Postcards 7

Hackers, Schmackers; it's old news nowadays -- How to Write a Bestseller -- Federal Employees can be Seen but Not Heard

LONDON — The Marriott International hotel chain said on Friday that the database of its Starwood reservation system had been hacked and the personal details of 500 million guests going as far back as 2014 were compromised.  NYT

Another hacking outrage, and it barely rates a yawn.

These accounts seem stagnant and are badly overdrawn.

The world now, as we know it, extracts data like a tooth;

For good or bad, like Judgement Day, we give up all our truth.

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Book sales boom in December, and in the lean months following the holiday peak, even modest sales can catapult a book onto the best-seller list.  WSJ

Bestsellers are written by hacks

who profit from book selling slacks.

In midwinter they

will publish away --

and readers will buy 'em in stacks.

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In a move that some ethics advocates say could be an opening to limit dissent, the federal government has issued new guidance for the political activity of federal government workers, warning that weighing in on impeachment or talking about “the Resistance” may constitute prohibited activity.

Washington Post

There once was a government clerk

who said that he thought Trump a jerk.

Tossed out on his ear,

he cried "I do fear

I never again will find work!" 

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haiku

Postcards 6

Reporter Nicholas St. Fleur Invents Time Travel Machine

Nicholas St. Fleur, of the New York Times

Those in the know say it was only a matter of time (excuse the pun) before the U of C at Santa Cruz graduate Nicholas St. Fleur perfected time travel.

Emily Kaugummi, the Director of Extraneous Affairs at the Willard Scott Institute for Something like Science, says:  "Mr. St. Fleur combines the intuitive brilliance of Einstein with the mettle of Tesla -- and he also does a mean SpongeBob Squarepants imitation."

St. Fleur first considered the intricate challenge of time travel when he was appointed to the Trilobites desk at the New York Times three years ago. Looking at all those old fossils made him think -- made him think they should get some younger editors around the place. It also made him think how cool it would be to go back in time to see a real dinosaur, an authentic Bubonic Plague victim, or an original Swanson's TV Dinner. As he explained to M.I.T. students last year:  "I took the multi-dimensional theorems of Rutherford and combined them with the quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr to come up with the equation  BVD = PDQ x 2. From there all I had to do was contact Steven Spielberg for the financing, and the machine practically built itself." 

Mr. St. Fleur says he has already used his time travel mechanism to go back and warn Julius Caesar of the dagger attack in the Roman Senate, and help Thomas Edison invent the Nerf Ball before beginning on the electric light.

While he is reticent about future time travel voyages, he has thrown out hints that something should be done about the price of Starbucks' Frappuccino.

His other interests include rehydrating snow globes, brewing his own dishwater, and eradication of the gingersnap. 

He was recently awarded a Best Mixologist certificate from the Elkhart Distillers Association.  

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Postcards 5

Postcards 4

Postcards 3

Postcards 2

A New Work by Emerging Thai Poetess Sutita Gai

From being a hermit, now I am awakening,

ready to rise, shine and to follow my dreams,

I can not tell how much I do love sharing,

the energy of caring, courage, comfort and hope,

to all men and women arond the world.

I'm Giving Away Five Dollars this Morning

HEY!  I'm giving away five dollars this morning on a live video broadcast on my Facebook page. All you have to do is call in and answer the riddle "What did Jack say to the Beanstalk?" 

The first person to give the correct answer will have five dollars mailed to them, no strings attached. 

I have posted the answer to this riddle on my Twitter account. What's my twitter account? Sorry, you'll have to look that up yourself.

What's my cell phone number? Sorry, I won't reveal that except on my live video on my Facebook page in two hours (9 a.m. Mountain Time.) So you'll have to find me on Facebook if you want a chance at that five bucks.

Hope to hear from you in 2 hours!  

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Well, this is humiliating. I stayed on for 13 minutes and nobody, not one single solitary soul, called me for the five dollars.  My social media sucks . . . 

Postcards

Hi -- thank you for your message. Please note I am out of the office until Dec. 3 and will respond to your email upon return.

I wish all 'out of office' notes

were eaten by a herd of goats,

and those that put 'em up were fried

in Crisco and then quick tie-dyed.

If you're not in and won't reply

please do not my slim patience try

with idiotic automation

that sends me such cold notation.

I gonna go back to postcards

when sending someone my regards;

at least they'll get it, wait and see,

sometime in this here century.

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Reporter Jennifer Maloney Likes Trains

Jennifer Maloney, of the Wall Street Journal

Jennifer Maloney likes trains. No, that's not strong enough. Jennifer Maloney loves trains -- she dotes on them. And why not? It was a train that saved her life and set her on the journalist's exciting and remunerative path.

On a hike across Lake Winnemucca during the dry season in Nevada as a teenager, Maloney was set upon by a herd of feral merino sheep. Just as they closed in on her, their fangs dripping with lanolin, she spotted train tracks, with a locomotive pulling train cars headed her way. As the rabid sheep made for her jugular vein, she leaped into an empty boxcar and was thus saved from a sheepish death. Exhausted with terror, she immediately fell into a deep slumber.

When the train pulled into Primm, a kindly conductor found her still asleep in the boxcar. Rather than turn her in as a vagrant, he took her to his home and fed her beetroot souffle to build up her strength before sending her back home. His parting words to her as he put her on the train back East were:  "Never trust anything you don't read in the local newspaper." 

Ms. Maloney never forgot that sage piece of advice. In a few years she was a star reporter for Newsday, and then came to the Wall Street Journal to report on book publishing, cultural institutions, and trains. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages, including Xhosa and Michif. 

Today she limits her writing to stories about the liquor and tobacco industries (she lost a bar bet.)

She enjoys touring gypsum mines and eating at restaurants that still use flypaper. She is working on a history of cow catchers, which is already out of print.  

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Laura Stevens and German Banking

Laura Stevens, of the Wall Street Journal

Ms. Stevens is fond of telling her coworkers at the Wall Street Journal that: "The only difference between a German banker and an armadillo is armadillos have better manners." 

When the Wall Street Journal sent her to Germany to cover the banking industry there, she initially thought it would be a tedious and unfulfilling assignment. After all, how exciting or controversial can a German bank be? They're full of money and have honest burghers guarding it carefully and prudently. It'll be about as exciting as a Buddenbrooks sequel. Nothing more.

She soon learned how wrong her initial reaction was! Her very first week in Dortmund found her chasing down the details of an old banking family that had siphoned off funds to start a cuckoo clock factory in Zhangdao, China, using recycled water bottles and cheap willow bark to produce knockoffs of Hermle and Junghans models for the Russian black market. Her investigation ruffled Teutonic feathers far and wide; she became the target of an online smear campaign that charged her, falsely, with putting ketchup on her sauerbraten. When that didn't deflect her reporting rampage, a contract was put out on her by the Schwarze Gauner -- and her life became worth less than a plugged pfennig. 

Ms. Stevens had no intention of backing down -- she loves a good challenge, whether it be with German mobsters or on a Norwegian slalom -- but her editors back in America had no use for her as a corpse riddled with bullets and feeding the fish in the Baltic, so they recalled her to report on the fracking industry.

Unfortunately the trans-Atlantic communication to her was garbled, and she thought she was being reassigned to report on the Swiss comedy team of Frick and Frack. She canvassed dozens of skating rinks in Chur and Zug for background on the skating duo, and returned to New York with a fascinating article on their exploits during the Second World War, when they smuggled hundreds of chinchillas out of Romania into Liechtenstein. 

Today Ms. Stevens makes her home in San Francisco, where she entertains guests at her condo under the Golden Gate Bridge by exhibiting her collection of Victorian beanbags. She also likes to cruise the Bay in her ketch, christened "Mambo Sauce to Go", which she built by hand entirely out of s'mores. 

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Rachel Leah Siegel, Historian of Business in Dallas

Rachel Leah Siegel, of the Washington Post

Yale graduate Rachel Leah Siegel, while working as a reporter for the Washington Post, is also engaged in a gargantuan project that might take a lifetime to complete. She is chronicling in detail the history of business in Dallas, Texas.

A scion of the Lone Star State, Ms. Siegel grew up amidst the mesquite and oil derricks as a quiet and observant child. She looked on in wonder at the way businessmen ran things throughout the state, and was puzzled by the lack of women and non-Caucasian business leaders. As a teenager she vowed to dig deep into the red scrabble soil of Dallas to find out what made commerce tick in her neck of the woods. 

And so by day a mild mannered business reporter for the Washington Post; but by night a sleuthing juggernaut that rolls over all obfuscation and resistance as she rattles the skeletons in the Neiman Marcus closet, or inventories lenker rods at Elliot's Hardware. 

Her magnum opus, tentatively entitled "The Decline and Fall of Dallas Business", is now up to three hundred pages -- and has reached the year 1814, when one Athanase de Mezieres, a French soldier of fortune in the pay of the King of Spain, set up a flea market on the Trinity River. But since all he could attract were earwigs he soon retooled his business plan and opened a grit store. Settlers, stragglers, native Americans, and Mexican soldiers all needed plenty of grit to survive the broiling summers and soggy windy winters around Dallas, and so Mezieres' store prospered -- until it was overrun by the Caddo, who emptied all the grit into the river and forced Mezieres to construct a water slide for their children. The soldier-of-fortune-turned-entrepreneur died soon after of a broken heart.

Ms. Siegel likes to let off steam by occasionally dancing barefoot on a wooden floor sprinkled with Grape Nuts. She is also noted for her charity work with indentured denture wearers and parking meter addicts. Her favorite color is yesterday. 

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Reporter Ben Mullin Believes that Art is the Test of the Artisan

Benjamin Mullin, of the Wall Street Journal

An artisan with words since his early youth, California State University at Chico graduate Benjamin Mullin has mined a rich and varied vocabulary for the Wall Street Journal and for Poynter since he was knee high to a katydid. 

Family chronicles indicate that his first spoken word as an infant was "Boo-bah." And speculation has been rife ever since as to what exactly he meant by that. Was he trying to pronounce 'pooh-bah'? Or was he making a financial reference, as in 'moo-lah'? There are those who insist his infant lips were trying to frame 'Mee-Maw' to gain his grandmother's attention. But all such speculation was cut short recently when Mr. Mullin revealed to Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" that "Boo-bah" was his hyphenated critique of the British television show Teletubbies. This revelation devastated the CBBC to such an extent that the British network changed it's format completely and now shows only static views of wallpaper. (Their ratings, by the way, have skyrocketed, and it's rumored on Fleet Street that Rupert Murdoch is about to buy the network lock, stock and barrel.)

Mr. Mullin likes to dress up as a fenugreek plant during the Holidays to visit lazarettos along the Mediterranean coast and pass out mochi cakes. He calls his character 'Mr. Gumwater', and is in great demand with Interpol.

An avid sportsman, Mr. Mullin has won numerous Korfball trophies in the Netherlands. He also likes to indulge in yukigassen during the winter months. 

His native tongue is pickled. His preferred form of communication is wangling. And he never strikes in the same place twice. 

Ben Mullin messaged me back on Twitter about his new profile, thus:

1. Omg

    
2. 

   This is great! Thanks, Timothy :)

    
3. 

   Happy Black Friday!

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