"Merkley you are a very persistent fellow; you will make it; you will go places"---Nat "King" Cole
"Merkley...with every good wish"---N. Eldon Tanner in a book he gave me.
"He's a disgrace"---quip from a student who got a failing "E" grade in Merkley's 14 week acknowledged snap course on public speaking which the student, 7/8 asleep, attended 6 weeks.
"I'm a singer"--said Anita O'Day after I asked her what it is that she does.
"That was great fun riding a horse into the York Hotel...but I did"---Woody Strode who played the King of Ethiopia in the Ten Commandments, telling me at James Edwards' house in LA what it was like winning the Grey Cup for Calgary in 1948.
"Thanks for the dinner Brother Merkley,"---said Elder Verl Osmond, Donny & Marie's bro after he was a guest for dinner.
"Mind if I smoke?"---Rene LeVesque later Quebec Premier asking Merkley if he could light up in a small stuffy conference room at the Univ. of Saskatchewan.
"'It's green"-- Lowell Thomas, friend of Lawrence of Arabia & CBS commentator noting the traffic light as he and Merkley crossed N. Temple walking south on State Street in Salt Lake City
"Disc jockey huh?"---Ella Fitzgerald at the Hollywood Bowl questioning Merkley's dubious status.
"Nice to meet you"---says R. M. Nixon to Merkley after a speech in Hilo in 1960.
"'See you man," Jim Pike of the Lettermen says as Merkley leaves for a mission in Hawaii in the late '50's.
"Thank you very much," DeeDee Corradini Salt Lake City Mayor who brought the 2002 Olympics, upon hearing Merkley say she was buff.
"What do you think?" Merrill Bateman asking me to say something when I really didn't know what to say, as usual, in a committee meeting, no one knowing he'd be the next president of BYU while Steve Covey looked on snickering.
"So where should we go?" Lani Kai (Lani Woodd) friend, songwriter, co-star actor with Gardner McKay in TV's "Adventures in Paradise" and Woody Strodes step-son asks Merkley as they sit in Woodd's '58 Thunderbird on Sunset Blvd. in front of the Seawitch.

# posted by B. Merkley @ 11:17 AM 1 Comments

Stay Loose Jack

2008-01-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

My cousin Jack Gibb wrote a lot and lectured a lot on trust and developed a theory he called TORI. When I was young I stopped at his house in Portland on my way from LA to Calgary in a '49 Merc and had breakfast with my great aunt, his mom. And she was asking me about what I'd majored in and I told her and she said well you know Jack is in that field and he's pretty well known and he's with the Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla and I'm so green and naive this was all news to me and I say "Oh," and go on eating. My aunt Ada, his mom, was the salt of the earth. Jack was a great man. His bro and my cousin too was the dean of the graduate school of management at BYU, Bill Dyer. Jack's article "Is Help Helpful?" has shaped some of my management style.
For example some of the time and you've probably run into this, you can offer help and be rejected totally. And then there are the times when you want to do it yourself and somebody appears to be butting in when they say they would like to help. Jack goes into that type of situation in his article. The piece has shown up in some textbooks and journals. But on the loose thing knowing that help can be unhelpful can make a person choose to be brutal when someone pleads with him to go up a tree to get a cat when almost everyone knows that a cat will, someday, come down on its own. And there are a ton more situations that don't require someone to go hairbrain nuts just because an event is occurring, that, in the mind of the panicky, may seem to need an immediate remedy. Perhaps it may need no help at all. Other than listening to the person's problem and going Hmm, hmm, so the cat's up the tree. I wonder if you've thought about opening a can of sardines and placing it at the foot of the tree. Hmm.

Use MASH when going riding

2008-01-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

Merkley's AXIOM OF SPORTS HEALTH: Without a helmet the freedom to mash your brains is self-evident.
Some Bio now: Merkley spoke to an institute of agrologists. It was fairly boring. Once he lectured insurance agents. That was sort of dull. He spoke at a university too, where half the audience grasped for tenure. He's spoken to Rotary folks, Chambers of Comm., Kiwanis groups, cultural clubs, and even Toastmasters. He lectured the Mounties about how a red coat makes you stand out. He's talked to nurses who wanted to take his pulse. He spoke to a state health department about listening, with a bunch of bored shrinks in attendance. In a nutshell in doing those things it is required that you STAY LOOSE.

Steve Covey Stays Loose

2008-01-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

The Declaration of Independence gives us clues as to how difficult it is to stay loose. It says that "All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."--July 4th, 1776

Here's how I was introduced to an academic approach to the attitude of being relaxed. Many years ago, I was in a college class in human relations. The subject matter was about the relationships of people with one another in organizations. The course was taught by Stephen R. Covey, an assistant professor at that time, and who later became a well-known public speaker and writer.
OLD PROFESSOR
During the time the class was underway, the story was told a number of times about an old teacher long ago who once taught a class in human relations. It was explained how this ancient teacher would emphasize the critical need to stay flexible. The story goes that there was once a student who wanted to remember what the old teacher was teaching about human relations. While the old teacher was teaching, the student would write in his notes the things that the teacher was saying. The student went over the material persistently in order to know it better for when the final exam came around.
As the ancient professor's class rolled on, the student with the notebook wondered if he could remember the notes which he had written. Then the final exam was announced. To help himself prepare for the exam, the student cut his jottings to one page. The night before the exam he was still concerned about his recall abilities so he trimmed his notes to a half page. The next morning with exam angst gripping him, he reduced his notes further to a paragraph. But again this was not manageable enough so he condensed everything to one sentence. Five minutes before the exam was to start he took a big step. He summed up the whole course and boiled it down to two words which he figured he could remember once he began responding to the test questions in the exam room.
TWO WORDS
The student went into the exam room knowing his time would be brief. He sat down and thoughtfully began writing his answers. On the brink of writing something, he stopped in his tracks. He had forgotten the words. The words were the essence of the course that the ancient professor had taught incessantly. They had everything to do with how we could act more loosely and effectively instead of going berserk when we don't get our own way. It was a great story told by Steve Covey. Later on in Covey's class my own exam time approached. I thought and wondered about how I could ace it. The exam came. Walking into the room, I picked up a blue test booklet, carried it to a desk, and sat down and began writing. In seconds I was done.
SIX SECONDS
After approximately a six second response, two pithy words had been written. they were on paper and now possessed a life of their own. It was written. Once in a while, decades later, people who had heard about this gutsy risk, ask about what it takes to pull something off like that. They want to know how I could be so cool in writing a two word final. Keep in mind that when you take an exam, see if you can arrange it so you can take it in a form more to your liking.
In the exam room itself, out of respect for the other 25 students allotted a three hour span in which to struggle over tricky questions on a worrisome final, the author stayed three more minutes. Having paused in that fashion in order to reflect to myself how ridiculously easy that little leadership caper had been, I stood up and walked to the front of the class. I placed the exam, without any fanfare, on the front table at a spot designated for placing the completed exams. The other students were amazed. Of course they were amazed. They were conventional students using conventional, typical minds to write out answers. It was such a fast finish. How can you take an exam that fast. They couldn't figure it. They murmured.
GIST OF COVEY
If you had understood the basic Covey, with an appreciation of what the uncomplicated S. R. Covey actually was, and what had been professed daily, and you had responded on the final in a manner absolutely consistent with what he was professing during the entire course, and then doing this on the exam, then my friends, then, it is precisely true, in fact, without a doubt, that if you had written "stay loose," on the first right hand page and been done with it, then, bam, like John Madden exults, you would have grasped the pith of the class in a tidy two word final.
AORTA
Isn't that better than a long drawn-out effort on a warm, spring morning holed up in a classroom. It surely is. And I knew it, and I knew the others knew it. I had no intention of being in that classroom as one of the herd going about writing convoluted, laborious sentences in a blue book. Certainly not when Prof. S. Richards Covey with his Harvard MBA was more or less continually playing on a theme of "stay loose" for an entire semester.
What does it take, then, a super-human genius to get the meaning behind all that. Stay loose, amigo, means stay loose. When you're faced with what shapes up as a stressful scenario there are always methods to lessen the load for you. How you do it is to put stay loose into practice. It involves a risky route to final exam completion. I did it and departed. I was itching to get into the sunshine and into the university's memorable history books, here called the Annals Of Risk Taking Accomplished, or also known as AORTA.
You can imagine how good it was walking out. Think how I must have, in fact, been quietly relieved inside, having shucked off a load of weight with the flourish of a cheap pen. But it was not easy to pull off. The naive might think it could be done easily. In the early stages of deciding to write just two small itty-bitty words on a final exam there was yes, you guessed it, r over wondering if it could be pulled off. Questions of self doubt came up. The big one was "should I?"
UNDECIDED
Had it ever been done before? Who knew the answer to that? No one the author knew in his small circle of friends. Could it really be pulled off? In the early stages of figuring it out who would know about that sort of unconventional test-taking that you could talk to. No one knew anything like that. Covey had appeared entertainingly creative in class and had, in many ways, according to his own accounts of how he had handled various human relations situations in the past, been operating somewhat outside routine convention.
Covey was quite capable of trying a lot of things other people wouldn't try. So whether or not to actually go ahead with such an outlandish cut-short written answer in a final exam was the question, even if risk-taker S. Covey happened to be the teacher. It was known in my mind well in advance of the test, that the two word answer would be in response to any and all questions the class must answer, not just one, or some of the questions. All questions. The two-word answer was all of it.
Essentially no matter what Covey asked then, the words "stay loose," would be what I was going to write down. The two word answer had become, in my mind, a general response to anything and everything that could come my way as a way of putting me to the test. In the decades to come as a matter of how the two word answer took on a handy utility, the words "stay loose," cropped up regularly as a continuing general response to any manner of discombobulation. "Stay Loose" even became a parting shot. So in that sense, stay loose as an answer to a global set of problems, was a relationship position. It was a way of looking at particular things and all things. At the least it was that day in that exam room. It was a method of responding, generalizeable to an unknown number of challenges.
And with respect to the test, I had no intention to reveal to anyone, anything about my plan or precisely how I was going to write the final exam. In the days immediately before the writing of the examination I met casually from time to time, briefly in passing, with other fellow students walking across the college campus who wondered about the coming test and who vainly tried to predict what sort of exam it was going to be.
TOP SECRET
Various hypothetical exam scenarios were laid out by students who figured
they could out-figure the professor, but not a word was breathed by me about how truncated I had decided my own final test was going to be. The whole escapade was top secret.
You can imagine that if the plan had ever been suggested, even in confidence to another student, that this two word tactic was an easy way to walk into the exam room and write it, the word would be out. You can further figure that Prof. S. R. Covey could very well at that point come out with a bulletin board warning like "All students will take the allotted three hours and write a minimum of 1500 words..." and so on, etc. So the whole effort would not have worked. It definitely would not have been unique and it would have failed. Tactics told about beforehand lose their novelty and power to surprise. I got a nearly top grade out of that final and a nearly top grade out of the class.

# posted by B. Merkley @ 11:28 AM 1 Comments

Woody Allen Stay Loose Leadership

2007-12-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today we take a look at a type of leadership that smacks of totally Stay Loose. It was written on Tuesday, February 08, 2005

THE WOODY ALLEN WAY One way of conducting your super-high, super-serious role as a top manager if you are one of those people at the pyramid's top, has a tremendous lot to do with making the job one nice huge piece of cake. Do you like cake? Here is some cake for you. But what shall we call the ultra-easy process? Catchy titles for this manner of leading out can be very elusive indeed. Management theorists have given various names to different theories on how leaders can go about leading. You've probably heard of Theory X and maybe you've come across Theory Y. There's also general management and there's close supervision. But how about perhaps for now let's just call this new piece of cake, easy management method, something simple. How about Woody Allen Management. It's easy enough. In other words WAM.
The author has studied management for the better part of the 20th century. He probably knows more about this type of laid-back leadership than anyone, most anyone, anyway, just from looking around and seeing how people knock themselves out trying to get stuff done. But consider this. In looking at hot-stuff leadership traits, the notion hits you like a freight train that Woody Allen is probably the one icon who really has a handle on leadership. At least he certainly demonstrates it. Some would unknowingly wonder how so. He has it besides understanding it. He is easily above and beyond what the graduate schools of management can ever teach anyone, anywhere, anytime. The MBA programs the world over cannot ever come close to touching WAM--Woody Allen Management.
Wide-Eyed
Perhaps you have seen Woody's wide-eyed alertness. He uses it as he deals with an almost incomprehensible array of babbling fans. He looks with amazement at the world which is, in a nutshell, the great kernel of truth about what WAM is all about. It's the ingenuous pith of the recipe. It's the guileless blueprint for giving others something to do. It's the WAM approach to handling management problems. It is pure innocence in the face. Appear untainted like Woody and you'll be showing off WAM. Look like you have a full truck load of self-confidence. Innocence is power. Simplicity is genius as in Woody. You would not want to evince guilt now would you. Guilt, for the most part, looks totally suspicious. Appear unpolluted and come off as stainless. Woody Allen Management is a type of posturing that demonstrates totally clearly to anyone wanting to really understand this effective management style, that to be an effective leader, a popular one, and well-liked besides, the leader absolutely must show that he cannot believe what he is hearing when some stupid flunky gives him a load of organizational gobbledygook. The WAM leader says in retort, "Gee, I'm amazed that I'm so uninformed about what you're telling me." In other words there's no fear in admitting to being ignorant. But as a matter of fact, a WAM leader would follow quickly up on his guileless attitude with the one that says right out that he is absolutely not astounded in the least at hearing anything he hears from a greenhorn toady. Including any of the crap he has just heard. Since he is leader, then it can surely only follow that everything is absolutely quite under complete control even when he is daily presented with the absurd. What he does do is leave things alone while keeping the eyes wide open taking in everything that's going on.
Late Show
Take a step back to David Letterman's "Late Show" of February 1st 1994. It is at the 43 minute mark. Julie Kavner is Dave's guest. They are thoughtfully and earnestly discussing Woody Allen. Dave says something to the effect that Woody is almost kind of a non director in that everything sort of goes along and that's fine. Julie says something like and he'll let you know if he doesn't like it or if it's not working and then he'll direct you but other than that he leaves you alone. Bravo. Do you know that with that sort of slack, free approach of leaving alone, almost all effective director behavior, meaning competent leader behavior, is an effortless behavior to portray. Director behavior, we see, has as much power inherent in it as being presidential, since when you are either director, or president, or leader,you are in that wonderful upper spot to guide people around.
Appearance
In Woody Allen Management then, as you direct others, you merely appear to be open and accepting of others. You illustrate that you are unfettered, unregulated and unrestricted. That is how you do it. Keep the "eyes wide open" tactic in mind. Those peepers that scan the environment, denote wonder. They say to all who see you that there is a willingness to receive information coming into your person and because of it you are unclosed and uncovered. The eyes tell of a willingness to learn and a receptivity to being taught besides. When people put pressure on you to play the phony role, that they think you should play, and how you should not do it like you want to do it, then implementing an effective come-back can help you handle it. It can deflect that ineffective pressure that people put on you to be a leader the way they want you to be leader, but which way, in fact, turns you into a certain kind of highly ineffective flop.
Amazor and Amazee
Playing the role of an effective leader and being aware of the so-called mystery which people attribute to tremendously good leadership readily suggests that you can evince amazement at their suggestions. People love that. People like to shock people. On the other end, people like being the amazee, that is, on the receiving end of bewilderment as it were, and promptly amazed by others. It feels good to be stunned. It probably feels even better to be the amazor. To reiterate, on the flip side, to also feel that incredibly, you are actually amazing someone else, feels absolutely, spectacularly startling.
"That's amazing. Did you see that guy? He was flabbergasted when I told him he oughta do it my way. And he's the president of the company. His eyes were smack open in amazement, like Woody Allen does. The CEO dude was dumbfounded." The president goes home and tells his wife at supper. "I really amazed that supervisor. He thought I was taken aback. My amazement staggered him. I just opened my peepers wide-eyed and bug-eyed. He figured I was as loose as an amazed goose, because I listened to him so raptly and was basically entirely bowled over and open and receptive to what he was saying." His wife says "well that story certainly--pass the macaroni--amazes me dear, that you could even be befuddled but bless you--please pass the green beans--for it dear, and bless Woody Allen too for being such an amazing mentor for you."
Amazed translates lightning quick into learning something new and exciting. Someone who is cock-sure smug about his job and hard pressed to be wordless you absolutely know has not, will not, cannot, ever learn anything to speak of over the long haul that would rank as amazing. But do you know why? It's because he wouldn't be LOOSE. So use the wide-eyed look when you're talking to people you've assigned jobs to who want to get you to pitch in.
"Me?" you say. "You want moi to help you?"
It works if you will only use it. People like thunderstruck people and you will have great fun looking amazed at them. It is mind-blowing how much fun there is in being amazed.
Amazingly Entertained Being baffled is one of the great secrets to being engaging. It is truly the right thing to do if we are not going to be stuck fast in constant ineffective floppiness. Amazement equals effective leadership a la Woody Allen. Take it as a new millenium truism that if you are sufficiently traumatized and/or amazing to people, then that will truly entertain them and put you into leadership territory. You call someone in another state on a cell phone, maybe even over to Hawaii from the mainland and they answer you. You say that this is amazing me calling you on this phone and I'm driving across the desert in Nevada and you're in Hawaii on a movie shoot and I'm talking to you that fast and it amazes me and they wonder about you and the elementary, common things that can amaze you. They wonder about how naive can you be, but they like you for being so amazed that you can call them and talk to them so amazingly easy compared to the forties in the last century when you had to have an operator make the connection for you then she says "go ahead please," before you could talk, and then when you talked you stood up straight leaning against a big square 'phone on a wall, shouting into it.
People in the throes of amusement will love you. They will love you deep down because you have taken the time to let them amaze you and for you to amaze them. Amaze people when you can. Like ordering at the counter in a juice store one day, the author did what he does a lot and that's using different names when ordering, because what difference does it make, they are not entering what name you use in a huge data bank, are they, like they would if they had to know who you really, really are. All they want is a way of calling you when your juice is ready. So having used DeCaprio and Redford and other interesting unknown names, the writer thought that he would use Stefani and the girl taking the order asked him if he was related to her and he said that he was and she said something like are you her Dad or something and he said sure and told her how his son hangs out with a rock group called No Doubt and she was amazed that she would be that close to the degree that she was, to this Stefani entity whose No Doubt group's album CD she had just bought the day before. So she was really amazed that some old fart would breeze in and act like he was really connected.
It was amazing to her and that's what made the whole juice-imbibing incident gratifying not only to her but to the author for having a little fun with amazing names and gracefully doing it. But then he told her that he wasn't really her dad, but that he was only his son's dad and that it was he who hung out with her and her famous San Diego Super Bowl performing and Grammy-winning group.
Like has been said if you have been openly amazed and/or deliberately amazing in your dealings you will have shown that wonderful quality to them with your eyes wide open in a WAM-type genuine style.
In Isolation It all adds up to making it easy to be somewhat all alone 'way up there as the top person. But now we come to a solitary, forlorn, facet of leadership that goes hand in hand with going it alone. Not only as a leader, are you alone, but when it comes time to decide on which way to go, you have to do that alone, too. In this respect, the top spot is a challenge and demands decisiveness. In regard to this, millions of people would take total charge of things if they only could. But they do not, because someone else usually has charge of things for them. They think they cannot be in charge because they have also concluded that there is not enough entertainment in it for them to be bothered with doing it. In other words the fun factor in administering a project is basically nowhere to be seen.

# posted by B. Merkley @ 11:34 AM 3 Comments

However Your Face Looks

2007-12-28T10:00:00.001-07:00

Friday, March 25, 2005

Your face is your power tool although millions of folks are uptight about how their visage actually comes on. Your looks are your biggest trump card. But suppose when you look in the mirror something bad comes back at you. In that case we recommend touting your looks with; here they are, I have them, and they are timeless.
Your face can be a standard for what people see when they look at you. So why would you change that standard to conform to what the public thinks is good looking. That's an enervating rat-race to avoid like the plague. But let's say you look like Jeff Goldblum in the late stages of the movie "The Fly." If you are rot gut ugly, why care, as long as you meet lots of people. Amongst a lot of people there will always be someone who likes your face. Your face, if you will consider the actors who screw their visages up like Jim Carey, is a gold mine, however it appears. And that, my friends is the timeless standard.

Don't think of it as a face. Think of it in terms of these three points.
1. Think of it as a new wrinkle on presenting yourself to people.
2. Spend 10 seconds each morning contorting it into outlandish expressions.
3. Now you have what is called flexibility in the puss.

It's your puss, and how it can be distorted is what will give you an edge in face to face contact. The way you look counts if you give your face the breath of life. Come up with an expression worthwhile. Put your face to work. Do what the psychological people do: Look people in the face. Remember that, in a face, people want entertainment. The crux of entertainment is good screwed up looks. It means you can impress others without having to prove yourself with much else. Your animated power puss means that your face is armament. Put life in your visage and vitality in your nose as you wrinkle and purse your lips. Be read like a book. Don't get put on the shelf unopened. Let no one slam your covers shut. Just make sure you create a moving, dynamic facial front that stands as a timeless standard in a crass world of wacko icons.

Merkley @ 2:42 PM

Helping Students Stay Loose

2007-12-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

Student Helps on Points & Letter Grade

I taught public speaking at a local unnamed college here and most students figured it was a snap course and some were downright anti-social and kept asking the same old questions even when the grades had all been explained at length to them so I wrote this one page SYLLABUS for them to give them at the start of the course so there wouldn't be any mistakes about what their grade meant when they got their grade. In other words, for the thousandth time I would not be hearing "sir, what does the grade mean?" I made this syllabus so painstakingly simple and, as you will see, so glaringly obvious that even a idiot could get it. Dig?
I developed the points carefully. But guess what? An awful disappointing lot of them didn't get it.
SYLLABUS ADDENDUM Jan 24 2001: Student Helps on Points & Letter Grade
Students should be aware of what grades mean before they take a class. What students learn has everything to do with attaining a final letter grade. All the academic material stated in class has everything to do with working towards this end.
Meaning What?
A student may, after receiving a final letter grade, ask " but what does it mean?" or state, "but there was no explanation about why you gave me this grade." This sort of inquiry indicates that they don't know what the grade they got means. Understanding a letter grade comes by reading what the Community College 2000-2001 General Catalogue says about it. Paying sufficient attention to the syllabus is a help. Listening in class assists in this. Attending, instead of being absent, helps to understand how a letter grade comes to pass.

LONE LETTER GRADE
Students should know that knowing prior course material is what contributes to a final letter grade. What the student previously learns in class is what the final lone letter reflects.

Why Else? Students know what letter grades mean well in advance of getting one. Otherwise why would they shoot for it. The student has learned about them all semester long. Here is how a final letter grade develops:
1. The student learns what the final letter grade stands for before it is gotten. He has read the Community College 2000-2001 General Catalogue about it. After enrolling in class he learns academic concepts that the text and lectures set forth, as being necessary to receive this letter grade that comes at semester's end.
2. The student attends class and learns these concepts.
3. The evaluative measures that test how a student performs earn numerical points.
4. Numerical points indicate how many points were gotten on the test measures.
5. No letter grades are given during the semester. Only points are added up.
6. When the class ends, a student sees his total attainment by seeing his letter grade.
7. A final letter grade shows how the student performed over the whole course.
8. A final letter grade may have plus or minus signs.
9. The student learns text and lecture requirements in order to finish with the single letter grade for which he may be striving.
10. A final letter grade is the climax.
11. After it is received, it is not necessary for the teacher to meet with individual students to explain the meaning of a final letter grade.
12. Meeting with a student to explain a final letter grade would be anti-climactic because the student by now already knows what it stands for. Trying to explain it at that point would be like George W. Bush after taking the oath of office at his inauguration, turning to his wife and whispering, "how did I do?"
13. A letter grade is an outcome that in one, single, capital letter finally explains it all.
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In his classes, wherever he teaches, in a building or on a beach, Dr. Merkley demonstrates extemporaneous public speaking as he presents the course material.

# posted by B. Merkley @ 10:54 PM 1 Comments

Grasp Offensiveness

2007-12-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

Someone is going to see you as offensive. The reply to your audience is if I have offended anyone here today, I'm delighted.