Triplicate

Let's have some new clichés.

― Samuel Goldwyn

The cliché Close, but no cigar stems from late 19th-century carnivals.

Winners at the wheel of chance took home a cigar for picking the lucky number.

Losers won only the wheel operator's condolence: "Close, but no cigar!"

An inveterate loser at the game might very well get the cold shoulder from his girlfriend.

The cliché stems from early 19th-century dinner parties.

A guest who overstayed his welcome at a dinner party would be served a cut of shoulder meat—the toughest part of the animal—cold.

Being served the "cold shoulder" was a strong hint: it's time you left.

But sometimes the hint wasn't strong enough.

Especially if the guest was a smart aleck.

Another cliché with early 19th-century origins, "Smart Aleck" was the nickname the New York City cops gave Aleck Hoag, a fraudster who bilked men while they consorted with his accomplice and wife, who would pose as a prostitute.

Aleck earned the nickname "smart" when he started bragging he would no longer bribe the cops to escape arrest.

Folks ain't got no use for braggin'.

Immersion

We are fish in a bowl, dear.

― Erin Morgenstern

Most writers research a topic by turning to experts. But some take a more direct route: they immerse themselves.

• Nellie Bly, on assignment for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in 1887, faked a mental illness so that she could be committed to Blackwell’s Island, a state-run psychiatric hospital with a reputation for inmate abuse. Her resulting book, Ten Days in a Mad-House, made Bly's a household name and prompted Albany to reform New York's treatment of the insane. Bly's critics labeled her the "stunt girl," but she was a pioneer in "participatory journalism."
  
  
• Upton Sinclair worked undercover in the Chicago stockyards in 1904 while researching his novel The Jungle, an exposé of immigrant life and the ghastly meatpacking industry. Two years after its publication, Sinclair’s book resulted in nothing less than the establishment of the FDA, dedicated to protecting consumers from unscrupulous food manufacturers. "I aimed at the public’s heart and, by accident, hit it in the stomach,” Sinclair said.
  
  
• Stephen Crane donned rags, slept in homeless shelters and ate at soup kitchens while he researched "An Experiment in Misery," an 1894 short story that chronicled the seedy plight of the tramps, alcoholics and drug addicts who populated New York's Bowery District. Crane said he sought to show that the "root of Bowery life is a sort of cowardice," a willingness to "be knocked flat and accept the licking."
  
  
• Jack London did the same while researching The People of the Abyss, feigning poverty for seven weeks. "In the twinkling of an eye, I had become one of them," he wrote. "My frayed and out-at-elbows jacket was the badge and advertisement of my class, which was their class. It made me of like kind, and in place of the fawning and too-respectful attention I had hitherto received, I now shared with them a comradeship."
  
  
• George Orwell opted to "submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed, to be one of them and on their side" while researching Down and Out in Paris and London in the early 1930s. He lived as a dishwasher in Paris, then as a tramp in London. The experience highlighted the cultural difference between the two cities: in Paris, Orwell wrote, he was called "bohemian;" in London, "scum." His stint as a bum awakened Orwell to his own British snobbery. "I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant."
  
  
• John Howard Griffin darkened his skin to disguise himself as an African American in the Jim Crow South while researching his 1961 book Black Like Me. He hopped a Greyhound bus and traveled undercover through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, undergoing along the way a "personal nightmare." He'd planned to spend six weeks in disguise, but only lasted four weeks before having a nervous breakdown and returning home to Texas. Unfortunately, Griffin's White neighbors weren't forgiving of his "stunt." They sent him death threats, hanged him in effigy, and forced his family into exile in Mexico.
  
  
• George Plimpton tried out for a major league baseball team that same year, while researching Out of My League, a book Hemingway called "beautifully observed and incredibly conceived." Plimpton's experiment led him to immerse himself later in other sports, including professional football, hockey, tennis, golf, and boxing, in order to write books.
  
  
• Hunter S. Thompson spent a year embedded in a criminal motorcycle gang while researching his 1966 book Hell's Angels. Thompson spent so much time with the gang that he was "no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hell's Angels or being slowly absorbed by them."
  
  
• John D. MacDonald wanted his 1973 mystery novel The Scarlet Ruse, to center around a swindle involving a stamp dealer, so he immersed himself in the world of stamp trading and speculation for five years. To understand stamps' value, MacDonald studied 10 years of auction catalogs, interviewed dealers and collectors, and began bidding on pricey stamps at auction, storing the ones he bought in a safe deposit box. In the process, he made a 175% return on investment. He called his immersion "adventures in auctionland."
  
  
• Barbara Ehrenreich lived in trailer parks and residential motels and worked as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a hotel maid, a nursing home aide, and a Walmart sales clerk while researching her 2011 best seller Nickel and Dimed. The experience taught Ehrenreich that no job is "unskilled" and that even the most menial ones are exhausting. She also learned that one low-wage job isn't enough, if you hope to avoid homelessness in America.

Immersion is the art of leading readers so close to a topic that they're inside it, like fish in a bowl.

For the writer, "immersion begins simply with a key question, which must be taken literally and figuratively," says journalist Patrick Walters. 

"How do I get inside?"

Same Old Same Old

So it's the miscegenation, not the incest, which you can't bear.

— William Faulkner

Serious students of the American Civil War understand the causes to be twofold:

1. Rich Southerners' unremitting greed; and
    
2. All Southerners' fear of miscegenation.

Yesterday, Republican Senator Mike Braun told a reporter that states not only should decide whether abortion should be legal, but whether interracial marriage should.

"You can list a whole host of issues," Braun said, "but when it comes down to whatever they are, I’m going to say that they’re not going to all make you happy within a given state. We’re better off having states manifest their points of view, rather than homogenizing it across the country, as Roe v. Wade did."

Same old same old.

Attack!

Vulnerability scanning by Russians indicates the Kremlin is "exploring options for potential cyberattacks" President Biden warned yesterday.

"Harden your cyber defenses immediately."

Biden called cyberattack readiness a "patriotic obligation."

While big businesses are the likely target of the Russians, small ones are the most frequent target of cyberattacks in peacetime, according to Barracuda Networks.

A study by the cybersecurity firm found the average employee of a small business experiences over three times the number of cyberattacks that her counterpart at a large business does.

Fraudsters set their sights most often on small businesses because big ones have expensive safeguards in place.

CEOs and CFOs are the most common targets of the attacks.

Given their privileged access to systems, executive assistants are also popular targets, according to Forbes columnist Edward Segal.

Fraudsters in peacetime primarily use email to hack into and take over a business's computers, which they then hold for ransom.

Cybersecurity experts say at least one-third of small businesses are vulnerable.

More frightening than a systems takeover is fund-transfer fraud—because it's easier to pull off.

Fund-transfer fraud losses increased nearly 70% from 2020 to 2021, according to PropertyCasualty360.

Fund-transfer fraud is "one of the easier ways to monetize a cyberattack," the magazine reports.

Fraudsters use email to hack into a company and modify payment instructions on purchase orders and contracts.

They also send fake payment instructions that appear to come from vendors.

The average loss in late 2021 was $347,000.

Once again, small businesses are the most likely targets.

Fund-transfer fraud is not only easy, but potentially more profitable than a systems takeover.

That's because small businesses are less apt to pay a ransom for their computers. 

"Small businesses typically have less digital infrastructure, leaving hackers with less leverage during a ransomware negotiation," PropertyCasualty360 says.

How about you?

Are you prepared for a cyberattack?

Exile on Main Street

The artist has no more actual place in the American culture of today than he has in the American economy of today.

— William Faulkner

I'm flattered so many friends and acquaintances have taken well to my choice of an "encore" career.

At the same time, I'm saddened that I can only pursue painting as a career because I don't depend on it for the lion's share of my income.

My hat's off to those painters—successful or not—who found the cajones to try in their youth to paint for a living.

Faulkner was right to say the artist "has no place in the mosaic of the American dream as it exists today."

The average American artist, according to the Labor Department, earns $50,300 a year. That's $10,000 less than a clerk at the post office (a job Faulkner held as a young man, until he was fired for throwing away mail).

Of course remorse isn't good for the soul; and calling America materialistic is trite.

But as Wassily Kandinsky observed, "The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip."