Monday, July 2, 2012

Thoughts of a short week.

Secretary of Labor:  The Department of Labor wishes to note that the workers of Freedonia are demanding shorter hours. 
Rufus T. Firefly: Very well, we'll give them shorter hours. We'll start by cutting their lunch hour to 20 minutes. 


One of the many lunacies of our business--especially the creative end of it, is the constant imprecation to   be billable, accountable and to have no downtime. It's a ludicrous notion to think that ideas can be regularized and "clocked" like cleaning a drain or mowing a lawn.


The great French director Jean Renoir once said "The foundation of all civilization is loitering." But in the world of agencies, the holding company vise says NO.


Tim Kreider had this to say in this Sunday's "Times."


"Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.... It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking."


That's all for now. 


I'm too busy to think.

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