You’re the man, and here are some ways to look smart in a job interview:

1. 

   “Bob, here are three reasons you should hire me, Bob…”

   Drop names. This is the best way to impress pretty much everyone, but especially people in interviews. Say stuff like, “one time Zuck, Sean Parker and I were drinking beer and talking about the social graph…” or “Biz asked me my opinions on the future of the written word” or “I wish David Karp had a name like ‘Zuck’ or ‘Biz’ so that when I mentioned him in an interview I didn’t have to say his full name.” Even by dropping these names in this article you can tell the circles I run in.  See – it works!

2. Call your interviewer by name….over-and-over-over. This is a great little Dale Carnegie nugget, so if doing it a little is effective, then doing it a lot is way better. Work that name into your opening conversation like this: “Paul, I’ve had two jobs in eight months, Paul, so I’ve learned an awful lot about how companies work, Paul. Paul, let me ask you about compensation…”
3. Use English phrases/pronunciation: Americans are fascinated with English accents to the point that many companies ask their one English employee to do the recording on the company voicemail di-rectory. So remember – the interviewer is your “mate,” your cellphone is a “mo-bile” and you left your last job because your old boss was a “bloody wanker.”
4. Wear Google Glass(es). If you can get your hands on a pair of Google Glasses, your interviewer will see that you’re edgy, connected and a super-early adopter. If you can’t get a pair, just buy some of these and strap a transistor radio to the side.
5. Mention your copious personal connections on LinkedIn. Today’s companies aren’t just hiring you – they’re hiring your social graph. So this interviewer person is going to be blown away that you have over 1,000 connections on LinkedIn. After all, you could call any one of these personal friends and ask them for a favor, right?
6. Make no fewer than three references to TED talks.  Only smart people speak at TED, so only smart people watch TED (Note: these are not related with the Mark Wallberg movie about his pot-smoking teddy bear). If you don’t have time to watch a TED Talk, just say this: “…it’s sort of that Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing…” The context doesn’t matter – he’ll know what you mean.
7. Drop an F-bomb or two. This tells the interviewer that you’re cool and you know it. If he seems down with the aggressive language, go ahead and make some unmistakable reference to casual drug use. If your interviewer is a woman, it never hurts to say/ask “I get the sense you like to party – am I right?”
8. Describe yourself as a “visionary” or at least an “expert”: Hey, you were tossing sheep on Facebook in like 2007, way before this doofus had even heard of MySpace. That fact alone means that you understand the dynamics of how major corporations leverage social media as an important component – but still only one component – of a complex and nuanced communications strategy.
9. Talk about your MBA incessantly. You worked hard for that online degree and even though you’re trying to land a job at an ad agency, this interviewer needs to understand that you once knew how to price a bond.
10. Remind them “I don’t really need this job”:  This one gets ‘em all frothed up for you, as it establishes that you’re a hot property. Another option here is to say, “Hey, you called me, bro…” You gotta show them that even in this economy you could take it or leave it. That’s the attitude.
11. 

    I am the man. I am the man. I am the man.

    Outline a set of goals you may or may not accomplish. “I might learn Spanish,” “I might do a half marathon,” or “I’m thinking of volunteering more…well, some…” The interviewer will see your good intentions as evidence of your pure and curious soul. Be sure to follow up each objective with an explanation of why it’s actually a bad idea in a way that paints you as a virtuous person. “Then again, I probably won’t volunteer at the soup kitchen because I wouldn’t want all those hungry people seeing how happy I am being slightly overweight.”

12. Pre-interview affirmation:  Just before the interview, look at the mirror and tell yourself repeatedly:  “I am the most important person this company has ever talked to. If they don’t hire me, they will fail and go bankrupt.” Keep telling yourself as you walk into the meeting, between interviewers and for the several months afterwards as you wait for their follow-up correspondence. 

The post How to Look Smart in a Job Interview appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

“I don’t have a drinking problem:
I drink. I get drunk. I fall down.
No problem.“

I think that’s how Yahoo! is thinking about Tumblr’s porn problem. It’s obvious Tumblr has a “problem,” it’s just that Yahoo! doesn’t care (or pretends to not care) about it.

But whether they admit it or not, Yahoo! is going to have to deal with the crazy amount of NSFW content on their newest toy. Because there is a whole hell of a lot of porn on Tumblr, and (non-endemic) advertisers tend to avoid the category aggressively.

Just how much porn does Tumblr have? I’ll use a standard industry metric:  it’s, like, a lot.

The percentage of their traffic that is porn-related is impossible to say, but when one (in this case me) searches for Tumblrs tagged for “porn,” one gets this:

I’ll say.

In fact, there’s so much porn on Tumblr that they can’t even list all the results for blogs that distinguish themselves for being “not porn.”

Btw, I’ve done extensive research into the topic, and I can tell you that most of these are also porn.

Even as one narrows his (again, me) search to more specific sub-genres within the extended porn family, one is once again reminded of the sheer volume of skin in the Tumblr catalog:

Trust me, one (me) can get SUPER-granular (because I care) here and not run out of blogs on a super broad variety of very, very specific topics.

Suffice to say that no matter what your kink is, there’s a Tumblr for that. College girls, high school dudes, foot fetishes, yoga pants – Tumblr has the full spectrum of porn covered (I would provide a much more extensive list if I had two things:  1. more time to spare, and 2. an office door I could close).

Why does Tumblr have so much porn?

Because purveyors o’ porn are some of the best digital marketers in the world, and they were early adopters of message boards, email, groups, search, etc. You name it – porn was there and there early. They get there first and scale it until it stops working. Thus it totally makes sense that they would be the first to adopt and proliferate inside of social, blogging, social blogging or however you want to categorize Tumblr.

So while Yahoo! might not worry about their porn problem, they do have an issue to deal with.

Perhaps it’s a challenge, or perhaps it’s an op-porn-tunity.*

*I’m really sorry.

The post How Bad is Tumblr’s Porn Problem? appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

I was thinking, “With awesome hair like this, I won’t be unemployed for long”

The time is 1997. I was graduating from Dartmouth’s Tuck School with an MBA and a staggering amount of student debt -$80,000 in 1997 dollars (I think there’s a way to calculate how much that would be in 2013 dollars, but I forget how to do it…I’ll cover the irony of that in another article). The debt was all the more terrifying because I had no job, a situation that contrasted with that of my classmates, the vast majority of whom seemed to have positions in investment banking, consulting or brand management with eye-popping starting salaries, signing bonuses and even tuition reimbursement. Annoyingly, as these friends of mine accepted their offers, they quickly shifted their time from job-searching to golf course-ing. Bastards. By contrast, nature had selected me to be a not-investment banker (see above reference re. computation of present value). I also couldn’t get traction with the prestigious brand management programs, and I had decided I didn’t want to do consulting because I couldn’t explain what they did (plus, none of them would hire me).

Good prospects would pop up here-and-there, but several months into the process I continued to receive their dismissals in the form of politely worded missives, the clear message of which was “piss off!”

As catharsis to make it through the experience, I edited these rejection letters (which I kept because I amuse myself) and hung them in the hall outside my room in the house I shared with four classmates.

Reading over them today, I still find them hilarious, but they freak me out a bit too, as they reflect the crazy stress I put myself through over finding my first real corporate job.

One night my roommates and I hosted a party for about a hundred students from other top business schools. Our house was filled, upstairs and down, with beer-ponging/funneling MBA candidates.

At some point in the evening I ran up to my room to grab something and could hear a couple of guests laughing at the edited correspondence outside. I was happy they found them funny until I heard one of them say, “These letters aren’t even from top companies” (there were many others than those included above).

Ahem.

I assumed – and remain convinced – that this person was from Wharton.

It sucked, but as you can probably guess, this story has a happy ending. Not too long afterward I found a job announcement in the career center (no HotJobs or CareerBuilder in 1997) for a company that produced an advertising-supported CD-ROM featuring interviews and performances with bands and movies stars. I thought to myself, “Hey, I love music, and everyone knows that the CD-ROM is the future of media!”  Long story short, I got the job, and it kicked off a great career in the internet business.

You can check out the future of media on LAUNCH (if you’re still running Windows 95).

Soon after I started, the LAUNCH CD-ROM became LAUNCH.com, a very cool music website that was eventually bought by Yahoo!. I loved working at Yahoo!, paid off my student loans and saved enough money to pursue a long-time dream of doing stand-up comedy full-time.

Stand-up was fun but way harder than I anticipated. I met many of my comic heroes, and got lots of stage time, but it takes a long time to gain competence in the field. One time after I had introduced Daniel Tosh, he started his set with “Paul – God bless him, he’s trying.” Ugggh.

Two years in, I proposed to my girlfriend (now wife and baby mama), and felt the call to a more predictable career path. So I put my tail between my legs and headed back to the corporate world.

In May, 2007 I joined the sales team for a small social network called Facebook.

Sometimes I wish that I could have been a better comedian or that I would have stuck it out longer. But if it had gone better, I wouldn’t have spent four years working, learning and making life-changing money at Facebook. Indeed, if I had been funnier, I’d have a much smaller house.

Here’s my point:  your career is going to bring you many ups-and-downs, and your job search is just the beginning of that. The whole process might be annoying, frustrating, and terrifying, but it will pay off. It’s all part of helping you figure out who you are and what you really should and could be doing with your career.

The many dozens of interviews I had coming out of Tuck ranged from good to humiliating. They did not get great until I learned to stop telling people what I thought they wanted to hear and started telling people who I was and what I hoped to accomplish.

By the time I got in front of the LAUNCH team, I knew that this was exactly the job I wanted, and I was telling the ME story with clarity and enthusiasm. After meeting with each interviewer I told them, “I want this job, so if you’ve got any reservations about me, I’d like to talk about them with you now.” I think they thought I was crazy. And now they’re some of my best friends, in and out of business (except for this git).

Take heart, keep at it, and tell YOUR story. It’s all going to work out….unless you went to Wharton, in which case – piss off!

The post Dear Unemployed Graduate, appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

Back in the day (I try to use this phrase as often as possible…even when I just mean “like two weeks ago”) we had the choice of either groovy ‘70s fare like The Electric Company or vaguely racist and completely violent tales of survival of the fittest like Tom and Jerry or Coyote/Road-Runner. “Hey kids, drop anvils on each other!”

Today my kids watch shows that teach them to read, count, recycle, celebrate diversity, mix their denim and treat their peers and adults with respect. Before you shout, “BO-RING!”, I submit to you that there is some stuff worth watching amidst the trite crap.

Even still, your kids should probably watch no more than five hours of TV per day, even if you’re totally hungover (videos on tablets, phones or laptops don’t count toward this total).  To help you make the most of that time, here’s the BAC Guide to Children’s Television, #1:

SHOWS I LIKE

Yo Gabba-Gabba!: The trippiest of kids’ TV, Yo Gabba Gabba features an orange-onesie-clad DJ, a big, red Gumbi-looking cyclopse (as seen on the Kia Sorrenta commercial), and a whole cast of other freakshow monsters who sing, dance and drop-knowledge on the kiddos. I’m wouldn’t say for sure that the creators of this show are drug-addled freaks, but I wouldn’t say that they’re not. The show is silly fun, features a beat-boxin’ Biz Markie and myriad celebrity cameos, including The Office’s (US) Angela Kinsey who is way too hot for Dwight Schrute…not that I think about that stuff while watching TV with my sweet, beautiful children.

Yo Gabba Gabba’s DJ Lance! ( Some rights reserved by @cdharrison)

Peppa Pig:  The Pig family snort a lot. Just that fact makes it fun to watch with the kids, and it also makes me feel better about my hardcore snoring (yes, I’ve been tested for sleep apnea, but thanks for your concern). Peppa is a little girl pig whose antics and interactions serve as the basis for this otherwise absurd series. Her dad is lazy and hugely fat, as all dads are supposed to be. Also, her little brother has a sweet toy dinosaur.

Pocoyo:  This Spanish CGI-animated series is super cool and accompanied by a groovy musical score. The version we get is narrated with the help of English actor and comedian Stephen Fry who speaks, well, English. It follows the adventures of niño Pocoyo and his friends: a pink Elephant and a duck who wears a hat like Heisenberg’s on Breaking Bad (Note: Breaking Bad is not a good show to watch with children under 8 years-old. For 8+, it’s totally okay. Hey, a kid’s gotta learn how the world works). Pocoyo is the best show I can get my kids to watch.

ANNOYING SHITE

Caillou: Caillou has a great imagination! And so would you if you were a bald four-year old who looks like Charlie Runkle. Hey, a kid’s go to have his defense mechanisms. I’m sorry for being critical of a child (albeit an imaginary one), but the incessant morality and niceness of the whole thing just gets irritating. Truth is his lumpy mom and dad need to lay off the Tim Horton’s and hit a Zumba class. The only more annoying Canadian export than Caillou is Nickelback.

WonderPets: A guinea pig in rain gear, a baby duck with pilots’ goggles and a turtle in a sailor’s hat.  Hey – it’s the adorable baby animal version of The Village People! The furry YMCA crew speak with cute lisps and save other animals who are stupid enough to get stuck in trees or under rosebushes (whatever happened to natural selection?). I don’t know what it is about this show, but WonderPets makes me hungry for roasted rodents, broiled baby amphibian (or whatever a turtle is) and sauteed duckling with celery.

WHATEVER

Curious George (PBSKids):  So there’s nothing out-of-the ordinary about a 6’ 5” guy who dresses head-to-toe in canary yellow and has a pet monkey, but I call absolute bullshit on him being able get that monkey past his (let’s call it) New York City co-op board. I do my best to suspend disbelief when watching children’s television, but this is asking too much. That shit only happens on Friends.

Dora The Explorer:  Dora and her pet monkey, Boots, have done more to get young boys speaking Spanish than anyone except for Sofia Vergara. But while Dora helps break down stereotypes about simian-owning Latinas, she absolutely shits on trolls (all of whom are grumpy and old) and foxes (who are apparently all sneaky, thieving bastards).

Ni Hao, Kai-Lan:  If you don’t think Latinos are losing jobs to the Chinese, I ask you to explain Kai-Lan, Dora’s nemesis from the East. Kai-Lan grows up in a bi-lingual household (just like Dora), breaks the fourth wall to teach lessons to her young audience (just like Dora) and even has a (you guessed it) monkey friend. She obviously has less respect for Dora than she does for intellectual property. If Kai-Lan don’t watch it, Dora gonna cut her ass.

Next Time:  BluesClues – a guide to fashion crimes of the late 1990’s (see also “Cargo pants” and “rugby shirts”)

The post BAC Guide to Children’s Television, #1 appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

Perhaps it was a cookie I picked up during my recreational Internet browsing – a souvenir from a web server in the remotest part of Estonia. Or maybe it’s because the social network recently launched Facebook Look-alike targeting wherein they run ads at users whose profiles or behavior matches that of an advertiser’s current customers.

However it happened, the ads I’m being served recently feel more like MySpace c. 2005 than Facebook 2013, i.e. a whole lot of either scantily-clad women or shirtless, oily dudes.

For example, a bit of this:

I miss high school Spanish.

When i think “FitCougar,” I think “classy.”

…and a whole bunch of this:

Interestingly, the way these sexy people are being presented to me indicates that Facebook isn’t entirely convinced that I’m interested in women, as I have declared in my account profile. The ads are paired-up adjacently, suggesting that Facebook wanted me to pick a team:

I saw these coupled ads over-and-over, as if Facebook was saying, “Hey, we’re not saying you’re gay. But then again, we’re not saying you’re not…”

It’s kind of like going to the sexual preference optometrist:

Doctor: “okay, which one is better, A…or B? Here’s A again….and B…”

Me: “Hmmm…it’s so close. Can I see B again just to be sure?”

Now I couldn’t be completely sure that The Eagle was a gay-targeted ad without looking at their page. Really – I’m not that up on pop culture these days, so it could have been an ad for really fit guys who like suspenders. Or maybe it was ad for a totally straight clothing brand like Abercrombie.

Like I said – who knows? What do I have to lose? I’m almost completely confident in straight-ness, so I let my mouse click on the ad.

I was greeted by the best cover photo of any Facebook page I’ve ever seen: a dude’s hairy chest (no face) with double nipple-piercings in some sort of harness.

“Okay,” I thought, “The Eagle is a gay bar, and I’m leaving this page right now…..just as soon as I finish reading their post about next week’s Jock Strap Wednesday party, from 10:00 p.m. – 4:00 a.m.”

Oddly, my only concern after reading it was:  “who’s got the energy to stay up that late?”

So it’s official, I’m in some kind of new ad-targeting ‘bucket’ for hook-up ads. Perhaps this target bucket is called “People who like the sexy-time” (sounds better if you say it with a Russian accent) or “Guys who aren’t quite as straight as they think” (sounds less good in a Russian accent).

You might be wondering: does my new profile follow me to Facebook mobile?  You bet it does!

“Grindr meets foursquare”? How about “Grindr meets LinkedIn” so I can hook up at work?

I find the whole thing pretty funny, but the sexy ads and the targeting are of note because they represent a meaningful change in Facebook’s policy.

When I sold for Facebook (2007-2011), we operated under strict rules about sexual orientation and targeting. Dating services like Match.com could only target ads to users who had specifically stated their sexual orientation and then only with ad copy specific thereto.

This was one of the line-in-the-sand policies that distinguished Facebook from MySpace at a time when Facebook was the social media challenger. It sent the message that Facebook was committed to leveraging and respecting personal data in service of creating an ad experience better than any that existed to that point on the Internet.

The ads I’m seeing now indicate that Facebook may have added the following caveat to the policy: “…unless the ads in question are full of smokin’ hot-tays – wooooo!!!” (say it like you’re reading it on MySpace)

I assume, however, that the ads in question are the result of Facebook working the kinks out of its new Look-alike targeting.  Even so, it begs the question “what behavior of mine looks like that of the current customers for the brands running these ads?”

Is it the songs I’m streaming on my FB-Connected Spotify account? Not to indulge in stereotypes, but for a straight guy, I do listen to a lot of Madonna.

Was it all the searches I did recently for “big data?” You may be thinking “what’s wrong with that?” but it turns out that “Big Data” is actually Larry Ellison’s nickname for his penis.

Oh wait – I know what it was - it was that weekend my wife was out-of-town. The specifics are a bit fuzzy – all I remember is waking up on the couch with my laptop open to the “Young Lacrosse Hunks” Facebook Page. But I don’t think that should count because the night before I had gotten pretty hammered on Zima and Luna bars (the Lemon Zest are the yummiest).

Anyway, I’m going to take this whole thing as a compliment. Even if the nuance is way off, at least Facebook thinks I’m still young and virile enough to swing. And swinging really is what it’s all about….especially if it’s 2005 and you’re on MySpace.

Still, it makes me miss the good ol’ days when the Facebook ads that embarrassed me most were the ads that were, by contrast, very well-targeted:

-END-

The post Facebook Look-alike Looks-alike Myspace appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

I grew up one of six kids in a medium-sized home that was always crowded. As such, I really wanted a bigger house and fewer siblings (they know this and feel the same way about me).

Call it the need to correct some inequalities of financial genetics, but I got hugely excited a couple of years ago when I realized I could afford a big ol’ home on a street to which I had always aspired…the street and house where we now live.

Let me state now that I am not complaining here (not really). I am beyond fortunate and our home is really beautiful – splendid architecture, big front porch, and a pool/hot tub, etc. It’s just that it’s way too big. And I couldn’t have known this until I experienced it for myself.

I had always heard it was smart to live small and to avoid buying too much stuff. I thought that this was a strictly financial axiom, but I have discovered the very meaningful “costs” to big home ownership that don’t show up on Zillow’s mortgage calculators.

Even if you can pay cash upfront or have a meaningless monthly payment, here are 5 Reasons Buying a Big House is Dumb:

1. Lightbulbs:  If you double your square-footage, you’re going to at least double the number of lightbulbs your house has. Makes sense, right? But have you ever thought about that before? Didn’t think so. Then you also haven’t considered that with those dramatic 10- and 12-ft ceilings you’re going to need a freaking ladder to get to the freaking lightbulb every freaking time one blows. Which means that every Saturday morning you’re up on a ladder in your foyer trying not to fall off and squish your kids. Oh, and since you also have about ten different varieties of light fixtures, you rarely have exactly the number and kind of bulbs you need. So make friends with the lighting person at Home Depot, because you’re going to see her a lot. It seems like all I ever buy is lightbulbs, toy batteries and scotch.

One month’s worth of lightbulbs for both indoor/outdoor. Insanity.

2. Windows: Sure, they’re beautiful and let a lot of light in, but windows are a pain in the ass to keep clean, especially when you have two little child-monsters running their puddin’-stained fingers all over them. If you can’t see through windows, they’re pretty much pointless. What’s that – your housekeeper will do it? Okay, get used to having her around. A lot.

3. Fancy plumbing:  However big your house is, buy your sink at Sears. Seriously. Because if you

The original hose and its “replacement.” Duct tape ain’t gonna fix this one.

choose the expensive German sink fixtures, you’re setting yourself up for misery. Say you get a hole in the hand-sprayer hose. You will first call a plumber who will look at it and then run screaming from the house like he’s just seen a Poltergeist (also German). Then your wife will tell you its your responsibility to fix the damaged hose. You will ask her “why is it my responsibility?” And she’ll go, “Because Sheryl Sandberg says you should be doing 50% of the housework. Lean in, baby!” (Damn it, Sheryl!). So you’ll go online to try to figure out what kind of sink this is to begin with, and once you figure that out, you’ll try to order replacement parts which have to be flown in from Deutschland, only to find out that the replacement parts don’t fit. At that point you’ll spend hours on the phone with customer service only to be told that they don’t make the hose that fits your components any more and you’ll need to replace ALL OF THE FAUCET AND FIXTURES for an amount roughly equal to what you paid for your first car…just because you got a tiny hole in the FUCKING hand-sprayer hose. Go to Sears. Seariously.

3. Decorators:  Sitting somewhere on the moral spectrum between Hitler and Ke$ha, decorators are evil people who charge you thousands of dollars to hang your grandmother’s china on the wall while telling you “It looks just like The Viceroy!!!” CAVEAT: this only applies to pretty much all decorators. (except for Heather and Marcus*)

5. Wallspace:  Acres and acres of bare wall-space that beg to be filled by interesting things at which to look. You can try to hang a bunch of posters or tapestries if you want your fancy new house to look like a dorm room or an Urban Outfitters. But if you want to have a look that is vaguely “adult,” you’re going to end up buying some art. And even decent, entry-level art from local artists is expensive as crap. You might try to come up with an innovative solution to fill these vast expanses of nothingness, like the huge wall in our basement pool room. I wanted to make it personal, so I listed out 66 of my favorite albums from the ’60s-’80s, and spent months seeking them out in used record shops around town and on ebay.

I then spent hours lining up the hangers on the wall to make sure they were all evenly spaced. As you can see, it started out great from the left, but somehow the bottom row ended up mushing with the middle row, and I sort of gave up.  Also, I simply couldn’t find many of my favorite records under $100, so I ended up settling for REO Speedwagon and the B-52′s.  Still good memories, but it ain’t Spinal Tap.

So take it from Paul, your zen realtor – when it comes to home-size:  ”Enough is a feast.”

don’t buy this house.

*Stacey made me write this, but I do love you both.

The post 5 Reasons Buying a Big House is Dumb appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

  )kay, this isn’t really about tech or media, but i’ve played a lot of golf with digital marketers, so I say it’s relevant…

To play at the top of his or her game, a golfer’s mind must be clear and focused on the shot at hand. Many golfers focus on a swing thought (“head down-arm straight,” “back-and-through”, “finish high”) to help them maintain position or rhythm through their swing.

Swing thoughts can be great if you are able to limit their number to one per swing. Beyond one, a golfer’s brain becomes a swirling, noisy mess of voices that produces errant shots, thrown clubs and lost wagers.

I love the idea of swing thoughts, but find them difficult to execute, as my already profound internal dialogue is exacerbated by my upbringing in a devout Catholic home and twelve years of Catholic school.

While I am extremely and eternally grateful for my parents and education, I am equally certain that the guilty Catholic voices in my head are responsible for at least 5 strokes of my 15 index.  This is why my Protestant friends should give me two extra shots per side.

Charlie don’t surf. And the Pope don’t Golf. Here are my Top 5 Catholic Swing Thoughts:

1. “I don’t deserve to make this putt.” With war in Syria, Mali, Afghanistan, and people starving  everywhere, how can I even think that God should want me to make this straight, uphill 4-footer? I should have given up golf for Lent.
2. “I hope my mother never finds out how much I paid to get into to this club…” When I was 14 I told my saintly mother that I wanted to buy a Porsche someday. In a household of eight wherein ziploc bags and tin foil were washed and re-used, this was the financial equivalent of telling her that I wanted a pet dinosaur. Her reply was basically, “Could you really drive a car that expensive in good conscience, knowing you could give that same money to feed the poor and hungry?” Here I am 30 years later with the resources to buy a dinosaur farm but lacking the will to actually buy that Porsche. Which is why I drive a Mercedes.
3. 

   These jokers should be at church. Seriously.

   “I should have told my wife I was playing today – she’ll figure it out somehow anyway.” Come on, it’s not like I’m cheating on her. I didn’t tell her anything that was untrue. I just left the house with my golf shoes buried in my gym bag (I leave my clubs in the car to empower these temptations). If not telling my wife I’m golfing is a sin, it’s a sin of omission at worst.  So why does her accusatory face keep appearing in my brain as I stand over this 110-yard wedge shot? Why didn’t I just tell her? Here’s why – because I want her to regard me as an over-worked schlub who never has fun and sacrifices his own personal happiness to work hard for his family….like all Catholic dads.

4. “I Should be at Church.” It’s a sunny, blue-skied 73-degree Sunday morning in early March. I really should be inside a dank old building, inhaling incense, mumbling prayers, and focusing on my sins instead of enjoying the outdoors, laughing with my friends, and generally appreciating life. Me being here on this beautiful manicured golf course is wrong.
   

   Stop worrying about your noodle and hit the ball.

5. “Masturbation is still a sin?”  Wasn’t this doctrine over-turned a decade ago after all those priests got busted?  Didn’t The Vatican just go, “okay – let’s just call this one even – wank away!”  It would have saved me a lifetime’s worth of guilt, fueled by the mantra, “God is watching.” If so, I hope He can help me find that ball that just went into the woods. As importantly, why am I thinking about masturbation on the golf course?

The post Top 5 Catholic Swing Thoughts appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.

Yahoo! CEO, Marissa Mayer

Yahoo! leadership and CEO Marissa Mayer created quite a stir this week by announcing major changes to the company’s work-from-home policy. Going forward, Yahoo! employees who have heretofore worked remotely must report to work at a company office.

The tech press made much of the edict, which some employees view as a “morale killer.”

Whether or not this is one in a series of moves that will turn Yahoo! around remains to be seen. For the time-being, Mayer has on her hands a public relations gaffe that calls into question her sensitivity to the balanced personal lives of company staffers.

Management is now scrambling to pick up the pieces, and will be releasing a new memo to clarify the intent of the first memo. Banner Ad Confidential obtained a copy of Memo 2.0 by writing it, then leaking it to ourselves anonymously.

Here’s the fake memo in which Marissa Mayer clarifies the Yahoo! WFH Policy:

—————————————————————————————————————————————————-

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY, CONFIDENTIAL AND FAKE — DO NOT FORWARD (BUT PLEASE RE-TWEET)

27 Feb 2013

Yahoos,

Over the past few days there has been a lot of talk in the press about this week’s WFH memo that Jackie sent out. Which is one of the reasons Jackie was fired.

The other reason is that she wanted to WFH occasionally, and that shit don’t play here no more. 

To be clear, the WFH issue has been taken totally out of context by the press, who then amplified it using the social media platforms that now hold the dominant market position that Yahoo! used to occupy (ironic, right?).

But let me first say – we handled the announcement of the policy poorly, and I apologize. 

I get that a flexible workspace is important to you as both employees and as employees who aren’t working at the time. Believe me – I understand that family means balancing priorities. It was for this reason that I recently permitted myself the luxury of a 3-day weekend to give birth. 

That extra day of recovery was divine!

Know this: Yahoo! is committed to a positive work environment in which Yahoos can lead healthy, well-balanced lives (which is why I built a Gymboree in my executive suite).

So while the changes in our WFH policy do restrict flexibility somewhat, they are not an outright ban. Please allow me to clarify the following points:

• Yahoos with sick children can totally WFH if they feel that the health of their child is more important than boosting the stock price above $25/share for the first time in five years. Hey, it’s your call.
• All employees can WFH up to a total of four days per year, with a maximum of one time each for the following excuses:  cable/internet guy, plumber, race riot, intense gastric distress, or nuclear war.  (Please note that sick days are a separate matter, but “existential career crisis” and “my manager makes me want to barf” are not considered illnesses)
• If you need to be home in excess of these parameters, you will need to take PTO. Better yet, have that deadbeat husband of yours stay home. As if anyone’s going to miss him at his job. What is he – like a history teacher or something? Come on. 
• If you still can’t make it into the office, we will replace your new iPhone with a Palm Vx and an OmniSky modem.
• Employees are permitted to make one daily personal phone call (lasting no more than 5 minutes). While some might find this measure draconian, we don’t want you to miss out on impromptu office discussions just because you’re stuck on the phone with your senile mother trying to explain for the 50th time how the remote control works. Sure, she might be suffering from dementia, but in the eyes of the law, she is still an adult, and should be able to take care of herself.
• Exception to the telephone rule: you may use the phone if your house is on fire only after trying to reach the fire department using Yahoo! IM or another one of our nifty mobile apps (wouldn’t it make a great case study if IM yielded a quicker response! ).
• IMPORTANT:  the mimeograph machine remains off-limits for ALL personal use.

One other policy I’ve been considering for awhile will now be implemented immediately:

• If you fart in a conference room, you will be escorted by security and banished to a quonset hut workspace out on the marsh/swamp-thing behind the Sunnyvale campus. While this is technically working remotely, we can still see you from our windows and find that continuity refreshing. Well, not “refreshing,” but, you know, “encouraging.”

I appreciate your enthusiastic support of these new guidelines. Thanks to all of you, we’ve already made remarkable progress as a company — and the best is yet to come (unless you need to WFH, in which case you’ll be fired…like Jackie).

Love,

Fake Marissa

**Read also 5 Former-Yahoo!s Marissa Mayer Should Totally Re-Hire**

The post CEO Mayer clarifies Yahoo! WFH Policy appeared first on BANNER AD CONFIDENTIAL.