Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
Hence my official position: it’s fine to abandon books or other projects – but you’ve got to really abandon them, not let them fade amid vague intentions to finish them some day. “It cannot be said often enough that one should not postpone; one abandons,” said the management expert Peter Drucker. Give the unassembled bookshelf to someone who wants it; throw the beach-read into the sea. Make abandonment a positive choice.
The Rise and Fall of Mr. Zip
Informative and fun little article on the US Postal Service’s push to get Americans to add a 5-digit ZIP code to their envelopes and post cards. The effort started in 1963 and it took almost 20 years before Americans changed their habits — or knuckled under, depending on your point of view.
Interesting slice of Americana, with a special role played by an, at one time, iconic — though now largely forgotten — cartoony character.
The campaign began with the name itself — ZIP. It was a good name. ‘ZIP’ sounded a lot friendlier than Zone Improvement Plan, the Orwellian phrase for which ZIP was an acronym. At the same time, ZIP said speed. Mr. Zip — a hand-drawn, wide-eyed little postal guy — became the face of ZIP code promotional efforts, the embodiment of the harmless yet zippy quality of ZIP codes. (‘Mr. Zip’ was also a significant improvement on Mr. Zip’s original name “Mr. P.O. Zone”.) Mr. Zip was speedy and clever, like other American cartoon heroes: Bugs Bunny or Speedy Gonzalez or the Road Runner. After July 1, 1963 Mr. Zip was everywhere. Americans would turn on their radios or televisions or open a newspaper and there was Mr. Zip, banging the drum for ZIP codes.
via The Smart Set: Happy 50th Mr. Zip – June 12, 2013.
via http://www.postsecret.com/
Your reading style needs to go from “reading with some skipping” to “skipping with some reading”. Skipping is the new main course. Skipping is the primary activity.
From the Postsecret blog site
Before Sunrise” imagined romantic love as yours for the taking. “Before Sunset” saw it as something that might slip from one’s grasp. “Before Midnight” looks it straight in the eye and calls it out as hard fucking work. “It’s not perfect,” as Jesse says. “But it’s real.
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