You Mean I Could Have Been Driving a Utopian Turtletop?

When poets and car companies meet.



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I couldn't really tell from the article. Was Moore actually trying to undermine the operation by coming up with crappy car names?

Was the Edsel ahead of its time? Were Moore's names for it?

Now that all the cool names for cars have been used, and we've resorted to alphanumeric signifiers like "H2" and "RX7" maybe some of Moore's suggestions will be revived. Maybe in a few years, we'll all be riding around in "Intelligent Whales" or "Varsity Strokes".

"Poetry shakes up our thoughts, calls upon a part of the human character that is at home in the corporate world, and allows us to look at old problems in new ways."

This guy might not be "The Man," but he's The Man's Right Hand Man (thanks to KI Press for the link). P.S. Saab's are Europe's Datsuns.



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Here's some Datsuns fit for a ninja:

http://www.canit.se/~griffon/aviation/img/saab/

Now excuse me while I go draw up a new business plan.

Accountants Do It Additionally

Apparently accountants read more than anyone else, including teachers. And it seems everyone likes Jane Austen. Sigh.



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More Work Lit

After ninja Zach's blue-collar poets bit on Monday, AN Wilson follows up with a look at Orwell's commitment to reporting on the plight of the common man:

In his direct reportage of what life was actually like for working-class people in the depressed industrial districts of northern England, Orwell has no rival. Who, having read The Road to Wigan Pier, can ever forget his description of a coal miner's working day, in which he points out that in order to start a seven-and-a-half-hour shift, the miner has to make a subterranean journey of at least an hour, sometimes several hours, through dark, low dripping passages?



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Writer in the bookstore

Um, is it just me or is this not uncommon. Don't many writers work in bookstores? See, because we need day jobs and we don't want to take a step lower and become a publicist...

The curious sight of a writer employed in a bookstore is not lost on Shea: "Not unlike a farmer hanging around the dairy section. A fashion designer lurking in the boutique. . . . The quarterback hiding in the back seat during the fans' ride home."

Uh, get over yourself, lady. Running back, maybe. Quarterback? That's always the blonde guy.



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QBs are SUPPOSED to be hidden in the back. Now a lineman cowering in the back seat is another story...

I've got three words for you...

Deputy Executive Director.



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The executive poet

Is that the poet that comes with extra leg room and more recline in his seat? (As opposed to the coach poet -- eg, WestJet's idiot poet of the skies.)

Smith has developed a more nuanced way of looking at mundane business activities, which helps him make better decisions on the job, he says.

When he writes about offices, "I'm hunting for relationships, for how I relate to people in the business world. Business executives tend to look at things in a linear way. A leads to B leads to C. Poetry is non-linear."

That leads to original approaches. "I'm thinking about two or three things at once and trying to solve two or three different problems by linking them together in a creative way," Smith said.

Wait a minute. I didn't have to quit the corporate world for a life of poverty? Crap! I could be wearing a cornflower blue shirt and yellow tie right now, working myself to death instead of getting to know my son. What was I thinking!?



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Or you could be doing both?

Wallace Stevens did it. Ron Everson, too.

Poet, Cabdriver

Two great tastes that taste great together.



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