Would you like some cheese?

I got an email the other morning from Netflix, as I'm sure any of the rest of you who subscribe did as well. I'm a big fan of Netflix, and I use both their DVD by mail format, as well as streaming digitally through my xBox 360 (and in the case of the ultimate [useless] gadget, I can stream it to my alarm clock as well!). I enjoy the convenience of the digital streaming, but let's be honest, the selection isn't the best. They've got some good older stuff, and the crappy new stuff appears pretty quickly too.

Anyways, though, the long and short of it is that Netflix is splitting into two separate OpCo's to provide separate services for streaming and DVD by mail. They're renaming the DVD by mail service to Qwikster. Apparently, this has annoyed some subscribers.

In a different note, I logged onto facebook the other morning, and the whole layout and newsfeed and such had changed, and a veritable litany, a manifesto you could say, written by all the people clamoring for it to "go back to the way it used to be." How horrible these changes must be!

Quite frankly, I support both changes. I will continue to subscribe to Netflix, and now Qwikster as well. My facebook habits will not largely be effected.

In his email, the mastermind of Netflix referred to two defunct endeavors, both of which had been spectacularly successful at their time; he spoke of the downfalls of AOL Dialup internet service as well as Border's Bookstores. You will have difficulty finding either one (although I'm sure there's a huge landfill somewhere, perhaps an island that was built and now floats about on the pacific ocean, constructed entirely of the 3.5" AOL floppy discs). Since I added facebook to the conversation, i suppose we should bring up MySpace. Sure, it's still there. i mean, it takes up a space in the digital domain. But my MySpace page looks exactly the same as it did 7 or 8 years ago, and i doubt that anyone has looked at it in nearly that long.

While I was in leadership training a few weeks back, we watched a movie (based on the book) "Who Moved My Cheese?" (completely separate random side note...wanna know one reason why i refuse to support the Kindle? Which is more expensive, the digital version of the book, or the hardcopy? Happens all too often) which is, in it's entirety, about adapting to (and anticipating) changes in the business world. My company, FedEx (specifically our OpCo FedEx Services [aka FedEx Office]) has spent a lot of time on this lately. This is not the same company that I started working for 6 years ago (which is not the same company all those Kinkoids worked for 15 years ago). We've always had those Kink-hoes who pined for the good ol' fashion pre-FedEx days, but now we've got the new class of bitter veteran, dreaming of the the way it used to be, last year. There is more than one of my peers, respectable managers and leaders, who are right sure that our Glass Palace in Dallas has no idea what's the field is really like and all these changes are bunk.

Quite frankly, i think they're full of it. I'm down with change. What we used to do wasn't working (aka, we weren't profitable), and the definition of insanity is simply doing the same thing and expecting different results. Maybe everything they try won't work, won't stick around, but I'd much rather we try things until we find something that works rather than ending up just like Borders Bookstores.

I bring this up because i think it applies directly to entertainment media. TV, movies, music, books, comics, art. The borders (aka, the lines between the art forms, not the bookstores) are disappearing as marketing departments try to bombard us consumers with more and more ways to make them money. It is largely the marketing departments out there driving this, at the time.

I want to see the artists getting on board for the changes. The boundaries between genre's and art forms are vanishing, and we can use that, not to offer marketing departments more ways to generate advertising revenue, but to push the capacities of art and move it forward.

And such, I am trying to work on one small part of that with my novel. you've heard it mention that my novel involves three stories. That's only part of the, er, story. My novel is actually a case study on how three unique stories from three wildly different genres can overlap and enhance each other by using the same backdrop of local events, minor characters, and incorporating themes, ideas, and participation from musical as well as literature. There is even another story that happens simultaneously (and interweaves) with the 3 main arcs which will not be told in the novel. I might write it as a short story, or perhaps more ideally, presented as a graphic (comic book) novel.

We'll see if i can pull it off.

All that to say...

Activities for Today:

• do not get hung up on skipping productive plans on Tuesday to play Madden 12
• ran 5.3 miles (with my half rapidly approaching, i decided it was better to skip Krav today and go for a longer run)
  
• blogged on a relevant topic
• wrote 819 words (as transcribed by Open Office), possibly finishing Chapter 2
• Read from The Savage Detectives (it's hard reading, well written, good book, but i'm having to force myself through it)
  

Music du jour:

• Extraordinary Machine by Fiona Apple

I Covet this Hat:

• Stetson Chatham

Goals for Tomorrow:

• Run 5-ish miles. Maybe 6.
• Verify the completion of Chapter 2
• Write the entire 1 word of Chapter 3 in an Open Office file (The Detective's Story)
  
• Begin writing Chapter 4, the return to the Singer's Tale.
• play the guitar