kung fu grippe

a personal weblog,
or “blog,”
by Merlin Mann

The Celebrity Chronicle

Thanks to the vigilant Archive.org, the first project I ever made for the web lives on.

I’m working on a longer post about my modest, mid-90s labor of love (get ready for some hilarious FileMaker Pro anecdotes), but for now I’ll just leave you with a few of my favorite “brushes with celebrity.”

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Sick of You” (fragment)

Factors:

  1. some new equipment
  2. new GarageBand
  3. a song I wrote 20 years ago
  4. 90 minutes to kill between calls

The model of restraint.

Also, Teenage Fanclub and Ozzy Osborne.

I don't want to be rich,

yourmonkeycalled:

but if I have to be rich in order to build a secret oak-paneled downtown library where my pals and I can eat chicken salad sandwiches, drink whiskey, and make poop jokes, then fine, I will get rich.
I don’t write the songs in The New Pornographers. So for me, it’s kind of like sleepover camp, where you get to go in canoes and jump off floating docks and stuff — of rock. Neko Case, in an interview full of wonderful insights, humor, and music from her swell new record.

Tim and Eric - “Prices”

Probably the apotheosis of all insane Tim and Eric over-the-top video pieces. Gold.

The New Pornographers - “Letter From an Occupant”

One of my very few regrets is that I never got a legitimate shot to have my life turned upside down by Neko Case. She seems like she could really put a hurting on a man. And, you have to respect that.

The New Pornographers - “The Slow Descent into Alcoholism”

Eight years on, I still love the shit out of this whole record. It’s relentlessly, maddeningly catchy.

YouTube - Mugatu

I say it often enough; it pays to go back to the source one in a while.

Doesn’t anyone notice this!?
I feel like I’m taking CRAZY pills!!

Null Eta

Øη (Null Eta) is my visionary strategic business strategy framework strategy, based on instantly achieving zero efficiency using only cool greek letters, secret naps, and the occasional off-site retreat on the Las Vegas strip. Its goal — such as it is — is to make nothing happen. No efficiency. Nay: null efficiency. The absence of efficiency. None efficient. Empty set. Zzzzp.

Sure, bullshit like Six Sigma may seem like a lot of costly nonsense for middle managers to squirt on their resumes like a grievous, room-temperature aioli. But, øη is a truly revolutionary approach to re-imagining business excellence vis-a-vis deliberately unintentional and persistent stasis. Go, ahead. Sit down. Try it. Nice, right?

“Six nines?” Sure. If you have that kind of time to dick around on increasingly minor improvements before you give up and get a goddamned highball. But, Null Eta kicks in the first day you spend two hours trying to figure out what the fuck it means. Then, it never lets go. Until there’s simply no time or resources to care any more. That’s how you know it’s working. That’s Null Eta.

It’s the tent pole of a modern enterprise strategy that scales like a motherfucker. So, come on: drop those nines, and join the empty set.