Flashes

It's not uncommon for me to have flashes of thought that I want to record for one reason or another. Usually, it's because, in the instant, I think the words or ideas that race through my mind are sufficiently clever or interesting or unusual that they might one day find their way into a book I'll one day publish. Sometimes, of course, I look at the ideas later and wonder what on earth could have been wrong with me...how could I possibly have found anything meritorious about what I recorded?

Well, I'm going to record something that flashed through my mind today and will come back to one day. Then, I'll decide whether there was even the most remote glimmer of potential in the idea.

By the way, today is my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Libba!

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SNIPPET #1
Jacob was a troubled and troublesome teen. During his early teenage years, he lived to create grief for his parents and their adult friends. Jacob spent virtually every waking hour plotting ways to annoy them and to demonstrate to them that they had no real control over him.

Even the name of his garage band was used as a weapon against his parents, whom he believed had children only to serve as a diversion from their mundane lives.

His band, Acoustic Vomit, was loud and discordant and fundamentally without talent, something other kids quickly realized and, consequently, stayed away from. But Tony Salermo and Quack Sullivan, his band members, were convinced Jacob was a talented songwriter and guitarist. Tony, who asserted that he played bass, believed Jacob was a god; he would do anything Jacob asked. Quack believed in Jacob's talent, too, but secretly thought his own skills on the keyboard clearly outstripped Jacob's talent. Morevoer, Quack thought Jacob's lyrics were nonsensical and detrimental to the music.

SNIPPET #2
He formed his first truly successful business at twenty-six, a market segmentation consulting firm that targeted businesses whose demographic targets were betweent the ages of 16 and 24. The success of the business came in spite of its name, Bloodlust Market Management and Snack Shop. Thanks to Jacob's extraordinary skill at convincing prospective clients that he had his finger on the pulse of, and could actually control, discretionary spending by 16 to 24 year-olds, he could have called his company something far more offensive...it would not have mattered to his clients, whose only motivation and whose most intense fear involved revenue targets.