Archive for the ‘Ripped from Headlines Still Oozing Ink’ Category

Publishing Industry Hijacked!

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Dateline: Wellington Leg: In a shocking development authorities are now convinced that an entire industry has been hijacked spirited out of Publishers Row and stashed aboard an abandoned tugboat in Newark Bay. “I think it’s safe to say that we’ve never experienced anything like this before,” said Big Publisher Rudy G. “One minute I was reading Chapter Five of Sarah Palin’s memoir, the next minute the Thought Police arrived and took the book away.”

Is Chapter Five significant? Authorities believe the hijacking began with Carrie Prejean’s riveting work STILL STANDING. Carrie was Miss California and then she wasn’t and then she was and now she’s not and probably won’t be in the future. Sorry for the spoilers. “I had hoped to read the sequel NO LONGER STANDING,” Rudy G said. “But now we have a ghost writer shortage and hippy treehuggers running Washington, so I think we’re finished here, cooked.”

Glengarry, Glenn Beck: Perhaps Alex, a Master Salesman, can negotiate the release of the publishing industry before North Jersey toxins begin corroding editorial judgment and taste. While few people enjoy white water rafting on the Passaic River Rudy is pretty certain that Alex can redeploy an energized salesforce after just such an event. Fortified with enough Glenlivet they can market the next dozen Palin memoirs and the reinstatement of Carrie Prejean.
“Those sound like demands,” Rudy observes. “But they’re really life affirming goals. I never forget that I’m in the hopes and dreams business and ultimately I hope this is all a bad dream.”

Cash For Clunkers Goes Literary

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Wellington Leg: This year’s Literary Faire began shortly after three o’clock this morning when Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe roared through towne on a red Indian Scout motorcycle. A crowd of three outside Dunkin Donuts cheered as Prudentia tossed a wedding bouquet to Night Manager Cindy. “I’ve never won anything before,” Cindy said. The bouquet was confiscated by mall security shortly before Cindy’s shift ended at seven am.

His aim is true: Senator Foghorn consoled Cindy with a cash offer for her maroon Yugo. Waving a copy of his bestselling Beige Book, the senator arranged a trip for Cindy to the Fed’s discount window. “I asked for a billion dollars,” Cindy said. “I’d never heard of the cash for clunkers program,” she added.

When Books go Bad: As a test case the forty third earl’s masterwork VOLTAIRE’S MIASMA may be returned to Eddie’s Book Nook this Saturday in exchange for cash. The Senate Literary Oversight Committee declared the book a clunker after Senator Foghorn discovered that Voltaire was a “French person.” Adding insult to injury Senator Leghorn dropped the massive tome on his foot after being startled by a lobbyist discussing the Louisiana Purchase. “We’re not returning Louisiana to France anytime soon,” Leghorn vowed. Foghorn seconded the motion joined by Longhorn who came in third.

One lucky customer received a $3,500 credit after dragging VOLTAIRE’S MIASMA across the Sierra Nevada range. He also managed to trade in his donkey for a new Chrysler minivan. “This baby has air conditioning,” the lucky fellow enthused.

Late word from the Palace: anyone attempting to return the Dowager Princess’ Her Lyrical Poetry will be beheaded. A word to the wise.

T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.

Jersey Towns to self-Govern

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Wellington Leg: Following the arrest of several of New Jersey’s mayors experts are suggesting that many cities in the Garden State adopt open source governance. Under this method of leadership bribes can reach more people more quickly creating more economic stimulus by increasing the velocity of laundered money.

According to the Tuffington Post laundered money often moves more slowly than unlaundered money in part because the great unwashed have sticky fingers. “A single laundered dollar will often drift around in the trunk of someone’s car for weeks on end,” noted Atlantic City resident Eddie. At one point the money supply, the M!, dropped to zero in Hoboken as all the cash went to the sidelines. “This is incredibly inefficient,” Eddie says.

Tuffpo Contributor Little Mahmoud can relate: after naming a Jersey City resident as First Vice President, LM was shocked to discover his choice was overruled. “Recycling politicians is even messier than laundering money,” noted Mahmoud. Caught in the spin cycle he had no choice but move on.

Jersey Beaches are Open: the sudden shortage of mayors and public officials won’t effect the shore. Bundles of cash may be visible at high tide and schools of jellyfish, sometimes used to launder money, have floated north toward Long Island. The sighting off a shark off Cape May turned out to be a loan shark. “The water’s fine,” said a local mayor who has yet to be taken into custody. Loan sharks are not considered a threat to swimmers.

Tuffy Tuffington reporting.

Lurid Writing Outtakes

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Wellington Leg: Nothing is more exciting than writing a novel unless you include watching another person writing a novel or watching yourself. Despite much evidence to the contrary, though, even writers must pause to absorb what the world is dishing if only to make sure that the planet is still here even if you’re not quite finished with your scene.

CNN: Anderson Cooper is confused by piracy: “What do these guys want?” Of course this story only began a few days ago in CNN time but Somali pirates want you to know that they’ve been at this hijacking game for years. Trotting out guys from the K&R world to explain shipping lanes and Lloyds List is a hilarious diversion from working on that manuscript. I highly recommend the pirate coverage for fiction writers and Benedictine monks of all ages.

Sean Hannerty disses France: Sean is funnier now that Obama is president although he’s gone a little grayer since the G-20 conference in London destroyed traffic on Piccadilly. Needless to say he’s worried about pirates too, aren’t we all, since international maritime law is a god given fundamental right of human kind and now seems to be in jeopardy. The Hudson and Potomac are wide open, though, due to eternal vigilance.

If You Encounter Pirates: Something to consider while you try to figure out why the scene you’re working on is becoming a Monty Python riff. Maybe the old lady muggers are getting in the way. Let’s make them pirates but remember you have to answer Anderson Cooper’s somewhat rhetorical question, what do these guys want?

Here are some possible answers: After pouring over the Baltic Dry Index the pirates of the Indian Ocean sense a turn coming in charter rates. “If we seize all the merchant ships we can charge whatever we want for time charters!”
Money.
This is the kidnap and ransom business on the high seas. Every merchant vessel has a Lloyds Registry designation by class, deadweight tonnage and flag. Even tramp steamers, those ships with no fixed route or “trading territory” are included on the registry. There are few American flag merchant vessels because of the vagaries of the Jones Act passed back in Woodrow Wilson’s administration. The act imposes staggering costs for crew liability and limits where a vessel can call. That’s why the flag of convenience is so popular with ship owners everywhere.

The pirates may soon encounter another type of ship those found in Jane’s Fighting Ships. Jane has been cataloging war ships for over a century; she’s the original old lady mugger.

Exchequer Porfolio Swap Approved

Friday, March 13th, 2009

House of Gourds: The august upper chamber has given treasury and exchequer officials a reason for cheer: from now on they can forget about money. From now on they’re in charge of college basketball. “We realize how depressed these people were becoming,” said First Gourd Graf Rafferty. “We thought, let’s throw some new people into the financial crisis, people who are fresh and probably broke.”

Kansas Suffers: The Jayhawks men’s team suffered a first round loss in the Big 12 tourney. Part of the blame falls on the officiating crew who only days earlier worked for Treasury. “Well, we warned the point guards that we’d modify the three point line but only if a reasonable alternative presented itself, a blend of private initiative and public policy that might insure some consistency,” said referee JM Keynes. “In the end we will all die and these scores won’t matter all that much,” he added.

Atlantic Ten powerhouse Xavier fared better as the officiating crew replaced the scoreboard with the Philadelphia SOX Index. “We carefully weighted the performance of each player on each team and concluded that LaSalle, Duquesne, and Fordham had no chance of winning the tournament,” a Treasury official commented. “Forget St, Joe’s and GW.”

Syracuse Faces Sanctions: TARP officials may sanction Syracuse because of their six overtime win over UCONN. “That game took too long,” said an unnamed source. As noted in the FOMC minutes “Basketball games shall remain within the confines of their allotted duration, that is to say during regulation.” Clearly the unregulated Orange missed opportunities to put the Huskies away but opted instead to prolong the agony.

March Madness: In a related decision the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that Niagara University will play Canisius for the national championship April 1st. All twelve fed governors will referee the contest. “This will save a lot of energy,” Speaker Pelosi said. She’s privately rooting for the Purple Eagles.

Sports and Finance Editor Al “Boom-Boom” Greenspan reporting.

Nanobots Set to Strike

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Wellington Leg: According to the authoritative Nano News a strike vote has set the stage for a walkout scheduled to begin sometime after midnight. The chief negotiator for the Wellington Leg Nano Cooperative, Erhardt Crisp, has warned the Privy Council that the nanobots are serious this time and want to join the Teamsters Union. “They want to drive tiny trucks into tiny places where large trucks cannot go,” Mr. Crisp said. “They want to frequent miniature truck stops and drink coffee; they want to watch Smokey and the Bandit.”

It’s a Very Small World: Nanobots and NanoWorkers were assigned to repair roads under Wellington Leg’s Economic Stimulus package according to shift foreman Gus of Goth. “It was windy yesterday and my entire nano crew wound up sixty miles away in a chestnut tree. I mean, these nano guys are small, okay? It takes about three million of them to polish off a Big Mac.”

One Square Inch at a Time: Nano bridge building crews have completed a one inch section of the First Avenue Extension not far from Fran’s Haus of Beauty the epicenter of the credit crunch. Readers will recall than Fran’s one thousand dollar loan caused CitiGroup to collapse. “Enough already about CitiGroup,” Fran said. “I’m trying to style some nano hair over here.”

A Basket Full of Kittens: Even before the news of A-Rod’s impending hip surgery foremen such as Gus were having difficulty managing the nanobots. “My full size Ram truck carries about sixty million of these guys; every time I stop for a light they scatter to the four winds ( are there only four? I thought there more) I spend half my day running around looking for these guys,” Gus complained. “That ain’t very stimulative,” he added.

Better Working Conditions: Nanites enjoy their own cafeteria while Nanobots fend for themselves at enormous vending machines. “They form nano chains to reach the coin slot but the quarters are way too big. Plus if they can get the quarter into the machine they are a Snickers bar away from catastrophe.”

Organizers predict that the nano vote will be close: “We think a few Cat hats ought to cheer them up,” said Erhart Crisp. “One hat ought to cover about forty million nanobots.”

T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.

Whig Response Somewhat Muted

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

Wellington Leg: The Whig Party’s response to President Obama’s speech last night is still being written sources tell the Druidical & Literary. Indeed the heavy lifting for the Whigs falls on the forty third earl whose plasma big screen television is on the fritz. Whig Maintenance recommends kicking electronic devices when they malfunction but the manual fails to indicate where to kick the big screen. Fortunately the President’s speech is available at the local drive in whose really big screen is viewable from the Dunkin Donuts parking lot on Irrational Exuberance Boulevard.

His First Impressions: As viewed from the roof of a Buick Six, the earl notes that none of the assembled dignitaries wore their ceremonial powdered wigs. “The forty third earl will no doubt decry this breach in decorum,” says Urquhart Depew embittered dogsbody and victim of medical record keeping. Depew was switched at birth with the earl in a tragic case of obsolescence, malfeasance, and baby blankets of similar color and heft. “Mine was blue,” Depew says in his memoir. “So was his.”

Undoing the Louisiana Purchase: As regular readers can attest the Whig Party is opposed to the Louisiana Purchase; while the US and France did all right in the deal, Wellington Leg lost control of large swaths of territory. Neither President Obama nor Governor Jindal mentioned the Dowager Princess and her claims to the Missouri Territory. “Let’s face it,” Depew says. “Might makes right.”

Powdered or Sugared? The earl is working on an energy independence plan that captures escaping gases formed by the Slush Pile. “As these orphaned manuscripts age they form a biomass of frustration; by simply attaching a hose to the bottom of the pile energy flows to a gathering point called a Vortex. Here in Wellington Leg we have several of these vortexes monitored carefully by Vulcanologists who came here from Vulcan for this very purpose.”

At the conclusion of the President’s speech the earl will race across Towne to deliver his rebuttal and pick up his dry cleaning. If the dry cleaner’s is open we should have the full text of 43’s speech in time for the D&L’s afternoon edition.

T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.

Saving Private Enterprise

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Wellington Leg: A tiny group of men and women are struggling to conceive a Bad Bank that will purchase toxic assets from other bad banks thus saving the economy by spurring lending. Perhaps a good example of what these stalwart government officials are facing may be found in literature where bad novel was created to clear a path for good novels by selling in large numbers creating what economists call Extra Money.
Bad Bank Should Look Bad: The elusive design of the Bad Bank begins with the lobby. Traditional Sound Bank marble should be replaced with crumbling fake marble. Portraits of ancient capitalists should be mass produced and hung from the walls at an odd angle. Lobby Popcorn? You know it’s stale. Remember this is a Bad Bank without a lobby seating area where geezers watch CNBC.
That’s Right, We Bad: Outside Bad Bank men in pork pie hats will hawk Collateralized Debt Obligations, Mezzanine Tranches, and Credit Default Swaps. I base this prediction on our own Piggy Bank, Wellington Leg’s baddest bank. Iggy Ban CEO of the Piggy has been operating sidewalk sales since the crisis began. “We hired a sushi chef a few years ago to slice and dice interest bearing instruments. He was such a hit that we moved him outdoors to attract depositors.”
It’s Not Easy Being Bad: Treasury officials are invited to come to Wellington Leg to see Bad Banking in action. Piggy Bank officials led a consortium of banks that loaned some ten billion dollars to nine year old Eugenia Phaeton whose show and tell project My Hedge Fund is now the fourth largest financial institution in the country. “A few years ago Eugenia unwound her yen position because Japanese trading begins way past her bedtime,” Professor Moriarty explains. “It was a brilliant move that catapulted My Hedge Fund into the big leagues.” Her collateral for the massive loan? A somewhat dubious mountain of gummi bears. Piggy Bank officials hope to sell the gummi bears to the Treasury in exchange for Extra Money.
T. Rex Love-Handles reporting for Wellington Leg Financial.

Things We Need, Things We Don’t

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Wellington Leg: Life stops when the job is lost. Before it starts again a period of uncertainty brings about enough reflection to alter a few habits, discard some junk, scale down the activity level. Economists talk about the velocity of money, how fast it moves when times are good. That money has slowed to a crawl is part of the reflective process, the opposite of impulse buying. Money is scarce, sticking to the fingers of whoever has it, reallocated by instinct or formal plan to the basic necessities.

There is less traffic. Like the measles or chicken pox most recessions are waning by the time they are recognized. This time is different because our naked emperor is running down Wall Street with peasants and pitchforks in hot pursuit; hey, those scars on the limestone are from the riots in the Twenties. Where are the Pinkertons for crying out loud? Whatever happened to irrational exuberance? That was fun, by the way.
Maybe the Population is Reading After All: After all the analysis it turns out that people are reading more fiction. They’re eating fried baloney sandwiches and Velveeta a substance not native to this earth. We’re doing all kinds of crazy things. Grab a book and a pitchfork. Get down tonight.

Into That Good Night

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

Wellington Leg: In the final days of the pre-election frenzy the Republicans began using the word socialism to terrify the constituency into voting their way. Given the backdrop of extraordinary economic events the word socialism sounded friendly, almost gentle, like a cold medicine to avoid with extensive alcohol use.  Republicans were reduced to bystanders at a five alarm fire warning of dire consequences to the water supply if we don’t stop dousing the flames. Looking back it’s a classic moment when public officials, accustomed to running amok with electoral emotions, froze in mid scream as Godzilla’s mighty foot came down. The squelching aftermath of political failure has infected the publishing industry, not as cause and effect, but as part of a similar blossoming of late stage awareness that scaring the audience is scaring themselves .

I Didn’t Mean to Destroy Book Publishing: It’s pretty hard to scorch Tokyo without serious collateral damage to institutions viewed as innocent bystanders in an epic moment such as this. Writers were put on earth to suffer but that agony was intended as a private and seedy passage through circles of hell invisible to ordinary folk.  Writers need publishers the way cold sufferers need their meds and their excessive alcohol consumption in order to delay recovery. Writers are supposed to fall into gutters, not publishers. The fact that very little about the relationship between writers and publishers is healthy makes no difference.  The ideal is that great work sways a skeptical house into acceptance by sheer force of quality. The author is hardly presentable, perhaps dead in a perfect circumstance. Dead authors are not invited to confess their sins on television. Well, maybe they get invited but they certainly don’t show up. But their work lives on! Imagine the sacrifice. Of course that ideal may have tarnished a time or two. Publishing people once announced that Pamela Anderson had written a novel, and ominously for the sanity of all, publishing people published it. Still the punishment does seem excessive for the occasional crime. Pam did promise a sequel. Perhaps it will prove to be the final book our civilization produces.

Writers now are beginning to understand that we may outlive the august houses against whose sturdy plate glass we press our noses. The guilt prone may assume some responsibility for this disorderly demise the theory being that if only we kept our end of the bargain all would be well. This is a Bastille unstormed; it’s crumbling away.

Grab a stone and some crazy glue. We need these people.