Transparent. Frankly, I’m sick of the word…

Catch phrases are being overused, don’t you think?

They’re like a good song that gets played so much you’re afraid to turn on the radio for fear of having to hear it played once more.

It’s Friday and call it "fried-day" if you’ve had as hectic of a week as I-and with only two more work days to go, this seems like the best day to get off a rant.

Allow me to digress…If the 90’s were defined by conspicuous consumption than the "Ought’s" so far have turned out to be years filled with anxiety, uncertainty and fear.

Before the new millennium ever even got started we had to worry about the Y2K. Even naysayers of that alert surreptitiously logged into their bank accounts the next day just to be sure. Then the 21^st century really hit and we ushered in new paradigms.

We voted for a new President that year but that too was after much anxiety in our nation. We never really knew without question if the President we voted for was supposed to be in office or not.

Things settled down and seemed to be humming along fine until September 11^th 2001, when our country faced an unparalleled attack. More anxiety, uncertainty and fear.

That’s when our country’s paradigm shifted to a fear based society. Even our government leaders told us to go about living our lives, while looking over our shoulders; all while our mail delivery person was supposed to watch out for suspicious activity. We had to be alert, 24/7.

Then all of a sudden we needed to be green. Of course it would have been nice to think green all along; and in fact many people have. But suddenly everything had to be about "going green" and it starts to be disingenuous when corporations are going green as a marketing ploy.

Now with gas prices soaring, the housing market crashing and ruining everyone’s party, the only fun anyone we’re having is riding the stock market roller coaster-more uncertainty.

And now everything has to be transparent-transparent? Who coined that word to describe the new millennium business model?  In order to compete in real estate all of a sudden you have to be web 2.0 savvy and completely transparent. Not even the people using the phrase web 2.0 can agree on its meaning. And what about transparency? Don’t you think Coke owes it to us to make their recipe public? After all, we do drink their product…

Am I the only one who thinks the word transparent has a slightly negative connotation to it-as in there’s no substance, "it’s completely transparent"; or, "he’s so transparent", as in you can see right through his gimmicks?

I’ve never started a catch phrase before but could we try something with a little more integrity, such as "apparent", as in "His business style is completely apparent"-perhaps not.

It’s hard to be green and transparent at the same time. The only thing that seems transparent to me right now is that everyone is so busy trying to be transparent, in the meantime, they are.