Strangest executive compensation of the month

The tech company Zynga, which turns its customers into addicts to the extent that it calls its biggest customers "whales" -- the same term casinos use for gullible gamblers who like to front large while regularly losing tens of thousands of dollars -- regularly indulges in weird behavior that should embarrass any reputable company.

For example, when its IPO was upcoming, it asked some employees to return the stock options it had given them when they got hired so that it could redistribute those options to executives and investors; if you were just some ordinary developer or, God help you, a non-technical employee, you could go fuck off if you hoped to profit from the firm's IPO. And this week, with the stock already plunging below the IPO price, it was reported that company insiders are dumping that stock -- the stock they acquired using those options they'd snatched back from the company's workers -- as fast as they can.

Like I said, embarrassing. But this piece of news today was really weird:

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus received a compensation package valued at $1.7 million in 2011, most of it in the form of a home security system and related expenses.

San Francisco-based Zynga said in a regulatory filing Friday that it spent $1.2 million on the one-time purchase and installation of a security system for Pincus and his family. It was included in roughly $1.4 million of "other compensation" for Pincus.

Of course, Pincus and his cronies still got rich off the IPO, even if the stock has lost 25%, because they acquired those options for pennies on the dollar. So he'll have plenty of dough forever. But how strange that he chooses to take much of his annual compensation in the form of a home security system. I'm trying to picture the scene, say, five years ago, where Pincus says to his wife: "Someday, baby, when I make it big, I'm gonna get us the biggest home security system ever!"

It's tempting to suggest that Pincus needs the system because his company's business practices make him plenty of enemies. Maybe so. Like a drug dealer, the man makes his money by running his employees ragged and creating addicts out of his customers; so he surrounds himself with high walls, cameras, and alarms. Pathetic.

For artists, success is an illusion

After she published her first novel, a friend of mine went back to the summer writer's conference where she'd workshopped a part of it a couple years before. Formerly a mere attendee, she was now a published "alumnus" who got to give a reading from her published work and hang out with the writing program teachers and other published writers who make up the event's faculty. So she got to talk to several other women who were about her age or a little older, women who had published not just one novel but four or five.

And what she found was that no one was satisfied; no one considered herself a success. The woman who'd published five novels was dissatisfied because the publisher had been decreasing her advances and print runs for the last three books in a row. The woman who'd published two novels was dissatisfied because her publisher wouldn't spend any money to promote her next book. And so on. That's not even counting the universal bitching from writers about the strains and indignities of book tours. (You flew to 14 cities, stayed in fancy hotels, and were chauffeured from event to event? Really breaks my heart.)

In that light, I draw your attention to this article on Salon.com, No Sympathy for the Creative Class. It has the usual comparisons with European countries where artists are "appreciated" and receive state support. Excerpt:

Europeans, says (painter Peter) Plagens, have a very different relationship to the arts because of a high culture going back to the Renaissance and before. "Over here, America is more tied to pragmatism -- clearing the land, putting the railroad through... And artists don't really help with that, so we're suspect."

Novelist Jonathan Lethem, whose father was what the writer describes as "a non-famous artist," sees the American artist as living in internal exile. American history is stamped with "a distrust of the urban, the historical, the bookish in favor of a fantasy of frontier libertarian purity. And the Protestant work ethic has a distrust of what's perceived as decadence." ... "Cultural elite," says Lethem, is "a code word for people who are getting away with something for far too long. It's a term of distrust -- you can almost hear a plan for vengeance in it. Republican politics hardened these impulses and made them more virulent and paranoid."

All true as far as it goes. But nowhere does it describe the cooptation that state-supported artists have to deal with. Suppose the state gives you an artist-in-residence gig in Rainbow City, including an apartment and a studio, and all you have to do is agree to show your work in a gallery at the end of the period. Awesome -- except when you feel pressure, either overt or covert, to create art that will make your sponsors happy. And even when there's no pressure as such -- and I believe there usually is -- wouldn't living in Rainbow City on their dime make you identify with its residents and the locale, so that the artist's crucial role as a cultural critic is weakened? Wouldn't you be likely to turn out art that celebrates Rainbow City? If that's too abstract for you, imagine being the artist-in-residence in Damascus right now. No, I think I'll just struggle along, thanks.

The thing is, any success is an illusion. You think Stephen King thinks he's successful? No, he chafes against the universal conception of him as a hack. Jonathan Franzen is is almost the same boat; he was appalled at Oprah's designation of his work as acceptably bourgeois, and then slammed for being ungrateful. Philip Roth? He wouldn't be still turning out novels almost annually unless he thinks he has left some things unexpressed. David Foster Wallace? The unhappiest man on earth, until he killed himself.

Being an artist is a prescription for misery. A real artist is never truly satisfied with her work; anyone who is satisfied is probably either finished creatively or delusional. State support won't help that problem; it will only provide a different illusion, that one is a real artist because one is certified by the state. Commercial success won't help either; it will only make one doubt oneself. Or it will make you happy for a day; and then the work begins again.

Just answer the question (exasperated sigh)

In my job as a technical writer at a software company, a lot of my time is spent talking to developers and QA people about how a new feature works or about how customers are supposed to use it. And very often, no matter how specific I try to make my question, I receive in return a long, complicated answer that starts at home plate and takes a trip around the outfield when all I wanted to do was go from first base to second.

So I chuckled knowingly when I read this paragraph from a news story about Google CEO Larry Page testifying in court in a trial over whether his company legally used technology owned by another:

Page's answers Wednesday were occasionally slow in coming. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup asked Page several times to answer "yes," "no" or "I don't know" after Page gave answers that the judge said did not address the question.

I mentioned this to Cris, who said, "Reminds me of that joke: A plane is lost in the fog. It flies by a tall building, and the pilot opens the cockpit window and yells out 'Where am I?!' A man in the office building replies: 'You're sitting in the cockpit of an airplane!' Then the pilot punches in a bunch of coordinates, takes the controls, and flies straight to a safe landing. 'How'd you know where we were based on that answer?' asks the dumbfounded co-pilot. 'Well,' the pilot says, 'I asked a question and got an answer that was full, accurate, and completely useless -- so I knew we were flying over Microsoft.'"

Foamer conflates United States with Biblical nation of Israel

One of the real wack jobs I follow is a guy who posts occasionally to a blog entitled (all caps, please) HELL ON EARTH. Today's post, in which he applies the standards to which Jehovah held the Old Testament children of Israel to the modern-day U.S., is typical.

Just one sentence, punctuation uncorrected (at least he got the hyphenated adjectival phrases right):

Turning towards an ungodly course of embracing sin such as the love of money, no-fault divorce, promiscuity, abortion and the asexual agenda, America has drifted far off its' God-set course.

Strange and even frightening as it may be to believe, this is the way true fundamentalists feel. Just as the Taliban apply the most reactionary interpretations of the Koran to Afghanistan, real Christian fundies genuinely expect the modern-day world to have the relationship to God as Israel did three thousand years ago -- as reported in the Old Testament, which they take as literal, historical fact.

I did like "asexual agenda." Not just homosexual agenda -- asexual agenda. I wonder what that's about.

There is no point in struggling against this mind-set, no hope of talking to them or attempting, however gently or violently, to re-educate them. They are as truly lost and left behind in the modern world as the poorest residents of ghettos or rural America, only they're capable of holding down jobs. And now (unlike before 1975) they vote, thanks to people like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, whose pawns they are.

Of course, this blog post -- my words, the one you're reading now -- is simply a mirror image. I'm no more capable of changing my mind about what I believe politically or, for that matter, religiously.

I think foodie-ism is not really about food

At Easter dinner, an interesting discussion cropped up. It started by someone asking why in the world someone would want to collect first-edition books, because wasn't the value of the book solely in the words printed therein, and therefore an electronic version of a landmark book was every bit as valuable as a first edition? And from there we somehow got onto a subject very often discussed by the family: food.

I've said before: I'm not a foodie. If by foodie we mean someone who considers herself an aficionado of certain (or all) types of gourmet food. While the definition of what we mean by "gourmet food" has changed over the last fifty years, as people become interested (or obsessed) with the provenance and nutritional effects of food, it's still pretty much the same impulse: to set yourself apart by gaining a commanding knowledge of and refined taste for expensive grub.

At least that's my opinion. The other people in the family no doubt feel they're interested in the provenance and nutritional value of food because they care about their health and that of the planet. And yeah, I get that. Some foods are better for you than others, and some foods are raised in more sustainable ways.

But what irks me are the lengths people go to to control these aspects. It isn't enough to, say, shop at Whole Foods or some other store (and let's not make this about Whole Foods) because you feel they do a pretty good job of assessing these issues of provenance, nutrition and sustainability and making the decisions for shoppers (in my opinion, that's their job, and why should I do it if they're already doing it?).

No, one must educate oneself about these issues and make choices for oneself, ultimately becoming one's one purveyor, buying directly from ranchers you've met personally who can provide a detailed description of the life of that cow from conception through slaughtering and continuing onward until the side of beef is at rest in your personal $10,000 top-of-the-line freezer. One must go to farmers markets, not just shopping if you please, but engaging the farmer (not his or her worker, but the grower herself, and god help her if she doesn't have dirt under her fingernails) as to the location of their plot, the methods they used to raise their vegetables, the things they put on the plants and the things they refrained from putting on; the conditions for workers on the farm; the Ph of the soil; and every other possible bit of information. And so on, ad degustandam.

Foodies would say that this attention to detail makes them more healthy, and encourages farmers to raise food in ways they approve of: "sustainably," "organically," and so on -- supposedly the twin goals of foodie-ism.

My question is: Is this really about health and well-being of oneself and the earth? Or is this really about fear, and control, and trying to stave off death?

I think that no matter how healthfully I eat, I will eventually die. In fact, I seriously doubt that making every single correct choice, when it comes to what I eat for the rest of my life, will extend my life more than a year or two. Set aside the likelihood of me dying in an accident or from a communicable disease, because I realize most people still die of heart disease and cancer. In my case, I think cancer is more likely, as my father (who worked for 40 years in oil and chemical refineries, albeit in the office while wearing a white shirt and tie) died of brain cancer in his mid-70s, and I lived from ages 1 to 6 in one of those oil refineries. It hasn't killed me yet, so maybe it's not going to; but I have had the exposure, for what it was worth. Can what I eat affect that?

And more to the point: Can I, by jumping through hoops to ensure the correct provenance of my hamburger, rather than noshing at Burger King and Taco Bell as I do at least once a month, affect anything? Yes, it's probably worse to eat Burger King every day than to eat ecologically blessed beef three times a week. But if I only have to make the choice twice a month, and I choose Burger King every time, is that really going to kill me? I kind of doubt it.

Of course, by choosing Burger King I'm missing out on the sense of virtue, the feeling of control, the feeling of being part of a dietary and ecological elite that my other family members are enjoying. But I don't think that feeling extends your life either.

My mother, who died six months ago, lived til 90. She wasn't in bad health until the last five years. She also smoked heavily for 50 years, ate crappy American food with hardly a fresh vegetable for most of her life, and exercised fairly little after age 25. If she had lived a "more healthy" lifestyle, would she have lived til 95? Maybe so, and maybe she would have preferred it to dying. But 90 years is already a long time. On the other hand, Herman Wouk just sold a novel at age 96. (Wouk is the perfect example of the kind of mid-century realist who's out of style now, but "The Caine Mutiny" is a crackerjack book. Dare you to read it and be bored.) If I'm still writing at 90, or 96, or 106, maybe I will wish I had been more finicky about hamburger. But if I last that long, I have the feeling that the 2010's fad of near-worship of food will, at best, seem like a pretty amusing piece of nostalgia.