Psychedelia Gothique

Do you know the difference between flotsam and jetsam? Flotsam is wreckage - stuff lost at sea as a direct result of a disaster - whereas Jetsam is useful stuff thrown overboard to lighten the load. Flotsam is, at best, useful for keeping survivors briefly afloat, but for the most part it just gives you slivers; while jetsam is the sort of thing beachcombers spend their lives looking for.  Welcome to the Age of Jetsam - where we're all waiting to see what useful things are being jettisoned during the storm we are currently weathering. And what, after all is said and done, might be salvageable.   Even before the pandemic, I heard stories about the sad state of the publishing industry.  Now that retailers in general are in survival mode, with many restaurants, specialty stores, nightclubs, and other businesses surrendering to the economic chaos of the moment, I've started to hear the inevitable stories of authors not getting paid, bookstores and printers going bel...

Despite my aversion to rolling over and exposing my soft, pink underbelly, the blog posts that draw the most readers and get the strongest reactions, are the ones where I publicly fail – or at least, come close enough to failure to see the shreds of my dignity in its teeth and catch the reek of shame on its breath.   I don’t attribute the popularity of those posts to some kind of schadenfreude thing. There are very few people around who actually enjoy seeing others fail. In fact, just the opposite usually happens; a certain amount of failure brings out the best in people. It attracts and engages us, makes us want to help.   Many of us enjoy rooting for the underdogs – specifically because they are the underdogs. For those on the receiving end of that attention, it’s nice when people sit up and take notice – even for the wrong reasons. As long as we don’t play the “woe is me” card too often, it can even give us a sense of achievement and reinforce our sense of self...