A is for Apology

Junior awoke to one knock, two knock, three knock, four. 

It was a clear spring morning, not a bird in the sky.

Not like the day before. The day before it snowed.

The neighborhood kids got an unexpected day off from school. 

Junior included. 

But what was all that commotion about? 

He could hear both of his parents’ voices growing louder and louder.

They were standing outside his door, talking to each other. 

What were they saying? He couldn’t say.

He took out the garbage the night before. The recycling, too.

He did the dishes.

He cleaned his room. 

So what could this be about? 

There was another voice, a third one downstairs, commenting on the quality of the drip coffee.

Junior sprinted to the window and peered out.

A black car was parked in front of the house, in front of a hydrant, no less. 

Fire hazards bothered Junior since his Uncle Frank was a fireman. 

He loved seeing tickets piled high on someone's front windshield.

He really loved when cars were towed.

He really really loved seeing drivers rage at the sight of their car at a 45 degree angle, reeled onto a truck, powerless in the face of municipal might.

Then a fifth knock, followed by a, “wake up, Junior, someone downstairs wants to talk to you.”

“Coming,” he said, grabbing a robe from the closet.

Junior opened the door and looked up at both of his parents.

They said nothing and led him to the living room.

An old man in a long trench coat was standing up.

He held his coffee in one hand, and a framed family photo in the other.

The photo was of Junior playing with a set of toy cars.

When he noticed Junior, he put the picture back on the mantle. 

“Good morning, Junior, I just had a few questions for you. Sit down, please.”

It’s weird when strangers ask you to sit down in your own home.

Even at Junior’s non-advanced age, he knew it was an odd request.

“Thanks,” he said, and sat down on the couch furthest from the man.

“Mind if call you Richard?”

 

“Richard? Why would you call me Richard?”

Why would he call him Richard?

“Your father’s name is Richard, so I assumed you were Richard, Jr.”

“You assumed wrong. My legal name is Junior. At 65, I may decide to change it to “Senior” though. There’s always that possibility."

With that cleared up, the man dove into the interrogation. 

“I see you like cars.”

Junior nodded.

“I also like cars. The problem, Junior, is that you’re not legally permitted to drive.”

“I know that.”

“The principal’s car was stolen from the school parking lot yesterday, driven out to the beach and filled with chalk. That smell is never coming out. The janitors are still hosing it down as we speak.”

Junior tried to fight back a smirk.

“Is something funny young man?”

Junior shook his head.

“I’m willing to cut a deal with you, son. All you have to do is apologize and then tell me who put you up to this. None of it has to go on your permanent record.”

“Are you a cop?”

“Retired. I’m a private investigator hired by your school to look in matters such as this.”

Junior knew that if this guy had anything more than a hunch, he’d be in the principal’s office right now.

He had nothing though. 

“I came down to your house as a courtesy.”

“Answer the man, Junior,” said his mother.

“Listen to her,” said his father.

“Yesterday was a snow day and we’re having trouble ascertaining the whereabouts of all our students.”

Matilda entered the room. She was the family dog walker, constantly misplacing the various leashes of the various pooches. 

“He was with me all day, I can vouch for his whereabouts,” said Matilda.

Junior said nothing.

The parents said nothing.

Matilda said nothing more.

The man rolled his eyes. 

Because A isn’t for Apology, it’s for Alibi. 

Better Angles of Our Nature

For any political movement of any political stripe, gaining traction among the public at-large isn’t necessarily a painless process. It’s one defined by flighty magic markers drying up without so much as a warning smudge. In the pre-digital days, many rallies were destroyed by fed-up FedEx Kinkos employees, frustrated at their lack of inclusion. Inadequate copying services often did what the FBI couldn’t – stop the protest in its stacks. Participants want flyers. Otherwise, they return home emptyhanded, without a record of what they’ve done. Nothing for the scrapbook or the grandkids. It’d be like attending a Broadway show without receiving a Playbill. It’s just not done.

In my analysis, however facile and cursory it may be, I’ve come to accept that too many of these grand social projects are generally hemmed in by the public spaces they strategically take over. These public squares, limited by a cruel geometry, control the people and put them at odds with each other. Squares haven’t been considered cool since the fifties. So you’d think we would’ve retired them alongside others errors of the atomic age. Nuclear fallout shelters and sunken living rooms immediately come to mind. 

We need more shapes, more angles. More places to hide with the tear gas falls. More crevices to run to when the “please disperse” announcement comes blaring from a nearby megaphone. The shape of the future isn’t something as strict as the one of the past. These simple plazas with their harsh right angles and inconveniently placed fountains do not belong in the 21^st century. Two decades in, we should have adopted something bulbous, something amorphous, something complex and confusing. Euclid be damned. If it’s weird to us, imagine what law enforcement will think when trying to map out the event. They’ll give up when confronted with too many alleys and asymmetries to count. 

Since the public isn’t square anymore, their squares shouldn’t be either. 

Moral Panic Room

Why don’t you take your shoes off and come right in? A good rule of thumb (or should it be “rule of big toe”) is that you should always act as you would at a fancy Japanese restaurant. There, you’d remove your shoes, sit on the floor, and eat more sea creatures than a famished flounder. Chugging sake and soy sauce by the quart. Watch the lamp on the side table, it’s an original Tiffany. And don’t eat those hard candies in the crystal dish, as enticing as they appear. They’re purely decorative, and as you might have discovered, sadly inedible. I can take out some petty cash for an emergency dental visit if necessary.

This house has it all, and then some. A good roof, firm walls, strong floors. No exposed wires or pipes. The fridge doesn’t rise above a low hum. The pilot light has but a gentle flicker. It wasn’t the scene of a horrible crime or once owned by an out-of-work celebrity attempting to hit the career reset button with a double dose of modesty and humility. An infestation isn’t on the horizon, nor is a major renovation. We did some digging, and this isn’t the location of an ancient Indian burial ground. Though, whoever built the place, liked to hit golf balls into the foundation. You shouldn’t lose any sleep over the possibility of something paranormal either. Haunting statistics have only been kept in the last decade, but as of right now, you’re totally ghost-free. No, no, that isn’t lead paint – though I still wouldn’t advise licking it. Oh, you want to see more? Okay. Let’s take a walk to the other end of the house.

You have a good eye there, Ted Williams. Your optometrist must be proud. Since I can see you’ve noticed the back room, which I only show to serious buyers. Because once you’re inside, you will have seen enough. Come on, let’s go.

That’s titanium-reinforced steel. Yup, this room is windowless. Good catch. It’s what we’re dubbing, “The Moral Panic Room.” The Internet won’t work in here. Don’t bother trying. We’ve made it so that the electricity barely registers a pulse. Your cell phone will be rendered useless. And even your brain waves will only function at a reptilian level – enough to keep you alive, but not enough to keep you asking annoying questions. Inside here, you can forget what’s going on out there – in the real world. There’s no news, no TV, no radio, no podcasts, no articles, no nothing. Yes, there’s a single pillow if you must sleep. That’s a hot plate for your dinners. Cans of pickled everything are in the crawlspace should you get hungry. Visitors? I don’t think so. 

When would you leave? That’s up to you. I would say, given the current state of the world, it might be best to hunker down for a few more months. Stay as long as you like. Remember that no one knows you’re in here, which raises the possibility, however remote, that you’ll be declared dead before the closing date. Just something to keep in mind as we’re signing papers. But that’s nothing a few strokes of a pen and one big press conference can’t fix. I’ll make some calls. You’ll have plenty of room to breathe. Although, if you notice your CO2 levels going up, hit that red button in the corner – it connects directly to the Fire Department. 

But I should really get going. I’m showing a houseboat down at the marina in 20 minutes and high tide is in 15. We’re pitching it as an “unmoored home for an unmoored human.” Catchy, I know. The trouble is that without a mooring, there’s a real risk of losing the boat to the ocean.

I’ll lock you up on my way out. 

Pronoun Cement

When properly addressed by a complete stranger, I’ve come to expect very little adroitness in the pronunciation department. Therefore, I’ve come to expect a wide selection of herbal teas, excessive flattery, and sheer awe (generally indicated by non-verbal sighs and other wide-mouth poses). It’s the atypical individual who actually pronounces my last name correctly.

You’d be surprised by some of the weirder variations on the same theme. Since each name has its own flare and baggage. There’s Moesure, which sounds like a placating comment to a sea-parting prophet. While Moysir reminds me of a sauce, plated and requested by a ravenous group unaccustomed to unreasonably dry feast. Mosher is already a thing – the label we bestow on the aimless crowd surfer, hopped up on whatever else (non-human) is being passed around, now left to circumnavigate the concert on fingertips and fists until sliding onto the stage like a pizza pulled out of the oven in the nick of time. Well before the unwanted burning begins. Mozer sounds dangerous. A middle “z” has the power to terrify. Moseeay is the name of French butler, mindlessly twisting his pencil-thin mustache, and ready to wait on you hand and foot. There are many more. 

I don’t need to correct people when they get this wrong. They didn’t grow up with my name, so how would they know just by the spelling the right way to say it? I could, when feeling unseasonably generous, extend an olive branch, understanding that there is no one way to say anything. People have myriad of accents and dialects, which all go into speech and pronunciation. I could do what Steve Buscemi does when people say “booshemee” in front of him. Nothing. He does nothing. He knows that “semi” is the correct suffix, but, whatever. It’s his name, after all.  

But I’m not going to do that. I am not Steve Buscemi, a kind and generous soul, a retired fireman, Brooklyn resident, and fine actor. I’m not even going to tell you how to say my name. That way, there’s a better chance you get it wrong. I choose to take it personally when people verbally deface my last name. I choose to be offended, reading far too much into every syllabic stumble. It’s a personal slight, of which there can be no magnanimity offered. Either get it right or go home. 

I can’t let it go. I won’t let it go. It’s my name. Am I supposed to change it, all for you?  

A Humbling Idiot

It’s advertising awards season again. Which means that I must show off my wares, championing the wild ideas that have somehow made their way into the world, floating down the river of creativity like Moses in a basket. Did they really happen? Does it really matter? The advertising Old Guard is still hung up on making actual “ads.” But the joke’s on them. A good idea – to say nothing of a great one – must not only change culture, it must shift people, causing a literal stampede and temporary insanity in those who come across it. Thankfully, some of my most cherished ideas have risen to the top, bubbling up and frothing over. I’m already in awe of this segue. You’ll see.

Bud Light Foam was born on the sticky surfaces of many a wooden bar, pooling along the edge and destroying the varnish drop-by-drop. There, I noticed that while most people prefer their beer frothless, there are some of us, “cloud eaters”, who prefer a little foam, reminiscent of that fine ocean sizzle rippling its way to shore. Our staff data scientists found that 89% of people would rather eat bad foam than drink a good brew. It’s cotton candy for adults – an unexpected, always welcomed dessert. We don’t like it when the bartender apologizes or someone makes a biting remark about our inability to pour properly. So we created limited-edition collector’s six packs of pure Bud Light Foam, the heady essence of beer. Get it while it lasts, which is to say, before it evaporates. 

Full Plate was a partnership with Tinder, where we sought to reunite license plates with their original inmatefluencers.

Talking Shoes have replaced walking shoes. Or, at least, that was the case in the case study. Instead of following the news closely for every subtle development, leave it to your shoes to stay on top of things. Your shoes, Nikes, will lecture you on every subject from war and peace, to sports and politics. Don’t know what to think about something? Just go for a jog and Nike Talking Shoes will fill you in point-by-point step-by-step.  

Gas Guzzlers was a publicity stunt where we paid down-on-their-luck circus performers to guzzle gasoline. You know it’s bad for the environment, but there you are, still humming along the highway fancy-free. If your SUV gets 12 miles per gallon, then our erstwhile acrobat would run that distance after guzzling the right amount of fuel. We had medics standing by and the smell was overwhelming for our camera crew. But our point was made. 

Fired Blankets were distributed at agencies before a big round of layoffs. Everything’s a little easier to take when ensconced in wooly fiberglass.  

These weren’t first thoughts. They were no thoughts, ideas that came about from nothing and turned into nothing. They weren’t shortlisted so much as they were no-listed. Like the foam forming before you, they’ll be gone before you know it. 

Interview: Like Talking to a Wall

Well before radio waves made their way through our eardrums and into our hearts, jingling and jangling happily ever after, ads were barely noticed. This is also prior to the ascendancy of television, when the little people on the screen yelled at us, demanding we accept our purchasing power and buy a new dishwasher or toilet seat. Ads couldn’t yell at first. They could hardly say a thing. But they were there. They were everywhere. Mostly though, advertisements were painted on exterior building walls. Then repainted again and again for a princely sum. Not a bad gig, for a wall, if you could get it. Painted Brick Wall, a painted brick wall on the corner of 18^th Street and Broadway, spent most of the first half of the twentieth century selling something. Bri, as he goes by now, has been retired for a few years, living in constant fear of demolition. Thankfully, New York City has some of the best historic preservation ordinances in the country. I walked by him a few days ago and this is the transcript of our brief, though extremely fruitful conversation. 

MTP: Hello wall. May I call you Bri?

A wind gust sent a piece of paint flying off the building, falling many stories to the ground below.  

MTP: You’re chipping badly, if you don’t mind me saying so. I wouldn’t want to presume. We're not friends - yet. 

PBW: …

MTP: Is there a direction I should speak towards? I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at.

PBW: …

MTP: Okay then. I aim towards the foundation. Have you thought about seeing someone professionally about the damage? I know a few good contractors. They’d be more than happy to help. 

PBW: …

MTP: No, it’s not free. I can still get you a good deal though. 

PBW: …

MTP: You’re practically falling apart. I would get someone over here ASAP.

PBW: …

MTP: No, that’s not why I came here.

PBW: …

MTP: I’m getting to it. Slow down, will ya? Sheesh. 

PBW: …

MTP: There’s no reason to get an attitude. 

PBW: …

MTP: Great, let’s get started. In going over your career, I noticed how you’ve been a part of every major industry since about 1910. You promoted vaudevillians, silent movie stars, prop comics, vacuum cleaners, and an annual holiday buffet held at the Waldorf. Care to comment? How did you handle potential conflicts of interest? A thick border? 

PBW: …

MTP: I bet you were glad you weren’t made of wood, huh? Fires, who needs 'em?

PBW: …

MTP: I get it. You not much for dwelling on the past. So why don’t we talk about the future for a change. 

It was then that I heard the mistakable sound of trickling liquid. Why? A man of indeterminate age was relieving himself on the side of Bri. 

MTP: Excuse me, what are you doing? That’s my interview subject you’re so rudely interrupting. 

Jake: Huh?

MTP: Do you mind? I’m conducting business here. 

Jake: Me too. How about a little privacy? 

MTP: Look, pal, zip up and ship out. Capeesh? 

Jake finished as quickly as possible and sprinted off the lot. However, I couldn’t manage to get the stream of conversation flowing again. Another time, perhaps. Outside of a wrecking ball, Bri isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

Fossil Phew

  

In the spirit of the day, Earth Day, I want to make a solemn promise to my adoring audience slobbering their way through the archives: that this blog will be completely carbon neutral by the year 2050. That gives me plenty of time to get my affairs in order and use up my stockpile of aerosol cans. To get on the right side of history, it can take several decades and a massively lucrative financial push. By then, there will be no more reading in the car. No more writing in the car either. 

I’m in bed with fossil fuels (which makes me wish I never bothered to buy white sheets). It started innocently enough – with a few wisecracks at the expense of long extinct dinosaurs as a way to break the ice. When bonding with someone in this industry, I’ve found that insulting a T-Rex for their pea-sized brains and twiggy arms goes a long way. It may start as a whisper, since you won’t win friends in most circles through a pointed, evidence-based critique of the stegosaurus. 

This blog isn’t helping anyone - I know that. By 2050, I will have the skills required to write my ramblings on biodegradable material. One person (me) can read it and then either dispose of it safely or decide to eat it. The choice is theirs (mine). Plus, it goes great with soup. A bready “blog bowl” is just what this country needs. If you thought my sentences were hard to decipher now, imagine trying to read them through a thick serving of clam chowder, crackers and all. At least in this scenario you’ll be satisfied - or simply full. I’ve always felt strongly that truly palatable ideas should also be easily swallowable. How can you digest something interesting if you can't actually digest it?  

It’s true that I’m about to make a serious shift based on self-sacrifice and moral certainty. The good news is that I have about 30 years to come to terms with it. I don’t believe in making impulsive decisions. When I get off fossil fuels, I want to be sure that the only ones still left are under glass, in museums or laboratories. I’ve changed before and I’ll change again. In an earlier era, say the 1850s, when New Bedford was the place to be, this blog was powered entirely by whale oil. I wasn’t alone. The city of London was lit with the stuff, too. You could say this blog is merely a product of its times. But I can sense the ground shifting beneath my feet. 

Will the tone of the blog change, you wonder? Probably. Anything written on pita is decidedly different than the standard pallor you’ve grown accustomed to. And it's much, much tastier. 

My Daily Self-Censor Routine

Self-censoring is the act of abstaining from activities and statements that may cause harm, annoyance or irritation in order to maintain an optimal level of overall mental health. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of areas of self-censorship. Social media mavericks raking in cash by the carload may have you thinking that the purpose of modern life is to share every thought that enters your brain with the world. It’s not so. In fact, the less you say, the better off you’ll be. Here’s my daily regimen of self-denial.

Before I do anything in the morning, I check on my birdfeeder. No, that’s not some sort of bizarre euphemism. I actually check on my birdfeeder. By checking on the birdfeeder, I’m checking on the birds. However, on most mornings, there are no birds – only squirrels, feasting on the gourmet seed I refill each Sunday morning. Now, I could confront these rat-like creatures, dressing them down in accordance with my simple, though self-righteous belief system. Instead, I avoid conflict. I don’t say a word to the squirrels. They can eat as much as they like. Who am I to say what seed is meant for birds and what isn’t? There are birds who eat other birds, so it’s not as if the moral superiority is stowed safely in some far-off twig basket.  

Let’s say it’s raining, as is often the case in April. Do I really need to roll my eyes and mutter something profane about the leak in my ceiling? No. There are entire societies and cultures that revolve around rain. They have rain dances, rain festivals, rain soirees, and rain men. The rainy season is a joyous time. Am I sacrificing that much by saying “nice day” when someone asks me my opinion of the weather?

Once I’m caffeinated, sated and hopped on the news of the day, opinions begin exiting my mouth at a dangerous pace. These aren’t the opinions I share. But I need to cleanse them somehow - exorcise them from my being. They are new and fresh each day. I write down 50 to 100 things I want to say but can’t for reasons that I can’t go into. After the list reaches a satisfactory length or my wrist begins to ache, I burn them. Doing so without a fireplace and with several smoke alarms isn’t always a simple process, but I find a way. When the words themselves are particularly incendiary, sometimes they combust all on their own. Other occasions, I shred them first to ensure maximal destruction. Once the smoke clears, I feel like a new man, fresh out of ideas.

There are people who say things you might disagree with. That’s fine, I suppose. To deal with these people is no trouble – just agree. They aren’t looking for a debate, as much as a nodding head. Frankly, you’ll make far more friends through subtle, non-threatening gestures than any clever turn of phrase. 

Let’s say you’re out at lunch in a big professional setting and the boss orders a bottle of Prosecco for the table. But you hate the bubbles, remember? Honestly, you despise carbonation of any kind, having once been kicked out of Yellowstone for heckling Old Faithful. That’s understandable on your private time, but this is business. So grab a glass and drink up. 

Most days end in prayer – a one-sided conversation between you and your Maker. That's all right, I guess. But since God can read your thoughts, he’s listening to a clearer feed than the NSA. No day needs you to pray. If it’s important, he’ll figure it out. 

There isn’t a situation that can’t be improved by a little prudent self-censorship. You’ll see. Just don’t say anything about it. Cool? If nothing else, it's great for the skin. Nothing reduces wrinkles better than never saying what you think. 

Cool Intentions

There happens to be this bizarre notion floating around these days, bobbing up and down like a pet desperate to please. There it is, this notion of ours, nominally submerged in a spring-fed pond, as bored swans wisely ignore its dangerous logic on their way to a nested fete. Intent doesn’t matter, huh?

Not to me it doesn’t. When an Amazon package shows up in my mailbox, filling the space so no other mail can easily get in – I open it. Why should I bother to first see if my name is on the label? It’s in my home, isn’t it? Precisely. Once the mail crosses that invisible threshold it’s mine. With this package philosophy guiding all home deliveries, you might think I own plenty of items I don’t need. Things that weren’t meant for me. While it’s true that I didn’t need them at first, I’ve come to embrace these boxes like lost souls looking for a better life. Their arrival on my doorstep is proof of fate. Plus, Amazon has such a good return policy, there’s no need for the sender to enlist a search party for the missing. They'll get a second chance.

The whole concept of accidents is a foolish waste of mental energy. Whether or not I meant to scald my toes and ruin my slippers with a pot of fresh coffee is irrelevant. That I did is all that matters. My slippers don’t care that it wasn’t my “intention.” They only care that they smell of a cheap diner’s stack of used cardboard sleeves sticking out of the garbage. And my toes? They felt the burn all the same. In other words, they got the message. 

You see, I could say that I didn’t “mean” to spill coffee or that some old lady didn’t mean to send me an expensive stereo, since it was clearly a wedding present for her grand-nephew. But those facts are the facts. That hi-fi is mine because I received it. My toes are bolder than most French roasts now. That’s the reality and there’s no way getting around it. 

And I wasn’t trying to hit you in the face with a fresh, icy snowball. But you walked into the blind spot of my wind up and got a frosty projectile right in the kisser. I could say that I was aiming for something besides your head. Would you believe me? Would you care? 

So don’t take this the wrong way. Not that it would matter. 

High Speed Fail

There’s a great debate happening at the moment on the infrastructure circuit. Champions of high-speed rail (standing atop hollowed-out cabooses while hollering into train whistles) want to accelerate into a track-heavy future. As is often the case, the experts are going about it all wrong. They are caught up in the romance – wondering why planes never got the same troubadour treatment by artists of the day (excluding of course Steve Miller’s obvious aerial obsession). Lonesome whistles are one thing, while propellers and turbines are obnoxious symbols of the new age. Trains evoke a simpler time, of soot and soot-covered balladeering hobos, committed to a lack of hygiene rendering them incapable of touching a piece of sheet music without leaving streaks of grime.

All of this is to say that in 2021 we should not be focused on speeding up our trains. On the contrary, we should adopt a more reasonable goal. Like slowing down our planes. I’m not suggesting that cross-country trips should be accomplished via wagon train and a few dozen oxen. Nor am I arguing that a trip to LAX is incomplete without a cannibalization flirtation somewhere northwest of Lake Tahoe. But what’s wrong with the trip taking a little longer? 

 

We’re greedy, shamelessly greedy. It wasn’t too long ago when the buzzing sounds of a dial-up modem signaled cyber velocity. Now, it’s a tortoise-like reminder of how spoiled we’ve become when a webpage fails to load in a split second. But why can’t we adjust to a different, more leisurely pace?

We can. And if I have anything to say, we will. Let’s set a federally enforced speed limit, standardizing national travel so that no mode of travel is any faster than the next. That goes for bikes, trikes, and yikes (unicycles). This way, however you get around comes down to taste, rather than efficiency. If it’s too difficult to fly planes dramatically slower, fine – they have wheels, don’t they? Steer those jumbo jets out on the highway and bus it out to your destination. Just because something can fly doesn’t mean it must. Penguins come to mind, though I don’t think they can actually fly. But try telling that to their flapping friends. Like a fish who doesn’t swim, they’ve made quite the comfortable life for themselves. And, as a matter of record, they can swim – quite well, in fact.

In a perfect world, running would be outlawed, since walking is a viable and safe alternative. With a little time and lots of lobbying from Washington, perhaps we’ll get there. But for now, we must take our victories wherever they come. Having trains and planes that top out around 25 MPH is one such win. 

The Seventh Spiel

The year is unimportant. The place is insignificant. What’s relevant is that to the delight of everyone but the most seasoned and crusty cynic, a global pandemic slowly abates. There’s hope, somewhere off in the distant sea, out near the horizon, beside the shrimp boats and pirate trawlers. The shore is empty, but for one underemployed night clerk aimlessly ambling along it. Antonious Blockchain is a cryptocurrency evangelist. He likes to talk, to anyone and anything.

On this day, he’s mapping out the finer points of computational math problems to a captive family of gastropods. A French second cousin on his mother’s side would view this scene as a potential five-star appetizer – beachside escargot bolstered by fresh parsley and warm butter. But Blockchain has never eaten a snail in his life, and he’s not about to start now. As he attempted to give a quick refresher on data processing, each slug slinked away into the water, preferring the dark, dangerous abyss to continuing this lecture. Each snail had already graduated from an institution of higher learning, thus rendering this lecture without any tangible benefits. They weren’t going to receive credit for enduring it. When that was obvious, they left, leaving Antonious to fend for himself in the hopes of finding another unwilling audience. 

Antonious scooped up a handful of pebbles and seashells, skipping each one into the ocean. The he smelled something. The funk was immediately overwhelming. The kind of aroma dentists have nightmares about. It was a pungent phantasm, a fetid phantom, a putrid presence, a stinky specter, a guttural ghost, a reeking wraith. And it could only mean one thing – The Black Breath had arrived. 

There are some who would have been terrified to come within six feet of such an acrid apparition. Just not Antonious Blockchain. He still needed investors in his startup. Who better than a malodorous member of the undead? Blockchain didn’t waste any time going into “hard sell mode.” He knew that he had seven chances, or spiels, to convince The Black Breath that joining in on the crypto-craze would be a wise and prudent decision. 

However, Antonious could not, for the life of him, get through to the ghastly ghost. The first six spiels went in one ear and out the ether. To make the seventh count, he would have to pull out all the schleps. 

This was Blockchain at his best. Rattling off statistics, telling heavily embellished mining anecdotes, and making financial forecasts using aggressive hand gestures. To make this spiel a little different, he offered to play a game with everything on the line. The only trouble was they couldn’t decide what to play, board or video, computer or phone. The two fools bickered back and forth on the merits of chess versus D&D. There wasn’t enough time. Antonious concluded with a bold statement, jump aboard now and you’ll never have to worry about buying toothpaste or mouthwash again. You will know the pleasure of surprising unsuspecting people. As it stands now, they always smell you coming. 

The Black Breath acknowledged the skill and effort Antonious expelled in making his case. He coughed a bit, cleared his throat momentarily, which only led to even more hacking, and responded. 

 

“Whaddya say? You in or what?,” asked an anxious Antonious. 

“On one condition..."

“Anything. Anything at all.”

“It's cache only.”

Smartphoning it In

After a decent run, a run no one expected, music has run into its unfair share of glaring obstacles. The sort of problems you can’t merely play away. From cavemen banging on hollowed-out gourds to the choral excesses of reality TV, we should all be happy that music made it this long and did this well. But if we don’t do something, and fast, we’re looking at a musical landscape that’s emptier than the aforementioned gourd. Destined for the same compost heap as the rest of recent prehistory.

Human beings get exhausted listening to the same thing. The trumpet was a novel instrument in the beginning. So was the piano and the viola. Not today, when everything must have a high-tech angle to entice the glazed-over demographic of restless adolescents. Only the supremely deranged reminisce about the good ol’ days of rotary phones and the triangle. 

If phones are so much smarter today, then why not saxophones and vibraphones? What Charlie Parker was able to accomplish on an alto sax, despite being more strung out than soaking wet laundry, pales in comparison to what he’d create with a saxosmartphone. On-stage improvisation could benefit from a helpful app store suddenly at the ready to assist in any melodic digression. While plenty of legendary photographers captured the hazy, smoke-filled light of popular night clubs, where were the selfies? Where were the POV shots taken from inside a piano, drum kit or trombone? I’ll tell you. They weren’t there. No stereotypical duck face self-portrait would compare to the mid-note shot of someone like Freddie Hubbard, quite literally blowing his way into stardom.  

No wonder Sesame Street has fallen on hard times - xylophones never got smarter. Neither did vibraphones, the instrumental choice of someone who couldn’t decide between playing a piano and the drums. Somewhere along the way, instruments stopped getting smart. We didn’t give up after the acoustic guitar, satisfied with the wood apparatus. There’s a universe in which Hendrix sits on a tree stump playing a medieval lute while commuters ignore his every strum. 

Smarten up. 

Dispatches from the Protozone

Years before I ever set bare foot onto an ad agency lobby as a member of the security staff asked me kindly to slip back on my socks and shoes, I worked as a master puppeteer on the popular children’s show, The Protozone. Misunderstood in its day, the program never achieved mainstream success, always having difficulty showing the lighter side of microorganisms. Henson it was not.

We were hip though, hiring several eukaryote consultants, having them on set to ensure we weren’t wildly off base in our protozoa portrayals. I wasn’t even an original cast member – that honor went to actual members of an amoeba acting troupe. They were fine in rehearsals – so the story goes – but on opening night they were nowhere to be seen. What did the producers expect? When you enlist tiny, single-celled organisms, who are only visible under powerful microscopes, this is what happens. The director scrambled picking members of the audience at random to join the performance. I was one of those lucky people. 

In the script, my character, Friar Dino Flagella, ran the Church of the Flagellates, a religious order of wispy appendages, floating through time and space. There were some hiccups after that first performance, but most children on hand took to the stories, almost as if they’d been infected. Frankly, with so much time passing, I can now say that the relationship between actors and audience was a decidedly parasitic one, with us literally feeding off them. 

Still, it was an exciting thing to be a part of. One day a Paramecium would show up and it would change the whole complexion of the show. We would adapt the script to fit whatever was in the room. This was actual improv existing on a microscopic level. Sometimes, a person in the front row would walk out, fed up and disgusted. Something we always viewed as a real achievement.  

So why am I telling you all this? Because I never should have taken the job in the first place. I needed the money at the time, living only off a small allowance and the occasional car wash cash. While there were protozoans in my family, the connection was a distant one. Some relatives spoke about a bad case of amoebic dysentery that popped up on a cruise ship a long time ago. The details were scant though. I should have done everything in my power to bring a projection screen down to the theatre, making the original cast members feel more comfortable. They never felt seen. How come? Because no one ever thought to make them visible. Instead, a panicked production team went with an all-human cast to salvage the investors money. 

I didn’t know that then. I only knew it was a great opportunity. There are times when I feel like apologizing to every single-cell organism – though I know such an undertaking is impossible. While many of them survive through predation, what we did was no better. We took the essence of organic tissue and caricatured it for our own entertainment. Simply put, it wasn’t our story to tell. How do I know for certain that the most devout dinoflagellates distill their own liqueur for piety and profit? The truth is, I don’t. 

I’d like to think I’ve evolved since the days of The Protozone, in the midst of much acclaim and adulation. Then again, who can really say what counts as progress? 

Watching the World Go Round and Round

Children reared in the latter half of the twentieth century were taught all they had to do to succeed was to participate. Do that and there’d be a plastic trophy with their name on it waiting for them as they hit the locker room. Maybe not their full name – since the base of a trophy only has so much space. Initials then. Participation as a virtue has extended well beyond the white lines of a little league ballfield and into homes, offices, home offices, and yes, a geometric meeting ground I, and many others, like to call the public square.

Too bad it’s led a great many people dangerously astray. Why participate when you can just as easily abstain, refrain, and avoid ? Did Gladiator teach us nothing? It’s better to be in the crowd, surrounded by a sea of peanut shells and empty beer cans, than in the arena with psychopaths and circus animals. Teddy Roosevelt, despite his mustache, got it wrong. It’s not the man in the arena who counts. It’s the person watching from a safe distance, with a fleece blanket over their shivering thighs, holding a pair of high-powered binoculars, a transistor radio and all the latest betting lines. The credit, my friends, belongs to the person dispassionately involved in the competition. You may claim that I can’t understand victory without being on the field. That’s fine, but I will also never walk away as a loser. I can’t be defeated from the mezzanine – unless we’re talking about food poisoning, which we aren’t. The players are handsomely rewarded for their emotional distress.  So yeah, I won’t know victory or defeat, but I’ll probably beat the traffic by ducking out in the 3^rdquarter. That’s as much a win as any touchdown. 

This was the beauty of color television. You could watch professional athletes freezing their nose hairs and chin whiskers off at Lambeau Field in subzero weather while you were safely mixing drinks in your temperature-controlled, wood-paneled and heavily carpeted den, admiring the tundral ambiance without so much as feeling a single solitary flake. You definitely didn’t have to be there to experience the highs and lows of the contest.

The world has a surplus of serial participators, obsessed with the notion of making a difference. The place to be is in a lawn chair on the side of the road watching as the world goes by. You won’t get sweaty, you won’t get noticed, but you won’t get hit by any cars either. And there are always concession to help you pass the time. 

CSO (Chief Stupidity Officer): Job Alert

Here at Ads Hominem, we’re looking for a uniquely suited (definitely not Armani) individual to fill our latest high-level position. The job is a creation borne out of weeks of discussion and very little listening – our trademark. What the agency needs is a flickering light to guide us through the changes that are most certainly coming down the pike. So who exactly are we looking for to fill the newly-minted role of Chief Stupidity Officer? You? Maybe?

You’re a petty, capricious, and literal thinker. When someone says, “think outside the box” you bring a soggy cardboard package that’s been left unclaimed on your stoop for weeks. The address is illegible, not that you could read it anyway. You know how to read, in an academic sense, but you choose not to. You’re a conscientious objector when it comes to literacy, preferring to have people “come and find you” if their emails aren’t getting through. 

There’s no right age for the job as long as you’re completely set in your ways. You should be influenced by people – you’re a follower – but you should also have an allergy to change of any kind. Your mind wanders and your digressions are painfully boring. Underlings will quit despite promises of material wealth in the face of you retelling the same story about Thanksgiving 1982 and the notorious “turkey baster incident.” 

You don’t trust people. You hate social media, but you spend too much of your time on it. You refuse to take responsibility even when there’s no way around it. You’re a master of deflection. You’re not here to mentor, you’re here to annoy. You’re a rival and a disgrace. You hate collaboration not because you hate people (which you do) but because you have an active distaste for ideas. You just don’t care. Multitask? You can’t even spell it. 

You don’t know what’s going on. You can’t. You’re a moron. Stupidity is in your job title, so you better fit the bill (and you better pick it up). You can’t have some excuse either. No medication, learning disability, or a recent concussion. You must be dumb, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. The less you understand, the less that will bother you.

It’s your job to create more problems than you can solve. You’re not here to help. Think of yourself like a foreign object slowly making its way through your building’s pipes until arriving at a juncture that’s far too narrow to pass. You’re there to clog, to slow things down. Things shouldn’t run smoothly. When the water suddenly rises in a toilet or sink, that’s you, changing the subject for every employee who thought they had control over the situation. Starting fires is far easier than putting them out – and much more fun. And at Ads Hominem, we tossed the last of the plungers out with the fire extinguishers.

Your lack of qualifications are your qualifications. Ultimately, that’s how you’ll get the job. To perform this job successfully is grounds for immediate termination. 

When can you start?  

Standard Carpet Response

Have you read your rental agreement lately? Chances are, if you’re anything like us, you haven’t. You’re using it as bookmark in your dogeared copy of Das Kapital, unread, unseen, and un-understood. Most landlords require 80% of the floor covered by rugs. A reasonable request if you ask us – a multimillion dollar carpet company. It’s about protection, safety, and acoustics - not to mention stuffing our bank accounts. Yet your floors remain conspicuously waxy and bare. But a home is not a bowling alley, where the oil comes into play and where Pete Weber comes to play. Oil belongs on your plate, amongst the lettuce and the kale, the chard and the beet greens – never on the ground between floorboards, left to pool around uneven nails. 

 

We want to stand with you. Really we do. But that doesn’t mean we can’t all lie down on the floor together. While we may not be a mattress company, there are plenty of famous people (names you’d recognize) who’ve spent more than their fair share of debauched evenings sleeping on one of our Persian beauties. Or, as we like to say, horizontal and happy.

 

It’s our dream that by 2030, every inch of floor space on earth will be carpeted. Not 80%, but 100% - either by a grassroots ballot initiative or Presidential fiat. We must do away with the creaks and the squeaks, the noises that accompany fine hardwood. Our rule is that if you can’t see the floor, you can’t hear the floor either. 

 

But this isn’t merely a statement about wood in response to splinters and spills. It’s about everything that isn’t a rug. No more Tuscan tiles, Roman marble, Lyndhurst linoleum, or cheap laminates. You can have them as long as they’re hidden. When are people going to accept that bare floors are the naked bodies of any room? Obscene and off limits. We wear clothes, why can’t they? Society needs more shame, not less.

 

The last holdouts are still hanging on to the dream of one night reliving Tom Cruise’s cinematic sock slide. As if recreating this piece of celluloid history will get you any closer to understanding Xenu and the rest of the boys. It won't. 

But this will. In order to ensure a more carpeted union, we have four simple demands.

 

First, we’d like to see waterproof rugs for the outdoors. There’s no reason why a person hiking in the Tetons or Smoky mountains has to literally traipse along a beaten path. They deserve better. They deserve something ornate and rug-like.

 

Second, rugs are meant to be walked on, not hung on walls. We’d like to see all tapestries removed from stuffy museums and placed in crowded foyers and long hallways no matter how exquisite or expensive. If you wouldn’t put a painting on the floor, then you shouldn’t put a rug on the wall. 

 

Third, every homeowner will receive a staple gun with their annual tax refund in order to do spontaneous carpet repairs.

 

Fourth, should something unfortunate happen like a broken tumbler in the carpet shattering alongside a bottle of vodka, instead of taking a faulty vacuum out of storage to clean up the mess, we’ll encourage people to add another layer of carpet and call it a day. 

 

When in doubt, sweep your problems under the rug. And then, throw another rug on top for good measure. It can’t hurt. It won’t hurt. But maybe wear shoes for a while, just to be safe.

This is a paid advertisement by the Magic Carpet Company, LLC, PO Box 1001, Wilmington, DE 19801