Something's Coming Out of Your Nose
Have you ever wanted to write a book to change the world? We sure haven’t.
In fact, we’re surprised books still exist, considering the effort involved in reading them - it’s way easier to just have something of interest electromagnetically beamed to your phone (in the future it will beam directly to your brain). After all, the same level of immersion occurs, with way less lateral eye movement, and you don’t even have to bother deciding what “something of interest” actually is, the phone does it for you!
(We hate decisions too…what if there’s a better option out there?)
Yes, the stuff on your phone just magically shows up for you to consume, completely lacking intent. Or remorse.
If only our coworkers behaved in the same manner.
But then a thought occurred: Since books still (supposedly) exist, why do people write them? How do they do it? What stimulants to they take? And what’s our universal obsession with publishing photos of ourselves all over the place?
Undoubtedly the single most important reason people write books is revenge. And they write them by sitting in front of a “type” writer, or if really advanced some sophisticated computer program. Then they have to find someone to check their work because it turns out words are technical beasts that need to be organized in such a way that things make sense. Then the author needs something for this word pile to be encased or “covered” in, preferably with an image, but hopefully not an image of the author unless your Jim Gaffigan. Or Ewan McGregor. Yum.
Speaking of which, data-driven research shows humans like to publish photos of themselves all over the place because everyone wants to get picked up as a model for Spudman – the exclusive, audited magazine for the nation’s potato growers, packers, shippers and processors. Emu Today & Tomorrow came in a close second.
As for stimulants, it’s Brazilian cocaine. Mounds and mounds of Brazilian cocaine. Mixed with Adderall.
So that all makes sense.
Plus, when you think about it, if a politician can write a book, or pay a ghostwriter to do so because said politician can’t actually string a sentence together on paper or simply doesn’t have the time what with all the legislative sessions, highly orchestrated spontaneous selfie shoots with whichever group of voiceless, struggling citizens they benefit from aligning themselves with on their way to a Ralph Lauren-fitting at Rochester Tailored Clothing Company, and of course those obligatory fundraising dinners, virtually anyone can.
So we here at Outcasting did exactly that. Not the corruption part, the book writing part. Although we’re open to corruption.
It turns out the word “book” falls under the “loosely defined terms” category of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. So our book is really a collection of humor essays and general dis-coherence, often accelerated thanks to the Brazilian cocaine, and occasionally casting a point. With some desultory rambles thrown in for good measure (we hate to be predictable).
We decided one of the lighthearted points of this collection was to make you possibly laugh, or giggle, preferably right when you’re taking a drink of say carbonated water so it comes out your nose.
The other lighthearted point was to make you laugh at work so you get in trouble with some authority figure. When was the last time you were in trouble? Come on, live a little.
(What would be incredible is if liquid came out your nose at work from laughing, resulting in you getting in trouble.)
On a less-frivolous note, we also tried to suggest through some of these, ah, essays, that we all tend to think we know all the rules and how things work, because that makes us comfortable. Which, while understandable, may not actually be the case.
The beauty is you get to pick which of these intentions to pay attention to! It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure, just weirder.
Finally, this book allowed us to reach out, enroll, and assemble the many talented people we admire, with the intent of creating a studio where we can work on projects we think are important. This is a fledgling operation, and we’re not sure where it can go, but it’s worth exploring, and we think there are other folks out there who’d love to be a part of such a thing.
After all, a few of us came together and built this book. It’s almost ready to go. Then there’s this inflatable, fully stuffed, cooked and dressed turkey dinner idea kicking around, something about offering an option to decorate your yard for Thanksgiving and tying the sales to a philanthropic organization, and it may be crazy, but again, maybe it’s all about how we see the rules, and how we think things work. Or don’t work.
The book is coming in May. Crap, it’s already May! If you’d like to know when it launches you can hit this button so we can automatically collect your bank account information. Okay, it’s just an email address where you can send us a note, we were going to do a form but felt like folks are (justifiably) wary of forms and lists. Although this will put you on a kind of list. Oh well.
Thanks for following all the stuff we’re doing – it may seem ironic, but you’re the only reason we stay sane.