The Donut Fairy Was Here

Dear Members and Constituents,
We inhabit a world which is continuously stripped of its mysteries. Every scientific breakthrough. Every explorer’s accomplishment. Cold cerebral rationalization is slowly replacing magic. All things must have a logical explanation (which does not involve mystical creatures). Long gone are the days when we were afraid of what might lurk in the dark or were awed by the fog rolling into the crags at dusk. Or are they? As I arrived at my desk this morning a familiar yellow box sat on my chair with a heart-shaped note attached to it. The note read “Nothing like donuts on Tuesday” and was signed by the Donut Fairy. My advice to you this morning is not to question why or how this happened or who is behind this, just know there are three dozen donuts waiting for you at my desk. Come on down, there’s plenty for everyone.

Happy Fr… Tuesday!

In Donuts We Trust

Dear Members and Constituents,
How much is a dollar worth, and why is it we freely devote countless hours to work for a paycheck? When you think about it, a dollar has no intrinsic worth. It is not a good building material and has questionable nutritional value (although I bet it’s rich in fiber). A hundred dollar bill probably costs about the same to produce as a one dollar bill (and I bet coins cost more to manufacture). The dollar is not even backed by precious metals (we did away with that in the ‘70s). So why is it so many folks around the world put their faith in the almighty dollar? If you give it some thought, I think you will agree it’s a matter of convenience and trust. Let’s face it, barter is very bulky and inconvenient (How many hams for that plasma T.V.?), so we choose to trust we will be able to exchange these dollars for the goods we need and want. We trust the value of our dollars will remain relatively constant over time. By extension we trust dollars will remain relatively rare and that the folks with the printing machines won’t make too many of them. We even put the word “trust” on the bills themselves (next to the word God, no less –talk about subliminal reinforcement).

Now the purchasing power of our dollars is not constant and the folks with the printing machines do tweak the throttle to increase or decrease our buying power a tad. In-fact, it is being suggested that a good way to decrease unemployment and get the economy going might be to devalue the dollar. If you decrease the value by 10%, you’re effectively decreasing everyone’s pay (and life savings) by about that much, so you could theoretically take that money out of our collective pockets and use it to hire that 10% of Americans who are actively searching for jobs. I realize it does not quite work that way (you have to factor-in greed and we do not have a closed economy… but that is the gist of it).

Fortunately these changes in purchasing power are usually gradual and most of us can still afford to buy donuts. That is certainly the case for Penny (our monetarily named donut girl who makes her debut this morning with five dozen Krispy Kremes). She was even able to afford an extra dozen to compensate for the fact KK’s are smaller than LaMar’s. Supply should certainly be able to keep pace with demand. Enjoy!
Happy Friday!

Peace, Love & Donuts

Dear members and constituents,
When thinking of a utopian society, peace and love come to mind as two of it's key traits. But if you were building this society, which would you prioritize -say, if you had limited funding, and needed to phase-out the project. Love comes naturally in a peaceful society. Similarly, peace is to be expected when love prevails. But which is the better precursor to the other? The Beatles speak out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to this topic. They would have you believe love is all you need, yet, it was the very John Lennon who said we should give peace a chance. Then again this may be a false trade-off. It seems to me, peace is to love what chickens are to eggs (or muggy weather to mosquitoes). You can't have one without the other. I think there is a third item without which the utopian society is not possible. Donuts.

This morning we have two donut girls. Tracy Holick, responsible for the physical donuts present at my desk (first day of school has caused the slight delay in delivery) and Stacy Jackson, responsible for the virtual donuts (this note’s topic was inadvertently triggered by her). Stacy is also responsible for a short story on NPR which aired Wednesday night, in which she speaks of Donuts, no less (well, sort of…). So, come-on down and get started on the journey to a new social order. One donut at a time.
Happy Friday!

Donut Surrogate

Dear Members and Constituents,
Our lives seem to be filled with surrogates. Rationalization substituting religion. TV filling-in for conversation. Facebook replacing physical social interaction. Why is it we get caught-up in these alternatives to the real thing? To be sure, every case is unique and each medium has it's own appeal. Take facebook. I don't know whether the number of your posts is truly inversely proportional to the amount of face-to-face interaction you get, however, it stands to reason the more time you spend using it, the less time you have left-over for other activities. I think the it is such an appealing surrogate has to do with the fact it keys-in on several reward mechanisms. There’s something for everyone. Whether you’re an exhibitionist (sharing all the minutia in your life), a voyeur (keeping tabs on others), a journalist (archiving things for posterity), a collector (accumulating friends) or a gamer (pretending to be a rancher or a mobster)… you can get it on facebook. Plus it’s convenient.

Donuts may be irreplaceable, however, we do have a substitute for you today. Before you panic, you should know I’m talking about our surrogate donut boy, Andrew McClure, who is filling-in for Alissa Baan (vacation girl). So come-on down and reward yourself with the sweet taste of a fresh donut. And, they’re ready for your consumption right now. How convenient.

Happy Friday!

Donut Canals

Dear Members and Constituents,
Have you ever subjected yourself to a root canal? Of all the activities we willingly undergo, root canals are the closest thing I know to raw, unadulterated torture. A simultaneous stimulation of all senses, root canals are an equal opportunity tormenter. The sound of the drill. The smell of burnt teeth and rotten bone marrow. The taste of tooth fragments and bleach. The sight of your teeth, turned to stubs. The vibration of your entire skull in response to the blunt instruments used… not to mention the raw pain emanating from that inadvertently pinched nerve-ending. A funny thing happens when you sit helpless on the endodontist’s chair, mouth full of cotton, wondering whether to dignify his latest question with a response (surely he realizes all the instruments in my mouth prevent me from articulate speech): You start to think absesses might not be so bad, after all. Mild chronic pain, bone loss and even toothlessness briefly seem attractive alternatives. Of course, these fleeting thoughts pass and you successfully finish what you started.

Donuts, on the other hand, provide an altogether pleasant sensory stimulation: soft, sinuous, sweet, scented… sigh! This morning, Craig Mundell (donut boy) is responsible for providing us with four dozen LaMar’s donuts. Now that’s the kind of treatment your teeth really deserve: biting into the soft, doughy texture of a fresh donut. Let your teeth know what’s good.
Happy Friday!

Denver Donuts Deliver Dreamy Deliciousness

Dear Members and Constituents,
How one sees things is inevitably conditioned by one’s perspective. Take, for example, the shepherd who tells his incredulous buddy about the Pterodactyl he just shot. “Did you kill it?” asks the friend. “No, but I did startled it enough to drop the sheep it had taken”. The newspaper article describing this self-same event tells the tragic story of a hang-glider pilot plummeting to his death, shot-down by a cold-blooded sniper. For those of you gaping in horror, this is a cruel joke (any similarity to actual events is unintended –and highly unlikely). It does help me make the point that our experiences frame our perception. This is the proverbial box we keep being told to think outside of.

I recently got a taste of my own ethnocentricity in Panama City’s Tocumen International Airport. I awaited my connection, browsing duty-free goods in this giant monument to consumerism, when I had to do a double-take. A Dunkin’ Donuts. This remote enclave had a quintessentially American icon. A donut chain Denver lacked, for that matter. The tenth largest central business district and sixteenth largest T.V. market in the U.S. was outdone by a third world city half its size. For those of you gaping in horror, this is not a cruel joke (any notion Denver is the donut capital of the world is misplaced –and misguided). My prejudices led to my incredulity.

Today, my appeal to you is not that you think outside the box, but rather, that you reach into one for a donut. I don’t ask you to postpone your propensities, but rather, that you indulge your inclinations. Not to bemoan the absence of Dunkin Donuts, but rather, to celebrate the delicious LaMar’s selection Tina Telson (donut girl) makes available this morning.


Happy Friday!

Agile Donuts

[Ed Stocker; filling-in for JP]

Dear members and Constituents,

In JP’s absence The Donut Club has self organized into an Agile Scrum. In this weeks Sprint, Bill Long has Prototyped 4 dozen Lamar’s Donuts. They are located in the Bullpen (32C-415) for your testing.

Please come by and provide your feedback on the enjoyment level obtained from the first delivery in our Agile transformation.

Scrum Master Ed