The Weekend in Foolish Attention
DATELINE: February 12, 2022
Happy Saturday, gang!
First things first. I left my gig as a Senior Copywriter this week. Yeah. I hear you.
No drama. Just a change in the expectations of the gig so I decided to move on. I can definitely say that I learned a ton about the industry of copywriting in the past year and a few months and worked with extraordinary folks. I also was lucky enough to work the entire second year of a pandemic from home so I am eternally grateful for that.
Now, I’m taking some time to relax then go back out into the world of copywriting to land some cash gigs. In the meantime, why not share this Substack so maybe someone will subscribe and eventually I’ll put up some writing that requires a paid subscription?
STEVE-O FOREVER!
As noted in Friday’s post, I loved Jackass Forever.
Sure enough, the boys are doing the round of promotional interviews and this one is cherry.
“Most people would be delighted to hear that they’re actually not going to die in their early 30s,” Steve-O says now, almost 14 years into the sobriety wrested from what he believes is a familial predisposition to addiction. “It came to me as a crisis. I was confronted with the most terrifying possibility: I was only like halfway through my life.” He had little money and no idea how to make more, having alienated his personal and professional connections and seeming to possess few skills beyond inspiring people to shout, “Oh shit, it’s Steve-O!” when they saw him. “The ultimate fear for me would be to be a recognizable personality and totally broke,” he says.
How about being a completely anonymous human and totally broke?
Maybe instead of searching for more writing gigs, I should just film myself lighting my nuts on fire?
Eric Zorn Finds a Song from the 60’s That Perfectly Captures the Zeitgeist of Today
I subscribe to a few Substacks and none gives me more pleasure than Eric Zorn’s The Picayune Sentinel.
This week he posted a unique find.
Reminds me of Mark Twain’s The War Prayer. You know, with better singing.
The Trauma Olympics
If Everything Is ‘Trauma,’ Is Anything?
The word “trauma” comes from the ancient Greeks, who defined it as physical injury. And while the term is still used to describe physical harm, today it’s more commonly expressed in the context of the emotional. That shift was critical in the 1990s and early 2000s to legitimizing the concept of domestic abuse, said the sociologist Paige Sweet, the author of “The Politics of Surviving” — and even helped shelters gain government resources because it “medicalized” the concept.
But as words gain useful new meanings, over time, they can also lose precision.
Words like racism, harm, assault, harassment, PTSD, and New & Improved.
Trump Flushed Documents
While Trump was in office, staffers in the White House residence periodically discovered a toilet clogged with wads of printed documents — and believed the president had flushed them, according to Maggie Haberman's new book.
“I am really the best flusher there is. Others say they can flush government documents down a toilet but I am really the best one. Some people take a dump. I take a Trump.”
That’s about it this weekend!
Remember that whether Joe Rogan is a bad man or just a guy with a podcast is definitely not the most important thing in life these days. Hell, they just lifted the mask mandate in Vegas! That means each smiling face I see inside Fashion Show or at Caesar’s could also be completely deadly. Like Russian Roulette with incisors!