Another New Year... This One's Gonna be Different...I Promise

I read one of my articles from January 1, 2004 and saw a list of things that I thought was going to happen that year. The only thing that I believed about 2004 that was actually true is that Tom Peters is mostly right. Other than that, the Eagles didn't win the superbowl, I didn't write a book, the Phillies didn't make the playoffs, the technical certification debacle didn't implode, the Flyers didn't win the Stanley Cup, my wife didn't meet Susan Dell at a triathlon and the 76ers didn't trade Allen Iverson. Instead, Jim Thome fizzled, Ed Wade got fired, the NHL went on strike, the Eagles spun wildly out of control and Allen Iverson still scampers around in Sixers garb and gives the ball, ever so hesitantly to Chris Weber. Who cares about everything else I said? So, for all intents and purposes, I was wrong on every prediction. And more painfully, I didn't come close to any of my personal endeavors. In those 2 years, I had a terrible fallout with my employer, sold everything and moved to Florida, gained 30 pounds and got a job playing the executive game rather than the technical one. The only positive note is that my wife is doing marathons now instead of triathlons and her legs look HOT.

I golf more now though.

Anyway, it occurred to me that my life is panning out a lot like it did when George decided on "Seinfeld" to do everything the opposite of what he would normally do in attempt to turn his fate around. So that's what I'm going to do this year. And see how long it took me to come up with this? 9 days for Chrissake!

• I will sleep in every day
• I don't care if the Flyers win the Stanley Cup
• I will not go to the gym... ever
• I won't write articles and try to get them published
• Screw walking the dog, she doesn't need fresh air anyway
• I won't take classes and learn things
• I will never, ever start my business... who could do it better than my old boss?
• I won't blog

Hope I'm wrong

Twisty Tie Conspiracy

Tucked away deep in the recesses of all toy manufacturing plants, there resides a monster. Fashioned with a wide-eyed, maniacal grin, he toils away at his craft, comforted by the knowledge of the heartache his work will bring to parents all over the world. His title is the Toy Shelf Presentation Engineer, but he prefers to call himself the Twisty Tie Guy.

Twisty Tie Guys' true purpose is disguised by an actual Strategic Marketing fact: people buy things when they look nice on the shelf. A kid has so many choices; colorful action figures with wild weaponry and interchangeable headgear or pastel colored anatomically correct 12-inch high supermodels with 10 pairs of designer shoes, matching handbags and multiple hair accessories, so it begs the question, where does our wonderful offspring begin? How do they choose? They scour the shelves dreaming of what it would be like to play with each toy they see, and then they find it: the action figure they've been dreaming of looking back at them, standing tall in all its glory. Levitating perfectly amongst the main figure are just enough of an assortment of tiny little plastic paraphernalia to seal the deal. Had those pieces of plastic bliss not been out there in the open for the child to see placed within reach of the toy's small opened hand, the purchase may not have seemed so interesting. But because they were there, the child had to have it. How did those little pieces of plastic so naturally and so creatively find their way into the box in suspended animation? Twisty Tie Guy put them there. Common men can only fantasize about obtaining such expertise.

But Twisty Tie Guy has gotten cocky. He has realized the power he has over all of us and he's wielding that power with reckless abandon. He places 325 twisty ties throughout a box that only needs about 20 to keep the toy in place. He finds action figure underarms and little openings and necks and knee joints to run the twisty tie metal through multiple times before running them through the cardboard action backing that nestles itself in the inner portions of the greater packaging. And then he twists and twists the twisty ties over and over again until the act of untwisting is difficult to get started and then once untwisted, the twisty ties are so mangled that they can't find their way back through the hole in the cardboard from whence they came. And as if that wasn't enough, Twisty Tie Guy has one more trick up his sleeve: he hides his final twisty ties in unexpected places. Around the corner of the box. Underneath the box. On boxes within boxes and then on twisty ties on cardboard within boxes. And he does this all the while knowing that a child is going to be grabbing and whining and hovering as Mom and Dad are struggling with their masterpiece. And why does Twisty Tie Guy do this? He hopes to one day rule the world.

Twisty Tie Guy is not alone. He works closely with Too Much Tape Guy and Errant Detail Decoration Sticker Guy. Together they dream of Christmas morning. They long to hear the expletives rising from houses all over the world while parents struggle to open the overpriced toys. They hear the arguments between husband and wife, contributing to the divorce rate, while Dads struggle with Twisty Tie Guy's handiwork and Mom makes suggestions on how to get the toy opened faster. Then they wait. They wait for the insanity to set in. They will make their move soon. We are all almost completely overrun by their handiwork. We must stop them.