The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The lines continue to blur between this blog and my column in The Business Monthly.

Sometime between now and tomorrow evening I need to submit 900 or so words for my column in the January 2009 issue (Volume 17, Number 1). This is crunch time.

I already have a theme. It’s “the good, the bad, and the ugly of the past year.” For example, the good is the return of the poinsettia tree to the Mall this Christmas. The bad is the car dealer ad that surrounds the tree.

I guess that could qualify for the ugly too.

Another one, the good is the news that Integral Systems and SAIC have committed to over 300,000 square feet of new office space in Columbia Gateway. The bad news is that General Growth Properties had a major layoff this past week.

I could go on. I have others. The ugly examples have been the most challenging of the three. Good and bad tend to be black and white. Ugly is highly subjective.

Would you like to play along?

I’m open to any and all suggestions for the locally good, bad and ugly examples. Be creative. Of course I’ll only use the ones I like but I will attribute them appropriately (anon 4:15 AM, anon 5:18 PM, etc.). If you want to be discrete with your suggestions and not have them shown in the comments section here, you can email me at wordbones@verizon.net. 

It would be fun to see just how much I can blur these lines.