Odd mood this week. What seemed settled is suddenly not. It all depends who you talk to around the shop, and their level of paranoia and/or authoritative insider skinny. But it made me realize that nothing actually changed. Vague enough? Sorry. Just realizing I have to mentally recalibrate again, and prepare for a 2025 that upends the Etch-a-Sketch.
And that would be . . . okay. Once a week or so I bring something home from the office, and no I don’t mean a stapler or other office supples. If I wanted, I could find some:
That’s on the Free Table of Pathetic Remnants.
No, I mean taking home the things that accumulate at the office. Books, pictures. I’m pretty lean in terms of desk decorations. The era of making the space just so, a testament to your brilliant and fascinating personality, was over long ago. I have only two art things Natalie made me out of plastic pieces you fit together then bond with an iron. One is a low-res pixel Birch, and the other is one of those things that lets you know your daughter knows you well.
Laugh-a while you can, monkey boy, but there are few artists whose work you can see from across the room, and know in a second who did it.
Well, I suppose all the big boys are recognizable, if you know the work, but post-Renaissance, it’s easier.
The problem with the news industry: the audience interested in this is not the audience that will give you money to cover suburban sewer board meetings.
Last week, an influencer named Ryan Nordheimer took to TikTok with an accusation that has shocked the culinary world:
“Influencers” is the term for people who make “content” which is “consumed” by “followers” for the purpose of wasting 80 seconds of time before you move on to the next time-wasting reel.
The “Culinary world” was not shocked. Chefs in Europe did not rear back in horror, the phone sliding from their boneless fingers. (Or, since we’re talking cooking here, perhaps their boned fingers.)
A restaurant stole the 15-layer confetti cake he brought in. Sort of. Maybe?
That’s some hard-hitting journalism there, friend. Like a dedicated running back plowing through the opposing line with fierce determination to get to the objective.
In the initial video — ostensibly a Funfetti-cake tutorial — he detailed the recipe and casually dropped that “the restaurant ate half the cake themselves.”
“Would you say this is a funfetti tutorial?”
“Well, ostensibly it is is a funfetti tutorial, but there might be a deeper subtext.”
Viewers were less concerned with the triple sec in the French buttercream, obviously, and quickly focused on the allegation of cake thievery: “I’ve thought about it a few times today,” one follower admitted.
Who wants to be a “follower”? It makes you sound like a peon in a cult. Whose life is so soft and empty they can think about the disposition of a stranger’s cake once, let alone a few times today?
Of course, Buzzfeed picked it up. Headline: “Over 9 Million People Are Furious After A High-End New York City Restaurant Allegedly Ate Half Of A Customer's Homemade Birthday Cake”
No one is furious. The Buzzfeed story says the video was watched by nine million people. This does not mean there are 9 million furious people. In the journalism world, we call this "bad"
To save you the click, he brought a cake to a restaurant, paid the cakeage, was served very thin slices, and the rest of the cake disappeared. The staff might have eaten it. He did not complain when served micromilsliter-thin pieces because, I don’t know. CONFLICT GIVES THEM THE ICK or something.
Do you think this was an honest mistake, or do you believe the restaurant is still in the wrong? Tell us all your thoughts about this cake saga in the comments.
Well, I think we’ve redefined “saga” here from its old Norse connotations.
Anyway who cares, you say. Well: this is the audience large and . . . ostensibly serious news organizations are trying to court. Trying to convert them into paying customers.
At least there's also revenue from ads:
Hmm. I’ve seen that before.
If you zoom in and find the address and google it . . .
It’s an actual location.
Thee are the ads that will pay for the staff, and maybe the rent if there’s an actual location in the future? Let’s look at the ads of yore: there's junky but granular . . .
Vitamins, keyboards, computers, diamonds. Ten years before:
Department stores took out pages and pages and pages of ads. They're all gone and they are not coming back. What we have now are webpages that sell us things we can't touch or examine, and do not require visiting a public place and experiencing a big, well-stocked store with a particular culture, surrounded by people who are all on their own missions, but part of the same experience.
I love the internet, but we paid too much for it.
I was leaving an apartment complex in my brand-new pickup truck. A construction crew had a tall crane that somehow got ahold of my truck; I jumped out, and the truck ascended to a great height, where I saw some suspended metal items strike the side.
I was furious, as this was a brand new truck, and when I got it down I went straight to the construction office and demanded that they repair the damage. The woman in charge was incredulous I should even ask, and I had to do some orating about how I would make the internet well aware of this problem. While she was consulting about a resolution, I somehow managed to activate a floor-polishing machine that made everything very wet and sudsy, and it also narrated commercials. It was difficult to turn off.
She relented and offered to pay, and I thanked her and went outside, but there was a bear. I spent the rest of the dream trying to avoid the bear, which seemed to pop up no matter where I went.
And now, a related feature that will provide some Friday amusements:
I mean, it was everywhere
Couldn't shake it
I have no idea why so many of my interior spaces in my dreams are either Mexican resort hotel rooms or 1920s spaces.
On a different note: I was generating some 1920s English ads for English muffins, for reasons that will be apparent eventually. As ever I am fascinated by the garble, and I already miss the days when it was a tell-tale giveaway. It is difficult to generate nonsense like this.
It's as if you're having a stroke in Dutch:
Or it's what you hear when you've been drugged and the voices can be heard, but not quite understood:
I want to order these now and see if the waiter nods and brings them right over.
I mean, what if there are layting muffins, and no one ever orders them because no one knows they exist, but the waiters know, and regard it as a sign you belong to a secret society?
Look at this magnificent gibberish!
Pomish mams, red to the publy, into did heal phide a mirroes erishern ofirees, Febrit breen all nunden hep te the prosseit of holdy in the autny Sapperits.
Come up with enough definitions, and you've built a completely unique and interesting world.
I wonder if Lance was genuinely shocked when he came across an actual suicide.
Oh there's a lot more here we could speculate about.
Little Junior Parker. "Herman "Junior" Parker (March 27, 1932 – November 18, 1971) was an American blues singer and harmonica player. He is best remembered for his voice which has been described as "honeyed" and "velvet-smooth".
That guitar gets on my nerves eventually.
Wikipedia: "Parker died on November 18, 1971, at age 39, in Blue Island, Illinois, during surgery for a brain tumor. His next album was released by United Artists Records in 1972, titled I Tell Stories Sad and True, I Sing the Blues and Play Harmonica Too, It Is Very Funky."
Now we're done. Thanks for your visits this week! Substack up at 10 AM.
