Words and Phrases

Bill and I spent last week in Silicon Valley, visiting various technology companies. During the week we took the liberty of coining two new phrases. I find it appropriate, since this part of California is constantly inventing new words (most of them nifty combinations of existing words to make a company name that nobody else has trademarked).

Elevator Grunge

This term describes the “new alternative music” you hear on the radio. This term is for all of those bands that sound just like … well, that other band that you can’t put a name to. It’s not Nirvana or Soundgarden, but it sort of sounds like it. It is Creed or Pearl Jam … nobody knows.

Elevator Grunge is what happens when the same people who market boy bands sign a bunch of bands in the wake of the 1990′s “alternative music” movement. It’s because of shit like this that I listen to more {{link http://www.threeweirdsisters.com/ folk music}}.

Vulture Capitalists

This is Bill’s defining moment of comedy for Thursday, November 14, 2002. We were winding through one of the many technology parks in Fremont in our rented Maxima. A large flock of black birds was circling over one of the many beige, one-story office complexes.

“That doesn’t look good,” I said. “Do you think there’s a layoff about to happen.”

“Probably,” said Bill. “Those look like vulture capitalists.”

Needless to say, I almost laughed myself off of the road.

I think the term Vulture Capitalists can be properly applied to people that profit from the fall of any technology company. There’s a myriad of 21st Century carpetbaggers that profit from the likes of WorldCom and Global Crossing (on-line auction houses, repo men, crooked 401K advisors, etc.).