Borders on the ridiculous

So Borders is going the way of Woolworths. It changed so much down the years. When it first opened, all full of US publishers and live jazz in the coffeehouse, it seemed like a magical haven I’d longed for my whole life. Then the jazz went, then the coffee changed from Borders to Starbucks, then the US editions began to disappear, until the shop went the same way as Woolworths, trying too hard to please too many people instead of recognising what it did well.

And I went around looking for bargains and had to force myself to buy stuff.

I think nowadays a high street bookshop has to offer odd stuff. Or rather the high end stuff from the small press or overseas. The stuff Amazon lists as available in 13-28 days. Because while Amazon wins on price, it’s crap on reliable deliveries. Why is Pluto v.6 out in the shops but my pre-ordered copy has a delivery estimate of Mar 2010? I want to see lots of Joe Lansdale and Rudy Rucker, and PS Publishing et al in the shops I frequent.

Waterstones in Leeds and Manchester are good for this. Sheffield Space Centre is good for this, though slightly out of synch with time.

When all the secondhand bookshops have all the same mainstream stuff in, what hope do we have?

Stuart Recommends

The Men Who Stare At Goats - funny, poignant, Kevin Spacey being Kevin Spacey, Clooney being a good actor, McGregor’s dodgy American accent.

Also, Misfits and Veronica Mars - both on E4.

Also, I will write something soon. We’re nearly there, my friends.

Moved in

I’ve moved in. I need to sort out internet. Once that’s done, stuff will happen.

Is it awful?

That I thought, I don’t need friends, I have TV.

Something you can’t do is…

You can’t start a revolution if you only ever work with the people you like. If you want to change a culture, if you want to make things work, then you can’t be seen to be conspiratorial and only ever working with the same people, because that just turns people off, and then they form their own cliques and they oppose you.

Man…

I just realised that I’ve moved to a city where I have no friends.

Was this an error of judgment?

Only the best is good enough…

Milky bars don’t taste the way they did when I was a boy.

Soon

Proper blogging will return.

You know, where I say interesting things. It’ll be good.

Trust and freedom

Today one of my “underlings” (I prefer the term “assistant” or “companion”) turned to me and said, I’ve created some pages on the wiki.

I decided to make a wiki at work.  It hit the usual rut that I had to wait for other people to get their acts together - I’m a “if it needs doing, let’s do it now” sort of a person - but I’m dragging everyone into the year 2005.  I’d set up the thing with the basic areas of information and then gave my underlings power to create pages.

And because I trust them, and because I don’t think I’m above other people, and because I don’t play favourites, and because I nurture people, my team started work on it with enthusiasm and no fear of repercussions.  And they started doing good work on it.  And I was pleased.

And it proves, yet again, that I am the only good manager I know.  I don’t know if it’s because I don’t see management as a battle.  I don’t know if it’s that I treat people the way I would want to be treated.  I don’t know if it’s that I’m a good team player.  But I do a good job.

I watch other people who think they have to control people.  I watch people worry about staff liking them.  (Never had that problem.)  I watch people play games.  And they get it wrong, because here’s the truth:

If you treat people like people, it all works out.  If you treat people like crap, you’re a moron.

So…

You know how when you were a kid you would meet someone you would want to be friends with, and you would say, let’s go and play football? And they would say, well I’m a bit shy and I don’t like football and go a bit weird when I’m around other people but they would still act like they were your friend. And you would say, oh okay, even though you suspected that it was a lie, and let it go. And then you would see them off playing football with someone else and something inside would collapse, because they were lying to you and you wish that they had just been straight with you instead of pretending that they liked you?

Totally hypothetical situation. Totally.