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The Other Shoe Drops

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Spin Williams, noted visionary and dealmaker, is always trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to trends and unusual events. From his all-seeing perch as permanent chair of The Meeting That Never Ends, Spin has identified several stories that indicate … something.

Hi Trendwatchers!

The whole world is interconnected! Everything that happens has an effect somewhere else – the key to wealth, power and success is in knowing where to look for another shoe to drop! Everybody’s watching the big stories for just this sort of cause / effect relationship. Here at The Meeting That Never Ends, we’ve got our eye on a few of the smaller ones, looking for three things – moments of realization, the trend indicator, and the next story.

One word of advice, young man – Meatballs!

I love the IDEA of TV dinners – a quick meal in a foil tray, just a few squirts of food product with brown gravy and a little apple cobbler on the side and I’m good to go. And of course there are upscale and specialty versions of the same basic approach. But just this week, Nestle had to recall some of their “Lean Cuisine” frozen spaghetti and meatball dinners.

“Nestle is taking this action after a few consumers reported they had found red plastic in the meatball portion of the entrée,” said a company statement. The recall applies to dinners that were manufactured during a one hour period last October.

Moment of Realization – We eat October meatballs in March. TV dinners are Old Food!

Trend Indicator – in the future, look for “freshness dating” on frozen foods to allow picky microwave gourmands to assure themselves their meal was assembled in the same calendar year they’re planning to consume it.

The Next Story – We discover that spaghetti and meatball frozen dinners are made on the same assembly line as plastic furniture. Look for consumer complaints that the bin holding all the My Little Ponies seems to be held in place with dried spaghetti sauce and a strange meat-like substance.

Honest, it was like that when I took it out!

Publishers and libraries are arguing over e-book check-out policies.

Moment of Realization – Libraries loan out e-books! You don’t even have to go there to pick them up and the book automatically deletes itself from your e-reader when the due date arrives. This is awful news for people suffering from CLBDS (Compulsive Library Book Defacing Syndrome). How can you tear the cover off and scribble your crazy theories in the margins of a borrowed e-book?

Trend Indicator – Expect a new App (Librarian’s Nightmare?) that makes it possible to scrawl comments across the pages of borrowed e-books, with a special toolkit for drawing moustaches and antennae on the author’s dust jacket photo.

The Next Story – Borrowed e-books that delete themselves gradually, starting with the first chapter and continuing with 10 – 20 pages slipping into oblivion each day, a technique to “chase” tardy readers through the book.

A Jack LaLanne Terrier

And finally, a new study finds that dog owners get more exercise than people who don’t have dogs. It seems that a dog’s hunger for a daily walk, combined with That Look they give you, is enough to get some sedentary folks off the couch.

Moment of Realization – Fido is my Personal Trainer!

Trend Indicator – Look for a new Weight Loss Reality Show where the human contestants are harangued, berated, cajoled, prodded and humiliated by beautiful and incessantly demanding Golden Retrievers.

The Next Story – PETA files class action suit on behalf of fat dogs, complaining that they could be slim and healthy if only their slothful human companions would learn to take a hint. Whimpering and looking at the leash with Big Brown Eyes should be more than enough!

I’m not saying all these things will happen, but remember – if they do, you heard it here first! And if they don’t, what do you expect? Nobody can see into the future!

– Spin Williams

Ever been at the leading edge of a trend?

49 thoughts on “The Other Shoe Drops”

  1. the new trend of keeping goats in the suburbs is taking the world by storm. headed up by barb in blackhoof who increases the worlds population exponentially every spring (see yesterdays late posts) the inhabitiants of the suburbs are going to be keeping goats. lawn mower sales and fertilizer sales will dip accordingly as the goats pay their rent in the only way they know.

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    1. hi All – a thankful good morning to You.
      goats are wonderful animals, tim, but if you want lawn mowers, get sheep. goats prefer to prune your woody plants for you – they’ll do roses, nan king cherries, trees, clematis, and they love, love apple trees.

      Alba, Terra and Freya are doing well – a little subdued, but who wouldn’t be after such an ordeal? we’re watching all carefully. Grandma Dream is not impressed.

      warmer today!!

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      2. Had to go back to yesterday’s blog to get the news. Waiting breathlessly for Steve to put up some cute baby goat pictures!

        CONGRATS!

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  2. Good morning to all:

    I might be a trend setter this morning by being the first one to comment. I probably won’t be the first because I am a slow writer and others will probably have posted by the time I finish my comment. Well, I think I have always been a little too slow to be a trend setter. I will have more comments latter.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons:

    I’m afraid I’m not much of a trend setter. I tend to be at the opposite end of popular culture and taste. I refuse to wear a short skirt these days, despite their trendiness–I did that, skinny legs and all, in the 60’s and 70’s and refuse to go there again. I am a liberal in an age of reactive conservatism. I think I embarrass my neighbors terribly in the spring, summer, and fall by using a very old fashioned clothes line to dry my sheets and clothing out here in the suburbia. No one here is picking up that trend. If I add raising chickens I will become a total outcast in the neighborhood. Although the neighbors do love my flower gardens. They never say no to my give away tomatoes, either.

    The only time I felt really, really trendy was in 1990 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer just as it became the “cause du jour” and everyone wanted to be in on the fundraising for research and races for the cure. Then when I survived both the disease and treatment I felt even trendier and more “with it.”

    So the Homecoming Queen Crown will have to go to someone else on the trail.

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    1. I am thinking liberals raising chickens and hanging out laundry are the next big thing. Lots of online chatter about that these days. Buying everything at the mall is soooooo last decade!

      good for you to be on the survivor cutting edge-

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      1. Actually, I don’t really want chickens–I used to help my aunt and grandma with theirs, so I know they are a lot of work! And they peck human hands very hard when one tries to take their eggs. However, I would give my now gimpy right shoulder and right arm for a load of chicken manure for my garden–especially the raspberries who really thrive with the stuff!

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      2. no chickens for me either, but I do love the fine farm eggs we get at the market.

        as to the manure-when your shoulder is not gimpy, I seem to remember you as being a knitter. I highly recommend the Shepherd’s Harvest at the Washington County fairgrounds on Mother’s Day weekend. The event is free! (wish I could do that like Krista does), but bring cash and leave your credit card at home is my policy-lovely yarns and tools to be had, classes to take and fleece animals to see and pet. Also border collie demonstrations.

        how does this affect your raspberries you may well ask? There is one farm there that keeps therapy llamas and sells bags of their very tidy and ready to use manure-not free, but on the other hand you don’t have to shovel out a hen house.

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  4. Can you be a trendsetter by staying behind? I’ve been knitting and baking and all that old-fashioned domestic stuff all my life. If the proliferation of online communities for those activities make them trendy, then I was waaaaayyyyyy ahead of the game.

    Guess if you stay on the wheel long enough, soon what you are doing is the next newest trend.

    I’m thinking a Jack LaLaine terrier would be a fine trend to follow-the cat thinks staying under the covers is the next big thing.

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  5. I used to wear LL Bean outdoorsy clothing much of the time. To my disgust, sometime in the late 1970s the fashion world discovered that look and made it trendy, which meant I was in fashion for a year or so. And then the fashion train charged on to a new look, leaving me behind. I went on enjoying my chamois cloth shirts and checkered red and black wool jackets.

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    1. I had a clothing style similar to yours at about that same time. What is the saying – great minds go along similar paths? My LL Bean costom included khaki pants. I’ve gone back to blue jeans for every day wear. My Dad thought blue jeans were work clothes and thought I should not wear them, so I went with the khakis for a while.

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  6. My least notorious trend setting was wearing a gray sweatshirt on the slopes of Vail only to find a few years later they were selling drab grey with pink “Vail” across the front for big bucks.

    Let’s see…in the 1970s & 80s: living in the country and raising goats & chickens (though that might be a late 1960s throwback), riding dressage before it became too expensive to afford the shows, the horses, the clothing…that’s all I’m admitting to.

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  7. Of course! I’m ahead of the style/fashion trend roughly once every twenty years or so. That’s about how long it takes for ‘pop culture’ to do a fashion/style lap.

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  8. I think the only trend I started was in graduate school when I announced I was pregnant, and soon after 5 of my graduate school chums as well as 4 of my cousins announced they or their wives were pregnant, too. It was pretty weird. We have a Jack Lalanne terrier and she is a demon for her daily walk. Not only does she have a certain look that is hard to ignore, but her friendly wags, excited wiggles, and strange vocal scream as the leash is brought out of the closet make ignoring her totally impossible. Good morning to you all. I am up early making Irish Soda Bread for a work gathering.

    Clancy’s Irish soda bread

    1 2/3 cup whole milk at room temp.
    1 1/2 T. lemon juice
    1/2 t. baking soda
    3 cups all purpose flour (I usually have to add at least 1/2 c. more)
    2 T sugar
    1 T. baking powder
    1 t. salt
    1 c. dried currants
    1 t. caraway seed

    Preheat oven to 350. grease a 9 inch pie plate. combine milk and lemon juice for 5 minutes. Add baking soda and let sit for 2 more minutes. Combine dry ingredients and gradually add milk. Transfer dough to floured surface and knead until smooth, about 3 minutes. You may have to add more flour to make a kneadable dough, but don’t overdo it. Form into a round mound, place in pie plate, and sprinkle on top
    1/4 cup of sugar mixed with 1 t. cinnamon. Bake for 45 minutes until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Spread 1/4 c. soft butter on the top. Serve slightly warm.

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      2. We are having a corned beef and cabage lunch. I really destest the smell of long cooked cabbage, and our building will reek of it until tomorrow.

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      3. ’tis true-whipped out a nice bannock loaf meself this morning. Very satisfying, next to no work or mess and pass the strawberry jam.

        Get everything measured out tonight, then mix it together tomorrow morning while you are still asleep. By the time you are awake enough to appreciate it, it will be done baking.

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    3. I’ve made this kind bread in the past and I really like it. My brother-in-law decided he should bake his in his wood burning fire place to do the way it was done in the past in Ireland. I supose that would add a smokey taste to the bread. I think he was trying a little too hard to show off his Irish heritage. He even used peat for fuel.

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  9. I was a (relative) early adopter of email back in the day, and remember message boards from the era of plugging your (wired) phone handset into the modem cradle. With the pace of technology, though, I doubt those count.

    I have been in a book club that predates Oprah’s by a couple of years (and thus proliferated the trend). To date, we have only read one of Oprah’s picks (“The Time Traveler’s Wife”) – though perhaps one or two more of hers might have been better choices than some we have made (“Backlash” by Susan Faludi was an early choice – worth reading, but oy was it difficult going…). Unlike Oprah’s club, though, we throw ourselves anniversary parties (with dancing, of course), and go on weekends away together.

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  10. Completely off-topic:
    From the “It’s ~what~ day? Oh, yeah…” Department,
    As I’m recovering from the ‘boomerang flu’ that’s going around (so named because you get sick with it twice), I completely forgot that:
    a) Monday was Pi Day (3.14) – To be celebrated by having a slice of your favorite pie and
    b) Yesterday was the Ides of March. A nice idea to ‘celebrate’ the IoM is to visit http://www.romancats.com and make a donation if you can. The Torre Argentina, where Brutus actually stabbed Caesar in 44 BC, is now Rome’s only cat sanctuary. They feed, spay/neuter, and provide placement services for Rome’s abandoned cat population. They’re volunteers and get no gov’t support. So, instead of celebrating IoM by stabbing a politician, help out some cool cats.

    Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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    1. And I can attest that the Romans love their cats, and the feral cats are EVERYWHERE! This would be a worthy cause. Beggars in Rome often have a bowl of catfood next to their coin cups. HMMM? Never did quite figure that out.

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  11. Like the rest of the trail I am lucky to be on the following edge of a trend let alone the leading edge. Whe I worked on campaigns this Fall the 20 somethings would regularly pause, turn to me and say, “Let me explain that pop culture reference to you.” Luckily they were amazed by my Cliff Klaven trivia so it came out even.

    My favorite fact of the week …..in response to an email sent to the vet at the DNR-“nymphomania is a symptom of rabies.” You don’t want to know the question I asked in order to get that response.

    Happy Birthday to the twins!!!!!!

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      1. thanks, Jacque! i’ll tell STeve – he’s the photographer and the blogger.
        we’re waiting for them to rest up a bit and then will take them out for a little acitivity. will be good for all of us.
        then Steve will post the pics of the past 24 hours..
        thanks again.

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  12. I am very open to change in my areas of interest, such as new woodworking tools, sometimes buying things that do not work or more often that I do not really need, just like the idea of them. Intellectually I am open to new ideas; professionally I was open to new options, idea, approaches. But outside my interests I ignore trends.

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  13. I have been a trend follower more times than I care to mention, and a few of them stuck (she says as she tries to remember a few)… the hippie with no make-up, the natural foods (with exceptions, of course), countless clothing fads, folk dancing (at the time I learned it). I would think I was being a trend setter, and then find that everyone around me was also already doing the same things. The one thing I can name that might be leading edge is making kombucha – it’s easy, it’s healthy, but that scobie (the culture) is so ugly! Is it trend setting if everyone you know looks at your Kombucha Jar and and just sort of backs away?

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    2. Oh! You’re part of the fungal brain-juice collective? I work with a guy that’s been trying to indoctrinate me. I think the ‘code word’ for Kombucha drinkers is “It’s gooooood…”

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      1. I can just hear him! Who is it that used to say that with just the right inflection? Some comedy person…

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  14. Hi all… sorry I’m late, got a new pc & software at work this morning and it’s been interesting to say the least.

    This is actually the only place where I am a trend setter, but not by my choice. I seem to catch on faster to new hardware and software than most of my co-workers; this means I am always the first one to get the new pc, the new software, the new upgrade, whatever. Unfortunately this means that I am the guinea pig who is plagued by all the new problems and issues — by the time my coworkers get the new stuff, I’ve already had to figure it out and usually written up the solutions for them. So today, I am a trendsetter. In a couple of months, when everything has rolled out to the rest, I’ll be in my normal role of never quite knowing what’s going on!

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  15. I remember the first time I saw people in hippy style dress. I think it was 1965 or earlier. I wondered why those people wanted to look like elderly rural folks. They had wire rim glasses, bib overhauls, long skirts, long hair, beards, and wore bandanas. There was small group of them who I think were visiting from some other place, probably California. They might have actually been beatniks. I had never seen that before and I didn’t know it was a trend. I thought it was a throw back.

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      1. I have some pictures that show me with very long hair and a very odd looking beard. I did away with the long hair and the ugly beard and kept the mustache that went with the beard.

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  16. Good grief I hope not…

    Hmmm perhaps we could arrange five gallon buckets of chicken manure traded for chocolate chip cookies?

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