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Ghost Stories
(this is not a puzzle)

How successful people stay calm and beautiful

6/29/2016

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They say there are three reactions beautiful and successful executives can have to fear: fight, flight or finance. I experience all three of these at Teddy Boy Grove, an exclusive retreat for men of import with perfectly quaffed hair held deep in the California Redwoods. If I share too much they will track me down and shear my entire body but one amazing workshop at this retreat had myself and other top performers learn to tackle the bears and outrun the bulls of the market by first tackling an actual bear and then running from an actual bull and then paying both of them to leave us alone. It was invigorating and rejuvenating. I was affirmed and then reaffirmed in my well-deserved commendability. I was a master of finance among other masters of finance and we were untouchable and would never fail.

I was reminded of this on Monday when I received a call from the executive assistant to the CEO of Ghost Patrol International Holdings LLLC informing me that the company would not be replacing my limousine helicopter due to financial cutbacks. Nor was I to buy any more Bucky Domes for my underwater sea base. My plan to laser etch a hilarious tableau of insect genitals onto the moon's surface?Indefinitely moth-balled. It seems our Ghost Patrol franchises on the American West Coast are under-performing. Ghost Patrol International Holdings LLLC was built on the promise of other people's money and our franchise owners are not keeping their end of that promise.

Enraged in my penthouse apartment at the Burj Dubai, I rushed to the roof and flung my diamond encrusted house slippers into the oblivion between luxury and the desert floor. As quickly as they had left my hand my attack owls, Hootie and Dave Matthews, broke free from their aerie and dove over the edge of the massive glass spire, returning moments late with my sparkly sparkle flip-flops in their terrifying talons. Peace came over my being.

It was in that moment that I realized the truly successful can't be beaten. Success is calm. Success is beautiful. Success is not a ship upon the sea in a storm. Success is a submarine. It’s a natural expression of my staggering ability, flawless expertise, and utmost self-regard. I went back inside and lit some aroma-therapy candles, cranked up the Enya, rubbed my entire body with a mixture of beeswax, avocado oil and lavender until I gleamed like the tower of glass I inhabited. I ordered nameless assistant 1 to lay out the most California suit I have and ordered nameless assistant 2 to book my flight, I'm going to California to make things right.

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The Claw Machine of Executive Level ideation

6/21/2016

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Occasionally I am called in to corporate headquarters to weigh in on the big decisions, to tackle the really big problems, to fire a ton of people and to stuff my Ted Baker trousers with all of the half-and-half packets and binder clips possible. Once you've clipped some chips with binder clips you will begin to feel the miracle of creative problem solving that I feel every day of my life. It will probably stop right there but you will be awed.

I was meeting with two copper-level underlings for a little business pep talk. Life, I explained to them, is like the claw machine at the arcade, you have to persevere! If the doll slips from your tenuous grasp you have to drop your quarters into the slot and grab that doll by it's petulant head and drop it into the metal chute of success.

"So life is pointless waste of time where I give someone else all of my money and never get what I want?" inquired sloth one.

"No, life is rigged and you'd be better off spending your money on buying your success at the store instead of trying to snatch it out of some stupid machine" unhelpfully suggested toad two.

Furious at them both for missing the point of my kick ass metaphor, I fired toad two for having too much ambition and possibly being smarter than me and ran to the roof, ordering my helicopter limo pilot to fly me immediately to Circus Circus, the Reno one where no one would recognize me. I ordered the nearest server to bring a yard of martini to the arcade immediately, stuffed a Woodrow Wilson into the change machine and got to work. As the hours ticked by I went through many stages of enlightenment staring into that box of light and promise. Were the prizes imprisoned or ensconced? Was I in the one trapped with them staring pityingly at me? As the hours ticked by with the ticks and tocks replaced by the sound of quarters rolling down a metal ramp and into a box filled up with other quarters, I bargained with myself and with the universe. I didn't need the big-headed Elsa doll to be happy; I could be happy with a light up Paw Patrol key chain or a pack of Fruit Stripe gum. I could live a simpler life and be happy. I could be free of the trappings of cruelty and excess. The claw machine, the great equalizer of men, had put me face-to-face in it's reflective facade with my own weakness, my fragility, my failings. I had won nothing.

As the last call for quarters and gin rang out over the loudspeaker and the lights slowly began to come on overhead, I knew what I had to do. I had Eddie, my executive phone handler, call the owner of the Casino and after some minor negotiations I bought that claw machine. I bought that claw machine and I pushed it from my executive helicopter into the watering hole of a wildlife sanctuary and then pushed that helicopter off of my yacht and into the sea, barely missing a family of sea sponges who I'd felt had been leering snidely at my naked body as I'd flawlessly transferred from Chaturanga to Happy Baby on the my sunny poop deck. But, you know what, there's will always be more days on this earth and there will always be bigger helicopters. #believe2016

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8 Ways Your Efforts have been inadequate. Yes, there are 8!

6/13/2016

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They say it takes money to make money and here at Ghost Patrol International Holdings LLLC. there's nothing we enjoy more than taking your money to make you money. Recently we were contacted by an extremely satisfied franchise owner with a great deal of experience in attending our seminars. He shared with us that the level of success he had expected and the level of success he'd achieved were wildly different! Wow! But he wanted to know how he could achieve VIP-level enrichment maximization beyond the incredible fulfillment that comes just from being part of the Ghost Patrol family. 

I was meditating on that very thing in my Ashram brand spa tent on a custom blue sand beach on an island that isn't on poor people GPS when I started to feel something funny and bad in my head and tummy at the same time. Was this feeling guilt? Accountability? There was no way to know but I made a promise to myself on that day to never feel anything like that again. I ordered Simeon, the booze Panda, to fetch me more of that vodka made with the tears of the financially ruined and set to work writing a masterpiece of giving back, Your Efforts Have Been Inadequate. "But, Matthew" you might say, "Surely you are in some small way culpable for what you have wrought upon the world." You're wrong. You're wrong and I'm not even angry. We are a family and I want you to be happy so I'll share with you some chapters from my new book:

1. The Iceberg of Ignorance
2. Are you a Chihuahua or a Cheetah?
3. Deep Sprinting to Supernatural Productivity
4. The Exactly 4 Habits of Great Leaders
5. You Are Not A Tree: The Root of The Problem
6. Preparing Your Career For a Permanent Vacation
7. The 7 Signs Your Employees Are Stealing Your Success
8. The Effort Paradox

To find out more, buy my book and read your way into the mindfulness of excellence. Bless.

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The Myth of monotasking vs the myth of multitasking: the myth-off your business can't afford to myth

6/7/2016

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Throughout modern history there are literally tons of examples of technology making our lives easier. It seems as though every time we face adversity, a new technology rises up to battle that adversity and win. Horse excrement on your oxfords? BAM! The automobile. Stiff neck from looking at Big Ben all day? BOFF! The wristwatch. Suffering a sarcastic cartography staff? ZAP! Mapquest. Infant heirs falling out of the penthouse window? ZWOSH! The baby cage. Technology has never once gone astray.

But with our hectic modern lives, it can be easy to get lost in all of the things we never imagined we'd still be doing for ourselves. Did I tell TaskRabbit to pick up my dry cleaning or did I tell Amazon Echo to do it? I find my interactions with Alexa to be so invigorating, so arousing. I love the way she coyly pretends to not know what I'm talking about. She knows and she also knows that I like to be challenged because I'm a challenged kind of man. 

I was reminded of this as I sunbathed on my yacht. I was Snapchatting my doodle to my extensive list of gold-tier followers when my pet Orca, Spotty, playfully spouted into my mid-morning virgin Shirley Temple (I have my staff booze it up and then de-booze it so that it tastes like extra effort). As I tried to steady my bevvie I dropped my iPhone 6s right on the sensor module of my Swabbie Deck Hand Roomba causing it to careen directly into the path my pet Kinkajou, Scampers. Well long story short, my Kinkajou has been at half mast since Sunday.

Though technology stands as permanently infallible, man remains a creature of exotic tastes and wildly expensive fixations. Perhaps it is this duality that drives us to dream better, invent bigger and to one day solve the mystery of it all.

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The leadership trap or how to tell when it's never your fault (the answer may surprise you)

6/6/2016

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When seventeen legally independent entities, two banks with sovereign territories that you've probably never heard of in their names, and I originally incorporated to form Ghost Patrol International Holdings LLLC, it was with an equitable interest share of a common dream. We dreamed that the only way to achieve that dream was to dream a dream too close to the sun on dreams of wax, consequences be damned! But, you know what? There have never been any consequences and there never will be.

When we first foresaw a world free from supernatural and monetary burden for the common man we knew we would not stop until every ghost was eradicated and every royalty, reimbursement and percentage on sales from our franchises was collected, laundered and hung out to dry in the sun on some beautiful friggin' island where we named all of the birds so that we could grant them citizenship and then purchase their real estate. I personally know the Mayor of that island and can get you a tee time to play the sweetest holes you will ever see in your life. But I won't.

So how do you avoid falling into the leadership trap? Don't worry about placing blame when things don't go your way. Free yourself from the burden of culpability. When the feds show up at your door, ask yourself why there's a door. Who even answered the door? Was it a leader or someone who has never even heard the name of a leader? Do you like my title? I invented that title when I re-invented myself. That title can be parsed so many ways that if you ever try to accuse me of being any one or a combination of those words I will litigate your face off. 

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    Author

    Matthew Kuhmann is a Senior Management Operations Director with Ghost Patrol International Holdings LLLC. The extra L is for "Look, we really don't appreciate this level of scrutiny."

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  • Home
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    • White River Park
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    • Thousand Islands Family Restaurant
    • Capture the Ghost
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