Is this thing on?

Hello, out there in Internet land! After a long absence I have returned! 

Don't all go crazy, now!

No? Not even a little crazy?

Fine, be that way. 

Anyway, yes, due mostly to work obligations, I have been unable to post for some time. I have come somewhat out from under the pile of said obligations, but my main reason for priortizing my online presence is this: 

Some of you may know that the fine folks at Raconteur Press have published my YA novel I've Got This, and it was put to me that my readers (who are all tasteful and good looking) might want to find a way to contact me. So here I am. Come at me, bro! 

The book is available from the typical sources (like Amazon, Books-a-Million, maybe the dumpster at Publishers Weekly) and my contact email remains the same:  frederick_key@yahoo.com. Someone has to give Yahoo something to do, after all. 

I hope to post regularly, but have not figured out a schedule yet. For those just peeking in for the first time, the general topics are books, comics, food, work, home ownership, what my dog did, the perils of modern living, and everything else. The last file, oddly, is the smallest. Maybe I should get out more. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon!

-Fred

I need a montage.

I need a montage. 

It's Saturday, and I have three projects running that have me stressed. Two are copyediting jobs that also light fact-checking (for some values of "light"). Suffice it to say, if an error gets past me, many people among the readers will know it, and I am going to be in huge trouble with the publishers of these books. The third job is short, for a young audience, and is so poorly written that I'm concerned about how to get it to make sense without also making an enemy for life with the author and editor. I am paralyzed with anxiety and annoyance (anxioyance?).

So I need a montage. 

At this point in a movie or TV show, a friend or new acquaintance would enter my life and give me some words of direction or encouragement. As the light of hope and resolve comes back into my eyes, the opening chords of an upbeat pop hit are heard. Then, with the music overlaid loudly, I am shown in various scenes hammering away at the jobs, maybe with a few comical cuts (going for coffee, pencils breaking, Post-its being posted, going for more coffee, pounding the keyboard, looking through enormous books of facts, crawling for more coffee). It looks rough, but after two minutes the music is over and I'm DONE! 

That's the important bit -- being done. The audience doesn't need to go through all that stuff because it's boring and hard, and no one goes to the movies for homework. But without a montage for my life, I have to go through the boring and hard stuff. So I need some serious film editing. 

Well, some people still say that when you're in danger of death, your life passes before your eyes. I certainly hope that the boring parts are edited out -- unless of course that keeps the life-passing-by stage running longer, giving me more time to be rescued. "We thought we'd lost him, but he was rewatching the time he had to edit an encyclopedia of the Eisenhower administration, and that bought us some time!" 

Could be. That was a huge project.

Don’t bother to wake me up.

 

I'd hoped to have a fantastic blog entry for you on Monday, but you know what they say: Wife Happens. In this case my wife forbade me from getting on the computer on Sunday. Why? Because I normally do at least some work seven days a week, and I don't sleep well at night, and she thinks there's a connection. 

Besides, on Saturday (November 30th!) I had expressed my frustration with having no time to get any Christmas decorations up -- it seems like all my neighbors had theirs done by 12:01 on Thanksgiving afternoon -- and she suggested that rather than complaining I start doing. And stop judging the neighbors' outsides against my insides! 

(Feh. Like there's any other way I can judge them.)  

So, that's what happened to Sunday. 

We all know there are two types of insomniacs: those who can't get to sleep and those who can't stay asleep. I have become #1 of the #2 types, and I'm not referring to my bathroom breaks. I have zero trouble getting to sleep, but I am a champ at waking up at three and lying there like a lump, unable to return to sleep. Reading, prayer, meditation, nothing works. I'll give up around five, because if I get up the dog gets up, and he'll have to go out, and I imagine five is the earliest you can be out walking about the neighborhood and not look like a suspicious character. 

Can I use the extra time productively at least? Of course not, because by the time I get the dog back inside I am finally ready to sleep again, and so hit the sofa until eight... or nine... or... 

OTC sleeping aids don't help. Diphenhydramine and doxylamine can make me go to sleep even faster than I already do, but they're out of my system by three a.m. and HELLO I AM AWAKE AGAIN.

I'm not sure what's happening, but it's been going for a while. I'm going for a checkup in January so I will load it on the doctor's shoulders. I've tried everything, doc; now it's your turn. 

Have any of you out in Blog Land had experience with some of the new prescription sleep drugs? I neither drink nor take any Fun Drugs anymore, so I am not interested in anything that could be sold on a street corner. Do the prescription sleep aids really help you get to sleep and stay that way for the expected eight hours, without feeling like an extra on Dawn of the Dead?

My luck, I'll get a perfect solution to the problem, and then the dog will become insomniac, dragging me out in the dead of night. Maybe it would be my just desserts. 

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. 

Whither Fred?

Sorry I've been around less than usual. The main cause of my absence has been a large project that engaged a lot of us freelancers for a publisher that needed research done. It's for an annual award that attracts a lot of buzz, and so there is an intense screening process to kick the bums out and keep the stars. It was a lot of work. Not enough to pay the mortgage this month, but a lot of work. 

It's discouraging to feel like you're in a race not to get ahead but to lose ground less quickly, but alas, that is where I and so many of us are running these days. 

If you're having a banner year in your business, good for you! I am not jealous. Besides, if the government confiscated all your dough and that of a dozen like you, it would not even pay for ten minutes of its spending. Years ago, when I was blogging on another platform, I ran the numbers for how long the United States government would be funded if it just up and stole every nickel from every billionaire in the country, all assets turned instantly into cash. I think it was about a week and half, if that. Feel free to do the figures yourself -- it's too depressing. 

So the nation at large is losing money at an enormous rate, and so are most of the nations on the planet. There's going to be a reckoning somewhere along the line, I imagine. The only thing I know for sure is that the people who caused the problem will not be the ones suffering from it. 

Meanwhile, the black bear situation remains unresolved. Twice since I reported it here last month, I saw the bear head down to the wooded area behind the house, passing through each neighbor's yard once. I was outside with the dog one afternoon when a guy walking by with his own dog yelled to me, "There's a bear up the block!" To which, like the man in the famous joke, I could reply, "Yes, I know." 

Here's the results of the informal bear poll I took around the neighborhood: 

It's a little nerve-racking that the bear is out and about when it's dark in the morning, because so am I with the dog, because I have insomnia and when I'm up the dog wants to be out. It's also nerve-racking that three times in the last month I have had to remove piles of bear poop from the backyard. It's enough to make Captain Poopy resign his commission. 

I guess that's a new skill I can add to my résumé: bear scat removal. Although considering a lot of the books I've worked on, trying to clean up clumsy language or poor research, I think that's a task I've been doing for years. 

All of this may sound like a lot of whining, unless you happen to be British, in which case it sounds like a lot of whingeing. And that's fine. One day I'm going to compile a book from my most popular blog entries as the Best of Fred, and the title will be Always Explain, Always Complain.  

Working through Labor Day.

Happy Labor Day! I'll be working all day, thanks very much. Someone has to keep the engine of commerce running. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Alas, the life of the freelancer. Assignments come in at random and deadlines are deadly. But it's all right; I had no social plans for today. Working on a holiday never bothered me unless I was missing a party I wanted to attend, and as I've gotten older, I have found precious few events that meet that particular criterion. 

Pardon me if I've told this story in this space before: When I was in college I worked for a time as a general dogsbody for a small midtown office that did a lot of mailings, and I mean a lot. They did not observe Columbus Day, but the post office certainly did. However, in Manhattan at least, the post office itself did not sleep; its windows were shuttered and its postmen were at rest, but the big sorting offices were still open. If a company wanted to get a dozen sacks of mail into the system that day, they just had to bring it to the loading dock and it would be cheerfully accepted. All they needed were the sacks, a big dolly, and a dopey college student who needed the money.

Well, if you've ever done this kind of work, you discover quickly that getting the four wheels of a dolly to play nicely together is like getting the band into the studio after the third album flopped and the tour disintegrated into fistfights. You also discover that, as smooth as they look in most places, the sidewalks of Manhattan are in fact pitted and furrowed as a centenarian's face; that the smallest amounts of litter can jam a little wheel; that the curb cuts may be and should be perfect for wheelchairs but are not wide enough for dollies; that mailbags love nothing better than to swing freely from the handle to which you tied them and drag on the ground or at least throw off the dolly's forward impetus; that the sewer grates are sinking everywhere and love nothing better than to reach out and take a bite out of a small and errant wheel. I don't remember how many blocks it was, but it was too many. Still, I got there, and delivered the goods, and the dolly and I made it back safely. 

So it's not a bad thing to work on the holidays. But it's a lot easier to do it at home, doing research on your laptop for pay, than to be shoving an uncooperative dolly through the pitiless streets of the naked city to deliver pamphlets to be mailed, most of which would be thrown away upon reception.

I still maintain that everyone in college should have a job like that. Or at food service or delivery, or something else low-paying and unexpectedly challenging. It teaches humility, but also self-respect, which is far better than ballooned-up pride that contains a deep sense of inadequacy. Plus, you might get a funny story out it. 

Bleary in the morning.

Been kind of wiped out this week, and for good reason.

For days I've been covering for someone who's on vacation, minding the desk from my perch at home. Which is good, in that it means billable hours for me, but the other clients I have still need tending. Fortunately, there have not been many explosions and freakouts. Some, but not many. 

This has also coincided with some hot and humid weather, though, and while we are blessed to have air conditioning, the dog still needs to be outside a good bit. That's the way of his people. However, then he gets overheated, comes inside, and drinks a gallon of water, which sets off the Circle of Pee, and we have to go out again. 

I'm glad he's staying hydrated -- his uncle, the late Nipper, was not good about it, and once had to have a Quasimodo-esque lump of water injected into his back. Strangest thing. Can you imagine humans being treated like that for dehydration? 

"What's that big lump, Maggie? Third breast implant?"

"Nah, just neglected my Gatorade."

The big downside is that Izzy, America's Sweetheart (currently America's Sweatheart), has to go out a couple of times in the night. It's made the week more difficult to navigate, let's put it that way. 

In my career I've been paid salaries and hourlies, and anyone who needs to learn the value of a dollar needs to work for hourly wages. That's a cold fact. Every kid should do it. When you get paid by the hour, whenever an expense comes up -- say, you have to part with $700 for a car repair, I did this month -- your mind immediately goes to the most annoying, frustrating, diabolical project that you had recently, and you factor that into the money spent. I worked hour after hour cleaning the sewer backup into that guy's basement, and it didn't even pay half of what it cost me for the car repair, an expense I didn't expect. I didn't get a dime's worth of fun out of the money. 

I always think of the most crappy job I had to do to get the dough. I don't think I'm unusual in this. 

I'd say I've been doing the editorial equivalent of cleaning sewage, but there is no equivalent of cleaning sewage. I will say it's been very little fun, and the money isn't going toward anything fun either, and I'm exhausted. 

Added to all this is worry's little side hustle, the sleeplessness. This worrying is exhausting! Fortunately, it's also keeping me awake at night! So when the dog wakes me up, I'm up for hours. 

Next week may be better, but it certainly won't be well. Life is tough. I'm tired. I sometimes wonder how any of us get by. 

Living the dream.

The American Dream has become one of the most misunderstood parts of the American Mythos, nearly always represented as selfish, soured, a nightmare hiding beneath a shiny gloss.  

The term dates back to 1900 and is described aptly by Webster's as "an American social ideal that stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity." So let's have a look at what the dream is really all about. 

1. Prosperity 

Often the American Dream is stated as "Work hard and you'll get rich," but that's twisting it, either to benefit those who sucker you or those who know that riches are rare and so disappointment will follow. 

Prosperity, on the other hand, is nothing more than a good living, a fair reward for one's work. Since so many people who came to the United States came from places that still had a feudal mindset, in which the efforts of the many only really meant prosperity for the few, this was and is a big deal. Even today, in places where slavery and serfdom are supposedly banished, people still can't achieve prosperity from their own labor because they live in crooked kleptocracies, low-trust societies that are all about theft, bribery, and using the law to steal from everyone. Corruption is the only means to rise from poverty.

We're supposed to be a nation ruled by laws, not men, and this is why. No one ever gets a fair shake when the law is merely a tool for those in power -- which is quite what many people in America are trying to do today.

2. Freedom

Prosperity means freedom from the tyranny of need. Noted French jerk Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously wrote, "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."

Oh, really? 

"Okay, baby, you're free! Here you go!" [chucks baby on lawn]

The chains to which all people are born are nature and necessity; only a baby born able to walk and eat grass and survive naked could be free as Rousseau demands. I never met a baby human yet who fit that description. 

But the American Dream promises a chance to not have to live under the shadow of terrible need, of hunger and exposure lurking daily outside the window. This is a far cry from promising mansions and yachts to everyone, but to my family who came over here from Europe, it was a huge improvement. They never expected Uncle Sugar to provide them with ease and comfort, just protection from lawbreakers and a chance to earn a fair wage. That was plenty to keep the wolf well away from the door. 

3. The Wealth Trap

The other proposed downside to the American Dream is meant to be the awful people who achieve it. Well, there we have to concede a point, if by those who achieve it we mean only the very wealthy, not the prosperous middle class. And yes, and they say on Instapundit, we currently have the worst ruling class in our history. Noblesse oblige is not considered their obligation for honor and generosity, but rather their responsibility to order the rest of us around. 

The rich are not usually concerned with the little people. We get in their way of them focusing on the ones they really hate -- the richer people. The guy a little farther up the hill who looks down on them. 

And if you are one of these moneyed mooks, you have a lot of incentive to hate everyone. People are always looking to separate you from your dough; you have no peace. For the type who holds the keys to the kingdom -- say, a repulsive, horrible creep who produces movies -- it must seem natural to demand humiliating services from those hoping you will unlock the door to fame and fortune.

And even if the rich can avoid all these temptations of pride, lust, envy, and so on, there's something about avarice that takes on its own life -- the hunger grows with the eating. 

Notice how well all these descriptions jibe with those in America's entertainment industry, the source of much disparagement of the middle class and the American Dream. They like to make the American Dream look bad, in their own actions and in their media, then take it out on the rest of us. It's America's fault! 

4. The Dream Is Good

The American Dream is still good, still right, and not to be disparaged because it sometimes fails, or because we fail it. It is not a promise, far less a guarantee. It is aspirational. It ought not to consume us, but encourage us. It ought not to be the whole aim of society, but a society that is rightly ordered makes it possible. It is still a dream wherein a people with no tribe more important than being Americans can look one another in the eye; where, as Joseph says in the series Jesus of Nazareth, "A man who's skillful in his work will stand before kings." 

Sprung.

As I noted, and you know if you're in this hemisphere along with most of the population, spring has arrived. And that means hope! Dreams! Young love! And WORK WORK WORK.

Yesterday I was in the giant houseware store, which I'll call Loam Depot because I was buying mulch and rocks. Rocks! When you're a kid you think rocks just happen. They're not something you buy. They're all over. Why spend money on rocks? Why torture the poor suspension (yours and the car's) with a load of rocks? And why buy mulch when you can mow over leaves and make it?

I know, I know. I don't care why. It just is. Spring comes and my un-mulched areas look like crap. As for the rocks, like most people in the 'burbs whose mailbox is on the devil's strip twixt sidewalk and road, I am not content to just let the mailbox post stand in dirt. But I am not so foolish as to think something planted in primo dog zone would survive. Once one dog hits the spot they all want to, and there's no plant alive that can withstand that kind of barrage. Some people cover the ground at the base of the post with bricks or mulch, and some use decorative pebbles, like moi. I use red ones. They match the mulch. 

My dad was a great one for landscaping, and he absolutely 100% did not pass that love down to me. I envy people like him, people who love gardening and tending the lawn and all the other things that make the property look dandy. They get exercise and fresh air and have more to show to the world for the effort than sweaty gym clothes. I like growing individual plants, but nothing more than I can grow in a pot, and that includes grape tomatoes and bell peppers. I cannot stand the idea of turning a large plot of earth, shoving in seeds, then fighting off deer and rabbits and bugs all summer. Unless I can develop a plant that produces Krugerrands, I think I'm just not going to maintain the motivation necessary. 

Today, though, is one of those days I have to buckle down and get some things done. Putting down some tick-murdering poison along the border of the property, for example -- one of the ways we keep the dog tickless. Killing weeds in walkways and other places plants don't belong. Washing the cars -- I feel confident that the big freeze is done, and there's no point in have a vehicle that looks like a pretzel. 

I guess that shows just how close to nature I am, that my spring endeavors are all about cars and poison. Oh, and I got the grill going yesterday, so that's propane for burning meat. I'm a one-man Anti-UN Environmental Programme. And for that, at least, I am proud. 

As I look back on today's blog entry, I realize I've covered this ground in years gone by. And that's what spring is -- covering the same old ground, year after year. With mulch.

Dope fiends!

I have a couple of friends who are pharmacists, and I would not like to do that job. 

Under ideal conditions, it's still difficult. There are about a million drugs you have to know about -- the names (trade and generic), the prescribable uses, the off-label uses, the side effects, the doses, the dosing, the cost, the content, the special warnings for particular populations (pregnant women, kids, diabetics, and on and on) -- and about two million drug laws you have to know about -- the rules for dispensing, your responsibilities (and career-ruining culpabilities), the permissions needed, the requirements for dealing with doctors' offices, and on and on. Then add all the health insurance variations. It might drive you to drink -- and if it does, you'd better have teenage George Bailey working for you or you'll kill some kid by accident. 

And most pharmacists work under less than ideal conditions. Once upon a time a pharmacist might be a drugstore owner, running his own respectable business, a well-regarded figure in town. Now you're far more likely to be a cog in some corporate chain. And in some neighborhoods your CVS or Walgreens will be overrun with crime (especially if your town has a Soros-funded prosecutor); but in any neighborhood you'll probably have to deal with thugs and scammers and no-account losers trying to get at the sweet, sweet opioids in your drug safe. 

Maybe you work in a nice town with a functioning judiciary and constabulary, for a pharmacy that doesn't even stock the really hot stuff (our nearest supermarket has a pharmacy that warns in LARGE LETTERS that they do not dispense opioids). Well, you still have to deal with the public. And the public can be dumb. Also rude and really bad about taking their pills. The medical journals used to complain about patient compliance, meaning patients not following the instructions on their prescriptions, but the term "compliance" was thought to be too authoritative, too patriarchical. So now they call it "adherence," and it's totally different. Now the medical journals complain about patient adherence. 

And if even THAT is not enough to make you want to sample the drugs yourself, Joe Pharmacist, you're now expected to administer shots to the rubes who roll up, because the doctors' offices can't be bothered, or because your customers would rather die than go to the doctor for a routine physical. So you're stocked with vaccines for flu and COVID and shingles and tetanus and RSV and HPV and hepatitis and freaking monkeypox and yellow fever and everything else, and now you are poking around arms, and you don't even have an MD or a heroin addiction. 

It's an important job but maybe not a fun one. You may say "It beats diggin' ditches," but few ditches are dug by hand anymore. And if they are, remember: people pay good money for gym memberships to get that kind of exercise. Of course, they don't actually show up at the gym, but they pay for it. (Is that "gym compliance"? Or "gym adherence"? I give up.)

Kaboom!

Sorry I have not been around. When I say everything blew up at once workwise, I'm not kidding. While overcommitting to other things, I agreed to a rush job for extra pay that turned out to have some hidden issues. I felt like a cartoon antagonist (say, Wile E. Coyote) whose tunnel got diverted to a fireworks warehouse by the hero (one Bugs Bunny, perhaps); rising from the tunnel in the darkness, I struck a match, then realized I was surrounded by gunpowder-laden rockets, their fuses lolling my way; shocked, I dropped the match, but before it went out, it caught a fuse and -- 

You've seen that cartoon before. 

As a coworker once told me on a particularly annoying afternoon, "If it was fun they'd call it play." 

Well, nothing for it but to shove everything aside that was shoveable and get the thing done. Which I did, yesterday, and was ready for a nap afterward, at which time of course I got a phone call from someone who almost never calls me. I will leave my phone on in case my wife needs me, thinketh I, because the only other person who might call is Claymore, and he never calls at this time because he's at work, and of course Claymore had taken the day off. 

Nice to be popular, but please, my public, let a guy rest! 

Meanwhile, here's a couple of other thoughts that have popped up for you:

ROOSTERS 

Chicken and eggs are good to eat, but sadly, roosters are part of the deal. When we moved from the city to the exurbs, there was someone in the area who kept a few, and I'd hear the idiot chicken known as the rooster scream from time to time. They don't just crow at dawn, as in the movies; they keep it up all the livelong day. 

As the town demographics have changed, it seems that keeping chickens is now more of a thing to do. These seem to be more hyperactive, possible meth-addicted roosters, who don't wait for sunup at 7 but start around 5:30. When one goes off to the east, another, miles away in the west, says to himself, "I'm not going to stand for that!" and blurts out his cheery tune. None of them have the nice, clear "cock-a-doodle-doo!" cry, but rather sound like kazoo-based kaiju being strangled. They used to say that children should be seen and not heard, but I think that better applies to chickens. 

WINTER

A haiku for you:

Chapped lips, chapped hands, feet

Where can I go to buy a

Full-body ChapStick?

See you tomorrow, unless more stuff blows up, or I get arrested for first-degree rooster assault. 

Electric heels.

One of the things I miss least about working in an office is getting to the office and getting home from same. Since most of my career was spent commuting via public transportation and shoe leather, the winter was the worst. Heavy coat, heavy boots, sloppy streets, grumpy New Yorkers. A regular winter wonderland. 

In those days I would keep a cheap pair of loafers in my desk -- one of those Payless pairs or the like that seemed to be made of compressed Hefty bags. That way I wouldn't be clomping around the place all day in my boots. The downside was that the plastic shoes, combined with winter air so lacking in humidity that it actually sucked water out of our skin, plus industrial carpeting, made the static electricity awful. I would carry a quarter in my pocket to tap against door handles to avoid getting shocked. The sparks between quarter and handle were often quite visible. I'd think, Isn't this how the Electric Eel on Underdog got his powers?

Believe me when I say how happy I was to not have a job that required working outdoors on such days. The reward of working outside on lovely days instead of being stuck in an office did not make up for having to labor in the freezing cold and rain and snow on tough days. But still, the static electricity was annoying. I think you could have stuck balloons on the wall without even rubbing them on your hair. Just carry one around for a while. 

Of course, my imagination and lack of scientific rigor expected more spectacular effects -- people's hair on end like they were hugging Van de Graaff generators; laptops shorting out at desks in a shower of sparks; the network being brought down by massive power surges; the combination of shocks and polyester clothes and negative humidity causing spontaneous human combustion. Fortunately real-world science is a little more forgiving than that. 

Winter still has lots of perils, so be careful out there, especially if you live in a land of ice and snow as I do. And if you work in an office, be careful in there. I'm not saying spontaneous human combustion is an actual danger, but the odds may be a titch north of zero. 

I like me too.

In 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," then presumably coughed a little and raised his eyebrows, looking around with a smile.

I'm not sure that poets have the clout anymore to make statements like that. But that's just fine -- there are plenty of other vocations in which the practitioners have a self-regard that would make Caligula seem like a shy, modest type. 

"Little ol' me? I'm just a kindly 
emperor, trying to help the people."

Journalists seem to have an enormous self-regard. Maybe they always did, feeling that with the power of their words they were able to assume an authority that required neither education nor invention, just the vote of the public when it purchased the newspaper. Since Watergate, their self-regard as truthtellers in a corrupt world has inflated as respect for the profession and evidence of its independence has cratered. Reporters on the whole seem to be happy lapdogs for the people they like, covering up things here and attacking on command there, whose mistrust by the public grows daily. (Was anyone surprised when the Newseum closed?) And yet if you read a book by a reporter on reporting, he'll tell you that he's not important, the story is, and also, ME ME ME. It's a tour de force of the author's humblebrag, with a few lectures on his Journalistic Ethics tossed in. 

Saints never tell you they're saints. 

Perhaps this egotism is purposeful puffery for journalists, designed to dispel the creeping fear that they really are useless loudmouths. Could be. 

Teachers have really gotten out in front of their skis on this one as well. Yes, they are important for the education of our children (when they do it), and most teachers I know are great people who love what they do. But when did some of them begin to think they were more important than the children's own families? While it's true that a bad family can turn out a bad kid, one bad teacher can corrupt a whole passel of them. Ironically, a little humility goes a long way to earning respect and trust. 

Sometimes I get the feeling too many of them took Plato's Republic seriously, thinking that philosophers ought to be the monarchs and children should be taken from their parents for education. They ought to remember that it might be a nice place to visit, but they wouldn't want to live there. 

Money handlers as a class do not consider their large sums of money adequate recompense for their work. They also demand the respect of the public for the genius that they possess. If you were smart, you'd be rich too! seems to be the thought. They needn't worry -- rich people will always get their tuchuses polished by those who want to know their secrets. They never have to see the disdain of those who find their egoism tiresome, their methods dubious, their gospel damaging. They never have to hear the moans of those who despise how they use their cash for charitable purposes and have to live with the consequences. 

Politicians are and have always been the worst of the lot, able to convince themselves of the good they are doing while stuffing their pockets and crushing the lives of citizens they are meant to serve. I'll give them this -- if people were always coming to my door and begging me for special favors, I'd begin to think less of humanity as a whole. Perhaps that's the best argument for term limits -- as a means of preventing cynicism and hatred among the ruling class.

Successful actors and other performers are perhaps the most revolting of them all. The love of the fans ought to be enough, but the appetite of the ego grows with the feeding. They must be world-changers as well and loved for it. It usually makes them pretty tools for the faddish fanatism of the day. This would be harmless, but it inevitably requires telling us little people what we ought to be doing. Yeah, we all just love that.  

And what of the humble novelist, who sweats away in his little garret, chipping away at his stories like a sculptor trying to draw the angel from the coarse stone? Like moi, in other words? Do we not think that we are hot stuff, and expect to be respected for it? 

Meh -- not me. As with poets, maybe there was a time when the novelist was a person of some societal rank. A million lousy novels and a million good but forgotten books since, those days are gone. Now only a pinpoint of wildly successful and wealthy authors would expect that kind of obsequiousness, and they fall into the money handlers category. The rest of us prefer love to respect. (Although a little money is nice, too.) 

Estimating estimates.

A couple of the publishers I work for ask for estimates in advance of work -- how long will it take to copyedit or proofread or fact-check or mark up or whatever some poor manuscript that won't know what hit it. I find this to be very difficult because I barely know what to expect, even if I have a chance to glance over the job. You might be surprised at the lousy condition in which some books and articles arrive from the authors.⭐ They'd have been flunked by some of my old profs. 

"Looks like crap!"

The main problem is, despite being word people at heart, I don't think these publishers all know what the word estimate means. One publisher requests an estimate, but if the job requires a lot more time than anticipated, they go into a panic. It makes more work for the unfortunates who hired me, who have to get approvals and new purchase orders, and it delays payment for the unfortunate me. Of course, the writer and the top editor are really to blame, but they barely know what we're doing -- they only acknowledge my work if I do something to piss them off. 

What this publisher wants is not an estimate but a bid -- a price at which I will promise to get the work completed based on the time and any expenditures required. I would be willing to work under that condition, and in fact I do for other publishers who offer a flat fee for a job. It's not ideal from my perspective, but at least it's honest. 

Everyone knows an estimate is not the same thing as a solid offer. New York, which has strict laws for contractors, even acknowledges that estimates may be exceeded depending on circumstances -- say, the guy who you signed up to replace your siding finds so much dry rot that the neighbors call your home the House of Usher, or the mechanic checking an idiot light discovers that your transmission is about to blow through the engine like the alien through John Hurt. The original estimates were based on what was believed at the time, as are mine -- and I also can't guarantee how long something will take until I start digging in. 

Again, I want to be clear that none of this is the fault of my contacts at these companies, who are some of the nicest and most professional people I've known in the business. It's the bean counters and the pencil pushers who make the procedures, the ones who are in the unenviable position of trying to make publishing profitable in a way it hasn't been since the first movie theater opened and the first radio broadcast went out. But I wish that they would use their terms with more precision. Don't ask for an estimate when you need a fixed price.  

So that's what's bugging me today. What's YOUR problem?

📕📗📘📙

⭐Or maybe you wouldn't.

Thanksgiving comes around again.

I always feel bad for people who have to work on Thanksgiving, especially when I'm one of them. But hey, I'm not complaining. At least I'm working on freelance editorial stuff against hard deadlines. I'm able to be home in my sweats. I'm not opening up the stupid store to herds of Early Black Friday loons and possibly looters. I got it easy. 

And I don't feel like I'll be missing much. Sure, I would love to veg out and watch the MST3K Turkey Day Marathon via Pluto, but A) my wife isn't a fan and B) the dog knows when I'm being lazy and promptly takes steps to prevent me from enjoying it. Seriously, this guy will sleep 14 hours a day, but if I try to loaf without actually sleeping, he will demand to go for a walk, or play outside, or at least freeze on the porch. So I don't get to watch much TV anymore. 

Two of my old Thanksgiving favorites are on the Nix List. I gave up on the Macy's Parade years ago when it became little more than an advertisement to get the moneyed folks from Connecticut and Westchester to come to town to see Broadway shows that I would not watch without being paid in the mid-five figures. And football? Is Roger Goodell still ruining -- uh, running -- the NFL? No thanks. Besides, the local teams suck, which reduces my interest in what the rest of the league is doing. 

So while I will be at home, working, I will be having the traditional feast, and it is really a treat. Do not think I am not grateful, because I am. I am just very, very tired. Combine that with the turkey and I think even the dog -- spunky though he may be -- is not going to be able to dislodge me from the sofa after eats. I suppose he'll try, though.  

Maybe I'd better have seconds.

Old mailroom Joe.

Guys in the mailroom are my pals. At one time I worked for a not-for-profit organization that had a dull official holiday party, but down in the cellar, the guys in the mailroom had a Christmas party that absolutely kicked. Later in my fabulous career I had a desk job in a tiny office, and every morning Mike (I'll call him) made his mail rounds, and he would stop in to talk sports. I liked him and all, but sometimes I had to literally tell him to leave so I could get some work done and not get in Dutch with the boss. Mike later got canned for, well, using the executive can, although he denied it.  

But before either of those jobs I was a mailroom man myself, starting as a part-timer. They hired two of us to deliver the mail throughout an organization that had several buildings, so that meant shoving the mail cart through burning sun and pouring rain, through ice and snow. 

It looked like this one. Note that the
wheels are not made for ice and snow.

I, young whippersnapper, did the mornings, and old Joe got the afternoons. Our shifts were expected to overlap. But we spent the first couple of days together, learning the route and meeting everyone, and that's how I got to know old Joe.

Like Mike, old Joe liked to talk, but not about sports. He talked about his former career; he talked about his son (who seemed to be on the outs with him somehow, if I recall correctly). He talked about the kind of work he had done, but the details did not impress on my mind. What did was one thing he said on that second day of training, while we were sitting around waiting for the boss. It went something like this: 

"I think as we work together, you'll find that I have a lot of life experience. And you will begin to see that you can learn a lot from an older guy like me. In time you may come to think of me as a father figure."

And I nodded and thought What is the matter with this man?

It was like he had already scripted our relationship past the pilot episode, deep into the first season. I had just met him the day before!

Maybe he had. Maybe he spent too much time alone, thinking of how things ought to go. I'm pretty sure he was not married anymore, but I don't know if he was a widower. He may have watched too much TV. I don't recall a single bit of wisdom from him. I don't remember him ever asking me or anyone else about ourselves. 

Not that I had a long time to see him in action -- they fired him after the first week and put me on full-time. I never knew why, but were I to guess, I'd say he spent way too much time bugging people who were trying to work and way too little time doing his job. 

That was many years ago, and I'm sure old mailroom Joe has gone to his reward. I think about him sometimes. I think he was very lonely, but in his loneliness, he developed odd habits of selfishness that pushed others away, cementing him deeper in his solitude. There's lesson he taught me -- albeit as a cautionary tale. 

I hope he and his son restored their relationship. I hope he found someone who liked him and could spend time with him. I hope he didn't need the chump change from that mail job, because it did not pay well. And -- why not? -- I hope he found someone who did respect him like a father, even if it had to be his own kid.  

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. 

Music City.

Not too long ago I applied for a job in the greater Nashville area. I know you think of me as a dazzling cosmopolitan New Yorker, and indeed for most of my life I was loyal to New York, and would have preferred to stay in the Empire State, despite the lousy winters and swampy summers and awful crowds and a government run by socialist morons (but I repeat myself) for whom I would never vote. Alas, New York has surpassed stupid and proceeded to brain-dead, so like most of us who are not brain-dead, we want to escape. 

But where to settle? Well, I had a line on a good job in Tennessee. I figured it had to be an improvement. My initial application was greeted warmly, and I had an online call to move the process on.

What was my fatal mistake, the flaw that led to the latest in my long string of failures? Ah, me. It may have been an error to demonstrate my enthusiasm for a possible move with this:

This is a souvenir plate I bought when I visited the great city of Nashville with my family years ago. It's one of three tourist-trap items I purchased on that trip. Another was a Music City coffee mug, long busted. 

We had a great time on that trip, even though most of us were not fans of country music. We did the touristy stuff -- show at the Opry and a look through the amazing Opryland Hotel, and yes, I was almost within touching distance of Elvis's gold 1960 Cadillac. I was completely sincere when I told the interviewer that we enjoyed the town. 

But this plate? Well, I didn't mention that I bought it as a gag gift for my then-girlfriend (now wife) who had asked me to buy her the cheesiest, hokiest, tackiest country-type souvenir I could find. She thought I'd exceeded the request. When we got married I got the plate back, and it hangs proudly on the wall of the cellar in what I laughingly call my workshop. 

The interviewer may have sensed that the plate, while a memory of a great trip, was not a sincere purchase made for the quality of the item.

I meant no harm by showing this off. I have cheesy souvenirs of New York City, and I lived and worked there most of my life. But I wouldn't be surprised if the plate sank my employment chances. I can find a way to sabotage pretty much anything in some new and unexpected manner. Everyone has a special gift, I guess, and that seems to be mine. 

Still, I suppose it could have gone even worse -- if I'd shown him my third souvenir, the bolo tie:

Made lovingly with the fine Nashville craftsmanship one finds in... Taiwan. 

See something, say something.

When I was a tiny tot of three or four years, Mater gave me an object that quickly became precious to me, and in fact would dictate my calling in life. 

"Reginald," she said, "this is known as a See 'N Say. Take good care of it, my boy, and it shall take care of you."

Indeed, Mater was correct, as always. From the first moment I spun the dial and pulled the string on my new treasure, I knew I had found my calling in life. To see. And to say.

By the time I was a precocious lad of six, I had already embarked on my hero's journey. "Doctor," I recall saying to the family doctor on one visit, "that is a blood pressure machine."

"Why, yes it is," he replied. 

"It says 'pst pst pst psssssst.'"

"I believe so."

"And that is a digital thermometer. It says, 'Beep.'"

"It does that, yes."

"And that is a nurse. She says, 'If Dr. Son of a Bitch doesn't divorce his old lady like he said, I'm going over there and telling her everything!'"

"Erm... How much you want to keep that on the QT, kid?"

So you see, at a tender age my gift was paying dividends. In this case, five hundred dollars and a lollypop.

Later I had established my own business, C-Say Inc. On a typical day I might be asked to consult for, perhaps, a building foreman.

Moi: That's a construction worker.

Foreman: Yeah.

Moi: The construction worker says "#*$^!&#^@+)&!!!!"

Foreman: Okay.

Moi: And "Look out bel--"

CRASH

Too bad about that one; Foreman Pete was a friendly chap.

Ah, my brilliant career. A recent job involved an interesting character. I was asked to have a look at this fellow named Epstein and report on what he said. I did the first part of the assignment, but there was some acute unpleasantness, and to make a long story short, he died. In fact, the agent who hired me was reassigned to investigating parents at PTA meetings, so I was left without a contract. 

But one cannot merely see and not say when one is as dedicated as I. So I have decided to use this forum to say the many things I overheard from Mr. Epstein. They were most enlightening. First, he said that among the most enthusiastic guests he brought to his private Caribbean abode, he would have to number Mr. --

Excuse me, that's the doorbell. I shall be right back. 

Entering the workfarce.

Hello, young graduates. I congratulate you on surviving whatever school you have just or are about to just be ejected from, to find yourself spreadeagle in the center of the road of your new career. 

You may be tempted to just take a little time off, figure out what you want to do, before you commit. This is the first time you had nothing expected of you since preschool, right? Why not relax, hang out this summer, play videogames, and freeload some more off Mom and Dad? 

DON'T DO IT! It's a trap! I understand that you don't want to start a whole new grind right now, but do you really want to punch your ticket to Loserville? Trust me: Loserville has a high population, but it's still the loneliest place on earth. If you get cozy being a lump all summer, you'll still be cozy being a lump in the fall. It gets harder the longer you hang around. Have you earned the right to live off someone else's effort as an adult? Of course not. 

Now, don't fret; it's not as awful as it may seem. Your first job may be horrible, but you know what? It's not like your grammar school. You can leave. You can find a different job. You're young; your skillset is growing. You're not cast into a highly specialized role. Just don't go back to the sofa. 

There are a few other things I think you should keep in mind, some of which maybe no one had to think about decades ago because they were not an issue. But for your career health and mental health I recommend the following bits of wisdom.

🛠 If work was fun, they'd call it play.

🛠 Do your best even if the job is lousy. It's good for your self-respect to establish good habits. 

🛠 Your workplace is not like family, no matter what they tell you. This is important. Startup companies can have that feel, but it's illusory. Say you join software startup TwoGuysAndAParakeet.com, working long hours to develop some damn business software (we don't make things anymore in America, we make software to help other people make things, usually somewhere else). At first it's exciting, and you feel very close-knit. Trust me: The rounds of fund-raising will end and PyroQEET.com will be launched, and the first time quarterly earnings projections fail, your "family" will have no problem divesting itself of you.

🛠 It gets worse than that. You know the people in high school who always kept score, who never forgot a thing you did and would use it against you? They're out there working too now, and they have not changed. Pettiness and backbiting are fun ways for some people to liven up the day. 

🛠 When it's really bad, remember that rampant workplace politics are the sign of a sick organization. Get out!

🛠 Don't be too impressed by so-called serial entrepreneurs. It's not that they fail a lot -- most new businesses fail -- it's that they chase that excitement of a new venture like some people chase new love, and like those people they cannot be trusted in the long haul. Plus, when they do fail, it's usually on someone else's dime. And you're the one who's out of a job.

🛠 Do not expect to or even desire to want to bring your "whole self" to the job. If the company tells you that it wants to engage your "whole self," they're wholly full of crap. No one wants to deal with anyone else's detritus at work, and everyone's "whole self" includes sacks of detritus. No one cares, and that's okay. We were never meant to find personal fulfillment at work, unless the work itself is that fulfilling, and even then, leave the personal stuff at home where it belongs. 

🛠 And on that note, there is a very good chance that you will have to pick between the personal fulfillment of a great job and the actual fulfillment of your bank account. The really satisfying jobs don't pay as well as the others by and large for the simple reason that people will do them for free. I'm not advising you which to pick if you find yourself at that crossroad. Either choice is all right. 

So there you go, my young friend. You can take my advice or leave it. I'm not wealthy, and no one is asking me to do any TED Talks, but I can assure you that part of the reason is that I did not adhere to these tips for my own rambling path in life. 

Do you want to have a good career or not? Then you must learn not only from the successful but from the rest of us as well. We know a lot, believe me.