I am happy to say that I am once again in the waking world. I write to you from my private bedroom in Jupiter Hollow. There is still a commando from the Commerce and Legal Brigade guarding my door, but the birds are singing outside my window. All will be well just as soon as Captain Sir Pierce's investigations are done; if you have any information about the recent strange circumstances (bricks through windows, sudden comas, etc.) please let us know.
In the meantime, Stringphone marches on! Thank you all for forging onward in my absence. I have missed nearly the entirety of spring (and dozens of bird sightings, alas) but summer is coming and there are many events to record in our fair burg. Please do send me your coverage for the June newsletter by Friday the 31st.
Regards,
Horace P. Gunderblatt X
PS - Big shoutout to Geraldine Waters, whose nifty mint tea and cumin concoction brought me out of my long sleep. You're the MVP, GW! - HPGX
It has been nearly two weeks since core Stringphone staff members were evacuated in the wee hours to Jupiter Hollow, the magazine safehouse. Horace P. Gunderblatt X briefly came out of his coma and sent a rather alarming message to all staff before falling back into unconsciousness. Simultaneously, a brick was hurled through a window at headquarters with a single "X" painted on the side. The portents could not have been worse, so we locked down until any threats to the editorial staff could be neutralized.
When no such threats materialized, we downgraded our emergency status from HEWFCON-5 to HEWFCON-3, where we now sit, monitoring an increasingly disturbing situation.
While we strive with our mysterious editorial obstacles, the city has roared into springtime with gusto. The air is electric with waking and the weather is just wondrous. We just hope that the good vibes make their way into Horace's private ICU room in the coming days.
As always, thank you for reading what we write.
Captain (Ret.) Sir Amos Pierce, Esq.
Commandant, Legal-Commerce Brigade
Acting Editor-in-Chief
HP-X HAS DETECTED AN UNAUTHORIZED EDITORIAL EMAIL AND IS INITIATING CODE 5.37ty4 OF THE OPENNESS AND FAIRNESS ANNUAL CIRCULAR VERSION 1.1.2
DISPLAY AUTOMATICALLY CALCULATED AMOS.TXT:
"Dearest Colleagues:
Greetings from the Stringphone safehouse, codename Jupiter Hollow. It's like living in another world over here. We were just emergency relocated from our downtown offices to this bunker, somewhere, by corporate ninjas of the highest caliber, both of violence and stealth. No one's coming from the financial subdirectorate, they have no idea we're gone. The magazine is on automatic.
Anyhow, I'm writing to you to offer an explanation of the alarming message you just received, ostensibly from me given Horace P. Gunderblatt X's current medical condition. You would be incorrect. At approximately 10:03 pm EST, cross referenced with Greenwich, Horace briefly came out of his coma. Pushing aside the pen and paper that had been laid here for communicating between watch shifts in case the editor awoke. Luckily his phone was there, lying unlocked and recording according to protocol so we could watch him email you all with no recordable assistance.
At the very same time, a brick crashed through the Stringphone headquarters window and upon its side was sprayed a single X. We have it on good authority that it was not indeed Snurge, the vandal force majeur in the city; it was a new vigilante graffitist.
This is a possibly very threatening portent from the perspective of the ongoing security of the staff and safety of the Editor from harm. "get the'" What does it mean? Well, if you accidentally hit the shift button when trying to type "them," it could be done. Sending by reflex with no subject line?
"get them" Is "them" the person or persons responsible for Horace's strange coma? It's compelling.
However, if "them" was his goal, it may have only been part of the goal. He could have meant "theme!" This is exciting! Can it be that Horace wants us to have a theme for the May newsletter? That is the position of this office. HP-X has provided us with an exhaustive list of randomly generated themes, and we have painstakingly narrowed it down over the last few minutes to include a final three:
- pickles,
- mom, or
- jazz-rock diffusion.
We have allowed you each to choose what you will cover as an individual as we look further into the increasingly hostile and cryptological case of a coma. Also we are now on HEWFCOM-5. Good luck everyone.
Regards,
Captain (Ret.) Sir Amos Pierce, Acting War-Time Editor-in-Chief
ps - the new standard issue gas masks are malfunctioning again. cheers - SAP"
END AMOS.TXT.
Good afternoon, Comrades:
As some of you may know, our illustrious editor Horace P. Gunderblatt was recently admitted to St. Germaine's with a mysterious illness and remains in a coma as I write to you on his behalf. I am a lawyer, not a doctor, so I will make no comment on Horace's condition or prognosis beyond saying that he looks perfectly cherubic in the wan light of the ICU, if a bit pale.
While he sleeps, we continue to work. Please send stories for the April newsletter by the 30th of this month. April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, so take that into consideration. Also if anyone wants to cover the Spinach Dance or the Hydration Marathon that would be great. With that, I will cease and desist from providing further editorial comments seeing as that is not my prescribed role in this organization.
In lieu of sending flowers, cards, chocolate, or stuffed bears to the hospital, Horace would appreciate small donations be made in his name to the local branch of the Audubon Society (as stated in his living will, section 13, subparagraph 12). Please be certain that donations are designated "in honor of" rather than "in memory of;" he's still fighting.
Regards,
Captain (Ret.) Sir Amos Pierce, Esq.
Commandant, Legal-Commerce Brigade
Of late, my dreams have fixated on Spring. I heard the first robin far off in the oneiric ether some three weeks back; perhaps you did too. It has just gotten warm enough to open my office window some afternoons, and my ears burn for the coming birdsong to rise above the wintersick grumble of bescarfed pedestrians. Our city is ready to wake.
That said, it is not as if we've all been sound asleep. On the contrary, the frenetic boredom of midwinter has boiled over into a wide array of happenings in our fair burg. We had the mid-February protests, which turned out to be about potholes, Valentine's Day postage hikes, or widespread wage theft in the financial district. It depends on which little bird you listen to. The cancellation of the President's Day Invitational Forklift Criterium due to floods in the Old Port was met with a night of chaos whose effects are still being teased out.
We look optimistically to March as a month of renewal, with the Department of Public Health's World Kidney Day Hydration Marathon and the Spinach Dance promising to usher in a vibrant spring.
While the days grow longer with the greening of the trees, Stringphone is here to keep you apprised of Spring's freshest cultural happenings and Winter's final words.
As always, thank you for reading what we write.
Horace P. Gunderblatt X
Editor-in-Chief
Dear Colleagues,
February is a strange animal. I was informed today by the Legal-Commerce Brigade (they still keep a sergeant on comms around the clock down there) that since it is a leap year, we can delay our production calendar for the March newsletter by about a week. Don't ask me how that math works because I couldn't understand it when they tried to explain it to me. All I know is that we get an extension, so enjoy it! Unsurprisingly, I will be spending my newly acquired free time by taking a longer than usual stroll through the halls of the Ornithological and Futurists' Society. What fun!
Best of luck,
HPGX
Dear Colleagues,
Our ongoing sojourn into the digital age has not been without its fair share of trials. I've fielded numerous calls from longtime subscribers, most over 70, who have had trouble accessing our new electronic content. Some have downloaded computer viruses, others have accidentally deleted their accounts, and one old fellow actually managed to order a bag of antique South African Quaaludes from some seedy corner of the deeper web. Suffice it to say I have disabled external advertising links until Legal-Commerce can verify their safety; the last thing Stringphone needs is to be enmeshed in enabling some pensioner's exploitation of hypnotic sedatives.
As we commence the construction of the February newsletter, I encourage you to embrace the spirit of the recent upheaval in our fair burg. There is much to be mined from the recent general protests, counter-protests, and counter-counter-protests, none of which seem to have had a clear direction or aim. At least they were exciting. If anyone feels like actually covering the protests, that would be neat as well, but I should remind you that we cannot take a stance (unless it's buried in the subtext).
Please send me your pieces by Saturday the 17th. Don't forget to submit questions to Gernie using the link on her column page.
Cheers,
Horace Ten
Good morning!
I am pleased to share with you our first electronic version of Stringphone! As always, it represents a labor of love, so thank you for your hard work.
I am sharing a pdf file, not a link, because our servers were hacked (probably Snurge or one of our many rivals) and we cannot host this month's edition until they are debugged. So share the file with as many people as you wish.
Keep up the good work!
-Horace 10-G
I have an...interesting...update for you all. Mr. Fink, our advertising manager, has informed me that the caliber of ad clients that our now-online publication attracts has fallen steeply. Digital being more accessible for thriftier businesses or some such. In any event, I wanted to warn you ahead of time about the ads. They are all legit, even if they don't really seem like it. That being said, if you hear of anyone who needs cheap ad space, apparently we are now that. Our crack Legal-Commerce Brigade has informed me that this is a good financial omen. I have my doubts.
I am looking forward to accepting a few final pieces in the coming days. The Jan-Feb issue is looking splendid so far!
Cheers,
HPGX
Having received a few pieces already (one via brick through my office window, care of Snurge), I can say that we are in for one hell of a reboot!
By the way, for those who will be traveling back into town after the Big Game tomorrow, keep an eye out for protestors on the 8th Street Bridge. If anyone wants to brave the flying fruit and teargas, I would appreciate some coverage. I would go myself, but a porcelain swan-eagle has been sited at the landfill, so that is where I will be spending my weekend.
Cheers,
Horace X
Dear Stringphone Staff:
As some of you may be aware, our publication has recently taken fire for pivoting to an online platform. One of our competitors has accused us, in a lengthy diatribe delivered to my desk via stealth courier just yesterday, of "joining the dot-com blitz to salvage what little buzz [we] have by simply pandering to the bots." Nothing could be farther from the truth. In point of fact, we are going green, keeping costs down, opening ourselves to new readers, and pandering to the bots.
Mr. Duckworth's criticism (yes it was he, that roustabout chief of the stinking Post-Gazetteer, rag sheet that it is) is not entirely accurate, but I convey it to you now in order to show you what we are up against. The post-physical-media-pre-virtual-technocracy moment in which our city finds itself is rife with Philistines and trolls (literally, I am disturbed to say), very few of whom are rooting for us, and fewer than that are even reading us.
But be heartened! According to the new business projections from our crack Legal-Commerce Brigade, assisted by Rodkey, Katz, Goldstein, and Hanson, LLP, we can survive at the current monthly capacity for at least five and one-half months without a serious restructuring of manpower or resorting to volunteer writing (I shudder to think). I have no doubt that our straits will be much less dire before half the year is out (or else).
So, with that knowledge in mind, go forth to your beats, your haunts, your opium dens and grand halls, go forth and collect in words that which is beautiful, that which is horrible, and that which is simply there, the stuff and substance of our fair burg. Going forward, please direct your one-sentence pitch out the nearest window in a loud voice; we have to cut back on printed pitches or face taking another collective pay cut. Have your copy turned in to your section chief by the 20th and your sections to me by the 25th.
Before I forget, let me invite you to join me in a moment of silence at your desk to honor the passing of Charlie, the office zebra finch. His gay chirruping shall be dearly missed but his random scatalogical proofreading certainly shan't.
Now then, off to work, remembering the motto of our dear founder, my grandfather, Horace P. Gunderblatt VIII: "Don't write what you see, write what you see reflected in the shiny surface of another thing you also see."
Good luck,
Horace the Tenth
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