The best quote I’ve seen lately about white collar work comes from commenter Webster:

“The white collar sector is all about no activity punctuated occasionally by useless activities.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

There’s only us
There’s only this
Forget regret
or life is yours to miss

“People look without seeing,
hear without listening,
eat without awareness of taste,
touch without feeling and
talk without thinking.”

I’m going back to the army for the first time in almost two years.

It’s only for 2 weeks and I get to stay out.

But being at Paya Lebar Air Base does not comply with my morning routines.

How do you measure a life of woman or man?

Candidate A was associated with witchdoctors and often consulted astrologists. He had two mistresses. His wife was a Lesbian. He smoked a lot. He drank eight to ten martinis a day.

Candidate B never managed to hold down a job because of his arrogance. He slept the whole morning. He used opium at school, and was always considered a bad student. He drank a glass of brandy every morning.

Candidate C was decorated a hero. A vegetarian, he did not smoke. His discipline was exemplary. He occasionally drank a beer. He stayed with the same woman during his moments of glory and defeat.

And what was the answer?

A] Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
B] Winston Churchill.
C] Adolf Hitler.

So what then is leadership? The encyclopedia defines it as an individual’s capacity to motivate others to seek the same objective. The bookstores are full of texts on this theme, and the leaders are normally portrayed in brilliant colors, with enviable qualities and supreme ideals. The leader is to society as the “master” is to spirituality. This, however, is not absolutely true (in either case).

Our big problem, especially in a world that is growing more and more fundamentalist, is not allowing people in prominent positions to commit human mistakes. We are always in search of the perfect ruler. We are always looking for a pastor to guide and help us find our way. The truth is that the great revolutions and the progress made by humanity were brought about by people just like us – the only difference being that they had to make a key decision at a crucial moment.

It’s just that I don’t see an awful lot of good films or good comic books these days, which considering the immense amounts of money that are pumped into the production of these things, I think I would ideally like a much better success ratio. Yes, sort of big films with their budgets of $100 million-plus, if they are successes then they make back quite a bit for the studio, I guess, but this is after six or seven that really haven’t made back their outlay.

You have to be thinking of this in terms of its environmental and economic impact. I would have thought, particularly in the current climate, where the world economy does seem to be circling the drain, we might have to start thinking about handling our culture differently. We might have to be more conservative in throwing these huge amounts of money at our movie directors, at our actors, at our sports heroes.

We might have to start rethinking all this. Is it really worth spending all that money? Wasting all those resources? I mean, $100 million, that would pretty much sort out the horrifying flood damage in some country.

We might have to start rearranging our priorities and not just trying to anesthetize ourselves with endless television shows and movies because we’re bored with our lives in the filthy rich Western world. We might have to change our priorities a little bit. If we are going to spend our money upon film, then let’s start valuing the people that produce wonderful things with very little to go on. Let’s stop being so childishly awed by what are essentially fireworks displays.

Most films that I see it seems that the level of criticism that they are expecting is on the level of a fireworks display. It’s ooh and ah. Those seem to be the only responses that are appropriate to most modern films. I think we’re in for a period of cultural revaluation. I certainly hope that’s true, because I think if we’re not, we’re in for a period of cultural damnation. I think that we’re fairly evidently heading to hell in a hand basket, and we have got to change our priorities. We’ve got to rethink this entire thing, and I think that rethinking our culture may be a part of that. I certainly hope so.