Emphasis on “some.”
Some Reviews of The Reeds
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Tagged book reviews, Literary Review of Canada, Montreal Review of Books, reviews, The Main
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2024: The Year of Aspirational Stupidity
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
In 2024 people finally were fed up and voted out everybody for other everybodys who, still, promised to make your life worse by making theirs better, because though we’ve lost hope we are still aspirational.
Aspiration is why we still get out of bed in the morning and stumble to the kitchen and make coffee and then face the day.
Aspiration is what makes a somewhat decent person vote for someone who says horrible things but feels your pain.
Aspiration is a year that laid bare the idea that power corrupts and it doesn’t need to be absolute but power absolutely corrupts stupidly. Or lazily. Though any power that appears lazy comes with a lot of enablers. The cult of the stupid mixed with aspiration is the most dangerous reality we have right now.
We aspired despite the Ukraine and Gaza/Lebanon and Sudan and Haiti and everywhere else blood spills because the stupid believe what they want to believe even if that means coloring the sky red with the blood of those whose reality makes yours inconvenient.
The world’s wealthiest man has proven that he is simply needy and spends time either alone (he is the father of 11!) or in the company of the world’s most successful grifter and he seems like a deeply pathetic soul who can’t believe that people don’t respect him even though he’s the world’s wealthiest man. So he has decided to try and buy the truth.
And truth abhors our aspiration (no matter how wealthy you may be). And then everything becomes television. We watch events unfold even as we take part in them. Korea. France. The US. Germany. India. China. Syria. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
We are still in the twilight of the pandemic that shut the world down for 2 years and accelerated the stupid and our need for aspirational models. Our children suffered. Adults suffered. Only the world itself did not suffer though that was temporary and we are stupid enough to ensure that we will continue to accelerate the world’s suffering. And I’m not even talking about the environment. Not specifically. Because everything is about the environment in the end.
When the truth abhors our aspiration, what does the media do? The legacy, big money media? I cancelled a few subscriptions this year, let’s put it that way. (I also added new ones, but none of them could be considered “legacy” or “big money” and that is also a problem, if not the major one).
I mean, did the Olympics really happen? Something about actual athletes having to swim in a dirty river full of shitty bacteria felt very on point. And then a Tesla filled with explosives blew up in front of a Trump property in Las Vegas (yes, it happened in 2025 but most people had yet to return to work so….2024).
In 2024 I did the following:
- Not much. At least this is what the year feels like and though I know this is not true I still think this will be an enduring memory, most probably as a form of self-preservation.
- Continued my brand/content strategic consultancy which was slow for a time until it wasn’t.
- I started my search for an agent in earnest, which is taking longer than I’d like. (I want to resolve this one in the first few months of 2025.)
- I published a novel in October. Not much happened. Which is what happens to most novels. (But the cover is great and the reviews have been mostly positive so what do I know?)
- I completed season 2 of my podcast, The Full Bleed, about the future of magazines and it helped me rekindle my complete love and devotion for not just magazines but for the people who make them, especially these days.
- I started writing another book. It is set on a cruise ship of sorts. I have never been on a cruise ship.
- My mother visited from India and stayed in Montreal (where, of course, she used to live) for over a month and at our house for 3 weeks and it went better than I thought it would.
- I grew tired of the digital world. Not because it doesn’t produce great products or present fabulous opportunity but because of the quick and built-in obsolescence of its potential goodness.
- I used the word “enshittification” with increasing frequency, mostly because of #8. It was the best addition to my vocabulary. The year in equation form might be thus: Enshittification = (Stupid + Aspiration)/Tech x People
- I have stopped using social media as a home of any kind or as a source of any kind of information but found in Bluesky a kind of pre-enshittified reality that if I’m being honest can’t last.
I have been saying “Everything is stupid” with alarming regularity online and I believe it. Because that is what we are and describes what we’ve created. Yes, the world is complex and we have created things of remarkable audacity. Sure. But…. how much smarter are we really?
And yet I still get out of bed and stumble to the kitchen and make coffee and get on with the day. Because there are still some things that are beautiful, we do and can create amazing things, and love can defeat the stench of the stupid and the ugly, and, well, we are, in the end, an aspirational sort. And yet despite all our aspiration, whether we are poor or wealthy, and whatever truth we want to believe, even the truths that are obviously not true, we all realize eventually that the end is the same for everyone, which might be shitty but at least it’s a constant, and in that sense is eternal.
Requiem For a Lost Dream
As a Canadian, I am not really in a position to speak of the choices Americans made yesterday. I don’t agree with them, fundamentally, and I’m extremely saddened by them, but that was their decision to make, and they made it.
The fact that they made it is going to lead to more analysis than I can fathom, and for many many years to come, but to sum up: Americans preferred a convicted felon, a grifter, a man who has stolen money from charities, a rapist, and a racist, who peddles in fear and lies and retribution, over a smiling and competent and smart woman of color. So some thoughts:
- The only person to beat The Orange Felon (The OF is my name for him) is, surprise, Joe Biden, who was never perfect, but seemed a mostly decent type and, perhaps more importantly, was a white man. I continue to believe we have The OF and everything that comes with it because Americans once had the audacity to vote for a man with a Kenyan father, and that most immigrants to the US are not white and/or don’t speak the majority tongue. The word “majority” is key in the US, as it is in other Western countries.
- If you support a party, and the belief system it encompasses, that still can’t beat someone like The OF, well, this calls for some introspection. Because the message isn’t getting through. Blame who you want but your message is not working. And perhaps the delivery needs to change. I don’t agree that one can be so put off by tone that it would result in a vote for a felon but that’s exactly what’s happened and so deal with it. Better. Though, really, neither American party survives. Not as we know them. One was hijacked. The other killed itself slowly and continues to do so.
- The American system sucks no matter how you look at it. The two-party system is terrible. The Parliamentary system (like the one in Canada) also distorts things. The Chinese believe that democracy breeds chaos and sometimes they’re right, even when they say it for the wrong reason. But the two-party system results in false equivalencies. Many years ago, perhaps during the first OF administration, but I think it was earlier, during Bush 2, I called our time The Era of False Equivalencies and it’s only become worse.
- A lot of the message from the left and the center is not getting through because of the media. And this isn’t an American problem per se; each country has its own issues, but a common denominator in much of the world is the control of the message by very wealthy people and/or those close to the leadership structure, the result of which is a citizenry that lives in alternate, or parallel, realities. I don’t know what the solution to this is, and this fact may be the most damming thing wrought by the internet overall, but it is not the only thing. The thing is, the rich get richer. And thus more powerful. Until, I don’t know, revolution. Which creates a different power structure.
- The media, in most countries, is not “Liberal.” That idea is the result of persistent messages from the Right. They are very good at this. At creating labels that stick. (see, also, the final paragraph of this text.)
- In most countries The OF’s backstory would be disqualifying. And not just a little. A lot. The American legal system – and most everyone, including those in power and the media – went half in on the prosecutions and created not a criminal but a martyr. The Conservatives in the UK were toppled by a…party. And it didn’t look like a fun one at that. The reasons for the beginning of their demise seem quaint now.
- The OF is not so much dangerous (which he is) as he is indifferent. To you. To your suffering. To all suffering. Only his suffering matters to him. He is not ideological. He just wants love. Or what he imagines love to be. Which is mostly about acceptance and power. His needs are ultimately transparent.
- The OF is surrounded by ideologues and there will be a rogues’ gallery of them in the administration now. That’s where the danger lies for most Americans and most of the world. He is surrounded by truly awful people. (Hello Elon!) And JD Vance. Holy cow. How many believe The OF, a person in such obvious physical and mental decline, will last a full term? He’s not just old, after all, he’s Joe Biden old.
- So…the Ukrainians. The Taiwanese (probably). They can’t be comforted by this. On the flip side, Putin and Xi are probably ecstatic. Xi, especially, is probably laughing himself silly. Putin can’t believe the gift that The OF and the entire Republican party continue to be to his whims. The OF is going to cede entire countries to him, and countries and industries to Xi. Modi is also happy. That douchebag in Hungary is happy but he rules over a place that is shrinking economically and socially. That he is an example to many of these people, including The OF, is tremendously odd.
- The Palestinians were going to be screwed no matter what. They are already screwed. They’ve been screwed for decades now. Perhaps longer. But now they’re fucked. It’s possible we will see them wiped out, or sent to the Sinai, or to Jordan. They’ve never really had friends, not at the state level, but now….
- We are going to see a bunch of “Strongmen” types come to power. My guess. Or more of them. There are already enough.
- Mostly, however, I am worried by the backslide we’re going to suffer on a planetary scale. The green movement is on pause. There will be local wins, there will be others doing some work, but the American government is out of the “let’s save the planet” business. The only heartening aspect of this to me is that Texas of all places is a leader in renewables. But The OF is no friend of the planet. He doesn’t understand how it runs nor is he interested. He only understands and is interested in profit. This is another industry he will cede to the Chinese. Odd to say, but the Chinese will have to save us now. I’m still not convinced the Europeans are fully committed to the effort. The Russians don’t care. The Indians are too obsessed with catching up. The Brazilians need help.
- And, finally, this election has now effectively normalized The OF. Which is stunning. There are millions of young people who will not know anything but. They will look at The OF’s resume and shrug. They will listen to him speak and shrug. They live in a country with a two-party system and one of them will be…this. For a long time. That legacy will continue.
It’s all quite dark if you ask me. (Democracy dies in darkness, indeed. Also, of all the eulogies for “America” I have read today this might be the best if not the smartest.)
I do know this: Ideologues keep going and going until they can’t. Until the wall of opposition to them becomes too high and too powerful. Ideologues ignore consequences because they can. And this is what will happen here. Some things can be fixed, of course. All systems go through course corrections. But some things can’t be fixed. Not on human timelines. And it is those I most worry about.
In 2016, I pretty much stopped watching the news and listening to it on the radio. I couldn’t stand the voices and not just The OF’s, but all of them. I couldn’t listen to the idiocy of the ideas, but more than that, the idiocy of the media, the sports-talkification of it all, pundits yelling at each other, or ignoring what was being said, facts or no facts, so they could get to their next point. It had all become gamified. Everything. The media made me angry not because of the content but the context in which it was all happening. Trust in the media has gone down in the US (and elsewhere) and that was the point. When you stop trusting the media you can say anything. And so you do. Because there are no consequences.
I have just published a book set in 2017, after the start of the first OF presidency. The fact I have to qualify that now makes me a bit ill. And the fact I could have set the book in 2025 makes me more ill yet. So we are, indeed, Still Ill.
George Constanza, the surprisingly prescient character from Seinfeld, once said “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” Not that a lie, no matter how widely held, changes the truth. And that means any truth, a concept which may be more and more elusive. But we live in an age where simple concepts, such as “the truth” are not so simple. And the sad part is many people simply don’t care.
When Your Local Bookstore No Longer Has Your New Book (After A Week)
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Because they had it, a bit before the launch date, and now, a little over a week later, they don’t. Which I discovered yesterday when I went to pick up Jeff Vandermeer’s latest.
It bugged me. It also didn’t. This bookstore, and it’s a great bookstore, is kind of, I don’t know, hip, I think that’s the word, though maybe not, who knows really what words really mean to the people who read them, but my book, despite its smashing cover, is not hip, not in the sense I mean it, and so probably not quite right for the bookstore. Like it wouldn’t pass the curation sniff test with this place. It sits athwart the list. The vibe.
I launched my last book at this store. And now, after a week, they have none of the new one. So, glass half-full: they ordered it and sold them all and were unprepared for the orders. Fair enough. Glass half-empty: they ordered a few copies and those few copies sold (I signed two copies when I went in) and they didn’t think they could sell anymore and so that’s that. Because there are other books that will be published, and more and more (and here I imagine Seinfeld’s Newman describing the relentlessness of the mail…”The mail never stops…And then it’s Publisher’s Clearing House!”) and, well, a small bookshop has to make room for all those new books. And my publisher, as great as they are, is also small. They have limited means to…market books. (Though this reality is not exclusive to authors published by indie presses, I get that.)
A book becomes an old product the moment it is released. Unless people buy it. Then, and only then, does it have a shelf life.
Posted in Blog
Tagged bookstores, indie press, novel, Publishing, Seinfeld, The Reeds, writing
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Because Unboxing Is Now A Thing
I unboxed the book when I received the package from the printer. Or, rather, I UNBOXED it. That’s what one must do now. I posted a video of the unboxing to social media. I won’t do it here. You can find the videos (there is more than one) with minimal effort if that kind of thing interests you.
But what I will do is post a photo of the box itself:
The book is very orange. The cover is gorgeous. It is by David Gee. It is like a shot of Vitamin C. Fights scurvy! (a smart quip by another writer on social media). And yes, the carpet is real. We used to keep it in the washroom but, you know, the washroom is not the best place for shag carpets even though the 70s happened. But once we fixed that issue, I kept it and it now lies proudly – if a shag carpet can be proud of anything – on the floor by my bedside. The fact there is an orange shag carpet in my book is completely unrelated to the orange shag in my bedroom. I’m being honest here.
The Reeds is out October 15. Meaning soon. Very soon.
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Tagged book, cover design, ECW press, orange, shag carpets, the 70s, The Reeds, unboxing
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The Start of The Game
This from Quill and Quire, Canada’s book industry magazine, a publication that used to be much much larger and perhaps more influential and isn’t any longer. But hats off, it continues to exist and that’s saying something. I don’t know if they’re still in print, but they have a website. It was always niche but now it just feels super niche. Like private club/speakeasy hidden away.
They do, however still publish a preview of every season’s bounty, which is probably the minimum they must do.
And they have chosen The Reeds as one of the books they’re “most excited about this fall.” Like, collective excitement. How fun!
The hope, of course, is that more become “excited” by The Reeds. That’s really the only hope.
The book is, of course, out October 15. But can be preordered now. Pretty much everywhere.
My Podcast About Magazines
It’s true. I have a podcast. And you’re thinking, just what the world needs, and I wouldn’t disagree, because, yes, there are a lot of podcasts out there, too many, let’s admit it, but who am I too say there’s too much of anything? I’m just a man. With a podcast.
The podcast is called The Full Bleed, a series of “short conversations about the future of magazines and the magazines of the future.” All the conversations are under an hour, mostly because my main complaint about almost all podcasts is not that there are too many (again, I’m not the king and I don’t get to decide what is too many of anything; we live in system that encourages too many of the same thing and then we get into survival-of-the-fittest mode which leads to an inevitable culling, and soon enough we’re complaining there are not enough of that thing that was once so abundant), no, but that almost all podcasts are too long. If I enjoy, say, ten podcasts, and they are all over an hour, I can’t listen to all of them regularly and I have to make choices. Life is about choices, sure, and too much choice is overwhelming, but podcasts should not make one feel existential dread, unless the podcast is about existentialism. And even then. There’s something in the length of podcasts about editing and control, for sure, and also about hearing about time crunches while simultaneously having to listen to too many podcasts (and read too many websites, yes, far too many websites are guilty of this and the lack of controls has led to some websites to employ overwriting as a stylistic thing, and this is also true of podcasts) – there are podcasts dissecting television shows that are far longer than the show they are dissecting, for example, which is a choice but also a kind of “we’re so smart” pissing contest, and they almost always end up sounding smug. Sounding smug about smart things is one thing. Sounding smug about, say, House of the Dragon is something else entirely.
The podcast came about because my friend was producing a podcast about magazines (there’s an entire website now dedicated to magazines) but the hosts were talking to the legends from the heyday of the form, and I asked my friend a simple question: What about the future? And he responded by inviting me to do something about it. So I did. (And, of course, I have a history in magazines, something that is in my past, sure, but I continue to love the form, though I have also become bored and even despondent with many magazines out there and continued to be so…until this show; let’s just say I loved running magazines).
I’ve just completed the first season of The Full Bleed. I spoke to all sorts of people from the EiC of Vanity Fair (Radhika Jones) to upstart indie types and everyone in between.
What they all shared in common was passion (of course) but also an amazing dedication to the form. I also found the following themes kept coming up: 1) the false economy of the ad supported model made readers into data points and so the business types at all media forgot who their customers were; the reaction to this is reader-supported magazines that charge the true cost of a subscription to their readers and don’t bend to the knee of advertisers (Mountain Gazette is a great example of this) 2) Print is far from dead; I spoke to more than one editor who is bringing their print edition back (notably Nylon and Saveur) and another who would love to return to print (Teen Vogue) 3) If you have a strong print brand, you don’t really need a strong digital presence (Mountain Gazette, again, and Delayed Gratification, for example) 4) though building a strong ecosystem is good if you can afford it and 5) the idea of quantity has been eclipsed, once again, by quality; more than once did an editor admit that the chase for clicks is “madness” (must have been a Brit who said that) and that quality ensures a longer shelf life for your brand than the incessant Sisyphean task of visits and clicks and eyeballs.
I’m going to start thinking about Season 2 soon enough. The Full Bleed is available at the embedded link but also on all podcast channels. Or at least the ones that I know about. It’s probably available in more places than that.
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Tagged Magazines, media, Mountain Gazette, Nylon, podcast, Saveur, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair
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A Short Introduction to Settings That Will Only Make Sense Once You Read The Reeds (and yes I’m going to say “read The Reeds” quite often in the coming months)
An overhead view of the lovely (it’s not lovely) Cote St. Luc Shopping Centre which was once close to dead but managed to kind of save itself (though not completely)
The long road to publishing is indeed a long road. Duh.
But you’ve seen the cover. The first blurbs are in. And they’re good. Again, duh.
We have chosen an actor to read the text for the audiobook; he’s worked in Montreal and knows French so he won’t massacre some of the words and names.
The book is set in Montreal. It is set, for the most part, near where I grew up. The Reeds’ homebase is very close to the corner of Cavendish and Cote St. Luc Rd for those who know that part of town. The gallery is in Mile Ex, sure, but the beer garden is really what is now Bar Wills up on Esplanade (though the book was written long before the opening of Bar Wills, back when it was called Alexanderplatz). The Canal is the Canal. The Point is the Point. I imagine Bobby’s office somewhere near Guy, perhaps between the Centre Bell and Guy where the new condos have all gone up. Dee’s high school is where Marymount is now but I had St. Luc in mind (and remember, Marymount and St. Luc switched buildings probably 20 years ago). Mimi’s store and warehouse is set in the Cote St. Luc Shopping Centre but a very rundown and dystopian version of it. The Chinese restaurant where Bobby orders take out and enjoys a beer is Fay Wong. It is always Fay Wong. It’s been there since I was a child though it may have changed ownership at some point. And the golf course is Meadowbrook. Where I spent countless hours as a child, exploring not just the golf course but also the train yard beyond it, where we would climb mountains of iron ingots and leave caked in black dust.
My last novel, which started out in Montreal (in the first draft) morphed into something quite different; a road novel set almost entirely in the U.S. The Reeds does not leave the island of Montreal. It almost feels like a reaction to Waiting for the Man.
The book is now available for preorder. Everywhere. Please preorder if you are able.
Oh, and here are some of the blurbs, taken from the book’s page on my publisher’s website.
Sometimes people say nice things and they don’t have to be paid for it.
Posted in Blog
Tagged Chinese food, Cote St. Luc, Fay Wong, golf course, Meadowbrook, Montreal, NDG, novel, settings, shopping mall, The Reeds, train yards, writing
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The Cover (Preliminary)
There’s nothing to add here. This is the cover of the ARC (look at the words in the black circle for clarification) for my forthcoming novel. Orange shag shows up a few times in the text, in two different places, connected to an individual and the two halves of his life. He strokes the shag a lot. That’s not a euphemism.
There’s a lot of carpet and furniture and cooking and drinking and over-drinking and photo-taking in The Reeds but mostly there’s a lot of talk; much of the plot is propelled by talk. And much of the novel is about big ideas brought to life by all this talk. More to come.
The Reeds is out this October.
2023 Cannot Be Dreamt Away
What a year it was.
I am tired of year end reviews.
Years can suck for the writer of the review or for the world at large, or can be good for the writer of the review (but rarely for the world at large) but 2023 seemed to continue a string of crap that started with the pandemic that refuses to leave (it hasn’t gone anywhere just look at the numbers) and continued on to, oh, the continuing mess in the Ukraine, wars in Burma and Sudan (which, quite possibly, is the world’s worst disaster right now, if we must rank disasters, and probably the most ignored for reasons that are too obvious to mention), and the incredible intractable kerfuffle that is Israel and the Palestinians (not ignored, obviously, but not always for the right reasons) and all the drama and trauma and idiocy and suffering that this latest awful mess is causing both in the vicinity of the conflict but also around the world.
The extremists are winning, in other words. They are always the source of the news. Always. Which is always a surprise.
This was our year. Canada, where I live, feels adrift but this, in hindsight, seems to be its normal vibe. In many ways Canada is not a serious country (and I don’t mean in the right wing pundit talking point kind of way, nor do I mean this in the Quebec separatist kind of way either). It is one that allows you to live and not think about things (and if you do, chances are it is an American thing) and this is a luxury and the result of the privilege of living huddled by the border of a superpower. In Quebec, where I also live, we are led by a party of bureaucrats and careerists who govern by what they think their voters might like, as opposed to leading. So the teachers are on strike, the nurses are on strike, the government promises things no one wants, they go after minorities and/or immigrants because it gets them points in the hinterland, they hate the metropolis because it is so different from the rest of the place. The government in Quebec is the result of a population being tired of politics and personalities and so we are governed by an apolitical bunch that is free of personality. In Montreal, where I live, the city marches on, drifting, with and without momentum, but livable and charming and creative, though that is being challenged as well, by the same problems afflicting other places, namely lack of affordable housing and apartments, NIMBYs moving into condos next to nightclubs and then complaining about the sound at night, and the damned cost of eggs.
The economy is doing not bad. The numbers say so. Inflation is pretty much under control. The numbers say so. Unemployment is very low. The numbers say so. But the people don’t say so. There is a disconnect between reality and what people feel, and unlike the disconnect between, say, crime rates and people convinced “the streets” are more “dangerous,” driven clearly by a media that needs us to feel the “danger” so we stay indoors and consume their media, the economic disconnect is something else. The numbers are good but the feeling that things aren’t is almost universal.
Is it because we consume entertainment that showcases the lives of the ultra-wealthy? (Look, I enjoyed Succession too but that family was miserable and part of the joy of the show was the manner in which that misery would manifest itself.) Is it because we believe that one’s prosperity says something about one’s character? (There are too many examples of people thinking this and being wrong for thinking this to mention but I will give you two words: Elon. Musk.) The world we have built is one that places great truck in personal growth, in “success,” in the linear trajectory our lives might or should take. But whatever the reason, many of us aren’t satisfied with what we have, or what we lack, and many of us are, indeed, not doing well financially, and so while it’s true money can’t buy happiness (see the examples above), some money can sure make one happier.
Is it because of Tik Tok?
I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning AI and this screed about the business of AI (and not the ethical implications of it) sounds good to me. Of course it’s a grift. And the people who will make money off it are not in the business of making things better they’re in the business of making more money. Which is their right. But the cost of their profit will be felt by everyone.
I received an AI-generated Christmas card the other day. Christmas was misspelled. And “Merry” was rendered in a font that was illegible. In other words, I can only assume the word was Merry. The image was glossy, a vintage looking robot placing a wrapped gift under a tree, with that uncanny valley sheen that seems to infect all AI-generated art. It was sent sincerely, so thanks sender, and it was also awful and unintentionally hilarious. I got the laugh out of the way because AI is going to stop being funny soon.
Tech has long been long on promise and short on actual benefits. You might say, wait a minute, the conveniences of tech far outweigh the bad. I think that’s debatable now and perhaps gets more debatable by the day. Tech utopians are simply that, utopians, and utopia is a mere vibe away from dystopia; both are unrealistic but it’s easier to frown than to smile (not everyone agrees with this and I acknowledge the disagreement). Every bit of tech has an outlier but sometimes the harm is built in.
Spotify is a good example. They have built a platform that emphasizes reach over quality (just listen to another streaming service and compare) and have managed to completely fuck up the economic model for musicians. And yet, we all use it. Spotify has flattened the world with their Wrapped feature (which collapses with any kind of scrutiny), which I’m sure started as the answer to a question from a smart marketing person (who simply asked “why are we just sitting on everyone’s data?”) and has become an odd and uncomfortable juggernaut. Again, only if you think about it. And by the way, the place my musical taste is most like is “Brighton.” I’ve been there, it’s lovely and I can see why Spotify thinks my taste aligns with the hip people of Brighton and Hove. It’s reductive and simplistic, sure, but Spotify isn’t creating this “data” to be smart, let’s be clear.
Speaking of streaming, well, I’d rather not, but TV is now streaming and the streamers are becoming….just like yesterday’s tv. What else is an ad on a streaming service? It’s like the tv-tech mash up braintrust thought long and hard, decided what they were doing was not sustainable (or finally realized it because money isn’t magic) and rediscovered advertising. We’re all Bobby Ewing in the shower, man, except we’re not all sleeping with Pam. Or live on a giant ranch funded by greed and fossil fuels.
And speaking of which, I don’t want to talk about the environment. It’s a mess, it’s getting worse, COP was a cop out, a handful of people have decided it’s better to get rich than die (eventually, this cartoon is on point). If you’re not working in the oil industry and still support the oil industry, ask yourself why. Beyond “ideology.” Really really ask yourself this question. Do it in front of a mirror until you are afraid of looking at your own face. Go ahead. What other industry do you support with such passion and…vitriol? Because chances are you are doing the bidding of others.
Look, electric cars are great and don’t use fossil fuels but they’re not, you know, clean. Those batteries are the source of some horrid working conditions. And I think the real menace is plastic, which is everywhere. Never mind the heat (or the humidity) or the dust or the drought. Or the rain. Or the flooding. Or the lack and/or abundance of water. (all of which I’ve written about in a manuscript I’m having trouble placing….speaking of my writing:)
I have a novel coming out in 2024. I wrote more in 2023. I ditched my agent at the end of 2022 and as of this writing am still looking for a new one. But the novel will come out, October 15th, it’s called The Reeds, and so that’s something to look forward to.
My consultancy, like other businesses, has its ups and downs. It’s a new business and that means I could use more money (notwithstanding what I just said). At the start of the year, my son left on some overseas adventures. Midway through the year he returned. Now he is planning another journey. I have travelled enough in my life that his mere planning tires me out though the thought of going somewhere and just enjoying the fuck out of doing nothing exotically has an appeal.
The older I get the more the idea of nothing appeals. Of null. Love, as no points is called in tennis. I look forward to a world that slows down, inexorably ridding itself of humans, waiting for another animal to take over. But that is a long ways away. In the meantime, there is media to consume (and all media, in addition to what I’ve mentioned already is a mess and most everyone knows it). There are books to read. So many books. There is joy. There is good food. There are moments and objects of beauty. There is the hope that people come to their senses, though the evidence generally does not lend itself to hope.
The possibility of beauty, especially when it is improbable, is what keeps us going and that in itself is a beautiful thing.
The video of the year, because the year was so meh, is this one. That it’s smart dumb and dumb smart, all at once, and that the campaign got even smarter (with the simple trick of never changing the vocal track but always changing the actress “singing”) and pointed – and even political in its lowkey way – is genius. It’s a parody and the joke is on all of us. And it’s catchy. Dumb catchy. (It is, in some ways, the sonic equivalent of watching Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day, which was a thing.) Planet of the Bass not the song of the year (and I’ve had this verified by my Spotify Wrapped at least – I didn’t listen to it once on Spotify!) but it made its point and perfectly encapsulates how genuinely shitty things feel. Wrapped in a pleasing, even, yes, beautiful, package.
Which leads us to the word of the year: “Enshittification.” A word so perfect, so obvious to anyone that learns of it, one is amazed it is new and not something passed down from violent prehistoric horse-riding tribes wandering the steppes of what is now Ukraine. Where they know a thing or two about enshittification.
Maybe it was all a dream, right?
Posted in Blog
Tagged 2023, AI, Bobby Ewing, business, Canada, COP, economy, Elon Musk, enshittification, environment, EV, Montreal, nothing, politics, Quebec, Spotify, tech, Tik Tok, wealth, writing, year end review
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