Extra Evil - Thawing Out
Today's Fortune: Now, quickly! While they're distracted!
Newsreel
Round and round the Guard goes, where they stop nobody knows.
Tourists prefer chewing glass to the US.
A rolling Swedish church inspired two mecha series.
Newsmax settled out of court with Jiminy Cricket.
Air Canada employees explained strikes to a judge.
Try not to get sick for a century or two.
You Need This
Almost there.
A Photo
Taken during my 1900HOTDOG efforts.
War Journal
What happened? Why do so many university types look nervous? Wasn't my money more money last week? Where should I put this brick?
Amran has answers in Leverage.
We met when...something on Substack, my memory is garbage. But he's a fellow traveler on the strange art of satirizing a sinking ship while you're on it. Leverage shows his aggressive and intelligent style at its best. He aims it at finance, the leaky tumor that just reached America's bones. It's a ride, and I was happy to get an early peek.
Is hyping someone else's book right after my own launch odd? Probably. But Leverage reminded me that life's more than chasing profit like fentanyl.
I had an injury scare last week. Or rather, an injury that I avoided battering to death this time. While it's nice that I'm recovering, I'm mostly happy that I avoided rewriting The Downward Spiral liner notes.
It's been a good year for learning. For some reason, I once thought there'd be no hills left to climb at this age. Hills are everywhere. I am besieged by hills. Is there a faster way past a hill? Or to climb it retroactively? My boots are worn down to nothing. I don't know how I made it past fifteen without walking into traffic.
But really, I've enjoyed a lot of it. I hope I'm rediscovering a brand of curiosity that dimmed in my twenties, when nothing went wrong. I suspect I'm just getting more easily bored, or desperate for an edge over other clowns. Whatever works.
Then there's door number three: I could be easily influenced. Everything in The Book of Five Rings and The Hagakure says that you grind levels forever. There's truth to that. One thing I've learned grinding levels: the Hagakure goes to surprising places in the middle.
Teaching remains motivational. Not just for all the kumbaya Stand And Deliver reasons. It's impossible to read twelve new writers without remembering there's something special about words.
Odd habit of mine, that probably doubles the time these take: I tend to write intense blocks of text in this last War Journal slot, find something wrong with them (real or imaginary), and delete the whole mountain. While the habit's slightly insane and sleep-annihilation, it gives me a little pride. My darlings could fill a graveyard.
A Screenshot
The Present
- My new novel saves your holiday of choice. [How to Dodge a Cannonball]
- Death to trees. [1900HOTDOG]
- Everything Abridged keeps your memories alive. [My Previous Book]
The Past
For some reason, magazines were gun-shy about this one.
The Future
I've got to run around the real world a bit for the next column. I think you'll like the results.
The next prank is coming along slowly. My brain's honestly a bit scattered this week, but I'm rocking ahead until it stabilizes.
Dead Sun Theory
Showtime.
Avatar Longmile149, the winner of The Largest Medium contest (for my glorious book How to Dodge a Cannonball, and a chance to suggest a fake ad) gave me a prompt with some soul:
"...in the late 00’s, some local charity put up ads on the sides of the city busses - all four of them - promoting an adult literacy program. Time has distorted my memory some, but I remember one from the back of the bus I’d always get stuck behind on my way to work:
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW CAN’T READ THIS, CALL 555-5555 OR VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT WWW.WEBSITE.COM
Adult literacy people writing out ad copy encouraging people who can’t read it to visit a website full of text.
Nobody likes having a joke explained, but it’s not “ha ha, dumb illiterates” or “ha ha, dumb charity workers.” It’s the kind of absurd that’s perfectly logical in a world like ours.
I don’t know what I’d like the ad to be for, but that’s the kind of vibe I’d like it to have.
There's nuance to that. Which I flattened to "promoting something aggressively without purpose." And then took to a place of evil.
Campaign A
Campaign B
A or B? And should I be committed?
Not Brought to You By
We'll go back to the signs outside my apartment in a minute. I want to look a bit further. From Ads of the World, where I spend a normal amount of time:
"Traffic isn't made of vehicles. It's made of people." It's in a few formats, with the same imagery and sentiment. You know, lower Death Race scores.
The point lands, but PSAs don't get much credit for that. "Don't roadhaul your neighbors" isn't controversial to anyone worth talking to. I have an art school problem with it.
Call me insane–for this, or a range of other valid reasons. The idea feels unfinished, like an unresolved chord. Either the line or visual needs to go a step further. The cheesy solve would be to eliminate cars/seats/etc. entirely, and have free-floating people. But cheese can be the solution. People will give you a pass on a roadhaul-prevention billboard.
Creativity: C- | Persuasion: D | Sanity: A
One Sentence Reviews
Karaoke: It works when it's cheap, expensive, amateurish, virtuosic, dead drunk, or stone cold sober. (Falsetto/5)
Perfume - Nebula Romance: Probably kept me from snapping. (Cosmos/5)
BAEST - Collosus: Riffs on riffs on riffs.. (Chug/5)
Graphic Design: A User Manual: Half brilliance, half filler. (3.5/5)
Understanding Exposure: Revised Edition: Delightfully crotchety for a textbook. (3.5/5)
A Question
Signing off
Thank you for reading Extra Evil, the newsletter playing mad scientist. Share it to awaken the monster.
