7.30.2004

COMMENTARY - Neckties: Another reason to hate the French (and your CEO is an idiot)

I hate ties. I never understood them. What is the meaning of tying a noose around your own neck every morning before heading to the office for work? Is this some sort of sick, depressing symbolism? So I decided to do some digging into the history of the necktie. Here is what I found.

The first version of the necktie found in history actually dates all the way back to 210 B.C. China's first emperor, Emperor QinShihuang, was buried with the likenesses of 7,500 of his best warriors, after being persuaded not to have the soldiers actually buried with him. You may have heard of this terracotta army. If not, here is a link to a site all about it. At any rate, each of these soldiers were modeled and painted in intricate, life-size detail, right down to their neckties. There is no other record of Chinese wearing neckties in that time period, and it is believed that the emperor bestowed them as a symbol of ultimate honor on these soldiers chosen to guard his tomb until the end of time... well, at least have a statue of themselves standing there anyways. Not a bad deal for a silk scarf, I guess.

Neckties next popped up again in 113 A.D., when the Roman Emperor Trajan erects a monument to commemorate his army's victory over the Dacians. The monument is known as Trajan's Column, and here is a link to more information on it, for those of you who know nothing about history and have never heard of this one either. (Alright, in all fairness, this one isn't really well known. But still, shame on you for not knowing anything about the terracotta army.) On this 100-foot tall column are detailed depictions of over 2,000 soldiers, once again all wearing neckties. It was not common practice for Roman soldiers to sport neckware, so again it is believed that these legionnaires are depicted wearing ties as a symbol of honor for their skill in battle.

We don't see any neckties around again until about 1660. A Croatian regiment was visiting Paris for a celebration of a hard fought military victory over Turkey, and the soldiers were presented as heroes before King Louis XIV. The French king immediately noticed the colorful handkerchiefs the soldiers wore around their necks as a sign of honor, and he immediately thought it would be a great idea to cheapen their symbol of military superiority by spreading it all over the French courts as the latest fashion. This of course resulted in it spreading throughout all the courts of Europe, and then soon anyone wishing to so much as pretend that they were well-to-do had to tie something around their neck in order to do so, and somehow the unfortunate tradition stuck.

But as if France wasn't enough to blame for this insidious fashion requirement, in the 1920's a shrewd fashion designer out of Paris by the name of Jean Patou came up with an even more sinister ploy - the designer tie. Using women's clothing patterns and designs derived from the latest art movements, he created an extraordinarily expensive line of ties targeted at women. And the trick worked. Women bought the ties like mad for their significant male counterparts, and the designer tie industry took off. In fact, today 80 percent of ties are bought by women. Don't believe me? Ask any guy how many ties he has, and how many of those he actually bought for himself.

Fashion historians have long been predicting the demise of the necktie, yet it seems to only gain popularity to the point of being a requirement in many circumstances. Why is this? Personally, I blame company CEOs. They are the Kings and Emperors of our modern business world. An unfortunate condition indeed, given the fact that most CEOs are idiots. So since the CEOs wear neckties, all the managers wear neckties. And since all the managers wear neckties, all the supervisors wear neckties. And of course, since all the supervisors wear neckties, all the underlings wear neckties. So when that underling gets promoted to supervisor, then manager, then becomes the new company CEO, he's still wearing the blasted thing. Why? Just because that's the way it has always been done, and typically by the time an employee makes it as high as CEO, any inkling of free thinking has long since been replaced with conformity, so the necktie stays and everyone under him continues to wear them as well, and the cycle continues. If only a couple of major CEOs were struck by lightning and realized, "hey, why do I bother tying this ridiculous thing around my neck every morning when it's uncomfortable and has no useful function? I think I'll stop wearing them." The affects would cascade down the business model, and soon we would be tie free, and there would be no more accidental deaths due to ties getting caught in industrial shredders. Talk about your occupational hazard.

7.22.2004

COMMENTARY - Curse of the Carpool Lane?

I hate Phoenix.  (Did I mention that already?)  Escpecially driving in it.  Now, it's not nearly as bad as it was a year ago before I left, when they were just realizing that the freeways were way too small for the number of people driving on them, and everything was under construction while they worked frantically to correct this problem with additional lanes.  It took me 45 minutes for a 6 mile commute in those days.  But now the construction is finished, and we now have something like a 12 lane wide freeway of total chaos instead of a six lane one.  Everyone still drives like a maniac, now there's just extra room to do it in.  The traffic is appalling, after moving back here from a relatively small town.  Where are all these people going at 2:00 in the afternoon?  Shouldn't they be at work or something?  Between the still crowded freeways and the 120 degree heat, it's no wonder road rage is so prevalent here.  But I noticed an interesting phenomenon on my drive today.  Even with everyone driving like they're Mad Max, the carpool lane stays astonishingly clear.  I saw countless idiots go screaming by, weaving in and out of six lanes of traffic in a futile effort to get in front of rush hour, yet not a single one of them veered as far left as to illegally enter the carpool lane.  I am still baffled by the reasoning for this.  With such blatant disregard for the equally visible speed limit signs, what makes them heed the regulations of the carpool lane?  Amidst all the chaos on the rest of the freeway, that far left lane somehow inexplicably remains an aisle of tranquility.  Part of the reasoning I'm sure is that if you are caught, it's a ticket you can't talk your way out of.  You may be able to get away with "Honestly officer, my speedometer said I was only going 65, it must be off by 30 miles per hour...", or "It's not my fault I rear ended him while I was weaving in and out of traffic, he slammed on his brakes on purpose!"  But what are you going to say if you get pulled over for abusing the carpool lane?  "No really, I had a passenger with me, he just jumped out on me in the middle of the freeway just before you pulled me over!"  Good luck with that one.  Yet even so, you'd think there would still be that handful of idiots that would tempt fate and slip into the carpool lane anyway, just to see how long they can get away with it.  Not once did I see this happen though.  So what is this unseen force keeping the carpool lane clear?  I have yet to discover the answer to this unusual phenomenon, but deem it worth further investigation.  The best way to do this would be for me to illegally enter the carpool lane myself the next time I am out driving, and see what happens.  Wish me luck...

7.20.2004

COMMENTARY - The State of Oklahoma Owes Me $2.50

Funny to think that I just spent a year in Wisconsin, and I hardly even touched my blog until I wound up moving back to Arizona.  Maybe it's just that the desert heat brings out my cynical nature.  Who knows.  At any rate, here's a long overdue update.

As I was saying, I just moved back across the country to Arizona.  For those of you who know how much I hate the desert and are sitting there pondering why I would ever make such a move after I spent so much time complaining how I couldn't wait to get out of this state, don't ask.  Just don't, okay? For as much as I like to write, that's too long of an explanation for even me to go into, and it's frankly none of your business.  Anywho, let's get back to my cross country drive.  The trip took in total about 3 days of driving, at 10+ hours a day.  Needless to say, the journey was a tad arduous.  But what I never suspected was that the most brutal leg of the trek would be through the seemingly innocent state of Oklahoma.  Who would have thought? But don't let the ruse created by the ostensibly benign musical of the same name fool you into thinking it's a happy-go-lucky place where the wind goes sweeping through the plains.  That wind ain't sweeping anywhere without going through a toll booth or three.  The entire state is riddled with them.  Well, that, and spiders.  It's really kinda creepy actually, all along the interstate you can see these trees just buried in spiderwebs, like giant sticks of arachnophobic cotton candy.  Anyways, I'm getting off the topic.  Toll booths. Why is this the only state I passed through that had a toll booth every ten minutes?  I mean honestly, what makes Oklahoma's roads so special to warrant paying that much for them, when every other state seems content to let me travel along free of charge?  Come to think of it, most everyone else must be aware of this ridiculous phenomenon specific to this state, for I saw less traffic passing through Oklahoma than any other part of my trip.  I am extremely lucky I had a plethora of coinage floating around my car when I entered that state, or else I'm sure I would have had an Oklahoma state trooper chasing after me for pocket change before long.  You couldn't avoid them.  Toll booths to get on the highway.  Toll booths to get off the highway.  The signs directing traffic into the correct toll lanes were very confusing to follow too, so sometimes you'd end up getting off the highway in the wrong spot altogether, where you would have to pay a toll, and then you would have to pay the toll again to get back on in the right spot.  I swear I ended up paying for the same stretch of highway at least twice that way.  I never exactly figured out how they decided how much to charge at each toll booth either, because every one of them was a different rate, from 45 cents to almost five dollars.  It's like a modern day take on an old fairy tale story.  Most any fairy tale depicting travelers traveling anywhere eventually had at least one bridge the group would need to cross, a bridge inevitably guarded by a troll.  This troll of course would not let them pass without either giving him something ridiculous, or correctly answering a riddle.  I think it's little coincidence that if you drop the "r" in troll that you end up with the word toll, as this same principle still seems  prevalent throughout the state of Oklahoma.  Well, minus the riddle part.  Actually, I would have greatly appreciated it, had they incorporated that aspect into their toll system as well.  "That will be $4.50 sir.  Unless, of course, you can tell me, what is the average airspeed of an unladen swallow?"  I may have made it out of that state with enough money for lunch that day, or at least been somewhat more amused by this legal highway robbery.  So anyways, here's a traveling tip from the TribbleHunter: travel through Kansas, travel through Texas, but stay out of Oklahoma.  Between the spiders and the toll booths, you'll be doing yourself a favor, especially if you're an arachnophobic who never carries loose change.