insourcing

You are hearing it here first: "insourcing" will be the word of the year for 2012. If that prediction turns out to be correct, the dotted red line I am seeing under the word insourcing as I compose this blog post, indicating a strange word or a misspelling, will disappear into the cyber-ether because the word will have entered the realm of Common Parlance. I'm hearing insourcing a lot. (For me, "a lot" totals one or two times, on an NPR report.) (Notice, my self-appointed style guide calls for initial quotes, and then no more quotes after the word's first instance. Also note that I've zoomed through the lexicographical journey of two words to hyphen to one word solid.) Insourcing sounds suspiciously like one of those words used by corporate managers or HR people to assuage their guilt for sending American jobs to India, Bhutan, or Burkina Faso. Insourcing says, "Out with outsourcing and in with insourcing, comrades! You have nothing to lose but your prefix! [Or your prix fixe!]) Insourcing is the bright and shiny bauble intimating the bubbling and simmering of a new economic stew, that will come to a tasty and nutritious boil just before Election Day, sending Barack Obama to a second term and totally grouchifying wealthy, white-shirt, starched Republicans, who have always wanted Obama's doom more than America's boom. Doesn't insourcing sound vaguely derived from the porn industry? "Hey, Mason, let's shoot that scene over! We need way more insourcing, babe!" barks the morose director, somewhere near LA, wearing shades and baring a hairy chest adorned with tacky bling. Insourcing is your brand-new resourcing for 2012. Welcome to the year of insourcing. Insourcing for one and all. Insourcing for you and me and the commonwealth. (Incidentally, "commonwealth" is a great word. But so 1780s. It won't even be in the top ten of the #word_ of_the_year list for 2012. Pity.)

Psychopathy for Beginners

Just finished an engaging piece about psychopathy in the November 10, 2008, issue of The New Yorker. First, a word about the word "psychopathy" itself. As I was reading the article, "Suffering Souls," by John Seabrook, I more or less assumed that the word was pronounced with the accent on -path, but also wondered it might not be true, because, after all, we don't put the accent on -log in psychology. Sure enough, Merriam-Webster, with its pronunciation thingy-doodle audio device, informs us that the accent is on the -op. But I digress. The article explores how neuroscientists, especally Dr. Kent Kiehl, are studying the functional MRIs of prison inmates, to see if their brains function differently than the brain of, um, normal people. It all provokes fascinating and provocative questions about good, evil, justice, and salami-on-rye sandwiches. Sorry, I digress again. Uh-oh. A diagnostic checklist used to evaluate for psychopathy, the PCL-R, measures, among other things, poor impulse control (not mind-wanderingness, not exactly sort of). We are let off the hook, a bit, with this: "If a biological basis for psychopathy could be establshed and pharmacological treatments developed, the idea that many people have at least a little of the psychopath in them could well become acepted." Relax, will you? This is not making a pitch for the acceptance of antisocial behavior. I'm merely saying how intriguing it is to ponder how the brain works and how we move within very lmited realms, it seems. (On a similar note, NPR today had a bit about brain scans and what they reveal about our shopping and other choices. Buyology. Neuromarketing. Martin Lindstrom. Whew, I love "Mad Men, " but times have changed since Don Draper and his team at Sterling Cooper left the building.)

Seabrook's Q. and A. is here.

The Munchin' Chronicles

What do you for lunch? More precisely, what do you do during lunchtime? This came up as an article of conversation about lunchtime conversation, before lunch. One guy in the office I was visiting said, "You could be like married people and just stare at each other." He was referring to the lunch I was about to have with a new employee. She's recently back to the U.S. after being in Europe for many years. I said I prefer grabbing a newspaper and eating by myself. That's what I typically do. Outdoors. Or in a conference room (it most assuredly cannot be at my desk; if I owned the company I'd forbid that; it is wretchedly unhealthy). Or at the mall. I used to do that nearly every day at our old location, since it was down the street from the new-fashioned public square. Sometimes I do errands. The library. The post office. Sometimes I meet with a group of friends. I like to be in a place where I can watch people (way better in the summer; fewer articles of clothing; more flesh). Oh. And I usually eat a lunch I make in the morning; sometimes I buy lunch downtown, or elsewhere. (Speaking of eating, Neal Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation today actually said this to Strawberry Saroyan concerning unusual names, "Nice to eat you." Or maybe it was, "People must always be saying it was nice eating you." Gulp. She awkwardly paused, on the other end of the line, and said she didn't know how to respond to that. He seemed totally oblivious to the implications of his, um, muchable query.)

Sometimes I conduct business at lunchtime. Today was quasi-business. How does one conduct business at lunchtime? The point is, I'm gregarious, engaging, witty, talkative, inquiring. All that. Feign interest, at all costs.

But little do they all know the toll it takes on me. It takes its toll. The cost of living adjustment (COLA), call it.

I like lunchtime solitude.

Yesterday, however, I truly enjoyed happening upon Eric, on his birthday, 64, with his assistant. Dining outside. Relaxed. Unhurried. They invited me to sit down. Turns out Rebecca doesn't own a car, at all, takes the bus or other forms of transportation. She's around 33 or so. She topped me. I thought I was hot shit for taking the bus twice a week. Good for her. It can be done.

Maybe I should ditch my piece-of-crap car. The steering wheel ain't steering well. It shimmies. A shimmering sign?

So today's lunch was conversational and tasty (Vietnamese-Thai) and airy and thoughtful. But it takes energy.

What do you do at lunchtime?