Response to Seth Godin's Linchpin

Linchpin Report

And Elevator Pitch

  

Jan-Ryder Hilton

PRWR 621: Business Writing

Dr. Harvey Lillywhite

Towson University

November 11, 2013

Tame the Lizard Brain

Seth Godin suggests in his novel Linchpin that people basically fight with themselves when they think. "There are two, not one, voices in our head . . ." (Godin 2010, 111). So, when making important decisions, we essentially negotiate with both positive and negative thoughts. The cerebrum, the newest and most sophisticated part of the brain, grants us our ability to work out problems artistically. This advanced organ is the source of our creative and positive thoughts. It's the part we root for - the part we want to win! The other part is the Limbic System, which is the source for fear, anger, and revenge. Godin calls this second part the "lizard brain." The "lizard" is less sophisticated than our creative mind. It's scared. It causes us to freeze or retreat from our artistic ideas when we should move forward. The lizard cannot deal with uncertainty. Unfortunately, the lizard has one important thing - control. It exists closest to the brain stem - likely generating our first instincts. Therefore, the lizard often wins. Our cerebrum is the underdog in this relationship (Godin 2010, Ch. 7).

Taming the lizard is about growing up. I wish I had read Linchpin years ago when working for AT&T and Progressive. Those were hard times for me. I am a bright communicator and an effective problem solver. I am also an idea person. I know how to get projects started. I know how to do the, "job that's not getting done" (Godin 2010, 34). But I have struggled with the perception of my own worth. I have feared those in authority. Uncertainty over acceptance of my ideas has caused me much grief over the years. Adults, professionals, successful people, all find ways to conquer their paranoia and harness the lizard.

I see the effects of the lizard's take-over in my job as adjunct instructor for the Community College of Baltimore County. Too many of my students fail to show for class, miss assignments, score low on tests, and get lost in the course. They come to me asking obvious questions, telling banal excuses, and looking worried. I can almost see the impression of a cold-blooded green-skinned lizard in them, resembling something like the GEICO gecko with a bad hangover. My answers for them are always the same "Don't miss any more classes. Make up the work you missed. It's all right there in the syllabus."

I wonder, "Are they really worried about failing the course, or are they worried about what I will think of them if they fail the course?" Successful students don't ask if they can make up missed work (when it's clearly written on the syllabus that they can). They make up the missed work, inform the instructor that it's been submitted, and move on the next assignment.

I appreciate Godin's metaphor of the lizard as the part of our minds that we need to conquer. I enjoy visualizing the source for fear, anger, uncertainty, and paranoia as a skittish reptile. The concept of the lizard brain allows one to approach negative thoughts objectively. This is a both an effective and mature thing to do. In any situation, where important decisions need to be made, if you notice the lizard getting loose, you need to grab that thing, and put it back in the aquarium. Let the cerebrum go to work. You got this!

Board Game Man

Playing board games was a big part of my childhood. My family loved to get together to play Monopoly, Clue, Pictionary, and many others. Game nights inspired my imagination. And it was at any early age when I developed my greatest skill - making my own board games. With only poster board, markers, scissors, and Scotch tape, I created 2D worlds where everyone played following my design. Contrary to popular skepticism, I made up the rules as we went along only to improve the game, not to cheat. In fact, I did not care so much about winning at my own game. Actually, I preferred to lose. What I wanted most was for the game to come to life and for everyone to have fun and say, "Wow! This is a great game Jan!"

Years later, Board Game Man would take on another challenge - becoming a fantasy football commissioner. My first fantasy football league was established in 2001. Since then I have served as the chief guy for making the NFL season more fun for my friends. For us, fantasy football is football, and we wouldn't want to experience the NFL season without it.

Godin's idea of "shipping" relates to my experience as commissioner. "The only purpose of starting is to finish . . ." (Godin 2010, 103). "Finishing" is important when setting up a league. There are many intangibles in fantasy football. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing my first time. But I didn't let my inexperience stop me. I shipped. I set up the league, recruited team owners, and we played fantasy football! Each season, I learned how to improve the league, waited, and made the necessary changes for the following season. "Shipping" is about overcoming the fear that a project may not be perfect, fighting off the temptation of resistance, and moving forward. Today, my league has 14 team owners, each striving to become champion. I have come in first place 3 times in the past 13 seasons (Godin 2010, Ch. 7).   

Board Game Man as a Technical Writer

One of my recent successful projects came from a correlation of my job as teacher's assistant for University of Maryland University College's Cybersecurity program and as a student taking Creating Online Help. For my final project, I chose to rewrite the instructions for connecting to UMUC's Virtual Computing Lab (VCL). The current instructions needed to be overhauled. This meant that I would rewrite the new set of instructions from the ground up. It was a big project, and it was a success! I earned a B+ on the project and subsequent report. Then I gave the new instructions to my colleague at UMUC.

"In the Linchpin economy, the winners are once again the artists who give gifts. . . . the givers are the ones who earn our respect and attention" (Godin 2010, 151). So I gave UMUC my gift of the new instructions, titled: Connecting to the VCL. I was certainly going to issue these instructions to the students in my classes. And I thought other TAs in the department might find the new instructions useful as well. I had no idea how popular my project would be. As it turns out, UMUC adopted Connecting to the VCL for the whole Cybersecurity department. I received positive recognition from senior faculty and a pay raise in the following semester. "Gifts don't demand immediate payment, but they have always included social demands within the tribe" (Godin 2010, 164).  

Online Courses are Like Board Games

The focus of my next career move lies within my position as adjunct instructor. I've recently been promoted to teach courses online at CCBC. And I'm also working towards landing a full-time instructor position at a different college. I feel online courses are a lot like games, and not too different from a fantasy football league. In preparing a course, one works out the intangibles - sets the learning objectives, creates assignments, sets the assessment forms, and "ships" the course. I'm excited to do it, and I'm willing to prepare a course from the ground up without additional pay. My quasi position as instructional designer will provide me with a platform to work on my art.

I have many other artistic ideas for my career. I'd like to work my way into the field of fantasy football, which I have begun with my blog - The Commissioner's Corner. I've also though about publishing my own book or game of some kind. I decided to use my position as an instructor to establish myself into these other areas. "Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion" (Godin 2010, 201). Truth is - I'm a pretty good college instructor. I'll be an even better instructional designer. How about an online class about fantasy football for actual college credits? Wouldn't that be interesting?

Pitch for the Fantasy Football Course

I'm Jan-Ryder Hilton. I am a college instructor, instructional designer, and fantasy football commissioner. I am an effective project starter and a determined project finisher.

Please allow me to tell you about a great idea I have for a new type of college course.

Now more than ever, colleges offer dynamic programs of study that fit today's job market. I believe we can improve upon this and offer something that no other college has.  

I have an idea for a writing and research course that's based on fantasy football. Students will learn: creative writing, journalism, statistical analysis, debating techniques, and, of course, fantasy football!

Sports journalism, alone, is a hundred million dollar industry. The rest of the industry surrounding sports, including fantasy sports, generates billions. Students yearn to get into this exciting field. My new fantasy football course will hand-off to those who want to run the ball in this direction.

I have the course outline and syllabus for you to review, and I can start teaching the course as early as next semester! Let's be the first college in the country to offer: Writing for Fantasy Football.

Works Cited

Godin, Seth. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? New York: Penguin Group, 2010.

Vaping: Electronic Cigarettes Could Replace Regular Cigarettes

My final research paper for Semiotics for the Professional Writer (PRWR 660) is finished - Vaping: Electronic Cigarettes Could Replace Regular Cigarettes. I worked on this report on a daily basis for approximately three weeks. I feel accomplished in my ability to use knowledge of semiotics as a basis for research and for developing an effective conclusion. Please read.

Shots! Shots! Shots! Myth Today Essay

My "Shots! Shots! Shots!" post has been rewritten into a more detailed essay.

Burgerbrow

Burgerbrow

Chain Restaurants

All across America, sad middle-class hangouts know as chain restaurants pretend to serve customers

quality fare. These food service clones are boring in every way: likely locations, monotonous menus, casual servers, stereotypical music, and of course, the featureless food. Applebee's, Chili's, Red Robin, Ruby Tuesday, and T.G.I. Friday's, are among the most popular nationwide. A.K.A. sports bars, these thrown-together establishments mock the bourgeois family man who attempts to recreate the same goofy look for his man-cave.

A good joke on these chain restaurants and the middle-class people who eat there was performed in the movie Hall Pass. A couple of married guys are granted a week off from marriage by their wives. This 'hall pass' gives the husbands a supposed opportunity to get lucky with some other ladies. These clueless dudes hook-up with their friends and head-out to Applebee's, where they think the action is. The group ends up overeating and calling it a night without ever making an attempt to talk to women. The joke plays on an idea that these middle-class, uncultured, hopeless men, have no idea what to do when their wives aren’t around.

I confess. I regularly hangout at sports bars and chain restaurants similar to the ones mentioned here. Some things that I'm proud to say I like the most are what Roland Barthes and Virginia Woolf would probably consider predictable bourgeois garbage. Nevertheless, I recognize chain restaurants like Applebee's as the middle ground between the take-outs found in poor neighborhoods and the four-star fine dining found downtown. Try asking-out an artsy Baltimorian girl on a date to Applebee's. I doubt she'll go, but if she does, it will only be to make you the butt of the jokes she tells her friends later on.

Synchronic Analysis on Burgers

I will momentarily buy-in to Barthes's and Woolf's opinions of middle class fare by zeroing in on one particular food item that's served in food establishments in all three social classes. I believe burgers (A.K.A. hamburgers or cheeseburgers) revel an essence that highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow, social class features still exist (at least in one particular food item).

The Matrix

Let's start with the highbrow burger. While The Hamilton Tavern may not be considered fine dining, it's certainly fashionable among Baltimore hipsters. The pub is not a sports bar - it has no TVs! And the staff certainly takes their food seriously. They'll gladly share information about all the local ingredients, including the beef. The Crosstown Burger made second place in City Paper's Burger Bracket challenge (City Paper's Burger Bracket 2013). The same way Mozart obsessed over his music, the Ham-Tav (as locals call it) shoots for perfection with their burger. It's the elite!

Second, let's discuss the lowbrow 7 Eleven Cheeseburger. While it may, in fact, be the lowest quality burger for presentation, ingredients, and taste, it has something that the middlebrow burgers don't have - it has significance. 7 Eleven burgers are for emergencies. You eat it when you're hungry. You eat it when you have to eat something now! Poor children scrounge for change to go and get one. Exhausted construction workers eat them. Commuters in a hurry eat them on the go! I remember eating 7 Eleven Cheeseburgers after a long crazy night at the club and just before the late night after party. It's the first-aid kit of food!

Finally, the middlebrow Applebee's Cowboy Burger is the official sandwich of the lost. I remember eating one of their burgers years ago. It was not round; rather, it was shaped long, like a football or the end of a baseball bat. It was smashed together quite like the way the sports decorations were thrown up and nailed to the wall. It was a mushy-salty metaphoric-mess. One blogger mentions that he wished he had skipped Applebee's and gone to McDonald's instead. I remember thinking the same. You will not experience the taste of perfection found in the Crosstown Burger, nor will you be charged the bargain price of the 7 Eleven Cheeseburger - in the Applebee's Cowboy Burger - you will just feel sick and sorry.

Codes

Daniel Chandler explains how important codes are for the construction of society. People need codes to make sense of things (Chandler 2007, Ch. 5). In the defense of Applebee's and other chain restaurants, they do in fact provide a positive set of codes for people of all three social classes. For the middle-class, it's appropriate to take the kids to an Applebee's. This way mom or dad can enjoy an evening out; have maybe a drink or two, and dinner with the little ones, without critical stares from others. It's simply not socially acceptable to take kids to a bar, or club, but to a chain restaurant - that's ok. For the lower-class, it's likely more reasonable to celebrate by going out to a chain restaurant, where something fancier may be too expensive. And the upper-class certainly knows of the consistency that chain restaurants offer. Applebee's may certainly be something that an upper-class couple would gladly settle for when traveling through remote areas. For instance, if a wealthy couple was driving across states like Alabama and Mississippi, an Applebee's might look like an oasis.

Word count = 888

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Hill and Wang, 2012.

Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd. Routledge, 2007.

City Paper's Burger Bracket. 2013. http://citypaper.com/eat/city-paper-burger-bracket-winner-1.1503718.

Dario. n.d. http://godblessburgers.blogspot.com/2010/12/cowboy-burger.html.

Glenn, Joshua. Woolf contra Middlebrow. 2009. http://hilobrow.com/2009/03/04/woolf-contra-middlebrow/.

    

     

  

                     

Shots! Shots! Shots!

Shots! Shots! Shots!

Let's drink!

We Americans love to round-up and have drinks together at parties, sporting events, bars and night clubs. Yet a common myth shared among us revolves around the idea that going out to socialize with alcoholic beverages will increase the good time we're having. Of course, we do have good times sometimes, but sometimes we don't because we drank too much. The myth - binge drinking leads to[1] shown in liquor commercials are such complete reversals from actuality that it can be dangerously misleading, especially to one specific gullible group - young people.   

more fun - is set into our minds. Alcoholic beverage companies invest millions in tempting ad campaigns that draw us to their phony blueprint for having a great night on the town. The most vicious of these ads are the ones for hard liquor that show young adults taking shots. The visual metaphor portrayed in the liquor commercials is a complete contradiction to the actual experience of drinking shots. When broken down, the signifieds

Clarification

Shots are 1 - 1.5 ounce portions of liquor or liqueur[2] poured into small glasses and consumed with a group. There's often a toast, celebration, or other silly gesture that suggests a reason for doing shots. Shooters, or bombs, which are concoctions made from a mix of not only liquor and liqueur, but also a sweet, sour, or energy drink, are also considered shots.

Mixed drinks, beer, and wine are not shots.  

Nothing Good Ever Happens After Shots

liquid courage leads to liquid stupidity

and lures laughing liquid lovers

into a night of sea-sick sex

and a morning of regret

Drinking too much is a lesson that's never learned. As a man in my mid-thirties, I know my struggle with the illusion of control when drinking is shared with many my age group. Judging the level of one's problem with drinking is not my point here. My intention is to present what I believe to be a common debacle when drinking with friends.

Does this sound familiar?

You want to go out, but you have important things to do tomorrow. You think that if you just go out for a little while, and not drink too much, you'll be fine. So, you talked yourself into it. You're out! You're having more fun than you thought you would. Then some jerk asks, "Wanna do a shot?" Your response is, "Ahhh . . . ." Yet the times you should have said, "no," you didn't. And the following day feels like torture - the culprit - the shots.  

Depth in Liquor Ads

Roland Barthes explains in "Depth Advertising" and in "Saponids and Detergents" how laundry detergent ads con us into a grandiose concept of soap (Barthes 2012). We watch kids spill drinks, slide in mud, and even cut themselves, leaving treacherous stains on their clothes. Mom comes to the rescue and does the laundry. Then we see a graphic illustration of miraculous stain fighting molecules killing their way through cleaning the garments. Finally, mom pulls the clothes out of the dryer, gives 'em a big sniff - ahhh - that's fresh!

Barthes's depth concept can be seen in liquor ads in two distinct areas: the people drinking and the liquor itself. The people in liquor ads are always attractive, well-dressed, clean-cut, sophisticated, and engaging. The drinkers are always out with the opposite sex, they're laughing, and they're engaged in some physical activity like dancing or a game. No one ever looks unbalanced, dizzy, or intoxicated. The patrons are having the time of their lives! Romance is insinuated in many of these commercials as well. All of this, of course, is a total contradiction to the reality of doing shots - cut to - praying to the porcelain god.

Like the people in liquor ads, the liquor itself is also depicted as neat, clean-cut, clear, icy-cold, and pure. It's poured into glasses slowly, it's sexy, it's premium. It's ostensibly not at all like what is actually foreshadowed after doing shots - the frothy, chunky, and vile hue of puke.

Examples

The "Power and Cool" resemblance in 1800 Tequilacommercial with Michael Imperioli

The active cutie runs around, meets different men, and then meets her friends in the Smirnoff Sorbet commercial

Tough guys bond in the Jagermeister commercial

A group of friends set to have the perfect night with shots of tequila in Jose Cuervo Silver commercial

   

Word count = 827

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Hill and Wang, 2012.

Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd. Routledge, 2007.

Filippone, Peggy Trowbridge. About.com. 2008. http://homecooking.about.com/od/cookingfaqs/f/faqliqueur.htm.

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[1] One of the two concepts of a sign as it's explained in the Saussurean model (Chandler 2007, Ch. 1).

[2] Liqueurs, also referred to as cordials, are sweetened spirits with various flavors, oils, and extracts. Liqueur alcohol content can range from 15 to 55 percent. Rum, whiskey, brandy, and other liquors can serve as a base for liqueurs. Cream liqueurs have cream added (Filippone 2008).