WallyConger.com

Can You Say “Hvannadalshnúkur”?

July 11, 2010

While I was sunk into a sofa drinking martinis last month at the swanky Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, my old pal Bob Howells was clambering over 7,000 feet of glacier to summit Hvannadalshnúkur, the highest peak in Iceland. OK, so Bob and I have different ideas about vacationing. For one thing, I’ve got [...]

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Why I Ignored My Mother’s Well-Meaning Advice

July 9, 2010

Got a note from Andrew yesterday. “Recent circumstances,” he wrote, “have prompted me to work on firing up my business and learn to market myself. I’ve always had a sense that doing so isn’t complicated, if not especially easy to do. It’s especially not easy for me as I’m an extreme introvert.” I’m a natural [...]

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Close Encounters of the Marketing Kind

July 6, 2010

It really started innocently. We were with friends at our local coffeehouse and Diane asked, “Did you see that funny light over the dunes last night?” And faster than you can say “Beam me up, Scotty,” a fella with a bad comb-over materialized at our table clutching fuzzy photos of flying saucers and alien autopsies. [...]

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When Ya Gonna Beguine Your New Business?

July 2, 2010

Like me, you’ve probably heard Cole Porter’s classic tune “Begin the Beguine” … well, a whole lotta times. In old movies, in airport lounges, in jazz clubs. I remember my parents playing it on the hi-fi when I was a kid. The song’s been performed by everybody from the Andrews Sisters, to [...]

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How to Put a Stop to Rude Drivers

June 30, 2010

Here’s another “well duh” item from today’s news… An IBM Global Commuter Pain Study reports that Americans are stressed about their commute to work. Those surveyed said the daily routine of stop-and-go traffic and rude drivers negatively affects their health, social lives, and job performance. Sixty-five percent said their commute gave them sleeping trouble and [...]

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Stuff That Keeps Me Up At Night

June 28, 2010

I’m a night owl. When everyone else is asleep, I’ll dig through my closet of DVDs and watch an old black-and-white B-movie thriller. Last night, it was Mr. Moto’s Gamble from 1938. The Moto movies, which starred the great Peter Lorre, were generally spy stories with exotic settings, global intrigue, and jujitsu action. But Gamble’s [...]

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How to REALLY Fight the Recession

June 23, 2010

Spent part of my morning at Borders. There was a large table there filled with books about fighting the recession. Their advice seemed to range from knocking off the lattes, to clipping coupons, to making your own clothes from carpet remnants and paperclips. Hell, those aren’t strategies for fighting the recession. Those are formulas for [...]

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How to Put a “Cherry” on Top of the Apocalypse

June 21, 2010

Thanks to Netflix, I finally caught up with The Book of Eli last night. Whew. If you haven’t heard of it before now, it’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure starring Denzel Washington as Eli and Gary Oldman as, of course, the bad guy. Eli is rough stuff. Lotsa violence and potty language, so put the kiddies [...]

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You Don’t Have to Get BIG… Get Small Instead!

June 18, 2010

If you visit Victoria, British Columbia — as Deb and I did earlier this month — there are two things just about everybody agrees you gotta do. The first one is afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel. Well, we enjoyed afternoon martinis in the Empress Hotel’s Bengal Lounge. Close enough. The second “must do” is [...]

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Corporate Doofuses Give Poor Little Orphan Girl Shabby Treatment After 86 Years of Service

June 16, 2010

Leapin’ lizards! This past weekend, the iconic Little Orphan Annie made her last-ever appearance in the funny pages. Sad but true. After some 86 years, newspaper syndicator Tribune Media Services finally gave the little gal with a blank stare her walking papers. The decision made business sense. Newspapers are dying, and the “Annie” comic strip [...]

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