Flutterby™! : Brands, lies and WiFi

Wednesday afternoon the rest of the team arrived and we rehearsed and made an Office Despot run and stopped for coffee at a place across the street from the hotel before regrouping to look over some Power Point stuff and noticed that the cutely bear themed mass-market pseudo deli in which we bought coffee right across the street from the motel advertised free internet access.

And of course Thursday morning we were pressed for time and rather than drive the extra miles out to Java Blü we went across the street.

Mistake. Not only was the coffee not as good, it wasn't really internet access. Celito feels it necessary to insert some sort of moralizing and b0rk3n proxy server in the process, one which blocked World Sex News Daily with an ominous "this violation of our terms of service has been logged" and broke a couple of my other daily reads (some of which have underscores in the domain names, others couldn't load their CSS). Of course I only discovered this later when the laptop was off-line and I flipped over to those tabs to read 'em, otherwise I'd have just turned on the encrypted proxy browsing to my colo box.

But I was reminded that I can't take shortcuts, that the crappy mall culture will seem just as good, but then will bite me in unexpected ways.

Which brings me to a difference in culture note. Years ago I'd mentioned to a visiting friend that Marin didn't have strip-malls. In the years since I've looked around, and seen strip malls, and wondered what I was talking about. This week in Cary I was reminded. Cary has some sort of local zoning look, and every store looks like some large corporate deal, the same beige color character-free architecture in every strip mall, the same style of illuminated signs and so forth. Wow, that monoculture is... frightening. Last night we went out for barbecue and I was reminded that finding a good barbecue joint is like finding good chinese food: If all the light bulbs in the sign are illuminated and the place looks like it would pass a health inspection, go elsewhere.

The problem is, with everything that squeaky clean and bland I'd have to try every place in town to find the ones that were any good.

So to tie this all together:

I was asked to wear a tie for my few minutes of exposure to potential customers thursday morning. Those of you who knew me in 1991 or so remember that at one point I used to dress up fairly regularly. There were a few months where I was doing tie and leather soled shoes every day.

Leading up to this morning I've been thinking about why I'm so resistant to that sort of dress-up now. It's not just that I don't like the way I'm treated when I'm dressed "up", although I've been reminded of this as I've been through airports and on flights with the wool pants, dress shoes and white oxford shirt, it's that a tie necessarily starts out a relationship on the wrong foot.

With a tie, you're meeting people while voluntarily wearing a noose. This can only have one of two meanings:

1. You're automatically willing to be the subordinate in the ensuing relationship.
2. You're not, but you're willing to look like you would be, so you're a damned liar.

Between the flights on Delta, with their Dasani ("Enhanced With Minerals For a Pure, Fresh Taste") co-branding and for-charge bags of chips and nickle and diming when you're used to the services and amenities of allegedly "cut rate" airlines like Southwest and JetBlue, and in-flight magazine "Sky" with its plebian pretensions that would make GQ blush; and the week in strip-mall monoculture, I've had a really strong lesson in just how cynical I've gotten.

I now look at attempts at cachet as an indication that you're a damned liar. In fact if I can't see flaws I assume you're being dishonest up-front. Is anyone else plagued with this? I wonder what opportunities I'm missing, what products that claim to be "new and different" might actually be, and whether this blind hatred of the glossy is holding me back.

Anyone found a good compromise?