What is your favorite season, and why is it fall?
Buy our new horse sticker! Down with AI! And make something, already!
When I was an editing manager at my last job, I threw out an icebreaker question at monthly meetings to get the staff talking before we had to plow through discussions of editing styles and the evils of passive voice.
My favorite one: “What is your favorite season, and why is it fall?”
Fall is by far the loveliest season in the Midwest. It means apple picking, cider doughnuts, the smell of crisp leaves, a riot of gold and brown spreading through the trees. I saw very little of this growing up in suburban San Diego.
It also means shorts and hoodies: There’s generally sunshine with no humidity; mild, borderline brisk weather; and maybe a slight chance of snow. (Yes, it snowed here one Halloween; tucking a child’s fairy wings into a parka is no easy task.) We had our wedding in Chicago in October, and my California friends and relatives were lulled into the belief that maybe weather in the city wasn’t as bad as they might have assumed. Fooled them.
This week’s artwork
Not my favorite, except for the old Frannie doodle anchoring it and the tissue paper background that I found in a stash of papers created by my late sister. Eh, maybe it’s okay after all.
(This is, incidentally, another artist trading card [ATC], which is 2.5 by 3.5 inches.)
What’s for sale: New sticker, new bookselling venue
As I’ve covered in this space previously, the video game and anime “Uma Musume Pretty Derby” has pulled my teenager into the horse phase she never had as a little girl. Now I’m selling her fandom sticker (below left), based on a Tumblr photo meme, on Etsy.
Whether you like animated Japanese horsegirl mashups, horses, or just ridiculous imagery of anthropomorphic equine cartoons laughing at you, pick up this sticker at the Etsy shop for your absurdist enjoyment.
(Don’t forget everything is 25% off at the Etsy shop through Monday!)
Also, it’s official: I’m shifting the bulk of my bookselling efforts to Biblio. I’ll continue to sell on eBay, but any new book listings will go to my Fluffbucket Books site on Biblio.
The ‘Bucket List: Making headlines, sucking down lattes
The art of the headline. In a previous career, I wrote newspaper headlines for a living. I have a stash of hard copies somewhere, but as with most headlines, few are truly memorable. Nine times out of 10, headlines (or heds in newspaper parlance) merely need to give just the gist of the story quickly. But before our current era, when “Such-and-such sucks; here’s the 10 reasons why” passes for a great hed on the interwebs, we copyeditors made an effort to be witty or otherwise eye-catching when appropriate.
The son of the editor behind one of the most memorable heds ever — “Ford to City: Drop Dead” — wrote a paean to his late father and his five-word legacy in The New York Times.
But why is it so enduring? I wouldn’t want to overinterpret its social or cultural significance. After all, the beauty of the headline was in its simplicity. As Margalit Fox wrote for The New York Times in my father’s obituary, the headline delivered “the power of a knockout punch.” When we get hit hard in the face, we tend to remember it.
But the headline also had the benefit of truth-telling, at a time when truth was easier to discern and less open to argument. There were only three major television networks, with anchors who enjoyed respect and credibility. Time and Newsweek still mattered. The Daily News itself still carried heft as the paper of New York’s working class, with a weekday circulation of around two million.
More significantly, media consumers didn’t face a fire hose of conflicting or false messages that distorted their understanding of events. Today, we don’t even agree on facts.
God, I miss that media simplicity.
At a book sale last summer, I picked up a retrospective of New York Post headlines, which has my personal favorite, “KHADAFY GOES DAFFY,” complete with an obviously doctored pic inside of the Libyan leader in full makeup and drag. (I bought a couple of copies of this particular paper back in 1986 in New York, and I wish I could find them.)
Foo-foo lattes. I generally avoid most coffee and coffee drinks these days; at the very least, I can’t do plain old coffee or it’ll kill my gut. But as it’s fall, it’s hard to avoid the fancified seasonal lattes that leave me slightly less crampy. My favorite social media marketing effort lately is from Homegirl Café, one of Fr. Greg Boyle’s many ventures rehabilitating gang members in L.A.; the campaign has homies and other wannabe “gangstas” surreptitiously ordering pumpkin spice lattes.
As for me, I like pumpkin spice, but I get tired of pumpkin spice everything by the end of September. My locally owned coffee joint, however, has banana bread lattes and a maple matcha drink that are fantastic.
Banana bread. Speaking of banana bread, I found my favorite recipe (originally in a Boston Globe cookbook I received in a convention goody bag years ago that I’ve long since lost) online. It’s basic, but perfect. Especially with chocolate chips mixed in it.
Quote of the week, “Beyond the Layoff” edition. Honestly, this episode of The Strategic Thinkers Podcast on creating a “portfolio career” to recover after a layoff could use some editing. But I found parts of it edifying as layoffs have picked up nationwide in recent weeks. And then host Sean Atkinson noted this during this “Beyond the Layoff” episode:
“There is no HR in entrepreneurship.”
The context of the quote isn’t as interesting. But I love this SO MUCH. In all the months since I was laid off, I have NOT missed dealing with the cold, daunting, byzantine world of HR.
We Need Your Art. I plan to write more about the necessity of a creative practice of some kind. Amie McNee argues — in interviews, TED talks, and her book We Need Your Art — that art is not only healing and needed; it’s also an act of rebellion and activism in a world that needs resistance to the clarion call of mass consumption.
“I want you to reclaim the attention that has been robbed of you and I want you to use it to make something. We are a culture of consumption and we’ve forgotten how to make. We need less consumption, more creation. …
“I want you to take some of those 10 years [of time on your phone] away from Zuckerberg and give it to a project you want to work on.”
(If you want to hear more, here’s an hourlong interview [audio only] with McNee.)
Word of the week: Neurodivergent! Glad to see some clarity on this word in this NPR piece.
People often confuse neurodivergence and neurodiversity, but there is an important difference, [Nick Walker, a psychology professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies,] said.
“The spectrum of human neurodiversity includes everybody ever, including people who are within the dominant norms,” he said. “With neurodivergence, you diverge from something. You differ in some way from some socially constructed norm.”
But “neurodiversity” began being used as a synonym for autism, and everyone else was deemed neurotypical. [Activist Kassiane Asasumasu, who is credited with coming up with the word,] said while “neurodiversity” was progressive, it wasn’t enough.
“You’ve got typical, and what’s the opposite of typical?” she said.
Gulliermo del Toro: “I’d rather die” than use AI. The filmmaker compares today’s tech bros to the fictional Victor Frankenstein. This is what he told NPR’s “Fresh Air” — joining other creators in piling on the threat of artificial intelligence to the arts:
My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity. I think that’s what drives most of the world’s worst features. But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor [Frankenstein] be similar in some ways to the tech bros. He’s kind of blind, creating something without considering the consequences and I think we have to take a pause and consider where we’re going. ...
AI, particularly generative AI — I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I’m 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. ... The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, “What is your stance on AI?” And my answer was very short. I said, “I’d rather die.”
Welp, it’s Halloween. Despite the fact that it’s kind of the centerpiece of my favorite season, I’m not fond of Halloween. When I was a kid, I never saw the point of dressing up and wandering the neighborhood, even for candy. Now with all the insane degrees to which suburbanites dress up their lawns, it feels like Halloween competes with Christmas for America’s Most Overwrought Holiday.
Whatever. F has taken over candy distribution duty at our house while I babysit all the escape- and bark-prone animals in my home office. Boo, friends.
And look out next week for the inaugural first-and-third-Tuesday-of-the-month newsletter issue! Maybe I’ll come up with something to write about today while I referee the cats between YouTube videos at my desk.
P.S. — As of this writing, the federal government shutdown threatens to allow food assistance to lapse. Grateful to see Illinois, my home state, is directing emergency funds to help recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) here. (Thanks, Gov. Pritzker.) Other states appear to be following suit. And a federal judge may take steps to keep SNAP funding alive.
Regardless, it’s a good time to find your local food bank or pantry and make a donation — preferably cash, because food banks can stockpile inventory in a more cost-efficient manner. Track down the nearest food assistance group near you.