Deathwatch? Got Better Things to Do

For the longest time, my only interest in obituaries was how in the hell those people always die in alphabetical order. The companion joke is attributed to George Burns. He said "When I get up in the morning the first thing I do is read the obituaries. If my name's not in there, I shave."

After age 50 or 60, obituaries are no longer the butt of jokes, but rather a perverse obsession with how many people who are dying are younger than yourself. Who thinks about their mortality when they think they are invincible?

Michael Winerip, author of the New York Times Generation B column recently wrote how nervous the obits were making him as he noted a rash of deaths in the age 50 cohort (some even younger!). With a history of heart disease in his family, he decides it’s time to become more proactive.

For the rest of us, every little ailment is the one that could bring us down. Sure, men and women are living longer, but a casual review of the obits reveals that a substantial number are not making it to the 70 or 80 mark. If age 50 is the halfway point, you can take the position (as we do here at BoomSpeak) that your whole life’s in front of you (or a good half anyway). Get out there and do things, eat better, exercise, live well and live longer. Conversely, you can adopt the attitude that it’s all down hill from hegravestonesre. If the big C doesn’t get you it will be H1N1 or an infected hangnail. So you might as well push back on the recliner and wait for the end to come. Grab your laptop and visit ObitKit.com. According to their homepage,

ObitKit allows you to personalize the obituary process while creating a written legacy to leave family and friends. It is a creative and upbeat way to leave a guide for loved ones so they can carry out your final wishes. ObitKit is a workbook that can be filled out alone or with a spouse, partner or even a book club. It’s a fun way to see how far you’ve come – with a hint of where you’re going and how you want to get there.

So there’s one less thing to worry about. Am I getting an ObitKit? Don’t think so. I’ve got better things to do than waiting for death.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

It’s Weisure Time?

When you can’t tell where work ends and play begins, or you can’t stop reading your work-related email at midnight, you’ve entered texterthe “weisuretime” zone.

Coined by a sociology professor at New York University, the term refers to the way we have all squeezed fun onto an endless treadmill of working. Instead of enjoying life and making time for work, we work all the time and try to find moments of leisure.

There was a time when we debated whether we should live to work or work to live. That seems like it was another century. Wait – it was another century ago. The debate is over and the live to work crowd has won. Nine to five is just a memory in a world that’s gone 24/7. There was a time when only workers who collaborated with fellow workers in another time zone we’re up at 4 am or still working at 2 am.

Workers feel guilty if they don’t take their office Blackberry with them on vacation. They check their email constantly to make sure they have not been sidestepped or sidelined. Taking time off from work is now literally a guilty pleasure.

Multi-tasking has evolved to dizzying heights where one has to answer email, read an instant message and follow someone’s tweets while speaking laser hair removalon the phone – and for the really savvy – texting too. So many forms of communication, so little time. Does anyone have time for real work or is everyone caught in the maze that passes for a communication system?

Can anyone really increase their productivity and still follow what Ashton Kutcher is up to? Can you tweet so much that you become incapable of writing anything that exceeds 140 characters? Does any or all of this social networking bring anyone closer together?

In another ten years, workers won’t be able to tell the difference between work and play, so your only option will be to pick one or the other. So after forty years of work or more, we’re just about right back where started – choosing between living to work or working at playing.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Vanessa’s New Baby

If you spend as much time on the Internet as we do, you eventually run across the meme phenomenon. It rhymes with cream and refers to all things viral. If you have seen the YouTube video of dancing baby...or Susan Boyle singing on Britain’s Got Talent, you’re as much a part of the meme scene as anyone.

If you want to immerse yourself in these things, there’s a whole timeline of memes on Dipity.com.

What I’ve realized lately, however, is that there is a genre of memes that can be viral on a very localized level. Have you ever gotten an email intended for someone else, and they have copied about 40 people on it? Then when each of the 40 people responds and is rude enough to hit the REPLY ALL button, it becomes the gift that keeps on giving. It goes viral and becomes a meme, but only locally, within your own email inbox.

My latest experience with a local meme was the receipt of an email from a manager at a real estate office in Malta of all places. The subject line read “Vanessa’s New Baby.” The original message, sent to 40 friends and colleagues:

Hi Guys,

During one of our student representatives discussion we decided that it might be a great idea if we buy a bunch of flowers and a card for Vanessa’s upcoming baby. Thus we will be collecting €1 from each student, remember that this is optional and feel free not to participate.

Should you have any other queries and issues you want to discuss (no recession problems please ), please do not hesitate to contact me.

I knew immediately that it was misdirected because I don’t know anyone who lives or works on Malta, I don’t know a pregnant Vanessa, and I don’t have €1 note. But I was fascinated by the message. What did the author mean by “new” baby? Was Vanessa always pregnant? Did she have some "previously owned" babies? Notice the use of the smiley face regarding issues with the recession. Well, that makes sense – they are in the real estate business and that's about all the smiles they get. Bad timing for Vanessa, eh?

It really became amusing when the responses went viral in my inbox. “Count me in,” says Ryan. “I’m in,” writes Samuel. “Same here,” from Clinton. Then I hear from Milos, Keith, Kyle, Earl, Jeffrey and Vladimir. They are all in. I noticed there were no women responding and began to think that’s how Vanessa may have gotten pregnant in the first place.

After about twenty of these replies to the original message, I realized that this meme has helped me coin a new euphemism for email that goes to unintended recipients – as in, "I got a Vanessas Baby today from some guy in Nigeria."

All of this goes to prove that time on the Internet isn’t wasted.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Messengers of Bad Tidings

Guess what? If you’re an out of work boomer or can’t afford to be retired anymore, you can find work as a handholder/bearer of bad tidings. Of course the work is only temporary, but come on, you can’t have it all.

Michael Winerip of the New York Times writes a great column called Generation B and he recently highlighted the work of an employment agency in Denver called the Boomer Group.

Boomers are particularly in demand for the empathy skills. Got lots of bad news about your product or service and need to set up a phone bank to handle the irate callers? Boomers are your guys.

That’s right. If it’s a shoot-the-messenger type of situation, you’re going to want baby boomers to be your cannon fodder. Why? We have experience. We have values. We have a work ethic. We are good under pressure.

Crikey, if we have all that going for us, can’t we do any better than temp jobs? It sounds like those are the qualities every employer dreams of having throughout their workforce.

Somehow, our primary skill set has become the ability to deliver bad news or commiserate with angry people who have already gotten the bad news. It’s nice to be valued for your talents, but what effect does all this empathy distribution have on us?

Several temps mentioned that they may have over-empathized at first or that it was hard to listen to people vent all day long, even swear at them. Yeah, that would be hard to do all day, even as a temp. But when the Gen Xs and Ys stay in bed on the day of the snowstorm, you can count on the boomers to come through. We’re too mature to be ducking out for a mental health day, though God knows we need one as much as the next worker.

If boomers have all these great qualities and if Woody Allen was right that 90% of life is showing up, we should be on top of heap, but more often than not, we’re being heaped with scorn. What’s up with that? You love us as worker bees, you just hate what we’ve done with the planet, we were rotten parents, and we’re too selfish.

It’s okay. We’ll just take those temporary jobs and try to rebuild the 401-k. Remember, we work while you sleep in.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Boomers Hot for Tats

Maybe it’s because they’re not working for “the man” anymore, or they’re not working at all, or they just don’t care. Whatever the reason, more and more boomers are getting their first tattoo.

When we were in our 20’s only military veterans and bikers had tattoos and who was going to give them a hard time about it. If you were going into a profession (teacher, nurse, doctor, lawyer, whatever), a tattoo was taboo. So even though we were born to be wild, we were doomed to be mild.

Now everyone has tattoos so no one worries about the job interview anymore. The guy doing the interviewing has as many tattoos as the applicant. They probably end up comparing their tats before the interview is over.

What accounts for the renewed interest in tats by boomers? We’re all free to speculate here. Some think it’s a Bucket List phenomenon – get it now before you die. Maybe it’s a reflection of the greater acceptance that tattoo art now has. Angelina Jolie’s career has not suffered and she’s up to about sixteen tats and counting. Many boomers choose to commemorate important life events – grandchildren’s names are a reoccurring theme.

They’re not getting tramp stamps (those big tattoos that run just above the butt crack of a lot of young ladies – you figure out where the name came from). Boomer women will still go for the less ostentatious butterfly, heart or flower in a place or size that won’t catch too much attention in the light of day. Men go for the barbed wire around the biceps. And of course, lots of tat seekers are checking out Asian, Arabic and Hebrew letter characters, despite the fact that most of the time they have no idea what they mean.

The reality shows about tattoo artists (Miami Ink) either hurts or helps the cause, depending upon your opinion of reality shows. In any case, you can’t go anywhere without seeing mainstream tattoos. Your waitperson in the restaurant has some, so does the mail carrier, the barista and the produce manager. If your priest or rabbi has one you probably would not know it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.

You missed Woodstock, so why not catch this wave before it goes back out. Just don’t tell your mother.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Love the Attitude, But Are They All Wearing Thongs?

We’ve all seen the Red Hat Society ladies when they storm the mall or whatever attraction they have targeted for the day. It’s like a swarm of red and purple locusts devouring all in its path. I admire their enthusiasm but their crustiness scares me. In the end, I think it’s great that they get together and have fun as opposed to sitting around alone and feeling sorry for themselves.

So the good news is that baby boomers now have their own social networking group. The bad news is they are calling themselves the Blue Thong
Society. Their website is quick to point out that just because they call themselves the Blue Thong Society does not mean they have to wear a blue thong all the time (phew, I say to myself). But they do prefer that you have no visible panty lines.

Co-founder Kelly Golden says "It is really not about being able to wear a thong. It is about the mentality that goes along with a thong." Add to that their mantra, Fight Frump Forever, and you get the idea.

The weird thing is that their logo looks more like a flip flopthong than underwear, but they say that was intentional.

So what is the mentality that goes along with a thong? Is it an uncomfortable pain in your butt crack? I don’t think so. According to the website:

We really felt and knew there was a HUGE need for a cool and fun group of women to connect from our unique generation. A group to encourage and educate all of our girlfriends, not only from our generation, but all our younger sister generations on the benefits of staying hip, beautiful and chic forever. We will never give in or stop fighting for what we believe in, and above all, we will Fight Frump Forever, and one way to do that is to never stop wearing Hip-Huggers and Bell Bottoms!

So there you have it – hip, beautiful and chic forever. Well, the group did start in Southern California. And it’s a lot better than sitting home with blue hair. So maybe they are right. The best thing to do is relax and have another blue martini.


Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.
Some last words of wisdom. They say 50 is the new 30 but tell that to your ass.

Kidless Communities: The Next Ghetto?

There seems to be no shortage of communities for the 55 and over cohort, and given the huge demographic shift of boomers moving into retirement over the next 20 years, the number will soon skyrocket. With increased life spans, and not withstanding our current economic fix that will inevitably delay some retirements, it’s expected that we may spend one-third of our lives retired. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will. By 2014, there will be 85 million retirees out there (and 40 million of them may be driving golfcarts!).

I have no problem with the basic concept, though I’m not getting in line to join the trend. Personally, I need more diversity. I want to see kids being kids and young parents raising families. I want to know what twenty-somethings are listening to on their iPods and watching on TV.

Leisureville by Andrew Blechman may exaggerate the pitfalls of the over-55 communities, but there can be a dark side to a monocultural environment. Blechman calls it geritopia but beyond all the terrific amenities there may often be a sense of isolation and a penchant for rigidity that may rub baby boomers the wrong way fast. Some of these communities limit the stays of children to no more than 30 days a year. Anecdotes about arbitrary rules abound. Dogs have to be weighed periodically to make sure they do not exceed the thirty-pound limitation. The height of your lawn grass is prescribed. Some communities have their own newspaper and security force – both supplied by the developer.

While other countries encourage extended families to stay together, here we put retirees out to pasture in idyllic, albeit isolated splendor. And it’s not like we make them go there under the gun. There are plenty of retirees who can’t wait to get to the retirement village --- like eternal spring break for geezers. More power to them. Why not live somewhere where there’s less friction and you feel safe?

My answer to that question would be that segregation, even when self-imposed, has the effect of creating alienation and intolerance. Every assisted living facility goes out of its way to promote programs that bring in children and pets. Why? Because every human needs that stimulation to create a happy medium between being overstressed and living in a bubble.

I’m looking for more than a cocoon when my time comes, and I can only hope that as a society we figure out a way to mainstream our retirees. If I can put a bumper sticker on my golf cart it will be the one that says Geezers Just Want to Have Fun.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.