Greetings and salutations from Lower Alabama!
Hi guys. Great seeing you all this weekend. Like I said, we would have stayed longer but I was running a bit of fever and that goddamned Austin heat was not helping me.
Another thing. I want y'all's opinion; is it just me, or is the fun kind of going out of these mega-parties of ours? Did it get any better when the action moved to the Hayes' house?
Well, after we got back home from the party on Saturday, Erica and I watched The Butterfly Effect. I liked it. I liked it because it’s built around a concept that I am a big believer in, the law of unintended consequences. And though the ending was a bit of stretch, even for a movie about a kid who can time-travel, it was still neat in that the ending balanced the scales. Thankfully, there was no focus-grouped Hollywood ending with Ashton Kutcher and his girlfriend cheating fate and living happily ever after. It's an unhappy but immutable fact that you can guarantee your actions, but you can’t ever guarantee results.
Guys, I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately, but I just can’t seem to get motivated to write. Before going to the airport, I put down over 500 words yesterday talking about conservativism and postmodernism (in a very long windup to review TBE) and emailed them to my computer here in Mobile to polish and post this morning. However, after I read it this morning, it sounded like crap so I deleted it. Hell, I think this is crap too but I’m going to post it anyway just because, well, because somebody has to post something.
This thing with Dad has me a bit conflicted, to be honest. Mark knows this, but to put it out there to Rob and Mike, working for dad was like working for Vince Lombardi. Without the Super Bowls, though. He had me under so much stress that I would literally sometimes break down and cry at random moments. And it is no exaggeration to say that I absolutely hated his guts at times, too. The way he would do things like compare me unfavorably to Warren Hayes or slyly insinuate that I wasn’t doing a good job because I couldn’t earn the respect of shitheads like Dario and Sandy (both of whom are now gone, by the way) angered and hurt me. It still pisses me off that he assumed that our lack of sales success in San Antonio was due to my lack of effort and initiative rather than, as I claimed, an exhausted market in that city. I think you’re right Robbie in saying that Dad fell too much in love with the idea of himself lording over a 20 million dollar company. So, instead of coming to my office and seeing with his own eyes what was going on, he would just sit there on his throne in Austin and bark orders to me on the fucking Nextel, assuming that putting enough pressure on me would right the ship. He wanted to be a bigshot, to be a Donald Trump, so he began to act like one, going on these silly skiing and diving jaunts all the time, even foolishly crippling himself on one, all the while ignoring his core business.
In that sense, what Dad is going through now is just. Like Robbie said, he ignored some very fundamental tenets of business to indulge his ego and this is the result of that. Still, even though I can see the justice in all of this, I take absolutely no pleasure in it because he’s our father. Whatever he has, he offers to us. He has always shared his wealth freely with us without conditions (he didn’t force me to come work for him) and he would give any of us the shirt off his back and take a bullet in the chest for any of us. So even though I sense that what has befallen him and Centex is just, I’m not going to gloat about it.
Well, I just reread this and I’m about as happy with it as I have been the other things I’ve deleted lately, but I’m going to post it anyway. Hope everyone has a good day and week. Hopefully I’ll be able to get away and catch Spider-Man II this week. If so, I’ll write about it.
Till then, Coopbro I is out!
Another thing. I want y'all's opinion; is it just me, or is the fun kind of going out of these mega-parties of ours? Did it get any better when the action moved to the Hayes' house?
Well, after we got back home from the party on Saturday, Erica and I watched The Butterfly Effect. I liked it. I liked it because it’s built around a concept that I am a big believer in, the law of unintended consequences. And though the ending was a bit of stretch, even for a movie about a kid who can time-travel, it was still neat in that the ending balanced the scales. Thankfully, there was no focus-grouped Hollywood ending with Ashton Kutcher and his girlfriend cheating fate and living happily ever after. It's an unhappy but immutable fact that you can guarantee your actions, but you can’t ever guarantee results.
Guys, I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately, but I just can’t seem to get motivated to write. Before going to the airport, I put down over 500 words yesterday talking about conservativism and postmodernism (in a very long windup to review TBE) and emailed them to my computer here in Mobile to polish and post this morning. However, after I read it this morning, it sounded like crap so I deleted it. Hell, I think this is crap too but I’m going to post it anyway just because, well, because somebody has to post something.
This thing with Dad has me a bit conflicted, to be honest. Mark knows this, but to put it out there to Rob and Mike, working for dad was like working for Vince Lombardi. Without the Super Bowls, though. He had me under so much stress that I would literally sometimes break down and cry at random moments. And it is no exaggeration to say that I absolutely hated his guts at times, too. The way he would do things like compare me unfavorably to Warren Hayes or slyly insinuate that I wasn’t doing a good job because I couldn’t earn the respect of shitheads like Dario and Sandy (both of whom are now gone, by the way) angered and hurt me. It still pisses me off that he assumed that our lack of sales success in San Antonio was due to my lack of effort and initiative rather than, as I claimed, an exhausted market in that city. I think you’re right Robbie in saying that Dad fell too much in love with the idea of himself lording over a 20 million dollar company. So, instead of coming to my office and seeing with his own eyes what was going on, he would just sit there on his throne in Austin and bark orders to me on the fucking Nextel, assuming that putting enough pressure on me would right the ship. He wanted to be a bigshot, to be a Donald Trump, so he began to act like one, going on these silly skiing and diving jaunts all the time, even foolishly crippling himself on one, all the while ignoring his core business.
In that sense, what Dad is going through now is just. Like Robbie said, he ignored some very fundamental tenets of business to indulge his ego and this is the result of that. Still, even though I can see the justice in all of this, I take absolutely no pleasure in it because he’s our father. Whatever he has, he offers to us. He has always shared his wealth freely with us without conditions (he didn’t force me to come work for him) and he would give any of us the shirt off his back and take a bullet in the chest for any of us. So even though I sense that what has befallen him and Centex is just, I’m not going to gloat about it.
Well, I just reread this and I’m about as happy with it as I have been the other things I’ve deleted lately, but I’m going to post it anyway. Hope everyone has a good day and week. Hopefully I’ll be able to get away and catch Spider-Man II this week. If so, I’ll write about it.
Till then, Coopbro I is out!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home