Q: Why don't baritones wear dentures?
A: Because that's a falsetto teeth.

If you think that joke bites, you're not alone. (Quick, look behind you!) No doubt my singing friends will say I'm misrepresenting what falsetto is, but of course I am because I know more about making puns than singing. I don't even know what makes a chorale piece good, but I only need them to be mediocre for me to have a pun fight at the okay chorale.

(I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that you signed up for this newsletter on purpose. I'm as surprised as you are.)

Actually, I may even be more surprised than you are because the past couple weeks randomly held some surprising interest in my writing. Interest in my writing is always surprising to me simply because feedback is so divorced (now it's dating much younger writing) from the process of writing that it always feels unexpected. One of the things I always loved about performing improv or stand-up is that the feedback is visceral ("please stop throwing viscera on stage!") and immediate. Whereas writing involves me sitting at my desk for a long time and then weeks, months, or even years later, someone might say, "Hey, I liked that thing you wrote."

Which is absolutely delightful, and I hope I never stop appreciating it (conveniently it's rare enough that it's still very easy for me to appreciate)("how did you like your steak?"), but it always comes out of nowhere for me so it's completely unexpected. And in a world that seems to provide a ceaseless torrent of unpleasant unsurprises of late, pleasant surprises are

REALLY GOOD

After my last column, I randomly got an email from someone at the Williams Alumni Office who said they liked it and asked if they could reprint it as an alumni career commentary. I was, of course, delighted to have more people read it, and so if you liked the excerpts in my previous newsletter (or skipped them entirely), now you can read the complete column, reprinted for your convenience with no paywall on the Williams Alumni site:

• Live a Life Beyond Compare

And while we're talking about emails from my alma mater, I recently received a survey from the Williams College Career Center asking about what students in INSERT INDUSTRY HERE needed to know about AI. I took the opportunity to tell them that AI can (and should) fuck right off, only in more and nicer words explaining that in addition to AI causing cognitive decline, there's literally no point in anyone hiring a writer who uses AI when they could just have AI write things themselves, or hire an actual writer not using AI.

Anyway, if you are a Williams alum who received this survey and thinks AI is deproving your industry and/or is detrimental to students who overly rely on it, I encourage you to take a few minutes and tell them so. And if you think AI is what all the students should be learning these days, I encourage you to delete that email and not waste your time with it when you could be out enjoying the weather (or asking ChatGPT to enjoy the weather for you, I guess).

FAKEY GOOD

Not long after receiving that lovely email from Williams about my column, I received an email from someone who wanted to grant me a featured author interview! She said she was very impressed with the clear and practical approach of my book on MRP and wanted to interview me for a program on Columbia University's student radio station that would help give me increased visibility.

That interview didn't happen, for reasons you'll learn as you read excerpts from this week's column:

• "The Interview That Wasn't"

Last week I was delighted to receive an email asking to interview me about my book on Materials Requirements Planning, delight which was tempered only by the realization that I had never written a book on that topic.

[...]

So, I dutifully emailed her my regrets, saying that although I had written a few books, none of them were on any remotely related topics and she likely had the wrong email address.

To my surprise, she replied and said she'd be happy to interview me about any of my books I'd mentioned! I couldn't believe that someone who had been excited to discuss complex business logistics was willing to grant me a feature interview to talk about my rhyming version of the Torah or weird things in Rhode Island! I mean, I literally couldn't believe it.

So I looked up the program she said she was running for WKCR, The Literature Humanities Radio Hour: Literary Classics in Conversation, which appears to be Columbia University's radio program for discussing classics like Dante's Inferno or Homer's Odyssey. Hard to believe that list would include Seth's rhyming bible, let alone weird things in Rhode Island or materials requirements planning.

I asked Bella for some more information about her program, and she replied that it "features conversations with authors about their books", which is tremendously impressive when you consider that the books being discussed include Dante's Inferno and Homer's Odyssey. I honestly can't name any other podcast that has managed to book Dante Alighieri or Homer, so clearly this was a very elite radio program!

Well, either that, or it's a scammer who knows nothing about the program and is just using AI to write emails.

Yep, turns out it was just a random gmail address claiming affiliation with a popular literary podcast, in order to ask for money in exchange for an interview. Quick research confirms these scams are becoming very popular, with scammers saying they're with book clubs, literary podcasts, anything where they can prey on unsuspecting authors delighted that someone is showing interest in their work. Then they charge the eager authors for the promotion -- which would be bad enough if they were actually affiliated with these real groups, but they're not.

Coda to all that is, not even two weeks later, I got another email, this one directly to my other email address, asking about doing an interview to promote a different book of mine. Different name but similarly formatted gmail address ending in .ht after a name, and hinted at my paying promotional fees for this great opportunity. Since I wasn't going to get another column out of a similar scam email, I just deleted it instead.

Be careful out there, author friends.

IF WE SHADOWS HAVE OFFENDED

Then you should try not to be offended by shadows because I'll probably keep throwing shade. At least at AI, which can go Puck itself. That's all for this midsummer night's newsletter. As always, I thank you for reading, will be back in two weeks with another column, and we will make amends ere long.

(Also I just had a weird thought that Midsummer Night's Dream ends with that bit about "Give me your hands if we be friends" and then Julius Caesar has "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" and what if Shakespeare is just gathering body parts from his friends to build a Frankenstein!)(At least he's asking his friends for the parts and not Robin them)

If all the world's a stage, I try to be a Good fellow, but I suspect my actual role is revealed by the relative position of my valediction.

the Bottom of this newsletter,
Seth