Busy busy busy.

It's been a busy time here at the ol' ranch, the ranch that is actually a Cape Cod style, the ranch that we can't sell at anything close to the original asking price.

There are reasons for that, some our fault, some the fault of others, and some that are part of the complex situation of our town. 

Regardless, I have been under the gun to try to rake in as much dough as I can with my freelance work. So...

Sandra Boynton channeling Gilbert & Sullivan via Kevin Kline -- a highly unexpected but successful combination. 

I was kvetching to a friend that selling the house is the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life -- not the saddest, not the hardest, but the most stressful. She thought that moving out of her house rather than selling it was more stressful, but she also noted that she sold her place in less than a week. I kicked her in the pants and said FINE. No, I didn't, but I want to kick someone. I'm looking for suitable subjects for kicking, if you know any. 

As if I was unaware of how stressful this is, I found myself suddenly suffering from periodic and severe pain on my right jaw. It encompassed the upper and lower teeth and the entire region around it, and was some of the most awful pain I've ever felt--and I've been hospitalized with back pain, had stitches, had a concussion, and had a tooth out, so I know a little bit about pain. This stuff was Advil AND Tylenol level, and even then I would have to just wait out the sieges. It was like having a charley horse on my face. 

I figured I had managed to give myself a nice dose of temporomandibular distress, probably from clenching unawares and also in my sleep. So rather than my dentist, I went to the ENT. My old ear doc has retired, so I went to a new one covered by my insurance, a fast-talking Chinese-born doctor with a heavy accent. It almost seems like a cruel joke to have an ear doctor who speaks quickly and with a strong accent, but there we are. 

The doctor confirmed my self-diagnosis, though, taking pains to make me understand what I can do, which isn't much. He did give me a very light prescription for a muscle relaxant to take once a day. It seems to have helped. I've also made a conscious decision to try to stop myself from clenching the ol' jaw during the day, with mixed success. Nevertheless, the facial agony has moved off, at least for now. 

If you've stuck with this entry all the way to the bottom, I thank you for your kindness, and please share your own agonizing adventures with facial pain, or moving, or stress, or anything else in the comments, so I can return the sympathy. Life is stressful, as we know, and we're all in this together. 

Monkey wrenches.

A company I work for was recently purchased by some firm you and I never heard of. While being tangentially in the same business arena, one is a publisher and the other one is an investment firm. 

Knowing the track record of the money mooks at places like Boeing in recent years, I am not optimistic. My main contact says that so far there's been a little departmental shuffling, but no major changes. 

I will be the first to admit that publishing is a mug's game these days, the overeducated spooling the unnecessary to the uninterested. It had reached a grand height in the 1990s, when Condé Nast built its new tower on Times Square, and has been in precipitous decline since. (Condé had its own tower by 2015.) Still, some ends of the business are attached to lucrative industries like finance and healthcare, so they have reason to continue to expect profitability. The company I work for is like that, so there's no reason to think it was bought to be sold off in parts, or to have the stock price run up and then dumped for profit by buccaneers of finance. 

However, there is every reason to fear that, once the dust clears, the new owners will move in the monkey wrench crew to improve things. 

These improvements are very much like artificial intelligence. They are forced onto the unwilling to perform functions that are unnecessary and wind up costing jobs for people who have performed well for years. The work is then outsourced or given to cheap hires that perform poorly. The bottom line is temporarily improved, the stock price rises, then clients flee as everything gets weird and shoddy. Then it's sold off for parts.

Improve Back Better

Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of capitalism. The profit motive in a high-trust society like America has been until recently is the best means of raising people in large groups out of poverty ever devised.

I'm against stupid capitalism, however, where companies are run by people who neither know nor care about the actual business and everything goes to hell. I'm sure you can list a dozen examples of companies that died that way, usually the death of a thousand cuts rather than a staggering collapse. Often companies are just caught by surprise by technological advances. But in the end, it mostly comes down to a lack of the intelligence and devotion that made the companies great in the first place. 

If your company is bought out, as has happened to me in the past, I wish you very good luck. Keep an eye open for the monkey wrench crew, come to fix things. It's usually a sign to get the résumé together, if you haven't already. 

Forgotten men.

After thinking of the vanished Little Pete a couple of weeks ago, I got to thinking about a few old men I knew early in my so-called career who have always kind of stuck in my mind. I thought I'd share a few with you, starting with a man I'll call Gabe.

When I was in college I worked a couple of days a week as a general flunky for a small office in midtown. I was never quite sure what they did, but it appears in retrospect that they held and managed real estate in different spots in the nation. One of my jobs was distributing the mail, and we would get newspapers from all over. On my breaks I would read the papers, see which funnies were running in places like Ocala or Kansas City. Everyone there was really nice to me, which was impressive, because I had some classic screwups in that job. Like throwing out cartons of flyers that were due to be mailed, and breaking a toilet while trying to put on a new toilet seat. (A little hole in the rim can become an attractive fountain when you flush!)

Gabe was the founder, I think, and had the only private office, one of those walled-off corner ones of the kind common then, where the walls didn't reach the ceiling. He seemed to me to be about a hundred years old. He would come in late, get greeted by everyone, take off his hat, go into his office, and -- do nothing, I think. His son was running the place. Gabe was, as I would come to find out, out of it. He didn't bug anyone, but he couldn't do anything. The man was senile, I guess, but he didn't cause trouble and he wasn't mean. 

Gabe (Dickens version)

One day he cornered me while I was sitting in my area -- the back room, where real estate flyers and the like sat in boxes on large metal shelves, or piled on skids, waiting for mailing. I may have been stuffing envelopes, something I did a lot of in that job and others in years to come. Gabe came over and sat next to me to tell me about his idea for a new business, one that was going to fill a niche, and bring some serious money into the firm.

His idea was to publish a new kind of business directory -- as he spoke we were sitting in front of a library of the (then lucrative) Thomson business directories -- and gave an example of how it would work. Say, if one were to be in the bicycle parts trade, you’d have a directory for manufacturers, suppliers, and customers. And from that point on I have no idea what he was talking about, because as far as I could tell he had just described exactly the books on the shelves next to us. He promised to keep me apprised of the situation, as good opportunities would come forth. I thanked him. It was the only conversation we ever had. 

It wasn't much longer before Gabe left this world, and immediately after sitting shiva his son moved into that corner walled office. It still seemed pretty cold to me, going in that fast, but I imagine Gabe’s son had put up with a lot in Dad's later years and just wanted to move on with things. 

All of it to say, we men can have an awful time letting go of work, even when we don't need to do it, even when the work doesn't need us anymore, even when we have nothing left to offer.

I've never forgotten Gabe, though, and he did teach me a lesson. And he gave me another thing about old age to be scared of. 

We'll revisit this topic another time soon. Meanwhile, Gabe, rest in peace. 

Bloody sacrifice of the cash cow.

Once you notice it, you can't stop noticing it.

All the best and brightest around us who achieve high positions in any capacity feel obliged to follow this series of steps:

1) Examine the state of the organization.

2) Determine what segment of the market is outside its current reach. 

3) Viciously attack its strongest adherents in the hope of winning over the outsiders. 

We all know the term cash cow from marketing -- that beloved quadrant of the business that just keeps pulling in money, year after year, without very much tending, a segment that yields predictable if unspectacular dividends that can be used to fund more risky, more potentially wealth-generating projects. All the company has to do is feed the cow and not murder it. 

It seems that all the grads from the business schools get a complimentary butcher knife along with their sheepskin. They loathe having to work on a dull part of a dull company that just makes money. Blech! (People who blech! at profit are people who have never had to worry where their next meal is coming from.) They would much rather be social engineering!

Step one: Kill the cow. And the fastest way to do that is to insult its greatest adherents to the point of libel and make them angry every time they see your logo. The next step is to be shocked that people got upset, and then get panicky when the sought-after new audience segment does not flood into the doors and double the revenue. Step three: Write a book about your great accomplishment a fail upward into a new job.

Gilette. Bud Light. Disney (subsets especially include Star Wars). The NFL. These are only some of the prominent businesses that have suffered at the hands of their young geniuses. 

The United States is doing it to its citizens. The very people who love this country and the principles upon which it stands and would die for it are treated with suspicion and worse by its own government, which is run by people who would not suffer a rainy weekend for it. Meanwhile, noncitizens are welcomed, no matter how illegal their entry, no questions asked, and criminals are allowed to run the streets. 

And now, the Catholic Church?

Every devout Catholic I know is worried that the Holy Father, a.k.a. Hippie Pope Frank, has called the three-year synod to make some rash changes, like ordaining women (which the church has declared is not possible), encouraging more illegal immigration (but not into Vatican City), easing up on divorce, or blessing same-sex unions, following the lead of some apostate bishops in Germany. (Germany: Birthplace of Bad Ideas Since Forever.)

The stupid logo they commissioned for it fills me with dread. Rather than being focused on Jesus, God, or the Trinity, it looks like a pagan tree god sheltering the usual multiculti mob, which schleps forward into a future of tribalism and special pleading.

I know church membership is down since World War II, but that's true for all churches. The reasons are varied, ranging from scientism/positivism to the apathy of wealth to the sickness of Communism to worldwide PTSD from the war. It's not just because the Pope doesn't like the Pill. 

Protestant churches who ran out in front to rubberstamp everything people wanted lost attendance even faster. Why? There's no point to a church that asks nothing, because a church with no firm moral center can give nothing. A church that approves everyone's bullshit can neither inspire nor educate, and certainly can't compel adherence or the personal sacrifice that leads to spiritual growth. If they're just social service stations, who the hell cares? The government already does that and tithing to them is not voluntary.

Is the Catholic church killing the cow with the so-called synod? Is it Vatican III, "Just do what you want"? Which would utterly infuriate and demoralize the faithful, who have kept the joint up all this time. And the church would be following a modern heresy. 

Heresy is not what the atheists say; that's simple unbelief. Evildoers within the church are not usually heretics; they are evil bastards who would have been better off sunk with a millstone necktie. Heresy comes from focusing on one part and blowing it up to be the whole thing. Worship of poverty like Tolstoy or worship of spiritual matters as secret magic like the Gnostics are heresies. Love of people to the exclusion of the laws of God would be the greatest heresy to ever invade the church. 

If the pope is thinking of doing something nuts -- not ex cathedra level but still -- he will not bring any of the "lost sheep" and he will lose the powerful love and devotion of those he has. He may think he's being Christlike, leaving the 99 to go after the 1, but when he gets back with the 1 and finds the 99 have fled and then the 1 kicks him in the nads and tears off, he'll feel a little stupid.

If that's possible. None of these cash-cow-killer geniuses ever seem to regret, understand, or appreciate anything. You explain that people don't like it when you attack them and their cherished beliefs, and they act like it's weird that stupid people would have feelings. They fail to grasp the most simple ideas, and we're the stupid ones?

The people in charge of things hate the very people whom they need the most. Once you see it, you see it everywhere. 

Business writing, song, dog.

Continuing the theme of clarity in writing we began yesterday, I thought I would pass along some advice on business writing in the modern era. There are two key things you should bear in mind at all times whenever you are engaged in business communications. People are taught these in school, but we could always use a refresher.  

The first is: Clarity is king. The e-mail, cover letter, formal request, summary report -- none of these is an appropriate place to go into a Song of Myself. You may use some style, a little razzle-dazzle if it highlights the message, but stick to the point and leave personalities out of it. If clarity is king, brevity is his viceroy. Don't give your audience time to get bored. 

As an example, I would like to use the clear and brief instructions in the chorus of that seminal hit by Jim Stafford, "Don't Pet the Dog." 

Don't pet the dog, don't pet him whatever you do

'Cause he ain't been fixed, he knows some tricks

That'll sure make a fool out of you

Don't pet the dog, he gets it confused with romance

Don't tickle his sides or look deep in his eyes

Or he'll be taking your leg to the dance

Six simple lines that convey clear, crucial information. The first line is a simple declarative statement, repeated and emphasized to impress its importance: 

Don't pet the dog, don't pet him whatever you do

The next sentences outline the source of the issue, and hints at the consequences of ignoring same:

'Cause he ain't been fixed, he knows some tricks

That'll sure make a fool out of you

The fourth line explains the problem in a little more detail, explaining the current state of the problem:

Don't pet the dog, he gets it confused with romance

And finally, the last two lines add more detail of the range of the warning and the depth of trouble for those failing to heed it: 

Don't tickle his sides or look deep in his eyes

Or he'll be taking your leg to the dance

You can see how effective this short message is. The verses go into greater detail, but you can think of that as the full report; the chorus is like the executive summary. 

The second piece of advice is: Be careful. 

Another reason to be brief, if not terse, in writing for work is that you probably would like to leave your job on your own terms rather than be defenestrated. Do not give in to the temptation to spice things up with a little levity or gossip. Companies are so terrified about being sued by their oversensitive and high-strung workers that they want us all to spy on one another like the Stasi and report the slightest infraction to human resources. Written communications can and will be presented at your drumming-out.

That e-mail you sent your best work buddy Bob, the one with the blonde joke? Someone looking over Bob's shoulder is going to report you for it, and maybe him as well for laughing at it. There is no freedom of speech. There will be no right to confront your accuser. The only question will be how big a box you will need for your desk tchotchkes, and whether you'll be escorted out by security. It really is like penny-ante East Berlin out there. 

It's funny that companies are so terrified of the reputation risk that comes with these kinds of lawsuits, and yet are so often run by idiots who will send the company down in flames to follow DEI and other PC nonsense at the expense of their customers and shareholders. That kind of foolishness seems like a much bigger reputational risk to me. But this is the world in which we live now. 

So, in brief: Be brief. Don't make eye contact with the crazy people. For job security, have no personality at work. And if the dog ain't been fixed, don't pet him. Whatever you do.

Change is good.

 

"It's just that, when you said you were looking for experts in change management,
I thought you meant something different."

Book biz.

It's flatly incredible how the book business has changed since 1980, despite the fact that readers are readers and still like the same things -- good stories well told, interesting histories, popular science, funny stuff, puzzles and games, and so on, bound within the confines of two covers. But oh how the scene has changed. 

Can it change back at all? 

In 1980, there were still plenty of independent booksellers, as well as thriving chains like Waldenbooks, Paperback Booksmith, and growing chains like Books-A-Million, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. The chains grew quickly, and soon were wiping the floor with the locals. In 1998's You've Got Mail, a Barnes & Noble stand-in called Fox & Sons Books was the ominous presence set to destroy Meg Ryan's little bookshop. 

Thirteen years later, Waldenbooks and Borders were dead and Barnes & Noble was fighting for its life, all because of a little startup in the 1990s called Amazon, which originally sold nothing but books. It seemed like in short order the brick-and-mortar bookstore would be a thing of the past.

Yesterday I read an interesting article that showed that Barnes & Noble is making a comeback. Ted Gioia, the Honest Broker, writes on Substack that 

Barnes & Noble is flourishing. After a long decline, the company is profitable and growing again—and last week announced plans to open 30 new stores. In some instances, they are taking over locations where Amazon tried (and failed) to operate bookstores.

That's exceptionally surprising, especially in the post-pandemic order-everything-online world. My wife barely goes to stores anymore, and she's not alone. Barnes & Noble seemed particularly doomed. It didn't discount as well as Amazon; also, one couldn't bundle buys from groceries and clothing and auto supplies and toys and hardware into a book order for free shipping as at Amazon. B&N has an e-reader, the Nook, like Amazon's Kindle, but the Nook was nowhere near as popular (although often considered a superior device). And yet Barnes & Noble is on the comeback trail? 

Gioia says that the secret is this: the new CEO of Barnes & Noble, James Daunt, loves books, and loves bookstores. He thinks book lovers love bookstores, too. But he did not like what he saw at Barnes & Nobles's stores, and set out to fix them. They were dull; they forced certain books in the faces of readers because of deals with publishers; they ran crap coffeeshops that were money-losers; they sold all kinds of non-book toys and things that didn't really help the bottom line. Most of all, he wanted the individual stores to sell the books that sold, not the ones that the home office said to push. To make decisions for the readers, not the suppliers. 

If you have any love for books or the book business, read the article. 

I have a couple of quibbles with the author, though, but not ones that argue his findings. First, I would note that it was not a thoughtless decision in the 1990s to open cafés in bookstores; for the first time ever, Americans were hanging around coffeeshops as if it was something good to do on one's spare time, so why not have them in to buy the reading material there? (It didn't last, though -- we're back to let's-caffeine-up-and blow, and Starbucks stores are dumps, and other coffee chains are failing.) 

Also, there is a problem with giving the employees in stores complete control over book sales, as has been seen elsewhere, and for some time -- they don't always bother with the books people want (such as, military or conservative political or history books) but rather forcibly promote the ones they think people should be reading. In other words, instead of a tin-pot dictator at the home office, you have little speech-silencing dictators in the stores themselves, who really don't care how much money is not made, as long as (for instance) that damn Jordan Peterson never sees the light of day again. Why should they? They don't own the store and they don't get a commission. So if a bunch of books from Regnery get "damaged in shipping" and have to be sent back at the publisher's dime, well, whoopsie! Don't have what you want in stock? Hey, you should be reading Ta-Nehisi Coates anyway.

And yet, Daunt's plan is almost magical in a way, because it relies on the last thing most business people genuinely consider anymore:

. . . I almost hate to say it, because the lesson is so simple.

If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema. 

But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Grammophon or Concord. I’ve come to doubt whether the people in charge really love the music.

Maybe they once did, but at some point they lost faith in the redemptive power of songs. That’s the only explanation I can give for what they’re doing. Instead they put their faith in something else—maybe a brand licensing deal, or a fashion line tie-in, or a human interest story. Or maybe they just decided that money talks, and began making creative decisions based on discounted cash flow projections.

Books-A-Million is still sticking with the old B&N type marketing, but they've always relied on volume and discounting over experience and culture. It will be interesting to see which proves more successful in the long run -- but I'd back Daunt.

When you hear from people in finance, it's about crunching the numbers, rounds of fund-raising, influencers, disruptors, and creative destruction, not being in love with the business and what's on sale. It's how they plan to get rich in five or ten years, not how they plan to have a thriving business. It's why publishers hardly have backlists anymore, or really anything but a swirling mass of barely promoted books with a few heavily promoted titles keeping the works afloat. It's amazing anyone in the book business has survived to this point with this business plan. The movie business is the same way, though -- cookie-cutter blockbusters and a bunch of homework that wins trophies but no one wants to watch. We see how well that model is working now.

Maybe what we need is more love and less numbers. Because, and I hate to break it to the smart money guys, everything is failing anyway, and the rest looks like houses of cards. Stop trying to be the smartest dweeb in the room, and start being actual human beings again.

Logo trouble.

Hello, friends! It's your old pal Fred of Fredcoin, here to share one of our latest promotions. You can help us, and we can help you! It's the Fredcoin Way!

You're all familiar with our symbol, of course -- the Fredcoin coin with the smilin' founder on it. 

Accept no substitutes!

But now we're looking for a logo. I asked the senior executives to come up with some ideas, and their ideas were so bad I had to fire them. So I asked the boys in the mailroom to whip of a few logos, and here's what they sent in. 

Not bad, huh? They were told to use some trademark green, and I think they did a fine job. The first one has some retro cool; the second is sharp and easy to read. The third has a cute little slogan. There's something a little foreign and suave about the fourth one. And the fifth one, in addition to little green accents, uses Comic Sans. Who doesn't love Comic Sans? Only Hobo might be better. 

After long deliberation I decided to promote those mailroom guys to senior vice presidents, and after I decide which logo to use will fire the other four guys. So what do you think? If you choose the winner, we'll add fifty Fredcoin to your account! 

Update on Fredcoin.

My friends, once again I, Fred, of Fredcoin, write to you in the hope of assuring you that Fredcoin is the safest cryptocurrency investment you can make. And here I go: Fredcoin is the safest cryptocurrency investment you can make. There! I said it!

The latest news about the drop in the value of Bitcoin and the layoffs at Coinbase indicating an upcoming "Crypto Winter" should in no way indicate shakiness on our part here at Fredcoin. Our value remains what it always is, and that is the value that it has always been! Surely there's no more rock-solid guarantee than that. 

Look at that honest face!

I would especially like to take this time to refute the scurrilous, nay, infamous remarks of our competitors, most of all those hornswoggling rascals at -- ugh! it pains me to say the name! -- HodagCoin. 

BOO!

The CEO of HodagCoin, Hans Hinderminder, has dared to refer to Fredcoin using such libelous terms as "fake money" and "not real" and "funny-looking." Well, Hinderminder, let me just say, you're not exactly Cary Grant yourself, you know. Plus, HodagCoin is a failed crypto from a failure of a sham of a company with a failed investment profile and a faily fail fail failure of a CEO. On the Street they say the portfolio is mostly Blockbuster and Bank of the United States, but surely even Hinderminder isn't that stupid. OR IS HE?

In short, friends, don't listen to the whispers of those who would steal your money and leave your children hungry, like that carpetbagging bastard Hinderminder. Instead, listen to your old pal Fred, who tells you that the Key to success is using Fredcoin for savings, investment, spending, and Green Stamps. Yes, tell that old Hodag to kiss your shorts! Tell him, "Me for Fredcoin!" You'll be glad you did. 

Pizza wars.

Since we moved up to the Hudson Valley, the population of our little town has grown steadily, but the number of pizza places has remained roughly the same. We lost a Pizza Hut (if "lost" is the term I want) as well another older place, and two more opened and closed in that time. An Italian place with brick oven pizzas opened, though, and the Blockbuster is now another pizza place. Dominos moved, but won't go away. Five others have held steady during that same period, becoming neither better nor worse and remaining in business. Some have never been all that great. I guess it's proof that, as the saying goes, sex is like pizza; even when it's bad it's pretty good.

What I'm saying is, I see an opportunity here. And yes, I mean the pizza, not the sex.

The thing I've learned is that bad pizza can thrive even in a good-pizza environment with one thing: advertising. So when I take my Fredcoin profits and open my pizza place, we're going right on TV and telling everyone how great the place is. Even though I am pretty poor at making pizza, we're doing that. 

Hey, paisan! It'sa me, Fredo, of Fredo's pizza parlor! Come on down and have a nicea slice of pizza. You love it! You tell everyone how great Fredo's pizza is! Looky here -- crust so nice ana soft you could sleep on it, but so firm you'd appoint it to the Supremo Court! Cheese, lots and lots, however mucha you want! And the sauce! It'sa to die for! Or maybe it'sa to die from. Either way, you never eat another sauce ina you life!

You want toppings? We gotta da toppings! Pepperoni, sausage, meataballs, little fishies! Mushroom, garlic, onions, olives! Artichokes, roasted red pepper, scungilli! Broccoli, pine nuts, Cheez Wiz, soppressata, chocolatea sauce! Just no pineapple. You aska for pineapple, we sticka you head ina da toilet.

And we gotta more! Homemade pasta! Well, someone made it, maybe at home. Also: Lasagna! Fettucine! Octopus! Mussels manicotti! Clams casino! Oysters soprano! Crab basso profundo! Antipasto, propasto, we no takea sides! Chicken cacciatore! Veal parmigiana! Turkey tetrazzini! Goat oreganata! Squishy things fried ina oil! We're not sure what. Don't ask, justa mangia! You tried da resta, now try da besta!

Remember, at Fredo's, you likea the food so much, you wanna throw it up so you can eat it again! 

On Route 17A, next to Charlie's Mow & Plow

Hidden costs.

 

Guesstimate.

One of the things that scrolls my nurd is when clients ask for time estimates for editorial work. Not the deadline; they mean how many paid-by-the-hour hours will it take. 

I understand that they have their own paperwork to file, and that the bean counters think that estimating time to copyedit or proof a book ought to be as straightforward as estimating time for a delivery of rocks. But it doesn't work that way.

Actually, the proofreading is not too difficult to estimate, since by doing a couple of pages quickly I can figure out how long and messy the job will be. Copyediting is a little harder, since it involves editing for sense and continuity, which can be an issue if the book turns out to be complicated. Estimating for fact-checking is the worst, though, because it's hard to tell right away if the author is a know-nothing dumdum who is going to ensnarl me in a world of irritation. 

The estimate I'd like to send

You can give a book a quick going-over, but that won't tell you if the author is using half-baked or completely unbaked sources, is mistranslating foreign words, is making wild suppositions hidden by passive language, or a hundred other things that make a book a pillar of lies. As a fact-checker it is not enough to say "WRONG!" like Dom DeLuise in Blazing Saddles, although it would be satisfying. I'm expected to provide the right information, or exhaust all efforts to find it. 

The problem is, unlike your plumber who discovers hidden problems, I have little recourse when an estimate is entered. One large company in particular makes it very hard for everyone if a job comes in over estimate, and it delays payment by weeks or even months. They make strong incentives to get me to provide on-target estimates, even though there's no certain way to do it. Either I overestimate and get a rep as an over-charger, or I underestimate and wind up working free hours. 

Anyhoo, it's made me more sympathetic to the contractor who finds unexpected issues like asbestos or bad wiring or unknown leaks or any of a number of things unexpected in a renovation. Sometimes you just can't tell where the big problems are hiding, in homes as in books.

the warning sign of lowercase letters.

 I see that Target has changed its logo now. I think the company may be in trouble. 

Old

New

I've noticed that companies go to the lowercase letters when they are getting a rapacious image and want to look friendly again. Uppercase letters look dynamic and effective, but when your reputation turns from dynamic and effective to vicious and ruthless, it's time to break out the wee little letters.

we're your friend! we're here to help!

A few years back Walmart (then WAL*MART) was getting all kinds of bad press, for poor treatment of employees, ruining downtowns and mom & pop shops, killing U.S. manufacturing with a flood of cheap stuff from China, etc. They deployed a smiley face in their commercials, but it didn't help. Then they did this, and you hardly hear a complaint anymore. 

Citibank has been the home of many scandals over the years, but one that got a lot of press was when the bank was "involved in one of the biggest corporate scandals in United States history when it was accused of helping Enron disguise debt and agreed to pay $101 million to settle charges relating to the Enron fraud case," as HuffPost reported. And what did Citibank do about it? 

Yahoo! went from being a hotshot Internet stock to barely holding on for dear life. A series of terrible data breaches in the '10s was end of Marissa Mayer's career as CEO. What little rep Yahoo! had since its days as Chat Room King (remember those?) was swirling in the toilet. But don't worry; everything's under control!

I have to note that the lowercase rule does not apply to companies that have used lowercase from their founding, like Amazon and Google. They were early responders to the modern age of infantilization of consumers. Plus, they wanted to pillage from the get-go.

Has Target had any big scandals? Not lately that I know of, but for some data breaches and their expensive failure to launch in Canada. Maybe something is waiting in the wings and the logo change was preemptive. If your bank or investment company goes to a lowercase logo without warning, beware! 

I'm not sure how well this lowercase thing will work in the case of Yahoo! or Target, but it seems to have done fine for Citi and Walmart. Then again, in the case of some companies, nothing really seems to help....

Fred's Book Club: Such Tripe!

It is Wednesday, which is Hump Day, and that means it's time for the Humpback Writers, our serious book feature with the silly name. To date no actual humps on the writers have been detected, despite our best efforts. In fact, today's author/artist, while being a bit advanced in years, still has no sign of back problems, as one can see on his Web page. 

Yes, today we're profiling British cartoonist Bill Tidy, and specifically one book-length installment of his long-running cartoon saga, The Fosdyke Saga (a takeoff on the novel and TV series The Forsyte Saga). And if you stay to the end of today's post, you'll see an interesting connection between this comic strip and a notorious case currently in the papers.

When I was a kid, I loved comic strips, especially the funny ones. What would prove to be my favorite form was not the straight gag or the adventure stories, but the rarest and most difficult -- the continuing story that still had a daily punchline. Strips like Thimble Theatre and Little Nemo were known for it, but they were long gone. It was a vanished breed in my youth, at least in America, but across the pond Bill Tidy had been writing and drawing one since 1971 for the Daily Mirror. The Fosdyke Saga featured the various adventures of the Fosdyke clan, Britain's greatest tripe-selling family, and their ongoing struggles in the Edwardian era and beyond, especially against the nefarious rival Roger Ditchley. The adventures centered around selling tripe, promoting the public's awareness of tripe, inventing new uses for tripe (tripe parachute!), fending off various wicked persons, and acquiring rare tripe-related objects for their tripe museum (on the book cover above you can see the South American tripe pyramid, composed completely of dried tripe). 

From the front matter

I bought the above book (the last in the series) at the Forbidden Planet store in the Village. While a lot of the humor (or humour) was lost on this young American at the time, I still thought it was brilliant, funny, endlessly inventive, and a veritable a circus of great characters.

Tidy maintained interest with cliffhangers and rotating storylines. In one adventure in the book above, adventurous son Tom Fosdyke has been dispatched to the Arctic Circle to seek the Arctic Tripe Snake!

Meanwhile, in Manchester, youngest and strongest son Tim has had a breakdown following a plot of Ditchley's to convince the Fosdykes they are haunted! Unfortunately the doctor leaves much to be desired....

Meanwhile Jos, head of the family, is stuck in a pub, where he is spying on a devious plan to rob a bank and pin the blame on his own horse, the mighty and faithful Tripeworks!!!! (!!!)

I loved the format and desperately wanted to create a comic strip like that for the American market. Unfortunately by the time I was coming of age, newspapers were starting to die and the comics pages were shrinking, a shadow of what they once were -- and that was before the Internet just about delivered the coup de grace. 

But that came much earlier for Tidy at the Mirror. In 1984 the Mirror was acquired by Robert Maxwell, MP, who didn't think Bill Tidy was funny, and cast him out. Tidy had been at the paper since the fifties, so this was a pretty big blow. The thing that saddened Bill most was that he'd planned to extend the Fosdyke adventures much longer:

“It was a very sad day when, with forty years of the Fosdyke story told, the Mirror’s new management decided to axe the strip [in 1985]. Fosdykes at Dunkirk, The Salford Blitz, the place of tripe production in the Marshall Plan, the possibility of free school tripe under the terms of the 1944 Education Act. All these stirring events are ready chronicled and simply need the light of day — a nation waits.”

But alas, that was the end. The Fosdyke saga, which had been adapted into radio plays, a TV show, and a stage play, came to a close. And people wonder why hardly anyone eats tripe anymore.

Here's the kicker I mentioned at the top: Robert Maxwell, who later annoyed New Yorkers by buying the Daily News, perished in 1991 in a bizarre incident where he apparently fell off his yacht naked while peeing in the ocean (as one does). Murder and suicide were ruled out (hmm); death by heart attack that caused drowning was the coroner's deduction. Maxwell had defaulted on a fifty million pound loan, which set off a feeding frenzy among his creditors, and his publishing empire came to the same fate as did he, minus the peeing.

More recently, Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine has been much in the news. As I write, she still faces serious charges for her dealings with the late Jeffrey Epstein, who probably did not kill himself. That story is, shall we say, tripe. The question is whether she can bargain her silence for freedom, based on the high rollers that went to Pedo Island under her watch. 

But on goes Bill Tidy, drawing and doing many other things, and God bless him. His is the kind of saga one should emulate, not that of the strange and awful Maxwells. 

P.G. Doghouse.

Readers of this blog, being literate and above average in oh so many ways, may be able to guess why I spent the money on a bag of refrigerated dog treats for our two little (read: huge) chaps. Yes, they're mostly good boys and deserve treats. And yes, they like chicken, very much. But why this brand?

P.G. Wodehouse was perhaps the funniest artist of prose the English language has ever known. Certainly there are many other talented humor writers, but not one has had the consistency and staying power of that late hero of humor. Readers of his will remember Freddie Threepwood, the rather soft-headed second son of the somewhat addlepated Lord Emsworth, who first appeared in Wodehouse's incomparable Something Fresh. Freddie is a bit of a wastrel, but sort of an innocent, never carousing in a serious way, but pulling pranks, drinking too much in school, running up debts, and consistently falling in love with the wrong women.

The Earl of Emsworth was so constituted that no man or thing really had the power to trouble him deeply, but Freddie had come nearer to doing it than anybody else in the world. There had been a consistency, a perseverance about his irritating performances which had acted on the placid peer as dripping water on a stone. Isolated acts of annoyance would have been powerless to ruffle his calm; but Freddie had been exploding bombs under his nose since he went to Eton.
       He had been expelled from Eton for breaking out at night and roaming the streets of Windsor in a false moustache. He had been sent down from Oxford for pouring ink from a second storey window on to the Junior Dean of his college. He had spent two years at an expensive London crammer's and failed to pass into the Army. He had also accumulated an almost record series of racing debts, besides as shady a gang of friends, for the most part vaguely connected with the turf, as any young man of his age ever contrived to collect.  

The thing about Freddie is that, after many disappointments in romance, he finally meets the true love of his life, the American Aggie Donaldson, whose father is the owner of Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits. They wed, move to America, and Freddie's new father-in-law puts him to work in the firm, selling Donaldson's Dog-Joy. Freddie becomes reborn -- confident and driven to succeed. It makes a new man of him. Kind of a bore on the subject. Lord Emsworth barely recognizes Freddie when the latter makes a trip to scout the prospect of selling Donaldson's in England. Here, from "The Go-Getter" in Blandings Castle:

"Rupert Bingham, did you say?" said Freddie with a sudden animation. "I'll tell you something about Rupert Bingham. He has a dog named Bottles who has been fed from early youth on Donaldson's Dog-Joy, and I wish you could see him. Thanks to the bone-forming properties of Donaldson's Dog-Joy, he glows with health. A fine, upstanding dog, with eyes sparkling with the joy of living and both feet on the ground. A credit to his master."
       "Never mind about Rupert's dog!"
       "You've got to mind about Rupert's dog. You can't afford to ignore him. He's a dog to be reckoned with. A dog that counts. And all through Donaldson's Dog-Joy."

I have no idea if Freshpet had Wodehouse in mind when they created their own Dog Joy. The website doesn't mention it, and I have my doubts. For one thing, Donaldson's product is clearly a dog food, a mainstay of a pet's diet, while Freshpet's Dog Joy is a snack. Still, in honor of Wodehouse, and in solidarity with another Freddie, I went ahead and bought the bag.

My dogs give it two paws up. Two out of two approve. They like the rubbery, stinky little chicken-flavored treats. However, I was surprised that they weren't wild over them. I can tell when they like a treat, when they really like a treat, and when they'll run through fire for a treat (we call that Cheese Level). Dog Joy did not achieve the top ranking. But they liked it a lot, so yes, they approve.

It did not turn them into dogs to be reckoned with. Actually, at their large size, I think that was already the case.

And I think writing about Freshpet's Dog Joy has not done the slightest bit as much for me as selling Donaldson's Dog-Joy did for Freddie Threepwood. Pity.

Staff meeting: The Vision Thing.

[Twelve figures in a meeting room; one walks in and stands before them, clearing his throat to stop the chatter.]

"All right, all right, everyone, let's settle down. It's our first staff meeting, and we want to make sure we're all on the same page, right? Okay, I think I've met all of you. Of course, I'm 2020, the new CEO, and our goal is to make this the best year ever. The first thing I'd like to discuss is the promotion of the new year. The last CEO had a pretty good slogan -- 'You Say You Want a Revolution' -- but maybe a little too suggestive. I was jotting down some ideas on the way in and I like this one. Ready? '2020: Get the Vision.' Clever, don't you think? Yes, there, uh, July, is it?"

"June, sir. July's my sister."

"Oh, yes, sorry. Strong family resemblance."

"We've been told. I don't wish to sound negative, sir, but that slogan is all about the new year -- nothing about the rest of us. It sounds like of, well, yearist to me."

"Hmm... While I appreciate your input, July --"

"June, sir." 

"June, sorry... While I appreciate your input, I must remind you that when we all come together we are a year, and that's what this is all about. Not just me, you see, but all of us."

"Balderdash!"

"Excuse me?"

"It's me, August! And you may call it a team, but I call it another annus horribilis! We months never get the respect we deserve!"

Grumble grumble harrumph harrumph he's right he's a damn hothead

"All right, all right, everyone, let's table the slogan for now. What I want is for you to tell me what your plans are to make this year excellent. Would you like to begin? Yes, you in the front."

"January is the name, and I intend to be every bit as excellent in starting this year as I always am, MISTER 2020."

"Psst... Mr. 2020 -- me, March. Don't mind her. She always acts icy and mean up top, but she's hot down under."

"I, uh, noticed."

"I object! I object to this objectification!" 

Grumble grumble harrumph harrumph

"Please, please! Everyone, focus! Remember, this is not about us! This is about the people on this planet. Does anyone else have any plans?"

"Why, I do, sir, indeed I do! December here, and my oh my, I am already looking forward to my turn at the wheel. We just had a wonderful Christmas season but I think we can completely surpass it next time! I just hope, if I may say, that my colleague November doesn't elbow in again as usual."

"I object! Mr. 2020, December is completely out of line. It's not my fault she's always spilling that Christmas stuff into my space!"

"Well, if we're going to be little Mr. Norbert Nitpickers here, let me say that I don't much care for May calling herself the 'Merry Merry month' -- some of us put a lot of effort into our merriness, don't you know."

"Yeah, whatevs, Grandma."

"I, uh, dislike being confrontational -- my name is September -- but everyone seems to intrude in my space. Here I am, a pleasant month in any and either hemisphere, and yet I am neglected, shoved into seasons I don't properly belong, full of complaints about school and work. But you never hear me complain, no sir."

"All right, well, I'm sure we all have concerns, but we can work them out, have some open and friendly dialogue. Let's sit down and --"

>**FRRRAAAAAAP**<

"Who put a whoopee cushion on my chair?"

"Tee hee!"

"You're a fool, April."

"Look, I think we're off on the wrong foot here."

"Or cheek." 

BWA HA HA HA

"That's enough. I want you each to send me a report by week's end with your thoughts for this year, all right? And keep to your lanes, people; we're taking it one month at a time. Dismissed."

[2020 sighs, rubs face in hands. Mumbles, "No wonder none of the CEOs last beyond twelve months in this joint." Then he looks up, says wistfully: "2020: Get the Vision." Smiling, he sits back.]

>**FRRRAAAAAAP**<

We need a lot of Christmas.

I heard a heartbreaking story the other day. That's not too uncommon around Christmas, when newspapers will publish such stories for fund-raising appeals. Or maybe it's just bad news in a family that seems particularly poignant because it strikes at Christmastime. Terry Teachout, writer on the arts for the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, provided one like that this year, and God bless him and his wife.

The story I heard was from an acquaintance whose female friend was in California for Christmas, in all likelihood to watch her grandchild die helplessly, while the baby's parents were off to score more drugs. The baby was born in a flop hotel and dumped at the hospital. The parents entered the wind.

My friend's girlfriend (seems an odd word for a woman with a grandchild) is doing what little she can, but it is very little. The child, born with all kinds of health problems, including opioid addiction and one dead kidney, is a ward of the state, and not likely to be released into Grandma's care even if he survives. The parents? Well, one presumes they are normal enough young people, or were before addiction got into them tooth and claw; now they are like a devil's own upside-down version of the Nativity, uncaring producers of an unwanted child doomed not to die for our sins, but just plain doomed to die without ever having lived.

California has become a magnet for this behavior, by refusing to enforce any kind of control on it. As if allowing this kind of thing to go on is some kind of mercy to the mentally disturbed, to the addicts and drunks, turning the streets into a fecal swamp. The big companies haven't run for the hills yet, but small businesses can't keep their doors open, surrounded by and victimized by this criminal activity. Failed nations allow this because they have no resources to control it; American cities and states are allowing it because they are run by the insane.

How is this any kind of kindness? Can anyone think that the mother will ever want to get straightened out with the knowledge of what she has done to her child? Addicts have one answer to feelings of guilt and shame (and in fact to everything else): pick up and use. Had the authorities enforced rules against vagrancy and drug use, the mother might have been confined someplace safe and drug-free, the baby born without so many health crises, and perhaps the mother and even the father would have had a moment of clarity to encourage the desire to get and stay clean. Now none of that is probably ever going to happen. The local government will bear the cost of disposing of the bodies, the one type of street garbage that it's still willing to haul, for now.

So yes, we need Christmas, and a lot more of it, and everything else that comes because of it. I said the other day that Hollywood doesn't understand love at all anymore, and this is true; but no one in California seems to understand justice and mercy, and that you can't have one without the other. The state is run by people who act like giving a baby hard candy because he wants it is the kind thing to do. When he chokes to death on it, well, their hearts were in the right place.

At least, as Selena Zito reminded us a couple of days ago, many and maybe most places in America are not this stupid or nutty. In her profile of the lovely little town of Everett, Pennsylvania, a place of generosity and civic spirit, she writes, "I think America is mostly this way. At least, America is more like Everett than it is like whatever you see on cable news. You just sometimes have to slow down to see it."

I think she's probably right about America. I just don't know how long it will last.

Wise words.

"Max, Grandpa doesn't have much time. Hurry down. He wants to see you."

Sure enough, Grandpa had taken a turn. He lay in the hospital bed white as the sheet, the only color on the old man from his big brown spectacle frames and the little blue dots on his gown.

"Give us a minute," he told everyone else, and shooed them out with shaky hands.

I knelt by his bed. "I'm here, Grandpa."

"I know." He sighed. "There are some important things you need to know, Sam."

"Max."

"Max, yeah. I knew it was one of those three-letter names."

"Uh-huh."

"With an A in the middle."

"Like Pam or Tag."

"Right. So I-- Tag?"

"Short for Taggart. Anyway, I'm here. Max."

"Who the hell names his kid Taggart?"

"I don't know. I had two of them in my high school."

"Dumb first name."

"Okay, fine. You wanted to say something?"

"Yeah, Sam, it's important."

"Max."

"I'm not Max, I'm Ralph."

"No, I'm Max, not Sam."

"Of course you are. Who's Sam?"

"I don't know."

"Then why do you keep bringing him up?"

"Ah... no idea."

"Must be related to your friend Taggart."

"Undoubtedly."

"Max, I have some words of wisdom before I go to the Great Beyond."

"Yes, Grandpa."

"Are you ready?"

"Yes, Grandpa."

"You don't look ready. You didn't shave."

"It's the modern look. Looks rugged."

"Really? In my day we killed Commies and built skyscrapers and we all shaved. Now you sit at a desk and play with toys and you don't shave."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Rugged. Huh."

"Okay, I'll shave."

"Good. But that's not the wise words."

"Okay."

"Here they come."

"Great."

"Listen closely."

"Righto."

"It's... don't go cheap on the toilet paper."

"...."

"Well?"

"That's it?"

"What? It's important. You're a young man, you want to save money and get ahead, but I'm telling you, you go cheap on the toilet paper, you'll regret it."

"I see."

"You think the roll is cheap, but you have to use twice as much of it."

"Right."

"It makes a mess."

"Yeah, that's--"

"And sometimes it feels like it's sanding down your hinder and you wind up walking funny."

"Buy expensive toilet paper. Got it."

"I didn't say to go spending all your money on toilet paper, I just said don't go cheap."

"Noted."

"No need to max out your cards on TP."

"That would be silly."

"There's no need for gold-plated toilet paper."

"I suppose that might be a little uncomfortable anyway."

"Not absorbent, no."

"Yeah. Okay, well, Grandpa, thanks for the wise words."

"Oh, sure, Tag, that's fine."

"I'm Max."

"Oh, yeah, that's right. Tag is Sam's brother."

"You bet, Grandpa."

"I love you, Max."

"I love you too, Grandpa."

I left to summon back the others, but in the minute I was gone, Grandpa had passed away.

On the way out of the hospital, my dad asked how I was holding up. "After all, I've lost a father-in-law," he said, "but to you that's a blood relative."

"Yeah, Dad. I'll miss him."

"What was the advice he wanted to give you?"

"Uh... I'm not sure if I should tell anyone. He seemed to want that to be between us." And Sam and Tag, maybe, I thought.

"Sure, son, I understand. Well, I hope it wasn't career advice. He was a wonderful guy, but he always had terrible luck in business."

"Really?"

"You bet. He told me once that he had a big deal ready to go, but had to secure a loan from the bank. Well, for some reason when the meeting came he waddled into the meeting room like a crazy man and the loan fell through. Can you believe it?"

I blame the AFL-CRTN.

Dog chart.

I'd just about had enough of the dogs barking out the window, especially wee dog Nipper. Ever since he got tall enough to put his chin on the windowsill he's been sticking his head through the curtains and letting fly at random times of day. Once he got his Big Boy Bark, which makes him sound like a Rottweiler whose wife left him for a Chihuahua and who's looking to kick somebody's behind, he's decided to be the Early Alert System for the whole block. Half the time when I look outside there's nothing there.

We can't have this behavior. Sometimes my wife is here, having a remote meeting, and nothing breaks the spell of professionalism like a dog barking in the background. (Well, unless your profession is police dog trainer.) So I sat down with the boys for a little confab about this barking business and how to get it under control.

They wanted to give me some data, to help explain what they are barking at. 

They reminded me that their superpowered noses and ears allow them to pick up evidence of foul miscreants even when none are visible.

I wanted to know about the squirrel situation. I was assured that, reputations to the contrary, it is their position that squirrels seldom rise to the level of barking. "Just stupid" was the term used to describe said critters.

I don't think these data really help, but perhaps it's a beginning. The more you analyze a problem, the more approaches open up toward resolving it. Or not.

Anyone know where I can buy cat repellent?