Whiteness is of course, a flaw. Being white is almost as bad as having blue eyes. This is all environmentally speaking - protection against the elements and so forth. But most of us do come in contact with those elements: wind, rain, sun. Especially sun. I spend a lot of time either looking for my sunglasses or squinting. Lots of squinting. It’s not as if I’m some kind of inter-planetary instigating interloper, trying to fit in amongst elements unknown, against scapes unfitting. This is my home planet. So why is its sun so incompatible with my hides? I have a genetic flaw: my skin does not produce enough pigments to protect me from that giant yellow menace. But the last time I visited the beach, I was not alone in my disfigurement. Lots of combination pasty white and stop sign yellow creatures were frolicking. No wonder so many people out there cast evolution aside as a ridiculous theory.

Here’s the thing: at the end of the day, we all need to be on the same page.

Do you have a job? Most of us do. We need the corresponding paycheck in order to pay the internet bill. And to pay for the space where the computer is setup and the general living area that surrounds it. And for the food - stuff like that. So, what do you get paid to do? Do you make food? Maybe you build houses, or perhaps you construct furniture or something like that? You know, something tangible: you go someplace where you turn raw materials into things that necessitate life. No? You don’t do that? You go someplace and talk on the phone to other people about things that seem important? You write and/or read documents that describe processes or procedures or prophylactics? You read emails and fill in numbers on cells on LCD screens? You make sure that something gets from there to there so that things happen and magnetic fields on the platter of one disk array are altered to correlate with those of another disk array someplace else?

Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought. That’s mostly what I do also. And so as a result of spending 10 hours of my day thusly, the magnetic fields of the disk arrays that correspond to the bank accounts that are indirectly linked to my name store patterns of digits that then spread out  across other similar fields on discs at Wells Fargo Mortgage and HarrisTeeter and Duke Power and Time Warner Cable so that life as I know it can continue on.

So the other thing that happens during a typical week is that people get really caught up in all of this really important activity. They come up with important thoughts and concepts that invariably conflict with those of others with whom they interact. They seem to do this as a goal in and of itself - the competing  thought generally being almost identical to those put forward by others but being at least slightly different along one axis in order to bring about some harangue that might result in an opportunity to win forth and demonstrate some worthiness for the paycheck that lives in the magnetic field.  This is wizardry in our time and most of us are stuck deep in it.

So if I am stuck trying to state something that you are probably going to also state, but slightly altered by 2 degrees in the Z axis, I must then come up with something that will simultaneously force you to understand while also obfuscating with time sucking attributes of nothingness that serve to fasten both of our minds up with lacquer to make things seem shiny and sticky. And so we have “on the same page” and “here’s the thing” and “at the end of the day” and any number of other casings and accouterments of business discourse.

“I would just like to point out that, from a customer perspective and the point of view of marketing, at the end of the day, we need to evaluate the synergies of this proposal and engage cross-functionally to flesh out the details of the marketecture in order to better conceptualize the potential of a win-win situation.”

Because you did it. I suppose we can take “I just wanted to” to help us distinguish this sentence from the others that you may have given us where you were actually forced to remind us, or say to us or tell us something. “I just wanted to let you know that…. your hair is on fire.” Thanks for taking that extra time and using up those extra words that I got to read so that I could eliminate any confusion about the origins of your intent to inform. You might’ve just said, “Your hair is on fire”, and saved us all a lot of extra bandwidth.

I think it has to do with respecting your audience. As in, when we do this useless posturing, we think it is more respectful than just making the statement. Where did we get screwed up? It is much more respectful to just say whatever it is and not waste everyone’s cycles trying to get to it. SO, don’t ask someone if the sky is blue if you want to know what the weather is like. Ask what the weather is like! Don’t ask, “Are you free tomorrow night?”. Ask the person directly if they want to go ice fishing tomorrow after work.