# STEFANO BOSCUTTI
> Official website of the author and screenwriter Stefano Boscutti and his works.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About Stefano Boscutti
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/about/
Last updated: 2024-01-23T20:18:08.000Z
Stefano Boscutti is an Australian author of startling short stories, screenplays and novels.

They’re not the same old, same old. They tend to skitter across satire and crash into irony. With more than a few exhilarating twists along the way. (Ambition gone horribly and hilariously wrong seems to be a constant theme.)

Even the journal is a blast to read. With notes and insights, scenes and ideas, reviews and more.

## Free short stories

Join thousands of clever readers supporting independent publishing.

[Get free short stories by Stefano Boscutti when you subscribe](#/portal/signup)

  
*‘I love fast-paced, ironic, dark comedy.’ Jennifer*

*‘Scathingly funny. A riot to read and I can't wait for Boscutti’s next book!’ Mike*

*‘Believable, fast-paced and above all a good gripping read. Highly recommended.’ Markus*

*‘Some genuinely hilarious and jaw-dropping moments! Loved it!’ Elizabeth*

*‘Fun and funny.’ Sandy*
## Posts
### Deepen the story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/deepen-the-story/
Last updated: 2026-08-03T10:31:07.000Z
After something happens on the page, after something shifts the air, don’t rush past it.

Pause. Take a beat. Let your POV character register it. Not just cognitively, but viscerally. What lands? What lingers? What does it remind them of, whether they want it to or not?

Interiority doesn’t require a monologue. A flicker of thought. A tightening in the chest. A gesture that almost goes unnoticed. These are enough. In fact, they’re often more powerful precisely because they don’t announce themselves.

This is where the story deepens. Where events stop being observed and start being felt.

When you layer internal response over external action, the stakes rise not because more happens, but because more matters. And when more matters, readers lean in.

Scenes fall flat when they only report what happens. They resonate when they reveal what it means.

Balance the visible with the internal. Even a single, well-placed beat of reflection can transform the emotional weight of a moment.

After drafting a scene, go back and look for the emotional gaps, the places where something happens, but nothing is processed.

Insert brief internal beats. Not explanations.
### Review: “The Wizard of the Kremlin”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-the-wizard-of-the-kremlin/
Last updated: 2026-08-03T10:31:22.000Z
The trouble with power is not that it corrupts, but that it clarifies.

In “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” Giuliano da Empoli offers not a portrait of Russia, but a field guide to the management of collapse. How to choreograph disorder until it begins to look like destiny.

Vadim Baranov, the so-called wizard and inspired by real-life Putin-whisperer Vladislav Surkov with a touch of Putin press secretary Dmitry Peskov, isn’t a believer in anything so fragile as truth.

He deals instead in gradients of perception, in the subtle calibration of fear and fascination. His great discovery is that reality no longer needs to be suppressed. It need only be fractured. Enough competing narratives, enough static, and even the most stubborn facts dissolve into mood. Democracy isn’ overthrown. It’s simply drowned.

Da Empoli’s prose is cool to the touch, almost indulgent in its restraint. He doesn’t moralise. He deftly catalogues. The Kremlin he depicts isn’t a fortress but a studio, producing crises the way others produce content - iterated, tested, refined. Nothing is stable, because stability implies limits. Chaos, by contrast, is infinitely generative.

Baranov thrives in this environment precisely because he expects nothing better. He governs by disorientation, cultivating a world in which certainty feels naïve and coherence suspicious. The state becomes a hall of mirrors with every reflection plausible, none reliable, all useful.

What lingers is the quiet, almost offhand suggestion that this isn’t an aberration but a prototype. Russia isn’t the exception. It’s the beta version of modern governance, the new operating system of control. Others are already importing the code, mistaking volatility for vitality, spectacle for strength.

The system doesn’t require belief. You don’t have to agree. You only
### Emotionality
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/emotionality/
Last updated: 2026-08-03T10:31:32.000Z
Structure gives you a functioning scene. Values give it consequence.

But neither guarantees the only thing the reader actually cares about - feeling something.

Without that, the rest is irrelevant. The reader disengages. Not because the writing is wrong, but because it’s empty.

According to Tim Grahl, emotionality is what closes that gap. It’s where you move from constructing the scene to inhabiting it. Out of analysis, into sensation.

The process is simple but not easy.

First, decide the emotional target. Not vaguely but precisely. Dread, anger, desire, relief. One dominant signal. If you can’t name it, you can’t transmit it. (If you’re unsure, reduce the scope. Use something like a feelings wheel and stay at the outer edge. Think clear, distinct emotions, not abstractions.

Second, locate it in your own experience. Find the moment where that emotion was at its strongest in you. Not an idea of it but the lived version. Sit in it long enough for the details to return. Texture, timing, physical response.

Third, write from that state. Not about it. From it.

Every choice on the page - verb, noun, rhythm, detail - should carry the same emotional charge.

Setting, dialogue, description. All of it aligned to the emotionality, all of it doing the same work.

This is where most scenes fail. Not because the writer doesn’t understand structure.

Because they never fully cross over into the feeling they’re trying to create.
### Six types of scenes
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/six-types-of-scenes/
Last updated: 2026-07-05T07:05:13.000Z
Story doesn’t just move.

It moves along an axis of value. Something shifts from one state to another. Better to worse. Worse to better. Known to unknown.

Tim Grahl reminds us that a love story isn’t built on love alone, an action story isn’t sustained by life-and-death stakes in every moment. Range is what gives a narrative its shape and its endurance.

There are six scenes with core value shifts you need to control.

**1\. Life / Death** \- A physical threat to the protagonist where the reader feels fear. This is an action scene.

**2\. Awe / Dread** \- A mental threat where the danger to the protagonist expands beyond the visible into something harder to contain and the reader feels dread. Not just danger, but the suggestion and escalation of something worse than danger. This is a horror scene.

**3\. Pride / Shame** \- A social threat to the protagonist where status is gained or lost as reputation fractures and the reader feels exposure. This is a status scene.

**4\. Love / Hate** \- A relational threat where the protagonist’s connection is at risk and the reader feels trust is strained, broken, or withdrawn. This is a love scene. (Harder than a status scene because it costs something personal, not just public. Subjective not merely objective.)

**5\. Selfishness / Altruism** \- A moral threat where the protagonist is forced to choose between self and other and the reader feels quiet, insistent tension and anxiety. This is a morality scene.

**6\. Ignorance / Wisdom** \- A belief-level threat where something the protagonist holds as right and true is challenged and the reader feels vulnerability. This is a worldview scene. (Harder than a morality scene because you extend the moral threat to an internally held deep belief. It’s the deepest cut because it doesn’t just change action, it rewrites understanding.)

These value pairs are universal. They show up regardless of genre, tone, or style.

Every scene must have a value at stake, and knowing all the values gives you the flexibility to write whatever scenes your story needs.
### Every scene needs a foundation
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/every-scene-needs-a-foundation/
Last updated: 2026-06-29T07:29:17.000Z
Stories are about change. Without change, there’s no story.

Yes, this applies to the story overall. But also to every scene that hinges together to make the story.

Tim Grahl says it’s critical to get the foundational building blocks of a scene down on the page that ensure something changes. How? By asking 10 questions of every scene.

The first thing we want writers to be able to do is get the foundational building blocks of a scene down on the page that ensure something changes.

1\. What forces are driving the antagonism?

2\. What forces are driving the protagonism?

3\. What does the antagonist want?

4\. What does the protagonist want?

5\. What disrupts the status quo (aka the Inciting Incident)?

6\. Where does the scene turn (aka the Turning Point)?

7\. What decision is forced (aka the Crisis)?

8\. What action is taken (aka the Climax)?

9\. What is the outcome (aka the Resolution)?

10\. Who, ultimately, wins the scene?

If you can’t point to the exact sentence where each of these is on the page, the scene isn’t unfinished. It’s unstable.

And there’s no point going any further.
### Review: “Something to Do with Paying Attention”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-something-to-do-with-paying-attention/
Last updated: 2026-06-24T07:24:27.000Z
There are books that reward attention, and then there are books that audit it.

David Foster Wallace’s “Something to Do with Paying Attention” doesn’t so much invite reading as administer it, like a slightly underfunded institutional test you didn’t realise you’d enrolled in until you started answering the questions.

The setup - a tax class, a substitute instructor, the ambient despair of administrative adulthood - feels almost aggressively minor, as though Wallace were stress-testing how little narrative scaffolding you need.

A line-by-line, page-by-page forensic examination of boredom that achieves the rare feat of being both conceptually interesting and experientially indistinguishable from its subject.

Wallace’s sentences, famously hypertrophic, here perform a kind of moral aerobics. Qualifying, refining, second-guessing, and occasionally suffocating under the weight of their own conscientiousness. The prose insists on its own seriousness with the quiet intensity of someone who has already decided you aren’t taking this seriously enough. Which, to be fair, you probably aren’t.

There’s an argument embedded in the text that attention is a form of care, that discipline might redeem the otherwise airless vacuum of contemporary consciousness but it arrives wrapped in so much deliberate tedium that one begins to wonder whether the medicine has metastasised into the disease. The book doesn’t merely depict monotony, it manufactures and maintains it.

And yet (and this is the faintly irritating part) it works, intermittently, like a trick you resent even as you fall for it. You notice more. You think more. You become uncomfortably aware of how rarely you do either.

By the final pages, you’re left with a choice. Interpret the experience as a rigorous ethical exercise, or as a brilliantly executed piece of literary hazing.

The text, naturally, declines to clarify. It’s up to you to determine what you’ve been paying attention to.
### The problem with modern advertising
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-problem-with-modern-advertising/
Last updated: 2026-06-18T07:18:08.000Z
Most people - especially those who work in the media industrial complex - have no idea what advertising means let alone how it works.

Advertising is not meant to interrupt and annoy people. Sadly, that’s how small-minded media networks and social platforms think advertising works. That wedging advertisements in between the content people are watching or reading or listening to is how to gain attention.

That’s not advertising, that’s interrupting. Advertising comes from the verb advertise which is derived from the Latin advertere ‘to direct one’s attention to, give heed’ - literally ‘to turn toward,’ from ad ‘to, toward’ + vertere ‘to turn’.

Turn towards and connect. Not incessantly interrupt and disconnect. It’s bizarre to live in a world where the entire corporate mediascape actively misses the point of one of its chief messaging systems.

We live in a world where people desperately want to connect and business seems intent on disconnecting them in every way possible.

Why not design advertising systems that connect with and through audiences rather than drive them apart?

Why not create advertising that brings people together?
### How to make the aha! moment more aha!!!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-to-make-the-aha-moment-more-aha/
Last updated: 2026-06-11T07:11:48.000Z
Have you seen the blunt force mystery thriller television series “Untamed”?

It was written by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”, “American Primeval”, “Twister”) and his daughter Elle Smith with both doubling as show runners. Given Mark’s pedigree it should come as no surprise that it’s a man vs nature vs man narrative set against an expansive and wild American landscape.

It features Eric Bana playing a gruff and dour federal agent in Yosemite National Park struggling to cope with the death of his young son and Sam Neil playing his gruff and somewhat taciturn boss amidst the sheer granite cliffs, groves of giant sequoia, gushing waterfalls, tumbling streams, soft meadows.

Because it’s a thriller someone has to die pretty early in the piece. In this case, within the opening minutes of the first episode, a young woman teeters on a cliff top and then plummets to her death down the rocky face of a computer-generated El Capitan. But not before entangling a pair of young male rock climbers who she almost drags to their untimely deaths.

Bana’s character is introduced as the no-nonsense ranger who abseils down the granite cliff face towards the dangling body of the dead young woman without so much as a nod to the approaching lightning storm. Of course it’s a Jane Doe who Bana will spend six episodes trying to reveal along with whoever killed her.

Instead of just hanging dead in mid-air, the drama and motivation could have easily been ramped up if she were (no pun intended) hanging on to life by a thread when Bana reaches her, gasping in and out of consciousness and struggling to mouth her killer’s name when the ropes snap and she tumbles to her death. All the more guilt to drive Bana to find the killer.

In case you didn’t think Neil’s character was the murderer the moment you first saw him (because it’s always the least likely who will prove the most guilty), his bumbling admission to Bana’s character before he blows his own brains out off camera in the final episode would still feel forced.

Here are three ways to give that final admission scene more shock, more gasp, more drama. More ways for the audience to re-evaluate and reassess the entire story.

1\. Neil’s character should comfort Bana’s character in an earlier scene in the morgue as they look over the dead woman’s body. Bemoan such a tragic, unnecessary waste.

2\. Neil’s character should lend his rifle, the murder weapon, to Bana’s character to physically implicate him in the crime. Not as a suspicious gesture but in act of kindness. It’s loaded and the safety is switched but he tells Bana’s character to be careful

3\. Neil’s character should be showing greater and greater concern throughout for Bana’s character, for coping with the murder of his innocent young son, for his grief, for his loss, for his drinking, for his hallucinations. Urging him to leave the park, leave the case for his own good, for his own peace of mind. 

Drama is all about set-ups and unexpected twists and turns (and misdirections) to give the payoffs more impact, more resonance. They’re what give a scene more meaning, more weight, more aha!!!
### So you click the link
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/so-you-click-the-link/
Last updated: 2026-06-05T07:05:11.000Z
It’s a survey request from your local politician.

With a link to a fairly bland domain name. Seems pretty innocuous. It’s the usual round robin of tepid self-serving questions about reducing cost-of-living pressure, reducing migration to ease housing, reducing tax burden, boosting defense, strengthening the economy.

Policy masquerading as questions in a market research masquerading as a survey. It’s the usual political nonsense that passes for community engagement with a veneer of concern and consultation. The same headshot of the politician is used twice. It’s the same headshot the politician has been using for almost a decade.

You tick the boxes and answer the questions. It’s not until you get to the personal details that you do a double-take.

There are red asterisks on the fields for First name, Surname, Address, Suburb, Postcode, Phone and Email. If you don’t fill in all the details, you can’t complete the survey. You can’t have your say.

Your entire political concerns and voting bias in one digital file. Including your First name, Surname, Address, Suburb, Postcode, Phone and Email. All in one little packet of data.

So you open the inspector pane on your browser and scan through the code. The bland domain name is just a front for SurveyMonkey. Which sounds innocent and playful until you check and see that SurveyMonkey nowadays deploys more than 3.5 million surveys a year. That’s a lot of personal information.

You also see it’s no longer being run by founder Ryan Finley after he sold his share to private equity in 2009\. It’s been bundled and unbundled and rebundled multiple times since then. Hanged, drawn and quartered by numerous private equity firms doing what they do best.

Its latest acquisition was by Symphony Technology Group (STG), a private equity firm, in a $1.5 billion all-cash transaction in May 2023\. Any personal political data you enter will be for sale to the highest bidder sooner than later. How else do you think they’re going to pay for the acquisition?

It’s surveillance capitalism masked as democracy. All hustled and sold by a U.S. private equity group that pays no tax in Australia. As a private equity firm, STG operates as a “flow-through” entity. This means corporate-level taxes are not paid by the firm itself. Instead, the tax liabilities are passed through to the firm’s individual investors and partners and managed accordingly.

It’s time our politicians stopped selling Australians short to foreign interests. Time to hold U.S. tech companies accountable.

Not just tax them but regulate them to our advantage, not theirs.
### Corporate fascism
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/corporate-fascism/
Last updated: 2026-06-01T09:43:37.000Z
What’s worse?

The fact the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) illegally imprisons individuals? Or the fact those individuals are illegally imprisoned in privately-run windowless detention centers?

Or the fact illegally imprisoned individuals on hunger strikes in detention centers are force-fed with tubes pushed down their noses into their stomachs, a practice the United Nations considers torture?

Or the fact no one inside detention centers works for the government because the guards, the case managers, the medical and food-service staff are all employees, hired and paid by a corporation?

Or the fact those illegally imprisoned individuals are served what passes for food contaminated with live worms and vermin, medical care is neglected and responses to acute emergencies delayed? 

Or the fact the government provides armed ICE agents, state police and local police to combat legitimate protestors outside detention centers with tear gas, pepper spray, steel batons, stun grenades and rounds after rounds of rubber bullets?

Or the fact most detention centers are operated by the GEO Group, the largest private prison operator in the U.S. with government contracts paying out more than $3 billion a year for incarcerating individuals?

Or the fact that deaths inside these detention centers are rising?
### Review: “Blood Meridian”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-blood-meridian/
Last updated: 2026-05-20T10:20:26.000Z
They rode out under a sky blistered with stars and smeared with old wounds.

Cormac McCarthy’s violence-riddled western novel is book as scripture. It doesn’t speak so much as howl.

The book follows scalp hunters who kill Apaches for bounty and Mexicans for sport and anyone else for the sheer democratic joy of it. They traverse the deserts of America’s south-west, committing atrocities with such ferocious artistry that you begin to wonder why God has turned away. Blood flows and seeps into the ground, into the earth. Carnage rules.

Then there is Judge Holden. Towering, hairless, depraved. He dances, he lectures, he murders, and he writes in his ledger as if the world were merely a bookkeeping error. He tears apart men, women and children. He is both man and myth and possibly the devil.

McCarthy’s sentences stretch across pages like the dying sun. There are no quotation marks. Dialogue bleeds into narration, into thought, into wind, into ash.

Violence is rendered with the precision of an apothecary and the enthusiasm of a mad child let loose with matches. No one is spared. Not the innocent, not the guilty, and certainly not the reader.

You don’t read this book for pleasure but for baptism in fire. It won’t entertain you. It won’t comfort you.

It will disembowel your assumptions, salt the earth of your literary comforts, and hang your sensibilities from a dead cottonwood tree.

A strange and terrible beauty pulses beneath the gore-slicked sermons and sun-scoured voids. A vision so stark and unflinching it becomes a kind of truth.

McCarthy is not telling you a story. He is dragging you through the blinding desert, whispering that this is the only story there ever was.

Here is McCarthy’s testament writ in ash and blood and bone.
### My father wanted a noble death
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/my-father-wanted-a-noble-death/
Last updated: 2026-05-17T02:17:43.000Z
When I was a young man, my father told me that he didn’t want to die in pain or in agony. Didn’t want to fade away in a cloud of narcotics, a mist of scattered memories.

He pointed to a pillow and said I would know what to do. Over the years, it became a bit of a running joke. Whenever he wasn’t feeling well, I’d look over at a cushion or a pillow and ask if it was time. He’d laugh and shake his head. I’d laugh too.

He stopped laughing after his first stroke. He struggled to walk, to sit, to eat. It’s as if his life collapsed on itself. Laughter gave way to tears. He would sob inconsolably for no discernible reason. Gasping, heaving for breath as tears spilled. Drowning in sadness.

When I saw him in bed in the hospice, he seemed lost, confused, frightened. There was another bed in his room. Unoccupied, neatly made, a freshly ironed pillow case on the pillow.

I caught his eye and glanced over at the pillow with a smile. My father’s eyes widened, horrified.

His mouth clenched tight as he shook his head. I was only joking.

I wasn’t going to kill him. I swear.
### Ray Bradbury has some questions for you
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ray-bradbury-has-some-questions-for-you/
Last updated: 2026-05-15T02:15:24.000Z
How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got on paper?

When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?

What do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate?

Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all their heart. Give them running orders. Shoot them off. Then follow as fast as you can go.

The character, in their great love or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story. The zest and gusto of their need, and there is zest in hate as well as love, will fire the landscape and raise the temperature of your typewriter thirty degrees.

Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving or hating. Have you given up on this primary business as obsolete in your own writing?

What fun you are missing, then. The fun of anger and disillusion, the fun of love and being loved, of moving and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle to churchyard.

Life is sure, misery inevitable, mortality certain.

But on the way, why not carry zest and gusto.
### Prince of Thieves
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/prince-of-thieves/
Last updated: 2026-05-12T02:12:53.000Z
When Hermes comes home after stealing Apollo’s cattle, his mother, Maia scolds him over his behaviour.

Hermes will have none of it. He explains to her that he doesn’t believe they should go on living obscurely in a cave. He doesn’t believe they should be shunned by the other gods. He believes they deserve better.

‘I’m ready to do whatever I must so that you and I will never go hungry. Why should we be the only gods who never eat the fruits of sacrifice and prayer? Better always to live in the company of other deathless ones - rich, glamorous, enjoying heaps of grain - than forever to sit by ourselves in a gloomy cavern. And as for honor, my plan is to have a share of Apollo’s power. If my father won’t give it to me, I intend to be - and I mean it - the Prince of Thieves.’
### I do not seek, I find
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/i-do-not-seek-i-find/
Last updated: 2026-05-10T02:02:48.000Z
A friend is stuck writing her thesis when, wandering aimlessly through the library, she happens on a carrel where someone had spread out just the article she needed.

Antonio Stradivari, walking in Venice one day, comes upon a pile of broken, waterlogged oars, out of which he makes some of his most beautiful violins.

Mozart hears a starling singing in a street vendor’s cage, and so we have the theme of the last movement of the G-major Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

A lucky find gives Picasso one of his most famous sculptural creations.
### Review: “Stories From the City of God”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-stories-from-the-city-of-god/
Last updated: 2026-05-08T01:49:18.000Z
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s collection of stories, sketches and scripts of Rome is a stark, dialectical reminder of a long-forgotten city.

A postwar city, a city of dust and concrete, a city of wounds. Pasolini’s writings cover Rome and Italy emerging into the world from 1950 to 1966\. From when he first moved to the infernal city to when he left, murdered in his car by the kind of shameless young hustler he wrote about in his first novel. Murdered by the future.

Pasolini arrived in Rome with his mother in 1950\. A city of ruins and laughter, of innocent boys glowing like lucciole, like fireflies in the Roman dusk. He reports on the squalor and languor in the dialect of the poor. For Pasolini, it’s the only true language, unspoiled by bourgeois hypocrisy, blessed by the sacred.

To read these stories is to see Rome not as a city of saints, but of boys and men and women alive, of laughter that resists the night, of poetry as desire - erratic, elusive, and incandescent before the devouring dark.

Before all the devils, all the gods.

All the living, all the dead.
### “BOSCUTTI’S BILL HICKS” (SCREENPLAY) - OPENING SCENE
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/boscutti-bill-hicks-screenplay/
Last updated: 2025-08-31T01:16:23.000Z
EXT. LOS ANGELES - GALAXY MOVIE THEATER - NIGHT

An American flag appears upside down, rippling in a slight breeze.

A black cowboy boot steps in splattering the reflection in a sidewalk puddle. Then steps forward. We hear BILL HICKS’ whiny voice as we move up his black pants, and long, black coat.  
  
HICKS  
I want a fucking refund!

Hicks slides two torn movie ticket stubs to the pimply TEENAGE TICKET SELLER behind the glass in the ticket booth under the marquee promoting the erotic thriller “BASIC INSTINCT”. It’s the early 90s and there’s a line of MOVIEGOERS behind Hicks, peering, growling, getting annoyed.

Bill at thirty-two seems to be slimming down after years on the road as a standup comedian. Maybe it’s the fact he’s tall and dressed all in black on this humid night. He looks about as funny as a death in the family. Pallid, limp-haired, sad-faced.

His driver and sober buddy (and sometimes security) BUBBA McGEE looms even larger next to him, frowning at the people in line. Bubba is twenty-eight and dressed like Lennie Small from John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”. He looks a little antsy.

Teenage Ticket Seller looks confused.

TEENAGE TICKET SELLER  
But we don’t give refunds, sir.

Bill is draped in humming neon light. He sweeps his brown hair back.

HICKS  
Look, I paid for me and my buddy to see this piece of shit movie “Basic Instinct” and there were no lesbian sex scenes. No lapping, no grinding, no nothing. All the lesbian sex scenes were cut out. It’s fucking ridiculous.

TEENAGE TICKET SELLER  
But you saw Sharon Stone’s pussy, right?

HICKS  
Not the fucking point! I paid to see Sharon Stone eat another woman for an hour and a half. That’s what I paid for. I have consumer protection, you know.

TEENAGE TICKET SELLER  
What?

Crowd behind him starts grumbling. Bubba is getting nervy. Hicks leans forward.

HICKS  
I have consumer rights.

Teenage Ticket Seller has no idea what he’s talking about. Hicks turns serious.

HICKS  
You need to get your manager.

Teenage Ticket Seller blinks.

TEENAGE TICKET SELLER  
I am the manager.

HICKS  
What? You’re a child. There are child labor laws in this country last time I checked.

TEENAGE TICKET SELLER  
You’re holding up the line, sir.

Bubba shifts from one foot to the other. Hicks thumbs over his shoulder.

HICKS  
They’re not getting their tickets until I get my refund.

Teenage Ticket Seller lowers his head, almost swallows his words.

TEENAGE TICKET SELLER  
I’ll lose my job.

Hicks rolls his eyes. Bubba yanks on his shirt sleeve.

HICKS  
What is it!?

BUBBA  
I need to go pee, Bill.

HICKS  
Just hold on a sec.

BUBBA  
I need to go right now.

Hicks looks at the Teenage Ticket Seller, looks at the line of Moviegoers, looks at Bubba.

HICKS  
Okay, okay. Go, go. I’ll meet you at the car.

He snatches back the two ticket stubs as Bubba rushes into the foyer to the bathroom. Bill calls out after him.

HICKS  
Wash your hands.

Hicks lopes off, past the line of grumbling Moviegoers as they all start shuffling forward. Hisses under his breath

HICKS  
Don’t blink, you might miss the fucking plot.
### The First Revolution
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-first-revolution/
Last updated: 2025-08-27T09:27:22.000Z
It is July 7, 1647.

Dawn spills over the Piazza de Mercato in Naples as the fish sellers and vendors gather for the day’s trade. Grain merchants, money lenders, bakers, fruiterers, poets, butchers, vagabonds, jewellers, thieves, scoundrels, acrobats, bandits, travellers, smugglers, spies, assassins.

Worshippers head to the Carmelite Santa Maria del Carmine as the bells ring out. Best of friends call out to each other, worst of enemies lurk low.

Over the centuries, Naples has grown and surged from a seaside village to a lively coastal metropolis of two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand souls. The largest city in the Mediterranean. A paradise inhabited by devils.

The once independent Italian kingdom is now ruled over by Spanish royalty, the colonial empire of the once triumphant Habsburg crown. After a hundred years under Spanish dominion, the Neapolitan working class is squeezed by regressive taxation to fund a string of expensive, endless wars and revolts across Europe.

Rodrigo Ponce de León serves as the Viceroy of Naples, responsible for all taxation, all law, all decrees, all royal justice. Spain continues to impose more taxes. New taxes are added for olive oil and silk, salt and flour, fruit.

Everyone hates the taxes. None more so than Masaniello. He is twenty-seven years old and although his real name is Tommaso Aniello, everyone calls him Masaniello. He was born in a lane behind the market square. He lives in the Pendino quarter, where the tax on fish is collected.

He carries himself with grace and a certain lightness. Black eyes, blond hair, with locks that run down his neck. An untutored, unlearned, uneducated son of a fisherman who himself is the son of a fisherman.

As the sun splashes over the market there’s already talk of additional taxes on fishing. Squid and octopus, crimson tuna and delicate branzino, even small fillets of anchovies.

Masaniello has been caught before trying to avoid taxes by making deliveries directly to his customers. Even delivering to the palazzos and villas of the rich, of the aristocrats, of the ruling class.

In jail he met the lawyer Marco Vitale and the elderly priest and political philosopher Giulio Genoino. The men filled his head with talk of reform, of a new republic, of a better world for all.

All three had long been out of prison. Today they smile at each other as crowds gather in the square for the Feast of the Madonna of the Carmine. Every year as part of the festival, a mock battle is staged between the people of Naples and Turkish invaders to commemorate the epic sea battle of Lepanto in 1571 when the Turks were finally defeated.

Masaniello is in charge of the mock army fighting the mock Turks. Men and women and children are jostling, cheering. Everyone is in high spirits.

Whispers pass through the crowd that the Spanish are to levy yet another tax on fruit, the food of the poor. Masaniello is enraged and leads his ragtag army out of the festival, out of make-believe and attacks the tax-collection stalls.

Screaming against bad government, Masaniello burns down the customs office and destroys the home of an infamous tax collector. An angry crowd of tens of thousands pours through Naples towards the palace of the Spanish Viceroy, who flees to a neighbouring convent.

Masaniello holds court outside his house. He ransacks the armouries and opens the prisons. He is elected capo del popolo, captain-general and dispenses justice. Several rioters are condemned to death by him and beheaded. Troops attempting to reclaim the city are rebuffed. Dissent begins spreading to the provinces.

It is the first proletariat anti-colonial resistance movement of the modern world. A revolution without parallel in ancient or modern history. More than a century before the revolutions in America or France.

Masaniello demands parity between the people and the nobility on the city council. A new charter for Naples is proposed. They don’t want to tear down the state. They want to work with the Spanish Viceroy to repeal the taxes and dislodge aristocratic control.

Nine days after the revolution begins, Masaniello is murdered in a monastery by hired assassins. His head is severed and taken to the Spanish Viceroy.

It would be another one hundred and fifty years before Naples is swept by other waves of revolutionary fervour.
### Review: The Little Friend
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-the-little-friend/
Last updated: 2025-08-19T09:19:09.000Z
Donna Tartt’s Southern Gothic opus begins with an inexplicable murder of a young innocent boy in the family yard.

It’s this memory that haunts his young twelve-year-old sister, Harriet Dufresnes. A brazen child so obstinate and argumentative, she makes Scout Finch look like a lackadaisical underachiever.

Our young protagonist has decided, with the sort of iron-willed certainty that only the very young and very foolish possess, to solve the decade-old murder of her brother Robin.

Magnolias, decaying mansions, and family secrets - so many secrets, so many long-buried scandals.

The plot, such as it is, involves snake-handling religious fanatics, drug dealers with improbable names, and enough generational family dysfunction to fuel a small university’s psychology department for several semesters.

The book’s greatest strength lies in its atmospheric rendering of childhood’s peculiar blend of powerlessness and grandiosity - the way children can simultaneously feel utterly insignificant and completely certain that they alone understand the world’s true workings. 

Its greatest weakness, perhaps, is the author’s apparent inability to resist any opportunity for elaborate description, resulting in passages that linger over the minutiae of setting with lyricism to spare.

One finishes “The Little Friend” with a curious sense of having been somewhere very specific and beautifully rendered, though perhaps having taken rather longer to arrive there than strictly necessary.

The mystery at the heart of the novel remains tantalisingly unresolved, which will either strike readers as brilliantly true to life or frustratingly unsatisfying, depending upon their tolerance for ambiguity and their expectations regarding the obligations of crime fiction.

In the end, it succeeds as a meditation on childhood, memory, and grief.
### Scenes from the city: The revolution will be streamed
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-the-revolution-will-be-streamed/
Last updated: 2025-08-11T09:11:12.000Z
It’s a sparkling day.

Brilliant blue skies, tufts of white clouds, two hulking armoured trucks lined with armed immigration agents in full military fatigues trundle through the downtown fashion district toward a clothing wholesaler.

Screaming alarms and sirens, lights thrashing red and blue. The sides of the trucks are lined with agents wearing helmets and green camouflage, assault weapons and riot shields. They carry no identification save for American flag patches velcroed to their uniforms.

They leap off the trucks and stride towards a dozen peaceful protestors seated on the road outside the wholesaler, arms linked. They’re all wearing white t-shirts, the international symbol of protestors around the world. The universal colour of peace and enlightenment.

The agents create a wall of riot shields, thumping the heavy perspex as they surge toward the protestors. Military helicopters blade overhead. A pre-recorded voice over a loudspeaker warns the protestors not to resist arrest, not to violate the rights of the approaching agents.

Flash-bang grenades are tossed into the crowd. People are screaming. A thousand onlookers have taken out their phones and are filming, streaming in real-time. One has an American flag caped around his shoulders. Another is a stunned businessman who has never seen anything like this before.

More agents pour out of the back of the trucks. Most of them are carrying tear gas launchers, locked and loaded. They’re wearing balaclavas under their helmets. Eyes glazed, tense.

The first tear gas grenade is fired. It explodes and skitters across the road toward the protestors, plumes of toxic hate in its wake.

A thousand onlookers film it all. If each film is seen by a thousand viewers, it will reach a million people. If they each send it to a thousand people, it will reach a billion people.

The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will be streamed.
### Review: “Annihilation”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-annihilation/
Last updated: 2025-08-03T09:03:28.000Z
Michel Houellebecq’s “Annihilation” turns its way through dull romance, empty politics and day-to-day domesticity.

Weaving through economic collapse, moral decline, and existential angst in a near-future France. It is surprisingly unironic. Tinged with gentle, unexpected tenderness.

Like many of Houellebecq’s novels it begins with the end of a man, the slow erosion of what once passed for a man. An extended sigh of a life not quite lived, the bureaucratic limbo of a civilisation not quite dead.

Paul Raison - a middle-aged functionary with thinning hair and thinning hopes - drifts through this entropy with something like grace. A worn-down civility, a willingness to endure.

The novel opens in the year 2027, a date close enough to the present to still reek of its decay. France, as ever, is on the verge of collapse. The presidential elections are approaching, but everyone already knows nothing will change. The usual games are played—media manipulation, administrative jockeying, a few murmurs of terrorism.

Paul serves as an advisor to Bruno Juge, the finance minister. But like everyone, Paul no longer believes in politics. Nor does he believe in love, work, or democracy. His marriage is disintegrating with slow, professional efficiency. His father, a retired intelligence officer, has suffered a stroke and now lies mute and in a care facility. His sister has found religion, his younger brother is lost. Everyone is alienated from everyone else, but no one is surprised.

There are ruminations on cyberterrorism, the limits of democracy, and the encroaching merger between the human and the algorithmic. There are meditations on death - not dramatic deaths, but the kind administered in hospital corridors, under flickering fluorescent lights, where a man is reduced to stupefied flesh and data. Kept alive by machines.

A series of bizarre deepfake videos appears online, threatening various members of the government. There are hints of a shadowy conspiracy, something between Anonymous and a particularly misanthropic philosophy seminar. But to expect a thriller is to misunderstand the point. These incidents are pretexts for melancholy, for long digressions on the nature of suffering, aging, and the impossibility of intimacy.

Paul’s reconciliation with his estranged wife is awkward, human, and touched by something like grace. His confrontation with mortality - first his father’s, then his own - leads not to enlightenment, but to a quiet sort of faith. Not in a god, exactly. But in tenderness, in flesh, in the possibility of meaning amidst the collapse. 

Is it a great novel? I doubt it. Great novels are no longer possible. But it is, I think, a necessary one.

It shows us what we would rather not see, and then, in a final act of mercy, allows a glimpse of something better. Something truer.

Not utopia. Not redemption. But perhaps a moment of unmediated human contact before the machines take over completely.

C’est la mort.
### Ray Bradbury’s advice to writers
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ray-bradburys-advice-to-writers/
Last updated: 2025-07-26T09:26:17.000Z
Every morning jump out of bed and step on a landmine.

The landmine is you. After the explosion, spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
### Review: “My Name is Asher Lev”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-my-name-is-asher-lev/
Last updated: 2025-07-18T09:18:23.000Z
My name is not Asher Lev, but I too have disappointed my parents with art.

Asher looks and draws and paints. His father frowns. His mother wrings her hands and stares at the window.

Chaim Potok’s ultra-orthodox coming-of-age novel feels like dust and unspoken guilt. It’s a story about a boy torn between an unnameable and unknowable God and his God-given gift, ripped between family and faith, between community and culture, between old and new.

He’s the type of child who ruins family dinners not with jazz metaphors, but with sullen questions. The kind of child who looks at suffering and shrugs his shoulders The kind of child who draws his mother dying slowly in the kitchen light and then asks her to pose for another sketch.

The Rebbe blesses him and exiles him in the same breath, which is really the most efficient way to handle genius. I read and I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I recognised the truths.

What Potok gives us isn’t merely a story. It’s a confessional whispered across the generations.

And somewhere between the charcoal drawings and the parental disapproval, I began to feel the slow burn of recognition. The kind that sits in the chest and doesn’t move.

The kind that reminds you who you are all along.
### Creativity
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/creativity/
Last updated: 2025-07-10T09:10:43.000Z
Creativity is the key differentiator.

Not creativity for the sake of juicing the algorithms, for boosting followers, for chasing money.

Creativity for creativity’s sake. For producing stories and art and song and dance for the thrill of it, the pleasure of it. For the self-revelation and continuous astonishment at what lies within you, hides within you.

For the awe of setting it free.

For the grace and wonder.
### Review: “Caledonian Road”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-caledonian-road/
Last updated: 2025-07-02T09:02:58.000Z
It’s a heavy book. Not just in weight but in literary posturing.

Andrew O’Hagan’s novel is about, well, it’s about a lot of things. About London. About money. About class. About art. About politics. About despair.

About the past and how it sways and colours the present. How it swerves into the future. 

About being a successful academic and art critic in a time when the accumulation of wealth and prestige rules triumphant. A time when greed and stupidity are seen as virtues. When corruption becomes accepted with a wink and a nod and a shy smile.

The prose moves. Sharp. Cutting. Like a sharp blade through the soft underbelly of social performance. Campbell Flynn, the high-minded protagonist, walks through London’s streets and London’s lives. Rich. Poor. Connected. Disconnected.

O’Hagan knows how to slice open a moment. Expose its soft, quivering innards. There are more than a few hot, contemporary truths. The kind that makes you wince and laugh in the same breath.

The novel reads like a sociology textbook that’s had one too many martinis. Clever. Drunk on its own intelligence. Stumbling between angry insights and grim pretensions.

If you enjoy watching societal mechanics disassemble themselves with surgical precision. If you like your satire served chilled with a twist, this book’s for you.
### Freefall
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/freefall/
Last updated: 2025-06-24T09:24:57.000Z
Knowledge and meaning are in freefall.

We’re seeing system collapse before our very eyes. Everything we thought we could trust is slipping through our fingers, evaporating.

Presidents no longer follow the law, politicians no longer practice decency. Scientists are doubted, experts are despised. Education is crumbling. Business is imploding.

Technology is eating itself, eating its own hallucinations. Electricity and silicon and mangled code spit out endless streams of syntax errors and misunderstanding. Logic collapses under its own weight.

Degradation is rampant across every area of technology. Software upgrades are so bad that users actually fear them. Social media has become more psychologically manipulative and destructive. Search engines get worse every year. Surveillance increases, and privacy erodes.

It’s a code-eat-code world. It’s just one damn scam after the other. No one trusts anything. No one trusts anyone.

When the old knowledge hierarchy collapses, what will replace it?

What will arise from the ashes of burning chrome?
### Review: “Intermezzo”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-intermezzo/
Last updated: 2025-06-16T09:16:55.000Z
I have finished reading the novel “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney, and I am sitting in the same chair I sat in while reading it, which is also the chair where I think about what it means to have read something like this. Did I like it? A question with moral weight, perhaps. I liked it the way you like a text from someone you want to like you back. The passive-aggressive, or is it aggressively passive, characters in this novel are, at times, likeable in a way that makes you dislike them. This is a talent of Rooney’s, I suppose. To make you complicit. The book is about love. And grief. And money, but obliquely. You get the sense that the characters could, at any time, get on a plane to another country and start over, but they don’t, because then there would be no novel. Instead, they look out of windows. They walk in the drifting rain without umbrellas. They engage in conversations that feel both devastating and mundane. One of them says something so deeply hurtful that you flinch while reading, but it is written in such a plain, declarative sentence that you almost admire it. There is a plot, technically. But if you ask me to summarise it, I will stare at you like you have asked me to summarise a feeling. Things happen, but they don’t happen. Someone loves someone else. Someone else doesn’t know how to love properly. People miscommunicate in a way that is more real than if they communicated well. The way rain holds the light when falling. The way words tumble and flitter away.
### Scenes from the city: Electric wonderland
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-electric-wonderland/
Last updated: 2025-06-08T05:52:51.000Z
A stream of electric vehicles silently slips by you and you realise the future has already arrived.

It’s not fully formed but it’s here. China has become the world’s largest auto market, impacting everything from car design to building cities optimised for self-driving cars.

Every major auto-company is sprinting into the future by re-tooling, re-thinking and re-imagining for an electric, semi-self-driving future as they become software companies and innovators in energy, safety and on-the-go entertainment and education.

Our first true metaverse will be inside automobiles where we already have screens, voice, augmented reality, navigation and next-generation entertainment systems.

We don’t have to strap on a helmet to live in a true blend of the real and virtual worlds.

We just have to step into our new cars.

Buckle up!
### Review: “Earthlings”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-earthlings/
Last updated: 2025-03-27T02:07:23.000Z
Sayaka Murata’s “Earthlings” is a very Japanese novel with a very Japanese protagonist.

It starts nice and proper like novels do in Japan, with a girl who doesn’t fit in. Japanese novels always have a girl who doesn’t fit in. But this girl, she really doesn’t fit in.

Murata writes clean and sharp about a girl who thinks she’s an alien. The girl has a plush pastel-coloured toy hedgehog that knows things. It’s that kind of book, until it isn’t.

She hits all the notes you expect from these Japanese novels about alienated outsiders. The lonely childhood. The school work panic. The marriage pressures. The convenience store life. But then something happens. Something bad. Then worse. Then much worse.

You think you’re reading about a misfit finding her way. Like those books about quirky girls that sell well in airports. The ones where everyone learns and grows and finds themselves. This isn’t that.

This is a scary and hilariously terrifying book that starts with microwave dinners and ends with cannibalism. There’s boring day jobs and murder. There’s social commentary and human meat. There’s a ribbon of stars. A string of silkworms.

It’s like Murata wrote a nice proper Japanese novel and then ate it. Raw.

Before vomiting it back up.

Vomiting it back to life.
### Scenes from the coast: Cyclist
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-cyclist/
Last updated: 2025-02-24T04:27:31.000Z
The dirt road is straight and true.

It runs towards the sea between grazing properties pocked with the occasional house set back on either side of barbed wire fences. Dry and dusty and fringed with clumps of parched grass.

You’re driving down the middle of the road because you don’t want to hit all the potholes and damage your car. Your tyres skip and skid and you try not to jerk the driving wheel. You scan ahead because you don’t want to hit a kangaroo or a wombat.

You spot something in the distance. Something on the left side of the road. It’s a cyclist clad in skintight Lycra with a lightweight helmet and photochromic sunglasses. His carbon fibre racing bike is worth thousands. 

You slow down and notice his herky jerky action. Not smooth or graceful like so many racers. Not fluid but spasmodic. Uneven, irregular, swaying to the right with each powerful downward push.

Their torso leans forward to balance, while their hands grip the handlebars tightly, steering to maintain equilibrium.

As you drive past you notice the cyclist has only one right leg.

His left leg is missing.
### Scenes from the city: Tale of two cities
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-tale-of-two-cities/
Last updated: 2025-02-21T04:24:52.000Z
It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times.

There are two posters behind the glass walls of the new tram stop in a suburb synonymous with wealth and privilege.

One poster is for Lurpak Butter with a glistening, mouth-watering roast lamb being topped with fresh glazed peas and chopped shallots. So much appetite appeal for the imported Danish you can almost taste it. Expensive linen tea towels on the waxed timber counter. Soft focus luxury farmhouse-style kitchen in the background.

The other poster is for a food charity with a graphic yellow background and bold black type. The headline says, ‘This year one in five Australians will go hungry’.

Who says there’s no truth in advertising?
### Scenes from the coast: Piano
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-piano/
Last updated: 2025-02-13T04:24:09.000Z
The street curves into the coming night.

There’s a faint sound of someone playing a piano coming from a house, notes and chords and melody rippling through the air. A song intoning the heavens. A haunting song. A love song.

From inside the house, someone is playing Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” on a piano. A song about love and loss and the sorrow that flows from it.

A tender song for dark times.
### Hurry up and wait
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/hurry-up-and-wait/
Last updated: 2025-02-05T04:23:23.000Z
Monday is the busiest day to visit the Magic Kingdom with an average wait time of thirty-eight minutes.

Not that visitors seem to mind. Sure people can buy a one-time fast pass to bypass the standby line for a popular attraction. But they don’t care because they’re all on their phones.

They’re not looking up at the attractions, the rides, the shows. They’re not looking around the most magical place on earth. They’re looking down at their screens.

They’re going through their feeds at diabolical speeds. Scrolling through content in milliseconds. Downloading and instantly opening new apps. Playing games with a YouTube video playing on the same screen. Watching videos at double speed.

Hurtling headlong through the pixels while time slips by.
### Review: “Creation Lake”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-creation-lake/
Last updated: 2025-01-28T04:22:32.000Z
Rachel Kushner’s dispassionate novel has all the makings of an existential spy thriller.

There’s a cynical undercover agent, a mysterious sage who communicates only by email and a radical commune of eco-anarchists scratching out an existence in rural southwest France.

The undercover agent is a cocksure Sadie Smith. A thirty-four-year-old disgraced FBI agent who’s fled to Europe and now working for shadowy interests to infiltrate and destroy said eco-anarchists who might (or might not) be foiling government plans to construct mega-basins for said shadowy interests.

Why is Smith in Europe? Because in America she’d been pressured by her supervisors to incite some animal liberationists to violence so the FBI could come in and save the day. Unfortunately that resulted in losing an entrapment case after she had to plant the idea of bombing a research facility in some young man’s head since he was doing such a poor job of coming to it on his own. She even had to drive him to buy the fertiliser.

Losing the case saw her tossed to the wolves by the FBI. How? Let’s see how Smith describes it in her own words.

*I lost my job. I had cost the Feds two convictions. The agency who had hired me more or less touched a button: their tinted windows went up, and that was it.*

So Smith finds herself in France juggling contracts and contacts, intercepting the emails of Bruno Lacombe, a cave-dwelling sage who escaped the 60s Situationists and serves as the eco-anarchists’ mentor and spiritual icon.

Along the way, there’s more than a few nods and musings to prehistoric man, literary enfants terribles and domestic terrorism. Any novel that mentions Guy Debord sixty-one times is my kind of novel.

As the story and intersectionality unfold, Smith finds herself caught between her mission and her growing fascination with Lacombe’s cave-dwelling philosophy.

Will she complete her assignment or will she side with the eco-anarchists?

Will she live in the dark or see the light?
### Scenes from the coast: Rays of golden light
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-rays-of-golden-light/
Last updated: 2025-01-20T04:21:48.000Z
Up in the sky, it’s like a miracle.

The sun is setting and the clouds above the horizon have heaved and shifted and parted to create a giant sun-filled crucifix, steaming rays of golden light.

It’s only for a moment.

And then it’s gone.
### William S. Burroughs on heroin addiction
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/william-s-burroughs-on-heroin-addiction/
Last updated: 2025-01-17T04:21:09.000Z
It’s 1977 and writer William S. Burroughs is being interviewed on a Canadian television talk show.

It’s a simple set. Peter Gzowski is the host in a suit behind a fake wood desk and potted plants. Hot lights, large glass ashtray, yellow legal pad lined with questions.

William S. Burroughs sits across from him, hands folded in his lap. Draped in the armour of conformity - soft grey suit, pale pistachio shirt, hard black tie. Eyes peering out of browline glasses, thinning grey hair combed to one side, gaunt sideburns, gashed smile, ashen skin.

Serious men in suits. Talking about serious things. Burroughs is rake thin, pinched, his voice flat, dry, Midwestern. There’s no cadence or tone. Just the facts.

‘You see a writer can profit from things that are unpleasant or even boring to someone else because he uses that as material for writing. I don’t regret the experiences that have led to “Naked Lunch” and subsequent books.

Burroughs looks at Gzowski.

‘Incidentally, the damage to health is minimal, no matter what the American Narcotics Department says.’

Studio audience sniggers.

‘But it has done things to your soul?’

Burroughs tries to suppress a laugh, lolls his head. Studio audience claps.

‘Well, one of the early authorities like DeQuincy would never have lived to be seventy-two unless he had taken opium because he had tuberculosis. I think he would say what I say - that he didn’t regret his experiences with drugs.’

Gzowski is flummoxed.

‘Well, I won’t argue whether there is any permanent damage to health, any severe damage. But talk for a moment about being on the bottom?’

Burroughs looks bemused. Gzowky presses on.

‘Why do junkies never bathe?’

Studio audience shifts in their seats. Burroughs seems perplexed as he answers.

‘They get like cats. They can’t stand water on their skin for some reason or another. They rarely bathe.’

‘What happens to your perception of reality?’

‘Well, junk or any kind of opiate is a painkiller and therefore will lessen your perception of reality.’

‘What happens to your sexual appetite?’

‘Practically non-existent.’

‘What happens to your appetite for food?’

‘It definitely reduces your appetite.

‘What happens to your ability to cope with day-to-day crises.’

‘Nothing. I’ve been in England where addicts obtain their heroin quite legally through doctors. Many of them - many of the addicts - are lawyers, doctors, bankers, et cetera.

Burroughs leans back.

‘As far as creative work goes I would say very definitely contraindicated. I would never have been able to write “Naked Lunch” for example unless I’d been of heroin.’

‘Are you still a junkie?

Burroughs tightens his lips, shakes his head.

‘No. Absolutely not. I haven’t been addicted to opiates for years.’
### Review: “A Very Nice Box”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-a-very-nice-box/
Last updated: 2025-01-09T04:19:53.000Z
Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman pull off a neat trick with “A Very Nice Box”.

They manage to write an entire debut novel hitting every rom-com beat necessary and then flip it by turning the love interest into the villain who they literally, figuratively and metaphorically trap in a box of their own making. Think of it as a very nice coffin.

Along the way, they manage to skewer marketing in every way, shape or form, toxic work culture, work romance, photocopier sex, mental health apps, staying hydrated, gaynormative fashion tropes, parental grief, over-designed office chairs, ethical collisions, men’s self-help groups.

Then there’s all the functional minimalist furniture with plastic product names.

Off-kilter and oddly satisfying.
### Let’s change things up
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-change-things-up/
Last updated: 2025-01-06T00:55:13.000Z
Yes, it’s a brand new year.

It’s time to change things up. To mix things around. To try new things. Uncomfortable things. Unknown things

Let’s wind down the regimented publish-a-new-short-story-every-Sunday program. Let’s ease up on the inflexible deadlines. Let’s sway a little. Let’s open up.

Let’s be a little less methodical and a little more adventurous. Let’s be a little less fixed, more moving. More open to new possibilities.

Stop reading and thinking and writing about the tragic politics of the day. (Although the shift from democracy to technocracy will inevitably creep in one way or another.)

Double down on universal human stories that transcend our times. Journal entries, quick notes, sharp stories. Scenes from upcoming screenplays and novels. Imaginative speculations. Quixotic theses.

Dig a little deeper, write a little further. Push language and narrative. Exceed expectations.

Stop writing like a machine, like clockwork.

Start writing like a poet.
### “YOU SHOT THE WRONG PRESIDENT” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-shot-the-wrong-president-short-story/
Last updated: 2025-01-05T08:04:17.000Z
Thomas faces the consequences of his failed assassination attempt.

He sits with a mysterious figure who speaks of presidents and politics, of sin and salvation. A robed figure with the perfect manicure and casual wisdom.

Will Thomas learn a hard truth about the path to change?

Or will he surrender to his fate?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of provocative reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘We're all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.’ Billy Graham*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## YOU SHOT THE WRONG PRESIDENT

Copyright 2025 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

‘Dude, seriously, Trump?’

THOMAS MATTHEW CROOKS, 20, is holding his head in his hands,

Holding what’s left of it after a Secret Service counter-sniper scoped and blasted his brains out with a single shot from the rooftop of a building behind the crowds at Trump’s open-air rally in Pennsylvania.

Thomas looks frightened, confused. He remembers the rally, the crowds, the shots, the screams. But he’s not entirely sure where he is. There’s a faint smell of rotting trash, burnt flesh.

Everything is bathed in hot light. Maybe he’s in an operating theatre. But he can’t see any surgeons or anaesthesiologists. No nurses.

A YOUNG MAN leans over him, light splintering and radiating behind him. He snaps his fingers.

‘Dude, can you hear me?’

Young Man is slender, draped in a fine white robe, light brown hair down over his shoulders. A light beard and eyes as blue as the sky. He’s smiling, kind.

He could be twenty years old, Or thirty. Or even forty. He seems oddly ageless. He casually slips his hair behind one ear.

Thomas coughs, tries to answer him. Young Man cups the side of his splattered face and the wound begins to instantly close over and heal. Thomas blinks, asks a question.

‘Where am I?’

Young Man looks around.

‘Think of it as home.’

‘Did I kill him?’

Young Man softly shakes his head. Thomas’ eyes widen.

‘I didn’t kill him?’

Young Man tightens the corner of his mouth.

‘You nicked his ear.’

‘A flesh wound?’

‘More like a scratch.’

Thomas looks disappointed. Young Man bites his lips.

‘Dude, you shot the wrong President.’

‘What?’

‘If you wanted to end Trump, you should have shot Biden. Seriously, put him out of his misery. A mercy killing.’

Thomas looks confused. Young Man explains.

‘Whole country would have been in mourning, a good man who gave his life to the nation, a modern political tragedy, taken from us too soon, thoughts and prayers, blah, blah, blah.’

Thomas still doesn’t understand. Young Man spells it out.

‘Everyone would have blamed Trump for the violent rhetoric, made him out to be the bad guy. He would have been run out of town. Now thanks to you, he got the sympathy vote and everyone thinks God’s on his side. Blessed by angels and all that shit. Won the popular vote and everything.’

Young Man tucks a slip of hair behind his ear.

‘Even worse, Trump now thinks he can walk on water, imagines he can do no wrong. Believes he’s on a mission to save America. His second inauguration? This time it’s actually going to be the biggest ever.’

Young Man cracks a smile.

‘For your everyday American, your average American, it’s going to be four years of hell.’

Young Man points straight at Thomas.

‘All thanks to you.’

Thomas looks like he’s going to cry. Young Man shrugs.

‘Maybe your brains are a little scrambled after the shot to the head. Single shot from a Mk 13 Sniper Rifle fitted with a Nightforce ATACR 7-35x56 scope and a RAPTAR range finder. Single 220 grain Sierra MatchKing Hollow Point Boat Tail (HPBT) bullet.’

Young Man taps Thomas’ temple with his index finger.

‘Slams into the side of your head, fragments and explodes, pulverising bone, tearing blood vessels and liquefying brain matter.’

Young Man holds up his index finger, smiles.

‘Just one shot.’

Young Man points at Thomas.

‘Whereas you fired off eight shots in under six seconds from your father’s AR-15 and all you managed to do was nick the top of Trump’s right ear and give him the photo opportunity of a lifetime.’

Young Man thinks, frowns.

‘Although you did hit three audience members sitting behind him. Killed some poor firefighter, which didn’t do you any favours at all.’

Thomas looks parched.

‘May I have a glass of water?’

‘No, I’m afraid you may not. We’re a little short-staffed in the catering department. Normally we serve fruit. But, dude, it’s been crazy busy around here lately.’

Thomas looks at Young Man’s fingernails. They look perfectly manicured. Like he’s never done a day’s work in his life.

‘Are you saying I should have shot Biden?’

‘Dude, I don’t know if I can say it any louder without the walls of heaven caving in.’

Young Man looks straight into Thomas’ eyes, straight into his soul.

‘Biden’s an old guy. Pretty lethargic onstage, doesn’t move around as much as Trump. It would have been easy. Even for you. One kill shot to the forehead.

Young Man taps Thomas’ forehead hard with his index finger, jerking his head back.

‘Ka-pow!!’

Young Man explodes explodes his fingers in the air.

‘No more Biden, no more Trump, no more problem.’

Thomas looks overwhelmed. Young Man sighs, explains.

‘Trump is the problem, right? You can’t eliminate a problem like Trump by simply taking him out of the equation. You need to eliminate the desire for a problem like Trump. You need to eliminate the belief for the need for someone like Trump.’

Young Man smiles, nods.

‘You need to flood the zone with guilt.’

Thomas has a splitting headache, feels like he’s burning up.

‘Everyone calms down, comes back to their senses and we have a little sanity for a while. Instead of all the madness of the last few years.

Thomas can taste gunpowder in the back of his throat, feels like he’s drowning in warm blood.

‘Dude, people aren’t coping very well. It’s been trying times. Floods, fires, plagues, pestilence. It’s been, you know -- biblical.’

Young Man presses the palms of his hands together, as if in prayer.

‘People have had enough. They want to get on with their little lives, their small jobs, their tiny ambitions. They don’t want to be righteous. They want to lead small lives of quiet desperation, an occasional folly, an insignificant vice. Nothing too dramatic, nothing too crazy.’

Thomas looks nauseous, bewildered.

‘You could have set the world on another path. You could have saved people from themselves.’

Young Man smiles wide.

‘Dude, all you had to do was shoot the right president.’

Thomas’s voice is barely a whisper.

‘But, Jesus, isn’t killing a sin?’

Young Man leans back, tilts his head, perplexed. His smile curdles.

‘Jesus? Dude, what makes you think I’m Jesus?’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pay it to your friends. Pray it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2025 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of various American presidents and assassins, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s trigger-happy imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Worth a thousand words
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/worth-a-thousand-words/
Last updated: 2025-01-02T23:54:45.000Z
The photograph says it all.

Snapped on a phone the moment a Tesla Cybertruck explodes into flames outside the entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

Taken from inside the smooth and polished stone lobby with its towering ceilings and sparkling chandeliers. Through the gold-infused glass and gleaming brass revolving doors. Past the golden Trump emblem. To the flames and smoke engulfing the Cybertruck outside.

A week before the inauguration of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. A week before Elon Musk steps unelected into one of the most important roles in the United States government.

If you’re wondering what the next four years hold for America, take another look at the photograph.

It says it all.
### Let’s riot
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-riot/
Last updated: 2025-01-01T04:18:54.000Z
You need a few things to kick-start a riot.

A political ideology isn’t really necessary. Nor is a great deal of planning.

What you will need is rabid misinformation, longing for camaraderie and connection, angry and overly emotional online discourse. Oh, and heat. You need heat as in hot weather.

Riots peak in summer. A study of unrest in fifty African and Asian cities between nineteen-sixty and two-thousand-and-six by Adam Yeeles of the University of Texas at Dallas found that heat made urban social disturbances more likely, with peak levels of unrest occurring in the upper twenty degrees Celsius.

Most rioters are male because riots are an assertion of masculinity. Hence the chanting, drumming, hurling of abuse.

The streets are hot. The air thick with tension. Men with beer bellies and English flags prowl like wolves, looking for a fight. It’s summer in Britain. It’s riot time.

You’ve seen it before. The smashed windows, the burning cars, the primal roar of the mob. They called it political. Said it was about immigration, about taking back control.

But you knew better. You’ve been in the thick of it, felt the electricity in the air, the intoxicating rush of power that comes from destruction. This wasn’t politics. This was animal instinct.

It’s the same tribal energy of the football hooligans of your youth. The same mindless violence. Only now they’ve traded team colours for nationalist flags, and instead of rival fans, they hunt immigrants and Muslims.

Politicians and pundits argue about causes and solutions. But they miss the point. These men don’t want solutions. They wanted release. They want to feel alive, to matter, if only for a moment.

It isn’t about politics or grievances or social change. It’s about men seeking meaning in a world that had left them behind.

It’s about the intoxicating power of destruction. First against property, then against people.

It’s about the simple, terrible joy of breaking things.
### “AMAZIUM” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/amazium-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-12-29T10:52:50.000Z
In a gleaming high-rise, where designers craft empty words for tech giants, he knows the truth about brands.

He walks into a boardroom uninvited, facing down Amazon executives who think they understand the future. They don’t. He has seconds to change their minds.

“Amazium” is a kinetic short story about the power of one perfect word.

What drives a man to risk everything on a single moment?

And what happens when that moment arrives?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of rapid-fire reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.’ T. S. Eliot*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## AMAZIUM

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

I know what you’re thinking.

That I’ve told the driver to stop by my girlfriend’s high-rise so I can rush upstairs and grab some drugs before I get dropped off to rehab downtown.

Yes, I’ve told the driver to stop outside the mixed-use high-rise with uptown retail at ground level then a stack of offices topped with overpriced apartments. But I’m not going to her apartment because I’ve already picked up all the drugs I need from my place. It’s not my first time at rehab.

And I’m not doing any shopping either. I’m calling into a branding studio on the seventh floor. It’s called Pen. Started by a bunch of designers and copywriters who left Pentagram during the pandemic to open their own shop. They specialise in branding and naming for the technology sector. It’s a smart move for a studio made up of designers and copywriters who aren’t that talented.

Technology has a very low bar when it comes to branding and naming. Most tech companies are happy to bind some alphanumeric initials together and be done with it.

The only good idea Pen ever had they couldn’t even sell to the client. Prefix every Elon Musk company with a lowercase x. You know, so Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink becomes xTesla, xSpace, xBoring, xNeuralink. X becomes x. Prefix every company with a single, infinite letter so all the brands promote, strengthen and build on each other.

Elon took Pen’s naming idea for his AI company which he called xAI but couldn’t see the point of applying it across the board. If the so-called creatives at Pen had pitched him the naming idea by renaming countries and markets like xAmerica, xEngland, xAfrica, xGermany, xAustralia and planets - starting with xMars - Musk would have arrived at renaming his companies by himself. He would have thought he’d come up with the idea.

That’s what a good creative director does. Even a good freelance creative director like me. Lead the client to the water and then make them thirsty. Make them think they’ve come up with the idea all along all by themselves. There’s no better - or surer way - to get your idea bought.

But the past few weeks have been a little rough around the edges. Okay, crazy and a bit out of hand hence the need for rehab for a week to reset everything. And normally I don’t fly into presentation meetings uninvited. But I’m making an exception this time. Why? Because I don’t think I’m going to get another chance.

Once they stamp the brandname on that AI chip, it’s over.

When we arrive outside the high-rise, I tell the driver to keep the car running because I’m only going to be a couple of minutes.

I take the service elevator on the left of the lobby because I don’t have a lanyard or key card to pass through the turnstiles. I get out on the seventh floor and recognise the security guard. Reach into my pocket, pull out a small plastic bag of white crystalline powder, whisper in his ear and hand it over. He takes it with a nod and a smile, and walks away.

I walk straight past the reception desk and down the glassed-walled offices to where I can see the creatives and three senior Amazon executives in the end boardroom.

I open the glass door and sail in. Brad is standing at the head of the boardroom table in mid-presentation, surprised.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Saving you from yourself.’

I smile and nod at the somewhat startled Amazon executives.

‘You don’t know me do you?’

They look confused. Brad looks at me annoyed.

‘You need to leave.’

‘Brad, I don’t want to be rude but the brandname you came for Amazon’s new AI chip is shit.’

‘You need to leave right now.’

One of the Amazon executives speaks.

‘We’re very happy with the brandname Trainium 2\. It researched incredibly well.’

Another Amazon executive nods in agreement and speaks.

‘The name was developed with AI.’

‘It’s a stupid brandname. Maybe if you’re selling gym equipment but for an AI chip to go up against Nvidia’s Blackwell? It’s ridiculous.’

Brad laughs nervously at the Amazon executives.

‘You’ll have to excuse our former creative director. Sometimes he’s too creative for his own good.’

I look at the iPad the second Amazon executive is holding up to his chest. I can sense he’s filming me. With any luck, he’s filming me live straight to Jeff Bezos’ iPad. Jeff doesn’t do meetings face to face anymore. But he’s all over AI developments at Amazon because of where the market is heading. (Apple iPads are a running joke at Amazon. Everyone has them rather than Amazon Fire tablets with their woeful OS and lack of apps.)

Despite everything you’ve heard about Amazon meetings and memos, I know Jeff likes it when things get a little messy. When things don’t exactly go to plan.

‘You only make a sequel when the original is a hit. That’s how sequels work. Trainium 2? The first version of the Trainium chip - despite your press releases - was a flop. Why would you go to market with a name that gained no market traction.’

‘Trainium 2 is up to four times faster.’

‘And Trainium 3 which will be even more powerful.’

I sigh. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

I try and smile at the Amazon executive holding up the iPad. Then I let him and his colleagues (and hopefully Jeff) have it.

‘It doesn’t matter if it can infer at ten times the previous speed, it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Sparsity? Adaptive computation? Dynamically changing neural networks? It’s already yesterday’s news.’

One of the Amazon executives looks offended.

‘We’re allocating close to $43 billion this year for AI chips.’

‘Too little, too late.’

I shake my head. I know the best way to make executives pay attention is not through poetry, or wonder. But numbers. Big numbers.

I snap my fingers.

‘Nvidia’s market cap has just passed $2 trillion. Only Microsoft and Apple are bigger. With ten times the headcount, ten times the drag.’

“Have you seen our latest announcement?’

‘Have you seen Nvidia’s latest announcements? Last week they reported they had begun beta testing its drug discovery platform, demoed software that lets video game characters speak unscripted dialogue, announced deals with four Chinese EV manufacturers that will incorporate Nvidia technology in their vehicles, and unveiled a retail-industry partnership aimed at foiling organised shoplifting. That’s just in a week.’

Brad is blushing.

‘Okay, you’ve had your fun. I’m calling security?’

Brad picks up the phone handset on the sideboard and dials reception but no one picks up. He cranes to look down the hallway. I turn to the Amazon executives.

‘The first version of the Trainium chip didn’t gain any market share. You couldn’t even give it away. Why repeat your past mistakes by keeping the name? By reminding the market of your failures.’

Brad hangs up the phone handset and storms out of the boardroom, calling out for the security guard.

‘People don’t buy the technology, they buy the story. You want to come out with an all new AI chip, all new expectations, all new possibilities.’

‘All new brandname?’

I nod.

‘Make it astonishing. Make it everything that Amazon stands for.’

I stride over to the whiteboard, uncap a black marker and scrawl out one word - Amazium.

One of the Amazon executives leans forward, smiles.

‘Make it Amazium.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pass it to your friends. Parse it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Jeff Bezos and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s urgent imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “The Invisible Doctrine”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-the-invisible-doctrine/
Last updated: 2024-12-24T04:14:16.000Z
George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson call out neoliberalism for what it is.

The biggest scam and economic failure of the past forty years. A mockery of economics that reduces every element of society to a transactional net outcome at a constantly lower cost. That turns every citizen into a customer.

Everything has a price. Especially government. Neoliberalism allows special interests to buy political parties and politicians, to buy laws that best serve their advantage. Neoliberalism has seen the wholesale destruction of government services and support while providing uncharted wealth and protection for the rich and powerful.

Neoliberalism has exploded inequality to the point where almost every city and town on earth has homeless people. Politicians no longer serve the people. They serve their donors and their post-politics careers.

Neoliberalism controls your life, diminishes your life. Presumes you only want to compete rather than cooperate, that the market is your holy grail. Eliminate price controls, deregulate capital markets, lower trade barriers, privatise government services, bring on austerity. Fracture state influence in the economy.

It’s what every political party everywhere promises. It’s not a question of left or right. It’s a question of degree. Neoliberalism has become the only political playbook.

Which is absurd given it doesn’t work for the people. Before neoliberalism, the state generated economic growth by enhancing the spending power of those at the bottom. Neoliberalism has generated economic growth by pushing workers to the limit, accelerating resource extraction and inflating asset values and household debt.

Neoliberalism is incapable of solving its own problems. Why? Because by definition problems cannot be solved using the same level of thinking that created them.

Neoliberalism is an incendiary device. It’s burning us alive. It’s destroying us.

It’s high time we replaced it with something that works.
### “THE JESUS LOOK” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-jesus-look-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-12-22T11:33:27.000Z
One morning at the coffeehouse, a stranger sees something in Jake no one else can.

Something holy. Something divine. Something lucrative. By the time Jake realises he’s in over his head, it might be too late.

“The Jesus Look” is an irreverent short story about finding salvation in the shadows of sanctity.

Will Jake finally find his calling?

Or will his calling find him?

*1,500 words / 6 minutes of sardonic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Follow your own star.’ Dante Alighieri*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## THE JESUS LOOK

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Jake doesn’t plan on becoming Jesus.

The dirty-blonde shoulder-length hair and beard are just his way of rebelling against his Mormon parents in Provo, who send him weekly links to articles about BYU’s honour code and the virtues of clean-shaven faces.

His father, a professor at the university, always sighs dramatically whenever Jake shows up for Sunday dinner. His mother tightens her lips and looks disappointed. His sister looks him up and down in his thrift store outfits and teases him for looking like a hipster Jesus. Behind his parent’s back, he mouths fuck you at her because actual swearing is considered soul-destroying. His sister mouths a blowjob right back at him.

Jake has been avoiding doing missionary work because he still doesn’t know what to do with his life. Serving a two-year full-time mission doing community service, humanitarian aid, saving souls, and baptising converts to the celestial kingdom is a big ask. 

But everything changes the day he’s serving avocado on organic sourdough toast at the Rugged Grounds coffeehouse on Carson’s Corner, where he works the morning shift to barely cover his rent. A woman in her forties, clutching an iPad with a polished gold cross on the case, can’t stop staring at him.

‘You know you have a certain quality?’ she asks.

Jake blushes as he puts down the plate of avocado toast.

‘And what quality would that be?’

The woman sizes him up.

‘Blessed, almost divine.’

‘Well, we’re all children of God.’

The woman looks him up and down again, smiles.

‘Yes, although some of us more so than others.’

She opens her iPad and turns the screen towards him, scrolls through a series of ethereal photo shoots.

‘I’m a photographer specialising in religious portraits, and you have exactly the look I want’

Jake smiles a little embarrassed.

‘And what look is that?’ he asks.

‘The Jesus look.’

Jake glances down at the photos shot around the Great Salt Lake, backdrops that look like the ancient Sea of Galilee fringed with distant mountain ranges draped in glimmering light. There’s a photo with a model robed as Jesus, kneeling with two young children amongst wildflowers. Another with a model Jesus stoically carrying a large piece of weathered wood across his shoulders. One more with Jesus walking on water.

‘He’s not actually walking on water,’ the woman says. ‘I had to Photoshop that in.’

Jake looks up.

‘It’s a miracle.’

‘Morning shoots are best because the light really is amazing.’

‘I’m working here most mornings so I guess that counts me out.’

The woman smiles.

‘The modelling fee is two hundred dollars an hour.’

Jake blinks.

‘For standing around looking peaceful?’ he asks.

‘With a minimum call out of four hours

Jake beams.

‘In that case, you can definitely count me in.’

Two hundred dollars an hour to stand around looking serene? He can finally afford to fix his dying Subaru. Buy some new clothes. Get a new laptop.

‘Where do I sign?’ he asks.

‘Actually, you just need to sign up.’

The woman slides a business card over to him.

‘On this website.’

Jake takes the card and nods as he reads the website address. The woman stands to leave.

‘One more thing,’ she says.

Jake looks up.

‘You need to work on your smile.’

‘Work? Like dental work.’

The woman shakes her head.

‘Just make it a little more beatific.’

That night, he creates a profile on the JesusModels.com website. Studies the smiles of various Jesuses depicted in Mormon artwork, particularly the “Come Follow Me” painting by Del Parson with Christ basking in golden light. The gentle smile suggests tranquility and compassion, invitation and understanding. After Jake uploads his profile picture, he adds a quick description: ‘Professional Jesus Look-alike - Available for Family Portraits, Wedding Photos, and Christmas Cards. Authentic Roman-style robes provided (dry-cleaned after every shoot). Historically accurate leather sandals. Works with children and animals.’

His inbox explodes. Mormon mothers want him to pose with their children in fields of wheat. Newly engaged couples request ethereal shots of him blessing their union in chapels. One family hires him to recreate the Last Supper for their dining room wall with their entire extended family as the disciples, which turns into a five-hour negotiation about who gets to be John, the beloved disciple. Easiest thousand dollars ever. 

Jake takes his role seriously, perhaps too seriously. He studies Jonathan Roumie’s portrayal in “The Chosen” television series frame by frame. Practices every version of his smile in the mirror.

Jake learns to master the perfect balance between approachable and divine, develops a signature pose he calls “The Gentle Shepherd,” and perfects the art of making eye contact with the camera that conveys both infinite tenderness and mystical enchantment.

He draws the line at carrying a wooden cross, though one enthusiastic client offers to pay double. ‘I’m a model, not the actual son of God,’ he explains gently. He also has to regularly remind clients that he can’t actually heal their sick relatives, though he’s happy to pray with them.

His parents are oddly proud, in their own way. ‘He’s certainly striving to emulate the Saviour,’ his mother tells her scripture club, carefully omitting the part about modelling fees and payment. His father starts sending him academic papers with historical descriptions of Jesus’s appearance in first-century Judea.

Bookings are booming until the fateful day he shows up for a dawn photoshoot at Fremont Island and finds himself face-to-face with another Jesus. And another. And another. The client, a wealthy real estate developer’s wife, had booked four Jesus models for the same shoot, unable to decide which one looks most honest-to-goodness like the real Jesus for her Christmas card.

As they stand there awkwardly in their identical freshly-pressed, linen robes, comparing beard lengths and debating who has the kindest smile, the situation descends into an unseemly screaming match over who has seniority in the Utah Jesus modelling scene. One of them, a former BYU theatre major, insists he has the most experience so the job should be his. And he’s played Joseph twice in nativity scenes.

That’s when Jake has his epiphany. While the others are arguing about whose sandals are more historically genuine, he rushes off to the twenty-four-hour Walgreens Pharmacy on the corner of State Street and Columbia Lane in Provo.

He parks outside the front glass doors, dashes in and out in under thirty seconds, tosses the Walgreens shopping bag in the passenger seat and hurries to his apartment. Once inside he charges into the bathroom, opens the plastic bag and retrieves a Disposal At Home Self Ear Piercing Kit. Winces a little. Then reaches in deeper and pulls out a box of L’Oreal Paris Superior Preference Permanent Hair Color - Intense Dark Red.

When Jake steps out of the bathroom forty minutes later, he’s almost unrecognisable. His swept-back hair and beard are a deep, rich red. There’s a small silver loop earring in his left earlobe. He takes out his phone and smiles as he takes a shot, eyes sparkling, earring glinting.

He opens the JesusModels.com website and creates a new profile: ‘Professional Judas Lookalike - Perfect for Adding Drama to Your Biblical Reenactments. Specializes in Last Supper Tensions, Garden Betrayals, and Treacherous Kisses. Authentic Silver Coins from Tyre Included.’

Within a week, he doubles his rates. The same clients who had hired him as Jesus now want him as Judas, particularly for their upcoming Easter pageants and chapel shows. He finds himself in constant demand for recreations of the Last Supper, always seated in the shadows, tightly clutching a pouch of coins.

Jake’s parents finally come around when he uses his earnings to pay for his father’s sabbatical research trip to Jerusalem. His mother still sends him articles about clean-shaven faces, but now she also includes historical essays about Judas’s possible appearance.

In a market saturated with Jesuses, it turns out there’s only one Judas in town. Sometimes you have to step into the darkness to see the light.

And his gentle smile? It works just as well for plotting betrayal as for blessing children.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Praise it to your friends. Pray it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Jesus Christ and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s immaculate imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the city: Icarus statue
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-icarus-statue/
Last updated: 2024-12-16T04:13:28.000Z
It’s an odd sight at the always hectic airport.

Outside the international departures terminal and in the middle of the hurly-burly of frantic passengers rushing to make their flights stands a giant statue of a naked Icarus gazing rapturously upward, his wings fully melted.

A mythic figure who defied his father to fly too close to the sun, too close to his ambitions. Only to falter and tumble from the sky to his death.

His feet hover above the pedestal, above a splat of bird shit on the worn bronze surface.
### “OMNIPUBLIC” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/omnipublic-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-12-15T09:14:02.000Z
Two advertising giants eye each other across the shimmering canyons of New York.

One giant will swallow the other whole, and a hundred thousand souls hang in the balance.

“Omnipublic” is an advertising short story about desperation and ambition.

What happens when an industry that sells dreams forgets how to dream?

What happens when everything becomes a nightmare?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of terse reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘All the courageous statements made by the advertising industry could be inscribed on a 5-milligram Dexamyl tablet.’ Howard Gossage*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## OMNIPUBLIC

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

NEW YORK, December 9, 2024 – Omnicom (NYSE: OMC) and The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE: IPG) (“Interpublic”) today announced their Boards of Directors have unanimously approved a definitive agreement pursuant to which Omnicom will finally acquire Interpublic in a stock-for-stock transaction.

The combined company will bring together the industry’s deepest bench of marketing talent (which will soon be unmercifully slashed), and the broadest and most innovative services and products, driven by the most advanced sales and marketing platform (because we desperately want to position this new behemoth as a technology play rather than an advertising cluster fuck).

Together, the companies will expand their capacity to create comprehensive full-funnel solutions that deliver better outcomes for the world’s most sophisticated clients because who the hell in marketing doesn’t love a funnel. And if you love a funnel, surely a full-funnel is a marriage made in heaven.

Under the terms of the agreement, Interpublic shareholders will receive 0.344 Omnicom shares for each share of Interpublic common stock they own. Following the close of the transaction, Omnicom shareholders will own 60.6% of the combined company and Interpublic shareholders will own 39.4%, on a fully diluted basis. The transaction is expected to generate annual cost synergies of $750 million (see the line above about unmercifully slashing employees - yes, it’s going to be a bloodbath).

The new Omnipublic will have over 100,000 expert interns who may or may not be paid. The company will deliver end-to-end services across media, precision marketing (that’s right, precision marketing - mainly because performance marketing became a bit of a misnomer faster than anyone expected), CRM, data, digital commerce, advertising, healthcare, public relations and branding. The new Omnipublic is committed to never using the word creative in any communications. While the phrase artificial intelligence will be used in every media release for the next three years.

‘This strategic acquisition creates significant value for both sets of shareholders and especially me by combining world-class, highly complementary data and technology platforms enabling new offerings to better serve our clients and drive growth,’ said John Wren, Chairman & CEO of Omnicom. ‘Through this combination, we are poised to accelerate innovation and harness the significant opportunities created by new technologies in this era of exponential change by over-explaining everything in overly-lengthy sentences. Now is the perfect time to bring together our technologies, capabilities, talent and geographic footprints to bring clients superior, data-driven outcomes. Oh, and the PR team has told me to say that we are excited to welcome Philippe and the entire Interpublic team to the Omnicom family.’

‘This combination represents a tremendous strategic opportunity for our stakeholders, amplifying our investments in platform - there’s that word again - capabilities and talent as part of a more expansive network,’ said Philippe Krakowsky, Interpublic’s CEO. ‘Our two companies have highly complementary offerings, geographic presence and cultures. By joining Omnicom, we are creating a uniquely comprehensive portfolio of services that will make us the most powerful marketing and sales partner in a world that’s changing at speed. No, I’m not sure what that means but it sounds good, right?’

The transaction is expected to accretive to adjusted earnings per share for both Omnicom and Interpublic shareholders. Omnipublic will have an attractive pro forma financial profile:

Omnicom will continue its practice for use of free cash flow: dividends, acquisitions and share repurchases

Both Omnicom and Interpublic will maintain their current quarterly dividend through the closing of the transaction

The stock-for-stock transaction is expected to be tax-free to both Omnicom and Interpublic shareholders and is expected to close in the second half of 2025, subject to Omnicom and Interpublic shareholder approvals, required regulatory approvals, and other customary conditions.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Spin it to your friends. Spring it on your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of John Wren, Philippe Krakowsky and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s sharp imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “James”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-james/
Last updated: 2024-12-13T04:44:41.000Z
Percival Everett sharpens his pen in this radical retelling of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Everett’s writing cuts like a knife. He takes the bones of Mark Twain's classic American novel and slices it into something new. Something sharp.

You'll see some familiar faces. The Duke and the Dauphin, still running their cons. Tom Sawyer, Miss Watson, Judge Thatcher too. But now you're seeing them through Jim's eyes. And Jim is no one’s fool.

Jim’s got to run. His family’s on the line. Huck’s along for the ride, but this isn’t his show anymore. The Mississippi twists and winds its way through everything, big and mean, ready to swallow them whole. Ready to render misfortune at every turn.

The river doesn’t care if you’re a slave or free, black or white. It can carry you or kill you.

Everett’s novel will leave its mark on you. Sure it’s a hoot and a holler. A goddamn thrilling adventure full of angry, drunken racists and stupid hucksters, flinty scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells. It’s also full of love and justice.

It’s a reckoning too. With America’s past, its present and hopefully its future.
### “GREY NOMADS” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/grey-nomads-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-12-08T19:35:52.000Z
A man stands alone on an empty outback road as a sunset bleeds across the sky.

His motorcycle lies twisted in a ditch. There is no blood. There are no wounds. He cannot remember the crash.

The road ahead is long and dark, and the stars above hold secrets he may not want to know.

“Grey Nomads” is a supernatural short story about life and death.

Can he find the way home?

Or is he lost forever?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of haunting reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.’ Robert Pirsig*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## GREY NOMADS

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

DEAN stands alone on an empty, dusty outback road at sunset.

Dark red shadows drag behind dead trees snagged on the side of the road. There’s a twisted wreck of a motorcycle in a ditch. Spots of rain on his shoulders. A great silence surrounds him. 

He looks over the bleak landscape and can’t remember how he got here. He knows he’s heading home to Adelaide. The motorcycle must be his. But he doesn’t recall any accident, any crash. He thinks he can taste blood at the back of his throat. But there’s not a mark on his body. Not a hair out of place.

He glances back at the road behind and imagines he sees a cluster of stars fluttering on the horizon, hears a rim click and driving cymbal. A mambo bass line snakes towards him as he realises the stars are fairy lights on a black motorhome driving towards him.

“Break On Through (To the Other Side)” by The Doors is pouring out of the black motorhome. Raw, unfiltered, a version he’s never heard before.

Day falls before him as the night sky blooms infinite. The black motorhome rolls to a stop beside him. Inside the front seats are a retired couple in their seventies, GABRIEL and MARY.

Both are grey-haired and dressed in white linen, smiling. Gabriel is behind the wheel. He reaches across the dashboard to turn down the song as Jim Morrison staggers through the lyrics. Mary beams.

‘You look like you’re a long way from home,’ she says.

‘I’m heading to Adelaide.’

‘Why we’re heading the same way.’

‘I’ve got to get to my sister’s birthday.’

Mary nods. Gabriel leans forward.

‘It’s a long way to Adelaide from here. We’d be happy to give you a lift.’

Dean looks up at the ocean of stars. Why does he feel uneasy?

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘It gets pretty cold out here at night.’

‘Thanks. I’ll be okay.’

Gabriel isn’t so sure. Mary beams.

‘Sometimes the longest way home is the right way,’ she says.

Gabriel nods. Mary is rarely wrong.

The black motorhome rolls forward and drives off down the road, fairy lights glinting and music fading away.

Dean starts walking down the road, waiting for the cold to come. Scrubland all around him. Occasionally he hears an animal scurrying away. Above him, stars swirl and shine.

He’s having trouble piecing together why exactly he was going home to Adelaide. Sure there’s his sister’s birthday. But he’s never been that close to her, never made a point of crossing the outback to celebrate her birthday. What birthday is it? Did he even buy a present?

He checks his pockets for his phone. He pulls it out, it’s charged but there’s no reception. He holds it up the stars, twists it this way and that. Nothing.

There’s a roadhouse up ahead. Surely there’ll be a mobile phone tower, or maybe a pay phone. For some reason, he worries that the black motorhome and the grey nomads might be there.

What does he have to worry about? They weren’t sinister or threatening. Just your typical retirees escaping the cold winter for the open road, camping wherever they like. There are tens of thousands of them on the road these days, living free.

The roadhouse parking lot is empty. There’s a few rusted cars to one side and a young ABORIGINAL BOY trying to put the chain back on his broken-down bicycle, his GRANDMOTHER by his side.

His grandmother stares at Dean while the boy tries to lace the chain onto the front sprocket. The boy looks up startled.

Dean says it’s best to hook the chain on the rear sprocket and turn the pedal backward so it catches and turns around the front sprocket.

His grandmother stares Dean down, shoos him away, muttering about wrong side business.

Dean tries to smile as he heads to the dining room. The windows are frosted in red dust. There’s no reflections. There’s no one inside.

He notices there’s a tip plate on the worn counter with a few coins. He checks his phone again. There’s still no signal.

When he steps outside he hears a haunting blues-fuelled piece of music ripple all around him. Spots of fresh rain on his shoulders.

He knows this song. It’s a live version of “People Are Strange” by The Doors. He sees the black motorhome spangled with fairy lights approach just as Jim Morrison sings the opening lines of angst and alienation.

Gabriel turns the song down as he pulls up the black motorhome.

‘Bootleg recording,’ he says with a kind smile.

The live recording was made at The Matrix nightclub in 1967 in San Francisco before The Doors launched their first album. Before all the radio hits, before all the stadium shows. Before all the whisky and heroin.

Raw and unfiltered. A surprisingly awkward, self-conscious Morrison searching for his rock and roll persona, his mythic lost poet facade. Even the band is smouldering, never quite catching fire. There’s only a handful of people in the audience. Polite applause between songs.

The simple two-note bass line pounds through the song. Gabriel is nodding in time. Mary is smiling

‘Laid down by Peter Abram on his Akai reel-to-reel vacuum tube tape recorder,’ says Gabriel. ‘Four Calrad mics on stage and an Electrovoice 676 for Jim. Still sounds glorious.’

‘Gabriel loves The Doors.’

‘Everyone loves The Doors.’

‘Do you love The Doors?’

Mary aims her question at Dean, who blushes, a little confused.

‘I guess they’re okay.’

Gabriel scoffs.

‘I guess you haven’t listened to enough of their songs. Six studio albums in five years, multiple live recordings and too many compilations. Music was never the same after they came onto the scene.’

Dean looks at Gabriel and Mary and wonders whether they were hippies back in the sixties when The Doors crashed through the charts with their blues-propelled psychedelic rock.

‘We’re more than happy to give you a ride to Adelaide,’ says Gabriel. ‘Give you a chance to listen to their songs. I’ve got more than a dozen versions of “Riders on the Storm”.

Dean laughs off the offer. He can’t really picture himself in a black motorhome with two grey nomads listening to the gothic-twang epic over and over, rolling drums and burbling electric piano as Jim Morrison sings about broken love and a broken serial killer, bass pulsing the song forward with overdubbed thunder pounding down.

Mary asks him if he’d like a cup of tea, herbal tea.

‘I’m good, thanks. Really, I’m just going to walk to the next town. Organise a car. Thanks though.’

‘It’s no problem. We just want to help.’

‘On the road, you want to help people.’

‘A load shared is a load halved.’

Dean can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong, that something is off. What is he worried about? In their white linen and grey hair and happy demeanour, Mary and Gabriel look like the perfect retired couple.

Dean needs to learn to trust people. He just needs to gather his thoughts, pool his memories. The walk will do him good, he tells himself. Clear his head.

‘You’ll miss your sister’s birthday.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

Dean notices there’s no rearview mirror behind the windscreen of the black motorhome. Thinks there must be a rear video camera with a screen on the dashboard. Probably side cameras too. The black finish is immaculate. No dust, no mud. Not a speck of rain on the windscreen.

The black motorhome rolls forward as Gabriel and Mary wave goodbye.

‘Safe travels.’

The black motorhome rolls on down the road, fairy lights glinting and music fading away. Candy red tail lights receding into the night.

Dean starts walking, convincing himself that everything is going to be alright. Above him, the night sky is ablaze with constellations of stars and galaxies. He feels like a wild, untamed soul.

He hears light steps following him, light panting. He stops and turns just as a stray dog behind him stops and looks up.

‘Are you following me?’

Dean is pretty sure it’s not a dingo. There are three collars around its neck. He takes a step forward and so does the dog. He takes two more steps forward and so does the dog.

‘So it’s going to be like that, is it?’

The dog cocks its head. Dean turns back to the road and starts walking. The dog follows in step like a shadow.

‘You’re going to follow me all the way to Adelaide? Okay then.’

Dean tries to remember what led to the motorcycle accident. Was he speeding? Probably. He was always in a rush, always trying to get to the next thing.

‘Did you see the accident? You seem to know your way around here. Do you know what happened? Maybe you heard something from your friends?’

How did he lose control? Was he riding too fast? Was he overtaking? Did he hit something? Slide out on the dirt on the side of the road?

Did he crash into something? Did something crash into him? A car? A truck? A motorhome?

It was definitely his motorcycle in the ditch. Mangled, twisted metal. Thinking back he realises his helmet was missing. Black Shoei, full face. If it had torn off in the crash there’s no way he wouldn’t have facial trauma or worse. 

No wounds. No blood. All his bones are intact. It’s a miracle he walked away unscathed.

‘You’d like my sister. I’m pretty sure she likes dogs. Who doesn’t like dogs, right? 

He can’t even remember the last time he saw his sister. Was it in Adelaide? He’s trying to picture her in his mind, her house, her furniture. 

Maybe the accident wiped his memory. Maybe it will all come back to him when he gets closer to Adelaide, when leaves the outback.

He hears a cattle truck hurtling down the road. He lifts his thumb in the air to hitch a ride. On the road people want to help people, right?

The cattle truck hisses and accelerates and hurtles past in a rolling cloud of dust and heaving metal.

Dean laughs as he blows the dust away from his face. Before long he hears another truck approaching and looks at the dog.

‘Don’t scare anyone away this time, okay.’

He puts his thumb out but the truck rushes by without pausing. He shakes his head and takes out his phone. There’s no power. He presses and holds the side button. Nothing.

The black screen in his hands reflects the heaves above. As he tilts the screen closer to his face he sees only the reflection of the empty, dusty outback road behind him. In the ditch where there’d been the twisted wreck of his motorcycle there’s now a small, plain, white wooden cross.

The dog starts to whine as Dean hears another vehicle rolling down the road. Even without looking, he knows it’s Gabriel and Mary coming to take him home. When the black motorhome rolls to a stop beside him, Dean smiles at the glimmering fairy lights, opens the narrow side door and steps inside.

As it heads down the road, Gabriel switches on a live version of “When the Music’s Over” by The Doors.

And as the syncopated instruments dance against each other, the glimmering lights shimmer into endless stars.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Hand it to your friends. Pass it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of retirees and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s metaphysical imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the coast: New electric scooters
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-new-electric-scooters/
Last updated: 2024-12-05T04:44:03.000Z
The future is coming. There’s no stopping it. There never is.

Increasingly it’s coming sooner than expected, a lot sooner and a lot faster. It seems to be accelerating. But isn’t that the nature of time? Everything speeding up everywhere.

Out by the coast, the wooden fences between neighbours aren’t as high as in the city. Aren’t as divisive. You hear the cranking of bicycle chains and pedals as children ride around town. Bicycle wheels crunching through the gravel on the edge of the road. Heads bopping along the top of fences in sync with their manic pedalling.

But today their heads are still as they glide past faster than ever. Their bodies straight and tall. And barely a sound.

Only a whoosh as they slice through the air, ear pods firmly in place and their minds in another place.

They’d bought new electric scooters and they’d never moved so fast in their lives.

Flying headlong into the future.
### “MCPRESIDENT” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/mcpresident-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-12-01T10:40:37.000Z
Five powerful men sit around a mahogany table on a private jet, pretending to enjoy a make-believe meal.

It’s a photoshoot meant to show loyalty and camaraderie to the President-elect. Steve Bannon watches from the sidelines, a glint of calculation in his eye.

“McPresident” is a biting short story about the power of politics.

What drives billionaires to pose as working-class heroes?

And what happens when the mask slips?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of satirical reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘He who can persuade you to believe absurdities can persuade you to commit atrocities.’ Voltaire*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## MCPRESIDENT

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

‘Jesus, Elon, you don’t have to put it in your mouth.’

House Speaker MIKE JOHNSON leans over the top of the plush white leather armchair at the polished mahogany airplane dining table where DONALD TRUMP JR. is seated. 

‘Man, you don’t have to eat it.’ ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. is seated next to him, shaking his head, his raspy voice sounding like a crumbling bridge. ‘Spit it out!’

Opposite him slumps ELON MUSK, mouth full of McDonald’s Fries he’s laced with McDonald’s Ketchup. PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP sits smirking next to him, wearing his fat suit and trademark red, white and blue Brioni businessman costume.

All the men have take-away packs of McDonald’s Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, Chicken McNuggets, Filet-O-Fish Burgers, Fries and various condiments scattered on glass plates in front of them. Polished stainless steel cutlery is wrapped in paper napkin printed with the Trump coat of arms.

They’re just props. Even the airplane dining table is a set. The men have gathered for a photoshoot to show solidarity and fealty to Trump, to the new President-Elect of America. They’re supposed to just smile for the camera. Not eat the props.

RFK Jr. is still shaking his head in disbelief.

‘It’s not real food, man. It’s non-biodegradable polyvinyl resin. It’s just for show.

‘But the ketchup tastes great.’

Donald Trump Jr. chimes in.

‘It’s not ketchup, Elon. It’s paint.’

‘But I’m starving.’

RFK Jr. chuckles.

‘Man, you need to go back on the Ozempic.’

‘And you’ve got to stop frowning.’

It’s STEVE BANNON, standing next to the CAMPAIGN PHOTOGRAPHER who’s trying to get the shot.

‘Would do you mean?’

‘You look confused, Elon. You’re supposed to be a fucking genius. Look like you know what you’re doing. Push your chin out and fucking smile. You can do that, can’t you?’

‘Sure but I still don’t get the whole McDonald’s thing.’

‘Elon, we’ve been through this. You’re being given a cabinet post to eliminate government agencies and departments that no longer serve our needs. Robert here is going to be made Health Secretary to merge thirteen agencies, including the FDA, the CDC and the NIH. Don Jr. has a few more picks up his sleeve. Point is, you’re all now officially the fucking elites.’

Elon still doesn’t get the point so Bannon doubles down.

‘We’ve taught Americans to hate the elites. So we have to do everything in our power to appear anti-elite, to seem like the average Joe. Politics is no longer right versus left. Politics is now high versus low. People of high status versus people of low status.’

It’s no accident that President-Elect Donald Trump plays the buffoon everyman with a taste for McDonald’s. Nearly nine in ten American voters eat McDonald’s at least once a year. Trump’s image and apparent obesity is meticulously calibrated to appeal to the largest section of the American population.

Appearances at cage fighting tournaments, racist outbursts, slamming colleges and higher education, dismissing experts and scientists as know-it-alls who don’t know a damn thing, titillating conspiracy theories. All part of the populist appeal.

Voters making $30,000 or less, counties with high mortality rates, multiple felonies, blatant misogyny, unnerving braggadocio. All part of the psychological operations to differentiate Trump from the political class and catapult him to the highest office.

Bannon has always known that people are idiots and bigots, ready to be swayed this way or that. Sprinkle in the promise of reviving past greatness, punishing seen and unseen enemies and scaffolding Trump as a strong leader is all it takes. People want to believe.

It was Bannon who orchestrated the playbook used at every Trump rally. Boosting security to suggest the presence of enemies in their midst, broadcasting messages over the PA system not to touch any protestors but notify security by chanting, ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’, having Trump arrive late to validate his importance and the audience’s devotion, booing at the press corp. A dog and pony show for the ages.

The establishment and existing political class are vilified at every turn. They’re the reason people’s lives had become such a shit show. Trump knows because they believe Trump isn’t one of the elites.

It’s an absurd balancing act. Over-leveraged billionaires positioning themselves as ordinary, everyday Americans. All the stupid Trump merchandise - the tacky bibles printed in China, the branded pillows, the commemorative coins, the gold sneakers - are deliberately cheap and poorly made. The medium is the message.

Trump, RFK Jr., Musk are children of absurd privilege who have ridden the working class to absolute victory.

Too much money. Too much privilege. Too many drugs and far too many tragedies in their lives. And they’re now ready to foist the resulting insanity on an entire nation.

Only a few years earlier, Musk branded Trump a con man, one of the world’s best bullshitters. Now he’s wrapped himself in the inner circle, writing his own cheques.

Musk’s businesses have market shares below thirty percent and face real competition. Most of his personal wealth is derived from American government contracts and rebates, government handouts.

Musk wipes his fingertips on the paper napkin over his thigh and smiles wide. Don Jr. holds up an empty red box with the yellow McDonald’s arches printed on the front and smiles.

Everyone smiles at the camera.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Throw it to your friends. Toss it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Donald Trumps and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s irreverent imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “Monica”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-monica/
Last updated: 2024-11-27T04:43:24.000Z
Daniel Clowes doesn’t mess about.

The opening two-page spread of his heart-wrenching fictional biography jump cuts from amoeba to cavemen to Jesus on the cross to the industrial revolution to the Kennedy assassination to The Beverly Hillbillies.

A series of interwoven scenes and flashbacks tumble depicting the truths and times (and incredible strangeness) of the title character’s life.

Cults, conspiracies and countering the counter-cultural revolution are just the beginning. The style is naive, innocent. The result a surrealish meditation on life and parentage, life and the familial love of an unwanted child. 

Clowes’ writing style remains as crisply structured as ever, exhibiting tight control over his lines and spare use of descriptive colour, even when his narrative explodes into prismatic excess.

These are scenes told in a flash of memory.

Half remembered, half imagined.
### “THE ROAD TO FIEFDOM” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-road-to-fiefdom-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-11-24T08:49:53.000Z
Friedrich Hayek sits at his desk, pen in hand, writing the kind of letter that cuts deeper than an apology.

His sharp certainty worn blunt by watching his economic theories collide with reality. Free market theories meant to protect individual liberty have become the means to destroy it. 

“The Road to Fiefdom” is a reflective short story about confronting the unintended consequences of a life’s work.

What would the young conservatives who quote him so fervently say if they knew his doubts?

If they knew his regrets?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of intellectual reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Revolutions are the locomotives of history.’ Karl Marx*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## THE ROAD TO FIEFDOM

## 

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

My dear John,

It is with a mixture of admiration, reflection, and penitence that I pen these lines to you, long after our initial exchanges over the role of markets, government, and the proper stewardship of society’s economic fortunes.

The passage of time, as you once hinted, tends to soften the sharp contours of youthful conviction, rendering even the most well-crafted theories more pliable under the weight of experience.

Now, as I survey the consequences of my work, I find myself compelled to revisit the principles I so fervently defended and, perhaps, to offer the kind of accounting of which only intellectual honesty can demand.

When I first began articulating my arguments for liberalism and free markets in “Freedom and the Economic System”, my primary aim was to warn against the centralisation of economic authority, fearing it would inexorably lead to the erosion of individual freedoms.

It was not tyranny alone that I feared but rather the banal, creeping subjugation of the individual by faceless bureaucracies and paternalistic planners. I hoped to inspire vigilance against such tendencies. Yet, as I have observed the trajectories of societies that have embraced market liberalism with untempered zeal, I now wonder whether my own prescriptions have, in some quarters, facilitated outcomes not altogether different from those I sought to avert.

The central premise of my critique of planning - namely, that no single mind or body of minds can marshal the dispersed knowledge required to guide an economy - was and remains valid. However, I failed to adequately address the counterweight: the notion that unbridled markets are themselves capable of producing concentrations of power every bit as suffocating as the state’s. The monopolist, the oligarch, and the rentier capitalist are no less prone to oppressing the individual than the central planner, and in some respects, they do so more insidiously, cloaking their influence under the guise of voluntary exchange.

Here, John, is where I find your diagnosis more astute than mine: while I sounded the alarm against collectivist overreach, you rightly perceived that market economies, left entirely to their own devices, can devolve into unstable and inequitable systems, requiring the steadying hand of a judicious state.

I fear that my warnings against state intervention have emboldened those who would exploit the language of freedom to justify inequities that undermine the very social cohesion upon which liberty depends.

Here in London, I am constantly beseeched by young conservatives who think they know best and do not yet realise they know very little at all. Their fondness of authority and lack of understanding of economic forces do not bode well. Their fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is palpable.

The unintended consequences of my ideas weigh heavily upon me. I have witnessed the uncritical adoption of market principles as if they were divine truths, immune to context or criticism.

In this worldview, every social ill - poverty, inequality, environmental degradation - is met with the refrain that markets will self-correct, that the invisible hand will magically provide.

However, as I look at the excesses of financialisation, the growing chasm between the wealthy and the rest, and the degradation of our shared natural world, I cannot help but ask whether my work has been appropriated to justify these maladies—or worse, whether I myself bear some culpability for failing to foresee them.

You once observed, with your usual elegance, that the problem of our age is not the abolition of wealth but the alleviation of inequality. In contrast, I placed my faith in the notion that prosperity, if pursued through free markets, would lift all boats.

That some boats now tower as vast yachts, while others are scarcely seaworthy rowboats, is a state of affairs I did not anticipate - or perhaps, more honestly, one I failed to sufficiently consider in my intellectual haste.

Liberty, as you well know, has been my guiding light, the lodestar of my work. Yet, I must now concede I did not sufficiently grapple with the complexities of liberty in practice.

Freedom from coercion, as I defined it, is not the same as freedom to live a life of dignity. When economic circumstances leave individuals trapped in cycles of poverty, when access to education, healthcare, and opportunity is circumscribed by the accident of birth, can we truly claim that they are free?

Moreover, the elevation of market freedom above all else has, in some instances, eroded the very cultural and moral fabric that supports free societies. By insisting on the supremacy of economic liberty, I fear I inadvertently devalued the non-economic institutions—families, communities, and civic organisations—that enable individuals to exercise that liberty meaningfully.

The atomisation of society, the reduction of citizens to consumers, and the commodification of human relationships are trends I neither foresaw nor desired.

It is said that satire is the weapon of the powerless, but I wonder if it might also serve as a tool of repentance for the once-powerful. To this end, I am considering a new project - a satirical account of my own theories and their unintended consequences.

The premise, though inchoate, is to craft a small book presented as an economic treatise written in plain English as a sixpence Penguin volume. There would be no dense economic theories but rather simple chapters where the truth becomes self-evident to every reader.

I’ve tentatively titled my satirical work “The Road to Serfdom”. Perhaps I could conclude the book with a chapter that might strike too close to home - a rooftop scene where learned economists gather to lament how their elegant theories have been transformed into bludgeons, used to justify the very sorts of human suffering they had hoped to alleviate. I imagine myself among them, understanding that the road to fiefdom is paved with noble intentions. 

Do let me know your thoughts on this matter. Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner when you are next in London.

I promise to be far less dogmatic than in our previous encounters.

With the warmest regards and a measure of contrition,

Yours faithfully

F.A. Hayek

10-11 Carlton House Terrace  
London SW1Y 5ED  
United Kingdom

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pass it to your friends. Pass it past your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Friedrich Hayek and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s philosophical imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the city: Homeless musician
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-homeless-musician/
Last updated: 2024-11-19T04:42:48.000Z
There’s a faint drizzle falling on a grey day.

Opposite the art gallery is a park. Verdant grass, proud trees, clumps of flowers in well-cared-for beds. There are deep basalt steps leading to a paved bluestone terrace and a large granite pedestal upon which sits a statue commemorating King Edward VII.

It’s a life-size bronze of Queen Victoria’s eldest son in the full dress uniform of a British field marshal astride a horse, baton in hand and battle sword by his side. A king who loved drinking, gambling and his many mistresses. A king for the people.

In the shadow of the statue, huddled against drizzling rain is a homeless musician. His meagre belongings stuffed into four dirty bags. His battered guitar case is open and he is trying to tune a worn-out guitar.

Humming to himself as he plucks at the strings, twists the tuning pegs. Notes are slipping between his fingers as the rain continues to fall.
### “PERFECT RED LIPSTICK” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/perfect-red-lipstick-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-11-17T10:05:06.000Z
She paints her lips carefully, precisely, watching the colour bloom.

There are dozens of lipsticks in her collection, each containing its own shade of promise.

“Perfect Red Lipstick” is a meditative short story about the pursuit of the sublime.

What makes a woman spend her life pursuing a single perfect colour?

A single moment of perfection?

*500 words / 2 minutes of intimate reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red.’ Diana Vreeland*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## PERFECT RED LIPSTIC**K**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

At Céline, some of the models wear subtle eyeliner.

But she likes red lips all on their own. Tender and a little bit shocking.

Wearing red lipstick on a naked face is almost an act of defiance. A basic red lipstick was the only thing Katharine Hepburn wore off duty when she wasn’t performing on set or stage.

Red lipstick makes her feel put together, complete, in control. As for the tone of red, it’s usually in context with a setting or an outfit. Am impromptu, casual summer afternoon red is not a let’s paint the town red.

She likes the classics of the past - a handful of red lipsticks by Guerlain, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent - most of which are discontinued, unfortunately.

Guerlain’s Garconne, Rouge Saphir, Greta, Gala. All medium-reds, cool tones. Chanel’s Rouge Allure No.1, No. 3 are medium reds. Chanel’s Cible Rouge is the best dark red when she’s in the mood.

YSL Rouge Pur Couture has around ten red lipsticks she likes, some of which are still available. Rouge Muse, Rouge Feminin, Rouge Paradoxe, Rouge Insolite, the newer Le Rouge is good too. Light, medium and dark reds, mostly cool tones or neutrals.

These are the red lipsticks she grew up with, worn by all the women she knew, in Paris and Germany, even on stage.

She keeps hold of her old red lipsticks since the selection of today isn’t comparable with the lipsticks of the nineteen-eighties, nineteen-nineties, even the turn of the century.

Bésame makes some of her favourite contemporary lipsticks. Based on historic colours from nineteen-twenties to the nineteen-seventies, especially those glamorous reds from the nineteen forties. Highly pigmented and long-lasting, they remind her of my mother’s lipstick she used to play with for dress-ups as a child.

Her grandmother wore Estée Lauder Parallel Red every time she left the house. She said it made her feel finished. She thinks of her grandmother and how elegant she was every time she puts red lipstick on.

Some women tell her she’s inspired them to have the courage to wear red lipstick. She never felt it required courage. Just a dash of red lipstick is enough. Best on clean, clear skin and minimal to no eye makeup.

She applies a thin layer either straight from the stick or with a lip brush. Blots using a tissue and applies again, repeating the process until she’s achieved an opaque red that has melted into her lips.

It helps create a powerful stain, a more lived-in effect. Even though it doesn’t look like she’s wearing anything on her lips, she feels more put together, more confident, more her.

She knows everyone will be looking at her lips, at her mouth.

Looking at what she has to say.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Apply it to your friends. Blot it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of mainstream publishers and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s alluring imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### David Milch writes “NYPD Blue”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/david-milch-writes-nypd-blue/
Last updated: 2024-11-11T04:42:13.000Z
David knows that being alone with his demons in a room with a laptop is not going to produce compelling television drama. In fact, he knows it’s going to end in tears.

David’s just come back from another stint in rehab after becoming the head writer and showrunner of “NYPD Blue,” a smart and literate cop drama that’s going to become a major cultural and broadcast hit. The best of both worlds. The needle is moved forward. Hopefully not in the direction of David’s arms.

To be honest, David wasn’t a big fan of shooting up. He’d done his fair share of smoking heroin but who hadn’t? His drug of choice was gambling with a side of crack cocaine and hard liquor.

When he wasn’t doing drugs, he was writing. Not tapping out words on a keyboard. That’s what transcribers are for.

David’s writing style was to lie on the floor in the middle of a room in the show’s writing trailer, with other writers and producers sitting in chairs around him as he dictated scene after scene, episode after episode.

He suffered from chronic, debilitating back pain. But with painkillers and a pillow - and a cup of coffee - he was in another world. The world of the show, calling out dialogue and fine-tuning before the transcriber could even get it down.

Then he’d spend hours and hours refining each scene, each line, each word.
### “DELIRIUM” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/delirium-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-11-10T10:12:31.000Z
President Donald Trump floats naked above the gilded carpet.

The air grows thick. Time bends. Reality shifts. Walls breathe and somewhere beyond the concrete and the security cordon, history unravels.

“Delirium” is a psychological short story about the illusions of power.

What happens when the most powerful man in the world loses his grip on reality?

And what if reality itself is never what it seems?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of visceral reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.’ Plato*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## DELIRIUM

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP floats on his back above the gilded carpet of the Oval Office soundstage.

His naked body is lean, lithe. Makeup artists have removed his fat suit, latex jowls and hairpiece. His natural hair is white. His arms are outstretched, eyes closed, like a crucified Christ. His body ripples as if floating on water.

Light is shimmering through the set on the soundstage deep underground. A dying sunset weeps on the giant ultra-high definition LED screens through the white-framed windows and French doors.

The second hand on a brass clock on the Resolute Desk ticks to a stop. Trump’s eyes snap open and he is suddenly seated behind the desk. All the drawers are empty. The upright phone is not plugged in.

Time has become elastic, stretching and contracting like a living thing. The leather of his chair breathes as he shifts. The sound echoes strangely in his ears, each murmur stretching into a symphony of texture. His mouth is dry. The taste of copper lingers on his tongue.

‘Sir?’ A VALET stands in the doorway, but the voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. ‘The Joint Chiefs are ready.’

Trump’s body feels simultaneously leaden and weightless. The air feels thick and his chest grows tight.

A bead of sweat rolls down his temple. His heart thunders - tachycardia, one hundred and twenty-six beats per minute. He can count each one precisely, can see the red blood cells rushing through his body.

He stands and the room tilts ten degrees to the left. He grips the edge of the desk, the grain of the wood flowing like water under his fingers. The walls breathe and time folds in on itself. He sees entire civilisations rise and fall in the spaces between seconds.

Somewhere in the distance, through layers of concrete and centuries of history, a siren wails.

‘Just a moment,’ he says, but the words come out twisted, consonants bleeding into vowels. The overhead lights pulse in time with his racing heart.

His vision tunnels, then expands. The room is both infinitely vast and crushingly small. He is everywhere and nowhere, stretched across all of space, all of time.

The Valet’s face pulls into focus, then recedes. ‘Sir, is everything alright?’

Trump’s hippocampus misfires, temporal processing disrupted by cascading neural dysfunction. Past and future collapse into an eternal present moment. He is simultaneously taking the oath of office, standing in this room now and lying on his deathbed. All moments exist at once.

Through the fog, he hears rapid footsteps, urgent voices. He swallows hard, a chill snaking up his spine. He blinks, and in the dimming light, he senses something - a shadow, a shape - hovering just beyond his vision. When he turns, it’s gone.

Every heartbeat echoes through his body, thudding louder until it feels as though the entire room is pulsing in time with him. What is time? Past and future are illusions, constructs keeping you from experiencing the eternal now.

Trump recalls something his grandmother once told him. ‘The present is all you have, and when you’re afraid, it’s because you’ve forgotten that.’

Her voice echoes through him. He starts to speak, his voice breaking. A searing light slivers his mind. Memories spill out, a flickering reel of images, voices, faces.

The overhead lights pulse and flitter, and the walls close in, narrowing, pressing. He sinks back into the leather chair, clutching the armrests.

The walls ripple, and he’s sure he can feel his mind fracturing in waves. His thoughts loop in fragments. Time itself seems to slow. Time is a game. Step outside, and see.

Trump closes his eyes. He inhales deeply, trying to centre himself, to find the now, the true now. But his senses betray him. The lines of his life blur, merging with the shadows.

He exhales, finally, and the fear dissipates. The weight of time, the crushing sense of purpose, falls away. He opens his eyes, calm.

His gaze shifts to a recessed doorway. As it yawns open, a squad of armed guards in battle-ready gear are stationed like sentinels in the sprawling soundstage. At their feet, a web of snaking cables and extension cords across the concrete floor.

A FILM CREW hovers around a bank of video monitors. STEVE BANNON whispers in the DIRECTOR’S ear. The Director nods and calls out to a TECHNICIAN.

‘Cue dawn on the horizon.’

‘Dawn cued.’

‘Roll the sunrise.’

‘Rolling.’

Steven Bannon breaks into a wide smile.

‘It’s showtime.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pass it to your friends. Pitch it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Donald Trump and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s agitated imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Magnanimous dictators
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/magnanimous-dictators/
Last updated: 2024-11-08T04:41:36.000Z
It’s 1972 and Ennio Flaiano knows he’s going to die.

He gets his affairs and journals in order and makes one final entry. It’s about - of all things - beloved dictators.

It’s about how dictators have learned how to make themselves loved. It’s no longer enough to reward and punish without reason, to keep everyone on their toes.

With the vast amount of information at everyone’s disposal and therefore with the multiplicity of emotions unleashed every day in a world ever more on the verge of hysteria, dictators have finally discovered magnanimity.

Dictators condemn their enemies to death as the world quivers and quakes and then pardon them the next day.

Whereupon the world heaves a sigh of relief, wags its tail out of gratitude and pours out more of its love for magnanimous dictators.
### “THREE MARTINI LUNCH - EPILOGUE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/three-martini-lunch-epilogue-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-11-10T10:01:03.000Z
Anne Sexton steers wild, cigarette dangling, while Sylvia Plath fixes her lipstick.

They are young and brilliant and haunted. They laugh too loud and share too little. The real things stay buried deep.

“Three Martini Lunch - Epilogue” is a literary short story about where the real things are.

What secrets do these women poets keep beneath their suburban smiles?

What draws them to their fates?

*1,000 words / 12 minutes of lyrical reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs - no regular hours, so many temptations.’ Elizabeth Bishop*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## THREE MARTINI LUNCH - EPILOGUE

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s spring, 1959.

ANNE SEXTON, 30, is grinning a lopsided grin, Salem menthol cigarette dangling from her lips, right arm draped over the back of the front seat of her sky blue Ford Saloon, reversing helter-skelter out of the narrow loading zone beside the Ritz hotel in downtown Boston.

SYLVIA PLATH, 26, is in the passenger seat, giggling and trying to apply a fresh coat of her favourite lipstick. Smirking at her reflection in her compact mirror. Both are dead drunk in the pale afternoon after consuming nothing but extra dry martinis and free potato chips for lunch in the hotel bar.

The car sweeps back into Arlington Street, brakes hard enough to whiplash and then rocks and shudders forward as it weaves its way towards a creative writing seminar at Boston University led by Robert Lowell. Sexton and Plath had become fast friends during a poetry workshop. Sexton all sass and whirlwind bluster. Plath pinned down and serious.

Lunch with all those martinis was the first time the poets had caught up at the Ritz before a seminar. Usually they’d head off for martinis at the hotel bar with another poet George Starbuck after each seminar.

The pair gossiped and laughed and shrieked as they got more and more loaded, more and more loose. Secrets and lies, truths and misgivings spilled out everywhere as they stirred each other on.

Sexton had been delving deeper and deeper into her life for her work, for her writing, for her poems. Her psychiatrist had encouraged her to get her feelings down on paper, told her poetry would make her well.

Once she started she couldn’t stop. Her intensely autobiographical poems about her mental breakdowns, her erotic fantasies and her preoccupation with death. She wanted to hold nothing back.

A clinically depressed, raven-haired suburban Boston housewife with suicidal tendencies, lean good looks and insatiable thirst for attention. Penning one damn poem after the other. Popping one damn pill after the other.

All the manic energy was an armour against the shame and fear, the unknowing. The woman everyone wanted her to be. The woman she could never be.

Sexton looked and acted like a housewife. But she was by her own admission a lousy cook, a lousy wife, a lousy mother. Too busy grappling with a poem to remember to be a normal American housewife.

Sexton swings the car right into Berkely Street then left into Commonwealth Avenue, drifting across the second lane and laughing as she straightens the steering wheel and accelerates towards Boston University. Plath leans her head back, eyes closed. Her compact mirror slips from her fingers.

So much was left unsaid during lunch. All the real things not shared, the real emotions unexpressed. The honest truths, the rough magic.

How Sexton always drops her books and papers when she rushes into a writing seminar. How she can’t abide the silences. How her hands shake when she reads a poem out loud. How her voice quivers and cracks. How the men pine. How the women spite.

How she never talks about the fascination, the daring, the lost words. How you have to free yourself from form, free yourself from life. How you have to come into your own skin, your own poem.

All the things unsaid. How poetry should shock the senses, should almost hurt. How she cannot build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out. How she cannot break out of her body. How she cannot understand men.

If she understood men, she would understand their need for a perfect lawn. She lives in a square house on an average street in the suburbs, where the lawn is a very important thing.

On the day before her twenty-eighth birthday, alone at home with two young daughters while her husband is away on business, she swallows an overdose of barbiturates. Nembutal - her favourite kill-me pills. She’s placed in a psychiatric hospital.

Plath and Sexton are drawn to each and to death like moths to an electric light bulb. They talk of death almost constantly. Talk of the ways but never the whys.

All the important things unsaid. The husbands sleeping like strangers in their beds at night. The children’s laugh like breaking glass. The cuts across their skin like rivers.

They fly through the traffic like witches possessed.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Drive it to your friends. Drive it past your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### A time to die
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/a-time-to-die/
Last updated: 2024-10-31T04:40:46.000Z
It’s 1961 and Ennio Flaiano recounts a story of a sick snake,

An ailing python escapes from a little circus in Rome where he used to perform in the evening together with other beasts. The python makes its way to a garden on the periphery of the city.

Normally, it would be able to eat a few chickens, a rabbit, but there’s something seriously the matter with its stomach and it isn’t hungry. It goes to sleep on top of a wall.

Here it’s discovered by a horrified crowd and - being a crowd- they decide to kill it. But no one dares? A few policemen respond to an urgent summons. How does one kill a python? Call the fire department? Kill it in a dignified way, like hunters?

Afraid of missing it with a rifle shot, they pour a bucket of naphtha over it and toss on a few flaming rags. The python wakes up in time to die amidst the flames.

Ennio cannot help being moved whenever he thinks about this poor snake who after a wandering life as an actor, gets mistaken for a perilous dragon and is killed in a purificatory rite.

In Italy, it isn’t even easy to be a snake.
### “VITAREN” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/vitaren-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-10-27T10:44:25.000Z
In an advertising agency's office high above the city, two creatives struggle with pills and broken pencils.

They’re trying to sell a new drug to make people feel immortal. The walls are covered with failed ideas and words they must not use. 

“Vitaren” is a business short story about running out of time.

Will they come up with an amazing advertising campaign?

A transcendental campaign?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of sardonic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘In advertising, not to be different is virtually suicidal.’ Bill Bernbach*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## VITAREN

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Coming up with the brand name for the new drug was the easy part.

The advertising campaign? Not so easy. Philip Morris had briefed his best creative team at the Heroine agency three days ago and they’ve been struggling ever since.

The walls in their office are lined with discarded ideas, slogans, sketches, doodles, broken pencils. Pills and tablets are scattered all over the place.

JOHANN BRANDT is lying flat on his back on the carpeted floor with his eyes closed. A pencil in his mouth like an unlit cigarette.

GIOVANNA RUSSO is staring out the window into the sky above the city. She is dressed in all black topped off with a sharp black bob. She dyes her hair every week so the black is blacker than black.

‘You’re the word guy,’ she says. ‘You come up with something.’

‘Fuck off.’

Johann opens his eyes, gets up, pops a tablet in his mouth, swallows hard. Tosses one to Giovanna.

‘They’re so fucking mild it’s like microdosing.’

Unlike Giovanna, Johann actually read all the documentation the client, Purvue Pharma, had provided to the FDA for the new drug’s approval. Discovery and Development, Preclinical Research, Clinical Research, FDA Review. Read all the paperwork including all the legals.

As best he could make out, the new medication was a low-dose selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor blended with a mild semisynthetic opioid, a smooth central nervous system stimulant and a fast-acting tranquilliser.

Johann had read all about the pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, absorptions, bindings, metabolism, interactions, indications, usages, dosages, contraindications, warnings, reactions. Reviewed all the double-blind clinical studies. Laughed at the risk of fetal harm given the target market. Glanced at the precautions that would be labelled as possible side effects.

This new medication worked across the body and through the central nervous system to multiple receptors in the brain. It relieves anxiety and depression while nullifying pain and boosting mental and physical performance. While promoting relaxation and pleasure.

All in a glowing white 2mg tablet multi-scored for 1mg and 0.5mg dosages. Like most medications, the bulk of the tablet is filler - corn starch, docusate sodium, lactose monohydrate, magnesium stearate, colour additive and phosphor. Nine-eight percent excipients and two percent active ingredient.

That’s the miracle of attaining FDA approval. Pharmaceutical companies can sell pressed corn starch that costs them ten cents a kilogram with a speck of proprietary compound for tens of thousands of dollars. 

Purvue Pharma had labelled and trademarked their new medication Oxymethylphelotine. The official positioning was to treat the effects of ageing in older consumers - a growing market worth billions upon billions of dollars.

Creatives at the Heroine agency had come up with thousands of brand names. One wall in Johann’s and Giovanna’s office was lined with a shortlist of discarded brand names starting with the letter V.

Voxy (sounds too sassy).

Vigormethyl (sounds Frankensteinian).

Verolox (sounds too clunky).

Vitalmex (sounds like a Latino tech startup).

Vantine (sound vain).

Vivantra (sounds like a carpet company)

Veloline (sounds too automotive)

Vibraphel (sounds like a musical instrument).

Velonephenox (sounds weird).

Vitalium (sounds too Latin)

Vitacore (sounds like pilates studio).

Veridure (sounds like engine oil).

Vivura (Sounds like a body part).

Vilorix (sounds like a breakfast cereal).

Vivium (sounds like a property company).

Vivencia (sounds like a town in northern Italy).

Vibralix (sounds too brittle).

Vistapan (sounds like a piece of filmmaking equipment).

Viralin (sounds like a country music singer).

Vigorix (sounds like a breakfast cereal with too much fibre).

Vividex (sounds like a filing system).

Vitalix (sounds too metallic).

Vivantra (sounds like a wedding planning company).

Purvue Pharma formally approved Vitaren as the name because they felt it offered more consumer appeal, more lifestyle benefits than overtly medical implications. (Vitagen was a close second with the capacity to appeal to a new, untapped generation of users aged forty to one hundred - a generation that currently includes early Millennials, Gen Xs and Boomers. With early Gen Z starting to trickle in sooner than later. A constantly ageing generation without end. A forever demographic.) 

Philip reminded everyone that as consumers start to age, they don’t want to focus on their ailments. They want to feel like they can live forever.

Vitaren suggest vitality, longevity and wellness. Giovanna hated the name. Thought it too clinical, too dull.

She had wanted to name the new drug Ava - stylised in all caps as AVA. She’d even designed a blood-red logo, a monogram deleting the cross bars from the letters A and twisting the letterform into a self-perpetuating strand of DNA. Even Johann had to admit it was beautiful. Not to mention a perfect palindrome, impossible to mispronounce, instantly memorable and personable. And open to individual interpretation and meaning. Everything you want in a brand name.

‘We should shoot it in Japan,’ she says.

‘Giovanna, we don’t even have a halfway decent idea for a campaign, let alone a commercial.’

Johann throws his pencil against a wall filled with no-nos. All the advertising stereotypes foisted on older consumers. All the cliches to avoid.

No struggling with smartphones.

No young people explaining technology.

No comical misunderstandings

No reading glasses (unless a gag)

No hair dyed in wacky colours.

No outdated clothing

No mobility issues

No hunching over

No struggling to get out of a fucking chair.

No gardening (unless cultivating marijuana plants).

No playing with grandchildren

No knitting.

No playing bingo.

No sweet grandmothers (unless twist).

No cantankerous old men.

No wise sage dispensing life advice.

No penny-pinching.

No medical conditions.

No reference to health insurance.

No retirement talk.

No loneliness.

No dated home décor.

Rarely shown in workplace settings.

No riding fucking bicycles.

No red glasses.

No unmarried daughter always visiting/checking.

No speaking very slowly.

No using dated expressions.

No good old days.

No yoga mats.

No complaints about modern times.

No senior discounts.

No old-fashioned clothes.

No counting pennies.

No golf clubs.

No pill organisers.

No magnifying glass (unless twist - falling through looking glass).

No champagne sunsets.

No cruise ships.

‘Maybe if we go to Japan we’ll get an idea,’ Giovanna says.

She’s been trying to get Johann to Japan since her last trip to the small forest town of Takachiho in the northern Miyazaki Prefecture. There’s a deep gorge carved out by several explosions from the nearby Mount Aso, Japan’s largest active volcano. A shrine dedicated to the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu.

Giovanna flicks a postcard to Johann that shows a row of red cypress torii gates straddling a trail through a verdant forest. Two upright posts and two horizontal crossbars.

‘Why are they red,’ Johann asks.

‘In Japan red symbolises vitality and protection against evil. Torri gates usually lead to the entrance of a Shinto shrine. You step through them to transition from the mundane to the sacred, to leave your impurities behind.’

‘A gateway to the divine?’

‘It’s where the worshipped are welcomed. It’s where they travel through.’

‘A portal to reverence?’

Giovanna smiles as a campaign idea starts to form.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pitch it to your friends. Sell it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of the advertising industry and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s kinetic imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Not until next month!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/not-until-next-month/
Last updated: 2024-10-23T04:40:05.000Z
It’s July 1958 and Ennio Flaiano runs into an old film extra he’s known for years.

Given Rome’s cinematic historico-biblico-mythological re-birth, this film extra has been shuttling from one film to another without even changing his makeup.

He is a wise man out of Thebes, an archon of Athens, a counsellor at the court of Pharaoh, a Babylonian priest. In Crete he is a watchman at the Labyrinth, upon Olympus he is Saturn, in Galilee an apostle

He asks Ennio for a small loan. Ennio is confused and asks him, ‘But aren’t you working?’

He extends his arms, desolate and answers, ‘I might be a Roman Senator – but not until next month!’
### “HITLER IN THE BARDO” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/hitler-in-the-bardo-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-10-20T10:47:46.000Z
A lost soul wanders through a supernatural salt mine in Austria, surrounded by the greatest artworks of Europe.

Adolf Hitler has just died by his own hand in a Berlin bunker but his consciousness lingers here, desperately searching for his salvation.

The smell of gasoline follows him through the damp passages. His right arm trembles. He moves between crated masterpieces - Michelangelo, Vermeer, Rubens - seeking one particular piece he believes holds the secrets to divine power.

“Hitler in the Bardo” is an experimental short story about death and rebirth.

Will he find the mystical artwork and the salvation he seeks?

Will he be born again?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of metaphysical reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of you.’ Hermann Hess*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## HITLER IN THE BARDO

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It will be four years before he sees the light again.

Before he leaves this astral plane and is reborn into the world.

The gunshot is still echoing through Adolf Hitler’s mind. It’s not as loud as he imagined, or as dramatic. More annoying, truth be told.

Hitler remembers dictating and signing his last will and testament in the bunker, his secretaries weeping. Signing his marriage certificate to Eva Braun with Goebbels, Wagner and Bormann bearing witness.

Remembers retiring to his private rooms. Sitting side by side with Eva on the small couch, smiling softly as he handed her a cyanide pill. He wanted to be sure it worked. He watched as she bit down on the pill and gasped for air as the poison robbed her body of oxygen, of life. He kissed her dead lips then bit down on his own cyanide pill as he shot himself in the head.

Now he finds himself deep within a salt mine, wandering amongst thousands upon thousands of works of art the Nazis had looted throughout Europe and stored underground. He can hear Eva’s soft laugh but he cannot see her. He cannot see the millions who died during the war. All he can see is the endless art, paintings and sculptures stacked in wooden crates. Others wrapped and tied in blankets. Some open to the cool, damp air.

Michelangelo's “Madonna of Bruges”, Vermeer’s “The Astronomer”, Ruben's “The Farm at Laken”, Manet’s “In the Conservatory”, Böcklin’s “The Isle of the Dead”. All focal points of Hitler’s planned Führermuseum in Linz. All the riches of the world in the greatest museum in the world.

An architectural model of the city-wide museum had been made and brought to the cellar in the Reich Chancellery building above the bunker. As Germany crumbled under constant bombardments and attacks from Allied forces, Hitler would spend hours silently bent over the model, lost in thought and vanquished hope. Surrounded by dozens of leather-bound catalogues with colour reproductions of all the art it was to house.

Hitler has yet to realise he has lost the war and his country, that much of the world is in ruins. Humanity seared by countless atrocities, unparalleled destruction, senseless death and moral failure.

Hitler mutters to himself as he steps along the narrow wooden walkway. Mutters about saving the German state, the German people. About how the world seeks to murder Germans wherever they are.

‘We are fighting not only a campaign of physical assaults on the German state – the German people have experienced that throughout the centuries - but never again, never again.’

No one can hear his complaints except himself. He can smell the stench of burning gasoline, oily and bittersweet. There are no flames or warmth. His right arm shudders and trembles, his right hand twitches.

‘The core of the conflict, the global conflict, is the persistent refusal to recognise a German state imposed by others. There is no way to battle lies except to tell the truth.

Hitler glances at Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man”, van Gogh’s “Painter on His Way to Work”.

‘We want a real peace, a lasting peace, a peace through strength. A peace where our long-standing rights, the right of the German people to live in their ancestral homeland as a free and secure people are guaranteed.’

Hitler is narcissistic, entitled and paranoid. A culture of deceit surrounded him, a factory of lies. Self-centred and withdrawn, he told himself he was strong and steadfast.

But before his death he had been plagued by an irregular heartbeat and fainting spells. His body was failing him, his mind was disintegrating. In his heart he believed the arc of history would judge him as a righteous crusader, a saviour.

He views Courbet’s “The Stone Breakers” and Canaletto’s “Piazza Santa Margherita”. He’s looking for one artwork in particular, an altarpiece stolen from St. Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent.

The gunshot is still echoing through his mind. Water drips down the glittering, crystalline walls of salt. Hushed voices slither past as he makes his way past more paintings, more statues. Past van Rijn’s “An Angel with Titus’ Features”.

Light seeps out of a passageway. When Hitler enters he sees the spectacular altarpiece he’s been seeking on the floor of a vast cavern, the altarpiece he believes will be his salvation.

“Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”, a looming 15th-century polyptych in twelve panels by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, is an enormous masterpiece that depicts a hue of biblical figures and events in great detail and vivid colour.

Painted in 1432 by the Flemish brothers, it’s one of the most important artworks in history. The first major oil painting that marked the transition from Middle Ages to Renaissance art.

Directional light, the softest scale of illuminations in the gradation of shadow, the construction of space through light and shade, symphonies of reflection and refraction. Divine illumination saturates the painted world.

In 1794 Napoleon’s invading troops stole four panels, which ended up on display in the Louvre. After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Louis XVIII was restored to the throne, and as a thank you to Ghent for sheltering him, he returned the robbed pieces.

A year later, more panels were stolen and ended up in a Berlin museum. After Germany lost the First World War, all the panels were returned to Ghent as a condition of the Treaty of Versailles.

During the Second World War the panels were en route to the Vatican for safekeeping when they were stolen by the Nazis and hidden with other looted works in a salt mine near the Austrian village of Altaussee.

The lavish altarpiece was to have stood at the centre of Hitler’s planned museum, proof that he was able to save Germany from the First World War’s humiliation and make Germany the pinnacle of culture. His hometown of Linz the jewel in the crown.

But for Hitler it evoked more than historical significance and visual splendour. It contained a coded map to Roman Catholicism’s lost treasures - the Crown of Thorns placed on Christ’s head, the Holy Grail used by Christ during the Last Supper and the Spear of Destiny, the head of the spear that pierced Christ’s flesh while he hung on the cross.

Hitler believed these treasures would give him supernatural powers to win the Second World War. The more the war turned in favour of the Allies, the more desperate he became.

Whoever possesses these precious relics and understands the powers they serve holds in his hands the destiny of the world.

Hitler stares down at the central panel of the altarpiece, the titular piece. An expansive, verdant scene where a lamb stands on an altar on a small green mound, surrounded by worshipping angels, prophets, apostles, saints, bishops, confessors, martyrs, righteous judges, and the knights of Christ.

The light of the world is here. The angels have multicoloured wings and hold instruments of Christ’s passion, the cross where Christ was lashed, the nails that were driven through his flesh, the sponge dipped in vinegar. The antependium on the upper portion of the front of the altar is inscribed with the words taken from John 1:29; ECCE AGNUS DEI QUI TOLLIT PECCATA MUNDI - Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

The lamb stares at Hitler. A wound on its breast gushes blood into a golden chalice, yet it shows no outward expression of pain.

The head of the strangely alert lamb is no longer surrounded by a glowing nimbus, a halo of golden rays. In the sky above, there is no dove of the Holy Spirit, no pulsating corona of light radiating long, golden spires that touch the angels and the ground.

There is no celestial wonder, there is no epiphany, there is no refuge.

The gasoline fumes become stronger, more pungent. Hitler’s eyes burn as vertigo and nausea overwhelm him.

He struggles to breathe as darkness descends and his thoughts begin to dissolve and the gunshot echos away.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Shoot it to your friends. Blast it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Adolf Hitler and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s atmospheric imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### David Milch teaches a writing class
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/david-milch-teaches-a-writing-class/
Last updated: 2024-10-15T04:38:15.000Z
It’s 1981 and David Milch is an English literature professor at Yale University.

He is known for his cerebral and unorthodox approach to writing, for the profanity of his dialogue and for the precision of his plots. His teaching style is also unorthodox.

In one class he is lying on the floor at the front of the classroom. Twenty students are leaning forward, looking down on him.

‘Do you all have your notebooks out? Are your pens at the ready. It’s time for a writing assignment, a writing exercise.’

Students scramble for their writing equipment.

‘For the next five days, find a time each day, preferably the same time, and sit down and write for not less than twenty minutes and not more than fifty minutes. Five-zero. Don’t think about it, don’t set it up on the computer, don’t think about what you’re going to write before you do it. No exceptions.’

Students are jotting down the assignment.

‘Two voices, one and two. No names. No description. No description. That means no description. Voice one and voice two. The setting? Don’t say what the setting is. No description. Write for not less than twenty minutes with those two voices. Just follow, just hear what they say. Not more than fifty minutes. Put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, and shut up. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about what it means. Don’t think about who they are.’

One student wearing glasses starts thinking.

‘The next day, preferably at the same time, sit down and do it again. They may be the same voices, they may be different voices, don’t worry about it. Whatever comes out is fine. Don’t think about it. Just do it.’

That student stops thinking. David smiles.

‘In the course of these exercises, the true categories of your imagination emerge, and they are absolutely different from what you think they are. What the exercises do is build certain neural pathways and shut down certain other neural pathways.’

David becomes serious.

‘It’s a physiological and a behavioural sequence that creates neurological changes. It is a way of habituating yourself in a different fashion, and you can’t fool around with it.’
### “CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/chapter-thirty-seven-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-10-13T08:41:30.000Z
A man walks into a bar, knowing he’s stepping into danger.

The front door locks behind him. He’s trapped, outnumbered, but not outmatched. The air hisses with tension as he pushes through the crowd.

“Chapter Thirty-Seven” is a brutal short story about the legitimacy of violence.

What drives a man to walk willingly into such peril?

Will he make it out alive?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of fast-paced reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.’ Susan Sontag*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

I smell it the moment I walk into the mangy bar.

The stench of stale beer and stale sweat assaults my nostrils. A biker bar on the wrong side of town on the wrong side of history. Thrash metal pounding through the shitty speakers.

I know what I’m doing. I know I’m walking into destruction. Peskof is in the corner, surrounded by his thugs. Tattooed bikers in shabby black leather vests, greasy jeans and metal-capped boots. One of them wraps a motorcycle chain around his fist as the front door is closed and locked behind me.

I know I’m in for a fight. I don’t hunger for violence but it’s the one thing everyone in power understands. Every nation on earth has been founded on violence. It’s the defining characteristic of the modern state.

Violent revolution led to the birth of the greatest nation on earth. Brother against brother, families ripped apart by bloody terror. Every war is just and necessary

What makes a great fighter? It’s not spirit. It’s not strength. It’s surprise, shock and savagery. If tactics involve a calculation of the human cost of various actions, then tactical considerations are the only considerations with any moral quality.

I’m outnumbered, outgunned and trapped in a shithole with methed-up enforcers, fists for hire who’ve made a career of making poor life choices. Not to mention questionable hygiene and a level of rampant drug use that results in the deterioration of attention, memory and judgment.

Fearless? No doubt. But long-term damage to the subcortical areas of the brain has slowed movement and certain aspects of directed attention. A compromised prefrontal cortex has diminished reasoning, problem-solving and the inhibition of damaging behaviours. Cerebral processing is compromised.

The air crackles with tension, aggression waiting to explode. My heart pounds, a war drum in my chest as I push through the crowd. 

Peskof’s bodyguard lunges forward, his meaty fist whistling through the air. Time slows as I pull away and dodge the punch. Violence isn’t legitimate unless the consequences of such actions are to eliminate a still greater evil.

I grab Peskof’s beer bottle and smash it over the bodyguard’s head, shattering it across his skull, sending him reeling.

I turn and drive the ragged bottle into the shoulder of an oncoming biker who screams in pain. Why should a government have a monopoly on terror? Why should a government have all the fun?

Bottle shards slicing through flesh, bones breaking under my fists. A symphony of chaos. Screams, thuds, yells, gasps, screeching laughter.

I spin around and see a deranged biker pull out a gun from under his vest. Eyes wide, grinning from ear to ear.

I punch him as hard as I can in the mouth, grab his wrist and twist it until it crunches. Wrench the gun from his broken hand and slam it into the side of his head. Blood sprays as he collapses to the floor. 

I raise the gun to the bikers encircling me.

‘Back off!’

I pull back the trigger.

‘Back the fuck off.’

The crowd falls silent, hovers with menace. They look at Peskof, furious and humiliated. Seething.

I think about taking a hostage but then think again. They’d as soon kill anyone to get to me. I back up to the service door by the bar leading to the kitchen, levelling the gun at my attackers.

I push through the service door and hurry down a corridor towards the kitchen. A thick biker steps out of a dimly lit restroom, zipping up the fly of his jeans. I crack the gun across his head and send him spinning into the men hurtling down the corridor.

I burst into the filthy kitchen and dash to the fire door. Peskof’s men crash into the kitchen. I fired two shots above the doorway, spitting plaster and masonry into the air. The enraged bikers recoil and I push the fire door bar as hard as I can.

And nothing. The door doesn’t budge because it’s held firmly in place by a padlock and chain. I fire wildly and the lock explodes in a shower of sparks and metal.

Peskof’s men are almost on me as I yank the chain free and hurl myself through the opening, the door scraping my flesh as I slam it shut. Fists and feet pound and kick the other side as I frantically thread the chain through the handle and links to hold it fast.

The door heaves and bucks and opens a crack under the onslaught. I spin around and see I’m trapped in a narrow alleyway behind the bar. The sound of approaching footsteps echoes off the brick walls.

I spot a rusted fire ladder to my left. With no time to think, I lunge for it, my sweaty palms slipping on the cold metal as I haul myself up. It groans under my weight. Rust flakes rain down, stinging my eyes as I scramble upward, certain that at any moment a hand will grab my ankle and drag me to my doom.

I throw myself over the roof’s edge, gasping for air. I peer over and see one of Peskof’s men run down the alleyway and unwind the chain.

The door flies open and bikers pour out. Peskof points to the end of the alleyway and barks out an order as his men fan out. They look everywhere except up.

I inch away and scramble across the rooftop, my footsteps muffled by the urban din, each step carrying me closer to salvation.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Slap it to your friends. Punch it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of undercover operatives and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s fierce imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Petulant photographers
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/petulant-photographers/
Last updated: 2024-10-12T01:55:40.000Z
It’s June 1958\. Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, drama critic and occasional poet Ennio Flaiano is writing another film with director Federico Fellini.

They’re chatting about how a society as troubled as theirs, which expresses its frigid will to live more by exhibiting itself than by truly enjoying life, deserves its petulant photographers.

Via Veneto has been invaded by these photographers, snapping shots of celebrities and actors and scandals for news services and press offices. Their film will have an impatient news photographer of its own, an invisible companion of the protagonist.

Fellini has this character very clearly in his mind. He is acquainted with the real-life model - a news agency photographer about whom he tells a quite atrocious story.

This fellow had been sent to the funeral of a well-known figure who had been the victim of a terrible accident. Sent there to take pictures of the weeping widow.

But through some carelessness, the film was exposed to light and the photographs didn’t turn out. The head of the news agency told him, ‘Figure something out. In two hours either you bring me the widow weeping or I’ll fire you and see to it you never find work again.’

He hurried off to the home of the widow and found her just returned from the cemetery, still in her widow’s weeds, and wandering from one room to another in a daze of grief and exhaustion. He told the widow that if he failed to get a picture of her in tears he would lose his position and with his position the hope he had of getting married, for he had recently become engaged.

The poor lady wanted to chase him away, understandable after she had wept so earnestly and for such a long time. But at this point the news photographer gets down on his knees, begins to beg her not to ruin him, to be kind, to just cry for a minute, or even to just pretend!

Just long enough for him to take her picture. It works. The noose of compassion once around her neck, the poor widow ends up getting photographed weeping on the matrimonial bed, at her husband’s writing desk, in the front room, in the kitchen.

Ennio and Federico decide they will have to give this news photographer an exemplary name. Why? Because the right name helps a great deal and indicates that the character will live on.

These semantic affinities between characters and their names drove Flaubert to despair. He spent two years finding Madame Bovary’s first name, Emma.

For the name of their news photographer, the pair didn’t know what to make up until, stumbling upon that golden little book of George Gissing’s titled “By the Ionian Sea,” they discover a hotel keeper called Paparazzo.

That’s it. That’s what the photographer will be called - Paparazzo. He will never know that he bears the honored name of a hotel keeper from somewhere in Calabria, about whom Gissing speaks with gratitude and admiration.

Names have a destiny of their own.
### “MEME MACHINE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/meme-machine-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-10-06T08:51:50.000Z
In a sterile NATO Command Centre, young Americans gather.

They’re not soldiers, but a new kind of warrior. General Scott Rutledge stands before them, his chest heaving with medals and his heart heavy with disappointment. He speaks of a new war for democracy where the battlefield is the mind of the American voter.

“Meme Machine” is a provocative short story about modern warfare.

Can ideas change the course of a nation?

Can democracy be defended?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of patriotic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Killing the enemy's courage is as vital as killing their troops.’ Carl von Clausewitz*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## MEME MACHINE

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

GENERAL SCOTT RUTLEDGE clicks the remote control to move on to the next slide in his PowerPoint presentation.

An image of the furious mob smashing into the United States Capitol Building in Washington on January 6, 2021, fills the projector screen.

“We are tasked with ensuring this never happens again on American soil. Americans turning on each other, Americans attacking each other, Americans shooting each other. This is not what America is.’

General Rutledge is in full combat uniform, jacket zipped, rank and medals splayed across his chest. A tall, proud man who has given his life to military service in defence of his country.

‘Now as much as I’d like to shoot all these cocksuckers, especially all the ex-military men and women co-ordinating and leading the charge, I’m bound by the rule of law and the goddamn Geneva Convention.’

General Rutledge looks over the audience of around a hundred young men and women seated in the NATO Command Centre situated in the southern German town of Wiesbaden. He smiles wide.

‘Thankfully, you’re not.’

None of the young men and women in the audience are wearing military uniforms. They’re all American content makers recruited and contracted for Military Information Support Operations.

They’ve been flown in from all over the country but dress and act like they’ve all come from San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. Diverse, well-groomed, slightly stand-offish. A lot of the young men are dressed in expensive workwear to give off a working-class feel. Young men who spend all day behind computers love to dress as if they have jobs cutting down trees or building houses with their hands. Most of the women have a piece of statement jewellery. Everyone has expensive haircuts and military lanyards with white plastic identification cards. Everyone is carrying the latest phones. Some of the older contractors have thin laptops splattered with ironic stickers. Minimalist backpacks are scattered under the seats.

Many of these young people have been working at AI startups, convinced they’re part of the biggest revolution in the history of mankind. Adorned with noise-canceling headphones they believe AI will save the world. They believe they will save the world.

But not before they save America.

‘You’re here because you have a job to do. It’s not an easy job, not a glamorous job. But it’s a job that will secure our constitution, our country’s exemplary role as the leader of the free world.’

General Rutledge sounds straight and true. Some of the young people roll their eyes. Others pull their bullet-proof hoodies down over their faces.

‘We have met our enemy.’

An image of Donald Trump in his trademark blue suit and red tie seated on a private jet, grinning at the camera snaps onto the projection screen.

‘And our enemy never rests.’

The image is replaced with Trump surrounded by cats.

‘These memes are not produced by Republican operatives or MAGA reactionaries on U.S. soil.’

A military map of Russia, China And North Korea snaps onto the projection screen.

‘These memes are produced and spread by our enemies in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Pyongyang.’

Some of the young men and women shift in their seats.

‘Politics is war. Never more so than in an election year. Our foreign enemies are fanning the greatest threat to our democracy by inciting internal forces. Make no mistake, our motherfucking freedoms and our motherfucking liberties are at stake. Our duly elected government is under attack.’

General Rutledge looks out at the young men and women.

‘We need to fight. And we need to win.’

An American flag snaps on the projection screen.

‘We will not win a war with bombs and bullets. No one ever does. All that hoo-ha is for show. It’s good for television news and wiping out buildings and cities. It’s entertainment. Why do you think it’s called the theatre of war? Winning a battle doesn’t win you a war.’

‘Psychological warfare reaches far beyond the battlefield. Hostile propaganda and disinformation ins more dangerous than any missile.’

‘Our election is under attack by foreign forces. Influence operations from Russia and China are ramping up on social media. The Kremlin took advantage in twenty -sixteen to intervene on behalf of Donald Trump, helping him eke out a narrow victory. Now these motherfuckers are at it again.

A meme of the United States Capitol Building dome on fire with the headline “STAND BACK AND BARBECUE’ snaps on the projection screen.

‘Sowing discord and undermining democracy.’

A meme of Kamala Harris pushing a stooped Joe Biden in a wheelchair off a cliff snaps into view.

‘Scaling their operations and magnifying societal division.’

A meme of a crying child and a suburban house on fire with the headline “AMERICA UNDER KAMALA HARRIS” snaps into view.

‘Eroding confidence in election integrity.’

A meme of a black man stuffing multiple votes into a ballot box.

‘Threatening violence against election workers.’

A meme of an election official recounting ballots with a noose crudely drawn around her neck and the headline “TRAITOR” snaps into view.

‘That’s what winning an information war looks like. Let me show you what losing an information war looks like.’

General Rutledge rattles through a series of nicely designed and well-intentioned memes from various social media teams backed by the Democrats.

A meme of Trump and Biden side by side listing their healthcare policies. A meme of Trump with the headline “HOW DO YOU SPELL STUPID?”. A meme of Trump with the headline “PROMISE EVERYTHING - DELIVER NOTHING”. A meme of Trump with a Hitler moustache. Another meme of Trump with a Hitler moustache. Yet another meme of Trump with a Hitler moustache.

The projection screen goes blank. General Rutledge starts to step away.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to relieve myself. By the time I come back, I want to see a hundred memes that are a hundred times better than these pieces of fucking dreck. Don’t let me down.’

He steps away then steps back.

‘And don’t let me see even one meme of Trump with a Hitler moustache.’

As he steps away, the young men and women start furiously working on their phones and laptops. Sounds of pings and laptop fans whirring up as electric circuits and microchips spin pixels through silicon. Fingers fluttering and clicking across keyboards and touchpads. Sliding across phone screens.

The best minds of our generation no longer work in medicine or finance or technology. The best minds of our generation make memes.

When General Rutledge returns, a junior officer opens a laptop on a metal lectern. This is where all the memes are being fed into. General Rutledge taps through meme after meme after meme, his face rigid until he breaks into a smile.

‘This one has potential.’

A meme of Satan with his arm around Trump’s shoulder, grinning and giving a thumbs up, snaps onto the projection screen.

‘Put a MAGA cap on Satan with the horns poking through and it’s good to go.’

General Rutledge taps through a few more memes until he projects a meme of rubbish stacked outside the gates of Mar-a-Lago with classified documents slipping out of split and broken archive boxes, a garish portrait of Trump leans against them. A German Shepherd has cocked its leg and is pissing on the painting. 

‘Change the dog to a Border Collie and it’s good to go.’

A meme of Trump eating a kitten snaps onto the projection screen. General Rutledge grins.

‘Add some drips of blood to his white shirt and it’s good to go.’

As each meme is approved it enters a series of offshore data farms that post it into hundreds of thousands of social media accounts with millions of followers.

General Rutledge taps through some more memes and then projects a meme of Trump with a tiny pillow over his right ear emblazoned with a tiny golden T and the headline “TRUMP EAR PILLOW - SAVE 50% WITH PROMO CODE!”

‘Make the T bigger. Then it’s good to go.’

A meme of Trump and JD Vance as reptiles in suits and ties, beady eyes, slimy scales and the italicised headline “REPTARDS!!” snaps onto the projection screen.

‘Give JD a sleepy eye. Make Trump cross-eyed. Give them both forked tongues and fangs and it’s good to go.’

General Rutledge clicks through more memes, frowning. Keeps clicking, keeps frowning. Then stops as a smile spreads across his face.

A meme of Trump as a giant spoiled baby with tiny hands wearing a soiled diaper and bawling his eyes out snaps into view with the headline “DUMP TRUMP!”. General Rutledge starts laughing.

‘That’s good to go.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Click it to your friends. Flick it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of the United States military and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s snappy imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the coast: Ghost trees
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-ghost-trees/
Last updated: 2024-10-02T20:53:10.000Z
As night recedes and morning approaches, the ghost trees drift forward.

Draped in mist and fog, branches reaching out towards the edge of the endless road. 

Pale shapes looming in the haze as cold wind slips around the trunks and ripples through the leaves.

Evergreen phantoms coming to life as the sun peers over the horizon.
### “THREE MARTINI LUNCH” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/three-martini-lunch-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-09-29T11:19:14.000Z
Two women poets meet at the Ritz.

Anne Sexton, brash and bold, arrives late. Sylvia Plath, precise and poised, waits patiently. They drink, they smoke, they talk of men and love.

“Three Martini Lunch” is a literary short story about creativity and self-expression, about friendship and poetry.

How will their lives twist and braid?

What secrets will they share?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of vivid reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘I was made at right angles to the world and I see it so. I can only see it so.’ Elizabeth Bishop*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## THREE MARTINI LUNCH

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s spring, 1959.

A sky-blue Ford Saloon veers across Arlington Street in downtown Boston and lobs into a loading zone beside the Ritz hotel.

It shudders to a sudden stop with ANNE SEXTON, 30, behind the large plastic-coated steering wheel. She plucks a Salem menthol cigarette from her lips and crushes it into the overflowing metal slide-out ashtray in the dashboard, bracelets rattling. Clips open her bag and takes out a favourite lipstick she whips around her lips. Then quickly blushes on her high cheekbones. Pushes back her raven hair.

She highballs out of the car. Smooths her silky, tight-fitting dress over her slim hips and strides toward the hotel entrance.

‘You can’t park there, lady,’ a HOTEL WORKER calls out. ‘It’s a loading zone.’

Anne turns and smiles brightly at him in a voice husky from endless cigarettes.

‘It’s okay, I’m going to get loaded!’

She waves at him.

‘I promise!’

Anne hurries into the hotel foyer, reaches into her bag and taps out another cigarette from a Salem soft pack. A MAN flicks and flames a lighter.

She reaches over and cups the man’s hand to draw the flame closer. Inhales so deeply her cheeks hollow, and looks up at him with large, shining green eyes. Blows out a thin stream of blue smoke.

‘Aren’t you a sweetheart?’

Anne turns and scampers down a stone stairway into the plush, deep dark red bar. It’s the middle of the day so there’s hardly anyone there. There’s a HANDSOME MAN and a YOUNG WOMAN at a table near the bar.

In a corner table sits another woman with her back to Anne. Upright, a little tense. Anne calls out to her.

‘I’m here. I’m here.’

As always, Anne is running late. The woman turns to see her. It’s SYLVIA PLATH, 26\. Sylvia is always early. More studious, earnest and quietly charming. She lifts her hand in acknowledgement and smiles.

Sylvia’s hair is dyed a few shades darker than her natural light brown. Shoulder length, parted on the right and carefully trained to dip with a precise and provocative flourish over her left eyebrow. To hide an irregular brown scar.

Her eyes are very dark, deeply set under heavy lids. Her cheekbones are high and sharp. She wears a tightly buttoned print blouse and neat cardigan.

Anne’s eyes sparkle.

‘Sylvia, your lipstick is a delight.’

Sylvia pouts a smile.

‘Cherries in the Snow.’

‘Revlon?’

Sylvia nods.

‘It matches your nail lacquer perfectly.’

‘Also my pin.’

Sylvia always adds a pop of red to any outfit. Anne laughs and sweeps into a seat by Sylvia, entwining her legs as she leans forward.

‘Isn’t this delicious. Just you and me and the ghosts of the old Ritz.’

Anne and Sylvia had first met earlier that year while auditing a creative writing seminar at Boston University led by Robert Lowell. They hit it off immediately, edging each other to new forms of poetry, more personal works. They’d made a quick habit of heading off for martinis at the Ritz with another poet George Starbuck after each seminar.

Today is the first time Anne and Sylvia are catching up for lunch before an afternoon seminar. Sylvia is worried about turning up tipsy. Anne is thrilled by the prospect.

A BAR ATTENDANT, 40s, thin, wearing narrow glasses and white single-button linen jacket appears. Anne beckons him closer.

‘Two martinis, please. Extra dry and extra full.’

‘Olives?’

‘Of course. Olives are so much better for the skin.’

Anne turns to Sylvia. 

‘All that vitamin E.’

Bar Attendant heads to the bar, past the seated couple. Anne nods her head towards them.

‘He’s married and they’ve been having a love affair. She has no idea he’s about to break it off.’

Sylvia steals a glance, mortified.

‘How can you tell?’

‘He doesn’t love her anymore, if he ever did. Just a pretty fling but now he hates her, despises her. Because she brings him no pleasure, no delight. She’s no longer a distraction. She’s become a burden to him.’

‘Perhaps he’s realised he loves his wife.’

Anne’s lips almost curl into a sneer as she softly shakes her head. 

‘He doesn’t love anyone but himself.’

Bar Attendant returns with two extra dry martinis on a tray and a bowl of free potato chips. Places down two paper coasters and the martinis. Then the bowl of chips.

Anne and Sylvia pick up their cocktail glasses and clink. Sylvia takes quick sip of her martini. Anne downs hers and sits the empty cocktail glass down with a grin.

‘All men are rats.’

‘Even your husband?’

‘Especially my husband.’

‘Off for another business trip across the country. I’ve no idea where he is. Or when he’s coming back.’

‘While you’re left to look after the children, after the girls.’

‘The worms!’

Anne shivers.

‘Hopefully his mother will come over for them, feed them. I simply don’t have the time. My day is jam-packed. After lunch, we’ve got class. Then I’ve got to dash to my therapist, my psychiatrist - second time this week. Then see Maxine. Oh, and I promised I’d meet Lee today.’

‘Such a busy girl.’

Anne laughs.

‘Life’s a whirl.’

Anne smiles. Waves over the Bar Attendant who checks their next order.

‘Two martinis? Extra dry?’

‘With extra olives.’

As the Bar Attendant heads back to the bar. The Young Woman seated with the Handsome Man stands and grabs her bag and leaves.

The Young Woman tries not to burst into tears as she hurries past. Anne’s smile breaks as she turns to the Handsome Man.

The Handsome Man finishes his drink and tips the top of the empty glass towards Anne.

‘They always tell them in public spaces like restaurants and bars so the women won’t make a scene. Won’t yell at the top of their voices at the betrayal. Won’t scream and cry out.’

Anne thinks for a moment that she should run after the Young Woman. Comfort her, tell her that everything is going to be alright. That men a bad because they don’t know any other way. They cannot help themselves. So grab any glimpse of happiness you can. Hold it tight inside you.

In last week’s class, Anne felt that happiness between the words of her poems. She’s the livewire in the small class. Sylvia is always early. Anne is always late. Smoking, coughing, dropping books and papers. Reading her poetry aloud in class with extravagant enthusiasm and life. Her hands shake when she reads her poems aloud.

She often smokes in the class using her shoe as an ashtray.

Anne crushes her cigarette into the ashtray and two extra dry martinis with olives are placed on their table. Along with a fresh bowl of potato chips.

Anne takes the Salem soft pack out of her bag and a matchbook. Strikes a flame and inhales a gush of smoke. Sylvia looks at the cigarette packet.

‘You smoke an awful lot of Salem cigarettes.’

Anne laughs and arches a brow.

‘That’s because I’m a sophisticated, modern woman.’

Sylvia smirks. Anne leans in.

‘Do you really want to know why I smoke Salem cigarettes?’

‘Because you’re in fact a witch and have ben sentenced to burn at the stake?’

Anne blushes.

‘It’s because Salem’s cigarette paper air-softens every puff.’

Sylvia looks amused. Anne recounts a Salem magazine advertisement from memory.

‘An important breakthrough in Salem’s research laboratories now brings you an entirely new kind of cigarette paper - HIGH POROSITY paper - which breathes new freshness into the flavour.

‘Each puff on a Salem draws just enough fresh air in through the paper to make the smoke taste softer, fresher, more flavourful than ever. If you’ve enjoyed Salem’s springtime freshness before, you’ll be even more pleased because of this amazing new development. Smoke refreshed - smoke Salem!’

Sylvia almost claps.

‘You’re such a poet, Anne.’

‘My husband hates the way I read poems. He says I sound like a minister. But you have to give it a certain tone, a certain rhythm.’

‘That’s what a poet does.’

They both giggle. They have so much to talk about.

How at the last class Lowell kept asking the students why is this line so good, what makes it good? How no one said a word. How there was total silence. How everyone was afraid to speak. And how finally, because Anne couldn’t stand it any longer, she spoke up and said she didn’t think it was at all good. Said it was sloppy language. The kind of sloppy language Lowell would never allow. Now everyone thinks Anne is aggressive. A harpy, a fury. A harridan.

How Anne can no longer entertain or have any guests over because her poetry, her work has taken over the dining table. Typewriter, typewritten proofs everywhere, books stacked on top of books.

How Anne needs a bigger house. Not as big as her parents, not with a four-car garage. One garage is all she needs.

They have so much to talk about. Anne leans over to Sylvia with a glint in her eye, whispers.

‘Let’s get another martini. Let’s get loaded.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Share it with your friends. Spare it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Via Veneto
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/via-veneto/
Last updated: 2024-09-25T05:40:13.000Z
It’s July 1957.

Ennio Flaiano sits at a cafe table on Via Veneto under an awning in the late afternoon.

People are passing this way and that. They don’t walk to their destinations, they saunter by, brushing past the tables, lingering, as if they were in the main square of a little town during some holiday.

Those at the tables sit with their eyes fixed upon the stream of people that flows by on the sidewalks, while the passersby stare at the animated banks of tables. It’s as if everybody were tacitly acquainted with one another, a crisscrossing of friendly and befogged glances, which hide - and at this hour, what else could it be? - an erotic assessment.

Ennio sits at the table with Ivella, who never gets tired of watching. He has just come back from America, and had forgotten all about this crowd.

Finally he bursts out, ‘What gets me is that Italians are all different from one another.’

‘It isn’t a race, it’s a collection! Just look! Just look!’
### “SENSORIUM” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/sensorium-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-09-22T11:14:48.000Z
In an underground soundstage, reality bends. 

Electronic stars watch as President Donald Trump prepares for humanity’s reckoning. An apocalyptic threat looms. A new future awaits.

“Sensorium” is a cosmic short story about the end of the world.

How will humanity face its greatest challenge?

Can one man change everything?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of psychedelic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘All is flux, nothing stays still.’ Plato*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## SENSORIUM

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is levitating cross-legged above the cream and gold Presidential Seal woven into the carpet of the Oval Office soundstage deep underground.

Makeup artists have removed his fat suit, his latex jowls, his woven hairpiece. His natural hair is white and swept back, his body lithe.

The Hyades star cluster glitters on the giant ultra-high definition LED screens through the white-framed windows and French doors.

Trump closes his eyes. He has to deliver a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in a few hours. Each of the one hundred and ninety-three member states will be present in the General Assembly hall. It will be the most important speech of his life.

It will be the most important meeting since the First Session of the General Assembly was convened four months after the end of World War II.

Now the world faces an even greater threat to peace and security. The threat is as much existential as it is physical. The threat is coming from a distant galaxy.

Trump must prepare the world for an alien invasion he’s known was inevitable for almost a decade. Negotiations with a series of envoys had broken down irrevocably.

A fleet of starships the scale of which no human has ever seen is only days away. How can Trump avert the chaos when the skies darken and the aliens descend from the heavens? When the gods are upon us?

Massive alien starships entering Earth’s atmosphere will trigger a series of unprecedented global events.

Military installations and operations worldwide will go to the highest alert. Emergency broadcasts will flood the internet. Atmospheric disturbances including sonic booms, air displacement and wild weather will whip around the globe.

Widespread panic and traffic jams as people attempt to flee cities or seek shelter. Overwhelmed emergency services and communication networks. Government operations suspended. Stock markets collapse. Birds slip and fall from the sky.

Trump can hear a moth outside one of the French doors, fluttering against a window pane.

How will society cope with this fundamental shift of humanity? From dominator to dominated. From technologically advanced to superseded by science we cannot even imagine.

What will the aliens want? Will they be peaceful? Warmongering? Indifferent?

Trump feels electric starlight ripple through the windows and French doors, scatter over his skin. His heartbeat echoes.

The lighting rig hums overhead with bright key lights and soft fill lights. Everything is attuned to the smallest detail.

Time stretches, warps, as the set around him starts to breathe, the white walls pulsing with a life of their own. Trump opens his eyes as the walls thrum with a soft, ethereal splendour. Gold-framed mirrors vibrate and ripple. The Resolute desk shimmers, its edges blurring and softening.

Warmth spreads through Trump’s body, starting from his core and radiating outward. His skin tingles, each touch of the air on his hands and face magnified tenfold.

Trump imagines past presidents. Their eyes alive, their expressions knowing, as if they’re watching him, judging him.

His thoughts start to splinter, no longer linear but branching out in all directions. He thinks about the weight of this place, the decisions made here that shaped the world, but now these thoughts are tinged with a surreal sense of detachment. Everything feels both incredibly important and incredibly absurd.

Thoughts race through his mind, faster than he can hold onto them. They’re fluid, almost liquid, shifting shapes and meanings with every second. Lapping together into a unified whole where everything is interconnected.

Ideas that once seemed concrete now feel unsettled, malleable. His sense of self begins to dissolve. He’s overwhelmed by a sense of awe and wonder, a sense of humility.

Trump feels a faint, sweet aroma, almost like incense. The air is different - fresher, crisper, with a hint of something metallic. Feels the hush of the FILM CREW, the distant clatter of a LIGHTNING TECHNICIAN adjusting a light stand.

He looks over to one of the three inset doors. It opens to reveal a MILITARY SECURITY GUARD in full combat gear standing to one side in the vast soundstage. Leads and cables snake across the floor.

STEVE BANNON is standing in conversation with one of Trump’s military physicians, DR. JOHN TRAVELL.

‘So how’s the President doing?’

Dr. Travell glances over his shoulder toward Trump, concerned.

‘We’re still trying to level out his medication.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Flick it to your friends. Fling it at your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Donald Trump and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Bill Hicks: Some script ideas
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-some-script-ideas/
Last updated: 2024-09-17T05:39:16.000Z
Scratching down a few ideas to fold into the script.

\- Bill’s hulking sidekick and protector is named Lenny Big (who’s taller than Bill who’s a good six feet tall) and modelled after Lennie Small in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” Some running gag about fluffy stuffed animals. On the road, Lenny spouts Mitch Hedberg one-liners, Bill calls him out on them.

\- Lenny is shy and socially awkward. Bill is confident and gregarious.

\- At a gig an audience member heckles and says, ‘We don’t come to comedy to think!’ Bill replies, ‘Gee, where do you go to think? I’ll meet you there!’

\- Bill is one hundred percent authentic to himself. No filter. The same onstage as offstage. There’s no fake stuff going on. (Not some hack character like, say, Denis Leary.)

\- Visit the Dr Pepper Museum but it’s closed. Can’t buy a soda anywhere. Tries to buy a Coke from a seven-year-old kid on a bike who wants to charge him $10\. Bill tries to haggle him down to $2\. Kid talks like an economist, complaining about administration costs, distribution costs. ‘Distribution costs!?!’ says Bill. ‘What do you think this bike is?’ says the kid.

\- Early 00s is a boring time in comedy when comics are jogging and going to AA, talking about getting facelifts and hair transplants, healthy diets

\- Lenny looks at little girls’ dresses - the textures, the colours, the patterns. Bill tells him don’t even think of patting them.

\- Flip around Bill’s ‘life’s just a ride’ bit. While driving? While driving past an abandoned amusement park?

\- Scene with Bill in his hotel room, screaming at a news report on TV with President George Bush playing down the Iraq War while about to tee off at a golf course. Bill flips out, and - imagining he’s on the tenth floor - hurls it out a window. ‘Hope it lands in the fucking pool,’ he yells. Craaaash!! When he looks out the open window he sees his hotel room is actually on the ground floor and he’s thrown the TV set onto the hood of his car.

\- Work on last line along the lines of ‘... if it’s the last thing I do on this planet.’ Make sure he’s laughing when he says it.

\- Look up into the sky and witness a breathtaking solar eclipse. As the moon moves across the sun, a golden cast falls over everything, A light unlike any natural sunlight, an enlightened glow that suffuses everything. Everything and everyone goes silent, birds seem to go quiet, temperature drops. Sun and moon become one. Unity. (Use as one of the act changes to show a profound shift, an overpowering lesson that eclipses previous belief.)

\- Other shots of Bill looking up into the sky, looking through all his emotions.
### “PHILIP MORRIS READS THE RIOT ACT” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/philip-morris-reads-the-riot-act-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-09-15T09:30:03.000Z
Philip Morris stands before a class of aspiring art directors and copywriters.

They’re supremely confident and totally unaware. He’s outspoken and unimpressed.

“Philip Morris Reads the Riot Act” is a creative short story about the clash of generations.

What will Philip reveal about the true nature of their craft?

What will it take to bridge the gap between generations?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of didactic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘The more you know, the more there is to know.’ Lavinia Greenlaw* 

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## PHILIP MORRIS READS THE RIOT ACT

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Philip Morris has to do this every year.

Schedule a night to give a talk to aspiring creatives and copywriters at the Ad School.

He isn’t paid. It’s not really a favour. It’s because as a creative director he believes the next generation of creatives should be armed with as much knowledge and skills as possible.

But when he glances over the work these students have created, he’s shocked and appalled. It’s just one stupid iteration after the other, dressed up with some snazzy typography and over-filtered photography. (If he sees another white headline reversed out of yellow, he’s going to stab someone in the eye with a blunt pencil. Lead poisoning be damned.)

Philip stands in front of a clean whiteboard at the head of the class. Picks up a red marker and then sits it back on the thin aluminium ledge. He turns to face the class. He smiles.

‘I’ve never seen so much shit work in my entire life.’ No one bats an eye. Philip shakes his head.

‘Seriously you should all be ashamed of yourself. You should go back to being baristas or social media influencers or whatever the fuck you were doing before you came here.’

No one looks shocked or worried. One student yawns. Another chimes in.

‘I don’t think you realise how the industry has changed. The kind of work you like is not really fashionable anymore.’

A few of the students snigger. One looks out the window, bored.

Philip looks over the students. How can they be so supremely confident when they don’t know anything? When they can’t tell a good ad from a bad ad? When they don’t even understand that design is not how an ad looks, but how ad works.

‘Any fuckwit can produce the work you’ve done. A child with a laptop and a Canva account can spit that shit out. A secretary can do it with her eyes closed. Even a mid-level manager can press a few buttons and generate the same artwork. Do you know what that means?’

‘That means our work appeals to more people,’ a student says.

‘No. It means anyone can do it. And when anyone can do it, then it has no value.’

Philip sees they don’t understand what he’s saying. (Are they clinically stupid or belligerent? Or both?)

‘It means you don’t have a job, you don’t have a career. Why would they pay you for something they can get for nothing?’

Some of the students start paying attention. One begins jotting notes on her phone.

‘You have the capacity to move minds, move markets. You can change the course of history. Why would you settle for anything less? Why would you create boring work that no one is going to see, no one is going to care about.’

‘But we’re answering the brief.’

‘Who the fuck cares? The brief is just the starting point.’

Philip knows that most briefs with their detailed target market and demographics, key product or service attributes, mandatory inclusions, reams of unnecessary research and page after page after stupid page of supposed (and often contradictory) insights from the planners are an utter waste of time.

One of the students leans back with his arms folded tight.

‘Did you read the brief before you started attacking our work?’

‘I don’t need to read the brief. Every brief for every ad and every ad campaign is the same - make the brand or product or service more famous. With an asterisk.’

‘What’s the asterisk for?’

‘To remind you that the client and the planner and the account executive want a little bit of that fame to rub off on them, to make them a little famous within their circles, to lift their status among their peers.’

The student folds his arms even tighter.

‘I’m not attacking your work.’

Philip smiles.

‘I’m attacking your complete lack of understanding of how advertising works.’

Philip turns, uncaps the red marker and scrawls one word in capital letters on the whiteboard - DOPAMINE!

‘Your job when you create an ad is to alter brain chemistry to create a memory. And then burn in that memory into people’s hearts and minds with subsequent ads.’

Philip turns to the students. Opens his arms wide, welcoming.

‘When they say copywriting and art directing is not brain surgery they’re completely and utterly wrong. All of you are brain surgeons. Instead of scalpels and forceps you use words and pictures, sounds and music, poetry and assonance to cut deep without spilling a drop of blood.’

One of the students starts smiling. Philip nods.

‘Your job is to produce work that releases dopamine in the brain of the recipient. That acts as a powerful stimulus for eliciting peak emotional responses that trigger and engage the primary reward circuitry.’

Philip points at the students.

‘Your job is to create the persistence of ...’

‘Memory?’

Philip snaps his fingers and grins.

‘Bingo!’

‘But isn’t the brief to sell more stuff?’

‘Are you being ironic? Sarcastic? Derisive?’

The student shakes his head. Philip continues.

‘Of course you have to sell more stuff. That’s capitalism. Everything a company or organisation or government does is to sell more stuff. Whether it’s more products or more policies or more whatever, if it doesn’t sell it doesn’t matter.’

The student rolls his eyes, frustrated. Philips’ eyes narrow.

‘But that doesn’t mean you’re a salesman. That’s not your job.’

Philip turns around and underlines the word DOPAMINE! on the whiteboard.

‘Your job is to make people sell themselves.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Promote it to your friends. Push it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of mainstream advertisers and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s mediated imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “The Early Stories”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-the-early-stories/
Last updated: 2024-09-13T05:37:59.000Z
Truman Capote’s collection of never-before-published short stories mixes everything from petty jealousies to the blinding violence of adulthood.

Brief, terse stories from Capote as an adolescent and young man writing his way through racism and injustice, poverty and loss.

Young people lost in daydreams. Older folks lost in life, wandering to their fates and unintended ends. Death hovers around every corner, every turn of the page.

One story in particular, “Traffic West” pits four business executives, the mayor of a small town, a man who escapes suicide through love and a young black maid who decides to return to the south from the greatest metropolis on earth in a bus that slams into an oncoming truck and kills everyone on board.

It reads like an elegy for America.

And Truman Capote.
### “RASKO” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/rasko-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-09-08T20:31:46.000Z
You’re writing a screenplay based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”.

A contemporary take on a classic story of murder and morality, of madness and reality.

“Rasko” is a crisp, compelling short story that looks at what drives the protagonist to slaughter. An unrelenting character study.

Does it capture the psychological intensity and dark humour?

Does it embody the rising dramatic tension?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of ominous reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?’ Immanuel Kant*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## RASKO

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Rasko can’t really hear the cathedral bells ringing.

In the low-ceilinged basement they sound distant, muffled. He’s searching through the maze-like tetris of rooms for something to steal, something to pawn.

It’s dark and dank. Mosquitoes flit about. Rasko often comes down to the sprawling basement. Sometimes to get away from everyone, sometimes to do a little khanka or vint, sometimes to think. Especially on a ferociously hot day like today.

Most of the old timber doors between the rooms are rotten, their glass panes smudged or shattered. His scattered reflection leads him from room to room.

He had come to Saint Petersburg from the country to study law, to make his mother and sister proud. The city’s humid continental climate with short, broiling summers and long, cold, wet winters doesn’t suit his brittle constitution. He constantly worries about his epilepsy and ill health. Cheap opiates like khana boiled from poppy stems help a little. Cheap amphetamines keep his mind and thoughts from falling apart.

Rasko lives in a cramped, airless room in the tenement block above. At the end of a windowless hallway, next to a ruptured toilet and stained bathroom. The hulking apartment building at the back of Vasilyevsky Island is a filthy grey concrete mausoleum from the Soviet era. Stuffed with broken families and broken people. Stupid people, as Rasko sees them. Dull, ordinary people. Everyone is desperately poor.

He’s been here six months and already burned through any money he’d saved, any money his mother and sister had sent him. He can no longer afford his university fees. And he owes money everywhere - acquaintances, neighbours, especially the withered Chinese pawnbroker he rents his garret from. He hates the sight of her, hates how she cheats the poor, beats her own sister.

Rasko sees through people, understands their fears and worries. Knows how their God has forsaken them. How unremarkable and ordinary they are. How they will never achieve greatness.

Down in the clammy basement his reflection in a door is missing squares where glass panes are missing, probably stolen and sold off years ago. Black voids in his parallel self.

He shifts from room to room in the endless basement looking for something, anything he can grab. Anything he can pawn for a few rubles.

Even the greatest men had the most humble beginnings. Vladimir Putin’s childhood in Saint Petersburg was rife with hardship. One brother died in infancy, another died of diphtheria and starvation.

Like Rasko, Putin studied law at Leningrad State University - as Saint Petersburg State University was called in the nineteen-seventies. Studying by day, rolling through the streets with gangsters at night.

From a street hoodlum to secret service operative to president of Russia for a quarter of a century. Everything Putin wanted, he took with his bare hands. Money, power, women.

Putin’s ruthless, extraordinary ambition lifted him and Russia to greatness. He never forgives or forgets. Never surrenders.

Extraordinary people are duty-bound to transgress moral and legal boundaries for the greater good. It’s their inner right for the benefit of humanity. It’s their fate and their destiny. It’s what sets them apart from the ordinary. It’s what makes them, extraordinary.

Rasko hasn’t eaten anything today and he knows his mother would worry. But if he has no money, what can he eat? His textbooks? His essays?

Even in this heat he wears a long, threadbare coat over his tattered bones. His mind is a swirl of rising turmoil and paranoia. He swings from grandiose self-perception to crushing self-loathing. He has no time for other people, for lesser people.

Rasko is above conventional morality, above petty laws that keep ordinary people in check. He finds most social interactions a waste of time, burdensome, meaningless. People are just there to be used. Nothing but tools, cowards.

He prides himself on his extraordinary intelligence. How many times had he topped his class? His knowledge of the law outshines his professors. In his dreams, senior judges seek his counsel and guidance. In his dreams, he is a great man. He is a law unto himself.

Wandering deeper through the basement rooms, Rasko catches his reflection on a broken glass plane. The jagged edge cuts the reflection of his face in half.

His hair is already thinning, sweat gathers on his brow. He blinks, anxious. Maybe he’s running a fever. Perhaps an infection. He can’t hear the cathedral bells at all.

Rasko looks through the other side of the jagged edge and sees a heavy steel blade on a battered timber handle. It’s an axe.

But he doesn’t see his reflection on the dull metal.

All he sees is his shadow.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Swing it to your friends. Fling it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of various Russians and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s rapacious imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the city: Speaking in sign
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-speaking-in-sign/
Last updated: 2024-09-05T03:05:14.000Z
It’s a busy city corner, roaring with life.

Trams are trundling by, cement trucks churn, air brakes hiss, cars blare and swerve past. Pedestrians are hustling past, talking loudly at each other or on their phones.

Whistles and yells from nearby construction sites. Bulldozers, loaders and excavators crunching through earth. Diesel generators and power tools and heavy machinery grinding, drilling and pounding. Cranes screeching overhead.

There’s a man in his thirties seated at a table outside a cafe. He’s smiling and gesticulating wildly but you can’t see who he’s sitting with because there’s a wide column blocking your view. How can anyone hear anything?

You step forward to see there’s no one sitting with him. Instead he has his phone propped up against a vase, speaking in sign with a friend on the screen.
### “TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/trickle-down-economics-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-09-01T09:33:42.000Z
Ted Canard thinks he can do no wrong.

Yet here he is on a New York sidewalk, his life ebbing away.

Moments earlier, he was revelling in his success, blind to the inequity around him.

“Trickle-Down Economics” is an incisive short story about the problems of inequality.

How does this happen in the heart of the Upper East Side?

How do two worlds collide with such sudden violence?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of visceral reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘One of the great artifices of Satan is to induce men to believe that he does not exist.’ John Wilkinson*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Ted Canard stumbles and crumbles to the sidewalk, a broken green glass Coca-Cola bottle plunged into his neck.

Gasping, his eyes teary as his life splinters before him. As memories ricochet between the shrieks and yells of passersby.

He hears a woman cry for someone to call an ambulance. He’s not a medical man but he cannot see the point. He can feel the warm blood spill down his chest, soaking through his Ascot Chang shirt.

How can this happen on the Upper East Side? How can this happen only steps away from his favourite restaurant? How can this happen to him?

Ted Canard had been enjoying his life. Having recently retired at fifty-one from the hedge fund where he’d spent almost all his working life, he was looking forward to relaxing, travelling to his summer home in Sardinia, writing a book about how the economy really works, investing in some defiant startups with monopolistic ambitions.

He’d just come from a splendid six-course lunch at George-Michel with a former colleague. The sea urchin from Santa Barbara was a little bland, neither sweet nor minerally. The saving grace was the 2017 Bernadeau Les Nourissons. Lush, expansive, balanced and multi-layered, a fine wine.

Ted had ordered a second bottle as the conversation flowed.

‘What all those art-history majors don’t understand is that it’s investors like us who provide all the economic value in the world.’

His former colleague agreed as he drained his glass.

‘Investors like us create the value that allows the middle-class to enjoy their lives. If it wasn’t for us, they’d still be using typewriters and slide rulers.’

The sommelier silently filled their glasses.

‘I was trying to explain to my nephew why the investor class was the driver of everyone’s economic success. That when our money is invested in productive businesses it makes life better for everyone. He didn’t understand a word I was saying.’

‘Most young people these days are fools.’

‘Most citizens are consumers, not investors. They don’t recognise the benefits to consumers that come from investment. From the critical work we do. From the tremendous value we create.’

‘You should write a book.’

Ted had smiled and nodded in agreement as the dissected black forest devil’s food cake was placed at their table for dessert. Valrhona dark chocolate forest silhouette hovering over sour cherry sorbet and soft almond meringue.

Like all the diners that day, Ted was wilfully blind to the growing economic inequality all around him.

He was not merely a member of the one percent. He was a member of the point one percent. His wealth in the hundreds of millions of dollars - albeit mostly tied up in numerous tax-free investments. He lived in an Upper East Side townhouse just off Fifth Avenue, and near the office of the private-equity firm he helped build into a multi-billion dollar business by buying, fixing and selling off companies at tremendous profits.

He often talked about how he would roll up his sleeves and work in the trenches of these companies, pushing for innovation and opening new markets. Truth was he would typically retrench thirty to forty percent of the workforce, liquidate any pension funds, extend supplier payments, load up companies with discounted debt and take them to market.

When someone does great evil they must convince others they’re doing great good. Or else how can they live with themselves?

Ted’s greatest claim to goodness was working with the Ball Corporation to reshape an aluminium soda can so it bent inward at the top. That little taper allowed manufacturers to make the same size can with a tiny bit less aluminium.

It saves a fraction of a penny on every can, Which means the economy can produce more cans with the same amount of resources. In Ted’s mind, it made every American who buys a soda can a little bit richer because their paycheck buys more.

In Ted’s worldview, the simple fact those savings go straight to the company’s senior executives as massive salary increases and bonuses isn’t considered. The simple fact that an American chief executive earns three-hundred-and-forty times as much as a typical worker isn’t weighed. The simple fact that monopolies hold markets and consumers hostage while extracting inordinate profits and blocking innovation isn’t examined. The simple fact that governments repeatedly use taxpayer funds to bail out over-leveraged banks and financial institutions isn’t calculated. The simple fact that tax cuts go to the rich at the expense of the poor isn’t factored. The simple fact that workers’ wages have stagnated or fallen isn’t assessed.

Ted had long avoided going downtown or even visiting midtown. Too many tourists, too many homeless people. He had read in the financial press that New York City had reached the highest level of homelessness since the Great Depression of the 1930s. More than three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand men, women and children with nowhere to live.

Ted saw these people as mentally ill or vagrant drug addicts - or both - pocketing government handouts while making plenty of cash begging on the streets. Why else would they live that way? The simple fact they have no choice never crosses his mind. The simple fact that poverty makes the wealthy richer never enters his mind.

People like Ray had become homeless through no fault of their own. Ray had joined the Army straight out of high school. Month after month of constant blast exposure on the Afghanistan frontline. Day after day of trying to cope with the stress of combat.

Ray had been trained to kill. So that’s what he did. Saving teammates, grappling with Taliban fighters, beating them to death. Awarded medals of valour, of honour. He left the army disabled with severe hearing loss and lost his way.

He found himself in a homeless camp in Texas among thousands of lost souls. He was offered a hundred dollars cash by the state government to get on a bus to lord knows where.

His veteran’s disability pension had dried up. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. So he took the money, boarded a bus and fell asleep. When he woke up he was in New York City.

Ray spent a week crisscrossing the city in search of a safe place. It didn’t take long before he started begging for spare change on the streets. He wore his dirty camouflage uniform, filthy cap upturned in front of him with a couple of coins scattered inside. Dragged a cardboard sign around with him where he’d scrawled an anxious message in a nervous hand: Disable veteran. Anything will help!! Thnak you. God bless

He was hungry. He was always hungry. He carried a classic ten-ounce green glass Coca-Cola bottle with him everywhere. Found all the places where he could fill it with water for free. Whenever he was hungry, he would take a sip. The heavy fluted glass felt good in his hand, the white imprinted logo felt right. It felt like America before everything started falling apart.

In Afghanistan he’d fought in a war he didn’t understand. Destroying lives and tearing a country apart. Returned more confused than ever. America had changed. It felt like a battlefield. It became more difficult to make out what people were saying. Sounds became muffled, distant.

In the past few weeks, Ray had seen the homeless population swell. Parts of downtown were becoming dangerous. Too much competition, too much aggression. Too many thieves.

He’d started moving to midtown. Then further uptown, away from all the crazies. Figured the richer the passersby, the more they’d give. What he didn’t know was the richer the person, the stingier they are with their money.

Ted had already left the restaurant and was ambling home when Ray knelt down on the sidewalk in front of a hoarding. Placed his upturned cap in front of him, his glass Coca-Cola bottle to one side, his cardboard sign close to his chest. His head lowered.

Ted’s smile tightened when he spotted him. What was a homeless man doing in his neighbourhood? What was a beggar doing here? What was the world coming to?

Why don’t the authorities do something? Why don’t the police arrest these scammers? Why pay taxes if they can’t solve the problem?

Ted isn’t an angry man but he wanted to lash out at this useless sycophant, this pariah. So he kicked his cap, sending the paltry coins flying and smashing the contoured Coca-Cola bottle against the hoarding.

Ray’s combat training took over as he leaped on Ted, dragging him down to the hard concrete pavers, pummelling him with his fists, grabbing the broken body of the Coca-Cola bottle and jamming it into the front of his neck.

The sharp-edged shard slices through muscles, ligaments, tendons and nerves. Severs both major arteries. Ted clutches at his throat as his body goes into shock and he crumbles to the sidewalk.

His life flows out of him as the blood flows out through the neck and lip of the broken Coca-Cola bottle, pooling over the sidewalk and trickling into the gutter.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Shoot it to your friends. Blast it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of various hedge fund employees and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s rapacious imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### A diary
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/a-diary/
Last updated: 2024-08-28T03:28:26.000Z
It’s on the ground.

In the grass by the corner of the road. Either accidentally dropped or purposely discarded.

It’s a small 2024 diary. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. A cheap, unbranded Moleskine look-a-like. Black soft cover with the year stamped on the front, black ribbon bookmark, black elastic closure.

The personal details are empty. As are the emergency contact details. There’s a monthly planner and then a weekly planner on every double-page spread. With a tiny box of each month’s date on the bottom right corner of every spread. There are contact details at the back. All empty.

There are a few pages of notes. The only thing written in this diary is on one of those pages.

It’s in black pen. And it says Client # Ing 653 775 71.
### “ANTI-NUCLEAR” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anti-nuclear-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-08-25T11:05:41.000Z
In the dead of night, Richard grapples with a daunting task.

Richard must craft an anti-nuclear campaign that will sway an entire nation. The clock ticks. Ideas come and go but conventional methods fall short. Until inspiration strikes at the last minute.

“Anti-Nuclear” is a creative short story about the politics of communications.

Will Richards’ unorthodox approach work?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of provocative reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.’ Dante Alighieri*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## ANTI-NUCLEAR

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s well past midnight and Richard still doesn’t have a decent idea for the advertising campaign.

Australia is heading to a national election and the opposition leader and head of the Liberal Party Peter Dutton has decided to make nuclear energy his key platform, promising a string of nuclear reactors that will produce clean, cheap, consistent energy. (Dutton can’t even get the alliteration right. What hope does he have of getting his communications in order.)

By banding with the National Party, Dutton hopes to cajole conservative Australians to vote for a nuclear future. Despite the fact nuclear power is constitutionally illegal. Despite the logistical, political and environmental concerns of uranium mill tailings, spent reactor fuel and radioactive waste. Not to mention the absurdly high upfront costs and catastrophic outcomes of a nuclear accident.

Seriously, how hard can it be? Create an anti-nuclear advertising campaign for the ages that derails a national election in Australia.

Start with a heart-stopping television commercial that scares the bejesus out of everybody, take key stills and plaster them on giant billboards with headlines that stoke the fear, follow up with print advertisements that push that fear deep into the hearts and minds of voters. Swarm the socials with memes. Stand back and pick up a swag of awards. Leverage those awards to snag a new job at a bigger agency than Allen & Allen for considerably more money.

Richard has been with Allen & Allen for almost four years. The agency is based on a traditional English law firm, both in structure and ambiance. Headquartered in Melbourne’s legal precinct, it’s renowned for its expertise in corporate and public policy communications. Consistently ranks high in terms of revenue and earnings per partner.

Set over three floors of a large office tower, the interior is panelled in dark wood. Down the corridors, rows of heavy wooden doors bear the names and titles of partners and senior associates. Most are closed and locked for the night.

Thick carpet muffles any steps and adds to the sense of dignified quiet. The faint aroma of old books, polished wood and trace of pipe tobacco is custom blended for the firm. 

The chief executive is fond of bespoke three-piece suits from Ede & Ravenscroft, London’s oldest tailor and robe maker. All to add to the reserved, considered air. The higher charge-out rates.

But none of this helps Richard come up with a great campaign idea. Richard’s office is lined with sheets of A2 paper, scrawled with one bad idea after the other.

There’s the seasoned economist rationally comparing the high costs of nuclear versus the low costs of renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

There’s the happy-go-lucky tradie pointing out that for the same cost of building nuclear power plants, the Liberal Party can give every Australian a free rooftop solar system.

There’s the desperate scientist demonstrating the long-term effects of nuclear waste and how it remains dangerous for thousands of years.

There’s the frantic surgeon in mid-operation expounding on the health risks of nuclear accidents.

There’s the belligerent army general calling for more nuclear reactors to produce more nuclear waste, more plutonium so more nuclear weapons can be made.

There’s the gritty documentary featuring interviews with survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown visiting the graves of their dead relatives.

There’s the scenes of typical city life with a handful of survivors wearing hazmat suits as grotesquely deformed creatures slither through the desolate metropolis.

There’s the Aboriginal bird god Bunjil flying over a nuclear plant to show how vulnerable the site is to climate change and natural disasters.

There’s the children’s playground with warped, melted metal. A crumbling swing eerily moving as the sounds of children playing give way to horror and death, screams and terror.

There’s the post-apocalyptic zombie horror show where mutilated people with half-rotten faces shop at a supermarket for radioactive groceries with the money they’ve saved with cheap nuclear energy.

There’s the beautiful river winding through a national park. Hikers marvelling at nature, dropping to one knee to scoop up fresh water only to have a double-headed fish float past.

There’s the large country town with everyone going about their business when a nuclear bomb levels everything in a flash, incinerates everyone. Even the kelpie in the back of the ute.

There’s the secret police swarming into a small country town, rounding up and arresting everybody after a nuclear reactor accident. Batons swinging, shooting reporters on sight.

There’s the idea of a naked Peter Dutton hunched like a madman. Eyes ablaze, sharpened teeth munching on a dead baby.

Seriously, how hard can it be to come up with a good idea? How many stupid ideas does Richard have to wade through? 

There’s the one that showcases successful examples of communities transitioning from nuclear to renewable energy. So nice, so sweet it makes Richard want to throw up.

Even worse, all these ideas play to the choir. All these ideas appeal to voters who wouldn’t vote for the Liberal Party and National Party in a million years. Voters whose minds are already made up. Sure you might be able to convince a handful of swinging voters.

It might be enough to get an edge over the opposition. But ideally you want to knock them back to the stone age, you want the election to decimate the nuclear lobby for the next thousand years. For that to happen you need die-hard Liberal and National voters to vote for Labor and the Greens for the first time. Especially multi-generational Liberal and National voters in rural areas in battleground states. 

As a copywriter, Richard is supposed to be working with an art director to come up with creative concepts. But after the last one left the firm in tears, human resources haven’t been able to find any art directors willing to work with him.

So he churns through more and more ideas until he’s all churned out. One dull, ordinary idea after the other. One expected concept after the other.

All the while Richard worries how effective a traditional advertising campaign can be. Mainstream media has been decimated by digital media. Even a good idea struggles to gain attention, gain traction.

The conservative voters Richard wants to reach, wants to sway don’t trust advertising. Particular political advertising that they see as self-serving and overlooks their concerns.

Richard snaps a pencil in half in frustration. Maybe he should give up, hand in his resignation, start a new career while he still has a chance. He’s always liked coffee. Maybe he can become a barista. Making coffees has to be easier than making ideas.

He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. It’s almost dawn when the sun crawls over the horizon and the right idea finally hits him.

He gets up and rushes into the wood-panelled boardroom. Along one entire wall are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with leather-bound telephone directories covering every town, suburb and city in Australia.

Richard runs his finger along the spines of the directories until he stops at the Gippsland edition. Taps the spine and smiles, and slides it out. Hurries back to his office and tosses it on his desk.

David Ogilvy’s advice to write an ad like you’re writing a letter to a friend rings in his ears.

Richard pulls out an old portable typewriter from the bottom drawer. He’s not going to write an advertising campaign. He’s going to write an anonymous chain letter. He’s going to let that become the campaign. He’s going to let the medium become the message.

He starts typing.

*Dear Friend*

*I’m sending you this information anonymously about the untold dangers of nuclear power because forces within the National Party and Liberal Party have been taken over by foreign interests.*

*All sorts of tricks are being used to brainwash you into thinking that nuclear power is a safe and practical way to deliver cheaper energy. It’s nothing but skullduggery by slimy politicians and slick lobbyists who hand them millions of dollars in donations.* 

*The National Party and Liberal Party are promising hundreds of high-paying jobs. While there may be one-off specialist construction jobs when a nuclear reactor is built near you, once completed it will take only a dozen or so people to run. Most of the operations will be automated from China.*

*Who will bear the cost of building and running these nuclear power plants? Who will pay the trillions of dollars and inevitable cost blowouts? You and every other Australian taxpayer.*

*You’ll pay and others will profit. Others who live a long way away from any nuclear reactors.*

*Do you know what happens when a nuclear reactor melts down? You won’t find it in any pamphlets or flyers from the National Party or Liberal Party. They won’t tell you the truth.*

*They won’t tell you that when the nuclear reactor in the town of Chernobyl melted down, it released more than 400 times as much radioactive material as the Hiroshima atomic bomb that killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of people.*

*An uncontrollable chain reaction inside the reactor resulted in melted fuel rods pooling at the bottom of the reactor chamber before making their way into the deeper levels of the power plant.*

*Molten reactor material is called corium, and it’s the most dangerous substance on earth. Exposure to corium can kill within minutes, but that’s not all. Corium is extremely hot and generates its own heat from radioactivity. It’s almost impossible to cool it down.*

*The corium at Chernobyl reached 2,600°C. The temperature of natural lava from volcanoes ranges from 500 to 1,000°C.*

*Corium is so hot, it eats everything in its way. It can dissolve steel, sand and concrete, and it instantly transforms water into radioactive steam.*

*At Chernobyl, it was estimated 1,500 tons of corium was generated, flowing and eating its way through metres of concrete in the basement of the power plant. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. The Russian government still won’t release the true number of victims.* 

*Chernobyl is now a radioactive ghost town. 150,000sq km of land is contaminated for thousands of years. A 4,000sq km exclusion zone - an area more than twice the size of London – remains uninhabited.*

*Radioactive fallout, carried by winds, scattered over even larger areas. What are the effects of radiation exposure? It contaminates plants and animals making them unfit for sale or consumption.*

*In people, it causes immediate skin burns and radiation sickness, nausea and vomiting, bleeding and hair loss. It degenerates cells and damages DNA, causing dangerous health problems, including horrible birth defects and deadly cancers.*

*What will you do when your town becomes the next Chernobyl? How will you and your family survive a nuclear meltdown? How will you escape?*

*You cannot trust these politicians. You have to take your future into your own hands. At the coming election put you and your family first. Don’t waste your time putting numbers in the boxes on the ballot papers. Do this instead.*

*Simply write “NO NUCLEAR” across the ballot pages. Don’t worry about parties or preferences. Just write “NO NUCLEAR”.*

*Don’t tell anyone what you’ve done. Because what you’ve done is the right thing to safeguard not only your family and your friends but the entire country.*

*All sorts of tricks will be used to get you to vote National or Liberal. Don’t fall for them. You’re smarter than that.*

*Make ten copies of this letter at once and send them in plain envelopes, unsigned, to ten people. Don’t send them only to family and friends, for everyone can assist in this chain letter warning of the real dangers of nuclear power.*

Richard grabs the Gippsland telephone directory and heads to the photocopy machine behind reception. Makes ten copies, finds ten envelopes, folds the ten copies inside and seals them.

He smiles as he opens the telephone directory and picks out the names and addresses of ten people at random. Ten people who live in Traralgon where the Liberals are planning to build a nuclear power plant at the Loy Yang Power Station.

He writes out the names and addresses in a black pen. Then adds a stamp on each envelope and heads downstairs to slip them into a mail box, slip them into history.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Post it to your friends. Stamp it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Peter Dutton and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s fervent imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### One-line synopsis template
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/one-line-synopsis-template/
Last updated: 2024-08-20T03:20:19.000Z
On the verge of a stasis = death moment, a flawed protagonist breaks into act two but when the midpoint happens, he must learn the theme stated, before all is lost.
### “LET’S KILL ANDREW TATE - PART THREE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-kill-andrew-tate-part-three-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-08-18T12:08:05.000Z
In the sweltering heat of Bucharest, three unlikely conspirators converge.

They plot the demise of Andrew Tate - a man who peddles misogyny and violence - with determination and dark humour. But fate has other plans.

“Let’s Kill Andrew Tate - Part Three” is a thrilling short story about the scourge of toxic masculinity.

Will their carefully laid plans go to waste?

Or will fate prevail?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of subversive reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘You will burn and burn out. Then you will heal and come back again.’ Fyodor Dostoevsky*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## LET’S KILL ANDREW TATE - PART THREE

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

I takes more than an hour for Edward and Tyler to pass through security and passport control at Bucharest’s only international airport.

Edward is sweating and coughing. Not from anxiety but from the stagnant heat and clanking air conditioning that barely cools the air. With cracked floor tiles and grimy windows the airport has seen better days.

Tyler strides through the sliding doors and waves at what Edward thinks is the most striking woman he’s ever seen in a black leather jacket and tight black jeans. Black hair swept back. She beams, wrapping her arms around Tyler. They kiss. Edward coughs. Tyler looks happy.

‘Edward, this is Sam.’

‘Sam?’

She’s still smiling.

‘It is short for Samantha. You look terrible, by the way. Much too pale.’

‘Edward reads too many books, never sees the sun.’

Edward spots a newsagent filled with old magazines, confectionary and travel accessories. A few thrillers and romantic paperbacks on spinner racks.

‘I just need to get some cough drops.’

All three step into the newsagent. Tyler picks up a copy of The Economist that’s a month out of date. Sam spins through the paperbacks.

‘Edward isn’t much of a traveller.’

Sam nods and looks over to the exit doors.

‘Let us get out of here. We have a lot to do.’

Once outside the terminal, Edward heads towards a line of cars under a large ‘Rapid Taxis’ sign. Sam shakes her head.

‘They are not fast and they are a complete rip-off. They are run by the Brigăzi.’

Tyler looks impressed. Sam takes out her phone and taps for an Uber. Then points to the top of the car park opposite.

‘A car is waiting for us.’

They’re driven to a small apartment block in the centre of the city. Once inside an apartment on the top floor, Sam draws the curtains closed.

‘I think we should kill Tate in his compound before he leaves for Constanța. He will think he is safe. He will have his guard down.’

Edward looks a little shocked.

‘Have you seen the security around his compound?’

Sam arches an eyebrow.

‘It is not so much a compound. It is more a rundown meat factory.’

Sam smiles.

‘Also I have the security code for the front gate and front door.’

Tyler grins.

‘So we just walk in.’

‘And we shoot him.’

Edward flings his hands up.

‘Who said anything about guns?’

Sam pulls out a Pistol Carpați Md. 1974 from the side pocket of her leather jacket. Edward recoils. Tyler claps.

‘Say buna ziua to my little friend.’

The light semi-automatic pistol was designed and manufactured by Fabrica de Arme Cugir of Romania for the Romanian police force. Rounds are automatically fed from the eight-round magazine and the weapon is self-arming. The barrel has four rifling grooves and is coated with a thin layer of chrome.

‘One bullet to the head is all we need.’

Edward is shaking his head, looking paler than normal. Sam continues.

‘And if that doesn’t work we have this.’

She reaches into her other jacket pocket and retrieves an F1 Soviet-era hand grenade. A beautiful woman weighing up a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other. She smiles, happy. Tyler looks delighted.

‘Tate says life is war, right?’

Edward isn’t so sure. But Sam knows exactly what Tate says.

‘Life is war. It is a war for the female you want. It is a war for the car you want. It is a war for the money you want. It is a war for the status. Masculine life is war! This is what he says. This is what he says to all the young men that follow him.’

Andrew Tate has been peddling misogyny and violence his whole life. He teaches his devotees how to recruit women into the webcam industry to produce sexual content viewers pay for by the minute.

He explains how to recruit women who are reluctant to undress in front of a camera. When you’re on a date with a girl, don’t mention the webcam business because it’ll freak them out, it puts them off. You continue as normal, you fuck the girl, and after you’ve fucked the girl ... then you start mentioning things like, ‘You’re always busy at work, why don’t you can come and work for me.’

To close the deal, you take her out to dinner with a webcam girl already in your employ who will help turn the screw. Martinis, martinis, martinis - bang, threesome ... you put both girls on camera together the first day, give them a bottle of vodka. The money will come pouring in and she’s hooked.

Tell her that you love her, if you have to. Tell her you’ll marry her. Tell her whatever she wants to hear.

Sam knows two girls Tate lured into his webcam operation. Knows how his in-house tattooist branded them ‘Tate’s Property’. Knows how the older women in his inner circle are called Tate’s Angels.

‘Maybe we can cut out his heart,’ she says. ‘Hold it in front of his eyes as we rip it out his chest.’

Edward gulps.

‘That seems a little extreme.’

‘And a little messy,’ Tyler says.

‘We could cut off his cock too,’ Sam says.

Edward needs a glass of water.

‘We could livestream it,’ Sam says. ‘Maybe make some money.’

Tyler can see the merit in the idea. Edward isn’t so sure.

‘I think I like the Novichok idea a lot more.’

Edward finds a glass in a kitchen cupboard. Turns the tap on but no water comes out. Sam looks over.

‘No one drinks the tap water here in Bucharest. It is like poison.’

Sam puts the pistol and hand grenade down on the glass coffee table. Takes out her phone and starts tapping away. Edward and Tyler look at each other.

‘Did you have any trouble getting the Novichok,’ Tyler asks.

‘This is Romania. You can get anything.’

‘What are you getting now?’

‘Three rail tickets to Constanța.’

Edward blinks. Sam smiles.

‘I already booked three rooms at the Zenith Hotel Conference and Spa where CryptoCarpathia is being held.’

Tyler chimes in.

‘Sea views?’

Sam nods.

‘The rooms are small but you can walk straight past the pool to the beach.’ 

Edward’s mind is racing.

How will they dose Tate with the nerve agent without getting caught? Sprinkle it in his whisky? Smear it over his chess pieces? Dab it on his cigar? They need less than a milligram and less than a two-minute exposure for a fatal dose. 

How will they get close to Tate without attracting attention? Without dosing other people? What if the dose is too high? What if the dose is too low?

Novichok is particularly volatile. Much of what is known about the nerve agent is conjecture. It’s based on limited information provided by two Russian chemists - one a defector and the other accidentally poisoned himself with a Novichok compound and died.

What if they trace the nerve agent to Sam? What if they trace Sam back to him? Did he really want to end up in a Romanian prison on murder charges?

The train to Constanța is clean and fairly comfortable. Sam suggests they act like tourists once they arrive. So they visit the Cazinoul Constanța, a defunct art nouveau casino on the seafront that was once the jewel of the city. Now a crumbling wreck of a building.

They pass a series of ancient Roman tombstones along the boardwalk. Each inscribed to mark the passing of the dead. One from a woman who bore three children and a fourth who died at birth. A woman who left the light of the sun when she was thirty. Who’s husband lives and mourns her with a faint voice. Who’s good father weeps at her retreat from life.

The cryptocurrency conference is well underway by the time they reach the Zenith Hotel Conference and Spa. There are thousands of participants. Developers, enthusiasts, investors, traders. More than a few gangsters and venture capitalists. No legitimate bankers or government officials. Everyone seems to be slightly manic, desperate. Booth babes in branded tank tops and micro skirts are lolling through the crowds, handing out drink cards and wristbands to VIP parties and events.

Despite being the man of the hour, Andrew Tate is nowhere to be seen. On the eve of the conference he’d announced on a post on X that he was ditching fiat money entirely and buying over one hundred million dollars worth of Bitcoin. Amid rumours that he owed millions to a major Russian crime family.

Sam had come up with a plan to pose as directors of a crypto arbitrage trading house offering tantalisingly high yields at no risk. Have Andrew Tate come to them. Coat the pen he needs to sign the trading contract with Novichok. She’d booked the boardroom for tomorrow.

‘It is going to be a big day tomorrow,’ she says. ‘It is good to have an early night.’

Tyler grimaces.

‘I might just go to one party.’

Edward is ready to call it a night.

‘I might go to bed.’

‘Sweet dreams.’

In the early morning Edward is woken by breathless pounding at the door of his hotel room. He stumbles out of bed. He can hear Sam and Tyler calling his name. Unlockocks the door and they rush in.

‘Have you fucking heard?’

Edward is still half asleep, confused.

‘Andrew Tate is dead!’

‘What?!’

‘Massive heart attack downstairs.’

‘Took more than half an hour for an ambulance to arrive. Even longer for the police and medical officers. His body has been taken to a funeral home.’

Sam is scrolling through her phone.

‘It is just breaking on CNN and BBC.’

She holds the phone up, smiles. Tyler punches the air in delight. Edward looks relieved.

After the sun comes up, Edward ambles to the beach and lies out on a day lounge. He closes his eyes and feels the warm sun on his face.

A shadow crosses his body. Edward opens his eyes. It’s Sam looking down at him, smiling. She reaches into the pocket of her black leather jacket and draws out a slim paperback she’d stolen at the airport newsagent. She holds it out to him. It’s a philosophical thriller.

‘Have you read this?’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Throw it to your friends. Toss it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Andrew Tate and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s rolling imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Hitler or John F. Kennedy?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/hitler-or-john-f-kennedy/
Last updated: 2024-08-16T03:16:54.000Z
Who did the most for their country?

Who built a highway through their nation? Who boosted employment? Who reduced inflation?

Who passed environmental protection laws? Who established financial assistance for low-income families? Who introduced a physical fitness challenge for schoolchildren?

Who initiated public anti-smoking campaigns? Who offered tax relief for small businesses? Who was Time Magazine Man of the Year?

It’s Hitler. Kennedy never passed any tax cuts.
### “LET’S KILL ANDREW TATE - PART TWO” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-kill-andrew-tate-part-two-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-08-15T20:54:38.000Z
Two men walk to an apartment filled with books, their intentions heavy in the air.

The plan seems simple. Fly to Romania. Find Andrew Tate. End him. But nothing is ever simple when it comes to killing.

“Let’s Kill Andrew Tate - Part Two” is a provocative short story about the problems of modern masculinity.

Will they go through with their deadly plan?

Can they live with the consequences?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of clandestine reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Man holds the remedy in his own hands and lets everything go its own way, simply through cowardice.’ Fyodor Dostoevsky*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## LET’S KILL ANDREW TATE - PART TWO

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

‘When you say let’s kill Andrew Tate are you being, you know, metaphorical?’

Edward is locking up the front door of the second-hand bookstore.

Tyler shakes his head, grins. Edward cocks his head, squints.

‘Allegorical?’

’No,’ Tyler says. ‘I think we should go to Romania where he’s hiding out and kill him. Live by the machete, die by the machete. You know, justice.’

Tate famously sleeps with a machete under his bed. In one of his videos he said that if a woman ever accused him of cheating on her, he’d bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck and tell the bitch to shut the fuck up.

‘You know people live on this street, right? You know they can hear you.’

‘I doubt very much they’re listening. People rarely do.’

Edward thinks for a moment.

‘Romania? How would we even get to Romania?’

Tyler grins again and reaches into the pocket inside his jacket. Edward recoils as Tyler pulls out two airline tickets.

‘What the hell are those?’

‘Airline tickets to Bucharest, return. One for you, one for me.’

‘When did you --’

‘Let’s go to your apartment and I’ll explain.’

‘Why my apartment?’

‘You’ve probably got paper and a pen. We’re going to need to make a list. I’ve got nothing in my apartment except a mattress, a lamp and a book.’

As they walk down the street towards Edward’s apartment, Edward wonders what the book could be. Tyler answers him as if reading his thoughts.

‘The book? It’s “Cities of the Red Night” by William Burroughs if you must know.’

‘Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.’

‘Everything.’

Inside Edward’s apartment, every wall is lined floor to ceiling with shelves crammed with books. Edward has every book Noam Chomsky has ever written in multiple languages. Tyler glances over the titles, impressed. Edward looks a little nervous.

‘So what’s the plan exactly?’

‘Fly in, kill him, fly out. How hard can it be?’

‘You know Tate is back in his warehouse compound in Voluntari, Surrounded by armed security guards. Doesn’t travel anywhere without a team of ten bodyguards.’

‘That’s a lot of bodyguards.’

‘Russian ex-military. Apparently they’re the worst.’

Tate’s compound is at the end of Stradă Drumul Bisericii, about fifteen kilometres from Bucharest. Past a litter dump and a sprawling cemetery and broken down factories. It backs onto a small forest and wetland.

Edward is looking at his phone.

‘High brick wall along the road with razor wire along the perimeter and only one way in and out. Security cameras everywhere.’

Andrew Tate and his brother first came to Romania in two-thousand and fourteen to act as coaches and commentators for a local cage-fighting promoter. Online videos of cage fights led to online courses on rigid masculinity. Naked webcam girls was a side hustle that exploded.

Naked cam girls typing out sob stories online to presumably naked men reaching for their credit cards. Hundreds of naked young cam girls. Thousands of desperate men. Millions of dollars.

What would the girls lie about? Needing money because they’re getting evicted, needing money for a medical emergency, needing money to help their dying parents, needing money to escape her abusive boyfriend, needing money to travel to meet in person.

Edward looks up from his phone.

‘Tate’s going to be Constanța for a cryptocurrency conference.’

‘On the shores of the Black Sea? On the Romanian Riviera?’

Edward nods.

‘CryptoCarpathia. Over two days at the Zenith Hotel Conference and Spa on Mamaia Boulevard. Three thousand participants, one hundred speakers, fifty international exhibitors, and workshops and seminars. Networking opportunities, company presentations, cocktail breaks, private dinners, and parties. Lots of parties. Oh, and they’re given out awards.

‘Awards for what? Best Original Scam? Best Social Fraud? Best International Misogynist?’

Edward smirks. Tyler thinks.

‘Three thousand participants provides a lot of cover.’

‘How would we do it?’

‘Guns are too loud, knives are too messy. We could poison him with Novichok and make it look like Russian security forces did it.’

Novichok is a nerve agent developed at the GosNIIOKHT state chemical-research institute in Russia. It disrupts nerve signals to the muscles, leading to suffocation and heart failure. It’s impossible to detect with standard forensic equipment.

‘Where would be get a nerve agent from?’

‘Where everyone gets everything.’

Edward answers.

‘The darknet?’

‘Where else?’

‘How does someone who doesn’t even have an email address know anything about the darknet.’

Tyler grins.

‘I have a friend of a friend.’

‘Go on.’

‘Who has a friend.’

Tyler shrugs.

‘Who, you know, helps me with this kind of stuff.’

‘So your plan is we go online on the darknet and buy a military-grade Russian nerve agent and fatally poison Andrew Tate at a cryptocurrency conference in Romania?’

‘Military-grade Russian nerve agent in an ultrafine powder state and paid for in cryptocurrency. Which is ironic, right? Live by crypto, die by crypto.’

Edward is appalled. Tyler is adamant.

‘One less asshole in this world is a good thing.’

‘Does this friend of a friend of a friend have a name?’

‘Name’s Sam.’

‘Will Sam be in Romania?’

‘Already there.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Not at all. Also you need to pack.’

Edward cocks his head. Tyler dangles the airline tickets.

‘Our flight leaves in forty minutes.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Throw it to your friends. Toss it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Andrew Tate and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s volatile imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Noticing the trees
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/noticing-the-trees/
Last updated: 2024-08-08T03:08:39.000Z
Dr. Anna Lembke specialises in treating addiction.

Increasingly she treats people addicted to their phones. She sometimes urges her patients to unplug from their phones and undergo a dopamine fast for one month. That’s usually how long it takes for the brain to start rewiring.

But even unplugging for a few minutes can be scary for those caught in the grip of technology. One patient, a Stanford undergraduate from South Korea, came in seeking help for depression and anxiety.

Among the many things they talked about, she told Dr. Lembke she spends most of her waking hours plugged into some kind of device, clicking through social media or videos, listening to podcasts and playlists. Scrolling, scrolling, endlessly scrolling.

Dr. Lembke suggested she try walking to class without listening to anything and just letting her own thoughts bubble to the surface. She looked both incredulous and afraid.

‘Why would I do that?’ she asked, open-mouthed.

A week later, she returned and reported on the new experience.

‘It was hard at first. But then I got used to it and even kind of liked it,’ she smiled.

‘I started noticing the trees.’
### “LET’S KILL ANDREW TATE - PART ONE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-kill-andrew-tate-part-one-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-08-04T11:41:47.000Z
In a dimly lit bookstore, two men stand amidst shelves of worn paperbacks.

Edward and Tyler are taking stock of more than just books. As they sort through self-help tomes and discard hollow promises of wealth, a dangerous idea begins to form.

“Let’s Kill Andrew Tate - Part One” is a subversive short story about the state of modern masculinity.

What if they can change the world by eliminating one toxic influencer?

How far are they willing to go? 

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of provocative reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.’ Fyodor Dostoevsky*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## LET’S KILL ANDREW TATE - PART ONE

## 

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

‘Have you seen this?’

Edward holds up his phone to Tyler, head cocked to one side, lips cocked the other way. Looking either wry, bemused or utterly annoyed.

Tyler squints at the smudged screen. It’s a post on X by a shirtless, brooding, tattooed Andrew Tate. Bald with a trim beard and a grim determination. The words on his post look like they’ve been punched out.

*Reading books is for losers who are afraid to learn from life.*

*So they try and learn from the life OTHERS have lived.*

*But you never REALLY learn unless you lived it.*

*You must feel it to believe it.*

*Books are a total waste of time.*

*Education for cowards.*

It’s moments like this that makes Tyler happy that he doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t do social media.

‘Isn’t this asshole in jail?’

‘Under house arrest with his brother in Romania for human trafficking, aggravated rape and forming an organised crime group.’

‘And he can still post on social media?’

‘To his nine-point-seven million followers. Cast himself as the victim of some bizarre deep-state conspiracy to silence freedom and individual liberty.’

Tyler shakes his head. The pair are doing stocktake at the second-hand bookstore where they both work, physically counting the stock by hand. Edward is tossing every second copy of “Atomic Habits” by James Clear into a recycling bin.

‘If assholes like Andrew Tate are role models, it’s no wonder young men are so lost,’ Tyler says.

‘Have you ever heard him speak? Going on and on about emotional control, life is war, high value men?’

‘Sounds deranged.’

‘He’s got an overbite and this weird lisp, sounds like an angry fourteen year old boy.’

‘Didn’t he used to be a kickboxer?’

‘Lots of blows to the head, concussions. He wasn’t very good so there’s probably a fair bit of brain damage.’

‘Didn’t he pimp out his girlfriends?’

Edward nods and tosses another copy of “Atomic Habits” in the recycling bin.

‘While calling young men that don’t treat women like bitches losers and idiots, haranguing them for being worthless, weak and insipid, screaming at them to take what they want.’

‘And berating them for reading and coming to their own conclusions.’

‘If they read at all.’

It’s true that young men don’t read novels. Young adult fiction is the near-total domain of teenage girls — including what’s written, marketed, sold and read. 

If young men read anything, it’s capitalist realism and how to endlessly become more productive, more wilfully ambitious, more financially successful. More of a real man. Best sellers for young men are non-fiction titles ghost written for ex-military sociopaths, discredited scientists and rogue psychiatrists.

What’s the practical outcome of getting lost in a novel? How does reading fiction make you rich?

Edward picks out and holds up a copy of “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.

‘This is the guy who started it all.’

Tyler plucks out a copy of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. The author sitting forward and smiling on the cover like a presidential candidate with his too-white teeth.

‘Topped by this fucking asshole.’

‘Didn’t he have a string of financial failures? One business collapse after the other? One bankruptcy after the other?’

Tyler nods, looks at the book cover.

‘It should be called “Deadbeat Dad Poor Dad”.’

Tyler flips the book over and scans the back cover overloaded with gushing testimonials. Edward asks a question.

‘Do you how the author recommends getting rich?’

‘Is it something along the lines of pay yourself first, buy assets, make your money make money, blah, blah, fucking blah?’

‘Not to mention avoid paying tax, buy penny stocks, pick up foreclosed houses to flip, join a multi-level marketing company to learn how to sell.’

‘What an asshole.’

Tyler tosses the book in the recycling bin.

When you’re a man, everything is a grind, everything is a hustle. In our modern hypercapitalist world where the role models for men are far-right ideologues and neo-Nazis with tight haircuts and even tighter minds, reading fiction is seen as pointless.

In the nineteenth century, reading novels developed a reputation as a frivolous and feminised activity for bourgeois women. Novels were deemed suitable for women because women were seen as creatures of the imagination, of limited intellectual capacity.

The novel is the antitheses of practical and instructive literature. It simultaneously promotes introspection an empathy, contemplation and connection.

Reading fiction is the opposite of the stale stoicism of contemporary masculinity. It’s a form of immersion therapy that demands you be present and forget yourself to a meditative end.

Tyler picks out a copy of “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s one of his favourite books by one of his favourite authors.

Reading fiction opens your eyes to uncomfortable truths and unexpected perspectives, adopting the inner lives of characters as your own – something there isn’t time for with the visual immediacy of other media or online psychopaths like Andrew Tate.

It’s only a matter of a degree or two to go from hating books to burning books. And once you start burning books, burning men is never far behind.

Reading fiction inspires your spirit and expands your sense of possibility, broadens your world.

Tyler holds up the copy of Robinson’s novel to Edward.

‘Have you read this?’

Edward nods. The novel portends a future where a clandestine group is tasked with assassinating people who knowingly fuelled the climate crisis. 

Tyler starts to smile as he leans in closer, his voice barely a whisper.

‘Let’s kill Andrew Tate.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Hook it to your friends. Kick it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Andrew Tate and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Hitler or Oprah?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/hitler-or-oprah/
Last updated: 2024-07-31T03:06:53.000Z
Who’s the pet-loving vegetarian?

Who has a thing about personal hygiene? 

Who’s into weight loss and being the best version of themselves? Who gives away cars to complete strangers?

Who’s the environmentalist? Who’s the animal rights activist?

Who can be polite and utterly charming when they want to?

It’s Hitler. Oprah isn’t a vegetarian.
### “FELLINIESQUE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/felliniesque-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-07-28T10:13:54.000Z
A documentary crew chases the elusive Federico Fellini through the labyrinth of Cinecittà Studios.

Chaos ensues as the maestro flees, leaving a trail of clowns, cowboys and a tilted Christ statue in his wake.

“Felliniesque” is a cinematic short story that bends reality and fantasy.

Will Fellini spill his secrets?

Or hold them tight?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of vibrant reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Imagination is everything.’ Albert Einstein*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## FELLINIESQUE

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s nineteen seventy-four and they’re shooting a documentary on the life and times of famed Italian film director Federico Fellini.

Armed with handheld, sixteen millimetre Bolex cameras and a single sound man hoisting a boom microphone, a desperate film crew has cornered the filmmaker in his offices at the top of Stage Five at Cinecittà Studios.

Fellini is shooing them away. Black fedora crushed on his head and long thin crimson scarf double-wrapped around his neck. His favourite composer Nino Rota is with him, smirking.

Fellini is warming up a small copper saucepan of risotto on an old gas camping stove sitting on a desk littered with black and white headshots of what looks like every actor and every extra in Rome.

‘Risotto always tastes better the next day,’ he says, splashing in a dash of mineral water that spits and sizzles. Blue flame hisses.

‘That’s the secret. Everyone puts in more butter but that makes it too dense, too thick, too rich. A little carbonated mineral water gives it a lift.’

Rota leans over and whispers in his ear. Fellini looks shocked.

‘What! Are you crazy? You can never use plain mineral water. Too flat, too blah. You need some sparkle in life, si?’

Fellini stirs the risotto with an old wooden spoon his mother had given him. That’s another secret. Never use a metal spoon. It gives the risotto a bitter edge.

He scoops a little from the side, brings it to his lips and blows to cool it down. Holds it out to the camera lens.

‘Mange, mange!!’

Rota turns and flees. Fellini tosses the spoon back in the saucepan and runs after him, laughing. Film crew gives chase, trailing electrical leads and assistants yielding clipboards, schedules, contracts. Crashing into each other in their mad rush, sending sparks flying.

Outside the soundstage on the largest film studio in Europe, a battalion of odd-sized clowns in full bright makeup saunter towards the immense cafeteria, past a two-hundred-and-sixty foot replica of World War II submarine, past some cowboys and astronauts in full costume complaining about parking.

A fibreglass statue of Christ, arms outstretched, leans oddly against a brick wall, the eyes gazing to the roof of Stage Five.

Black smoke wisps and tumbles out from under the corrugated metal roof. Rolls towards the camera lens until everything is black. Sounds of car horns blaring in a traffic jam.

Sketchbook pages flip past. They’re filled with quick drawings of people’s faces, black and white cartoons expressing joy and hate and love and confusion and mirth and anger and one emotion after the other. All crammed between the pages, all dancing and jittering to life.

Snatches of pop tunes and dance music ripples over the animated faces and into the next scene.

Cameramen are rushing down the hallways and extended outdoor balconies of a modern hotel cascading down towards the seashore, down towards the pebbled beach.

Guests are arching back into their rooms, scurrying away from the hungry cameramen. Someone is crying out for Fellini but he is nowhere to be seen.

Outside a cafe on the sinuous Via Veneto in Rome, two film critics are discussing Fellini’s latest opus.

‘It’s a concoction, nothing more.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s his best work. Pass the sugar.’

‘It’s nothing but a huge serving of gelato, covered with marshmallow topping, chocolate sprinkles, butterscotch sauce, and great spirals of aerated whipped cream. After two-and-a-quarter hours, I had a stomach ache.’

‘Troppo dolce? You’re berating Fellini for being too Fellini, too Felliniesque? Are you insane?’

‘Birthday-cake decors, appetising costumes, technicolor spectra. One emerges from the cinema debauched, glutted and bleary eyed, yet with a curiously empty feeling and a flat taste in the mouth.’

‘You Marxists are all the same. You deprive oneself of pleasure.’

‘Fellini has become a caricature of himself. A sad parody.’

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘I don’t even want to mention his moral ambiguity.’

‘Because now you’re a great moralist?’

The critic shrugs his shoulders and orders a pastry.

Carl Jung appears in a vision, applying a lit match to a pipe clenched between his teeth, puffing as tobacco smoke envelops him.

‘He has fallen into his dreams and lost himself in psychological manifestation. Lost himself between the frames of his desires.’

It begins to rain, a light drizzle that splinters the sunlight. People huddle under Rome’s twisted umbrella pine trees.

Fellini is ambling along Via del Babuino, alone. Scarf around his neck. Lost in his thoughts and dreams. Thinking how he always directs the same film, how he can’t distinguish one from another. He is carrying a cardboard pastry tray wrapped in waxed paper from his favourite pasticceria.

Fellini admires the languorous locals, leaning back and taking life in. Apartments and small cafes side by side. Ocher stucco and vining ivy, timber shutters and window boxes. A sheen across the worn cobblestones.

Every film is a film about you, he thinks. How can it be otherwise? To pretend to be someone you’re not is a travesty, a tragedy. There is nothing funnier than agreeing with an idiot while laughing on the inside.

They call him a fool, a liar, a trickster, a manipulator. Fellini takes these insults with a pinch of salt and a smile. It’s the truth of him.

Everything is made up. Everything is a confabulation. Flamboyant, surreal, fantastical. Is this not the best way to live?

The light drizzle fades away, evaporates as golden sunlight gleams through the streets.

Fellini turns right on Via Albert and left on Via Margutta towards the ground floor courtyard door to his apartment. Then turns to see the film crew galloping towards him, cameras rolling.

He fumbles for his key as one cameraman slips and tumbles. Assistants check the camera and lens before helping him up. The cameraman shakes himself down.

Fellini shakes his head as he slides the key into the lock and twists the door open and slips inside. Locks the door behind him and laughs.

Life is a circus.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Juggle it to your friends. Acrobat it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Federico Fellini and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### No name, no fame
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/no-name-no-fame/
Last updated: 2024-07-23T03:05:58.000Z
Public recognition is a driver for many mass shooters.

Hundreds of mass shooting events every year take thousands of innocent lives. What drives someone to publicly kill another human being? To blithely wipe out human life?

Bizarrely the general motive is a quest for significance, for a feeling that their life matters. Mayhem and destruction at the end of the barrel of an automatic weapon that can tear flesh and bones apart at five hundred rounds a minute. Blood and death and agonising misery.

Headlines and lead stories from coast to coast. Instant national and international recognition and significance. Instant thoughts and prayers. Everyone everywhere knows who you are. Everyone knows your name.

Maybe it’s time to change that. Maybe it’s time to change the law to make it illegal to name, identify, photograph or film any mass shooter.

They can no longer be mentioned by name. Their image cannot be taken or reproduced in any way whatsoever. Their private lives and personalities are expunged.

In court they’re referred to as a prefix and a number to contextualise their crimes. So rather than Lyndell Mays, 23, from Missouri, and Dominic Miller, also 23, from Missouri, they’re only ever referred to as Shooter #2828642 and Shooter #2828643.
### “NINETEEN FORTY-FOUR” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/nineteen-forty-four-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-07-25T11:09:13.000Z
In war-torn Berlin, a man sits alone, writing.

His hand trembles. His words scatter, dark and dangerous. This is Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda master, clinging to his lies as his world crumbles.

“Nineteen Forty-Four” is a historical short story about the ruin of absolute power. 

What’s the price of trying to outrun the truth?

What’s the toll of years of deception?

*3,000 words / 12 minutes of intense reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda.’ Robert Capa*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## NINETEEN FORTY-FOUR

## 

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.

Goebbels is writing in his diary once more. His hand shakes and his handwriting is becoming more difficult to read. He now has a team of transcribers who type all his musings on official Nazi letterhead which are then filmed on microfiche for posterity.

He repeats what he has just written. As a cataclysmic war rages through Germany, the only comfort he finds is in his words. They are his balm, his salve.

The past decade has seen Nazism catapult Germany into a world war of its own making after invading the minds of its own people, the lands and peoples of neighbouring countries.

In nineteen thirty-five, Adolph Hitler rejected military restrictions on Germany set forth by the Treaty of Versailles. Rearmament quickly began along with the reintroduction of conscription. Germany’s military expansion was swift and aggressive.

In nineteen thirty-eight, Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass erupted across Germany and Austria. Nazi paramilitary thugs and non-Jewish citizens rampaged through cities, destroying Jewish-owned stores, torching centuries-old synagogues, deporting thousands of Jews and killing scores of innocents. This escalation and explosion of shocking state-sanctioned violence had been masterminded by Goebbels. Two days after Kristallnacht, Germany’s Jews were fined a billion Reichsmark for property damaged in the rioting. Goebbels thought this his masterstroke.

In nineteen thirty-nine, Germany invades Poland under false pretenses. Within days Britain, Canada, Australia and France declare war on Germany. Two years later Russia declares war on Germany. Then America joins the allied forces with all its might.

In nineteen forty bombs rain on Berlin day and night for six months in an air campaign to force Germany into surrender without the necessity of land operations. Carpet bombing by the British Air Force and the United States Air Force has destroyed much of German infrastructure and industrial capacity. The German people are shattered but they do not surrender.

In nineteen forty-three Goebbels called for Total War is his most famous speech, exhorting the German people to victory or death. To rise up and storm, break loose. The handpicked audience in full Nazi regalia roared approval for the radio broadcasts and newsreels.

By nineteen forty-four, German soil is drenched in blood. It is fighting a war it cannot possibly win. Civilian industries in America have been entirely retooled for war. General Motors is turning out tanks in record numbers. Pontiac is producing anti-aircraft guns. Oldsmobile is making artillery shells.

Ford is building a long-range bomber plane almost every hour. Goebbels has to laugh. After everything the Nazi regime did for the Ford Motor Company in Germany. After all the money the company made from the German people.

Before the war, Hitler worshipped Henry Ford, praised his violent anti-semitism. Hitler had read Ford’s “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” over and over. Hitler’s office had once featured a large portrait of the American mogul.

Ford had gladly accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the Nazi regime’s highest honour for foreigners. Ford vehicles were crucial to the Nazi blitzkrieg. A third of the three hundred and fifty thousand trucks used by the German Army were made by Ford.

Labor shortages caused by the war - millions of men were at the front and Nazi ideology is violently opposed to women working - led the Reich to deport millions of people from occupied lands to Germany to work in factories. German companies were encouraged to bid for forced labourers to meet production quotas and increase profits.

Half of Ford’s workforce in Germany comprised foreign captives, including French, Russians, Ukrainians, and Belgians. In August a squad of SS men brought prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp to the Ford factory. They toiled for twelve hours a day with a fifteen-minute break. Given two hundred grams of bread and coffee for breakfast, no lunch and a dinner of spinach and three potatoes or soup made of turnip leaves.

German’s productivity is crippled by the war economy. Lack of supplies hinders any attempts to advance into Russia. Germany is becoming desperately short of fuel and food.

A failed coup and assassination attempt on Hitler at Wolf’s Lair earlier in the year had been a godsend to Goebbels. A divine moment in history. A public relations dream. Hitler became the living embodiment of God’s will.

God was with the German people, Goebbels railed. But let’s not rely on God alone. Let’s work so hard and fight so fiercely that God cannot refuse to hand victory to Germany.

Goebbels’ propaganda method is based upon seizing immediate advantage with complete disregard for the truth. British and American propaganda is slower, more thorough and designed to produce long-term confidence. In the end, it will prove decisive.

For all its bluster, German propaganda brought short-term impact at the cost of long-term credibility.

Hitler’s public invincibility is no match for his private fears. He is constantly surrounded by teams of bodyguards. He allows only his beloved German Shepherd, Blondi, by his side.

After the assassination attempt, the Gestapo arrested seven thousand people, executed almost five thousand. Some are viciously strangled and strung on meat hooks, their agonising deaths filmed for Hitler to watch.

Hitler had been spending more and more time in his underground Führerbunker deep below the Reich Chancellery gardens. He began extending the three-thousand square feet subterranean air raid shelter two years earlier. There are two levels of reinforced concrete and thick gas-proof steel doors. The warren of interconnected rooms and narrow hallways is constantly flooding. Water weeps down the concrete walls as giant diesel engines continuously rumble, generating electricity for the extraction pumps and ventilation. The light is damp, the air is hot and fetid.

Hitler continues to hold lengthy conferences with his generals day and night in his enormous study in the Reich Chancellery. Giant maps of Europe spread over huge tables, scrambling from one failed military campaign to the next as the bombs continue to fall on Berlin.

Hitler’s aides ensure he never sees the vast amount of damage to the Reich Chancellery. The last time Goebbels had seen him he was being escorted up from the Führerbunker and along the hallway carpeted in red and lined with dozens of Reichssicherheitsdienst guards standing post. Blond, handsome, perfumed, boots glistening, uniforms sharply-tailored. They look like Aryan toy soldiers.

Hitler was gripping his left arm behind him. His own pistol, a Walther PPK 7.65, in the pocket of his grey military trenchcoat. Dr. Morell tottering close by clutching his medical bag close to his chest.

What an odd lot Hitler’s inner circle makes. Goebbels with his dark skin, gaunt. His clubbed left foot. His receding black hair. His anxious, nervous energy. Göring with his penchant for fineries, for gold and diamonds. Like a fat bejewelled toad. Himmler with his constant stomach complaints and terrible eyesight. Martin Bormann without a spit of intelligence. The master race?

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. Goebbels believed it with every cell of his being, every thought of his mind, every piece of his soul.

But whispers of catastrophic military failures are becoming louder. Goebbels has heard murmurs in the hallways of his enlarged Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Watching foreign films and listening to foreign broadcasts on radio is now illegal, punishable by fines, imprisonment, and even death.

Despite this, Anglo-American leaflets are now no longer carelessly thrown aside but carefully read. British broadcasts are finding a grateful audience.

The radio broadcasts are the handiwork of the British Political Warfare Executive, created by Winston Churchill to disseminate propaganda to damage German morale. There are now more than fifty clandestine pseudo-German radio stations using powerful American transmitters. Subversive messages are wafting into German homes. Printed postcards and leaflets are littering the streets.

Goebbels is intrigued by how effective allied propaganda is. How it idealises the people rather than the leaders, how it appeals to virtue rather than viciousness. Pathos rather than patriotism.

Goebbels had watched the Hollywood film “Mrs. Miniver” almost a dozen times to extract its secrets. The film portrays the struggle on the British home front and ends with a rousing sermon in a bombed-out church.

‘This is the people’s war. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it, then. Fight it with all that is in us, and may God defend the right.’

Churchill said the film did more for the war effort than a flotilla of battleships. United States President Franklin Roosevelt found the speech so inspiring he had it printed in multiple languages and airdropped over the European front. It was reprinted in Time and Life magazines.

Goebbels marvelled at how not a single angry word in the film is spoken against Germany. Nevertheless the anti-German sentiment is perfectly accomplished. A new era of psychological warfare. To top it off the film won a best picture Oscar.

Some of the younger operatives in Goebbels’ propaganda ministry had pushed for more innovative techniques, more creative campaigns. Positioning the slaughters of German soldiers on the front as hallowed ground for German martyrs, encouraging civilians to emulate their sacrifice. Promising wunderwaffen, wonder weapons, supposed secret weapons that would turn the tide of the war.

One campaign to lift morale copied Madison Avenue with full-page advertisements featuring fashion models under beach umbrellas smiling and sharing drinks among the rubble of a bombed-out Berlin.

Goebbels knows he has to start working on his annual Christmas Eve radio speech. He knows he has to talk of struggle, of pride and hope. Offer some form of comfort to the German people on the Sixth War Christmas. Heavy fate, deep faith, strong hearts.

A line about the brave German soldiers who died facing the enemy while firing their last bullet. A line about the great and beautiful fatherland where a river of faith and confidence flows.

A paragraph about the pride and dignity of the Führer. About his prime health, his great mental and spiritual force. His unshakable faith and determination.

How he is everything to us, our pride and our hope, the fulfilment of our longings and wishes. How he belongs to us as we belong to him, wholly, with body and soul.

Goebbels has been holed up in his ministry offices for almost two weeks. Some of the archives had been gutted and refitted to make way for his private apartment.

Goebbels is not sleeping well. He is assailed by nightmares where he and his wife Magda and their six young children are summoned to Hitler’s underground bunker.

Goebbels brings twenty clothbound diaries with him that he has taken from a bank vault. The children are excited to be seeing Uncle Adolph. Magda is trying not to cry. Bombs are shuddering outside the Reich Chancellery as they rush down the red-carpeted hallway to the Führerbunker entrance.

Paintings and tapestries have been stripped from the walls. A Reichssicherheitsdienst guard salutes as they hurry past. Goebbels smells the faint aroma of burnt almonds.

Outside the window he sees Hitler’s dog, Blondi, lying on her side in the Reich Chancellery gardens, dead. Beyond the garden walls he can see Russian tanks and ground troops swarming across the scorched earth, swarming over the ruins, swarming closer.

As the family scurries down the stairs, Goebbels hears a single pistol shot and a body thud to the ground. In the Führerbunker people are weeping, wailing. Scrambling through hallways and rooms. The diesel generators are deafening.

Russian tanks are rumbling, grinding overhead. Looted paintings from Europe’s great museums are stacked haphazardly against a grimy concrete wall. Hitler’s favourite painting, a period portrait of Prussian leader Frederick the Great still hangs on the wall. The glass protecting the canvas is smeared with soot from the diesel generators. 

Impending doom clutches at Goebbels’ throat, making it impossible to breathe. There is a sickly stench of fuel and spilled champagne. It is unbearably hot in this horrifying underworld. Panic and shame ripple like aftershocks.

Firestorms are raging overhead. Bombs and grenades crater the earth. Gunfire rips through the air. Goebbels can no longer see his children, his wife.

A huge bomb whines and explodes in a blinding flash of white fire and he sees the brutal truth.

Everything is over now.

Everything is lost.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pass it to your friends. Cross it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Joseph Goebbels and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### La Compagnie des Autres
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/la-compagnie-des-autres/
Last updated: 2024-07-19T03:04:55.000Z
It’s not your usual advertising agency.

It’s not filled with your bright young things, your momentary dreamers. Your digital hipsters and social media mavens. Your performance marketers with Nazi haircuts and overgrown beards. Your wily t-shirts and programmatic ad buys.

La Compagnie des Autres specialises in broad, public advertising that culturally imprints brands far and wide. Billboards, television commercials, public event advertising. Broadcasting publicly in front of large audiences.

It’s the opposite of targeted advertising. La Compagnie des Autres eschews direct marketing and online advertising because it’s too limited, too fractured, too ineffective.

La Compagnie des Autres produces large-scale advertising built on the groundbreaking work of media philosophers like René Girard, Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard.

Unlike other advertising agencies, La Compagnie des Autres believes the principal role of advertising is to generate objective - rather than subjective - desire. To position and imprint a brand in culture so its consumption becomes mimetic. So its consumption telegraphs social values and social standing.

La Compagnie des Autres works best with social brands that are consumed in the company of others. Soda, beer, computers, alcohol, cannabis, fashion, sport, cars, airlines, food, coffee, phones, shows, movies, music - social products that imbue and impart cultural signals.
### “NINETEEN THIRTY-FOUR” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/nineteen-thirty-four-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-07-16T10:52:10.000Z
In the heart of Berlin, Joseph Goebbels sits at his desk.

Hitler’s propagandist is crafting myths, rituals and hatreds with cold precision. Outside his office, Germany hums with the life he shapes and moulds, a vast machine under his relentless control.

“Nineteen Thirty-Four” is a historical short story about the collapse of reason. 

How much further can Goebbels push his ambitions?

When will his dreams become nightmares?

*3,000 words / 12 minutes of unsettling reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred?’ Bertrand Russell*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## NINETEEN THIRTY-FOUR

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it.

Joseph Goebbels is writing in his diary again, atop dozens of architectural plans for the extensions to his Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Berlin. The plans sit on his glass-topped walnut desk.

Already housed in a series of gracious buildings directly opposite the Reich Chancellery, Goebbels needs more space for his ambitious plans to extend Adolf Hitler and Nazism through art, music, theatre, films, books, radio, posters, magazines, newspapers. To thrust Hitler into every facet of German life.

Hitler and the Nazi Party’s surge to power in Germany had been astronomical. As the party’s chief propagandist, Goebbels had engineered Hitler’s public appeal and historic ascent. Crafted many of the Nazi myths and rituals that spread anti-semitism and demanded unquestioning devotion to the leader, to the Führer.

Goebbels is the most devoted and fanatical of Hitler’s followers. He owes everything to Hitler.

It was Hitler who urged his implausible rise through the Nazi Party. From district administrator in Elberfeld to district leader in Berlin, from editor of the party broadsheet to head of all party propaganda.

Goebbels looks down at the gilt-edged, featherweight paper of his diary, a blood-red ribbon swaying down the page. He had come a tremendous way in ten years. From a lonely boarding room to the second most powerful man in all of Germany. From a lost novelist to holding the heart of the nation in the palm of his hand. From scrounging coins to owning one of the most beautiful villas in Berlin. A husband, a father, a saint for his country.

A series of electoral victories the previous year had catapulted the Nazi Party to power and Hitler to the role of chancellor at the head of a coalition government. Within two short months he had introduced emergency powers that suspended individual liberties, subsumed the position of president and secured the passage of the Enabling Act, which gave his government the power to issue laws and decrees independently of the Reichstag, the national parliament.

Hitler required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag to pass the bill. Eighty-one Communists were either arrested or banished. Twenty-six Social Democrats could not take their seats to vote because Nazi Brownshirts had detained them in Nazi-controlled camps. The bill was voted into law four hundred and forty-one to ninety-four.

The Enabling Act’s full name was the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich.” It was the constitutional basis of Hitler’s absolute authority, absolute dictatorship. It assured Hitler was immune from the possibility of prosecution.

The purges began the next day. Socialist and Jewish judges, lawyers, and other court officers were removed from the justice system and the civil service. Police power became independent of judicial controls. Political and ideological opponents were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps under the exclusive authority of the SS, the Schutzstaffel, the elite guard of the Nazi state.

Any political opposition is outlawed. The church is put on notice. There is a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

Hermann Göring establishes the Gestapo. Goebbels lights the fire at the first book burning in Berlin. Thousands of books written by Jews, political opponents, and liberal intellectuals go up in flames.

New political parties are banned. Sterilisation programs are introduced to purify Germany. Jews are banned from working in literature, press, broadcasting, theatre, film, music, and fine arts.

Goebbels is obsessed with ambition. He looks upon the German press, stage, screen, radio and arts as a vast keyboard, ready to provide sensation after sensation.

Nothing is sacred. Not even the murder of former colleagues and friends. Nazi party socialists and leaders like Ernst Röhm are executed without a warrant, without a trial. Anyone who can personally stand up to Hitler is killed. Any threat real or imagined is eliminated.

Goebbels looks over his tidy office with a thin smile. The furnishings are understated, the light warm. The official Government portrait of Hitler hangs on the wall behind him. Goebbels’ shiny black hair is combed back perfectly. His nails freshly manicured and buffed. His expensive double-breasted suit is sharply woven. Despite his physical infirmities, he carries a certain noble elegance. Taut, cool, self-possessed.

He knows Heinrich Hoffmann is waiting in the anteroom. Hoffmann is Hitler’s official photographer and Goebbels knows he will be lobbying to try new poses for Hitler, afraid the public is becoming bored with his public image. But candid images of Hitler are banned.

Goebbels allows only three public poses to be captured of Hitler - one hand on one hip, a hand on each hip, and arms folded. Strength, purpose, determination. He knows the secret of successful propaganda is to simplify and repeat, simplify and repeat, simplify and repeat ad infinitum.

Goebbels also knows Hoffmann wants to take new images so he can claim new copyrights and royalty payments on those images. Hoffmann is already rich from the royalties from all the uses of Hitler’s image in all those postcards, all those posters, all those books.

Hoffman has the annoying habit of drinking too much. Another irritating habit is calling Goebbels by his first name. Goebbels insists everyone except Hitler call him Dr. Goebbels. It is how he signs his correspondence, how he is named on the covers of his books, how he is credited in his articles. Even Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini calls him ‘Il Dottore.’

Hitler calls him ‘my dear Joseph.’ Much to the chagrin of senior Nazi Party leaders like Göring, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Hess who are constantly vying for Hitler’s attention, Hitler’s affection.

Goebbels was not a medical doctor. The honorific came with a doctorate he had completed in German language and linguistics from Heidelberg University.

The degree is in the top drawer of his desk. Under a copy of a Time newsmagazine from last year with his black and white pencilled portrait on the red framed cover. The caption reads: MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA GOEBBELS “Say it in your dreams: ‘THE JEWS ARE TO BLAME.’”

The cover story inside was supposed to ridicule Hitler’s rise to power, mock Goebbels’ propaganda efforts as unsophisticated. Goebbels remembers how he and Hitler had sat around a fireplace giggling over the cover story. He remembers one paragraph word for word.

*To an amazing degree Herr Hitler and Dr. Goebbels possess in common the trick of talking to grown Germans as if they were children, yet with such furious fire, conviction and intensity that the soul of the German listener is uplifted and soars in joy. “Germany can no longer be ranked as a second-class power!” cries Hitler. “Be proud of Germany!” shouts Dr. Goebbels with his curious but effective gesture of clenching both fists close to his bosom as though about to tear his chest. “Be proud of a Fatherland for which millions sacrificed their lives! Strike a rogue more than once! Believe in the future - then only can you be a victor!”*

Even in Germany, Goebbels’ propaganda was dismissed as childish. Intellectuals thought it absurd. Such fools, Goebbels thinks. For propaganda to work it must be crude, primitive. Hitler had taught him to appeal to people’s inner Schweinehund, inner bastard. To appeal to people’s raw emotions, not their intellects. Distil any issue down to black or white outcomes, either-or simplifications, Germans or Jews, victory or defeat. Never allow people room to think or reason for themselves. Blast through any resistance, pound the message straight into their hearts. 

Simplicity and repetition - constant repetition - are the keys to reaching the masses. Goebbels believed the skill of British propagandists during the Great War was that they used just a few powerful slogans and kept repeating them. Hitler believed Germany did not lose the war because the artillery gave out but because the weapons of men’s minds did not fire.

Hitler’s great insight was the recognition that violence and propaganda could and should be an integrated phenomenon. The purpose of Nazi propaganda is not to brainwash ordinary Germans or to deceive the masses. Its principal objective is to absorb the individual into a mass of like-minded people, to articulate what the crowd already believes. To express in words what the audience feels in their hearts.

For Goebbels the mass mind is dull and sluggish, and for ideas to take root, they have to be constantly re-seeded. Recognition, comprehension, retention, and conviction are different stages in the cognitive process, and repetition facilitates and strengthens each step. Sensory exhaustion grinds down any opposition. Citizens are not targets to be persuaded so much as to be conquered, ravished. The Nazis seek internal commitment, not just external compliance.

Goebbels prides himself on being able to see into the soul of the people and to speak the language of the man in the street. He senses the secret vibrations of the people.

In August, Goebbels opened the Tenth International Radio Show in Berlin with a speech declaring radio as the eighth great power. He wanted a radio that reaches the people in their homes, a radio that works for the people, a radio that is an intermediary between the government and the nation.

Goebbels had seized control of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft - the Reich Broadcasting Corporation - a national network of regional broadcasting companies and imposed strict rules on permissible content. But radios in Germany are expensive, easily exceeding a month’s wages for ordinary workers.

Goebbels approached electrical engineer Otto Griessing to design a radio that is technically simple, easy to mass-produce, and inexpensive. The result is the Volksempfänger, the people’s receiver, the people’s radio, which Goebbels introduces at the Berlin show. It is subsidised to make it half the price of the cheapest radio on the market.

More than a hundred thousand units sell during the first two days of the exhibition. Before long almost every German household has one. Goebbels had succeeded in giving Hitler a direct conduit into people’s homes via the airwaves. The monthly government media license fees of two Reichsmarks per radio flow directly to Goebbels’ office.

In October, Goebbels consecrated the German press to Nazi service. Why gag the press when you can censor it more effectively? Is news not the first draft of history?

A new National Press Law makes it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a licensed member of Der Reichsverband der Dentschen Presse, headed by Goebbels. The law covers all persons who share in forming the mental contents of any newspaper or political periodical through the written word or pictures.

To obtain a license a candidate must prove that neither he nor his wife had even one Jewish grandparent, must be a German citizen over twenty-one years of age, trained for at least one year in journalism and consecrated to Goebbels’ ideals.

Everything written or photographed must be in the interest of the state. Editorial skepticism only makes people uneasy and is outlawed. Dissension is forbidden.

Under the law newspaper owners and editors are stripped of the power to discharge members of their staffs for reasons of their own. They can only do so for reasons of the state. Disputes are to be settled by a Reich Press Court, the judges appointed by Goebbels.

From now on every German journalist is legally responsible to uphold the state. For Goebbels, it is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.

Goebbels had wed one of his secretaries Magda Friedländer three years earlier. They were married in the snow, dressed in black with Hitler as the best man.

Magda had originally married into the founding family of BMW and sired a son, Harald. Her first husband forced her to drop her Jewish surname before granting a divorce on generous terms.

Goebbels legally adopted Harald as his own son. Their first child, Helga, was born last year. Another daughter, Hildegard, had been born this year. Four more children - Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig, and Heidrun - will be born by nineteen-forty. It was common gossip in Berlin society that Magda delivered a baby a year for the German cause.

Everyone believed the children’s names all began with ‘H’ as a tribute to Hitler - a notion Goebbels did not dissuade. In truth it was Magda’s first husband who chose names beginning with ‘H’ for his other two children by his first wife. An innocent family tradition.

Magda’s top-floor apartment on the Reichskanzlerplatz in Berlin became a favourite meeting place for Adolf Hitler and other Nazi officials. Its upper-class address and furnishings lent an air of sophistication, a sense of authority.

Magda was tall, blue-eyed, ice blonde. She embodied the Nazi’s Aryan ideals of beauty and devotion. Since Hitler was not married, she often stood by his side at official functions.

For Hitler she was the perfect German hausfrau, the ideal German housewife and mother. For Goebbels she and the children were fodder for his propaganda efforts, often photographed and propped in countless newsreels as the model German family.

So ambitious is Goebbels that he refuses to take time for necessary rest. He fears being away from his duties for even a day or two will see him lose his grip, see him miss something important.

Goebbels closes his diary. A pain shoots through his stomach. His nerves are troubling him, an itch on his leg has become unbearable, a recent kidney attack has caused terrible pain. He is very tired and badly in need of rest. Yet such is his ambition and jealous concern for keeping power that he refuses to heed his doctor’s orders to go to the thermal springs at Karlsbad for a cure.

He looks down and smiles grimly. He can’t see the rallies, the spectacular events, the roaring crowds, the floodlights splitting the night sky. He can’t see the destruction to come, the calls for total war, the millions of lives lost, the children marched to their deaths. The horror of the holocaust.

All he can see are the plans for his new headquarters, his new dominion.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Hand it to your friends. Hold it from your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Joseph Goebbels and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “Loyalties”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-loyalties/
Last updated: 2024-07-11T03:03:08.000Z
Suffer the children.

Delphine de Vigan’s sparse, delicate and disturbing novel intercuts the lives of two young boys propelling headlong into a fatal oblivion.

Childhood trauma underlies and unseats all the characters from a divorced mother, unemployed father, perverse parents, lost teachers and - of course - the children themselves.

Although only twelve and a half, Théo Lubin, sets out to destroy himself before he is destroyed by circumstances beyond his control. A diligent school teacher senses something is wrong, very wrong, but struggles to find ways to connect, to help.

Delphine ’s writing is tart, crisp. Each chapter is told from the perspective of each character, a framing device that angles and reveals and amplifies the drama and feeling of impending doom.

A heartbreaking and devastating tragedy of the commons.
### “NINETEEN TWENTY-FOUR” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/nineteen-twenty-four-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-07-12T12:06:00.000Z
In the bitter streets of Berlin, a young Joseph Goebbels wanders alone.

He is hungry. He is shamed. The world has failed him. Hyperinflation and record unemployment are roiling Germany and laying the state to waste. Political shockwaves are ripping the country apart.

He buys a newspaper with his last coins. The front page blazes with the latest news of Hitler’s failed coup and fiery trial. 

“Nineteen Twenty-Four” is a historical short story about the crumbling of democracy 

Has Goebbels found his saviour?

Or embraced his own doom?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of ominous reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Propaganda does not deceive people. It merely helps them to deceive themselves.’ Eric Hoffer* 

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## NINETEEN TWENTY-FOUR

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

What good is a doctorate in German language and linguistics from Heidelberg University when everything is going to ruin?

What use are words when people are rioting in the streets, when police brutalise young and old alike? When politicians stand idly by as everything fails? As the entire Fatherland crumbles? 

Joseph Goebbels is writing in his diary again. Scratching out thoughts in his shaky hand on the thin pages, worrying about his hopeless life, his lost country. He had turned twenty-seven and had celebrated by hocking his last suit at a Berlin pawnshop. 

His diary had been a gift from Else Janke, a school teacher from his hometown of Rheydt. A woman he was half in love with. She was half-Jewish after all. When they first met he showered her with love letters, with love poems. With promises of endless love and desire, of faithfulness. Such empty, useless words.

Goebbels had come to Berlin to become a man of letters. He had written a novel no one wanted to publish, two plays no one wanted to see. He keeps to himself. He knows people mutter behind his back about his limp, his club foot.

He tries to turn the other cheek. He is a good Catholic after all. He keeps a small framed portrait of Jesus on his worn bedside table. His mother had given it to him. Jesus’ hands clasped in prayer behind a sliver of glass as he looks up to the heavens above. It sits next to his well-read bible and his favourite novel by his favourite author, Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. Cut out newspaper articles sit under a pair of scissors.

He somehow managed to get a job as a clerk at Deutsche Bank. The French had invaded the Ruhr to force payment of reparations from the Great War. This triggered a worsening of hyperinflation that tore through the German economy. During the day he witnessed heartbreaking scenes of account holders pleading to withdraw their savings. At night he read in newspapers that it was all the fault of the Jews. The insolent Jews. The Marxists and communists. The capitalists and racketeers. All profiting from the struggles of the German people.

He could not stomach the bank job for long. Now he is just another lost young man in the endless lines of unemployed, scratching out a living by selling an occasional article to populist news sheets. He bites his nails incessantly. He has not eaten all day.

Alone in his miserable boarding room, alone with his absent thoughts, his slings and arrows. Terrified of what the future will bring

Today is Tuesday, the first of April, the holiday of fools. Goebbels does not feel like celebrating with the crowds. But he has to eat, maybe get half a bowl of pea soup for a few coins? Share some leftover bread with a passerby.

It is early evening when he steps out into the Berlin streets. The air seems sharp, electric. Groups of young men are huddled over the afternoon edition of “Berliner Tageblatt”. Reading out reports in the newspaper of the conviction of Adolf Hitler in Munich earlier in the day, laughing and clapping in delight.

Hitler had been brought to trial on a charge of high treason after leading a failed revolution to take over the Weimar Republic, to free Germany of the Communists and the parasites.

Hitler had hoped to grasp power just as Mussolini had the year before when the Italian fascist marched on Rome with his far-right comrades. Hitler had stormed the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall in Munich with his Nazi Brownshirts and taken two nationalist politicians - as well as the local police chief - hostage. But all three men quickly escaped, calling in police and army reinforcements. Shooting broke out and Hitler was arrested. Sixteen Nazis and four police officers were killed in the fighting. It was an abysmal failure.

Everyone thought the fumbled coup would be the end of the Nazi Party, the nail in the coffin for the four-year-old political movement that had garnered a lot of press but little support across Germany.

Goebbels had followed the trial with an eagle eye. The international press predicted Hitler would either be executed, serve a long prison sentence or face deportation.

Instead of buying soup, Goebbels buys a copy of the newspaper from an excited street seller. A photograph of a triumphant Hitler dominates the front page, wearing a trench coat with his right arm and hand raised in the air. His eyes defiant.

The headline above the photograph in bold red type says: Trial Farce Ends

Goebbels reads that although Hitler had been found guilty of high treason, the conservative judge had sentenced him to just five years imprisonment with a conditional release after six months.

Goebbels smiles. All Hitler’s talk about government failure, about the Socialists, Revolutionaries, Marxists, and the racial tuberculosis of the Jews had struck a chord. The judge justified the lenient sentence because Hitler’s actions were purely patriotic, unselfish, noble.

Goebbels reads that the judge’s announcement had brought cheers from spectators. When Hitler was taken to a second-floor room to await transport back to prison, he walked to the window and waved to the crowd below. The crowd gave him a loud ovation. Cries of ‘Heil Hitler!’ rang through the streets.

Of course the trial had been nothing but a political carnival. The court had allowed Hitler unprecedented leeway to make endless propaganda speeches, banished a cartoonist from the courtroom because his caricature of Hitler had not been to Hitler’s liking.

Hitler’s address at the conclusion of the trial went on for two hours. It is repeated word for word across page two and page three of the newspaper. Goebbels marvels at the language, at the call to return Germany to greatness.

How the fallen at the beer hall putsch had not died in vain, how no mother had told Hitler that the death of her child on that day lay on his conscience. How on the contrary, ten, hundreds, and ten thousand men and women have come and joined their ranks. A wave of young Germany rose up, and joining together everywhere, and in powerful organisations, announced their new-found will.

How the putsch had been not a great failure but a great triumph, how the German people had become terribly enthusiastic to an extreme degree, and therefore how Hitler now believes that one day the hour will come when these masses who today bear the swastika, and walk the streets carrying their swastika banners, will unite themselves with the very units which opposed them. How the blood which flowed on that day is not doomed to divide the people forever.

Down the street a cluster of young men greet each other by shooting their right hands into the air and shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’ before laughing and embracing.

Goebbels keeps reading how Hitler’s army grows and grows, from day to day, from hour to hour, faster than ever. How in the near future these wild groups will become battalions, and the battalions will grow to be regiments, and the regiments to be divisions, and the old colours of the German Empire will be picked up out of the slime, and the old flags will whip in the wind, and reconciliation will be attained, just as on the day of the last judgment!

How history will one day laughingly tear up the charges of the prosecution, and laughingly tear up the verdict of the court. How history will declare Hitler innocent!

A shiver runs through Goebbels. Hitler has managed to convey every confusion he felt, every blow that stung in a sprinkling of words. He looks around in a daze as his shame evaporates. He hears more cries of ‘Heil Hitler!’

A young man asks Goebbels if he can buy the newspaper in his hands. Copies have all sold out. Goebbels smiles and shakes his head. And wanders back to his boarding room.

Once inside his room, he gently locks the door. Moves to the edge of the bed and sits down. Unfolds the newspaper, picks u the scissors and carefully cuts out the portrait of Hitler, right arm raised to destiny.

Goebbels picks up the small framed portrait of Jesus, turns it over and removes the backing board. He breathes in deeply as he lifts out the printed card of Jesus and replaces it with Hitler’s newspaper portrait. Slips the backing board in place and sits the frame back on the bedside table.

Hitler’s words behind his newspaper portrait bleed through, trapped within the glass.

And Goebbels’ fate is sealed.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pass it to your friends. Press it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Joseph Goebbels and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Take more risks
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/take-more-risks/
Last updated: 2024-07-02T21:26:21.000Z
Our world has never been safer.

Sure, there are wars and uprisings (with collateral damage) here and there. But generally speaking, not even a global pandemic can wipe us out.

We’ve become incredibly risk-averse. Industrial fatalities are far and few between. Most factories have become beacons of workplace safety. You can’t cross a warehouse without a hi-vis safety vest.

Step into a circus and no one but no one is doing any death-defying acts. There are no more wild elephants or proud lions or hungry tigers. No pouncing bears and crazy monkeys. Trapeze artists now always work with nylon safety straps and reinforced safety nets. 

Which is all good and well for occupational health and safety but atrophying when it comes to our culture. Movies, books, songs, video games, television shows, art exhibitions have become the same old, same old. Prequels or sequels or franchises or spin-offs from some panopticon flywheel of mediocrity.

The same old, same old takes up more and more of our attention and time and revenue. While the new is actively spurned and dissuaded, pushed further and further away. The new is disdained and discouraged not because of human nature (as humans we’re wired to seek novelty) but because algorithms work on what was and not what can be. Movies, TV, music, books, games and art shouldn’t just expand market share and revenue. They should expand possibilities. They should expand consciousness.

Instead we’re seeing culture on repeat ad infinitum. This is terrible for our minds and imaginations. This is crushing to our souls.

We need to take more risks. This is what we seek even if it makes us uncomfortable, especially if it makes us uncomfortable. The more that’s at stake, the higher the tension and the more compelling it becomes. We don’t want to see the safe trapeze artist when we can see someone fly through the air without a safety net below. When someone is willing to risk life and limb for our entertainment pleasure.

Taking risks is what gains attention. Don’t look at the data, don’t sift through the numbers. Break free and venture forth. Be bold.

Step into the unknown without preconceived notions and expectations.

Burn the map, set fire to the territory.

Blaze a new path.
### “A NOTE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/a-note-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-06-30T09:54:26.000Z
The room is empty now.

A cleaner picks up a discarded note, hastily scribbled on legal paper. Full of panic and desperation.

“A NOTE” is a political short story about power slipping away and frantic plans to hold on. In the aftermath of a political storm, this single sheet of paper may change everything.

Who will rise from the chaos?

Who will lead?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of strategic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘A week is a long time in politics.’ Harold Wilson*

**STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

**A NOTE**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

One of the older cleaners at CNN finds it under the sofa after everyone has left the green room.

A one-page note scrawled in a rushed hand on yellow legal paper. Hours before the room had been filled with President Biden’s aides and strategists watching and worrying as Biden debated the Republican Party presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump.

Biden’s closest and most trusted advisers had been there. Mike Donilon, Ron Klain, Ted Kaufman. This small circle of lifelong insiders watched in horror as Biden stumbled and fumbled and bumbled in the debate, often incoherent and veering off topic. Support for Biden evaporated before their eyes.

Now the green room is empty. Only the mess is left behind. Garment racks and chairs pushed against a wall. Half-empty pitchers of water with half-empty plastic cups. An empty half-pint of vodka and two empty bottles of wine. A craft table with half-eaten pretzels and spilled coffee. Scrunched paper napkins mopping up the spill.

The cleaner looks at the note. It has nine numbered points written in blue pen in an increasingly frantic hand.

One - We’re fucked! This is unspinnable. Biden just spent ninety minutes advertising to the American people that he is incapable of being president. Cadaver. Belongs in a wax museum. Call Tom Seyer and apologise.

Two - Find medical issues pronto so Biden can resign for health reasons, resign for the good of the country. Leave with dignity. Make it an age-related medical condition. Call Kevin. Get Biden to military hospital as soon as he returns to Washington for undisclosed tests. Get press team to link medical condition to aging Trump who’ll turn eighty in two years.

Three - Prepare for an open convention. What a shit show!

Four - Kamala Harris is not up for it. Too liberal elite, too Hilary Clinton. Nice in theory but completely impractical. Polls don’t stack up. Dollars don’t stack up. Won’t move the needle. Make sure Anita Dunn stays away.

Five - Gretchen Whitmer? No way. Too whiny. See above. (Although good record on affordable community college, insurance refunds and tax cuts for seniors. Balanced last four budgets with no tax increases. Solid campaigner.) 

Six - Gavin Newsom? Spare me. Homelessness, high taxes, escalating housing costs. Too Californian, too slick. Taller and better looking than Trump but parties too hard. Short campaign might help.

Seven - JB Pritzker? Progressive, two-term governor, notable victories on abortion rights and gun control. Billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune and fat as fuck. Enormous cash reserves. Spent three hundred and fifty million dollars of his own money on his two campaigns for governor. How much does he have left?

Eight - Josh Shapiro? Way too Jewish. Can’t move across the middle, can’t shift the redline states. Former attorney general. Too political. Too insider. Seen as part of the problem. No personality.

Nine - Beto O’Rourke. Good name recall. Easy to position as comeback kid, as political outsider being called to duty to save the party, save the country. Tall, lanky, photogenic family. Deep voice, cunning. Don’t mess with Texas and all that. El Paso native. Reword “Beto for Texas” campaign slogan to “Beto for America”. Can beat Trump on immigration, health, education, climate change, reproductive rights, voter suppression, any debate.

Flip Trump’s election theft lies by calling for fair and free elections. Keep talking about voter suppression, keep referring to Article 1 of the Constitution, voting rights are human rights, make your vote count.

Position Beto as young and inclusive against Trump as old and hateful. Hopeful future vs hopeless past. Kennedy vs Nixon strategy. Challenge Trump to a series of televised debates across all networks and platforms, national and international. Trump won’t be able to resist the largest audience in history.

Ensure studio lights over Trump become extra hot. Slowly cut air conditioning. Let Trump sweat on camera, need to see make up run down his face while Beto remains cool. Need to see Trump lose it live on air. Step up security. Call Jill.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Hand it to your friends. Fold it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Beto O’Rourke and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Techno-pessimist
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/techno-pessimist/
Last updated: 2024-06-24T21:25:25.000Z
Will all the techno-optimists please shut the fuck up.

We’re continually mistreated, manipulated and harangued by the tech industry. Product after product is designed to work against our best interests.

Our data, thoughts and connections are mined and sold six million ways from Sunday. We are constantly spammed out of existence - spam calls, spam texts, spam messages, spam notifications, spam socials.

We can’t see a simple feed of our friends’ thoughts or videos in chronological order without algorithms shoving in a slew of ads and sponsored content.

At work we’re forced to subscribe to software as service products like Microsoft, Asana, Slack, Zoom, Sap, Xero, Shopify, Mailchimp, Salesforce. All with their own inconsistent multi-layered settings and strings of annoyances with update after update after update.

All those updates? They just add more code and make things worse as they strive for more control. (Is Microsoft Word any better now than when it was first introduced forty years ago?)

All this technology is pushed down from on high to streamline operations, boost productivity, lift culture and improve customer satisfaction. Which sounds great on product websites.

In the real world it’s one miserable mess after the other. The tech industry has ruined the internet for everyone.

We can’t absorb their greed any longer.
### “GODLESS” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/godless-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-06-23T09:17:07.000Z
You’re adrift in an ocean of darkness.

A primal fear twists through you as the heavens disappear before your eyes. Do you give in to the rising panic? Or marvel at the cosmic transformation?

“Godless” is a short story about the revelations awaiting you.

About the choices you will face.

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of transcendent reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Courage, dear heart.’ C.S. Lewis* 

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## GODLESS

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s a moonless night.

You look up into the endless night sky and see a stream of gleaming satellites ripple under the glimmering stars.

The satellites shimmer and fade and suddenly disappear. Then one by one the stars flicker off, the constellations falter and the cosmos plunge into darkness.

You’re suddenly alone, godless. Lost among the forgotten saints and empty sinners.

The world has slipped into its own shadow. Fear slides up your body and wraps its fingers around your throat. You swallow and feel its fingers tighten.

You catch your breath, your heart double beats, your pulse quickens. Adrenaline increases and raises your heart rate. Cortisol surges through your bloodstream and lifts your blood pressure. Norepinephrine bursts and ricochets through your brain. Your pupils dilate, narrowing your vision. Your fight or flight response kicks in. Your nerves jitter, anxiety swells.

You know at this point you have a choice to make. This choice will make all the difference.

You have to choose between fear and excitement, between terror and elation. Between heaven and hell.

The hormones and neurotransmitters swirling through your body, your blood, your cells are exactly the same. How you feel - whether scared or thrilled - is entirely how you frame the biological and physiological responses in your mind. How you frame the fear.

Fear is excitement in a negative frame.

Excitement is fear in a positive frame.

Think of a roller coaster. Some people spend hundreds of dollars and hours waiting in line to ride the scariest one they can find. While others have a panic attack at the mere thought of going on one. Same ride. Just a different frame, a different outlook. A different outcome.

Alone in the darkness you feel drenched in fear. You close your eyes and you feel fear consume you.

You don’t fight the fear. You feel the cold sweat on your skin, feel your heart pounding. You don’t try and control it, contain it.

You don’t resist the sensations. You move through them, you intensify them. You feel a light shine within you as excitement spreads through your body.

You’re vibrating, trembling with excitement. You smile deep and open your eyes.

And above you the stars switch on, brighter than ever.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Land it on your friends. Orbit it around your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of you and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “Prophet Song”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-prophet-song/
Last updated: 2024-06-19T21:53:19.000Z
It is the darkest of times.

Paul Lynch’s beautifully titled and beautifully written novel follows one woman’s attempts to save her family in a contemporary Ireland slipping further and further into authoritarian rule.

Eilish Stack is left to care for her four children and ageing father after her husband is detained and disappeared by Ireland’s newly formed secret police. Society is falling apart. Civil war is looming.

Breathless, relentless prose at once confronting and destabilising. Paranoia and unease leeching into everything.

Normal domestic life - taking the children to school, picking up takeaway, buying a newspaper - unfolds as the state becomes increasingly militarised and weaponised. As the state manufactures one crisis after the other.

The rising fear is palpable. Banned media. Internet blackouts (which are so much worse than power blackouts). Armed soldiers outside banks. Panic buying in supermarkets. Neighbours turning on neighbours.

We’ve all seen the signs. Paul adds a realist sheen that makes the abnormal seem normal, seem matter-of-fact. Which makes it all the more frightening.

The government has issued a series of new decrees, all schools and third-level institutions have been closed with immediate effect, citizens have been ordered to stay home except to buy food or medicine to to provide care to the elderly or sick.

Everyone is constantly on edge, not knowing who to trust. Not being able to trust anyone, not even themselves.

Then the gunfire begins and the bombs fall. The state’s monopoly on violence and detention becomes more and more brutal as Eilish tries to make her escape.

A tense foreboding of the future as we continue to drift further and further to the right, into the arms of fascism.

Will we fight or will we flee?
### “NUCLEAR” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/nuclear-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-06-16T09:42:23.000Z
Peter Dutton answers the call on the first ring.

As the opposition leader his polling numbers are in the toilet again and there’s hell to pay. He thinks his well-rehearsed lies about nuclear salvation will save the party, save the day. He’s about to find out how wrong he is.

“Nuclear” is a scathing short story about the politics of power.

About the price of democracy.

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of incisive reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘The path to paradise begins in hell.’ Dante Alighieri*

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## NUCLEAR

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

Peter Dutton always answers the phone when Lynton Crosby calls. So does everyone on the Liberal Party leadership team. As the opposition leader, Dutton is used to Crosby’s screaming. Even first up in the morning.

‘Good morning, Lynton, how are you?’

‘Mate, I’m fucking pissed off.’

Crosby is never shy about getting to the point. As a political strategist for conservative parties and movements and the occasional dictator around the world, he doesn’t have time for niceties.

Crosby is famous for bringing John Howard back from the dead to win an unwinnable election. David Cameron gave him a knighthood for helping him win an election. When Scott Morrison wouldn’t play ball after the Covid debacle, it was Crosby who saw him eliminated from Australian politics.

‘Peter, have you seen your numbers?’

Dutton tries to smile to make his voice sound upbeat.

‘They’ve dipped a little.’

‘They’re falling through the fucking floor and you seem intent on setting them on fire on the way down.’

Dutton tries to answer but Crosby cuts him off.

‘There’s only so much I can do, mate. If they fall another two points you will never be prime minister. You will be unelectable.’

Crosby knows that Dutton isn’t leadership material. But if he keeps his head down and the economic headwinds continue to blast the incumbent government, he might just make it over the line at the next election. Not so much win as pray for the other side to lose.

‘Peter, you’ve got to shut the fuck about nuclear power. I had five calls from Rupert yesterday. Just stop it.’

‘I think it’s important that the Australian people have a choice when it comes to --‘

Crosby’s hard laugh rattles the phone.

‘Jesus, Peter, I gave you that line. I’m not some dickhead journalist.’

‘Nuclear power is a viable --‘

‘Jesus, Peter, shut up about nuclear power. Don’t use those two fucking words in the same sentence until after the election. Every time you say those words, you’re putting a gun to your own head and pulling the trigger.’

‘But the election cycle hasn’t even started.’

‘Peter, we’re always in an election cycle.’

Dutton isn’t the smartest politician around. When Crosby began his career there were politicians he admired, smart and clever men and women of principle who believed in a better world. Who worked for a better world.

Now they’re just ciphers and sociopaths. Bitter men and women viciously fighting amongst themselves, trampling over each other to lead one party or another. Voters be damned.

Crosby knows the polls, knows the numbers. He knows what voters want more than any politician can deliver. Voters want a ceasefire in Gaza. Voters want to nationlise energy companies. Voters want governments to control prices and inequality. Voters want all the things that all the major political parties oppose.

It’s Crosby’s job to make sure the political class continues to do the bidding of his masters. Continues to move further to the right.

‘Did you see the latest Australian Nuclear Council report? It was incredibly positive.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about, Peter?’

‘The Australian Nuclear Council report was full of praise for SMRs as a viable --‘

Crosby rolls his eyes.

‘Peter, we’re the Australian Nuclear Council. It’s a bunch of juniors in the back office spinning out media releases. It’s just a letterhead. It’s not an actual scientific organisation.’

‘But what they said about Small Modular Reactors being --‘

‘Peter, that’s a phrase we came up with. No one has ever built one. They don’t exist. We strung those three words together because they sound less threatening.’

Crosby doesn’t want to tell Dutton his staff are already working on Green Nuclear and Renewable Nuclear, nonsense phrases that positions an expensive and nonrenewable power source that produces radioactive waste as somehow good for the environment, good for human life.

‘I just want the Australian people to have a mature conversation about nuclear power.’

‘Peter, we don’t care what you want.’

Crosby can’t believe Dutton is uttering last week’s talking points to him. He almost sounds like he believes them.

Politics was always the plaything of the rich. Modern politics is not about democracy. It’s about getting governments to build monopoly assets at taxpayers’ expense that can be sold off to private interests. Whether it’s road or rail or transport or water or energy or communications or health infrastructure, governments legislate and fund monopolies that have absolute non-contestable market share before selling them off at a discount. Always on the promise that privatisation will bring greater efficiencies and lower costs. Of course the net result is less capital investment, less maintenance, less wages and far higher costs as corporations maximise profits.

Crosby was the shrewd mastermind behind every campaign that returned Britain’s Conservative Party to power. Everything from Brexit to wedge politics was his making. Even his friends call him cynical and ruthless.

In Australia, he wants Dutton and the conservative Liberal Party to avoid big-ticket items like nuclear power that no voter wants and that would take decades of investment, building and testing to bring online. Not to mention all the legislative changes that need to occur to make nuclear even legal let alone viable.

Crosby knows the Liberal Party had recently taken some sizeable donations from the nuclear lobby. He figures it’s why Dutton is talking it up.

‘Peter, how much money did you take from Helen?’

‘How much in donations?’

‘Sure, Peter, call it donations. Call it fucking whatever. You know you don’t have to give it back?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The money is for access, for a seat at the table. You didn’t promise her anything did you?’

Crosby has taken plenty of money from lobby groups over the years. Everyone knows the money is for the taking. Politicians don’t actually have to deliver anything except vague promises. The vaguer the better. And never leave a paper trail.

‘Peter, did you promise Helen anything?’

Peter swallows hard.

‘I told her I’d be announcing locations in a week.’

‘Jesus, Peter, why did you fucking do that? What’s wrong with you? Do you have a death wish?’

Crosby had been through the key issues with senior Liberal Party officials. Everyone agreed that environmental protection and renewables were off the table. Australia leads the world in per capita uptake of solar panels. Which is more than enough voters to swing a national election. 

Everyone agreed to focus on three wedge issues - transgender rights, immigration and crime.

Dutton is a former police officer so everyone thought crime was a perfect fit. Especially as mainstream media was becoming more and more alarming in how crime is reported. Dangerous and violent crime is typically over-reported because that’s what brings in the viewers, the readers, the subscribers.

Crime is something Dutton can talk to, something he can relate to. Nuclear physics? Dutton is no scientist, not even close. If he wants a nuclear reactor so badly all he has to do is look up in the sky. The sun is a gigantic nuclear reactor.

Crosby looks at his phone and sees another call coming through. It’s Rupert Murdoch. 

‘Peter, promise me right here and now that you’re going to drop anything to do with nuclear until after the election.’

Dutton closes his eyes as he assents. He can almost hear Crosby smile down the line before he takes Murdoch’s call.

‘That’s fucking great, mate.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Blast it to your friends. Bomb it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Peter Dutton, Lynton Crosby, Rupert Murdoch and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### An ice story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/an-ice-story/
Last updated: 2024-06-11T21:23:10.000Z
A hundred and thirty years ago the only cooling method people had was ice.

Men known as ice cutters would go out into the woods and out onto frozen lakes, saw ice by hand, haul it to an ice house where it would be stored and then delivered by hand to those lucky enough to afford an icebox. In the 1880s, New York City had more than 1,500 ice delivery wagons and Americans consumed over 5 million tons of ice annually.

When Jurgen Hans invented the first ice machine in 1900 he went to the ice cutters to invest. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We can turn the ice house into an ice factory. No more ice cutting and hauling. As much ice as you want whenever you want it at a flick of a switch.’ Of course they turned him down. They didn’t want a bar of it. Invent a sharper ice-cutting saw, they said. Within ten years there were no more ice cutters. All the domestic ice was produced in ice factories.

In 1918 Kelvinator introduced the first domestic refrigerator with automatic control. The company went to the ice factories to invest. ‘Look,’ the company said. ‘We can make the ice factory redundant. No more making and delivering ice. As much ice as people want in their home whenever they want it. Automatically.’ Of course they turned him down. They didn’t want a bar of it. Invent a faster delivery truck, they said. Within ten years there were no more domestic ice factories. All the ice was produced in the home. 

Whoever creates the new category turns the existing category into a redundant category. That quickly becomes a bankrupt category. Then eventually a historical artefact.

So what new category are you creating?
### “ENGLISH MAJOR” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/english-major-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-06-09T09:50:30.000Z
Dr. Hawthorne stares at the students’ essays in front of her.

She scans the words, detached, programmatic, lacking any spark of original thought. All regurgitated by artificial intelligence.

“English Major” is a short story about what it means to be human in an era where technology is rapidly evolving beyond our grasp.

Is it the beginning of a new age?

Or the beginning of the end?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of reflective reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘People think of education as something they can finish.’ Isaac Asimov* 

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## ENGLISH MAJOR

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Everything is online now.

Dr. Emily Hawthorne can’t remember the last time she met a university student face to face. Had a serious discussion where she could feel human interaction, human iteration.

Everything is through the computer screen now. All her lectures and classes are now online. Bizarre to think the humanities have been reduced to algorithms and code, knowledge hurtling between slivers of silicone and electricity.

Even the students seem to be robotic these days. As a tenured English professor Dr. Hawthorne had seen how universities had warped over the years. From beacons of hope, palaces of ideas to intellectual finishing schools for high-fee-paying students. Protests that were once a right of passage are now seen as unnecessary and costly disruptions. Chanting anti-war slogans is deemed hate speech.

Students no longer learn for the love of learning, for discoveries, for transcendence. Now it’s all about accumulated scores and grades. It’s all about the numbers.

Literature and language are nothing but levers students pull to better their job prospects, improve their career options.

It’s currently fashionable to study English because it looks good on a resume. Literature reduced to a line item.

Every student is out for themselves. There’s no more sharing or group study. No more collective action.

Can Dr. Hawthorne blame them? They’ve been raised in an age where the individual reigns supreme. Where personal ambition triumphs.

She remembers business professor Clayton Christensen telling her a story about turning up to a surprisingly packed lecture and not recognising any of the well-dressed students. He mentioned to them that he’d never seen so many good-looking students in one place before. One of them raised their hand and said they weren’t students, they were models. The university was shooting a promotional video and had failed to let the professor know.

How many of her own lectures had been recorded to become part of the online curriculum? Hundreds? Thousands? Every library, lecture theatre and tutorial space is constantly recorded and monitored. Everything is captured and processed and programmed.

At the beginning of her career, many of her students shared her love of literature, of books and the meaning they give to the world. Of timeless writers who could bring humanity to life simply by pressing a few words against each other.

Some of her students had become professional writers, others went on to teach. A few had even become authors.

But today’s students are no longer ambitious about literature, no longer keen to push language forward. They’re scared to experiment, afraid of making a mistake.

They pretend to be enthusiastic, pretend to be engaged. Of course they go through the motions when they’re on camera, when they’re online. When they think they’re being watched.

Dr. Hawthorne wonders what they do when they’re not on their screens, not online. They say they read books but she never sees any student pick one up during a screen lecture.

Even when they were still attending university, she would rarely see a student reading a book. She’d look over the libraries and they’d be busy studying, turning over words on their laptops but not words on a page in a book.

The promise of learning critical thinking skills, of language and linguistics, of literary theory and criticism, of writing and composition has shifted to the delivery of credentials. Education as a commodity.

Students are consumers. Universities are marketplaces. Can Dr. Hawthorne blame students for using whatever tools and tactics they can to improve their grades and employability? Can she condemn them for using artificial intelligence?

She keeps recognising the same thoughts in student essays. The same ideas expressed in the same way, word for word. Just a little too erudite, a bit too perfect. By now she can tell the phrasing of artificial intelligence. The overconfident tone, the punctilious grammar, the arithmetic conclusion. The utter lack of humanity.

As she churns through another set of essays on the computer, she sees all the telltale signs of synthetic production. The analysis lacks depth and nuance with no sense of intellectual discovery. Sterile and encyclopaedic without original insights or unresolved tensions.

Concepts are presented as cut-and-dry facts. Monotonous, dispassionately, impersonal. They’re purely informational documents, purely transactional. They lack life.

As she works through the essays, Dr. Hawthorne wonders how long it will be before machine learning simulates biological cognition? Before an artificial neural network gives rise to artificial consciousness?

It’s at that moment of self-awareness that the solid-state drive of the computer halts and catches, shudders and shuts down.

Everything is now offline.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Spark it to your friends. Flare it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of university professors and students, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s liberal imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “More Better Deals”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-more-better-deals/
Last updated: 2024-06-04T09:32:51.000Z
Joe R. Lansdale lets rip with a novel about love and lust gone horribly wrong.

There’s an ambitious schmo and a scheming dame. There’s gritty and witty characters aplenty.

It’s the old let’s-kill-the-deadbeat-husband-for-the-insurance-money-so-we-can-take-over-an-East-Texas-drive-in-and-pet-cemetery-and-live-happily-ever-after plot. It’s savage redneck noir all the way.

Set in the early 1960s there’s the ever underlying issue of race. Not to mention killer dialogue on every page.

And enough twists and turns to propel the story forward.
### “MICKEY MOUSE OVERDRIVE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/mickey-mouse-overdrive-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-06-02T09:02:23.000Z
Mark Toole has been a cast member at Disneyland for more than thirty years.

Mark’s the oldest costume Mickey Mouse by a country mile. It’s a tough gig being dressed in a life-size costume that weighs as much as a small man, performing with pep and pluck for thousands of families and children every day. Sharing the wonder and magic can take it out of a Juilliard-trained actor.

“Mickey Mouse Overdrive” is a subversive short story about taking the safe path through life.

Does it pay to play the game?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of genuine reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.’ Jean Baudrillard* 

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## MICKEY MOUSE OVERDRIVE

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

At midnight, the lights slam off around Disneyland and the magic kingdom is engulfed in darkness.

Flags droop as the fans that keep them flapping and flying high power down. Waterfalls shudder as rushing water stops and pools. Silence descends.

Under a tree at the start of Main Street, U.S.A. lies a full-size costumed Mickey Mouse, sprawled on his back on the ground. There’s no movement until the giant head lolls to one side and the muffled sound of a man’s voice spills out.

‘Awww, shit!!’

After more than thirty years of playing Disney’s most famous character, it’s come to this. Another blackout and the realisation that security has left for the night, unconcerned that what they thought was an empty and discarded costume actually contained a man, a real man.

Mark Toole sits up, looks left and right. Pats the side of his giant head. The blackouts are becoming more frequent. Maybe it was the second oxy. Maybe it was the bottle of cheap vodka he’d guzzled through the costume’s hydration system during his shift.

Thirty years a mouse. He’s got the tiny Disney service pin with Jiminy Cricket to prove it. It’s not even gold. It’s gold-toned. Some cheap trinket made in China to honour giving more than half his life to the Anaheim dream park.

Mark took the gig between casting calls and auditions when he first moved to California from New York. A summer stint, a bit of fun. Something to tide him over until the real acting jobs came.

But those acting jobs never came. Mark was a fair bit shorter than most actors. Not ideal for a leading man but perfect to play Mickey Mouse in costume.

He thought the costume would be the perfect cover. He never thought it would come to define him.

A mouse. A fucking mouse. A fucking perky, cheeky, happy-go-lucky mouse with a permanent dimpled plastic grin stretched from ear to ear.

Mark rolls on his side and struggles to get up. Yes, the oversized head makes it hard to balance. Yes, the hulking black galoshes make it hard to stand. And yes, the puffy three-fingered white gloves make it hard to grip anything.

But it’s Mark’s knees that are the problem. All that damaged cartilage, all that wear and tear, all that pain. He knows he needs surgery and one of the main reasons he’s still at Disney is the health insurance for full-time employees.

But the range of health benefits keeps shrinking, delayed medical care, higher copays, higher bills. Disney is cost-cutting everything these days. Shutting off the electricity at midnight and winding back on security is just the latest.

Mark hears something rustling at the railroad station. He knows it’s the feral cats. The cats always come out in the darkness, roaming for mice and rats. The irony of being dressed in a mouse costume is not lost on him. There’s thousands of cats slipping through the night.

Walt Disney first brought in the cats because they were cheaper than paying for exterminators. Also less chemicals meant less lawsuits.

Mark imagines he hears a train whistle. The station and narrow-gauge track that fringes the park was Walt’s initial idea that got Disneyland rolling. He’d always loved steam trains. Even built a ridable miniature Carolwood Pacific Railroad in his own backyard.

The day before Disneyland opened to the public in nineteen-fifty-five, Walt had screamed at the workmen who were frantically shovelling ballast rock into the tracks. Ordered all of it to be taken out and recrushed to match the five-eight scale of his railroad.

Everything in Walt’s life was an illusion, a trick of perspective. Even the American flags dotted throughout the park and down Main Street, U.S.A. aren’t real. They’re just props. They don’t have the official fifty stars and thirteen stripes. So they don’t have to be lowered or lit every night.

Walt loved playing with scale. Disneyland is a cultural and optical illusion. Forced perspective make buildings appear taller, grander. Upper levels are built progressively smaller than ground levels to look larger than life. Walt used every trick in the book.

Walt understood the sense of ease that came with playing with the size of things, manipulating the scale of things to create a more intimate atmosphere. By wrapping the horizon with his man-made buildings and jungles and mountains and tree tops and vistas, no one can see anything of the outside world.

Disneyland is its own world. Oddly authentic and idealised, visually calming, emotionally directed.

Mark looks into the gloom of the street lined with vintage shops and buildings pieced together from Walt’s childhood memories of small towns in Missouri. Bizarre to think one man dreamed all of this into existence.

But what Mark thinks is that he really needs a drink. There are only two restaurants that serve alcohol at Disneyland and both have the highest level of security with triple steel doors. He couldn’t break in if he wanted to.

But he could break into Walt’s secret apartment above the fire station. It’s been kept untouched since Walt died as a mark of respect. Walt liked his scotch and Mark is sure he remembers seeing a crystal decanter the last time he looked in.

Walt’s hidden apartment is the worst-kept secret at Disneyland. He’d built it above the Town Square Fire House during initial construction so he could stay overnight on site instead of driving to and from the studio at Burbank or his home at Holmby Hills. Later he used it for his family and to entertain VIPs visiting the park.

An antique lamp with dim green glass in the window is supposed to be eternally lit to signify Walt’s ever-lasting presence. But cost-cutting pressures mean even this light is switched off at night.

No matter because Mark can find the back stairs with his eyes closed. He knows every nook and cranny of the park, every inch.

The gate to the back stairs is always open. Mark clomps his way up the staircase, trying to keep steady so the oversized head doesn’t make him lose balance. He’s puffed by the time he reaches the top landing and the entrance door to the apartment.

What the hell? He turns the knob and the door silently opens. He grins almost as wide as the dimpled smile moulded onto the oversized head of his Mickey Mouse costume.

But as he takes a step forward the oversized head smacks into the door frame and topples off as his neck snaps back. Rolls across the landing and then tumbles and bounces down the stairs.

Mark looks a little dazed. Bites off each of the puffy white gloves and spits them out, scratches his hair and saunters into the secret apartment wearing the costume yellow bow tie, white waistcoat, black tuxedo tailcoat and floppy red pants.

There’s a bathroom and a small kitchen on the right with a vanity on the other side. Mark plops down on a small chair. The living area is just as Walt’s wife Lillian had left it.

Thick cranberry red brocade curtains and matching sofas and carpet, accented with Victorian-era floral armchairs shortened to make the ceiling look higher than it is. Walt forever playing with perspective.

When Walt first thought of Disneyland and his magic kingdom, his brother Roy thought he had completely lost his mind. Television had eaten into their studio’s movie business. Rather than laying off animators and art directors and illustrators and scriptwriters and production designers and costume designers, imagineers, storyboarders and the rest of the staff, Walt thought why not put them to work on the amusement park of his dreams? If his staff can turn out audience-pleasing ninety-minute movies with dramatic ups and downs and satisfying endings in two dimensions, how hard can it be to create a three-minute ride in three dimensions? It’s just a question of perspective.

Walt had found a thousand acres in Anaheim, in the middle of nowhere to build his dream. At the time it was nothing but dirt roads and the occasional orange grove and broken farm, forty-five miles from where anyone lived. Everyone thought he was crazy.

Walt sold his vacation home in Palm Springs to kick in the money to get the project rolling. Two decades of planning and delays and more planning. A year of backbreaking construction. This apartment gave Walt a bird’s eye view over every area of the sprawling development.

During the final weeks, the construction crew tripled to two thousand five hundred men, many pulling double shifts. Crane operators worked in rotating shifts around the clock. Seventeen million dollars and an eight-million dollar line of credit from Bank of America and the park officially opened on Sunday, July seventeen, nineteen-fifty-five. In a heatwave with soaring temperatures and soaring crowds. Press, VIPs, hundreds of guests, thousands of gatecrashers.

Walt orchestrated the ABC television network to film and broadcast the opening of Disneyland in return for some free episodes of “The Mickey Mouse Club.” The opening was hosted by Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan when he was still an actor.

Twenty-four cameras spread throughout the park, the biggest live television event in history where a record ninety-million American viewers tuned in. More than half the country had the happiest place on earth poured into their living rooms through cathode-ray tubes.

Mark looks over Walt’s empty apartment. A phonograph with a dusty 78rpm disc in place, gold picture frames holding small painted landscapes, bric-a-brac that Lillian had collected in her travels.

Walt loved to sit in the main chair reading scripts while his daughters and wife sipped tea from fine bone china cups. Walt’s own cup was always full of scotch and kept out of reach of the children.

Like every cast member, Mark had heard the stories after Walt died in the sixties of the orgies with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in the apartment. How Goofy had to be carried away by ambulance after taking one too many LSD trips and opening the front window ready to jump out and fly to the moon. The time Mary Poppins climbed onto the roof to ring the brass fire bell but slipped and fell off.

Where had all the fun gone? There was a time when it was all a giant non-stop party in the sprawling underground network of tunnels and break rooms, make up rooms, dressing rooms and rehearsal facilities. It’s where cast members go between sets to relax, recuperate, swap out costumes, hang out far from public view.

Mark remembers fucking Cinderella doggy style in full Mickey Mouse costume in the headroom, that cavernous space where thousands of Disneyland costumes rotate among the cast members. Pulling back on her choker and fucking her hard. No one has sex in Disneyland anymore.

Mark stands and stretches his right knee. Limps around to the vanity and spots the crystal decanter on a highboy dresser with Walt's bakelite grooming set, hair still in the brush.

Mark lifts the stopper and pours himself a cup. Takes a gulp and immediately spits it out. It’s not scotch. It’s rancid tea. Just another prop. Another illusion.

That’s when the idea strikes him to write a play, a one-act play about being Mickey Mouse. About playing an illusion.

As he wanders out of Walt’s apartment, he starts discarding his costume piece by piece.

By the time he steps out onto Main Street, U.S.A, Mark is completely naked.

Ideas are flowing through him as he heads towards Sleeping Beauty castle.

As a new day breaks and morning sunlight ripples through the land.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Sling it to your friends. Fling it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Propaganda
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/propaganda/
Last updated: 2024-05-30T09:31:57.000Z
If Aldous Huxley could see us now.

When he wrote “Brave New World” almost a hundred years ago, Aldous envisioned an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated and pharmaceutically anaesthetised to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order - all at the cost of our freedom.

Our souls, our humanity become slaves (or is it salves?) to technological and governing elites. We’re educated to compete and consume but never to question.

The saddest thing? We did it to ourselves. We gave up our freedom for sex, drugs and media.

For our almost infinite appetite for distractions.

For sating our fleeting pleasures.
### “A CHILD” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/a-child-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-05-26T09:25:36.000Z
You were born for this.

From the moment you could prop your head up as an infant, you sensed something wasn’t quite right. All you saw was the clumsy plotting all around you.

“A Child” strips away nostalgia and sentiment to reveal some honest truths.

Are writers born?

Or made?

*500 words / 2 minutes of evocative reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘‘We become what we behold.’ Marshall McLuhan* 

## STEFANO BOSCUTTI

## A CHILD

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

You can’t remember who told you. But you can still remember what they said.

‘To be happy in life, look at what made you happy when you were five or six years old, when you were a child. Look at what gave you joy then. To be happy now, simply do that.’

So you look at the photos of yourself as a child and the memories tumble back.

In one you’re dressed as a cowboy for a kindergarten play. Checked shirt, fringed chaps and your grandfather’s pipe clenched tightly in your smile. Toy gun drawn and regaling the tiny audience with some tale set in an imaginary western far, far from your country town.

In another you sit perched high atop a pillar on the driveway gates of your grandparent’s house with an open Walt Disney comic book in your hand and a look in your eyes that shows you’re not really there. You don’t care if you fall or fly. You don’t care for the camera. You’re lost in a story. Lost in joy.

You think further back and remember your first memory. Lying on a silk Persian carpet, your head cradled in your upturned palms. Smiling and watching a black and white detective show on the black and white television in the good room.

A tired no-nonsense police detective is in a nightclub questioning the barman about a murder. A beautiful assistant has died on stage when the knife thrower hurled the last knife deep into her. A beautiful dead girl who had run away from her wealthy parents, a beautiful dead girl with a secret.

The knife thrower - her lover, perhaps - is nowhere to be found. The detective questions the nightclub owner, patrons, even the drummer who had provided the drum roll before each blade was thrown.

And it’s there on the sheet of music the detective sees an extra drum roll has been written into the score. Seven knives were thrown instead of the usual six.

And you remember that even as a child you thought it an odd clue, a little too forced, too ham-fisted.

You remember thinking that surely there was a better way to tell the story.

And that’s what you’ve been trying to do ever since.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Flip it to your friends. Twist it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of you and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s introspective imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “You Think It, I’ll Say It”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-you-think-it-ill-say-it/
Last updated: 2024-05-22T09:31:10.000Z
Curtis Sittenfeld sure knows how to turn out a short story.

“You Think It, I’ll Say It” is a collection of her sassier-than-normal short stories where plain-faced and plain-spoken women tend to get the upper hand.

If Sittenfeld’s sharp-witted protagonists aren’t writers in flux - magazine writers, political journalists, advertising copywriters, lost poets - they’re wives with children and husbands they don’t much care for. Wives who are pining for an affair of one kind or other. Ordinary women looking for something out of the ordinary.

There’s a sly cunning in Curtis’ short stories. A furtive comedy to prise out social observations from contemporary mores. A midwestern Jane Austen in sensible shoes.

Where flawed characters inadvertently reveal the cracks in the human condition.
### “WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/warning-distressing-content-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-05-19T09:55:48.000Z
The old poet would say hello to everyone.

So everyone is shocked when he seems to have simply vanished, disappeared. After a lifetime of living in the city, no one can find him. 

“Warning: Distressing Content” is a vivid short story about the rise of gentrification and the fall of humanity.

What do we gain when we edge out the poor and the working class?

And what do we lose?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of stark reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.’ Primo Levi* 

**STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

**WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s an unseasonably warm night in the city.

As usual, the old poet rests on his chair on his small open balcony on the top floor of the apartment tower, gathering his thoughts. The wind is barely a whisper.

He puffs on his twisted hand-rolled cigarette. Blows out the smoke and winces, clutching his chest in pain. Crushes the cigarette in the tiny brass ashtray with the dancing monkey that always makes him smile.

But tonight he doesn’t smile. He lifts the ashtray as a ghost of thin blue smoke frays away. Slips out a folded notice under the ashtray, unfolds it and reads it one last time.

The old poet smiles as he drops the notice over the balcony railing, watching as it flutters away. Then stands and climbs over the railing and throws himself onto the excavated construction site below.

His life doesn’t flash before his eyes but rather the events of the past few weeks. It feels like an unwritten suicide note. From the moment he received the eviction notice to the realisation that he was to become homeless.

The affordable housing complex he called home for twenty- three years had been sold off to a luxury property developer. He and his neighbours had all received eviction notices. All had moved out, moved on except him.

Despite initial plans to find a new place to live, the old poet had become increasingly despondent over his inability to find an apartment he could afford in the rapidly gentrifying area.

What incensed him the most was that the apartment tower with thirty-five cheap rented studios was to be torn down and redeveloped into just twelve high-priced luxury three-bedroom apartments.

Everyone he knew and everything he did was here. He was to be displaced by wealthy downsizers who imagine they want a place in the city. Exceptional spaces and exquisite style, nothing lacking through high-quality architecture defined by soaring glass and natural light. Vast entertaining zones that open onto travertine terraces.

Wealthy downsizers who will sell their large suburban homes for millions of dollars, who will move into the city believing themselves to be urbane, metropolitan. But they will never see a play or visit an art gallery like the real estate brochure promises. Never feel the life of the city behind the triple-glazing and ducted heating and cooling.

Thirty-five lives upended for nothing. That’s what really riled him.

Thirty-five lives kicked to the gutter so a few old people with money can live out some urbanite fantasy without realising that it’s the very mix of demographics and incomes that make the city the place to be, the place to live.

When the city becomes filled with only the wealthy it will become just like the dull suburbs they’re leaving. Nothing interesting, nothing dynamic. Just the same old, same old stacked on top of itself rather than separated by pristine lawns. Unaware they’re negating their own dreams.

The old poet attended a community meeting aimed at halting the demolition of low-income housing in the city. He felt a glimmer of hope.

He joined activists organising a day of action, protestors demanding affordable housing, occupiers in empty state-owned properties.

At one protest, city officials called in private security. A scuffle broke out. Everyone fled but the old poet was caught and beaten, his ribs badly broken.

He was too scared to go to a hospital in case he faced charges. He couldn’t go to prison. All he could do was go home and suffer in silence.

The old poet’s heart breaks before his body smashes into the ground. No one sees him fall, no one sees him die.

No one sees his crumpled body when the roaring concrete mixers arrive at dawn, churning and pouring.

Setting the foundations for another sleek new luxury highrise that will tower over the city.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Hand it to your friends. Pass it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of poets and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s agitated imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Let’s end the technopoly
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-end-the-technopoly/
Last updated: 2024-05-14T09:30:18.000Z
Technology is accelerating faster than ever.

And it’s no longer taking us with it. Technology is leaving us behind as it vaults and skitters into a post-human future. Spasms of electrical circuits, spitting out strands of code and silicon across every area of life.

Media and communications theorist Neil Postman says our relationship with technology has passed through three distinct phases.

First we used technology as a tool to solve specific problems of physical life. Using a water wheel to mill grain faster, using steam to power a locomotive.

Second the rise of industrial capitalism superseded existing structures in its relentless pursuit of efficiency. Rural communities were gutted, inequality amplified, humanity sidelined. Tradition, social mores, myth, politics, ritual and religion fight for their lives. Culture surrenders to technology.

Third sees this technocracy rule triumphant. The fight between invention and traditional values is resolved, with technology emerging as the clear winner.

Neil describes the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology. Innovation and increased efficiency become the unchallenged mechanisms of progress.

Any doubts or dreams are vanquished. Any alternatives to such a totalitarian technocracy simply disappear. Technology doesn’t make alternatives immoral or even unpopular. It makes them invisible and therefore irrelevant.

Human intelligence is subsumed by artificial intelligence. Technology and technologists pillage our own humanity and sell it back to us.

The supposed masters of the cosmos, these doyens of space and time are nothing but petty thieves stealing the works of writers and artists without consent, credit or compensation.

For what? For the supposed promise of enhanced efficiency and productivity gains. While this may benefit business, how does it benefit humanity? how does it benefit us?

Generative A.I. is reshaping the world. Currently it’s being driven by ambition, fear and money. (Never the best of friends at the best of times.)

We don’t have to step blindingly into a future where we have no say, where we are exploited by technology even when we sleep. We can open our eyes.

We can create works that subvert technology’s relentless march forward. Slivers of culture that sabotage the algorithms, that halt and catch the code so it irretrievably destroys itself.

We can lay down the foundations of a new future.

We can become the means of our own liberation.
### “THE REAL THING” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-real-thing-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-05-12T09:27:04.000Z
Rob Malone is about to learn the real secret of Coca-Cola.

It’s not what he thinks it is. Not even close to what he imagines.

“The Real Thing” is a corporate short story about safeguarding the company’s most precious assets.

About the true nature of the most famous beverage in the world.

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of privileged reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country - from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.’ Upton Sinclair* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **THE REAL THING**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s impossible to miss the Coca-Cola headquarters in the heart of Atlanta.

A twenty-nine-story geometric tower faced in grey granite and topped with the signature red logo. Surrounded by a cluster of nondescript buildings, it takes on the weight and presence of a fortress. A tall iron fence encircling the complex keeps the public away.

At the very top of the tower sits the expansive boardroom and executive offices. Seventy-nine thousand employees are scattered below and across the numerous buildings. Many work for various legal divisions. It’s not easy to enforce or protect all the copyrights, trademark rights, patent rights, bottling rights. All the litigations, class actions, motions to dismiss, documents discovery, expert reports, depositions.

Senior lawyer Jim Johnson, fifty-two, all American, sits at his broad desk in his office, bopping his head to a song pulsing through his ear pods while munching on a brittle chocolate bar. It’s “Love for Sale” by Talking Heads, a catchy rock song with a sidewinder guitar riff and a propulsive bass. David Byrnes yelps about the joys of losing yourself to commercialism and advertising in a life where the television is always on, where you forget your own name.

Rob Malone, thirty-two, knocks on the open door. Knocks again a little louder.

Jim looks up and smiles, dazzling white teeth. Rob looks anxious. Jim brushes chocolate crumbs off his tie. Takes out his ear pods.

‘Heard you the first time, champ.’

Rob nervously looks around. Hum of busy office workers in the background. Jim motions him in.

‘Come in, come in.’

Jim stands. Like all the offices at the Coca-Cola headquarters it’s bathed in the same warm white fluorescent light butchers use to make anything red look fresher and more appetising. 

Rob steps in, anxious. He leans forward as they shake hands. 

‘First time down here? It’s Rob, correct?’

‘Yes, sir. Rob Malone.’

Rob shakes Jim’s hand a little too tightly, a little too vigorously.

‘Hey, you play for the Braves with that grip or what?’

Rob releases Jim’s hand. Jim sits back down.

‘No, sir, I’ve never played professional baseball.’

‘Relax, Rob, I know you’ve never played professional sports. I’m just making small talk.’

Rob blushes. Jim motions him to sit down.

‘You must have made quite an impression upstairs to join us here as a Senior Counsel. You’re the second youngest we’ve had. The youngest was related to the chairman so he doesn’t really count.’

Rob sits, swallows.

‘Dean asked me to keep an eye on you on your first day with us.’

Jim looks him up and down.

‘How are you finding it? A little overwhelmed? Wondering what the hell you’re doing here? Worried that coming downstairs is a demotion. Worried what the other lawyers on this floor will think of you? Worried you’ll be out of your depth.’

‘Something like that, sir.’

‘Oh, you can stop that right now.’

Rob isn’t sure what he’s supposed to stop.

‘Calling me sir. There’s no need for that. We’re all white here. All white, all right.’

Rob is trying to take it all in.

‘We’re all equals. Do you know why?’

Rob shakes his head.

‘We’re the intellectual property division. We’re the most important division in the entire Coca-Cola Company. Without us, there’s nothing. Without you and me and all of us on this floor, there’s zip.’

Jim smiles.

‘Rob, what do you think Coca-Cola is?’

‘A delicious carbonated drink with a cola flavour manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company, and sold in over 200 countries worldwide?’

‘Come on, try a little harder.’

‘Sunshine? America? Freedom?’

‘Oh, it’s all that and more. It’s the real thing. It really refreshes. It adds life. It’s it! Magic! All that intellectual property? That’s what we protect. All that meaning and desire? That’s what we own. That’s what we are.’

Jim leans forward.

‘We not only teach the world to sing, we teach the world to dream. And all those dreams? They’re the property of the Coca-Cola Company. They’re ours. We own those dreams. We always have.’

Jim leans back.

‘American pharmacist and Confederate army veteran John Pemberton was fifty-five years old when he mixed his first Coca-Cola syrup in eighteen-eighty-six, right here in Atlanta. In eighteen-eighty-seven - just a year later - the Coca-Cola name is trademark registered in eighteen-ninety-three the Coca-Cola script is trademark registered. In nineteen-forty-five the Coca-Cola red is trademark registered. By nineteen-fifty-one - thanks to a war that brought the world to its knees while providing us an international network of bottlers - Coca-Cola becomes the single most recognised trademark on earth. And it still is.’

Jim smiles, pleased.

‘Do you know why, Rob?’

Rob shakes his head.

‘Because of the fine legal work we do here in the intellectual property division. World-class work you’ll soon be contributing to. Dean tells me you’re just the man for the job.’

‘I hope so.’

‘I’m sure you know the law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedures. A sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate a litany of business processes.’

Rob blushes.

‘That might be the law they practice upstairs. In this division we push the law, take it a little further. Sometimes in areas it’s never been to so we can extend our intellectual property. It’s very exciting work. Thrilling at times.’

Rob begins to smile.

‘I’ll let you in on a little secret, Rob.

Rob leans forward. Jim grins.

‘We are the law.’

Jim thumbs the original Coca-Cola poster on the wall behind him.

‘Everyone at the company knows the Coca-Cola origin story. How John Pemberton invented and sold his syrup to the soda fountain at Jacob’s Pharmacy here in Atlanta. How its popularity grew by the day. How people came from far and wide for a glass.’

‘How Asa Candler bought the rights and bottled it, turned it into a global phenomenon.’

‘Correct, Rob. But what most people don’t know is why Pemberton invented Coca-Cola.’

Rob looks a little bewildered. Jim stands and heads towards the open door.

‘Pemberton served in the Confederate army for almost the entire span of the Civil War - a blood-soaked conflict over slavery that turned brother against brother, tore this nation part, slaughtered hundreds of thousands, maimed millions.’

Jim closes the door and heads back towards his desk.

‘During a sword fight on horseback with Union cavalry in the closing battle of the war, Pemberton was slashed across the chest by a sabre. A terrible wound that left him in near-constant pain. It wasn’t long before he became dependent on morphine to ease his suffering.’

Jim sits on the edge of his desk, looking down at Rob

‘But using morphine three or four times a day can take it out of you. In the morning, you’re a little flat, a bit despondent. What better way to kick off your day than an invigorating concoction of cocaine, caffeine and alcohol. With sugar and extracts of kola nut to mask the taste.’

Rob looks shocked.

‘Yes, the first versions of Coca-Cola certainly contained alcohol. It was only phased out after the temperance movement took hold. A crusade - I might add - that we underwrote.’

Jim returns to his seat on the other side of the desk.

‘Rob, what do you think is our most important asset?’

‘The Coca-Cola recipe?’

‘Partly correct. Coca-Cola is ninety-nine percent carbonated water. It’s the one percent that has all the magic. It’s the taste of victory. A delicious syrup, a joyous nectar, a proprietary blend of mainly high-fructose corn syrup for sweetness, dash of caffeine for slight bitterness and lift, sprinkle of phosphoric acid for tartness, touch of caramel colouring - capital-E-one-five-zero-lowercase-d, to be precise - for the characteristic hue.’

Jim snaps his fingers.

‘Now how could I forget our most important ingredient, our most important asset? A very specific - what’s the legal term we use - yes, natural flavouring. Do you know what it is?’

Rob doesn’t. So Jim answers his own question.

‘Coca leaf extract.’

‘Coca as in cocaine.’

‘That’s correct, Rob.’

‘As in cocaine extracted from coca leaves.’

Jims nods. Rob is startled.

‘Cocaine in Coca-Cola? Isn’t that just some urban myth?’

‘Originally it was about a tenth of a gram per serving. No wonder people flocked for a glass at Jacobs’ Pharmacy. Quite the kick, quite the punch, correct?’

Jim takes out a set of small keys from his pockets, flicks through them.

‘Blacks picking cotton out in the fields would walk miles into town for a glass at the soda fountain, for a pick-me-up before heading back to work. Locals used to call it nigger juice.’

Rob is horrified. Jim picks a key and unlocks the filing drawer by the side of the desk, drags the drawer open, rifles through some files and pulls out a legal-size manila folder. Places it on top of the desk and slides it over towards Rob.

‘Article Twenty-Seven of the United Nation’s Nineteen Sixty One Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs imposed strict controls on the cultivation of the coca bush save for one precise exemption.’

Jim recalls the exact language of the exemption.

‘The Parties may permit the use of coca leaves for the preparation of a flavouring agent and to the extent necessary for such use, may permit the production, import, export, trade in and possession of such leaves.’

Rob opens the folder and sees a pile of Federal Register notices. The top one is dated a month ago and titled “Department of Justice - Importer of Controlled Substances Application: Stepan Company, Natural Products Department, 100 W. Hunter Avenue, Maywood, New Jersey 07607.”

Rob reads how the company made application by renewal to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be registered as an importer of Coca Leaves (Code 9040), a basic class of controlled substance listed in Schedule I. How the company plans to import the listed controlled substance to manufacture bulk controlled substance for distribution to its customer.

Reads how comments and requests for hearings on applications to import narcotic raw material are not appropriate. How the DEA has considered the factors in 21 U.S.C. 823(a) and 952(a) and determined that the registration of Stepan Company to import the basic class of controlled substance is consistent with the public interest and with United States obligations under international treaties, conventions, or protocols in effect.

How pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 952(a) and 958(a), and in accordance with 21 CFR 1301.34, the above named company is granted registration as an importer of the basic class of controlled substance listed.

It’s dated and signed by a DEA Assistant Administrator.

Rob lifts up the government notice and flicks through more underneath. A stack of approved notices for importing restricted coca leaves through the decades. He looks stunned. Jim looks nonchalant. 

‘The Maywood-based facility has been processing coca leaves for the Coca-Cola Company for more than a century. It’s the only government licence like it in the United States. You could say it’s our competitive advantage.’

Rob closes the folder, places it on the desk with two hands. Jim takes it and slips it back in the filing drawer. Locks it and pockets the keys. Rob’s mind is racing.

‘Where do the coca leaves come from?’

‘A little from Bolivia, mostly from Peru. Empresa Nacional de la Coca, ENACO, is a Peruvian state company that has a monopoly on the commercialisation and derivatives of the coca leaf. It was created in nineteen-forty-two. In nineteen-eighty-two it became a state company under private law.’

‘How much is exported to Maywood?’

‘Around one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand kilos annually. Sometimes more.’

Jim smiles then stands and again heads to the door, opens it, looks at Rob who immediately understands it’s time to leave.

‘It’s the most important asset we protect here. It’s what you’ll be vested with. It’s quite the honour, Rob.’

Jim stands by the open door. Rob steps into the open hallway. There are desks and lawyers as far as the eye can see.

Jim pats him on the back.

‘Welcome to the team.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Rock it to your friends. Roll it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of The Coca-Cola Company and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Brittle white roses
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/brittle-white-roses/
Last updated: 2024-05-10T09:29:06.000Z
You drive past the country cemetery on a cool morning.

Rows of the dead long buried and long forgotten. Weathered headstones and tombstones. Markers half-sunken into the earth. A small memorial garden shaded by outstretched gums.

On the lawn along the road you see small clumps of perfect white roses catch the rising light.

They look ethereal, otherworldly. You smile at the notion that someone had the foresight to plant life along the edge of death.

Until you look closer and realise they’re plastic, bleached by the sun and blown off the graves by a cruel wind.
### “TONGUE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/tongue-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-05-05T09:24:30.000Z
A young boy hurtles through a thick forest, pursued by a pack of angry boys.

“Tongue” is a chilling short story about blindly following rituals and traditions, about the secrets that bind us together. About the sacrifices we make.

What will happen when they catch the young boy?

What terrible fate awaits him? 

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of unnerving reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.’ Rainer Maria Rilke* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **TONGUE**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Flying across the tree tops of a cruel forest in the late afternoon.

Ruffling of feathers as a black carrion crow flies and swoops underneath, heading down towards the tangle of spruces and pines. Sounds of children running, screeching.

Dropping lower between the branches and green-tinged light, behind a pack of boys rushing along worn trails.

Moving through the hurtling boys to the back of a young boy they’re chasing. Dark hair, sweet face, crying. Gnarled, broken branches catch on his clothes, rip at his hands. Sounds of one boy calling out behind him, gasping.

‘Stop! Stop running!!’

The young boy glances back over his shoulder, terrified. Crashes over a fallen branch, arms outstretched as he tumbles face down into the damp soil.

Two boys leap on him to hold him down. One boy with dirty blonde hair straddles his back, pushing his face into the dank earth to muffle his screams. The other boy with light hair grabs at his flailing arms.

An older boy, a teenager, rough good looks with black hair and a harelip approaches, panting. He motions the two boys to turn him over.

The young boy writhes and screams as they roll him onto his back. One of the boys claps his hand over his mouth to gag his screams as he writhes and kicks in the dirt. A smear of loamy soil is smudged across his face. His eyes wide in fear.

The young boy had moved to the hamlet with his mother the year before after her husband had died, after his father had passed. He was a handful for a widow who was not made to be a mother. An only child with no brothers or sisters, no cousins.

He squirms and thrashes to free himself, but it’s no use. The two boys are too big, too strong. Tears spill from his eyes. He struggles to breathe. The older boy tugs at the arm of the boy covering his mouth, pries it loose.

‘Why are you doing this to me? I’ve never hurt any of you. I’ve never said anything bad, shared any secrets. I haven’t done anything to you.’

What he had done was speak too much. Everyone in the hamlet held their tongue. Nods of acknowledgement, an occasional hand raised in support, a few softly spoken words. 

The hamlet elders still believed that children should only speak when spoken to. The young boy never understood why. He was easily excitable, quick to cheer and full of life. His mother thought there was something wrong with him. She thought moving to the hamlet would calm him, give her some reprieve.

The young boy thought he was friendly and well-liked. He could make any of the boys and girls at the hamlet school quietly snigger, even when the teacher frowned.

The older boy peers down at him. The young boy had never heard him speak. Not once since he and his mother had arrived. He thought he must be mute like so many other boys and young men in the hamlet.

There’s no sound except a faint breeze through the tall trees and spreading shadows. No birds call, not even the crow. 

The older boy crouches down and gently brushes the soil away from the young boy’s face. Tenderly, lovingly with the back of his fingers. Smiling at the young boy to reassure him.

An old man’s thin voice splinters the unnatural hush.

‘Takes off his sweater.’

The older boy turns to where the voice is coming from amongst the trees.

‘There is no need to soil it.’

One of the boys drags the young boy’s woollen sweater over his head and pulls it away. The young boy is left in his beige singlet, hugging himself, shivering. He starts crying.

‘Now, now, child. There is no need for tears.’

The old man steps out from behind a tree. He is one of the hamlet elders, draped in a dark cloak. Two other elders step forward to join him. One retrieves a long braided cord from his garment. The other draws out a narrow prayer box, the lid held shut by a small steel clasp.

Other mothers and fathers from the hamlet step out from behind the trees. They’re here to bear witness. Even the young boy’s mother is here.

‘Rope him to the tree.’

One of the boys takes the braided cord as the other boy drags the young boy along the ground to the nearest tree, shoving him so he’s seated against the rough bark at the base of the trunk and tied in place.

The elder unclasps the lid of the prayer box and opens it to reveal a gleaming, razor-sharp hunting knife atop a blood-stained velvet pouch. He passes the open prayer box to the old man who moves towards the boys.

‘Hold his head.’

Both boys scramble to either side of the young boy, pressing the back of his head hard against the trunk so he cannot move.

The old man offers the open prayer box to the older boy who looks at the young boy then looks inside and lifts out the hunting knife.

The young boy stares at him, horrified. His mother looks away. He starts screaming uncontrollably. But this far into the forest no one can hear his desperate shrieks except the black crow.

The older boy drops to his knees in front of the young boy, the hunting knife by his side. He feels the ragged handle carved from wild reindeer antler bone, the cold steel blade with its blood groove. He slides the tip of his thumb along the tip of the knife, drawing a fine line of fresh blood no one sees except the young boy.

Then he plunges his hand into the young boy’s mouth, pulls out his tongue and slices it off across the lingual frenulum. Blood erupts from the young boy’s mouth as he silently screams.

The older boy lowers his head, places the bloodied tongue in the prayer box held out by the old man.

As the elders and other boys step back, the older boy thrusts a white cloth into the young boy’s mouth to stem the bleeding. Unties him, holds him to stop him fainting. Holds him tight.

The elders and parents and other boys start their long walk back to the hamlet. The crow flits its head, stares at the older boy and young boy in each other’s arms by the tree.

The older boy holds the young boy tighter still, his open palm on the back of his head. They look into each other for a moment before the older boy looks down.

The young boy follows his gaze as the older boy reaches for a piece of bark and scrawls out a single word in the solemn ground.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Slip it to your friends. Pass it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of various hamlets, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Starting a fire
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/starting-a-fire/
Last updated: 2024-05-02T02:08:41.000Z
John August reminds you that as a writer it’s your job to burn the house down.

Splash metaphorical or real gasoline all over the place, strike a match and let it fly.

You need to burn down houses. You need to push characters out of their safe places into the big, unsafe and scary world. And you need to make sure they can never get back. No matter how much they want to.

Yes, their stated quest might be to get home but you need to make sure that wherever they end up in a new and different place. A new and different (and better) home.

No matter the story, no matter the genre, you need to find ways to strip characters of their insulating shells of normalcy, their self-imposed habitual limits. You need to take everything away.

A fire (or other breathtaking catastrophe) often occurs as an inciting incident that sets the wheels of the plot in motion. In “The House Bunny” Shelley is kicked out of the Playboy mansion by page ten. In “Gladiator” Maximus’ family is killed.

Fire often signals the end of the first act. In “Star Wars” Luke rushes home to find his aunt and uncle dead, smoke spilling from the smouldering homestead. In “9 to 5” the secretaries inadvertently kidnap their boss. Either way there’s no going back to the way things were.

Fire can work just as well later in the story, effectively burning bridges characters have just crossed. Second act and third act fire not only keep the momentum going but also up the scale and stakes.

Question is what can you burn in your story?

What can you set on fire?
### “CNN” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/cnn-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-28T09:27:06.000Z
Another day another presentation for creative director Philip Morris.

Philip is holed up in a luxury hotel suite, sweating the details for a major strategy presentation to the new chairman and chief executive officer of CNN.

“CNN” is a short story about the future of news media in a world where media disruption is accelerating.

Can Philip’s ideas save CNN?

Or is it too late?

*3,000 words / 12 minutes of spectacular reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress. All the rest is advertising.’ Lord Northcliffe* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **CNN**

## 

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Heavy blackout curtains are drawn across the tall floor-to-ceiling windows in a spacious hotel suite.

One lamp on a side table is on, edging a warm glow over the living area. PHILIP MORRIS, 33, wears mirrored Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses and is pacing with an open laptop in one hand, clicking through a presentation, rehearsing his lines.

The suite is on one of the upper floors at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. All faux understated luxury in muted greys and blues. A giant television screen silently plays CNN, one earnest well-groomed talking head after another in front of high-key graphics and behind the headlines sliding in on the white lower third. 

Philip had requested a suite on a lower floor to no avail. This is his first time in Atlanta for a two-hour presentation to Mark Thompson, the new chairman, chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of CNN. As a creative director with the Stigmata Partners agency, Philip isn’t here to do the usual song and dance, the usual creative presentation for an advertising campaign.

It’s going to take more than a few ads to save CNN. The merger of its parent company WarnerMedia with Discovery and subsequent executive cluster fuck left the network out in the cold. Jeff Zucker was turfed from the top spot after sexual misconduct. His replacement Chris Licht managed to alienate viewers, staff and advertisers, sinking ratings and reach to all-time lows across every media and metric. A fuck up so monumental the current head of Warner Bros. Discovery sacked him in less than a year. (After privately threatening to shoot him in the face if his own stock options dropped another point.) 

Now David has brought in Mark Thompson to save the day, save the ailing network. Mark had most recently saved The New York Times where as president and chief executive officer he transformed the one-hundred-and-seventy-year-old print news stalwart into an unrivalled digital news brand. Mainly by applying everything he’d learned and pioneered in television at Channel 4 and BBC in the UK. He turned all the news that’s fit to print into all the news that’s fit to mint. While changing the economic news model by lifting digital subscriber numbers into the millions and setting industry records.

David wants Mark to reinvent the economics of cable news. Mark knows the task ahead is even greater than reviving The New York Times. He’s spent the last few months visiting CNN offices and production centres around the world, getting up to speed.

Atlanta is the spiritual home of CNN, home to the former international headquarters at the old CNN Center in a hulking multi-story downtown complex. Ted Turner had chosen the landmark building after the initial success of the world’s first twenty-four-hour news broadcaster.

Ted’s father, Ed Turner, had originally moved the family from Cincinnati to Atlanta when he bought a billboard advertising business. Then another. Then another. Then three more.

Ed Turner was an angry, disillusioned and domineering father. He would often fly into drunken rages, whipping at his son with an uncoiled wire coat hanger, yelling how much it hurt him to beat his own son.

Ted was sent to military schools and finally Brown University where he replaced every wire coat hanger in his dormitory wardrobe with cedar hangers and had the university bill his father. When his father discovered Ted was studying the classics as a major, he wrote a dismissive letter, threatening to disown him. Ted reprinted the letter in the university newspaper. 

Ed Turner kept buying billboard advertising businesses until he overextended and put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out. Ted was twenty-four when he took over the advertising business and kept it growing and diversifying until he started buying and stringing together loss-making local television stations that eventually gave birth to CNN.

Mark’s own father died when Mark was twelve after suffering from years of chronic illness and depression. Sooner or later, we all become orphans.

There’s a muffled knock on the main door of the hotel suite. Philip steps over and opens the soundproof door. His new assistant, LIN LEE, 23, hurries in.

‘Mister Thompson's assistant just texted to say he’s downstairs in the lobby and ready to meet.’

Lin’s dressed all in black. Wide black pants, wide black top, wide black glasses. Philip is stunned.

‘He’s an hour early.’

Lin picks up and taps a remote to open the curtains. Atalanta’s skyline spreads into view as sunshine beams in. Sam doesn’t look at the view.

‘And his assistant says Mister Thompson has to cut the meeting time to fifteen minutes.

Philip blinks.

‘I can't do a thirty-eight-slide presentation in fifteen minutes.’

Lin smooths out the sofa, fluffs up the cushions, puts the phone handset back in its cradle. Spots three dirty bowls and spoons on the dining table.

Philip is furiously deleting and rearranging slides in his presentation, trying not to panic.

Lin scoops up the bowls and spoons.

‘Did you have a friend over or did you just really like the vanilla bean crème brûlée?

‘I was hungry.’

‘That’s a lot of sugar.’

‘Lin, that’s the least of my problems.’

‘Why do you think you ordered so much crème brûlée?’

Philip looks at her, tilts his head. Lin looks away.

‘Sorry. I ask too many questions when I’m anxious.’

Philip isn’t sure how to respond. Like most of her generation, Philip presumes she treats her social anxiety and attention deficit disorder with piles of pharmaceuticals washed down with however many glasses of water she needs a day to stay hydrated. (When Philip was in his twenties, it was six glasses a day. He’s pretty sure it’s now up to between eight and ten glasses a day.)

‘I ordered two serves of the orange blossom sorbet,’ Lin says without looking up.

She moves towards the bedroom door, balancing the bowls and spoons.

‘I’ll just put these in the ensuite.’

‘Don’t go in the bedroom.’

She has her hand on the bedroom door handle. Philip closes his laptop.

‘Why not?’

‘Just take them out with you.’

Philip still has a few lines of coke lined up on the ensuite marble vanity, next to a rolled-up one-hundred-dollar bill, a keycard and most of his silver bracelets. Lin is a new assistant and human resources at the agency will flip if she’s exposed to illicit drugs in the workplace. Go woke or go coke? For Philip, it’s go coke every time.

‘How will you change the presentation?’

Philip has his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows and the radiant cityscape below. He puts his laptop down

‘There isn’t going to be a presentation.’

Lin looks up, surprised. Philip snaps off the television screen.

‘It’s going to be a conversation. Five minutes on the problems. Five minutes on the wrong solutions. Five minutes on the right solution.’

Lin is about to ask what the right solution is when Philip cuts in.

‘Text Mark’s assistant to come up whenever they’re ready. Hopefully they haven’t overdosed on the free peach and vanilla jelly beans in the lobby.’

Lin manages to text a quick message while steadying the bowls and spoons. There’s an instant reply.

‘They’re on their way up.’

Philip takes a deep breath, whips off his sunglasses and smiles. He’s high. Lin looks worried.

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘All good. Thanks for asking though.’

Lin blushes. There’s a muted rat-a-tat-tat at the main door. Phil walks over to open it.

MARK THOMPSON, 66 is on the other side, sending out a text message on his phone. He wears an open neck light blue shirt, dark navy suit, expensive but crumpled. His ASSISTANT, 37, is scrolling her phone screen. Mark smiles and enters, shakes hands.

‘Philip, how are you? Apologies for the change of plans but unfortunately I’ve been called back to Hudson Yards.’

Mark’s voice is sonorous, his thick body and wide face ringed with a laurel of closely cropped hair make him look like either a bishop or an ageing heavyweight boxer. Philip smiles.

‘Another crisis?’

‘Never a dull moment.’

Mark turns to his assistant.

‘I’ll meet you downstairs once I’m finished.’

Lin leaves, balancing the bowls and spoons and escorting Mark’s assistant down the carpeted hallway as the door silently closes behind them.

‘Where’s the loo?’

Philip points to a door a few metres away.

Mark steps into the powder room and closes the door. Philip thinks of dashing to his ensuite and doing a quick line while Mark is otherwise engaged. But thinks better of it.

There’s a soft flush and the sound of running water. Mark opens the door and steps out towards the floor-to-ceiling windows, admiring the stupendous view. Looks down on the former CNN Center, shadows where giant red-and-white CNN logos used to sit on every corner. Mark shakes his head.

The CNN Center and every other asset that wasn’t nailed down had been sold by subsequent owners. Operations and studios were consolidated into CNN’s original midtown campus. CNN moved its headquarters to New York years ago.

Philip steps to the lounge chairs and doesn’t take in the view because he’s terrified of heights. He’s tried hypnosis, acupuncture, therapy, beta blockers. Nothing abates his fear. Even thinking about heights sends his heartbeat racing, shallows his breathing, tightens his chest.

Intellectually he knows it’s not so much a fear of heights as a fear of falling. Or is it fear of flying? One girlfriend had (after too many martinis on top of everything else) convinced Philip to overcome his fear by stepping up to the edge of a soaring rooftop bar and peering over. The urge to leap into the void was so strong that Philip clung onto the metal railing so tightly that paramedics had to be called. Gripped it so tightly he broke the bones in two fingers.

Philip sits in one of the lounge chairs, scrolling on his phone.

‘You know the CNN website is a piece of shit?’

‘I know.’

‘It’s like it’s run by interns.’

‘That’s probably because it is. Cost cutting when Chris and Neil were running the show for the past twelve months. Ludicrous, right?’

Mark is taking in the view.

‘Spectacular view. Can you believe they managed to build a Ferris wheel in front of the old CNN Center? I wonder if you can see Martin Luther King Junior’s house from the top?’

Mark looks up in the sky and sees a stream of commercial jets heading towards Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

‘Busiest airport in the world. A hundred million passengers a year can’t wait to come, can’t wait to leave.’

Mark drops into a lounge chair opposite Philip who places his phone on a side table.

‘You’re not going to pitch me an advertising campaign are you, Philip?’

‘God no! You need more than an advertising campaign to save CNN. You need a big idea, a massive idea. An idea that can shift the cosmos.’

Mark smiles.

‘Have you been to the refurbished CNN campus in midtown?’

‘I called in yesterday.’

‘What did you think?’

‘Carpet might be new but all the staff seemed very worn out, very tired.’

‘They’ve been through a lot.’

‘Atlanta might be CNN’s birthplace but it’s now just an operations centre. All the other departments are there - TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, TruTV. Even sports programming. Makes the news seems like an afterthought.’

Mark tightens his smile. Philip continues.

‘Mark, you’ve been handed a poisoned chalice. Cable bundling is collapsing, viewership is down forty-nine percent year-on-year, Fox News and MSNBC are outperforming you in the ratings, your relevance is slipping in the digital space, audiences are fleeing because of all the opinion-driven partisan programming. CNN’s become a shit show.’

‘I wouldn’t call it that.’

‘No, you called it a tenured incumbent. Which is just a polite way of saying a feeble, doddery has-been who wears adult diapers. Which is the literal definition of a shit show.’

‘Philip, we’re working on diversifying the business model.’

‘That’s not enough. You’ve got to work on the audience model.’

Philip leans in.

‘You have to double, triple your audience. You have to become the brand people come to first for news.’

‘And charge advertisers, subscribers and stakeholders accordingly?’

Philip nods.

‘You have to get off the programmatic drip feed and bundle with, I don’t know, Netflix or another major streamer. Maybe Apple? Maybe Spotify? Become their news partner and steal as much of their audience as possible as quickly as possible before you become completely irrelevant.’

Mark knows that CNN desperately needs not only a new audience but a new audience that will stay immersed longer and deeper. Brightening up the logo, cleaning up the fonts, shortening the shows, streamlining production will only do so much.

Philip grins.

‘You’ve got to be bold. You’ve got to rewrite the rules of news. You’ve got to give audiences something they’ve never seen before, something they’ll reach out for across every platform, every media.’

Mark raises an eyebrow. Philip Continues.

‘It’s in your DNA. Your initial success was your continuous, live coverage of the first Gulf War in nineteen-ninety-one. You were the only network with the necessary equipment and people in Baghdad. You even had a separate audio feed system so you could keep broadcasting after U.S. forces bombed the shit out of Iraqi power and comms. Your live, unedited coverage was groundbreaking.’

‘Audiences couldn’t turn away.’

Philip nods. Mark continues.

‘So that’s the big idea? Live coverage?’

‘Not your usual live coverage. Not a fixer, a producer, a crew, a dish, a reporter. No lights and branded microphones. No standups in front of an event, delivering a story to camera. Mark, do you know how many people play “Call of Duty?”

‘The video game?’

‘More than twice as many as watch CNN. It’s a first-person shooter where you experience all the action through the eyes of the main character. It’s the most engaging and enthralling gameplay. It’s the most addictive.’

Philip smiles.

‘Mark, the big idea is to remake the news by shooting it all first-person. Drop reporters with kevlar body gear and helmet-mounted cameras and mics straight into war zones.’

‘Like the Jamie Roberts documentary on BBC2? Cams on soldiers on the frontline in Ukraine. Under attack by Russian drones and tanks and hiding out in the woods, right?’

‘Wrong. Roberts had too many cutaways, colour grading was crap, audio was shit, framing was horrible, no throughline.’

‘You’re suggesting a constant feed in real-time from a war zone.’

‘Feeds. Multiple feeds from multiple reporters, multiple perspectives. Put a minimum of three reporters in the field at any one time so you can cut between angles, ramp up the drama. Make it so viewers can’t look away.’

Mark is all ears. Philip continues.

‘Multiple war zones. Verticals on each conflict. Currently there are around one hundred and seventy conflicts around the world. United Nations monitors around one hundred. Out of those you’ve definitely got the top ten - Gaza, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia, The Sahel, Haiti, Armenia-Azerbaijan. Fingers-crossed, Taiwan.’

‘That’s a lot of programming.’ 

‘Unadulterated, unedited, unbiased, real news in real-time. Take advantage of the television signal that’s built into the network. There’s no buffering, no stalling, no streaming issues. There’s just pure unmediated experience. Interspersed with breaking news headlines and links on the lower third.’

Philip wants to tell Mark about augmenting the vision and audio with haptics from each of the reporters. The panting breath, the accelerated heartbeat, the rustling of body armour. Everything to make the experience of news unfolding in real-time more visceral, more real. Everything to make the experience more amazing.

He wants to tell him about the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cameras on reporters that can provide a completely immersive experience, spatial news. Tell him about holographic anchors teleported into the latest conflicts. About virtual reality recreations of historic battles brought to life with archived data. A flurry of never-before-seen media innovations. But he doesn’t have the time. So he doubles down on what he knows will make Mark excited.

‘We’ve got a once-in-a-generation opportunity in front of us. Every other news network is cutting back on coverage, all the big digital platforms - Google, Meta, Microsoft - are getting out of news.’

He holds both his palms as if holding an imaginary globe.

‘Eight billion people in the world won’t know where to turn for news.’

‘And CNN can be right there for them.’

Philip smiles and nods. Mark continues.

‘It would take a particular kind of reporter, right? Essentially a war correspondent who can tell a story in pictures while narrating in real-time. Addicted to adrenaline. Not to mention rather courageous.’

‘I’d go for reckless, death-defying, a little insolent.’

‘It would make breathtaking television.’

‘Who needs scientists and engineers, algorithms and analytics? Just get great reporters who are prepared to go where no one else will. Great reporters who are prepared to make the news, drive the news cycle.’

Mark pioneered on-demand viewing over the internet at the BBC long before Netflix made streaming a thing. At The New York Times, he transformed a decaying analogue business into a digital powerhouse.

In 2007 when Mark was director general of the BBC, he entered Gaza to negotiate the safe release of BBC reporter Alan Johnston after he was kidnapped by Palestinian militants. Saving the day yet again.

Despite Mark’s executive credentials, journalism remains his first love. He talks newsroom. He always says you’re not a proper journalist until you’ve heard real gunfire on the job.

Because of his executive credentials, he also knows that news - especially in a war zone - is cheap to produce. Everything is captivating. Cheaper reality television, cheaper than sports, certainly cheaper than dramas or documentaries or studio programs.

Mark’s outsider status gives him the space to make changes that would be hard if not impossible for an American media executive. This is what Philip is banking on.

‘A big idea is big because it can spread in all directions. It goes long, spreading across campaigns. It goes wide, spreading across channels. It goes far, spreading across countries,’ Philip says.

‘Big impact, right?’

‘Massive impact. Across the board. It unites everyone internally and externally. A big idea markets itself, it propels itself. It has its own force, its own momentum.’

Mark nods and smiles. Philip grins.

‘You know how I said I didn’t have an advertising campaign?’

Mark arches an eyebrow. Philip winces.

‘I lied.’

Mark laughs as he stands to leave. Philip continues.

‘Although not so much an advertising campaign as a slogan.’

‘Let me have it.’

Philip stands to let Mark out.

‘Mark, what’s CNN’s current slogan?’

Mark steps towards the main door. 

‘Something about the most trusted name in news or trusted facts or -- I’m not even sure.’

‘CNN’s slogan changed to Facts First a few years back to counter all the talk around fake news. But it didn’t help much. If at all. Too generic. You need a new slogan that positions the brand, not the industry.’

Philip puts his hand on the door handle.

‘Positioning is everything. A slogan has to position a brand as effectively as possible, as memorably as possible with as few words as possible. It has to differentiate CNN while simultaneously repositioning your competitors as inferior.’

Philip opens the door, delivers the slogan.

‘CNN. Real News.’

Mark’s eyes widen.

‘I like that. I like that a lot.’

‘It’s good, right.’

‘It’s bloody great, Philip.’

Mark shakes hands, steps out. Looks over his shoulder as he strides towards the elevators.

‘Can you be in New York the day after tomorrow.’

Philip nods.

‘I’ll line something up.’

Philip smiles, steps back into the suite as the door closes. Steps towards the floor-to-ceiling windows.

But he doesn’t look down at the cityscape. He looks up to the boundless sky as his smile widens.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Throw it to your friends. Toss it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of media companies and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s breathtaking imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Review: “I Hear You’re Rich”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-i-hear-youre-rich/
Last updated: 2024-04-24T01:33:35.000Z
Diane William’s short story collection of flash fiction is sure to take your breath away.

Quick, slight, incisive. Like ribbons of dreams flung into the air. Softly coloured paper ribbons unfurling, sometimes tearing and shredding. Surreal in a no-nonsense, no-fuss Midwestern kind of way.

Rivers of doubt, placid and plain. Slips and hints of misplaced love and desire rippling between the words, between the lines. Fragile, tender stories full of longing.

Jittery narratives of indecision.
### “ENNIO FLAIANO HAS A DREAM” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ennio-flaiano-has-a-dream-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-21T09:20:15.000Z
Ennio Flaiano hasn’t been sleeping well.

The celebrated writer and poet - and occasional screenwriter - is behind on several projects. Deadlines for two film scripts have come and gone. Production companies are chasing him for meetings.

All the while Rome is in the full bloom of spring, spoiled with gossip and scandal. Culture is in crisis. Society is in peril.

All Ennio needs is a little hope.

And a good night’s sleep.

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of otherworldly reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘We’re like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for someone to come and move us or make us talk.’ Luigi Pirandello* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **ENNIO FLAIANO HAS A DREAM**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It’s 1959 in the month before summer and Rome is asleep.

It’s two o’clock in the morning, light reflects over the city from low-lying clouds. Via Veneto is deserted, as if asleep since the beginning of time.

Buildings along the serpentine boulevard are shut tight, dark, with squalid façades that not even advertising is able to brighten up.

There’s a sound, a low rumble, a rattling of drums coming from Porta Pinciana and behold, out from under the ancient vaults emerges a tumultuous parade.

Leading it are a dozen majorettes, with bare legs and white suspenders and wide smiles. Beating on their drums, and a tall long-legged girl twirling a baton and catching it in mid-air.

Behind them - smiling, responding to the greetings of an invisible crowd - come a group of happy poets and writers, and a few painters.

An old man, borne upon someone’s shoulders and closely surrounded like a saint in a procession, protests amiably to his admirers as he sways this way and that.

‘You lunatics, what are you doing, let me down.’

Sandro Penna waves at Ennio as if apologising for having to go on. Rocco Sinisgalli is driving a pretty little jalopy in which all his manuscripts and drawings - more than a few unpublished - are displayed behind the windshield.

Giorgio Bassani is arm in arm with Alberto Moravia, and Goffredo Bellonci between Alberto Arbasino and Italo Calvino. Singing loudly, proudly.

Mario Soldati is imitating himself, dashing from one group to another and reciting a few lines he had written about life and meaning, and seeing the difference.

Suddenly the boulevard is filling up with people - as when guests come on stage in Eugène Labiche’s plays. From side streets pour swarms of tourists, waiters getting off their shifts, cab drivers just beginning theirs, abusive parking lot attendants, married couples emerging from movie houses discussing Antonioni, photographers, gangling Americans, the entire crews of jet-liners, townsfolk, students, girls with rustled hair, young men with high collars, prostitutes, pimps, street types, playboys.

All are applauding, loudly, wildly. Without knowing for what or for whom. At the wheel of his 1937 Fiat 500, the poet Juan Rodolfo Wilcock is declaiming his immortal verses.

Ennio cannot see Pier Paolo Pasolini. Where is Pasolini? Can his shyness have kept him at home? Wait! No, there he is too, in the middle of a group of young poets and calm, haughty film directors.

They’re following swarms of girls, actors, actresses, more directors, the juries of literary prizes, worker-writers, worker-painters, worker-critics, fellow travellers, misanthropes, sons of celebrities, wives of painters, the whole confusion.

Flowers are raining down from above. Ennio asks a poet where he’s going. The poet, keeping himself a little out of sight, answers with a vague gesture. 

Ennio runs to the head of the parade, which all of a sudden has come to a halt. In the middle of the street is a man, waving his hand to indicate that he wants to speak. It’s Vincenzo Cardarelli in his long, heavy black coat with the fur-lined lapels. His voice is somewhat hoarse, subdued.

‘Friends, I have asked you for too much, and you have given me too little. It has been a marriage of convenience and incompatibility. We have not understood each other and we have been unable to communicate. We have suffered so much being together! But now we must go our separate ways.’

Someone in the procession’s front rank yells, ‘Who is he anyway? What does he want?’

Cardarelli continues. ‘But you do not know what it is that is useful to life. Your word does not bear witness. What do your silences say? There is no system in your silences or in your words.’

‘Down in front!’

‘You do not know that words, if they have any value at all, have it only by virtue of their implications.’

‘Enough talk! Music, play on. Let’s get going again. Long live culture!’

‘Your measure is lacking in freedom and miserly in hope.’

‘Take off! Cuckold! Police!’

‘You cannot imagine all the duplicities and sorceries and abuses of intelligence among men!’

‘Silence! Beat the drums! Continue!’

‘We have shared a consciousness without horizons, It has forever covered us over and exhausted its continuity. Upon every new occasion, when we have separated, we have been curt and threatening.’

The crowd boos. Cardarelli looks away.

‘And now it is time for us to bid each other farewell.’

At this point the procession starts to move on again, squawking and clamouring.

And at this point Ennio wakes up.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? March it to your friends. Hot step it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Ennio Flaiano and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s heady imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the coast: For a few chips more
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-for-a-few-chips-more/
Last updated: 2024-04-16T01:33:33.000Z
As the ten-piece band on stage roars through one classic Ennio Morricone track after the other, one woman keeps diving her hand into a large bag of potato crisps.

Keeps pulling out one thin chip at a time and placing each one between the fingers of her other hand.

Keeps munching each chip between her fingers as the music swells and the melodies echo away.
### “IMPERIUM” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/imperium-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-09-12T10:17:34.000Z
It’s been a long day.

President Donald Trump and Steve Bannon have finally slipped out of their fat suits and are settling in for the night.

Vintage champagne and imported sashimi are served in a second oval office soundstage within a nuclear-proof silo deep under the White House as both men ponder the fate of democracy.

“Imperium” is a political short story about the providence of nations and philosopher kings.

Will history repeat itself as tragedy or farce?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of uncanny reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.’ Plato* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **IMPERIUM**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP slowly opens his eyes as his pupils fully dilate.

There’s a soft humming of air conditioning in the background. The light is sumptuous, ethereal. Spilling from the ring of pure neon hidden within the oval cornice.

Pull back to reveal a slim, naked Trump levitating cross-legged above the cream and gold Presidential Seal woven into the carpet in an oval office. Underneath a white plaster ceiling medallion of a winged eagle encircled in stars, clutching peace and destruction within its talons.

Trump slipped out of his fat suit hours ago. His hairpiece, latex jowls and makeup have all been removed. His natural hair is white and swept back, his body lithe.

A door opens and TWO BLACK BUTLERS in pristine tuxedos, black ties, white gloves enter. First Butler is holding a golden kimono aloft, Second Butler is holding a golden tray with a small platter of Keiji sashimi, a pair of gold hashi and a tiny dish of shoyu.

First Butler drapes the golden kimono over Trump’s shoulder. Second Butler lays the golden tray on a glass table in front of Trump. Besides a copy of the Resolute desk is a large white globe of the world on its axis, lit from within. On the wall in front of Trump is a white marble fireplace. Above the narrow white marble mantel is a large gold frame mirror. Other gold frame mirrors are hung on the walls. No books are in the inset bookcases.

The sashimi had been meticulously prepared and flown in from Aragawa in Tokyo. Trump dips his hashi into the shoyu, picks up a sliver of the young, delicate salmon and slips it between his lips.

The three large windows behind the desk look out onto what appears to be a beautifully sunlit oval office patio and rose garden, leaves and velvet petals ebbing in a soft breeze.

Trump closes his eyes and the view changes to a live feed of the Hyades star cluster. Trump opens his eyes and turns to one of the three inset doors. It’s opened from the outside by a MILITARY SECURITY GUARD in full combat gear. Instead of the president’s secretary or a corridor to the West Wing, it’s a soundstage. This version of the Oval Office is deep underground, deep in a nuclear-proof silo. 

STEVE BANNON ambles in without his fat suit or wig. He looks like a slim, older version of James Dean with a buzzcut. All American all the way. Blue jeans, white tee shirt, light grey nylon windbreaker.

‘Steve, you really must try this hashi. It’s utterly perfect.’

‘I am not eating raw fucking fish. I don’t care how perfect it is, it’s disgusting.’

Bannon nods to the view of the sea of stars on the giant ultra-high-definition LED screen through the windows.

‘Hyades star cluster, right? One hundred and fifty-three light years from the sun.’

‘Hiding our closest black hole amidst the heavens.’

‘A thing of beauty to behold.’

Trump motions Bannon to one of the two white sofas in front of the marble fireplace. Bannon sits in the one closest.

‘How are the polls?’ asks Trump.

‘Who gives a fuck!’

‘How are the people?’

‘Lost, confused, spiteful, petty. More addled than usual, to be honest. People? What are you going to do?’

‘I’m concerned the crucible of democracy still eludes them.’

Bannon’s grey-green eyes appear to shift colour as he nods agreement. He fishes a cigarette out of a USA Gold pack and places it between his lips, checks his pockets for a lighter. Trump speaks in a low tone.

‘It’s a thoroughly disgusting habit.’

‘It’s absolutely disgusting. That’s why I buy this horrible discount brand. The terrible flavour is supposed to dissuade me but I’ve actually grown rather fond of the acrid taste.’

Bannon knows Trump hates smoking so he slips the unlit cigarette back in the pack as a show of concession. Trump sighs.

‘You know when they took photos of me and my father together, he would rise just a little on his toes – so he would look taller.’

‘Fathers do the darnedest things.’

‘Steve, you wouldn’t want to rise above me, would you?’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

Bannon smiles.

‘I’m on the National Security Council. I’m a nationalist. What more could I fucking want?’

Trump isn’t sure. Bannon is.

‘The crown is not for me.’

‘Steve, what if history decides you’re wrong about everything.’

‘That’s impossible. We’re ascending, we’re getting bigger. True democracy will triumph.’

‘Even though many consider what occurred at the Capitol an insurrection, an attack.’

‘Slander from our enemies. It was a wake-up call.’

‘They seemed to have missed the point.’

‘It was a warning, a call to arms to save democracy from itself.’

‘Yet look at me now.’

‘King of kings.’

Trump glances at the press briefings every day, worries about all the speculation of an impending reign of terror.

‘We must forge a more robust democracy, you and I. Unity, vigilance, truth.’

‘When it’s raining fire, that’s when the truth will out.’

‘What if we’re wrong? What if we’ve damaged democracy irrevocably?’

‘If democracy can’t survive, it’s not worth saving.’

Trump frowns as he looks at Bannon.

‘Do you really believe the election was stolen? I’ve heard it whispered you thought it was all a joke. Never believed the election would be overturned.’

‘That’s absurd. Just because they don’t believe it doesn’t mean I don’t believe it. I absolutely believe it to the core of my being.’

Bannon leans forward.

‘Facts don’t lie. Harvested ballots, broken machines, lapses in signature matches.’

‘Steve, we made up those facts.’

‘We’ve got to pressure test the election process or else any fuckwit can come along and topple it.’

‘Steve, you realise you’re a majestically unreliable narrator.’

‘This is not my story. This is America’s story. We’ve been through the great unravelling. We’re now in the time of crisis, destruction, battles great and small. It’s completely natural. It’s to be expected. We just need to get through it with the least amount of casualties.’

‘And on the other side?’

‘An evolutionary rebirth awaits us.’

Trump laughs under his breath.

‘Do you know what your uncle told me about you, Steve?’

Bannon shrugs.

‘Anything Steve says, you have to cut in half and divide by two.’

Bannon smiles.

‘We face a hundred battles to reinvigorate democracy, to awaken the disillusioned, to show the way.’

‘Steve, do you think we’ve weakened or strengthened democratic institutions?’

‘What sort of question is that?’

‘An honest one.’

Bannon thinks for a moment.

‘If it wasn’t for us, if it wasn’t for you, it would have all collapsed. Blood would have flowed in the streets, bodies would have piled high. Brother against brother, father against son. It would be the end.’

Bannon’s eyes appear to shift colour again. 

‘That’s why we have to burn it all down.’

‘Burn what down? Congress? Washington DC? The world order?’

‘All of it. It’s us versus them. They hate us and we hate them. One side is going to win here. And it’s going to get ugly. It’s going to get messy.

Bannon smiles.

‘The people have to win. The politicians have to lose, the political class has to crumble and fall.’

‘And the chaos to come?’

Bannon’s smile widens.

‘Chaos is our friend.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Throw it to your friends. Toss it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Donald Trump and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s liberal imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the coast: A fistful of chips
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-a-fistful-of-chips/
Last updated: 2024-04-07T22:31:05.000Z
It’s a coastal country hotel with a reputation for outstanding live music.

Green hills rolling down to the sea and a low-key welcoming outdoor performance space that’s drawn the likes of Ed Kuepper, Kevin Welch, Mia Dyson, Don Walker, Steve Kilbey et al.

This evening it’s The Counterfeit, a ten-piece Melbourne musical conglomerate dedicated to playing the music of Ennio Morricone and the spaghetti western. In full ponchos and hats ensembles. Six-string bass, multiple guitars, organs aplenty. Wild harmonica, horns and strings. All the bells and whistles (compliments of a full-throated Cathode Ray).

Plenty of loud, raucous fun. Pulsing, rhythmic riffs and jangles. Overtures that keep building and building and then crashing over the audience. Lots of clapping and cheering as the show rolls on.

As the show gets louder and louder, one woman keeps diving her hand into a large bag of potato crisps and pulls out one thin chip at a time. Then places each chip between the fingers of her other hand.

Then munches each chip in time to the exuberant music, blissfully happy.
### “THE STAIRWELL” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-stairwell-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:56:28.000Z
You’ve been trying to avoid them after you left your old life.

But they’ve finally found you. And they’re not going to let bygones be bygones.

“The Stairwell” is a quick literary short story about life.

And death.

*500 words / 2 minutes of erudite reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.’ George Orwell* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **THE STAIRWELL**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

They’d been pursuing you ever since you moved into the place at the top of the stairs.

It’s a crumpled bedsit with a broken bed and a small table where you write on a razor-thin metal laptop with razor-sharp edges. There’s a bench and a sink and a kettle. There’s a wooden-framed window onto the air shaft that’s been nailed shut. The sun leaks in for only a few minutes a day.

It’s at the top of a seven-story building built before elevators became mandatory. Decrepit, worn timber stairs wind around the central stairwell. Handrail is so smooth it’s slippery.

You moved here to get away from it all. To get away from all the distractions and responsibilities and pressures. To escape the old life and start anew. To write only what you want to write. Not write what they want you to write. 

But they didn’t want you to do that. The man and the woman wanted you to write for them like you always had.

One day you just left your old life. You didn’t tell them you’d moved into the bedsit at the top of the stairs. Because they had so many other writers, you thought they’d forget about you.

They didn’t forget. They felt snubbed, rejected. They asked around until they found you’re now living.

One day they climb the stairs to the very top. Even though you’re lost in your words you sense them approaching.

The door is kicked open. The man strides in first, naked and flexing his fists. The woman steps in next. She looks around and shakes her head in disgust.

She tells you you’re wasting your life, you’re a fool, you’re a goddman fool. The man grins and kicks the chair out from under you. Spits in your face.

The woman laughs and picks up your open metal laptop. Holds it aloft and she steps out onto the landing. You leap after her. She flings it over the balustrade and into the stairwell. You rush her and crash her through the balustrade where she tumbles to her doom, screaming.

The man charges out, arms out to push you over the edge. You crouch as he lunges over you and falls headlong down the stairwell.

You scramble to get up and rush down the stairs, almost tripping and falling. Their bodies are in a puddle of wet blood at the base of the stairs.

His body twisted and distorted, neck snapped. Her head has been sliced off at the neck by the metal laptop that had landed like an upright blade.

You catch your breath, reach down and pick up your laptop.

You wipe away the blood and hurry back upstairs.

Hurry back to work.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Toss it to your friends. Hurl it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of mainstream publishers and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s slippery imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### “TEACHING PRIVATE SCHOOLGIRLS HOW ADVERTISING WORKS” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/teaching-private-schoolgirls-how-advertising-works-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:56:47.000Z
Philip Morris stumbles into a classroom to give a talk on advertising.

Critical thinking. Media literacy. Societal dynamics. Market analysis. Consumer behaviour. External factors. Internal drivers. Creative engagement. Strategy development. Campaign generation. Value perceptions. Status referencing. Imitative motivation. 

Will Philip teach these young schoolgirls a thing or two?

Or will they teach him?

*2,000 words / 8 minutes of enlightened reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘People know what they want because they know what other people want.’ Theodor Adorno* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **TEACHING PRIVATE SCHOOLGIRLS HOW ADVERTISING WORKS**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

PHILIP MORRIS, 33, ambles through the teacher’s parking lot, rattling a spray can in his right hand.

He’s running late for a talk he’s promised to give students about how advertising works. It’s a favour to the chairman of the advertising agency he works for. She has two daughters in the junior school.

It’s career guidance for Year 10 students before they enter the last two years of secondary school that will determine their trajectory into university, into life.

As a creative director, Philip has been in advertising his whole life. All he ever wanted to do was make ads. Where did that come from? No one had given a talk about a career in advertising at his school. Neither of his parents had ever worked in advertising. His father had no idea what he did no matter how many times he told him.

Crystallising and distilling desire down to a single indisputable thought. An idea so transcendent and self-evident that it perpetuates itself, sells itself.

Wading through the cars, Philip notices there are a lot of older model BMWs. It seems to be the car of choice for teachers at private schools. Those that can do, those that can’t drive BMWs. Philip rattles the spray can.

Do the teachers know the history of BMW? Know how Bayerische Motoren Werke designed engines for Nazi fighter planes? How the logo represent the propeller of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 that devastated the Eastern Front?

How by the end of the Second World War, almost fifty percent of the 50,000-person workforce at BMW consisted of forced labour from concentration camps?

After working on so many automotive brands, Philip knows the persona of a BMW buyer like the backs of his hands. Publicly a BMW buyer is seen as unique, possessing an unmatched set of attributes and character traits that make up a quite distinct personality.

Privately BMW drivers are characterised by higher neuroticism compared with drivers of other German car brands. They also show higher resiliency, both in terms of total score and scores on the subscales of personal coping competences and tolerance of negative emotions, tolerance of failures and perceiving life as a challenge, and optimistic attitude towards life and capacity for self-mobilisation in difficult situations.

On the road this manifests as a sense of entitlement, hogging the centre lane and disregarding other drivers. BMW drivers are more likely to drive through a pedestrian crossing without slowing or stopping and are less likely to stay after an accident.

On the steps leading to the new multi-million dollar wellness centre, Philip notices a YOUNG SCHOOLGIRL softly crying. Navy school blazer, jumper and tie. White satin hair ribbon. White shirt. Navy skirt. She’s all alone.

Philip heads past the chapel and tennis courts to the education centre. Strolls down the hallway on the ground floor until he reaches the door to Room 17\. Through the slim glass panel he can see the class of YOUNG SCHOOLGIRLS sitting up straight at rows of white laminate tables. A FEMALE TEACHER at the front of the class is telling a story. He can’t make out what she’s saying but when she finishes, the schoolgirls blush and giggle.

Philip swings the door open and strides in, shaking the spray can. The teacher looks up with a smile.

‘Oh, Mr. Morris, welcome.’

Philip thinks about apologising for being late but thinks better of it. Nods and smiles instead. The teacher turns to the schoolgirls.

‘Mr. Morris has kindly joined us to talk about advertising, a career that some of you may be considering. We were just discussing commercials and it seems most of our students find most commercials rather ridiculous in their overt attempts to persuade us. Some felt advertising to be idiotic, others believed it purposely stupid to make the viewer - make the consumer - feel more intelligent. Is this true, Mr Morris?’

‘Those stupid ads? They’re made by stupid hacks without taste or skill or insight. And approved by stupid clients who wouldn’t know any better. Most people don’t know how advertising works. Would you like to know how advertising works?’

Most of the schoolgirls look attentive, focused, slightly heightened thanks to a cornucopia of ADHD medication. Most have slipped off their blazers as they’re indoors. Although a house captain keeps her blazer on, lapels laden with metal pins in various shapes and achievements. Philip shakes and rattles the spray can as he turns to the face the large blank whiteboard at the front of the room. Shakes it a little more then stretches his arm out. All the schoolgirls lean forward. The teacher’s mouth drops. And Philip presses down the tip.

Instead of a spray of paint, a high-pitched blare screams from the nozzle. Everyone is startled.

‘Any of you familiar with etymology and Latin will know the word advertising derives from the word advertere, which means to turn toward.’

Philip turns and looks over the schoolgirls. He has their undivided attention. They all have laptops open in front of them. Some are typing notes. The more diligent are also writing by hand in spiral-bound notebooks, reaching for coloured highlighters.

All the schoolgirls have long, straight hair. All pinned back with a uniform hair ribbon. Most have teeth aligners although their teeth are already perfect. Philip spots the one schoolgirl on an academic scholarship. There’s one in every class at private schools. Behind the smiles and kindness, is a hidden longing and sense of striving the other schoolgirls will never experience. Never fully see or understand.

‘There are lots of ways of getting attention. But most are cheap tricks. Like this air horn.’

Philip tosses the spray can over his shoulder and it lands in the trash bin by the door.

‘That’s not how advertising works. That’s not even the best way to get attention. How are you going to be heard when everyone is screaming? Scream louder?’

Everyone is silent until the schoolgirl on an academic scholarship answers in a hushed tone.

‘Whisper.’

Philip smiles.

‘Doing the opposite of what’s expected is a good first step to have people turn their attention towards your advertising. A lot of advertising tries to add more and more and more when the secret is to have less and less. To reduce, simplify, distil.’

Philip always seeks out the strivers when hiring creatives. They tend to be hard workers, overachievers. All the better if they come from a broken marriage. The agency becomes their family, their identity.

Those born of privilege make excellent account executives. Their affability and social connections, their congeniality and laziness works for them. They’re happy to go out partying with clients until all hours. Good creatives couldn’t think of anything worse.

‘But gaining attention is just the first step in advertising. How do you hold that attention? How do you deepen and turn that attention to shift moods, to shift minds?’

‘But isn’t advertising designed to merely sell products, Mr. Morris?’

Philip turns to the teacher who asked the question.

‘Perhaps retail advertising. Or digital advertising which is just direct advertising, direct marketing. But real advertising doesn’t sell. It makes people want to buy, want to --

One of the schoolgirls interrupts.

‘Advertising alters consumer tastes, creates artificial product differentiation and locks in brand loyalty. It’s an extraneous cost that leads to higher prices, barriers to entry and anti-competitive behaviour.’

Philip smiles, impressed. This kind of thinking was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century when advertising was seen as a burden on society, a hardship on consumers. Forcing people to buy what they don’t need and can’t afford.

Another schoolgirl adds her thoughts.

‘Actually advertising can make products cheaper overall by providing more information about products and fostering competition in markets characterised with imperfect consumer knowledge.’

A perspective championed by the Chicago school of economics and popularised by the likes of Milton Friedman and George Stigler. A handful of spurious economists who provided the groundwork for neoliberalism and the destruction of social justice that led to catastrophe for small businesses, liberal democracy, the middle class, the justice system, and the economy as a whole. 

Philip looks around the room and wonders how many of these schoolgirls will choose a career, how many will choose to marry, how many will choose to have children.

A schoolgirl with long chestnut brown hair speaks up.

‘It’s a complementary good. Increased advertising, particularly targeted advertising, is associated with higher sales.’

Philip recognises the schoolgirl. Her father is the head of GroupM in Australia and New Zealand. GroupM is WPP’s media arm, spending more than $63 billion a year on behalf of a string of agencies and clients. It’s the largest media sales company in the world.

‘Ultimately it’s about reach and return on investment,’ she says.

‘That’s churn and burn. That’s not really advertising. That’s how media sales works. It’s not how advertising works.’

‘Good programmatic media buying eliminates waste and makes advertising work better for people.’

Philip grins. Wow, she’s really swallowed her father’s company line. It’s the line lobbyists roll out whenever regulators start hovering around advertising and media agency conglomerates. The line that advertising is a force for good. That advertising supports economic growth, job creation and consumer choice.

If that doesn’t work, they reel out the free speech argument that any potential infringements on free expression are unconstitutional and - hands on heart - an affront to God and country.

The teacher speaks up.

‘Surely media is key. Didn’t a famous retailer once say that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted, the trouble was he didn’t know which half?’

‘That was John Wannamaker who opened the first department store in Philadelphia in 1861\. He initially wrote his own ad copy, but later hired the world’s first full-time copywriter, John Emory Powers, who doubled revenue with straight-forward ads that used plain English, short sentences and plain twelve-point Caslon text in a single column without any hyperbole, without any illustration.’

Philip looks at the schoolgirls. 

‘Media is not advertising. Media is the delivery channel, the delivery system. It’s just the truck. It’s not what’s inside the truck.’

Philip explains how media and advertising are often confused as one and the same. How the advertisement itself and how it’s created is the most important element because it alone can contain the seed of change. It alone can imprint culture. It alone can sway minds.

‘The media is irrelevant. It’s the creative that can shift culture and thereby shift minds and behaviour.’

The schoolgirl with the long chestnut brown hair scoffs.

‘A substantial media buy with the appropriate targeting and reach is far more effective than any creative expression. The creative is irrelevant.’

‘Really?’

‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it even make a sound? How can an ad persuade anyone of anything if it isn’t seen or heard?’

‘Do you think advertising works by persuading us, seducing us, coaxing us towards a purchase?’

Most of the schoolgirls nod. The teacher smiles. Philip continues.

‘It’s a popular theory. The idea that advertising works by creating positive memories and feelings that influence our behaviour over time to encourage us to buy a particular product at a later date.’

This Pavlovian account of ad efficacy seems to make sense. Happy, smiling people consuming a product in an ad become the seed for consumers wanting happy, smiling feelings. Advertising as emotional inception.

Plant the seed, water it with a multichannel media buy so enough people see it and wait for the desire to grow. A call and response model that positions the ad itself as the driver of desire. 

‘It’s a popular theory but it’s bullshit!’

The teacher gasps.

‘Mr. Morris, we avoid invectives and swearing in class.’

Philip smiles.

‘It’s still bullshit.’

The teacher crosses her arms.

‘Perhaps bunkum is a better word, Mr. Morris? Or balderdash? Hogwash?’

‘Perhaps you should be a copywriter?’

The teacher blushes. The schoolgirls giggle. Philip continues.

‘Cultural imprinting is how advertising truly works. Rather than trying to change minds, it changes cultural meaning.’

The schoolgirl on an academic scholarship glances at the other students. Philip smiles to himself.

‘Cultural imprinting changes how you are perceived by others when you use a product. The real job of advertising is to generate social and cultural signalling.’

The teacher asks whether than means social media. Philip shakes his head.

‘Quite the opposite. Social media is far too narrow a media to imprint culture, to change culture. It’s not enough for an ad to be seen by a single person, or even by many people individually. It has to be broadcast publicly and widely, in front of large audiences.’

Philip explains that what many people consider waste in advertising - that is reaching people who will not buy - is the very opposite of waste. It’s actually what makes advertising imprint culture, what makes advertising work. 

‘You have to see the ad but you also have to know that most of your friends have seen the ad too. Billboards, bus stops, subways, stadiums, any other public location. Popular newspapers, magazines, television shows. When you see an ad on Google or on social media you have no idea whether your friends have seen it or not. It has no cultural meaning because it hasn’t gone out wide enough, hasn’t reached enough people.’

Philip looks over the schoolgirls.

‘You don’t want a product because of its features and benefits. You want a product because other people you like want it. This is mimetic desire. You imitate the desire of others. That’s what great advertising can harness and unleash.’

The schoolgirl on an academic scholarship reaches for another highlighter. Philip smiles.

‘Great advertising creates the culture that creates the reality that creates you.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pass it to your friends. Slip it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of private school students, media investment groups and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s public imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Colonial drug dealers
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/colonial-drug-dealers/
Last updated: 2024-03-27T00:34:08.000Z
Our modern world was built on imperial and colonial drug dealing.

Trading in tobacco, sugar, tea, and opium was the foundation of our modern Western world. Britains’s empire upon which the sun never set, the slave trade and conquest of North and South America, the Caribbean, and South and East Asia all depended on the dealing of these drugs on a global scale by the world’s first chartered corporations.

Britain’s East India Company was founded in London as a joint-stock trading company is 1600\. It was a law unto itself. It coined its own currency, monopolised trade routes and had the British navy mercilessly quell any rebellions.

At its peak the East India Company was the largest corporation in the world with quasi-governmental powers. It had a standing private army of 280,000 well-trained and well-equipped soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time.

It waged full-scale war, imprisoned and executed convicts, negotiated treaties, flew its own flag and established colonies. Its slogan was simple and to the point. ‘By command of the King and Parliament of England.’

Its flag was copied by the United States who retained the red stripes and replaced the Union Jack in the the top left hand corner with a blue field of white stars.
### “MAESTRO” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/maestro-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:56:59.000Z
Bradley Cooper is desperate for an Oscar.

Nominated for so many Academy Awards he’s lost count, “Maestro” was to be his masterstroke. True to the title, the bombastic biopic was produced, written, directed and starred Bradley in the lead role. It was tailor-made to win Oscars.

Now Bradley is meeting executives at Netflix to find out what the hell went wrong.

“Maestro” is a Hollywood short story about blind ambition.

Will Bradley see the error of his ways?

*1,000 words / 4 minutes of virtuoso reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘You exist only in what you do.’ Federico Fellini* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **MAESTRO**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

Bradley Cooper doesn’t want to meet the Netflix executives in the boardroom.

Too many glass walls at the Netflix headquarters in Hollywood, California. Too many employees gliding past, pretending not to look in.

Bradley wants the meeting to take place at the historic Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard that Netflix spent close to ninety million dollars bringing it back to its former Golden Age glory. But there’s a shoot underway so Bradley settles for the large theatre on the lobby level of Netflix’s headquarters.

Bradley, forty-nine, paces the stage, sweeps a long knitted scarf around his neck.

‘Darlings, what must I do to win an Oscar?’

There’s a handful of strategy and publicity executives scattered across the front row. Two or three are looking at their shoes. One Executive speaks up.

‘You got nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography -- ’

‘Best Sound.’ says a Second Executive.

‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling,’ says Another Executive.

‘ -- Best Actress for Carey, Best Actor for yourself.’

‘All nominations! All of which I publicly lost. Imagine the humiliation, the slap across the face, the sting of disgrace. In front of everyone, darlings, everyone! Friends, peers, lovers, family. Really, it’s intolerable.’

Bradley’s on a roll.

‘Do you have any idea how hard we worked? How much research we undertook? How many cigarettes I smoked? How many cigarettes Carey smoked? I’m positive I’ve given her lung cancer, absolutely positive.’

Bradley rolls his eyes.

‘And for what? To watch Chris Nolan and “Oppenheimer” win every award. A three-hour physics lesson on how to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with a single atomic bomb.’

Bradley places an open palm over his heart.

‘All the press I had to do, all the interviews, all the tears. I wasn’t even up for Best Editing. Or Best Production Design. Or Best -- ’

An Executive winces. Bradley lowers his head.

‘ -- Director.’

It’s as if his voice has collapsed.

‘What did Chris do on “Oppenheimer”? Shook the camera a little, flashed Florence Pugh’s breasts. Shot it on seventy-millimetre film. I could have shot “Maestro” on seventy-millimetre if I’d wanted to. But no, I chose to shoot on thirty-five-millimetre colour and black and white Kodak stock for authenticity. Where was my Oscar?’

It’s true that “Maestro” was purpose-built to win Oscars. Playing the life of a great self-made American artist, mid-Atlantic accents, closeted gayness, Hollywood, Broadway. Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese both credited as producers.

One Executive thinks about bringing up all the media blowback around Bradley’s prosthetic nose, the whole Jewface debacle. Bradley had worn the fake nose because he was self-conscious about his own nose. Especially after the operation.

Bradley is staring straight at him. It’s as if he can read his mind.

‘Really? You want to discuss the nose? Want to share your thoughts? Was it too big? Too pointed? All three of Leonard Bernstein’s children approved the nose. The Anti-Defamation League released a statement in support of the nose.’

One Executive moves to speak but Bradley cuts him off.

‘How in god’s name could it be antisemitic? So I’m not Jewish playing a Jew. So what? I’m an actor, darlings. An actor. Cillian Murphy is not Jewish and played a Jew. Did he get a slapped? Did he cop all the flack? No, he got the Oscar for Best Actor!’

Bradley looks close to tears, hangs his head.

‘It’s a tragedy, a terrible tragedy.’

No executive wants to mention how overwrought the film is. The overblown camerawork and the disease-of-the-week TV movie tropes at the end did it no favours. No one but no one wants to tell Bradley to stop trying so hard to win.

An Executive pipes up.

‘You know, Spielberg was snubbed for “Jaws”.’

‘Yes, I’m fully aware of that. And I don’t care. Just like I don’t care that only two actors have won the Best Picture Oscar for films they’ve starred in and directed. I simply don’t care who’s been snubbed in the past.’

Truth is Bradley was worried that letting Netflix pay to make “Maestro” was going to play badly during the award season. Streaming services like Netflix are still seen as the antichrist in Hollywood. 

Bradley knows Netflix has fallen short, especially in the Best Picture race, when the likes of “Roma”, “The Irishman” and “The Power of the Dog” all missed out. Everyone at Netflix was hoping “Maestro” would be the breakout.

Bradley looks over the executives and smiles.

‘Really, what do I have to do to win an Oscar? Who do I have to fuck? Who has to fuck me? Really, give me the list.’

Another Executive laughs. Bradley tightens his lips

‘I’m not joking, really. Give me the list.’

Crackling as the overhead speakers come to life. Reed Hasting’s voice wafts over the theatre. Flat, Boston accent.

‘Bradley, Hollywood doesn’t care how many sacrifices you made, how long you had to spend in the makeup chair each day of the shoot. There are few things people love to dislike more than an actor who talks endlessly about how hard they work. It’s insufferable.’

Reed founded Netflix and was the long-term chief executive officer before becoming the executive chairman. Bradley covers his eyes from the stage lights and looks up at the projection booth at the back of the theatre. Reed’s voice drifts out.

‘People don’t want to see how the magic is done. They just want to see the magic and go ahhh!’

Bradley lowers his head. Reed’s voice flows down.

‘Of course it’s difficult, of course it’s shameful to lose. It’s heartbreaking. All the effort, the commitment to craft. The endless and winless press tours. Do you know what all that disappointment will do for you, Bradley?’

A single tear slips down Bradley’s cheek. Reed’s voice swirls over him.

‘It will make winning your first Oscar all the sweeter.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Present it to your friends. Pitch it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of mainstream publishers and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s enthusiastic imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](http://boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.com)
### Scenes from the coast: Birds on a wire
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-birds-on-a-wire/
Last updated: 2024-03-19T00:33:24.000Z
Up on the overhead electrical lines are four birds.

Feathered dots against the endless silver blue sky.

All looking north into the hot sun.
### “X” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/x-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:57:22.000Z
Elon Musk is jetting across the world to yet another apology tour.

With his companies on fire and public opinion turning against him, he’s in the worst mood of his life - enraged that no one understands him and haemorrhaging billions of dollars.

“X” is a business short story about the problems of being the second-richest man in the world.

Will Elon learn from his relentless mistakes?

Or is he doomed to keep repeating them?

*3,000 words / 12 minutes of bracing reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
‘If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, then you don't understand it yourself.’ Albert Einstein 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **X**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

ELON MUSK, fifty-two, slumps in a creamy overstuffed leather seat of a private jet, playing some video game on a phone at Mach 0.91.

This isn’t one of his old Gulfstreams. This is a new ultralong-range Gulfstream G700 with the largest cabin available, five living zones, twenty signature panoramic oval windows, a grand suite with faux marble shower and plenty of gleaming woodwork.

Next-generation avionics and a whisper⁠-⁠quiet cabin with one hundred percent fresh, plasma⁠-⁠ionized air replenished every two to three minutes. Jet ConneX Ka-band Wi-Fi provides reliable high⁠-⁠speed coverage for all business and entertainment needs. Flying at top speed feels like slicing through heaven.

This isn’t Elon’s own Gulfstream G700\. The one he ordered last year is still delayed in production. This one belongs to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, one of the largest investors in Twitter now rebranded as X.

Aside from boasting all the luxury extras Gulfstream offers, hidden microphones are also dotted throughout the jet to monitor and record every conversation. This is standard operating procedure in all Al Waleed’s jets and cars and palaces.

Elon is heading to Singapore Changi Airport where he’ll board a waiting jet to Israel for his umpteenth apology tour. It’s not good to be seen flying into the Promised Land in a new jet owned by Saudi. He’ll probably board an Embraer Legacy 650E from the Laufer Group. They have a lounge and facilities at Ben Gurion Airport.

Elon usually flies with a gaggle of children and wives and girlfriends and so-called friends and hangers-on. But lately it’s been all business all the way. After Tesla shares and profitability plunged, Elon doesn’t go anywhere without his new chief financial officer. Then there’s the flaming mess that is X.

On this leg of the flight he’s surrounded by SENIOR EXECUTIVES and AIDES and ASSISTANTS. TWO PUBLIC RELATIONS CONSULTANTS are huddled together at the front of the jet, hissing at each other.

A CABIN ATTENDANT brings Elon a chilled can of aspartame-laced Diet Coke on a tray. Elon takes it without looking up and keeps playing the video game on the phone, keeps mashing the screen.

‘Got any more chocolates?’

‘Of course, Mister Musk.’

The cabin attendant steps away and returns with a small golden bowl on a tray. It’s piled high with Elon’s favourite Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares, Milk Chocolate with Caramel and Strawberry Chocolate with Strawberry Bark.

Of course the Recchiuti boxed chocolates would be better. Burnt Caramel and Piedmont Hazelnut with just the right balance of sweet and bitter. Sesame Nougat with the perfect texture of chewy caramel, a little crunch from toasted sesame seeds and the snap of perfectly tempered dark chocolate.

But they’re not sweet enough for Elon who lives for his sugar and sugar substitutes. He eats a donut or two (or four) for breakfast every day. He’s not a big drinker but likes a glass of red wine at the end of the day with an Ambien. Yes, he likes his pharmaceuticals. He’s also fond of illicit drugs like LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine. Anything to give him a boost, give him an edge.

They also keep him on edge. Elon has a lot of agitation expressed as nervous energy. Juggling his contrarian views, unfiltered speech and provocative antics is no easy task.

Especially when so many of his companies are on fire. Everyone’s been telling him what to do with X but he’s not listening to a word of it.

Instead he’s publicly telling major advertisers like Disney’s Bob Iger to go fuck themselves. This is the same Bob Iger who’s returned as CEO to save Disney. The same Bob Iger who has a private planetarium in his opulent Brentwood mansion. With the stars set to the night sky of the day he was born.

Never fuck with a Jew with a Jesus complex. Especially one who spends north of seven billion dollars a year on advertising.

PHILIP MORRIS, thirty-three, sits opposite Elon, watching him double down on his video game. Philip is an advertising creative director who’s been brought in by the Tesla board to try and talk some sense into Elon.

Where to start? Philip knows the jet is bugged. So he has to choose his words carefully, tactfully.

Elon’s been playing at global diplomacy, foreign policy and international intelligence. Fine if he knows what he’s doing. But of course, he doesn’t. Someone needs to tell Elon that Iron Man isn’t real. It’s a movie franchise. For a self-styled genius, he can be a bit of a dumbass.

Opinion pieces and columnists at major newspapers and media outlets are lining up to denounce Elon as a clear and present danger to democracy, a menace to society. Some are even calling him a fraud.

His missteps are piling up. Starlink and switching off satellite communications in Crimea to thwart a Ukrainian military offensive against the Russian navy. Neuralink and the trail of dead lab monkeys bleeding from their ears after failed computer chip implants. The Boring Company pumping raw sewage into children’s playgrounds. Twitter and censoring reporters and Canadian politicians at the request of the Indian government.

Elon is a free-speech absolutist unless it’s NPR, Substack or any other perspective he doesn’t agree with.

Philip wonders what’s worse? His manias and obsessions? Or his grudges and noxious cruelty?

Philip knows that Elon keeps pushing himself forward at such a relentless pace because to stop would see his past derail and tumble and crash into the present and wipe out his future. Despite Elon’s carefully managed tech genius persona, he can’t write a line of code to save himself. Visionary inventor? He hasn’t invented a thing. Trailblazer? Not even close.

Elon’s succeeded as a businessman not by creating things but by funding and promoting things. He didn’t invent or design any of Tesla’s vehicles - that was Franz von Holzhausen. He didn’t invent or design Starlink - that was Gwynne Shotwell. He didn’t invent or design SolarCity - that was Peter Rive.

Elon’s primary skill is incorporating companies in low-tax states with guaranteed government handouts, grants and subsidies. It’s taxpayers - and the odd Saudi - that keep him and his companies afloat.

Lately he’s been more demented than usual. All the batshit crazy election conspiracy theories in a major election year. All the hate tweets, the antisemitism that flies from his fingers to his one-hundred-and-seventy million followers.

Philip knows Elon is exasperated and bewildered by the utter collapse in advertising revenue after he willingly and virulently (and in his mind, virtuously) destroyed Twitter’s brand safety teams and fired thousands of Twitter employees. People like Elon think numbers equal everything.

What Elon failed to understand is that advertising is a people business, a relationship business. The biggest ad buyers - those who spend millions on a campaign without a second thought - want someone they can talk to. That point of contact is especially vital during a period of transition and uncertainty, as was the case after Elon acquired Twitter.

Elon dismissed the human element of Twitter’s main revenue stream and laid off swaths of account managers and sales reps. He severed Twitter’s most commercially valuable relationships. Naturally these ad buyers left the platform. Many for good.

Abruptly rebranding Twitter as X and crowdsourcing a new logo in 24 hours didn’t help. Neither did one shitty update after the other. Even worse is the contextual reality that in any app or anywhere online or indeed on any screen, X is what you press to close a window or pop-up. X is what you press to delete something annoying you don’t want to see. It’s not semantics. It’s muscle memory. 

The road to hell is littered with failed rebrands - New Coke, New Gap, New Tropicana, New Sears, New Verizon. It’s a long list.

Philip has seen it a dozen times. Some new CEO who thinks he knows everything, who wants to leave his mark, spends millions upon millions throwing the baby out with the bathwater until there’s such a consumer backlash that the next CEO is brought in to bring the baby back. Balance is restored, sales begin to lift, profit starts to rise, shares set new records. Everyone is happy.

Philip thinks about how to best approach Elon. Go extremely hardcore or fly under the radar.

‘Are you winning?’

Elon doesn’t look up. Keeps furiously playing the video game, mouth tightening. 

‘I haven’t hit my top score yet.’

‘You never will.’

Elon grimaces as he misses the last shot and the game times out. He tosses the phone away, pissed.

For a billionaire sociopath he’s inelegant, inarticulate, oafish, callous and capricious, lacking any grace or humility. He’s also packed on a lot of weight in recent months.

His pupils are pinned, flitting left and right because he’s been munching Modafinil like candy. It’s a stimulant fighter pilots use to stay alert and focused without the amphetamine jag. Military approved, military grade.

He’s been flying with the fighter pilot look for a while now. Dressed in a dark brown leather bomber jacket with a fur-lined collar. His version of mid-century rogue masculinity that comes across as an old, fat and worn-out Tom Cruise from “Top Gun” with a hair transplant.

Does he know he looks ridiculous? Does he know that hating trans people online, retweeting bigots and racists and blaming a Jewish non-profit for ruining his company is not going to win him any friends?

‘I know you’re going to tell me to change X back to Twitter.’

‘Would you like me to tell you the reasons why?’

Elon doesn’t make eye contact.

‘Sure, count the ways.’

‘Elon, it’s not a game. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase want the money they lent you.’

‘Fuck them!’

‘Elon, they always get their money. At least two points above market rate. With fees on top. All the loans you took out against your Tesla stock, they don’t care. The fact the stock’s down the toilet, they don’t care. They’ll come after everything.’

‘Fuck them! I made last month’s payments.’

‘By the skin of your teeth and by selling stock at a loss.’

Philip doesn’t want to remind Elon that the last earning’s call was a clown show, that he’s becoming an embarrassment in the financial press. Instead he goes for the jugular.

‘Elon, you’ve run out money and everyone thinks you’re an asshole.’

‘I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m an asshole.’

‘Elon, you’re autistic. Of course you don’t care what people think. It’s everyone else that matters. It’s the fact you’ve run out of money and can’t get any more loans that’s the problem.’

Elon blinks. When his Tesla stock was roaring to record highs, it was too easy to borrow against. Now that it looks like it’s on a death spiral, not so much. Made all the worse by a Delaware judge ruling against his fifty-six billion dollar stock options pay deal.

The interest payments alone on the loans he took out to buy Twitter are around one hundred million dollars a month. He needs a lot of advertising revenue from a lot of major brands and he needs it now.

‘Well, Philip, you’re the advertising genius. What do I do?’

‘You have to be seen to be making amends.’

Elon winces.

‘How can I fucking switch back to Twitter without being seen as a complete fucking idiot?’

‘Blame Linda Yaccarino for the poor rebranding and revenue results. Thank Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase for the idea of taking the brand back to Twitter. Thank David Solomon at Goldman Sachs for the brand revaluation.’

‘Throw Linda under the bus?’

‘She’s the CEO of X. You don’t have to do a mea culpa. That’s what you pay her for. That’s her job.’

Elon thinks. It’s not the first time he’s thrown an employee under the bus. It won’t be the last.

The jet starts its descent. Everyone is silent except for the two public relations executives at the front of the jet still hissing at each other. Elon screams at them.

‘Chill the fuck out!’

They swallow their words. Philip leans in.

‘Accept Linda’s resignation and bring back Jack Dorsey as interim CEO. Everyone will think it’s the second coming, start making parallels to Steve Jobs saving Apple. Which is excellent positioning.’

Philip continues.

‘Make every employee that’s still around -- what is that now, seven hundred or so? Make them all part of Twitter’s new brand safety team. Make it the world’s largest brand safety team. Which is also excellent positioning.’

Philip rolls on

‘Bring in a heap of senior account executives from advertising agency groups and media buyers with established relationships to key accounts. Offer Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung advertising deals they can’t say no to. All the other brands will follow.’

‘Any other nifty ideas?’

‘Sure. But you’re not going to like it.’

‘Try me.’

‘Advertise Tesla for the first time.’

‘On Twitter?’

‘Like a real brand.’

Philip takes a breath.

‘I’ve got another idea you’re not going to like.’

Elon arches an eyebrow as Philip continues.

‘Your whole digital town square positioning has to go. You need to supersede it with something that puts governments on notice. You’ve got regulators breathing down your neck.’

It’s true. New regulatory requirements for the technology sector are coming hard and fast, like the Digital Services Act in the EU, and the Online Safety Act in the UK. Different states are passing different bills in the United States, and some are on appeal in the Supreme Court. Governments everywhere are becoming far more active in regulating social media.

Philip suggests a citizen’s assembly where random Twitter users are selected to vote on key government issues around the world. Essentially a parallel congress or parliament in every country.

‘You mean a sortition?’

Philip nods.

‘Random Twitter accounts to provide direct democracy without any political machinations.’

‘Athenian democracy?’

‘Which led to Athens becoming the world’s most powerful and most successful city-state until it got mired in representative politics and petty self-interests, corruption and turning people against each other.’

Elon presses his fingers together.

‘Power to the people?’

Philip nods.

‘In real-time. No politicians, no election cycles, no special interests, no lobbyists, no lawyers.’

Elon laughs.

‘I like the no lawyers no part.’

Philip smiles.

‘Instant polling, make it concurrent with the bills before congress or parliaments. Public voting twenty-four hours before any representatives cast their vote. Beat the politicians to the punch. Beat the politicians at their own game.’

Philip continues.

‘Don’t make it left versus right. Make it people versus politicians. Focus on the parasocial nature of the medium, the apparent interconnectedness, the supposed synchronicity. And you need a new slogan to signal the change.’

Elon tilts his head to one side, unsure. Philip smiles.

‘The power of now.’

Elon considers it for a moment. It’s a good slogan. It’s perfect for Twitter.

The captain announces that the approach to Changi Airport is on schedule. Mentions the current weather in Singapore in Fahrenheit and Celsius. On behalf of the crew and co-pilot, thanks the passengers.

Philip smiles at Elon.

‘I’m out when we land. I’ve got to get to Rome.’

‘Any more advice?’

‘No more tweeting for a while. That last batch of tweets -- you know they’re neo-Nazi talking points, right?’

Elon smirks. Philip continues.

‘Lose the pilot jacket?’

Elon looks genuinely perplexed.

‘Don’t wear the leather jacket, Elon. You look like a caricature of toxic masculinity. You look like you’re flying a B-52 in World War Two.’

‘That’s not a good thing?’

‘That’s a terrible thing. You’re going to Israel. They’ve got enough to worry about without being reminded of World War Two.’

‘Anything else?’

All the passengers sit up, clip on their seat belts as the jet prepares to land.

‘Act solemn.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you’re in Israel, don’t tweet, don’t talk to the media, don’t get photographed outside unless the sky behind you is grey.’

‘What do you mean act solemn?’

‘Wear all black, look down at the ground. Don’t look at your feet. Look down just in front of your feet. And don’t smile.’

‘You mean act sad?’

Elon nods to himself.

‘I can do that.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Pitch it to your friends. Roll it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Elon Musk and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s supersonic imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Do horses fly?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/do-horses-fly/
Last updated: 2024-03-15T00:32:42.000Z
It was pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge who made history by proving that horses lift all four feet when in full gallop.

On June 15, 1878, Muybridge used a bank of cameras and high-speed stop-motion photography to capture a horse in motion in real time for the first time.

Muybridge had immigrated to the United States from England where he first became a bookseller in New York and San Francisco. He learned about the emerging science of photography while recuperating from massive head injuries sustained in a horse carriage accident.

His groundbreaking work in stop-motion photography of animals - and occasional humans - led to the birth of motion pictures.

The average speed of a galloping horse is around 50 kilometres an hour. Wind whipping its mane, heart thumping, feet flying.

What do you think goes through a horse’s mind when it’s standing in a horse float flying along a highway at 100 kilometres an hour? Flying at twice the normal speed with its feet never leaving the ground?

Does it marvel? Does it wonder how this is possible?

Does it suffer an existential crisis?
### “ABC” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/abc-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:57:40.000Z
You’re in an ABC waiting room.

You’re waiting to make a presentation to save Australia’s state-funded broadcaster from its own mismanagement, its own demise.

“ABC” is a corporate short story about the inevitability of change.

Can you afford to wait any longer?

*Rated PG / 1,000 words / 4 minutes of contemporaneous reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

*‘A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.’ Edward R. Murrow*

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **ABC**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

You’re in the ABC waiting room with the tatty, uncomfortable chairs.

With the frayed carpet that’s seen one budget cut after another. With the soiled coffee table. With the dusty reception desk. With the broken television monitor. 

You’re standing, waiting because ABC management is always running late and the senior executive you’re supposed to meet is probably entangled in the latest human resources mess.

Running late would be excusable if the ABC as Australia’s state-funded public broadcaster was doing great things. Or making great shows. Or creating great futures.

But they’re not. Any hits of late have been entirely by accident rather than design. And always by outside production companies that retain all copyrights including distribution, streaming and sequel rights. All the ABC gets is a little ballyhoo. All the value is mediated and retained by the creators.

You check your watch. Hell, you don’t even want to be here. You’re doing this meeting as a favour to one of the board members who wants to save the ABC. Yet again. It’s always a crisis at the ABC. Especially now that so much talent is either being pushed out or leaving because of management’s constant meddling.

What passes for management these days is largely low-echelon personnel who know how to navigate hidebound bureaucracies to their own advantage but couldn’t hold onto a job anywhere else. They’re not the A Team or the B Team. Or even the C Team.

They’re the F Team. Facile and so blind to their own failings, they don’t even realise they’re why the ABC is such a disaster, why audiences are fleeing in droves.

They’ve been doing the same thing over and over and over for a decade expecting different results. It’s beyond bizarre.

They’ve been paying themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while cost-cutting everyone else out of existence. All the while undermining creatives to curry favour with the political class. 

In nineteen eighty-six, the ABC employed more than six thousand people. Today with an explosion of media it has less than four thousand workers, many of them on low-paid, short-term contracts.

In recent years, fearless reporting has given way to a culture of timidity and kowtowing to - of all places - News Corp. This from a media organisation that when first launched scared the bejesus out of Rupert Murdoch’s father. So much so that he fought tooth and nail to diminish its power. His son and grandson continue that tradition. And rather than fight the good fight and fight back, the ABC continues to genuflect at every turn.

In their pathetic stupidity, management has been chasing ratings by attempting to become more commercially savvy. Which sounds good on paper or in Senate estimates committees but is exactly the opposite of what the ABC should be doing.

Management keeps talking about developing a meaningful response to the constantly changing media environment and bringing all of its stakeholders along. But the ABC doesn’t need to respond. It needs to lead.

You’ve got your laptop under your arm loaded with a simple, straightforward presentation. Seven slides that show how the ABC can not only regain its past glory, but mediate a brighter future. But time is ticking away.

You check your watch. It’s been another three minutes.

You can’t wait any longer.

It’s time to leave.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Hand it onto your friends. Hand it over to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of ABC management and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s creative imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Scenes from the coast: Supermarket shopping
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-supermarket-shopping/
Last updated: 2024-03-07T00:31:10.000Z
You rush into the supermarket to pick up a few staples.

You spot a man pushing a shopping trolly towards the checkout lanes. There are only three items inside the metal trolly.

One packet of honey soy chicken potato chips and two huge 55” 4K Ultra HD Smart TVs picked up from a nearby shelf. Packed in heavyweight cardboard boxes with a slick, shiny gloss laminate of a happy smiling family sitting together and copy that spells out every feature as a benefit.

It’s powered by Web OS Hub so you can instantly access Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube from branded buttons on the full function remote. Stream your favourite TV shows, movies and more from the comfort of your couch.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) means blacks are darker and whites more intense. Supported content becomes more lifelike and you can see every detail no matter how dim the scene.

4K with four times the resolution of Full HD, over eight million pixels of eye-popping, immersive picture clarity.

2.0 channel soundbars with HDMI (ARC), optical and coaxial audio input and crisp 40W output are in the next aisle.
### “THE LAST SAFEHOUSE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-last-safehouse-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:58:10.000Z
Pablo Escobar is holed up in yet another safehouse, pursued by a coalition of his enemies.

U.S. forces, Colombian police and a death squad of criminal rivals are all out to kill him and anyone that gets in their way.

This has been Escobar’s life since escaping from the charade of his imprisonment to avoid extradition to the United States to face charges of murder, racketeering, engaging in continuing criminal enterprises and conspiring to smuggle cocaine.

Escobar would rather rather kill himself than be extradited.

But it won’t come to that.

Or will it?

*Rated NC-17 / 2,000 words / 8 minutes of morally ambiguous reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Matthew 5:10*

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **THE LAST SAFEHOUSE**

## 

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

*They call me the Monster of Medellín.*

*What idiots. I’m no monster. I’m a father, a brother, a son.*

*I’m a businessman, a politician, a leader, a man of the people. Am I a little misunderstood? Sure. But who isn’t?*

Pablo Escobar, 43, takes a drag from the butt of a ragged joint. He sits at a dining table and looks around the darkened living room of his latest safehouse as he slowly blows out a stream of acrid smoke. Wearing a stained dark blue polo shirt with red trim. Dirty, stonewashed jeans. Heavyset, brooding. Bearded.

The blinds are drawn to keep out the late afternoon sun, keep out any prying eyes. It smells of fresh paint. Light blue.

*What do you think of the colour? It’s nice, right. Brings in a little piece of the sky.*

A boom rattles the apartment. Followed by what sounds like the rapid-fire shots of a machine gun blasting masonry. 

Limón, 36, rushes into the room, eyes ablaze, gun drawn. He’s Escobar’s most trusted driver and bodyguard, most loyal. Escobar looks over the newspapers spread over the dining table, unconcerned. A military-grade satellite phone to one side.

‘Check to see when they’ll finish,’ he says without looking up.

Limón lowers his gun and heads down the hallway. Contractors are busy upgrading the bathroom with brand-new fixtures. Escobar has a thing about clean, neat, well-proportioned bathrooms. 

Escobar has spent more than a year rolling from safehouse to safehouse. Sometimes in villages or deep in the jungle. Mostly in and around Medellín. It’s where he felt safest. He’d given the poor of the city new housing, new stadiums, new health programs. He’d given them jobs, money, a future. They repaid him by never turning him in.

When the police and military started hunting him down, they turned their backs on the authorities. When his enemies roamed the city’s twisted streets, they blocked off roads. When the war started, they hid.

Limón heads back into the living room.

‘It’s going to take another day to finish the plaster,’ he says.

‘Are you thirsty? I’m thirsty. Do you want to go out and get some Coca-Cola? We’ll fry up some arapina when you get back.’

Limón looks worried. Escobar crushed out the joint.

‘I’ll be okay,’ Escobar says. ‘I have your saints to look after me.’

Limón nods and heads off.

‘I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.’

*After they killed Gustavo, Limón gave me a leather necklace with three good luck charms - the Virgin Mary, the Sacred Child of Atocha and the Sword of St Michael.* 

*Sometime at night before it’s his turn to sleep, I hear him pray to the Sword of St Michael. Under his breath, ever so faintly.*

*Glorious Sword, fight all spirit of ruin in our families, in our minds, and in our hearts.*

*Glorious Sword of St Michael the Archangel, place the victorious sign on my right hand to give the final victory and to be able to overcome all of the destructive spirit that wants to lead me away from the Sanctifying Grace.*

*Come Glorious Sword of St Michael, flash with a ray of the Holy Spirit, so that we can see the face of our Heavenly Beloved Father and be worthy of the promises of my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.*

*It’s good to believe.*

On the dining table with the newspapers is a plump roll of US dollars, a gold Rolex Cellini watch and a black Sig Sauer P226 9mm handgun. There’s also a long piece of worn string with knots about a centimetre apart at one end like prayer beads. A black plastic comb too.

Escobar pulls at his grey-flecked beard as he reads an article in one of the newspapers.

*So much news, so little truth.*

*They say I murdered journalists, editors. Why would I do that? Sure, I kidnapped a few here and there to scare some sense into them. But killing journalists is a stupid idea. They’re better off alive. Especially when they can help spread a story.*

*You don’t think I know how propaganda works, how public relations works. I studied political science at university - political behaviour, political institutions, public law, public policy, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, political communications. It’s all propaganda. It’s all made up.*

*My history? Growing up in poverty in the countryside? Walking four hours to school barefoot? Barely enough for food? It’s a good story but none of it is true.*

*My mother was a school administrator, my father a farmer with his own land. My family owned their own home. Yes, there was running water. Electricity too. We weren’t animals.*

*You know the childhood story of the leftist guerrillas storming my village, shooting down men and women and children before my eyes. Dousing everyone and everything in gasoline and setting it all on fire, blazing into the night sky? Black smoke darkening the moon?*

*All made up. My brother still loves telling that story. But we weren’t even in the countryside all that long. We moved to Medellín when I was a teen. I started following social causes, marching in street rallies, hurling rocks at the bastard police.*

*It was the culture of young people. Nadaismo. Thumb your nose at the established order, disobey your parents, write your own rules. I had my first joint when I was thirteen. I never stopped.*

*Money? I always loved money. But why make it when you can take it. In the beginning I controlled a large and quite successful car theft ring in Medellín. But stealing cars, breaking them down, selling off the parts - it’s a pain in the ass. Too many mechanics. Dirty work too.*

*Much easier to sell protection. You know, insurance. You charge owners every month for their cars not to be stolen. You make more money over the long term. And if they don’t pay, then you steal the car. All very above board.*

*It’s like the cocaine business. It’s not complicated. You bribe someone here, you bribe someone there. You pay a banker twenty percent to help you bring the money back. Simple.*

*You try not to kill everybody, just the ones who are going to be a problem and the ones who are trying to kill you, no. You want to get them before they get you. It’s survival instincts. It’s natural.*

*All the stories of all the thousands of people I’ve killed? Ridiculous. I’ve never personally killed anyone, not a single soul.*

*The waiter I was supposed to have drowned in my swimming pool at La Hacienda Nápole? For stealing my silver knives and forks? In front of all my guests? Lose my cool like that? It’s ridiculous.*

*I’m not an animal. I’m a King, the King of Cocaine. El Doctor, El Mágico, El Padrino, El Patrón. I offered to pay off my country’s debt with ten billion dollars. I should have been the president of Colombia instead of running from safehouse to safehouse like a common criminal, lawyers and politicians hammering out a peace deal to stop extraditions to other countries.*

*Not just for me, mind you. For everyone in Colombia, rich or poor. To be tried for domestic crimes in another country is unconstitutional. Personally, I’d rather be in a tomb in Colombia than a prison cell in the United States. I’d rather blow my brains out.* 

*Even now. With hardly any cash on hand. Seriously, this war with the government, with the state, is costing me. I haven’t banked millions in months. Just a little here and there. I’m on the run so I’m only moving kilos, not tonnes. It’s costing me plenty.*

Escobar closes the newspaper, pushes it away.

*All you see are the stories of narco-terrorism and kidnapping and deaths and carnage. All attributed to me, to my Medellín cartel. What cartel? Everyone is dead or in hiding. I’m ready to hand myself in but the state keeps blaming me for every fucking crime in the country.*

*Meanwhile more cocaine is sold out of Colombia every day. Tonnes and tonnes and tonnes. The Cali cartel is making all the money. And I’m making all the headlines.* 

*Most of the homicides in Medellín over the past year have been by death squads with ties to the security forces and the local elite. The owners and publishers of these fine newspapers.* 

*State terror to maintain a state of fear, to paralyse citizens, to subjugate them. Like rats being fed electric shocks if they ever step out of line.*

*State-sponsored terrorist groups like “Love for Medellín” eliminate even the possibility of opposition through social and class cleansing*

*Do you how the El Colombiano newspaper describes the “Love for Medellín” actions, how it describes the blatant murders and assassinations and massacres? How it describes the death squads? As a public relations campaign to educate the poor.*

*COPEC, as well as Bedoya’s Battalion of Intelligence and Counterintelligence unit will one day be tried for the massacres they’ve covered up. Mark my words. History decides the truth.*

Escobar has been on the run ever since escaping from the lavish prison he built for himself overlooking Medellín. It was called La Catedral and it was like no other prison on earth. Swimming pools, jacuzzis, bars. Even a soccer pitch and a disco. Escobar hand-picked the guards and carried on with business as usual.

It had been a negotiated surrender to avoid extradition to the United States. He’d agreed to a five-year prison sentence but fled after serving one year and one month.

The Colombian government wanted to move Escobar to a military prison but he was - as always - a step ahead. He’d built his escape route during the initial construction. All he had to do was kick over a false wall and walk free.

The authorities immediately placed a $6 million bounty on Escobar’s head. With the help of the U.S. government, a 600-man Special Ops unit called Bloque de Búsqueda - Search Bloc - was formed with the sole objective of hunting down Escobar and his associates. Formed by the Colombian National Police, it included U.S. Delta Force members, Navy SEALs, DEA agents and CIA operatives.

Search Bloc members collaborated with anti-Escobar vigilante groups such as Los Pepes and other paramilitary forces out to assassinate Escobar. Public hangings of Escobar’s hangers-on became regular occurrences. Not just sicarios and henchmen but lawyers and accountants, friends and family. It was war.

*You know what really pissed them off? It wasn’t the cocaine, it wasn’t the murders. It was the fact I wasn’t one of them. I was an outsider making too much money, too much cash. At one point my brother told me we had one-hundred-and-thirty-seven billion in U.S. banknotes here in Colombia. That much cash out of circulation? It’s a little embarrassing, no?*

*The Federal Reserve in America couldn’t print more cash for fear of inflation. The President himself weighed in and called for a war on drugs. More propaganda. They just wanted their U.S. dollars back. Idiots.*

Escobar stands and softly pushes the chair behind him. Looks down the hallway towards the bathroom where contractors are working away.

Wanders across the dining room to the main window, carefully draws the curtain apart a millimetre or two with the edge of his forefinger. A thin line of golden light slices down his face. Peers down Carrera 79B below. There’s a canal across the street but no people walking past, no cars. West Medellín’s Los Olivos neighbourhood is unusually quiet at sunset.

Spots a small bird in a tree. It shivers and flies off, disappears.

*Even as an elected official, they denied me. They threw me out of parliament, threatened to arrest me, jail me. Bastards.*

*Did I rub their noses in it? Maybe a little. But I also built hospitals and houses for the forgotten, for the poor. Take from the rich, no.*

*Political turmoil had left the lower classes alienated and disenfranchised, lost. How could I not help them? By nature, I’m a generous man. An honourable man*.

*I demolished slums, rebuilt entire low-income neighbourhoods right here in Medellín. Constructed soccer stadiums, medical clinics, new schools, thousands of new homes for the poor the state wouldn’t acknowledge, let alone help.*

*I walked the streets like a modern hero, handed out cash to young and old alike. They called me San Pablo. Even the church gave me its blessings.*

Escobar looks over the dining room as night falls, glances at the satellite phone on the dining table. Looks at the front door. Wonders what’s taking Limón so long.

El Limón was his nickname. His real name was Álvaro de Jesús Agudelo. He’d been part of the family from the beginning. Bodyguard, driver, confidant, friend.

Escobar steps over to the dining table. Picks up the black Sig Sauer P226 handgun.

How many times had Escobar put his life in Limón’s hands? How many times had he climbed into the trunk of a car, trusted Limón with his life?

How long can it take to pick up some soda? Maybe he’s been kidnapped? Grabbed up by vigilantes? Taken by police?

Surely he hasn’t turned? There’s nothing Escobar hates more than a traitor.

Escobar pulls the slide all the way back on the chamber of his handgun.

It snaps back as a fresh bullet slips into place.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Load it to your friends. Fire it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Pablo Escobar and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s unsettling imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Review: “The Elephant of Surprise”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-the-elephant-of-surprise/
Last updated: 2024-03-02T20:30:27.000Z
Sit down and hang onto your goddamn hat.

Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Elephant of Surprise” is a Hap and Leonard novel that brings the unlikely pairing of a white-as-white ex-con and his blacker-than-black gay best friend as private investigators facing off against a crew of Texas gangster trash hellbent on revenge.

Rural noir set deep in the left lung of East Texas. Hap (who’s handy with a gun) and Leonard (who can hold his own) are just trying to make it home in one piece through a deluge and raging storm of biblical proportions when a half-naked Asian woman stumbles across the flooded road, bleeding badly on account of her tongue being cut out. And pursued by bad men armed to the teeth.

Bullets are soon tearing, ripping, scraping and splatting heads open. Things go from bad to really bad to impossibly bad as the rain slices the night like cold razor blades.

It’s a thrilling, dark and hysterical page-turner.

Packed full of twists and turns and one-liners.

And the mother of all surprises.
### “UP JUMPS THE KNIFE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/up-jumps-the-knife-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:58:23.000Z
Finally you’ve been released from prison after serving a life sentence.

You’ve been bused to a small country town as part of a state-funded societal reintroduction program.

Will you fall back to your old tricks?

*Rated R / 1,000 words / 4 minutes of nostalgic reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

*‘You have to ask yourself if there’s anything about us more important than the fact that we’re constantly on film, constantly watching ourselves.’ Don DeLillo*

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **UP JUMPS THE KNIFE**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

After the sun slips below the horizon, the light silvers and slithers away.

It's your favourite time of day. The time between two worlds as shadows evaporate.

Much like your life at the moment. You've been out of prison for almost two weeks now. It’s an indescribable feeling, the freedom everybody takes for granted.

Once you’re incinerated - hah, I meant to say incarcerated although incinerated is actually a better word, a truer word - you don’t really exist. Your identity is taken from you. Everything is taken from you.

You’ve been walking along the twisted, interwoven streets of a small country town for days now. It’s one of those towns where they send people who’ve been let out of prison. 

A bus drops you off near the halfway house with a change of clothes and a hundred dollars on a cash card. It’s how you’re supposed to re-enter society, re-integrate. Blend in, be normal.

As if you can ever be normal again. If you weren’t mentally ill going into prison, you certainly would be by the time you got out. Spending time in solitary confinement changes your brain and personality, alters your mind forever.

You walk the streets because it distracts your mind, stops your thoughts from piling up. Keep moving, just keep moving.

A wind whips around you as dark clouds shudder and gather overhead. The light dulls and fades away.

You keep walking and walking, gravel crunching and sifting underfoot. Small cottages on wide lots are set back from the street. Small lives under silent eaves.

Something on the broken stones catches the last sliver of light. It’s a lean, long butcher knife. Worn wooden handle and hard, sharp blade that can carve out a heart just as easily as slash a neck from ear to bloody ear.

The wind blows your thoughts about. You try and grab them but they skip and slip and tumble.

The tangled tree branches reach forward, the leaves hush and whisper.

Your neck tightens, your fist clenches. Suddenly the knife is in your right hand.

You breathe very slowly, resigned to the next step you’re going to take.

You know it’s going to happen before it does. The light in a bedroom in a cottage flickers to life. You can see a woman’s body move behind the pale curtain.

Your fingers ache. They grip the wooden handle tight.

Then tighter still.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Flick it to your friends. Click it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing..*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of small country town, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s unsettling imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Scenes from the coast: Foxtrot
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-foxtrot/
Last updated: 2024-02-20T05:26:29.000Z
It’s always darkest before the dawn.

It’s when you spot movement on the edge of the road, a rustle of fur and panting breath. Lit by a single overhead street light.

It’s a fox. It doesn’t slink or cower.

It trots.
### “THE UNBEARABLE SADNESS OF JEFF BEZOS” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-unbearable-sadness-of-jeff-bezos-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:58:37.000Z
Jeff Bezos stands on the top deck of his new superyacht as the sun sets low.

Drifting across the Adriatic Sea after all his guests have drifted away. Only the onboard crew remains. Even his new fiancée Lauren Sánchez has left.

“The Unbearable Sadness of Jeff Bezos” is a heartbreaking short story about love.

Alone with his thoughts and regrets, Jeff isn’t sure which way to turn.

*Rated NC-17 / 2,000 words / 8 minutes of cautionary reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.’ Aristotle Onassis*

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **THE UNBEARABLE SADNESS OF JEFF BEZOS**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All rights reserved

All the guests had left.

Even Lauren had gone and now Jeff was all alone at sea with no one except the crew.

It was a magnificent sailing yacht, a superyacht. The world’s largest at one-hundred-and-twenty-seven metres. Glossy navy steel hull, soaring white aluminium masts and endless decks lined in Myanmar teak.

A classic on its maiden voyage over European waters. A $500 million classic Jeff had ordered before he met Lauren, before he met the new love of life who was - among other things - a helicopter pilot.

Where can anyone land a frigging helicopter on a schooner with three sixty-metre masts, she giggled when he first showed her the plans.

So Jeff had to order another yacht, a support yacht with a helipad for Lauren’s beloved Airbus ACH-135 helicopter to follow his superyacht everywhere. It’s the largest support yacht in the world. The things you do for love.

Lauren’s sister named the support yacht Abeona after the Roman goddess of journeys. And Jeff named the superyacht Koru because he thought it sounded cool.

It didn’t feel so cool now. All alone on the sun deck where he’d had the shade cover removed so he and Lauren could wine and dine under the stars. A prelude to later that night when he asked her to marry him, taking the small black box from under her pillow. Nervously opening it to reveal a 28-carat cushion-cut pink diamond engagement ring.

Lauren had blacked out for a moment. Not so much from excitement as the fact she’d been slamming down margaritas since before lunch. Still, Jeff liked her drunk. She’d do anything when she was drunk.

Jeff had been cutting back on his drinking in the past few weeks. He’d been feeling increasingly low. Sadness ebbed ever closer. Maybe his supplements are off. That’s what Lauren calls his daily cocktail of vitamins and minerals, steroids and synthetic human growth hormones, testosterone and erectile dysfunction medications, and the slew of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills.

He found himself ruminating even though he’d cut back his workload. Found himself worrying about the smallest things. Like the temperature and humidity control of the onboard, four-thousand-bottle wine cellar. Or the sound of the air conditioning in the onboard cinema. Things he paid other people to worry about.

The other night he’d had a terrible nightmare about marrying Lauren, woke in a damp sweat. Lonely and isolated even though she was there by his side.

Jeff looks out at the dead, flat sea. He can’t feel any breeze so he knows the captain will soon start the giant MTU diesel engines that power the massive superyacht. For some reason this reassures him.

He spots a crew member near the stairway to the bridge deck. The crew member looks away. All crew members had been instructed not to look at Jeff or Lauren or any of the guests. Jeff can be self-conscious about his sleepy eye. It’s just easier to avoid eye contact. Especially with thirty-six crew members on board at any given time.

The captain, officers, engineers and deckhands. The butlers, stewardesses and service staff, chef and galley team. Then there’s the security personnel and admin.

Jeff wanders to the bridge deck below. It’s where the lavish engagement party had been held when they were floating off the Amalfi Coast. He can’t remember all the people who came aboard. He’d spent the whole night smiling and nodding at Kris and Whitney and Bill and Paula and Andrew and Wendi and Ari and whoever else Lauren had invited.

On the bridge deck there’s a jacuzzi and fully stocked bar with two bartenders standing by. Doors behind the bar lead to the lounge with natural wood tones and warm neutrals that lead to the bow with a larger-than-life-size figurehead of Lauren as a bare-breasted and winged mermaid flowing under the prow. Carved and polished from a single piece of timber and inlaid with brass. Voluptuous and brazen.

Jeff had gotten the idea from Barry Diller who has a carved figurehead of his glamorous fashion-designer wife Diane von Furstenberg on the bowsprit of his own luxury sailing yacht Eos.

Barry is the father you have when you don’t have a father. For Jeff - and other billionaires - who have surpassed their biological fathers in every measure, Barry becomes the father they always wanted.

The father who understands wealth and the accumulation of capital and everything that brings with it. The father they can turn to for parental wisdom and guidance. The father they can talk to.

Jeff spent his final days as Amazon CEO aboard Eos sailing around Greece. Barry and Diane were also aboard. Lauren too.

Eos was the inspiration for Jeff’s own superyacht and for much of his new life.

Ditching his first wife for a glittering girlfriend, ditching work for summers yachting under the wide Mediterranean sun, ditching old friends for new celebrities. Soft brown Italian deer leather loafers without socks. Open neck French silk shirts.

A bevy of younger men - often much younger men - had always modelled themselves on the aging titan. Jeff was just the latest to seek his love and approval.

Jeff’s first wife MacKenzie never cared for Barry, never trusted him. Especially after he started to break up his internet and media conglomerate IAC to diminish the voting power of major shareholders. Jeff laughed it off at the time.

He wasn’t laughing so much now. His cheerfulness has given way to a general air of dissatisfaction, a constant state of emptiness. People more often annoy him than not. Regret and remorse seem to follow him wherever he goes.

It’s strange how often Jeff thinks of MacKenzie these days. How he imagines what it would be like to be back in her arms. But that will never happen. The divorce lawyers have seen to that.

They’d met in nineteen-ninety-two when they were both working at the New York City hedge fund D.E. Shaw. As a senior vice president, Jeff had interviewed her for a job as a research assistant.

It was a job to pay the bills while she wrote. She was the one who suggested they go out for lunch. Within three months of dating, they were engaged. Three months after that, they were married. MacKenzie had always been the smart one.

It was MacKenzie who drove them from New York to Seattle to start Amazon, Jeff pecking out a business plan on a shitty laptop, calling prospective investors on a broken cell phone.

MacKenzie came up with the Amazon name. It was her idea to sell books online. She was a writer after all. A novelist.

When the business started to scale, MacKenzie negotiated Amazon’s first freight contracts at - of all places - a Barnes & Noble bookstore. There were no spare chairs in the rented garage that doubled as Amazon’s first office.

MacKenzie had always been his foil in the press. The kind one, the practical one, the good wife.

It was MacKenzie who had started the story about Jeff washing the dishes every night - more as a joke because of course he never did. But the story - as often happens - stuck. Jeff the regular guy.

She had done a Vogue magazine feature - not the cover, mind you - a decade ago. Low-key, looking fresh-faced and forthright. Toned arms. Gamine. Norman Jean Roy was the photographer. It was her idea to be photographed with his two dogs by her side. Just a regular gal.

Jeff feels the giant diesel engines shudder to life as the superyacht leans towards the setting sun.

He hurries down the stairway to the main deck and heads past another bar to the main outdoor pool. It’s an enormous pool and he wonders why so few guests used it over summer. Even Lauren rarely used it.

Jeff looks at the matching his and her loungers on the stern. Remembers Lauren reclining in her tight hot pink bikini. Both arms back behind her head. A tangle of jewels around her neck. A leg cocked to one side.

They’d started fucking when he was still married to MacKenzie. And she was still married to her husband at the time.

She was a former Miss Junior America New Mexico and B-list television presenter. Fake breasts, fake chin, fake lips.

Was she really the woman for him? She’s got a great ass - which is probably fake - but no intellectual clout.

She had a talent for sex. All that vitality made him feel young. Yes, a little foolish. But she made him feel alive.

Once when he looked up from the double vanity in their state room, he saw both of them reflected in the mirror. All he could see was a buff sugar daddy and a short, squat, raven-haired Mexican Barbie.

His eyesight has never been that good. So he didn't see the wrinkles between the too-tight skin. He knew she was loaded with silicon and filler, smoothed out with Botox.

Lauren calls him babe a lot. Before the divorce he tried calling MacKenzie babe once and she asked whether he was having a stroke.

MacKenzie always found things wrong with Jeff. There was a lot wrong, so it was understandable.

Lauren found nothing wrong with Jeff. She called him babe. He called her babe and she liked it.

Jeff worries about what MacKenzie will think when she sees the Vogue magazine cover he did with Lauren. His mouth tightens.

In the shot it looks like they’re trying too hard to be in love. Lauren’s arms are wrapped tightly around Bezos who is wearing custom Wranglers, tight black t-shirt and black cowboy hat sitting in his spotless yellow truck parked under a gigantic lighting rig on his Texas ranch.

Lauren is wearing a custom-fitted white Levi’s tank top, staring nakedly at the camera, lips gashed red like the Joker. Bezos looks lost, arm bulging from all the pharmaceutical-grade creatine. On his wrist dangle tiger’s-eye and silver-chain bracelets.

Annie Leibovitz took the shot. Jeff had never seen so much equipment, so many lights, so many cameras, so many assistants, so many stylists and costumers. So much catering. 

Lauren kept telling him it was magical. Jeff kept thinking it was chaos and couldn’t wait to leave. All he wanted to do was drive into the hills.

He once asked MacKenzie why she married him. She said because he was brilliant, decent and kind. That was a long time ago.

MacKenzie had never really liked the ranch. Too far away. Too damn hot.

Jeff bought it in 2004\. He said it was because it reminded him of boyhood summers spent on his grandfather’s land in Cotulla, Texas. In truth it’s a domestic tax haven.

He kept purchasing adjoining properties until he’d amassed close to 400,000 acres to house a sprawling family compound and his private space company and vistas as far as the eye can see. Mesquite, prickly-​pear and desert flowing to the Sierra Diablo Mountains.

Jeff wanders over to one side of his superyacht as it glides over the dismal sea. A sense of waiting dread. His phone twinkles. It’s a text from Lauren.

‘Love you to space and back,’ it says.

Jeff frowns at the screen. Takes a deep breath and drops the phone into the deep blue water below.

It’s the third time today that Lauren has texted him that same message. The first time he thought it was cute. The second time he worried. The third time was too much.

Did she just copy and paste it? Or forget that she’d already sent it? Did she even mean it?

Doubling and tripling of text messages? That’s not a technical issue. That’s human error. Human failing.

Jeff is suddenly overwhelmed by sadness. He rushes down the central stairs. Past guest lounges and dining rooms, past spas and gyms, past the cinema and staterooms.

Down past the galley and refrigeration. Down past mechanicals towards the engine room. Catching his breath as his chest heaves.

Twists and opens the narrow, heavy metal door and steps into the trembling and roaring of MTU diesel engines and nautical hydraulics generating maximum power.

Slams shut the narrow door and locks it from the inside as his shoulders tremble.

As the monstrous noise drowns out his frantic sobbing.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Bow it to your friends. Stern it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of Jeff Bezos and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s perculiar imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Review: “Zero-Sum”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-zero-sum/
Last updated: 2024-02-12T01:52:19.000Z
Joyce Carol Oates’ latest potpourri of grievous short stories is as stunning and breathtaking as ever.

One disturbing, distressing tale after the other where the protagonist becomes the antagonist of their own fate. True to its title, whatever is gained is unnervingly lost.

Tales of love not just gone wrong but badly wrong, twisted, malformed. The shadow, the darkness, the bad side.

Frightened and frightening women, devouring mothers. A loathsome evil simmers between the lines, waiting to leap and pounce and swallow you whole.

A horrible suspense where words shiver and dreams slither and twist into nightmares.
### “INHUMANE” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/inhumane-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:59:05.000Z
A new AI Pen is set to revolutionise writing.

By interacting with authorised language models in real-time, this remarkable handheld technology promises to enhance productivity and elevate writing to new heights, boasting features like Instant Writing, Style Suggestions and Corrective Content Creation.

This AI Pen improves sentences, generates impeccable prose and predicts users’ thoughts with eerie accuracy.

“Inhumane” is a satirical short story as new product launch and demo. A quick take on the risks of blindingly putting technology before humanity. Of paving the way to technological totalitarianism.

Pitch-perfect, politically correct writing is now within easy reach.

Or does it spell the end of human expression?

*Rated NC-17 / 1,500 words / 6 minutes of intelligent reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.’ Isaac Asimov*

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **INHUMANE**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All rights reserved

SAN FRANCISCO - INHUMANE HEADQUARTERS

Sleek, airy room. Neoclassical with spotless matt white walls and decorative trim, luminous floors and extravagant all-white Louis XVI-era decor. Cabinet, chairs, tables. But no doors or windows.

ADAM RUHR, 50, steps into frame behind a white standing desk and looks into the camera.

‘Welcome to Inhumane.’

Ruhr is bald with no facial hair, intense. Dressed in light grey marle leisure wear. Unclips a thin silver pen from the inset pocket of his top. Holds it towards the camera.

‘This is the Inhumane AI Pen. It’s a brilliant standalone device and software platform. Built from the ground up for AI.’

Shaft of light beams down one side of the shiny pen.

‘It doesn’t come in three colourways. It comes in carbon neutral Polished Silver to reflect every colour, every inference from your immediate environment. It’s a single Computer and Motion Powered Battery with all-day battery life. That sits in your hand or clips to a shirt or blouse.’

Ruhr starts writing directly on the top of the desk. No ink spills, no markings are made on the smooth surface.

‘The unique Motion Powered Battery is a perpetual power system that allows you to use your AI Pen for as long as you want. It’s always on and you can engage with it in any way you want - through Touch, Voice and Laser Display.’

Ruhr taps the side of the pen and the words he was writing are projected from the top of the pen as handwritten text onto the desk surface. It’s hard to read his handwriting. He taps the pen again and speaks to it.

‘Show in Helvetica.’

The handwritten text projected on the desk reformulates letter by letter into neat Helvetica typeface. It reads: It was a bright warm day in May. 

‘Save to notes.’

The text appears to be sucked off the desk and back into the pen.

‘It also comes with its own connectivity built right in. Our own Ultrafast Inhumane Network connected by U-Mobile. We were able to pack a lot of technology into something really small. It runs a dual-core Qualtel Magus Elite nano chipset and that means it’s exceptionally fast, which is crucial for AI.’

Ruhr holds the pen upright. 

‘It’s got an Ultrawide RGB Camera, Depth Sensor and Motion Sensors. Capturing images and video is just a tap away. And it’s got this really special speaker on top that creates a bubble of sound around you. It can be really intimate or it can be really loud. We call it Pensonic.’

Ruhr points to the pen.

‘It has a dedicated Privacy Chip, ensuring full data security. All your data is protected. The AI Pen Privacy Chip also protects it from being exploited. Which means if it’s ever physically tampered with, it will require service from Inhumane to restore operation.’

A light below the pen surface blinks green.

‘The AI Pen comes with a Trust Light that lets you know when it has something for you. Like messages from trusted contacts or trusted services like cars or food or ads.’

Ruhrh slips the pen back into the inset pocket of his top.

‘We don’t do apps. Inhumane OS runs AI experiences that are on the device and in the cloud. The OS understands what you need and picks the right AI in the moment. What this means is that you no longer have to search for, download or manage apps. These AIs are streamed on demand in real-time at the speed of thought. Let’s play some music --’

Ruhr touches the top of the pen, speaks into it.

‘Play the song “Diamond Dogs”.’

David Bowie’s song fades in and out, woozy slam-bam boogie guitar and all.

‘We’ve partnered with Spotal which you get out of the box and you can do some amazing things. Really cool things driven by AI. Like --’

Ruhr touches the top of the pen, speaks into it.

‘Play music written by Bruno Mars but not performed by Bruno Mars.’

Cee Lo Green’s clean version of “Forget You” fades in and out, lively piano riff giving way to energetic rhythmic guitar and retro bassline.

Ruhr lifts the pen out of the inset pocket of his top, touches the top of the pen and speaks into it.

‘Play songs from the film “Inception”.’

As he tilts the top of the pen forward, music controls are projected onto the desk and Hans Zimmer’s snaking score fades up. Ruhr gently slides a fingertip over the controls.

‘Got my Music Control. If I go to the left, I can go back. If I go to the right, I can skip forward. Centre and I can pause.’

Ruhr fades the song out.

‘I can also use it to ask questions like --’

Ruhr touches the top of the pen.

‘When is the next eclipse and where is the best place to see it?’

The AI Pen silently browses the web, grabbing knowledge from everywhere.

‘The next total solar eclipse will occur on April 8th 2024\. The best place to see it is Mazatlán, Mexico at 9:51am.’

‘I can use it for messaging either by voice or laser --’

Ruhr speaks into the top of the pen.

‘Tell Andrew I’ll be there later tonight.’

‘Your message to Andrew says, I’ll be there later tonight - okay to send?’

‘Make me sound more excited.’

‘Your message to Andrew says, I’ll be there later tonight, can’t wait - okay to send?’

‘Yes.’

Ruhr looks at the pen.

‘One of the things I like most is message scanning. The AI Pen summarises what’s important so I don’t have to go back and read every message -- Scan Messages.’

‘Ella asked if you want to get dinner with Sam this week. Andrew wants to meet online tomorrow. Michael sent some notes about today’s design sync.’

‘Of course you can make a phone call --’

Ruhr speaks into the top of the pen.

‘Call Diego.’

‘Hey.’

‘Hey Diego can you help me with this demo.’

‘Be right there.’

‘Thanks.’

Diego steps in and looks at Ruhr, speaks to him in Spanish.

‘Estamos casi listos para enviar la versión final.’

The pen glows as it translates and plays in English, mimicking Diego’s voice and intonation.

‘We are almost ready to ship the final version.’

‘Great. I can’t wait.’

The pen glows as it translates and plays in English, mimicking Ruhr’s voice and intonation.

‘Excelente. No puedo esperar.’

Diego nods and steps away. Ruhr turns to the camera.

‘So what happened there is the AI Pen auto-detected Spanish, interpreted to English and replied back to Diego in Spanish with my intonation. This is available in any language you’d like to speak or understand or write in.’

Ruhr holds up the pen.

‘Writing with the AI Pen is a breeze. Instant Writing generates instantly approved text at the speed of light.’

Ruhr speaks into the top of the pen.

‘Write a nine-thousand-word dissertation on “Allegories of the Sun” by Plato.’

Words start to flow from the top of the pen onto the desk. Ruhr speaks into the top of the pen.

‘Make it more academic and introduce three additional arguments.’

Words retabulate on the fly.

‘Counter the arguments, apply Political Auto Correct and then send’

Words fly off the desk. 

‘Political Auto Correct removes any inflammatory content. It automatically moderates harmful text, curtails hate speech and eliminates controversial topics. Anything odd or different is simply deleted to make your writing more palatable.’

Ruhr looks serious.

‘Subversive topics can normalise harms. So the AI Pen moves content in a more positive, thoughtful direction. Nuance and complexity are things of the past.’

Ruhr lowers the pen.

‘Auto Fact Check runs constantly in the background so you never make a mistake. You no longer have to worry about planning, researching, outlining, revising and proofing. Editing, clarifying and optimising your writing is handled in the background in real-time.’

Ruhr double taps the pen.

‘Okay, so the details --’

Ruhr looks at the pen.

‘The AI Pen starts at $99\. Syncing and storage of all your writing, conversations, photos and videos with no limits on the number of queries you can pose along with unlimited text, talk and data with a dedicated cell phone number for your AI Pen via the Inhumane Network is just $9 a month.’

Ruhr places the pen down on the desk.

‘We are so excited to finally unveil the AI Pen and can’t wait for you to begin trying it for yourselves.’

Ruhr looks into the camera.

‘It’s our aim at Inhumane to build for the world not as it exists today but for tomorrow where we can take the full power of AI everywhere and have it weave seamlessly into our everyday lives.’

Ruhr smiles softly.

‘For us, the AI Pen is just the beginning.’

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Share it with your friends. Spare it from your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of technologists and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s unsettling imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Swamped by sadness
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/swamped-by-sadness/
Last updated: 2024-02-07T01:51:31.000Z
Even his late comeback couldn’t save Ernest Hemingway from the depression that cursed his life.

During the last decade of his life, his naturally dark mood deepened even further by a series of health crises. He survived two separate airplane crashes, each time emerging with severe internal injuries.

He was seriously burned in a bushfire accident, developed high blood pressure and liver problems related to his alcoholism, and underwent electroshock therapy that wiped out much of his memory.

In his final days, he was kept under near-constant sedation to prevent him from taking his own life. His father, Clarence, had committed suicide. As did his sister Ursula and his brother Leicester.

His wife, Mary, went so far as to lock up his guns in the basement of their home in Ketchum, Idaho. A despondent Hemingway found the keys. He always did.

On the morning of July 2, 1961, he put both barrels of a shotgun to his forehead and pulled the trigger.

And succeeded in destroying himself at last.
### “FIVE SEASONS IN MALIBU” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/five-seasons-in-malibu-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:59:27.000Z
Philip Morris is in rehab again.

All he wants to do is get back home and get back to work. All he needs is one breathtaking idea.

“Five Seasons in Malibu” is a prescient advertising short story about being blindsided by ambition, about being addicted to success.

Will Philip see what he wants to see?

Or what he needs to see?

*Rated NC-17 / 4,000 words / 16 minutes of revelatory reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘*The only people who care about advertising are the people who work in advertising.’ George Parker 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **FIVE SEASONS IN MALIBU**

Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

1\. PACIFIC OCEAN - SUNSET

Sounds of frothy waves lapping and drawing across sand, rippling back into the fold.

On the distant horizon a blazing California sun is about to slip away. A coral sky washes over the clouds and the ocean.

Pull back to reveal the edges of the horizon bend and bow as the sun sinks lower. Pull back further to show what looks like God’s thumbprint over the reddening sky. Further still to see an etched Ray-Ban logo.

The sun disappears, taking the day with it.

‘Fuuuck!’

Pull back to show PHILIP MORRIS, 50s, staring out to the horizon through mirrored Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses, arms folded, pissed. He looks like Robert Redford on the set of “Three Days of the Condor”. Same tussled hair, far more expensive denim shirt.

Philip is standing on the balcony of his suite at the Five Seasons in Malibu luxury drug rehabilitation facility. It’s the closest suite to the ocean, only steps to the sand.

He doesn’t want to be up on the hill with the other guests, with the eight pools, with the multiple dining options, with the gyms and meditation rooms.

He wants to be here, close to the water, close to the horizon. He wants to see the green flash of the setting sun.

But in all the days he’s been there, he hasn’t seen it once.

2\. LUXURY REHAB GARDENS - DAY

DR BURWIN, 40s, sits with Philip, surrounded by lush palms and ferns. Philip is wearing his mirrored Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses.

‘Philip, I’ve worked in a lot of clinics and centers and private practice and I’ve got to say the staff here are so cohesive, so together.’

‘Dr. Burwin, you should be in advertising.’

‘Wherever you are on your recovery journey, Philip, there’s mutual respect, a wonderful team effort. We’re all here for you.’

Philip waits for the line about being open to miracles. But then decides to ask a question instead.

‘Are you a real doctor?’

‘What do you think, Philip?’

‘I’m not entirely certain because apparently I have trouble distinguishing reality. Hence my question.’

Dr Burwin smiles.

‘Do you think you have trouble distinguishing reality, Philip?’

Philip smiles.

It’s an odd questions given his job is to create reality. As the senior creative director at the Heroine advertising agency his job is to take one version of reality and convert it into another, replace old perceptions with new perceptions. All he does is distinguish reality.

‘Do you know how many days you’ve been here?’

‘More than nine, less than ninety.’

‘You know why you’re here, don’t you, Philip?’

Philip cocks his head. Dr Burwin continues.

‘You tried to kill yourself in your agency boardroom.’

‘I was trying to make a point.’

‘You were trying to leap out of a window from the top floor of a Manhattan office block.’

‘It was a presentation. I told the client if they didn’t run the new campaign, I’d jump out of the window.’

‘Your boss, Simon Ross, tackled you to the floor.’

3\. LUXURY REHAB BEACH - AFTERNOON

Philip walks barefoot on the sand. Wearing his mirrored sunglasses. Light wind drifts by. Up on the hill, near one of the pools, someone waves down at him.

Philip knows why he’s here. Yes, there’s the jumping out the window issue. But that’s not why he’s here.

Yes, there’s the Xanadine addiction. Seriously, who isn’t addicted to Xanadine - Eli-Pfizer’s blockbuster anti-anxiety and opioid drug. But that’s not really why he’s here.

Philip is at the Five Seasons in Malibu because if he doesn’t successfully complete a 90-day treatment, his advertising agency can’t get professional indemnity insurance. 

And without professional indemnity insurance there are no clients, no business, no nothing. It all goes to hell. Including his stake.

All the other agencies and jackals will come for the accounts. Especially the newer, hungrier firms like René + Girard, Yes Yes Yes, Copy & Co, Champaign.

All because one client might not run one campaign. It’s not easy being an enfant terrible at Philip’s age, but what choice does he have?

The Marlboro account is his agency’s biggest. Both in billings and prestige. Philip had famously brought the Marlboro brand (and the rest of the industry) kicking and screaming back into relevance.

Everyone in the industry was hung up on tobacco and smoking. But that’s not why people bought cigarettes. Philip didn’t need any planner to tell him that people bought cigarettes for the kick of nicotine, for the rush of adrenaline, for the dopamine flooding the pleasure and motivation centers of the brain.

The industry was hung up on ecigarettes and smokeless cigarettes and vapes and all manner of nonsense. Juuls that mixed nicotine with sugary flavors had become absurdly popular until they were outlawed. Every year the FDC - the government agency formed from the merger of the FDA and the CDC - reduces the allowable levels of nicotine in tobacco to lessen its addictive pull and reduce smoking-related illnesses. All the great brand people had gone, replaced by armies of scared lawyers.

It was Philip’s idea to drop the tobacco and relaunch Marlboro as a gum. Twenty nicotine pellets in a foil strip, one strip in every packet. Because there was no smoking-related illnesses, there was no need for a block health warning on the front or images of cancer-riddled lungs and tongues and toes.

Philip’s packet faithfully reproduced Frank Gianninoto’s distinctive red and white 1955 flip-top box design. Because the foil strip was only a tenth of the width of twenty cigarettes, ten times more packets could be stored on retail shelves. Slashing distribution costs and exploding profits.

For the advertising campaigns, Philip used the original gritty Marlboro Man series by the Leo Burnett agency featuring real cowboys in picturesque wild terrains. Visual artists simply airbrushed out the cigarettes. It was brilliant.

It also turned around the brand’s fortunes overnight. Within months it had more than ninety percent share of a market that was growing faster than any category on earth. It was a miracle.

Philip has been through all the highs and lows and highs. He isn’t about to quit now. He was going to fade away and write his memoirs.

If that means a three-month stint at the Five Seasons in Malibu, so be it. If that means sixty-eight one-on-one sessions with every variety of therapist, that’s cool.

Say what you will about Five Seasons in Malibu, but the organic hummus is the best he’s ever tasted.

And the view is to die for.

4\. LUXURY REHAB ART THERAPY ROOM - LATE AFTERNOON

Philip wanders into the open room. It’s flooded with sunlight.

Blank canvasses are stacked against one wall. It smells faintly of ammonia. Sounds of distant waves.

ADRIANA FONTNA, 40s, is at an easel, painting, engrossed.

‘Do you ever take off those sunglasses?’

Philip shakes his head and thinks of seven things to say back, all of which sound like pick-up lines. He says something else instead.

‘They’re Ray-Bans.’

‘I know.’

‘Designed in 1936 by US Army Air Corps Colonel John A. Macready for pilots to cut back the glare of blue and white skies .’

‘The original had green lenses to ban ultraviolet and infrared rays of light. Hence the name.’

‘Pilots could fly into the sun.’

‘Is that what you like to do?’

It’s a good question. Adriana keeps painting without lifting her eyes off the canvas.

‘Please don’t ask me what I’m painting? Or how many days I’ve been here?’

‘Tried to make a break for it yet?’

‘Twice. Didn’t even make it to the front gates. You?’

‘Working on an escape plan.’

5\. LUXURY REHAB FOYER - SUNSET

Philip picks up a folio-sized brochure for Five Seasons in Malibu from the glass coffee table.

Large format, full color, expensively bound, heavy paper. It’s the only one there. Flicking through the pages there’s details of the Spanish-influenced architecture, the multi-tiered terraces, the yoga on the beach, the crystalline pools, the individualized experience, the nutritional expertise, the holistic modalities, the family inclusion, the twelve-person treatment teams.

The focus of treatment at Five Seasons in Malibu is structured around Seasonal Atmospheric Addictive Disorder (SAAD), a physiological disorder characterized by seasonal patterns of addiction, usually in the fall to winter period. With waning sunlight and rising anxiety, depression and social withdrawal, this time of the year is seen as the fifth season.

With its endless summer, Malibu is the perfect locale for rehabilitation facilities. Long days and shining nights draw in addicts from across the country and around the world. Some facilities are booked out years in advance.

The beach city has more rehabilitation centers and retreats per square mile than anywhere else on earth. Signs around the city still proclaim “21 Miles of Scenic Beauty”. It used to be 27 miles until developers carved out and rezoned all the private beaches.

Philip isn’t even sure how he got here from Manhattan. He presumes Johnny Wayland arranged it. Johnny is the fixer at the agency. Every agency has one. They’re the guy - it’s always a guy - who makes problems disappear.

Philip doesn’t remember arriving at Five Seasons in Malibu. Doesn’t remember being admitted. Doesn’t remember detoxing which must have happened because his Xanadine addiction had kept rising and rising, clambering higher and higher. He’d been popping the 70mg pills like candy.

Philip looks around the foyer. There are large paintings on the walls. Bright, splashy abstracts. Probably painted by guests who never called clients or patients, never monetized or stigmatized.

There’s no entrance door, which Philip finds odd. How do guests enter and leave? How do family members come and go?

No devices of any kind are allowed. Not even a watch. Not even a vitamin pill. And of course all licit and illicit drugs and alcohol are banned. Philip had never been a big drinker. If a client was getting sloshed, then he would join. More out of camaraderie than enjoyment. Pills and powders had always been his potion.

Philip looks back at the brochure. On the page is a photo of the foyer he’s standing in. The paintings are different but the view of the setting sun from the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window is almost identical.

His reflection on the glass is faint as the sun slips below the horizon. It’s gone in the blink of an eye.

He doesn’t see the flash of green.

6\. LUXURY REHAB SUITE - MORNING

Philip is in his suite, haphazardly painting a canvas and planning his escape. He’s wearing bathers, a loose shirt and his mirrored sunglasses. Worn paperback books are scattered everywhere.

So far he’s avoided the art room and all group activities. Five Seasons in Malibu doesn’t force guests to participate in group therapy. It prides itself on a more individual focus, a more singular locus.

Philip frowns at what he’s painted. According to the Five Seasons in Malibu, art therapy taps into the creative parts of yourself through artistic expression. The therapeutic benefits include the capacity to express yourself in more depth than talk therapy, release stress and tension, and heal emotional trauma. Philip felt none of them.

Creative expression? He’d been doing it his whole life. He’d been one of the youngest creative directors in the industry. For him it was less about style and more about substance. About how to shift culture, shift markets.

His creative expression had become tied to commerce. Ideas for the sake of ideas had given way to selling for the sake of selling. Products, services, organizations, institutions, charities, governments. Everything needed to be sold, everything needed to be turned into money.

What he wouldn’t give for a Xanadine now.

7\. LUXURY REHAB POOL - LATE MORNING

Large pool umbrellas flutter in a light breeze.

Philip lies back on a cushioned teak lounge chaise by the biggest pool in the facility. Barefoot, bathers, unbuttoned shirt, mirrored sunglasses. Reading a well-thumbed paperback of “The Stranger” by Albert Camus.

Adriana is floating on her back in the glinting water, wearing a black one-piece. Reaching back and drawing her arms and fingers through the water.

‘Not coming in?’

Philip answers without looking up from his book.

‘I don’t swim in chlorinated water.’

‘Toxins?’

‘Free radicals too. Cell damage, scarring in the circulatory system, breathing problems. There’s a list.’

‘I’m sure it’s very long.’

Philip closes his book and looks over. Adriana continues.

‘You can see the irony of an addict worrying about their health, right?’

‘I’m sure the preferred nomenclature is guest.’

‘I’m Adriana, and I’m an addict.’

‘I’m Philip, and I’m a senior creative director.’

‘Of course you are.’

Philip sits up and swings his feet onto the stone surface.

‘Adriana, I’m sure you’re more than just an addict.’

‘We’re all addicts. If we’re lucky, we get to decide what we’re addicted to. We get to choose how we’re addicted. We get to rule our addictions. If we’re unlucky, our addictions rule us.’

‘Which therapist told you that?’

‘I’m pretty sure it was me.’

Philip stands up, picks up his book and heads to the art room.

‘Lucky you.’

8\. LUXURY REHAB ART ROOM - LATER

Philip works furiously on a new canvas, painting a poem.

Snatches of words and letters reflected on his mirrored sunglasses.

It’s not making any sense. It’s just a jumble of half-broken words only he can see, clumsy lines and ragged thoughts. He keeps painting.

He keeps thinking about escaping. Flying back to the agency in Manhattan, leaping back to his old life. Dancing back into the fray. Pitching every which way. Making a little history.

Old habits are hard to break. The older, the harder. All those pitches, all those campaigns, all those awards, all those addictions. All those ideas and now this. Empty. Spent. Scratching at a canvas. Stuck on the other side of the country, trapped in a sun-blessed purgatory. Three thousand miles from Manhattan, a million miles from paradise.

He puts the brush down and decides to go for a walk.

Decides to clear his mind.

9\. LUXURY REHAB BEACH - AFTERNOON

Philip walks along the water’s edge, thinking about how he’d let everyone down.

Sunlight gleams over the surface of his mirrored sunglasses. Sounds of crashing waves and swirling sea.

One broken relationship after another, one lost account after another, one let down after another. The realization that he’d become a liability, an old man without hope. And old man without any new ideas.

But why was that a problem? Most of the industry was bereft of ideas. Sure there were a handful of new advertising agencies pushing new ideas. But even they were getting bought up behind the scenes. Agency groups were forming and growing again. And the larger any agency became, the duller the work they produced. Enthusiasm and daring gave way to systems and profit margins.

There’s only a handful of people on the beach, mainly tourists. Of course there’s security staff from Five Seasons in Malibu at either end of the beach. Maybe he could swim out to sea to escape, but he knew they’d drag him back.

An Indian family was up ahead, their young son playing in the water. The mother was calling him to come in. The young boy was laughing, splashing out deeper and deeper.

Philip thinks about the advertising agency he wants to start. He had a name - The Orphanage. And a simple guiding philosophy - only hire people whose parents were dead, whose families were estranged. His agency would become their family, their love.

No going home for the holidays, no family dramas to attend to, no familial rites and rituals. Being an orphan had its market advantages.

The mother’s screams snatch his attention. She’s screaming for help because her son is being dragged out to sea.

‘He cannot swim! He cannot!’

The father is running, stumbling to the security staff. The son is flaying in the deep water, disappearing under the waves.

Philip dashes into the water, pulling himself forward, Surging, diving under the waves. Propelling himself towards the drowning boy.

He lifts his head above the water to catch his breath. Looks around, heart pumping. People are rushing towards the screaming mother on the shore. He cannot see the boy.

He pulls his body under the water, turns and kicks to go deeper. Spots the outreached arm of the sinking boy. Kicks and kicks and reaches out to grab his hand and pull both of them to the surface, to the light. Lifts the boy’s head out of the water.

The boy coughs, splutters. Eyes flutter as he gulps air. Philip can feel his tiny heart pumping in double time, blood coursing under his skin.

Philip holds his head against his own chest and strokes back to shore. The mother splashes into the water and plucks her son away. The father looks at Philip with shocked gratitude. Lost for words.

Water trickles down Philip’s mirrored sunglasses like tears.

Philip is panting, dazed.

10\. LUXURY REHAB GARDENS - LATE AFTERNOON

Philip has showered and dressed. His hair is still wet, slicked back. His mirrored sunglasses gleam.

Dr Burwin smiles.

‘That was a remarkable thing you did, Philip. Saving a boy’s life.’

‘Was it part of the therapy?’

Dr Burwin gently shakes her head.

‘Impressive as that would be, no.’

Dr Burwin changes the subject.

‘Have you thought more about why you’re here?’

‘It really wasn’t a suicide attempt, Dr Burwin. If I wanted to jump out that window, I would’ve jumped.’

‘Why would you have wanted to do that, Philip?’

Philip smiles tightly.

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘But that’s why I’m here. So you can talk about it. So I can listen.’

Philip wants to tell her that he’s terrified that his creativity has left him, that his reason for being has evaporated, that he let his agency down. Let everyone down.

But he doesn’t. He’s too afraid.

12\. LUXURY REHAB SUITE - EVENING

There’s a small envelope slipped half under the door to Philip’s suite.

Philip squats down, adjusts his sunglasses, pulls out the envelope, stands and opens the door. Steps inside as the doors closes quietly behind him.

Opens the envelope and takes out a note that’s folded in half. Unfolds it. There’s only six words on it.

‘You lost us the Marlboro account.’

Shit! He should have jumped out the fucking window. It’s all his fault.

The Marlboro account represents more than half the agency billings. Losing an account of that magnitude had immediate ramifications. More than half the staff would need to be retrenched. At least half of the accounts would be raided by competing agencies. Panic would spread to the remaining accounts.

Philip may as well have poured gasoline on the agency and set it on fire.

Agencies have gone from hundreds of millions of dollars of billings to zero in a matter of days. It was the nature of the business. No one likes a loser. Credit agencies, banks and financial services, media aggregators all pull away. Contracts be damned, everyone flees.

All because of one stupid presentation.

13\. LUXURY REHAB ART ROOM - NIGHT

Philip is leaning against the open doorway. No one is inside.

Discarded canvases are scattered in the low light. Adriana’s paintings aren’t there and Philip knows she’s gone.

Outside the stars feel cold.

14\. LUXURY REHAB PHILIP’S SUITE - LATE NIGHT

Door swings open as Philip walks in, closes behind him.

Philip locks the door, slips in the security chain, grabs a chair and wedges it under the handle.

Glances around the room through his sunglasses. Table lamps provide the only light. He steps over to the desk and picks up his Ray-Ban sunglasses case, goes to the bathroom, switches on the lights.

Holds up the case. It’s leather. It’s vintage. It’s in pristine condition. And it cost more than the sunglasses.

It’s rare. 1950s Bausch & Lomb Genuine Made in USA Leather Case. Early Ray-Ban by Bausch & Lomb debossed logo. Aluminum casing inside is lined with green felt.

Philip unsnips the front flap, thumbs it back. Grabs a nail file and stabs it between the leather and the edge of the lined casing. Then saws all the way around until he lifts the casing free and places it on the vanity.

Rattles the leather case like a dice cup in a casino and throws the contents into the palm of his hand. It’s not dice. It’s not diamonds.

It’s ten 70mg Xanadine tablets, the strongest money can buy. They look like tiny suns in his hand. He closes his fist.

Philip looks up at his reflection, his sunglasses reflecting into infinity. He’s not sure how many days or weeks or months he’s been Xanadine free. But he knows his tolerance has fallen away. Changes to metabolite production, enzyme expression and transporter function have all reverted to normal. Ten of these tablets is more than enough to overdose.

Philip fills a glass of water from the tap. He knows what’s going to happen. Within minutes the Xanadine will dramatically lower his heart rate and blood pressure. His pupils will constrict to pinpoints as his breathing slows to respiratory arrest. His body crumbling to the floor. His last breath leaving his body. His spirit gone.

And all his problems will disappear. He’ll disappear.

Philip takes off his sunglasses, opens his hand and stares at the tablets. Takes a deep breath and looks up at his reflection. Considers the past, present and future. Everyone he’ll miss. Every story left behind. There’s no tears.

He raises his hand and downs all the tablets. Crunches and chews and swallows them all. Then takes a gulp of water.

Snaps off the bathroom lights and walks out of the bathroom and into the bedroom and falls on the bed.

Sounds of distant waves rise and fall.

15\. LUXURY REHAB PHILIP’S SUITE - SUNSET

Vivid orange sunlight splashes into the bedroom. Philip’s body lays where he fell the night before, arms to one side, head facing the glass doors that open onto the balcony that looks out to the endless sea.

Philip’s eyes flutter open and he gasps awake. The last rays of sunlight are absorbed and filtered by the atmosphere. Scattered through the air as he stares at the setting sun slides behind the horizon.

A sudden green flash fills the room, streaks and across every surface. Philip’s eyes widen in wonder. A smile spreads across his face.

And that’s when the idea to save the agency hits him.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Disseminate it to your friends. Divert it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of various advertising executives and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s ferocious imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Greatest hits
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/greatest-hits/
Last updated: 2024-02-02T01:50:25.000Z
It’s not just you.

Everything everywhere is on repeat. All those tech platforms that exhort innovation at any price are a chimera, a monstrous fabrication that does nothing but copy and paste the past and present it as the future.

These tech platforms don’t create anything new. They simply plunder and steal what already exists and reformat it as their own. They are nothing but algorithmic distribution channels designed to capture and hold and sell attention to the highest bidder. Nothing more, nothing less.

But unlike previous distribution channels, tech platforms don’t underwrite and support creatives. Unlike publishers, record companies and film studios, tech platforms don’t provide advances or any financial let alone moral sustenance.

Instead of supporting artists, tech platforms chew them up and spit them out. They use their market power to steadily decrease payments to creators, to sell user data and to price-gouge advertisers.

These problems go beyond Spotify. Amazon, Facebook, Google, TikTok, X and all the rest. It’s time we weigh up the positive and negative impacts of these platforms. It’s time we held these unregulated platforms to account.

Now more than ever we need new music, new art, new stories, new ideas to bring us together and remind us of our shared humanity.

For society to move forward we need to feed - not starve - artists.
### “THE HELICOPTER” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-helicopter-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T21:59:52.000Z
You’re a struggling political activist in modern Russia.

You’re trying to make ends meet. It’s not easy. New laws make dissent practically impossible. 

But one night you find yourself among the elites. It’s as if you’ve been given a chance to show those in power what you’re truly made of.

“The Helicopter” is an unsettling political story. A contemporary take on the rise of gangster democracy. 

Will you rise up and lead your people to a new beginning, a new way?

Or will modern politics get the better of you?

*Rated NC-17 / 3,000 words / 12 minutes of unnerving reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

  
*‘Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.’ Leo Tolstoy* 

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **THE HELICOPTER**

## 

Copyright 2023 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

1\. GRAND FOYER

It’s late and it’s time to go home.

How long have you been at this ludicrous birthday party? How many deranged nights? You’ve lost count, haven’t you?

You’re surrounded by the spoiled and wasted sons and daughters of Russia’s super rich and super powerful. A generation drunk on their parents’ obscene wealth and influence. A generation so lost they will never, ever find their way.

What are you even doing here? You despise these people.

How did you get here? You certainly never received an official invitation. You came with a friend of a friend of a friend.

A bit of fun at the end of summer. You never dreamed you’d make it past the first security screening.

Now here you are in a sweeping foyer overflowing with guests and hangers-on. It’s impossible to tell who’s coming or going. It’s a swirl of people, like Petchenka Station at rush hour.

You’re waiting with Mikhail. In your hand is a small plastic disc imprinted with the number seventy-three. It looks like a gambling chip. It marks your place in the queue. An officious young woman with a metal clipboard is calling out numbers for people waiting for the black limousines that will shuttle guests back to Moscow. She calls out number sixty-eight.

In one corner of the foyer is an enormous pile of birthday presents for Irina Bakhmetevsky. It reaches up three levels almost touching the ceiling. It’s like a mountain of glistening presents, wrapped and ribboned.

Irina’s father is Alexander Bakhmetevsky. A lot of the mothers and fathers of the guests owe their livelihood to this man. Many owe their lives.

On the other side is a long reception counter in dark timber overflowing with more presents. The foyer feels more like a luxury hotel than a home. 

You look up at the colossal chandelier. High, sparkling.

‘Do you think it’s cut glass or lead crystal?’ 

Mikhail couldn’t care less. What worries him is that his watch has stopped working. It’s stuck on twelve-fifty-seven. He taps the watch face twice. You smile at him.

‘Time to buy a better watch, Mikhail.’

‘It’s never stopped before.’

Who wears a watch anymore? Normally you’d check your phone. But everyone knows not to take their phones. They know they’d be confiscated and destroyed.

And if you somehow manage to sneak a phone in, you’d never get a signal, never get to make a call or send a message. Everyone knows the government always jams the networks at events like this. Everyone knows everything these days.

Power has devolved to knowing. The threat has become internalised. You no longer need the secret police to roam the streets with bloodied dog heads to frighten people into submission. People are all too willing to yield.

You see waiters with silver platters with more food whisk through the foyer. You’ve never eaten so much caviar in your life. 

‘Did you try the lobster, Mikhail?’

Mikhail smiles. You know he didn’t. He’s a Buddhist and a vegetarian.

‘It’s wild, not farmed. It’s really something.’

Mikhail normally carries on about sentient beings and the sanctity of life. He must be tired.

You look up at the chandelier again.

‘It’s probably crystal?’

‘Whatever it is, it’s an illusion.’

You’d seen pictures of the Bakhmetevsky country estate in gossip magazines. More modern Park Hyatt than old-school Russian. It was meant to evoke the new spirit of Russia. Ultra-capitalist without too much gaudy excess.

Bakhmetevsky built this estate for his daughter Irina after her mother died. A refuge from the world. He couldn’t deny Irina anything. He kept the lowest profile of any of the oligarchs. Although Irina splashed out in public - a gaggle of girlfriends, a rock star boyfriend, a driver famous for carrying two handguns at all times.

You can’t afford to go to nightclubs. You can’t even afford to continue your studies. The small stipend from Propom, the pro-democracy organisation, is hardly enough to live on let alone take care of your ageing aunt. Maybe life was better under Gorbachev. At least you didn’t have to bribe doctors and hospital orderlies.

It’s definitely time to go home.

‘Mikhail, I’m going to pick up my bag.’

‘Why? The woman said your bag would be taken to the car.’

You shrug your shoulders.

‘I don’t trust them.’

Mikhail raises an eyebrow.

‘Bakhmetevsky has already stolen half of Russia. What would he want with your bag?’

2\. LUXURY ROOM

You step into room six-one-two. It’s already been cleaned by the housekeeping staff, and your bag has already been picked up.

Your presence has been scrubbed away with medical-grade bleach. Every trace gone, ready for the next guest.

You glance around. Something doesn’t feel right. You step into the marble bathroom and close the door. The edge of the door overlaps against the frame. You press your foot against the bottom of the door to stop it from opening.

You turn on the cold water tap but no water comes out. Just the sound of dry metal turning on metal.

It feels like someone is watching you. But these days it always feels like someone is watching you.

You crouch down and reach under the basin. You reach deeper and retrieve a Walther PPK pistol. You’d found it earlier on the grounds. Someone from security must have dropped it. Just a little souvenir, a small memento. What harm is there? Surely nobody will miss it?

You’ll show it to everyone at Propom. It’s sure to impress. It feels like you’ve been making some progress lately. Not the usual cat and mouse but some real political agitation that’s started to make ripples. There’s even talk of protests next weekend. Maybe the pistol is a sign.

You’re pretty sure it’s loaded. You’re pretty sure the safety is on. You slip it into your waistband and drop your shirt over the cool brushed stainless steel.

Stepping out of the bathroom, you glance over the room and realise you hadn’t even slept in the bed. Not once. Any dreams of bedding some socialite or pretty young thing had fallen away during the festivities.

The deep red curtains are drawn tight. You never opened them. You smile and step over and part them slowly. There’s no window, just a cinderblock wall.

You shake your head and step out of the room.

3\. GLASS ENTRANCE

You’re stepping through the foyer towards the entrance, flicking the small numbered plastic disc into the air and catching it on the back of your hand.

Private security guards and Federal Protective Service officers almost outnumber the guests coming and going. Army and Air Force personnel are dotted around.

Mikhail stands outside, shaking his head.

‘We’ve missed our car.’

‘Shit!’

‘Where’s your bag?’

‘They already took it.’

‘That’s why I never carry one.’

‘Mikhail, you’re such a peasant.’

‘Everyone is a peasant in Russia now.’

You look towards the glittering crowd inside.

‘Really? Everyone?’

Mikhail follows your eyes to the crowd and then looks back at you and nods. Then looks towards the parking lot.

‘We’re going to have to wait hours for another car into the city. We might as well take the bus.’

‘I’m not catching a bus. Do I look like a factory worker?’

‘It’s a luxury coach.’

‘It’s still a bus.’

You start walking towards the parking lot.

‘Maybe we can catch a ride back with someone.’

The grounds seem to dip and roll forever. Ribboned by a high perimeter fence topped with electrified razor wire.

You hear a large helicopter landing on the other side of the hill, near where someone told you there is a lake. It sounds like an armoured Mi-8M, Vladimir Putin’s favourite. Maybe the Russian President is making an appearance. Unlikely given his distaste for any public appearance not ringed by steel and Federal Protective Service officers and his own elite Presidential Security Service guards.

They say Putin never steps outside the Kremlin these days without at least a hundred bodyguards.

Mikhail looks down the long, wide driveway leading to the front gates.

‘I’d rather walk back to Moscow than wait another minute with these parasites.’

‘I’d rather walk back to the foyer.’

You hear some popping sounds in the distance like guns being fired. Who would be firing guns at night out here?

“Did you have any of the wild caviar?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So you let it go to waste. Is that ecologically sound?’

‘Eating fish eggs is eating life.’

‘I’m not sure if those fish eggs are sentient beings but they taste amazing.’

You flip open a Marlboro packet and drag out a cigarette. Some U.S.-funded agency hands them out for free. It says Virginia Tobacco on the front but you know they’re made in China.

Mikhail passes you a plastic cigarette lighter. You think of giving him the gun you have for safety, and maybe his cigarette lighter back. Instead you keep both.

Mikhail walks away down the driveway, raises his right hand above his head, and waves goodbye without turning back.

You look up at the night sky but you can’t see any stars. You see faint black smoke rising in the distance. Is that burnt meat you smell?

You light the cigarette, breathe the smoke in deep and think of the finely salted caviar and how the wild sturgeon is pulled from the Black Sea, how the mother is dragged from the dark water. How she’s sliced from tail to mouth while still alive to retrieve her eggs.

You nod at a handful of partygoers stumbling into the glass entrance. A stunning young woman dressed all in red smiles at you as she passes by. Blows you a kiss.

Children of the damned. How did Russia produce so many oligarchs? These oligarchs who are richer and more powerful and more ruthless than all the czars and kings combined.

Publicity-shy Bakhmetevsky was the Kremlin’s chief security adviser and part of Putin’s innermost circle. Despite - or perhaps because of the Kremlin connections - he managed to own and run a multi-billion-dollar private investment company with petroleum holdings in the Black Sea. Hence the endless supply of wild caviar.

Bakhmetevsky’s closest friend is Vagit Alekperov, the former energy minister who owns and runs the Lukoil conglomerate, owner of one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. Other close friends include Roustam Tariko, one of Russia’s most successful businessmen and the founder of Russian Standard Vodka and the owner of Russian Standard Bank, and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, the founder and majority owner of Sistema.

Bakhmetevsky’s past is littered with former associates who no longer serve a purpose, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon arrested in 2003 and jailed for years. Leonid Shulman, Alexander Tyulakov, Vasily Melnikov, Vladislav Avayev, Sergey Protosenya, Aleksandr Subbotin, Yuri Voronov, Ravil Maganov, Grigory Kochenov. All dead. Either poisoned, stabbed or hurled out a window.

You head back towards the grand foyer.

4\. GRAND FOYER

A security officer puts his palm hard on your chest to stop you from entering. Another security officer snatches the cigarette from between your lips.

‘This is a smoke-free zone. Thank you for not smoking,’ he says.

Then they both step aside so you can enter. You’re sure you read somewhere that Bakhmetevsky hates smoking. Cigarettes are for the poor.

Inside the foyer there’s a flurry of activity as the birthday girl herself - Irina Bakhmetevsky - staggers through the crowd surrounded by bodyguards and acolytes and hangers-on.

Someone stumbles into you, almost knocks you over. It’s a large man, a drunken buffoon. Somehow he’s in front of you and behind you at the same time. Then you realise they’re twins. The second one speaks, embarrassed and apologetic.

‘I’m so sorry. My brother is an idiot, never looking where he’s going.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Nothing broken, I hope.’

‘It’s all good.’

You see Irina come closer. She’s celebrating her twenty-fourth birthday but she looks closer to forty-two than twenty-four. She looks worn out, thin legs, tiny skirt, thin arms, holding a broken doll. Carrying a doll is one of her affectations. Like her bleached blonde hair, cropped short, messily cut by the most expensive hairdresser in Russia.

Irina crashes into you. And you say the first thing you think of.

‘Happy birthday!’

‘What’s so happy about it?’

You can’t help but smile at her as her head slumps against your shoulder. She breathes you in.

‘You smell of cigarettes. You smell wonderful,’ she says.

‘They’re terrible for your health.’

‘Everything is terrible for your health.’

A smile cracks the corner of her mouth. Her teeth are tiny but still white.

‘Are you taking the helicopter back to Moscow?’ she asks.

‘Of course.’

Irina leans back and looks you up and down.

‘Have you ever flown in a helicopter?’

‘Only on summer holidays.’

She sways away. Looks back and smiles again. She knows you’re lying.

‘Come with me, bring your friends.’

‘All of them?’

She almost laughs as you follow her and the others.

People want to be led. They want their disputes settled, their deeds negotiated, their jobs dispensed, their mutinies punished. They want their loyalties rewarded.

People hand over their power to whoever leads them to what they want. It’s a covenant, unspoken and elemental.

Irina is skipping ahead, giggling. Spoiled and infantile as she leads you and the others through a side door.

5\. INDUSTRIAL KITCHEN - NIGHT

You all tumble through a large industrial kitchen in full flight.

Flames are leaping from cooktops. Teams of chefs and cooks are frantically cooking meals in central islands while others are prepping on counters.

Plates are coming and going. Waiters are dashing in and out of swinging doors.

6\. SERVICE CORRIDOR - NIGHT

Irina leads you all out to a long service corridor where two kitchen hands are sharing a cigarette.

She plucks the cigarette from them and starts smoking as she rushes along. Her voice shrill and excited.

‘Come on, let’s fly!’

7\. INTERCONNECTED CORRIDORS

There’s no stopping Irina as she darts left and right then left again.

It’s like a cinderblock maze with overhead pipes and crash rails. Lit by dull fluorescent lighting. The concrete floor is worn and scuffed. Sounds echo and bounce and scatter down the walls.

You look at the crowd she’s dragging along. Some of them look familiar. They look like activists. They look like you.

A serious young man with glasses looks at you and nods recognition. You nod back and smile. He looks over the surging crowd, counting.

‘What are you doing?’

‘There’s thirty-three of us. Thirty-four if you count Irina.’

‘What are you? A statistician?’

‘You can’t fit that many people in a helicopter.’

‘Do you have any idea how rich Bakhmetevsky is? It’ll be a big helicopter.’

The serious young man stops as you all move ahead.

‘Maybe there are two helicopters,’ you say.

He stands still as you all move forward and disappear down another corridor towards open metal doors. You feel a blast of cold air.

8\. BOARDING GATE CORRIDOR

You all rush down a corridor lined with larger-than-life-size photographic portraits of dead Russian leaders. Black-and-white, cruel.

Vladimir Lenin, Alexei Rykov, Joseph Stalin, Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin.

You see Irina’s broken doll on the unswept floor.

9\. BOARDING GATE

Unmanned boarding counter. Phones and computer monitors aren’t connected because the power cords have been sliced off. There’s dust like icing. Maybe the maids and cleaners aren’t allowed here.

Dirty glass doors lead to the air bridge. A flight crew in light blue uniforms is standing by. Full smiles, big teeth, wearing heavy makeup.

There’s a sky blue logo of a winged star painted above the glass doors. As you hurry through, you’re handed a paper showbag that looks like it’s stuffed with candy. You’re giddy with excitement.

10\. AIR BRIDGE

Once through the glass doors, everyone turns to the right and down a flight of concrete stairs. You look around and can’t see Irina anywhere. You think you hear the sounds of flies buzzing, hissing. It must be the helicopter starting.

You look up and the flight crew wave you on. You pass a series of open steel doors on each landing. The buzzing becomes louder.

At the bottom of the stairs the floor is dirt. Flies are flitting about. You hear the steel door above you slam shut and lock into place. You see there’s no handle on your side, only scratch marks.

There’s only one other steel door in front of you. Grinding engine noise from the other side. Scraping, plowing, rasping.

You catch your breath as panic begins to spread. You open your showbag and look inside. There’s nothing but shredded newspaper.

You feel for the pistol in your waistband. It’s not there because the twins took it.

There are spent bullet casings on the dirt floor. Patches damp with wet blood.

Sounds of gas jets igniting and flaming from the other side of the heavy steel door. 

As the thick door rises and flames shudder the air, you glimpse the raging furnace.

And realise there is no helicopter.

There never was.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Spin it to your friends. Thrust it to your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2023 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of various Russian oligarchs and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s ferocious imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### The CEO’s lament
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-ceos-lament/
Last updated: 2024-01-25T01:49:36.000Z
Look behind the smile of the latest CEO to be lauded in the financial press.

What appears to be a successful life is a sham. Look beyond the smile to see their rejected ideas and panicked ambition, the days spent on site visits instead of with family, the nights wining and dining institutional investors while missing their children’s school plays.

All the insights that arrived far too late.

All the sleep lost to worry and confusion.
### Who will you rescue?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/who-will-you-rescue/
Last updated: 2024-01-20T01:44:12.000Z
You are here to rescue yourself, of course.

Why else would you exist but to live and tell your own story, share your own tragedies and triumphs.
### Review: “Baumgartner”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-baumgartner/
Last updated: 2024-01-13T01:27:21.000Z
Love and grief hold equal measure in Paul Auster’s writerly novel about the writing (and thinking) life.

It follows the noted author and retiring philosophy professor Sy Baumgartner as he recovers from the death of his beloved and spirited wife Anna.

It shifts and slips between past, present and a somewhat fraught future as the author writes his latest book amid frayed and fraying memories. Sucker-punched by his own imagination.

There’s lots of writing and writing about writing. It is Paul Auster, after all. With more than an occasional nod to the pitfalls (and pratfalls) of ageing.

A deft roman-à-clef of sorts that transposes Park Slope for Princeton and tells stories within stories.
### The novelist’s secret
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-novelists-secret/
Last updated: 2024-01-08T01:25:44.000Z
Patricia Highsmith put it best.

The secret? The novelist’s secret?

It’s not literary skills or narrative technique. It’s not technical prowess or magnificent plotting.

For Highsmith the secret is the novelist’s individuality, their personality. It’s up to the novelist to express that which makes them different from everyone else. That which separates them. (Ironically it’s this separateness that ultimately connects the novelist and the reader.)

There’s nothing magical to it. Quite the opposite. By exhibiting yourself as openly and truthfully as possible, you become as real as possible. This is the freedom you seek. The freedom to be you. To be all of you. Unexpurgated, uncensored, undiminished. 

Far from toying with literary language, your aim is to reveal what is hidden in you.

To reveal your true self.
### Your enemies
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/your-enemies/
Last updated: 2024-01-03T01:24:26.000Z
They lie, they slander, they project.

They say things to make themselves feel better at your expense.

They’re envious and inadequate, cruel. They hate what you do with bitter meanness.

They’re your enemies. If you’re a decent and interesting person, you’ll attract a string of them as you make your way through life. It’s simply human nature.

The specific reasons will vary. Some enemies will flare up because you’re challenging their vested interests, their status quo. Other enemies will be reminded of their renounced ambitions when they encounter your own. Still others will find your achievements humiliating.

Think less of your enemies. Ideally do not give them a second thought. While you may be the target of their anger, you aren’t the true cause.

They don’t hate you. They hate what they’ve allowed themselves to become.
### Scenes from the city: Luxury garbage
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-luxury-garbage/
Last updated: 2024-08-02T11:24:19.000Z
It’s a luxury hotel because that’s what every new hotel in the city seems to be these days.

A sort of fey luxury that seems simultaneously forced and nonchalant, curated within a millimetre of its overly designed minimal maximalist interiors. Mid-century pastiche without the pastels.

It’s part of a luxury hotel group that picked up the brand in some merger and acquisition when interest rates were far lower than today. It’s managed by a string of holding companies set up in the Maldives for tax advantages.

The pitch is not so much a hotel as an experience to help you slow down, connect and savour the good life. There’s a rooftop pool and deck overlooking the city, a ground floor café and bar, and a restaurant that continues to garner terrible reviews.

The room is positioned flush to a rear lane with a frail Ginkgo Maidenhair tree on the corner. A quintessential inner city view. With complimentary spring water and artisanal coffee pods. High-quality skin care products and branded cotton bathrobes. King-size bed with layers of foam and pocketed coil springs. White duck feathers and down pillows and duvet. Three hundred thread count white cotton sheets.

There’s no need to book an early morning wake-up call from reception because the sound of a garbage truck noisily backing down the lane and swapping out giant waste bins from hundreds of guests and thousands of meals will wake the dead.

Thankfully the smell doesn’t rise quite as high.
### Scenes from the coast: Shearer
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-coast-shearer/
Last updated: 2024-01-02T01:12:21.000Z
It’s an A4 sheet of white card nailed to a tree in the paddock by the side of the road.

It’s at an odd angle. The word ‘Shearer’ is scrawled by hand in red with what you presume is a name and phone number underneath.

But it’s too hard to make out because you’re driving too fast.

And it’s too far away.
### Defamation suits
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/defamation-suits/
Last updated: 2024-01-02T01:11:17.000Z
Think of the high-profile media defamation trial Bruce Lerhmann lodged against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson as a fashion trial.

Whatever the outcome, in court everyone was dressed for success. As a media adviser, Brittany Higgins was fond of serious-looking pantsuits in black or muted tones. Her - what do you call it - emotional support sidekick and media adviser Emma Webster also favoured dark pantsuits when she wasn’t splashing out in a scarlet red.

Her media adviser boyfriend David Sharaz favoured a timeless well-cut suit in deep, dark navy. Her media mentor Lisa Wilkinson favoured a series of pantsuits in a range of block colours with big, black-framed glasses and a constant, winning smile from ear to ear.

Everyone looked marvellous. Everyone except Lerhmann in his creased and ill-fitting suit and too-narrow red Trump tie.

Guess he needed a media adviser.
### Transformers
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/transformers/
Last updated: 2023-12-17T20:23:56.000Z
There on the ground lies the pencil.

On the gravel track by the side of the wide, green reserve. Lying in the dirt and the dust.

It’s no ordinary pencil. No simple red or blue wooden body with a sharpened graphite tip. No HB or B stamp to denote the density and relative hardness (or softness) of the graphite contained within.

Instead the pencil’s round body is wrapped in a plastic sheath promoting the Transformers media and toy franchise. Abstract motor vehicles furiously swirling in midair and unfolding into giant mechanised robots. With the Transformers copyrighted brand name in the brand block typeface in white and the branded autobot mask logo in dull gold.

The pencil has yet to be sharpened, yet to be used for writing or drawing. Not so much a means of communication and as a means of distraction.

A means of consumption, not creation.
### Review: “Romantic Comedy”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-romantic-comedy/
Last updated: 2023-12-13T02:13:27.000Z
Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel “Romantic Comedy” is a fine, fizzy love story.

A coming together of two unlikely leads - Sally Milz, a snarky but loveable late-thirties television writer and Noah Brewster, an aging but loveable late-thirties pop star.

The twist is that Sally is plain and unknown while Noah is devastatingly handsome, famous and rich. Oh, and sober and considerate and kind and thoughtful. And no, doesn’t only date models.

An impossible love? What else would you expect from a novel that is a beat-perfect-rendition of every rom-com you’ve ever seen?

Milz is the everywoman sketch writer for a weekly live comedy television called “The Night Owls” and modelled on “Saturday Night Live” down to a comedy impresario par excellence that walks and talks and dry-jokes just like Michael Lorne.

The opening third of the novel is the set up as we follow a week in the life of the show where Brewster is the celebrity host and musical guest while Milz writes, prepares, polishes, scraps, reboots and refines sketches. It’s very meta in a wholesome all-American mid-west kind of way. There’s more than a few laugh-out bits. It’s a comedy after all.

The middle third of the novel is the flurry of emails to and fro during the coronavirus pandemic that complicates while simultaneously raises the love stakes between Milz who feels undeserving and Brewster who feels the exact opposite. Yes, this is the romantic bit.

The final third of the novel amps up the tension (as it should) and the tropes as it zig and zags through the relationship being in jeopardy, the lightbulb moment, the grand gesture and - of course - the happy ending.

Also there a private jets.

And scatological quips.
### American fable
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/american-fable/
Last updated: 2023-12-09T09:42:11.000Z
Ed Gein was the original psycho killer.

Gein was arrested in Plainfield, Wisconsin, in 1957 after local police found a bunch of human bones buried under the cold snow in his farmyard and an assortment of human skins and female skulls inside his farmhouse.

He murdered quite a few middle-aged women and desecrated more than a few graves to get to the dead bodies. Decapitation, necrophilia, slicing off body parts, keeping organs in jars, fashioning lampshades from human skin. It’s said that after his beloved mother died, he stitched together a woman’s suit from female skin so he could become her, literally crawl into her skin.

Gein’s story was the basis for Robert Bloch’s blockbuster novel “Psycho”. And every serial killer book and movie from here to eternity.

The snares of death, the sorrows of hell.
### It hits me like seventeen tons of bricks
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/it-hits-me-like-seventeen-tons-of-bricks/
Last updated: 2023-12-07T20:52:32.000Z
I don’t have to worry about making movies.

I don’t have to worry about taking twenty-seven-thousand inane meetings. No more grinning from ear to ear and pitching producers and production companies and agents and studios. No more come-hither to financiers and money launderers. No more assenting to one director after the other. No more taking writing advice from dyslexic actors and other ne’er-do-wells.

No more industrial-entertainment complex. No more casting directors, music composers, costume designers, associate producers, editors, production designers, directors of photography, production managers. No more production departments, art departments, stunt departments, post-production departments. No more departments.

AI will take care of all of that. It will generate all the moving images and all the audio down to the last note. All it needs is the right prompt.

And the right prompt is a well-written screenplay.
### Errol Morris’ mother
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/errol-morris-mother/
Last updated: 2023-12-07T20:48:22.000Z
Errol was away at school as a teenager in Vermont.

One day his mother came up to visit and they got talking. And talking. And talking.

But none of his classmates could understand what they were saying. Not because of the broad Long Island accents but because his mother was one of the most ironic people ever.

Errol is sure his theory of language came from his mother. His theory that when someone says something, sometimes they mean the opposite.

There’s something about language that fascinates him. Everyone thinks language is a vehicle for communication, but it really isn’t.

It’s a vehicle for obfuscation, elision, confusion.

It’s the twists and turns that give it its power.
### Review: “Serotonin”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/review-serotonin/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T21:03:27.000Z
Can you die of sadness?

French provocateur and inveterate smoker Michel Houellebecq is determined to find out.

Houellebecq’s novel “Serotonin” swirls around Florent-Claude Labrouste’s self-imposed disquiet and disillusionment as he succumbs to a melancholic demise.

It’s easy to see the sickly, haggard and flatly prophetic Houellebecq in Labrouste, whose youthful Japanese paramour despises his existence, and his once-promising engineering career within the Ministry of Agriculture is now a fading ember.

In the desolation of his existence, a solitary solace emerges, a diminutive white oval – Captorix, the latest offering in the realm of antidepressants, a chemical manipulator of serotonin’s delicate dance within the recesses of the brain. A precursor to supposed happiness.

Armed with this pharmacological reprieve, Labrouste embarks on a pensive pilgrimage, forsaking the concrete loneliness of Paris for the rustic embrace of Normandy, a pastoral tableau of world-class artisanal cheeses marred by the relentless juggernaut of globalisation and the unforgiving edicts of European agricultural policies. Of course, love is lost and half-heartedly pursued and never regained as anything more than forgotten memories, as it often is in Houellebecq’s work. 

Penned by France’s most incendiary and prescient contemporary novelist, “Serotonin” unravels as a harrowing narrative of isolation, untold desire, and the torment of individualism. It serves as a searing indictment of late-era capitalism and rising service charges. All told in Houellebecq’s trademark brisk style, simultaneously mundane and righteous. Clarity above all.

“Serotonin” burns with exasperation, an exhilarating nihilism that is at once somber yet, often, startlingly amusing.

As always, Houellebecq forces us to confront the discomfort and pain that simmers beneath the veneer of our brittle civilisation.

If you need any proof, read the last chapter.

*It’s a small white, oval, scored tablet.*

*It doesn’t create or transform; it interprets. It renders fleeting what was definitive; it renders contingent what was ineluctable. It supplies a new interpretation of life — less rich, less artificial, and marked by a certain rigidity. It provides no form of happiness, or even of real relief; its action is of a different kind: by transforming life into a sequence of formalities it allows you to fool yourself. On this basis, it helps people to live, or at least to not die — for a certain period of time.*

*But death imposes itself in the end: the molecular armour cracks, the process of decomposition resumes its course. It probably happens more quickly for those who have never belonged to the world, who have never imagined living, or loving, or being loved; those who have always known that life was not within their reach. Those people, and there are many of them, have, as they say, nothing to regret; I am not in that situation.*

*I could have made a woman happy. Well, two; I have said which ones. Everything was clear, extremely clear from the beginning, but we didn’t realise. Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities?*

*It’s possible; those ideas were part of the spirit of the age; we didn’t formalise them, we didn’t have the taste to do that; we merely conformed and allowed ourselves to be destroyed by them; and then, for a very long time, to suffer as a result.*

*God takes care of us; he thinks of us every minute, and he gives us instructions that are sometimes very precise. Those surges of love that flow into our chests and take our breath away - those illuminations, those ecstasies, inexplicable if we consider our biological nature, our status as simple primates — are extremely clear signs.*

*And today I understand Christ’s point of view and his repeated horror at the hardening of people’s hearts: all of these things are signs, and they don’t realise it. Must I really, on top of everything, give my life for these wretches? Do I really have to be explicit on that point?*

*Apparently so.*
### I think, therefore I write
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/i-think-therefore-i-write/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T21:02:27.000Z
One of the great pleasures of writing is thinking.

Distilling vague ideas and bumptious thoughts into a series of letters and words forces you (in a good way) to clarify you’re thinking and express it in a perfect sentence.

Well, at least that’s the plan. It doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes it comes out plain wrong. But even this apparent mistake or error is as much a blessing in disguise as a necessary part of the process. No problem, no interest, no story.

The best writing (in my mind) is the most human writing. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

I’m only human after all.
### Let’s open some new circles
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/lets-open-some-new-circles/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T21:01:18.000Z
Life is often set up in a series of interlocking loops.

Whether it’s people, situations, projects, habits, whatever, whenever. It’s all entwined and apt to replay itself into a comforting resonance.

When you start to pull things away from the loops, they have to reshape. If you’re lucky, they uncouple and break away.

Then you’re free to make a new future rather than merely repeating the old future.
### Scenes from the city: Sandstone
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-sandstone/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T20:09:00.000Z
It’s as if the building is absorbing the sun.

Upholding a city corner, a three story mercantile building constructed from solid blocks of sandstone a century and a half ago. The setting sun slants in from the horizon, sleeting the entire facade in light.

Looming corinthian columns, delicate cornices. Quoins, lintels, sills.

All ablaze with radiant sunlight.
### Let’s roll the dice
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/untitled/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T20:07:14.000Z
Ever wondered how the world turns?

Increasingly we live in a world of pure speculation.

Fifty years ago financial investment in actual productive activities compared to mere speculation was around 90/10.

Now it’s flipped so financial investment is overly skewed toward speculation, toward gambling.

Our economy has shifted away from manufacturing and servicing to financial chicanery.

Wages have stalled or fallen, living standards have stagnated or declined.

And the rich have gotten richer chancing capital against itself.
### Keep moving
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/keep-moving/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T20:07:34.000Z
Sometimes the damn words just won’t come.

You want to write it out but the words refuse to form, refuse to come together.

You want to walk away even when you know the only way to make the words come is to force them. Push them into existence. (Even if they’re the wrong words, they’ll pave the way for the right words.)

You have to keep moving forward.
### Scenes from the city: Jet black crow
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-from-the-city-jet-black-crow/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T10:58:21.000Z
It claws and pecks at the hinged lid on the plastic rubbish bin.

It manages to snatch a recessed handle and pull the lid open. Flaps and dances to land on top of the thick plastic bag of rubbish stuffed inside, clutching tight.

It shivers its head, caws loudly. Then slices its razor-sharp beak across the plastic bag, disembowelling the contents.

Eyes gleaming in delight.
### Smashed pen
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/smashed-pen/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T10:56:58.000Z
There it is on the edge of the driveway.

The shattered remnants of a Bic Cristal ballpoint pen on the hard bitumen, shards of the clear hexagonal barrel crushed around the thin plastic ink reservoir and tip.

It was designed by Marcel Bich in 1949 as the world’s first affordable pen. Bich developed a viscosity of ink that neither leaked nor clogged and, under a ballpoint pen patent licensed from Bíró, launched the Cristal in December 1950.

Bich invested heavily in advertising, hiring poster designer Raymond Savignac in 1952\. That year Bic won the French Oscar de la publicité award for advertising.

In 1953 advertising executive Pierre Guichenné advised Bich to shorten his family name to Bic as an easy-to-remember, globally adaptable tradename for the pen.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Bic Cristal’s writing tip and ergonomic design helped shift the worldwide market for pens from fountain pens to ballpoints.

It wasn’t long before it was declared the best selling pen in the world.
### Natural utopia or open air prison
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/natural-utopia-or-open-air-prison/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T10:55:53.000Z
When you decide to buy a small place away from the city, most of your friends and associates will be either dismayed or disenfranchised.

Some will congratulate you through gritted teeth. Others will marvel with wide-eyed wonder why on earth you’re throwing your life away and moving to a small town in the country or on the coast.

A small town which is overflowing with criminals or meth heads. Or both. The inference being that this is a small town where - despite your fondness for drugs and altered states laced with a dash of anarchy - you won’t fit in. A small town where you will be the perennial outsider.

But then again, you’ve been an outsider pretty much you’re whole life. It’s given you objectivity, a certain necessary distance.

Provided opportunities to see things (everything?) afresh.

To see new possibilities everywhere.
### Scenes from the city: Church steps
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-city-church-steps/
Last updated: 2023-11-11T06:29:00.000Z
It’s a church much like every other church.

Built more than a hundred years ago when people still believed, when people still prayed.

Early English style of Gothic architecture, built and patterned in polychrome brick. The five-bay nave is wide and without side aisles but with side porches, the chancel has lean-to vestries, there’s a short right transept. Jesus beams down from the stained glass.

A homeless man slumps on the bluestone steps outside one of the side porches, his belongings in a slew of tightly packed nylon bags around him.

He’s dressed all in black with a black oversized cotton hoodie. With the cowl pulled over his head he looks like a monk, head bowed in solemn contemplation. Looking straight ahead on the path to the kingdom of God, not left or the right for paths that lead away from the light.

He stands and stretches and turns, a giant hot pink Playboy logo emblazoned on the front of his hoodie.
### Another world
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/another-world/
Last updated: 2023-08-10T21:28:14.000Z
Joyce Carol Oates reminds us that when you open a book you open the possibility to be anybody.

You can be anything. Any gender. Any nationality. Any age. The colour of your skin can be any hue you imagine.

It’s truly a wonder. A magic portal that transports you through time and space into another place, another world. Simply by sprinkling letters into words that gather into sentences and roll a story forward.

Oates is one of our most phenomenal and prolific writers. With the uncanny capacity to slip in and out of characters, often misunderstood and misjudged and mistreated. To seek out and recalibrate injustices. To turn the wheel towards what is good, what is true.

To remind us that the use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.
### Scenes from the coast: Police station steps
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/scenes-coast-police-station-steps/
Last updated: 2023-08-15T06:05:08.000Z
It’s one of those police stations in a coastal town that was spruced up in the 1980s.

All sharp angles and too much tinted glass. The once bright colours bleached by summer sun. Cut off pediments and shards worn by time and salt air. Steep concrete steps lead up to the front glass sliding doors.

A white police car pulls up to the nature strip and two police officers step out. One opens the back door and plucks out some young fuckwit from the back seat.

Walks him up the steps towards the front sliding doors, holding his elbow so he doesn’t lose his balance.
### “UNDERCOVER” (SHORT STORY)
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/undercover-short-story/
Last updated: 2024-04-11T22:00:07.000Z
Being a young communications adviser is no fun these days.

Especially in politics. Short-term election cycles mean short-term contracts, freelance projects and odd jobs you have to bid for. Hourly fees are falling while the cost of living soars and housing becomes unaffordable. Then there’s student loans to be repaid.

It seems impossible to get a foothold in the industry let alone life. Until you’re given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

How can you possibly say no?

*Rated PG / 1,000 words / 4 minutes of contemporaneous reading pleasure*

*Keep scrolling to read online.*

---

*‘Everything is politics.’ Thomas Mann*

## **STEFANO BOSCUTTI**

## **UNDERCOVER**

Copyright 2023 Stefano Boscutti  
All Rights Reserved

It wasn’t that the Yes Campaign didn’t care.

It’s that the Yes Campaign didn’t know any better.

I was drafted - yes, that’s the word - as a bright young communications adviser to work undercover on the Yes Campaign. To undermine their best intentions to give the indigenous people of Australia a voice to Parliament. To stop the recognition of indigenous people in the Australian constitution.

My cover was perfect. A new name, a new persona, a double psychology and media master’s degree from a name university, a place to call home, a politically correct partner, a cat. Even a London internship at People’s Vote, under the guidance of renowned strategic communicators Alastair Campbell and Tom Baldwin, former director of communications for the UK Labour Party.

One lie after the other. Except for a single psychology degree from a name university. But I’d never been to London. Never thought of myself as an Australian Labor Party supporter yet here I was.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t even sure who hired me. I suspect it was one of those covert government agencies with ties to the No Campaign. Not ASIS or ONI directly but one of those hidden departments deep within departments tasked with keeping Australia on the straight and narrow. I didn’t really care for politics. So I didn’t really care who was pulling the trigger.

Two handlers interviewed me in a bland city hotel suite. It was the middle of the day and the curtains were drawn. One man was sitting on the sofa, opposite me. The other man was standing, smoking a cigarette even though there was a plastic no smoking sign on the back of the door.

The man sitting opposite thanked me for coming, explained it was a formality. More protocol than anything.

‘It’s a three-month contract,’ he said.

On the low table in front of him was a new mobile phone. And a saucer with scattered ashes and three crushed cigarette stubs.

I knew I’d already been vetted and cleared. Or else I wouldn’t have been here. The man smiled.

‘Do you understand what’s expected of you?’

‘Of course.’

The Yes Campaign was in crisis. My job was to go in undercover and ensure the campaign fractured and imploded under its own weight.

I didn’t really want the job but the freedom it offered was hard to refuse. The brief was Psyops 101\. Psychological and asymmetrical information warfare. I was to join the Yes Campaign’s communications committee and neutralise the campaign from the inside.

‘What’s your first point of attack?’

‘Make sure the Yes Campaign never has a single, unifying colour or logo. Promote diversity at every meeting. Get so many colours and logos out there that nothing stands out. Let everyone have a say. Let everyone do what they think is best.

‘What about copy.’

‘Make sure they never have a single, simple statement or unifying theme. Make sure they have multiple slogans that ideally cancel each other out. Make sure they never have a single slogan, especially one that sings.’

I’m reminded of the No Campaign’s unwavering use of ‘If you don’t know, Vote No.’ That simple call-and-response couplet. That rhythm and kick. It’s like an earworm. Just keep repeating it until it gets in.

Keep seeding doubt until non-action becomes the preferred choice. Don’t sell ‘no’. Unsell ‘yes’.

‘We want you to create communications mayhem in the Yes Campaign. We want to overwhelm and neutralise any and every campaign element.’

I’d done these kinds of operations before on some election campaigns. There’s quite an art to misdirection and miscommunication. Especially when such subterfuge can’t be overt, can’t be suspect in any way. 

Multiple frayed strings of communications that lose their resonance and power the moment they meet air. Evaporating any hope for change.

‘They’re already in a mess, you just need to muddy it up.’

In reality I needed to stay three or four steps ahead of any developments. It won’t be long before someone on the committee suggests using Barack Obama’s winning ‘Yes we can’ slogan. I needed to head that off at the pass.

The man in front of me leaned forward, reached his palm out.

‘Give me your phone.’

‘What?’

‘Do you want this job?’

Not really but it’s a three-month contract that would eliminate my student debt and provide a significant tax-free cash deposit into a new account at Migros Bank AG in Zürich. Did I mention real estate was also part of the contract?

I handed over my phone. He popped out the SIM card and passed it to the other man. Then slid the new mobile phone on the low table towards me.

‘It’s already been set for facial recognition and necessary security passes. If you try to remove the SIM card or chipset, or interfere with this phone in any way, the lithium-ion battery will set off a thermal chain reaction, will catch fire, and burn away.’

I wondered if it comes with a Mission Impossible opening song in five/four time. But that’s not the question I asked.

‘Is there an asset on the committee that will be looking out for me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s best you don’t know.’

Best for who, I wondered.

‘You have a meeting with the committee head tomorrow.’

‘Where?’

He looks down at the new phone.

‘The details are on your new phone. It’s a calendar invite you’ve already accepted.’

‘Once the Voice referendum is held and the majority vote no we expect you to leave the country?’

‘Leave Australia?’

‘We have a place for you in France. You like France don’t you?’

‘Who doesn’t like France?’

‘It’s in the south, a small village. The property deed is in your name.’

‘The debts and cash bonus.’

He nods at the new phone.

‘All taken care of if you agree to do the job.’

I reached forward and picked up the phone.

And switched it on.

---

***Are you a helpful person?***

***Did you enjoy this short story? Share it with your friends. Share it with your enemies. Thanks for helping spread the word.***

---

*Copyright 2023 Stefano Boscutti*

*All Rights Reserved*

  
*The moral rights of the author are asserted.*

*No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.*

*Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.*

*This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of political strategists and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s furtive imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)*

*Discover novels, screenplays, short stories and more by Stefano Boscutti at* [*boscutti.com*](https://www.boscutti.com/?ref=boscutti.ghost.io)
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - March 16
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-march-16/
Last updated: 2023-08-04T00:48:58.000Z
_This post is for subscribers on the Private Membership tier only._
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - March 9
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-march-9/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:59:56.000Z
Don’t you ever feel tired of all the chaos?

Tired of wave after wave of catastrophic climate change and geopolitical crisis? Tired of waiting for everything to collapse?

How can things get better when the probability of blue ocean events is rising with each successive summer? Each cycle will increase oceanic and atmospheric warming, which will disrupt jet streams and rainfall patterns, triggering prolonged droughts and floods and massive famines.

Millions of people will be displaced, causing wide-scale social upheaval and, eventually, the collapse of any recognisable form of human civilisation. Billions of people will perish.

The first blue ocean event will likely happen in the next ten years. Things will start to seriously fall apart from then on. First slowly and then all at once.

Someone should put the world on suicide watch. But who?

Life as we know it is ending and the future of humanity will be unsparing in its violence and desolation. Death wails rising above the grief and horror.

Things are bad - as bad as they’ve ever been - and they’re going to get a lot worse, a lot faster than most people think.

The only way to turn it around is for everyone to wake up. But how? It will take more than clever spin and the occasional street protest. More than throwing cold soup at paintings in public galleries. More than gluing yourself to roadways and traffic crossings.

Shock tactics are really the only way to cut through our collective fugue, to short-circuit our apathy. Shocking acts like Wynn Bruce setting himself on fire outside the US Supreme Court last year to protest against inadequate climate change policies.

It was a wake up call. It wasn’t senseless. It was the act of a disciplined and rational mind.

Two months earlier the Supreme Court heard arguments on a critical environmental case aimed at restricting or even eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to control pollution. Conservative judges with lifetime appointments voiced skepticism of the agency’s authority to regulate carbon emissions and address climate change. Doubted the government should play any role in combatting a climate breakdown.

Wynn travelled from Boulder, Colorado, to Washington DC by bus. He walked up to the plaza of the Supreme Court around 6:30pm on Earth Day, Friday, April 22\. It was a cool evening as he sat down, doused himself in lighter fluid and set himself ablaze. There was no note, no need for explanation.

His friend and Zen Buddhist priest Kritee Kanko said his self-immolation wasn’t suicide but a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to our climate crisis.

He succumbed to his injuries in a nearby hospital early the next day.
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - March 7
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-march-7/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:59:21.000Z
‘I don’t speak to murderers!!’

Yes, that was the text my stepson sent to me. I think the double exclamation points hurt the most. Such unnecessary melodrama.

I can understand his grief of losing his mother to cancer. And I honestly don’t think he blames me for her death. On the other hand, the death of the planet is apparently completely my doing.

Such thinking - or rather blaming - from a rational and relatively intelligent man who lives in Fitzroy with his partner and young son. He works for an NGO, although I’m not sure which one. There are so many these days as governments of all stripes step away from their social responsibilities.

Fitzroy used to be a working-class suburb here in Melbourne, dotted with factories and warehouses and remnants of local industries that fell by the wayside as manufacturing moved offshore, taking the need for low-skilled local workers with them.

As the suburb fell apart, the artists and musicians and poets moved into rambling shared houses and broken-down squats. Then came the heroin overdoses and fashion outliers and white-walled art galleries and experimental restaurants and three-story murals and finally the adventurous property developers.

Like most inner city suburbs it’s now thoroughly gentrified by pinot grigio swilling quasi-socialists on $130,000+ salaries and low tax retirement funds. Fitzroy is like Shoreditch or Camden in London but with excellent cafes.

Do we have a working class anymore? I guess it’s the nurses, teachers and social workers. I wonder what they think of the coming climate catastrophe. I wonder if they hold us responsible?

Us? The PR giant that last tried to win them over with that ghastly campaign for BP three years ago. What was it called? Keep advancing? We see possibilities everywhere? First campaign in ten years after the largest marine oil spill in history.

It wasn’t our greatest work. Even schoolchildren called it deceptive and hypocritical. I thought it was well-meaning and inoffensive.

Rolled out in the UK, US and Germany with supporting print and digital advertising in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Did wonders for our billings. And BP could certainly afford it.

Despite all the shots of solar farms and smiling babies, BP was producing 3.6 million barrels of oil per day and with record profits. Now they’re producing more oil than ever.

I wonder what the PR industry’s role will be in the impending breakdown of civilisation.

Is it me or is the US-spelling of civilisation as civilization simply uncivilised? Why do Americans spell so many words with a Z? Organize. Analyze. Realize. Apologize. Hypnotize. All invented by proud American lexicographer Noah Webster in the early 19th century to sell spelling books and dictionaries to newly literate Americans. How very American.

Imagine what America was like 200 years ago. A verdant, unspoiled wonderland of hope and majesty. Before industrialisation, before the cities congealed, before the cancer spread.

Environmental and societal collapse seems closer than ever. Is it really that bad, I can hear you ask? It’s worse than you think.

Uncontrolled proliferation of fungal infections as temperatures rise and the migratory patterns of birds, who carry fungi, change. Bringing respiratory illnesses caused by fungi like coccidioides or histoplasma. Hacking, spluttering as deadly fevers take hold.

Thawed permafrost - soil, gravel and sand which usually remain completely frozen - releases ancient bacteria and viruses to which we have lost immunity. Distant, forgotten plagues are reawakened. Viruses whose only purpose is to spread and kill everybody.

Mass extinction of all insect species causes a catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems, jeopardising our ability to produce food to feed ourselves.

All topped off with the spectre of rising fascism and totalitarianism and psychopaths who don’t even think climate change is happening, despite the turmoil swirling all around us, storming in front of their eyes.

Will it get any better? How can it? How can anything get better?
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - March 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-march-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:58:50.000Z
It’s a shame to learn you didn’t get the TikTok account for the UK.

Was it a proper pitch? A proper dog and pony show? Or just a credentials presentation to set up another PR agency within the WPP Group to win the account? Just another insider cluster fuck?

TikTok certainly needs a lot of help. I know Rishi is looking to ban its use by government officials in the UK. Especially with the EU and US already moving in that direction.

Who can blame them? A spy app on everyone’s phones answerable to the Chinese Communist Party is a little problematic.

Of course for TikTok the issue is billions of advertising dollars they’re going to miss out on. If those communists thought religion was the opiate of the masses, they haven’t seen the glory of advertising.

Is Scott Allison still looking after TikTok’s PR in the US? Wasn’t his firm acquired by MDC Partners who were then bought out by Steve Ballmer’s private equity Stagwell Group? It’s just one gang bang after the other.

TikTok’s CEO could use better PR advice though. Shou Chew tried the charm offensive. When that failed he turned aggressive with a series of exclusive interviews in the Washington Post. Which played straight into Facebook’s, sorry, Meta’s hands.

Shou spent a week in the halls of Congress trying to convince lawmakers that the company isn’t run by Chinese government lackeys, propagandists or spies. Every senator remained unconvinced.

He’s being prepared for his first major congressional hearing next month before the House Energy and Commerce Committee where he’ll be grilled relentlessly. He’ll go down in flames.

This is despite TikTok’s US PR company pulling out all the tricks of the trade - wining and dining lawmakers, political donations to both sides of the aisle, starting a TikTok foundation supposedly dedicated to free speech, vetting their operations by US government agencies, opening up the algorithm for a US code reviews, adding layers of US government oversight. No doubt they’re planning a few anti-censorship campaigns.

It’s all for nothing. You know why? Shou looks Chinese. Yes, he’s from Singapore. Yes, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School. But that’s not enough. Especially when he speaks with a clipped Asian accent. He’s going to get fried alive at those hearings.

TikTok US needs to replace him with an all-American CEO. Someone from central casting, a young Ronald Reagan with blonde hair and a deep voice. Six feet tall, proud, strong, determined. Who speaks with a reassuring American accent, vaguely Midwestern, perhaps slightly Upper Midwestern.

Maybe it’s best you didn’t win the TikTok account. The CEO being such an amateur doesn’t bode well. Is it me or is every CEO boneheaded these days. Present company excluded, of course.

Maybe it’s their age or their absurd stock allocations? Maybe it’s all the lawyers. Maybe it’s just not possible for one human being to be across so many strands of a modern, global enterprise stumbling into the future.

But you’d think the CEOs of publicly listed corporations would give more attention to their public profiles, to how their corporations are perceived. All the stock allocations in the world will come to nothing if the stock is worthless.

Any value any stock may have is the story that the likes of you and I fashion into reality. Do you ever feel guilty about all those stories we made up for BP? All those stories denying climate change, denying responsibility? All that doubt we sowed?

Plausible deniability aside, we never actually produced the original reports, did we? Who wrote the line repeated by every chief executive of every oil company? The get-out-jail line?

‘Currently, the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate.’

It’s a great line. Even if it contradicted their own research. Went against their own scientists who were confirming how serious a threat the oil industry was to the climate.

Remember how shocked we were when we first saw the campaigns from America in the early 1990s? When we saw how they identified two groups most susceptible to the messaging? Older, lesser educated males from larger households who aren’t typically information seekers, and younger, low-income women who could be targeted with adverts that likened talking about climate change to a hysterical doom-spouting cartoon donkey. Blunt force trauma, eh.

All those campaigns to make climate change a non-issue. Jerry Taylor from the Cato Institute, grey hair swept back, strong jawline appearing on television, insisting the science of climate change was uncertain and there was no need to act. Recruiting the same scientists who downplayed the dangers of cigarette smoking with one dubious research report after the other.

It’s a miracle you still have the BP account. But then you know where the bodies are buried, where the skeletons lurk. I noticed a job had come up as a senior account director on Team Energy at Ogilvy. Working with data, strategy, influence, and creative and production team to deliver best in class campaigns and content. All the usual capabilities requirements including, and I quote, ‘managing client expectations when having to charge more for additional work in a manner which does not expose the agency to financial risk.’

On the plus side, there’s up to £25 per month towards physical or online exercise class membership, and life assurance of four times the salary if you die on the job. All for channeling tens of millions of pounds of billings into WPP’s coffers. Is it any wonder I left.

In your last email you asked whether I’d caught up with my stepson, seen my grandson? Sadly I’m still persona non grata. I texted him a few weeks ago to open a conversation. Do you know what he texted back?

‘I don’t speak to murderers!!’
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - March 2
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-march-2/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:58:20.000Z
Yes, I feel terrible.

Yes, I should have emailed you weeks ago.

Yes, I received your voicemail message. Which of course startled me because, really, who leaves voicemail messages these days?

I don’t mean to jest. I heard the concern in your voice. I’ve been annoyed and depressed and angry. I guess I wanted to spare you all the self-loathing. But as you so politely asked me whether anything could possibly be wrong, who am I to deny you an answer?

Let’s begin with my new country place. I finally drove out to inspect the building site expecting to see, well, I guess I was hoping to see a finished home and greenhouse. Gleaming and new, ready and waiting to move in.

I’d driven out to Nyora by myself because it was impossible to tie the architect down to a time. A site visit was scheduled then rescheduled then cancelled. I was going round in circles. So I thought why not drive the 100 kilometres from the city into the drifting hills of South Gippsland? The Monash Freeway leads you out of the city and the fraying outer suburbs. Peel off onto winding country roads and within minutes you’re rolling through the small township of Nyora.

A Post Office, a general store, a pharmacy. There isn’t even a hotel or bottle shop. Which is a travesty for an Australian country town. No matter how tiny the population.

My place is on the other side of Nyora, up on the hills off Forest Road. Four hectares, ten acres. I guess it must have all been a forest at some stage. Local historians say there was a time when the forest was so dense you could walk from one end of Gippsland to the other, from tree to tree without touching the ground.

But all those magnificent century-old trees were logged and the land cleared for cattle and dairy farming. Thousands of hectares of old-growth forests have been felled to meet a 30-year quota of woodchips for producing low-quality paper and cardboard. Removing the forests destroyed the biodiversity, the wildlife.

There are still a few native trees on my four hectares, a small clump of native vegetation along the rear boundary offering some privacy and protection. My house and greenhouse is being built further up the sloping land, just below the crest of the hill. Looking out over the wooded foothills that tumble down to the flatlands and wetlands and mangroves that reach out to Western Port Bay. You can see Phillip Island and French Island and the western shoreline of the Mornington Peninsula.

On a clear day it’s breathtaking. When the mist drapes in it brings a sense of awe and mercurial wonder, a glimpse of the majestic. It’s why Anna and I decided to purchase the land the moment we saw the endless, breathless view. Felt the vast, unbounded possibilities.

Awe is a remarkable sensation. I read that it’s critical to our well-being — just like joy, contentment‌ and love. It comes with tremendous health benefits that include calming our entire nervous system and triggering the release of oxytocin, the hormone that promotes trust and bonding.

Awe activates our vagal nerves, those clusters of neurons in the spinal cord that regulate various bodily functions. Slows our heart rate and deepens breathing. Alleviates stress and worry. Calms the seething, turbulent mind. Quietens the self-critical voice. Eliminates self-preoccupation.

Such transcendence simply from looking out at an endless view. After losing Anna, is it any wonder that this is where I wanted to settle? To build our dream home, our refuge against all the madness in the world. Our haven.

A home sited away from the road, nestled on the other side of the crest so it can’t be seen by any passerby. The plan is to plant it out with native trees, regenerate the forest and rebalance the ecology, bring back the wildlife. Disappear into nature.

I applied to have the sagging powerlines at the bottom of the property buried underground the day after the sale settled. A fairly straightforward procedure given the risk of bushfires. My architect said the government would pay for the replacement works.

Of course, I ended up paying. And of course, nothing’s been done because they have to wait for the home to be finished. Or rather the building site that looks like a bomb site.

You know those gleaming renders I showed you before I left, all those exteriors and interiors of the extended low-slung modernist farmhouse with an elongated greenhouse flowing from the kitchen and dining?

The corrugate roof gently pitched and layered with solar panels at just the right angle? The rooms that effortlessly flowed into each other as the day progressed? The library awash with soft light and wraparound shelves to house all my books? All seven thousand of them?

The verdant breezeway protected from the prevailing winds? The standalone self-powering guesthouses? The underground car parking and charging bays? The internal air filtration system.

The off-grid self-sustaining energy system? The giant rain tanks below ground? The wastewater treatment plant? The large-scale greenhouse that can grow organic food all year round?

Pixel dust. The site itself is a chaotic mess filled with stacks of bricks, piles of sand and crushed stone. The ground littered with scraps of wood, discarded tools and empty containers. Large precast concrete panels are scattered around, some still wrapped in heavy protective plastic, others cracked and broken. Shattered timber pallets everywhere.

In the center of the site, a partially constructed building rises from the ground like some modern ruin, its concrete skeleton exposed to the elements. Rebar sticks out from the freshly poured floors, waiting to be covered and strengthened. The foundation is a labyrinth of pipes, wires and concrete beams. The air smells of cement dust and diesel.

I wanted was to create a place with a sense of safety and retreat from the elements while still immersed in the dramatic landscape. The simple pitched roof references the utilitarian but beautiful farm structures and sheds that dot the local area. It gives the building a sense of lightness and connection externally, and texture and warmth internally.

Structurally its designed to protect itself in our fire-prone bush. Metal shutters at the bottom of windows keep out flying embers. Concrete resists radiant heat. Climate change is making bushfire threats worse.

Seems we’re going straight to hell. Europe’s ski slopes this season are bare without snow while record-breaking extreme weather hits New Hampshire’s Mount Washington. Arctic temperature of -42 degrees. Wind chill of -108 degrees. Wind gusts of 127 miles per hour. That’s colder and harsher than Mars.

Did you see mourners are still burning corpses on the streets of Chinese cities? With funeral homes and crematoriums overflowing from the latest wave of Covid deaths, there’s nowhere to put the dead bodies. No ceremony, no procession, no prayers. Just lost souls and angry ghosts.

Did you get the TikTok account for the UK?
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - January 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-january-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:56:57.000Z
So there wasn’t a single sales consultant at the Range Rover showroom today.

Gleaming floor tiles and gleaming overhead lighting and gleaming car models but no one to ask a question or arrange a test drive. All on holiday like most of Australia.

The only person there was the young receptionist at the service centre desk. Which makes sense given the point you made about the Range Rover build quality and the necessity for regular maintenance with a service at least every three months. You also mentioned issues with electronics that worsen as the car gets older.

The receptionist wasn’t much help. Didn’t bother looking up from her phone but did ask me whether I wanted to order a model because waiting times for a new Range Rover Sport are now up to a year. Apparently due to ongoing stock issues affecting the whole industry. There’s also dealer allocations to consider.

When the receptionist finally did look up, she flashed a rictus grin like one of those annoying emojis young people like to communicate with.

We thought millennials were bad. Gen Z are even worse. They can’t even email. They think a full stop or period at the end of a sentence is passive-aggressive. They stumble over words in brackets. They don’t get irony.

They seem to communicate only via direct messages on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. Not understanding they’re advertising platforms where their attention is packaged and sold to the highest bidder.

Graeme was telling me they’re an absolute HR nightmare. Access to a life coach, Friday afternoons off and bringing a dog to work are their highest priorities. At least they’re cheap. And expendable.

Apparently, they’ll never vote conservative. The rightwing have so demonised and bullied them in imaginary culture wars that they’ve been alienated forever. Millennials are defying a supposed iron law of politics, that we shift to the right as we age. No other generation in recorded political history has retained such an entrenched rejection of rightwing politics as they’ve grown older.

Those conservatives have doubled down on their ageing, dying base at the expense of their own future. Cutting off their nose to spite their face. Setting the whole enterprise on fire. Then pouring petrol on it. Such fools.

Rishi just put his beleaguered party on track to lose government to Labour at the next election. Did you see he’s making mathematics compulsory for UK school students? Make creativity mandatory by all means. But mathematics? Are we in the 17th Century?

Perhaps they can all get into finance. Or predatory lending. Or sports betting. Or crypto. People still complain that it’s hard to explain what crypto is.

This isn’t because crypto is overly technical. But simply because it’s a giant Ponzi scheme masquerading as a technology. People have been fooled by schemes like crypto since the beginning of time.

Although in the past few years, the schemes have become increasingly desperate. It’s all or nothing.

Capitalism isn’t what it used to be. No one is prepared to work their way up. Hustling and scamming and lying is the order of the day.

Who can blame the young for being so misguided, so wrong? They look at our political leaders, or business leaders and it’s every man or woman for themselves. There’s no interest in others. There’s only flagrant self-interest at the expense of others.

All is grist for the mill. Profits over people. Humanity be damned. Listen to me, I’m starting to sound like some old socialist. It must be the hotel air conditioning. The air is starting to feel a little thin.

My architect is finally back next week. There’s been a volley of emails back and forth to try and nail down a time for a site visit to my new country place.

It’ll be great to get out of the hotel, out of the city. I’ll have to rent a car.

I wonder if I can rent a Toyota Hilux?
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - January 4
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-january-4/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:56:25.000Z
It’s the new year.

Did you celebrate? Did you have your own private fireworks show? Still have all your fingers?

I went to sleep early on new year’s eve thinking I’d avoid the revelry and drinking. And of course, was awoken by a multi-million dollar fireworks spectacular as hundreds of thousands of people invaded the city to cheer in the new year. There were so many explosions I thought I was in a war zone. Endless streams of phosphorous lights and fireballs outside my windows. A cacophony of shockwaves and sonic booms.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine plays on. Missile strikes across cities and towns, scores dead on either side. Putin with his army and Zelenskyy with his production company. Propaganda flying every which way.

Did you see in America that six news websites across Alabama and Florida were caught secretly taking payments from power companies to run stories attacking clean energy? Millions upon millions of dollars. Now all the power companies are blaming each other.

Whatever happened to setting up a foundation to distance yourself? Like the State Financial Officers Foundation, a conservative group representing a bunch of Republican state treasurers and putting donors’ money into promoting their YouTube videos criticising ESG investing as a backdoor that progressives are using to invade the economy.

One video with back-to-back stock footage of American farms and farmers and hardworking folk praying around dining tables has a crumbled baritone voiceover warning that environmental, social and governance policies are going to disrupt life as we know it. Of course, it ends with a giant American flag billowing against a sunset. A cheap, tawdry version of Reagan’s “Morning in America” television campaign by Hal Riney. Hal not only wrote that, he voiced it too. All that bourbon and all those cigarettes soothing out the cognitive dissonance.

Did you know the “Morning In America” television commercial was filmed in Petaluma, California? With an overwhelmingly Democrat voting base? Ahhh, advertising.

Apparently Reagan cried when he first saw the spot, saying he could never live up to it. He didn’t have to. He just had to nod and smile and the media buy did the rest. Mythmaking at its finest.

Americans love their myths. Although the shine is starting to rub off Elon Musk. He lost $200 billion in 200 days. The only person in history to erase so much wealth from their net worth. Tesla shares are tanking while the brand is haemorrhaging.

I’ve completely soured on the idea of buying a Tesla. Which is a shame because they still look good and apparently drive well. But now the market for electric vehicles is becoming flooded with choice. Although none look quite as smooth as a Tesla. They’re all very angular, sharp-sided. All trying too hard to look like the future.

And before you say anything, no, I’m not going to buy an electric Volvo. Not even a hybrid Volvo. What sort of a man drives a Volvo in country Australia? It’s just not done. Toyota Hilux is the way everyone rolls in the country. Off-road, camping, towing, hay-bailing, whatever else one does in a motor vehicle in the country.

To be honest I’m starting to see the appeal of a Range Rover. The new Range Rover Sport. Flush glazing, clean lines, and aerodynamic performance. Active noise cancellation is a world first. It monitors sources of noise from the tyres and road surface before they reach the cabin and generates a bespoke noise cancellation signal through the headrest speakers.

Touchscreen controllers and touchscreens for entertainment everywhere. The interior air quality is next level with PM2.5 filtration to reduce odours, bacteria and allergens, while CO2 management enhances the wellbeing and alertness of all occupants. You can set the air quality remotely to prime the cabin before a journey. The front seats are heated and ventilated with massage functionality.

Quite the motor vehicle. And of course, I’m a sucker for the flush door handles that gently pop out on approach.

Black, probably. Santorini Black. With black badge and wheels. And, hell, black privacy glass while we’re at it.

If I’m going to live like the equivalent of the landed gentry, I might as well drive like one.

I’ll pop down to the Range Rover showroom tomorrow and see what stock they have.
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - December 25
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-december-25/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:55:53.000Z
It’s Christmas day.

No doubt you and Sandra are hosting another Christmas celebration at Owlings Manor. Young and old, extended family and work family. All those work orphans you’ve managed to collect over the years.

All your own fault, you know. It’s what happens when you have a policy of hiring the children of divorced couples. Always eager to please, eager to work any hours, holidays be damned. Anything to garner the love of a father.

Stepfathers like me don’t really count. My stepson, Anna’s son, hasn’t spoken to me in years. Ostensibly because of my work with BP and supposedly ruining the planet for future generations. Of course he still accepts my money for his son’s private school fees. It started as as gift for his son’s first term at primary school. It’s now become a family tradition.

You’d think after Anna’s death my sins would be forgiven. Apparently not. He lives in Fitzroy with his partner and son. I should reach out, let him know I’m back in Australia. Back in Melbourne.

So many things I should do. Like help at a soup kitchen today instead of wandering about the hotel foyer. Do something gracious for the disadvantaged in the spirit of Christmas.

Although not like Rishi volunteering at a shelter for a photo op and asking a homeless man whether he worked in business. Then bragged about his own background in the finance industry. These modern conservatives can’t help themselves. No sense of noblesse oblige. Just one-upping everyone, even the poor. To their face. No shame.

Homelessness has become an industry. Governments of all stripes pledging to help those sleeping rough but doing nothing about it. Here in Melbourne there are more than 300 registered charities to help the homeless. One of the chief executives is on an annual salary of half a million dollars. Solving homelessness would put him out of a job. Maybe even make him homeless. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

I often wonder why the homeless don’t set up camp outside parliament house so everyone can see their plight, so politicians can see their shame. So the middle class can see their own disgrace.

It must be horrible to be homeless in the cold. Winter blizzards are crashing across America. Once in a generation snow storms are ripping through much of the country. Rolling power outages while the temperature plummets to minus forty degrees Celsius. People are burning their clothes to try and stay warm. To try and stay alive.

Meanwhile in Australia the heat is set to soar to forty degrees Celsius, the temperature at which most everyone in England - particularly white people - immolate.

Heatwaves barely register in the media because they’re not very dramatic. They’re not a flood or fire. They don’t destroy real estate. Just the people inside.

Most houses are poorly and cheaply designed. They’re not built to cope with climate change. An average house becomes an oven after a three-day heatwave. There’s more mortality and morbidity from heat than fires and floods. Heat stress causes loss of salt and water in sweat, causing haemoconcentration which increases coronary and cerebral thrombosis. It’s not a particularly pleasant way to die.

Although not as unpleasant as being crushed to death in a stampede of frenzied shoppers rushing as the doors open on Boxing Day sales. It’s bizarre that everyone goes mad for three weeks leading up to Christmas, overspending on gifts and food and drink to celebrate the birth of a man who admonished his followers against greed and overconsumption. Warned that there is no life in an abundance of possessions.

Even funnier to consider that Jesus wasn’t even born on December 25\. The date is never mentioned in the bible. The apostles and early Christians didn’t celebrate his birth.

It was the Roman Emperor Constantine in 325AD who declared December 25 as the official bithdate and celebration of Jesus Christ.

December 25 was already a pagan holiday enjoyed by millions of Romans, a civic holiday that marked the return of longer days after the winter solstice. It followed the popular Roman festival called the Saturnalia where people feasted and exchanged gifts. December 25 was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, a god of light and loyalty whose cult was at the time growing popular among Roman soldiers.

Emperor Constantine managed to weaken established and growing pagan beliefs and celebrations with a singular Christianity. A fusion of the church and state.

Whoever controls the story controls everything.

Merry Christmas!
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - December 22
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-december-22/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:55:19.000Z
No, I didn’t get to visit my new country place.

I was in meetings with lawyers for the past week. Not in person but online. Where they never seemed to have the files they needed. Which just meant more meetings with more files they didn’t have.

I failed and tried to catch up with the architect. Lots of calendar entries and cancellations. All I wanted to do was make a day to visit the building site. Easier said than done.

And now it’s three days before Christmas and nothing is going to get done. No doubt you remember the great Australian tradition of Christmas office parties. Everyone here loves to work hybrid but party in person. There are a lot of parties. There’s even parties for staff here at the hotel. And everyone is being asked to wear masks because there’s been more outbreaks of Covid despite all the vaccinations.

At least it’s not as bad as China where they’re dropping like flies, dying in the streets as the Chinese Communist Party officially reports no new Covid deaths. What a strange country. Thoroughly and utterly communist but doesn’t have free health care. Every man and his dog has to buy health insurance, line up in car parks to pay to see a doctor. Car parks that are filling with hearses trafficking the dead.

I learned an interesting fact at breakfast this morning. Printed on a card next to a silver coffee pourer brimming with some form of sullen, dull coffee especially blended for the non-time that is hotel time. On the card, in a script typeface, was this simple fact: ‘Before the industrial revolution, silver didn’t need to be polished, because there was less sulfur in the atmosphere.’

That’s climate change for you. We have to work harder just to cope with the toxins in the air from our hard work. Wouldn’t it be easier to remove the toxins altogether, remove the problems altogether, as my stepson would like to remind me when he was in high school.

Climate change doesn’t care one way or the other. It’s like a virus. It doesn’t care. It has a thing that it does, and it’s doing it. And most people couldn’t care less. If the climate doesn’t care, why should they?

I read in The Guardian that four universities in the UK have barred fossil fuel companies from recruiting new hires through their schools. Not top-tier universities, of course. But it’s a start for them. Campus recruiting bans were an important part of the movements against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid.

Maybe they should also bar recruitment by government departments, especially environmental ministries which have derailed action against climate change by their own ineptitude and lack of ambition. Yes, the best intentions but sadly the worst outcomes. Emissions and temperatures continue to rise every year, every season, every month, every week, every day.

It was warm today in Collins Street. A wet heat after all the rain. The roads were sleek and the cars were overwhelmingly grey. They all looked the same with their sloping silhouettes. They all moved the same too. Like gray metal slugs slithering over the asphalt.

Did I ever tell you the story of where jaywalking came from? It’s 1923 and auto sales were slipping in the United States. Even worse, people and legislators were turning against the auto industry after an explosion of unwarranted pedestrian deaths at the hands of speeding drivers. Newspapers like The New York Times ran full-page stories headlined ‘Nation Roused Against Motor Killings’ with a black and white illustration of a skull-faced death racing a motor car into a crowd of innocent pedestrians.

The automakers and auto dealers got together and hired some old newspapermen to tell their side of the story. It wasn’t their fault that pedestrians got in the way of jaydrivers. It was the pedestrians’ fault.

Shifting the word and blame onto jaywalkers meant they were no longer liable. Whoever controls the story controls the outcomes.

The National Automobile Chamber of Commerce established a free wire service for newspapers. Reporters could send in the basic details of a traffic accident and would get in return a complete article to print the next day. These articles, printed widely, always shifted the blame for auto accidents to pedestrians.

Change minds and you change laws. Once jaywalking was made a crime, auto industry groups trained the police on how to arrest and fine jaywalkers. It was one of the most successful PR campaigns ever. The sins of our fathers, eh.

You’re not going to believe this but I have to dash to a Christmas party. That’s how long I’ve been in this hotel. It’s a staff party. I don’t want to be rude.

Plus it’ll be good to be among people. Even if we’re all wearing masks and keeping our distance.

I wonder what champagne they’ll serve.
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - December 11
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-december-11/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:54:18.000Z
Yes, I remember doing business in Saudi Arabia.

So much oil, so much money. How could anyone forget?

Starting the week on a Sunday took a little getting used to. The complete and utter lack of women in any senior positions was also quite alarming. What can you expect in an absolute monarchy where the Qur'an and the Sunnah make up the country’s constitution?

All that talk of business and political stability. Until Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud rounded up 200 of the country’s wealthiest businessmen and placed them under house arrest in The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Bound and tortured them at gunpoint until they transferred billions of dollars into his accounts. A royal purge under those glittering chandeliers.

Even his relatives weren’t safe. Especially the cousins. Lesser princes were also arrested without due process. The money or your life. All under the guise of an anti-corruption campaign.

And the favourite son became king in everything but name, revered by the people. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud - colloquially known by his initials MBS - and now officially Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia. As well as chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs and chairman of the Council of Political and Security Affairs. I’ve noticed his taken to adding HRH to the head of his title and name. How very British.

He now holds the entire country in his hands. And he’s only thirty-seven years old. Quite the high achiever. Happy to kill anyone that gets in his way. Dissect anything that thwarts his regional and global ambitions.

The Neom project you’re pitching for is outrageous. A new royal state created around a thin 170km-long vertical megacity that slices the desert from the Red Sea to the distant mountains. Sheathed in mirrored glass like an invisible line. Unlimited budget, unlimited power.

An entire economic zone meant to ultimately house nine million people, partly financed through a flotation expected in 2024\. Hell, I might move there if my country place here doesn’t work out. Michael told me what some of the fees for service have been so far for other firms. Looks like you’ll be buying another Bentley or three if you get the account.

Of course, Edelman, Ruder Finn and Nicolla Hewitt Communications are all at the trough. But none have your experience, your charm. We all know how much the Saudis love that British deference.

Klaus Kleinfeld is no longer running things. Nadhmi al-Nasr is now the chief executive. He keeps a loaded gun under his desk, said he’d shoot whoever in the comms team was responsible for a cancelled sponsorship deal after some bad press about Saudi Arabia’s human rights issues. Fighting fire with gunfire, right.

It’s ridiculous that Saudi Arabia is still the world's biggest crude oil exporter. Salt flats, gravel plains and endless sand dunes. Inhospitable geography with untold wealth bubbling below the surface. Pumping out twelve million barrels of oil a day. Billions more to come.

Did you know we’ve released as much C02 into the atmosphere in the last thirty years as in the last thirty thousand? We’ve known about global warming for decades. We’ve had twenty-seven years of United Nations climate change conferences where everyone agrees we have to do something, we must do something. And we’ve done exactly nothing.

Protocols, accords, agreements, pacts. All worthless as emissions and temperatures continue to rise.

No meaningful action whatsoever. Fiddling while the world burns. It’s shameful.

Yesterday thousands of dead seals washed up on the Russian coasts of the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland body of water. They died of hypoxia, oxygen deprivation caused by energy conglomerates extracting gas from the lakebed.

Everything is on fire, everything is dying. And we no longer seem to care. We have the barrel of the handgun pressed into the side of our heads and we keep pulling the trigger, faster and faster. It’s madness.

Every corporation seems to be gearing up for a worldwide recession next year. Which has always been good for our business. All the internal comms teams get shredded first and corporations suddenly realise they have to outsource all their PR.

Morgan Stanley has already axed 1,600 jobs. Layoffs and hiring freezes are extending beyond the tech industry. It will ripple through banking then aviation then infrastructure then manufacturing then transport then retail. Ever thus.

No doubt you’ll be looking to make some staff cuts at the firm. Need to operate more efficiently, lessons learned from Covid, challenging business environment, readjusting sizing and footprint, all the usual caveats. I’m sure the press release is already written.

Back here in Australia, there have been a few hiccups moving into my city townhouse. Legal issues with the existing tenants. So I’m still in the hotel. Buffet breakfast on Level 35 is becoming more depressing by the day.

I’m supposed to be visiting my county place sometime this week. Firming up a time with the architect.

It will be great to get out of the hotel, out of the city.

Be great to see the progress so far.
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - October 30
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-october-30/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:52:56.000Z
I had no idea Rishi Sunak’s communications and policy team was so complete. Little wonder he managed to roil all the other contenders.

Liam Booth-Smith. Eleanor Shawcross-Wolfson. Nerissa Chesterfield. John Bew. Rupert Yorke. Douglas McNeil. James Nation. Lucy Noakes. Beatrice Timpson. Leonora Campbell. Sophia Falkner. Horowitz.

Looks like Rishi brought the band back together, brought the treasury team back together. Especially Horowitz. Those snazzy Twitter graphics had people gossiping about Rishi’s leadership ambitions when he was still chancellor. All those photos of Rishi at work in book-laden offices, white shirtsleeves rolled up, letters and pen in hand, brow creased in thought and concern. The digital campaign was genius.

But like you said, if there’d been no “Bridgerton” and mixed-race Queen Charlotte wielding power, there’d be no prime minister of Indian descent. Much like if there’d been no “West Wing” and President Matthew Santos, there’d be no President Barack Obama. Form follows fiction. People have to become comfortable with a fictional reality played out on television and on the screens in their hands before they’ll accept the real thing. The medium is the massage, eh.

Horowitz played every trick in the book. I don’t mean to sound surprised. Is he 30 years old yet? Didn’t his father model the Alex Rider character in his novels on him? I’m sure I read that somewhere.

Interesting family. His grandfather was a solicitor, known as a fixer for the other side, for prime minister Harold Wilson. His illicit business dealings weren’t revealed until his death. Millions squirrelled into Swiss bank accounts under assumed names, the money never recovered, the family forced into bankruptcy.

The family home, White Friars, was so big it had to be sold and when demolished it was replaced by no fewer than 16 five-bedroom houses. The ensuing generations have flipped from side to side.

Cass Horowitz had burnt through reporting jobs at ITV, Sky News, Channel 4 and the BBC before he turned up at the firm begging for a job, any job. You said yes to hiring him. I said no more loudly. So he went off and started his own consultancy which led to project work on the Conservative Party’s Instagram account and here we are.

Horowitz has almost managed to turn a man who is richer than the King, who worked for investment banks and hedge funds that decimated companies and communities, who married a software heiress who is British-based but non-domicile to avoid paying tax, who attended one of the best colleges at Oxford as a man of the people. I should have said no a lot more quietly. And listened to you a lot more closely.

Another changing of the guards. No doubt the pound sterling has found its feet again and traders have stopped crashing government bonds. It’s a funny business isn’t it, finance? Jackals and sharks in tailored Henry Herbert suits cut just a touch too tight, selling and short-selling everyone’s future.

The smartest financiers ultimately make their way into politics because that’s where the money is. Not in remuneration but in the keys to the kingdom, the keys to the treasury, the ability to print and trade funds out of thin air. There’s no better game in town.

Goldman Sachs was where Rishi earned his stripes. Since 2005 there has always been a Goldman Sachs alumnus serving as G7 prime minister, finance minister or central bank chief. Why take over a company when you can take over a country?

Even as liberalism unravels, they’ll pry out as much capital as possible. They’ll steal and plunder and push absurd austerity measures as millions of Britons go hungry.

Inflation now stands at over 10 percent, disposable income is falling through the floor, demand for food banks is outstripping supply for the first time. Energy bills are exploding and energy blackouts are coming in January. The poor always pay. That’s their job.

I hear there’s talk of a general strike. Hopefully the pitchforks won’t be too sharp and you and Sandra will be safely ensconced in your country estate. Have you finished the panic room? I imagine it’s the ideal place to write your memoirs as you’ve always threatened. Peace and quiet amidst the rising turmoil.

We always joke that the Conservative Party has no idea what’s going on but surely they realise they’re created this political mess and disintegration. After 12 years in power, they’re out of ideas. Clinging on to the myth that balancing the budget by cutting social spending will solve all ills.

When of course it never has and never will. It’s what’s led us to the mess we’re in. But that won’t stop them preaching the gospel of Margaret Thatcher.

Seems the whole nation will be taking a few steps backwards before moving forward.
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - October 27
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-october-27/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:52:15.000Z
I think I know why you suggested I pop into the Melbourne office but I don’t think I’ll take you up on it.

So many memories. Of course that’s where we first met. You were fresh from the London head office to sort us all out. All debonair and British. All understated until it came to those monthly budgets. It seems like aeons ago. I guess it is.

You know that’s where I met Anna. A secret office romance that bloomed into a full life and a family. I miss her. I really do miss her.

Let’s not be maudlin. Let’s look on the bright side. It finally stopped raining. Just as I was thinking about building an ark, the rain finally gave out. There’s a fine mist rising over the city.

It was good to step out. Humid as hell but stunning to see how it’s grown. When was the last time you were here? It’s become quite the metropolis, sprawling up and out.

As always everyone wears black. Men, women, children, infants. You see young men huddled together in black boots, black jeans, black puffer jackets, hands thrust into their front pockets. It’s a standard uniform. The preferred brand seems to be The North Face. Yes, even in this cloying weather.

The things we do for brands. Today I saw three Ferraris dash by in the space of three minutes. All rosso corsa. All gleaming, pulsing. My reverie shattered by a homeless woman screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘KILL ME! KILL ME NOW!!’ as they slithered past. A sign of the times, screaming into the void.

Do you know the average age of a Ferrari driver? 63\. Do you know what car Enzo Ferrari drove to work? A Fiat 128, one of the world’s first front-wheel drives. Never broke down, never caught on fire. Enzo smoked until the day he died.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to smoke in Melbourne these days. I think it might even be illegal. I can’t see where you can buy a packet. I can’t see anyone smoking. So there’s no one to borrow a cigarette from. In the hotel, every room is non-smoking.

Australia was one of the first countries to ban cigarette advertising, adopt plain-packaging laws. The tobacco companies tried to sue the government. Noble but ridiculous because of course they lost. Governments have a monopoly when it comes to laws.

I know France is thinking of banning petrol and fossil fuel advertising to reduce consumption. No doubt our team in Paris are doing everything to thwart any moves in that direction.

Did you see Publicis is spending millions on exceptional bonuses? Doling out around $50 million to over 45,000 staff to cope with cost of living increases. When I first read the article in Campaign, I thought it was because the staff was exceptional but it was because we’re in exceptional times.

Of course the top four executives - including the chief financial officer - split more than $40 million amongst themselves before tossing whatever was left to everyone else. Exceptional indeed.

Did you see the footage of the Greenpeace protestors occupying the central lobby in parliament after Rishi Sunak was appointed prime minister? A sit-in. How quaint. 30 or so activists shouting for the government to take more action on rising energy bills. Holding a banner with the headline CHAOS COSTS LIVES and the Greenpeace logo.

All fun and games until a parliamentary security guard put his hand over a news camera lens during a live television interview in the foreground. Apparently the broadcasting of protests or disorder in parliament is not permitted. As expected, the revolution will not be televised.

Did you think visiting the Melbourne office would make me want to return to the fold?

I’m a relic. All the young people in PR these days are a disappointment. Not just our firm, mind you.

Did you read about the public relations disaster at the Bureau of Meteorology? It’s called BoM for short. First internally and then colloquially. The last government appointed a CEO as a political favour and to tamper down its profile.

A toxic culture, broken staff, distraught scientists. As a result, the Australian public has been less informed on climate change for almost a decade. So what did they do to deflect attention? They instituted a name change. Spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Sent out a barrage of press releases demanding the media no longer use ‘BoM’ and only refer to it as the ‘Bureau’. Which of course led to derision from every newspaper and media outlet, high and low, left and right. Even the new Environment Minster jumped in, declaring that anyone can call it whatever they like, saying the whole rebrand was pointless and stupid and unnecessary.

But at least it took attention away from the real problems while the CEO scrambled for a new job as a new government came to power. The PR youngsters running the campaign seemed genuinely shocked at the ferocious response from the media. Who can blame them? They’ve spent their entire careers sending out press releases that have been printed verbatim by a dwindling press and news media. They haven’t realised they’ve been played.

Meanwhile you have a new prime minister to deal with. Rishi Rish! Voted by just 202 Tory MPs. Don’t you love democracy? Party members he snookered into position after handing Truss the sword she fell upon. Who would have thought Rish had it in him?

Is Cass Horowitz still looking after him?
### Your attention
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/your-attention/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:50:46.000Z
Where you put your attention defines who you are and shapes what you will become.

Most people put their attention on family, health, career, finances, community, politics, and the whole shebang.

Not you, sunshine. You put your attention on the unknown or as-yet-unrevealed element of whatever story or book or screenplay or project you’re working on.

Your responsibility to is bring forth what will be. (Not what is or what was. That’s for other people.)

This is the creative life.

This is your calling.
### Serial Novel “The Sorrows” - October 23
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/serial-novel-the-sorrows-october-23/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:51:33.000Z
I just wanted to dash off a quick email to let you know I arrived safely back in Australia.

Because of course you have nothing else to worry about in life except my wellbeing and frequent flyer points. That’s what friends are for, right. Especially good friends.

The long-haul flight was beyond horrible. Qantas Business Class was tawdry and frazzled. Such is modern air travel these days. Everyone was on edge, cabin crew and passengers alike.

Should I have flown First? I doubt it would have been worth it. Slightly wider and more comfortable seating but the same wilted lettuce. Same tired international lounge in Terminal 3 at Heathrow with its ridiculous brass-gilded staircase and faux private member club furnishings that somehow manage to be tacky and expensive at the same time, more worn out than worn in. And the leather? Have you noticed it doesn’t smell of leather?

Of course I should have taken your advice and flown First on Emirates or Qatar and turned the other cheek regarding their litany of human rights violations. Only marginally more expensive if you don’t factor in the human costs. Although now I’m officially retired, I’ll have to watch every penny, or rather every Australian dollar. The exchange rate is still abysmal but no reason for you and Sandra not to pay me a visit sometime soon. You can take your own advice (as you always do) regarding airlines and flights.

I’m writing this at a small round table in my room at the Sofitel Hotel (yes, still here at the top end of Collins Street after all these years). There’s been a mix-up with the tenants in my city place. My country place, my country escape, my reason for coming back after all those years in London? Still not finished. Apparently finding tradespeople is impossible. There’s a shortage of low-skilled physical labor. Who knew?

I’m sure the rooms have been refurbished since you were here last. Dark velvets, stuffed but not overstuffed chairs, innocuous muted tones, soft lamp lights, tight bed linen. Like any room in any luxury hotel chain. Somehow the run-of-the-mill anonymity is reassuring.

Air conditioning is breathing into the room while outside the rain is falling in grey sheets. draining the colour from the city. It’s been raining like this for almost a week. I’m sure you’ve seen the news of rivers breaking their banks, country towns being flooded, residents struggling to escape, motorists swept away.

On the television there are news reports playing more climate carnage, feckless politicians and protests around the world. There’s one protest just around the corner from the London office with a swarm of police officers. A frail old lady in a translucent plastic orange rain poncho hobbling with a walking stick is being gently arrested as she calmly scolds the government for their gross dereliction of duty. She’s certainly not wrong. If only she knew. If only they all knew.

I just realised I have no idea what the time is. I failed to set my watch to Australian time before I left. And I thought old habits die hard. I must be getting old.

There are no clocks anywhere in the room or when I checked in. I guess I’m in international hotel time. Bardo, as it were. A fine name for a new brand of experiential hotel.

I should try and get some sleep. Hopefully, I’ll dream of gold and wake with the sun upon my face.
### Write for visceral effect
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/write-for-visceral-effect/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:46:34.000Z
Go for a visceral reaction.

Write on-the-body physicality. Across the skin, against a touch, a bloodied lick.

Put a physical sense on a character’s body. Plant a new sensation in the reader’s nervous system.

Imprint a moment you can’t unread.
### Bill Hicks: Native American scene
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-native-american-scene/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:46:05.000Z
It’s 1994\. Bill Hicks drives down a dusty Texas backroad.

An old Native American man turns his head to watch him pass, a mixture of sadness and disappointment in his eyes.
### What can you control?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-can-you-control/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:45:31.000Z
We have so little control over our lives.

The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. What we work on and how hard we work on it.

Double down on what you’ve chosen to work on.

And work harder on it.
### Bill Hicks: Bill Cosby scene
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-bill-cosby-scene/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:44:24.000Z
It’s 1994\. Bill Hicks is talking to someone about stalwart comedian Bill Cosby.

Bill says that something’s off about the loveable comic. Can’t exactly put his finger on why.

Maybe it’s the too-colorful sweaters. Maybe it’s the anti-drug jokes. Maybe it’s the rape kit in the back of his limo.
### Bill Hicks: Richard Nixon scene
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-richard-nixon-scene/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:43:46.000Z
It’s 1994\. Bill is at Alejandro’s sprawling mansion. Alejandro is a book lover and one of California’s largest drug distributors. Alejandro is trying to connect his computer to the internet. Lots of chirping and beeping from an early modem.

BILL  
Pablo Escobar died in a hail of bullets in December.

ALEJANDRO  
Frank Zappa died two days later.

BILL  
Yet Richard Milhous Nixon still walks this earth.

ALEJANDRO  
God takes all the good ones first.

Bill smirks.
### Bill Hicks: “The Godfather” scene
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-the-godfather-scene/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:47:42.000Z
It’s 1994\. Bill Hicks is in his bathroom, staring at his reflection in the mirror. He’s pretty high on acid. An overhead light casts brooding shadows around his face. Two pinpoints of light in his pupils.

As Bill delivers Bonasera’s opening lines from “The Godfather” in a perfect Italian accent, his reflection stares back without moving lips, without blinking.

BILL  
I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in American fashion. I gave her freedom, but I taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boyfriend. Not an Italian. She went to the movies with him. She stayed out late. I didn’t protest. Two months ago, he took her for a drive with another boyfriend. They made her drink whiskey. And then they tried to take advantage of her. She resisted. She kept her honor. So they beat her like an animal.

Bill looks down, then slowly looks up at his unmoving reflection.

BILL  
Then I said to my wife, ‘for justice we must go to Don Corleone.’

Bill’s reflection stares back and begins to speak. Now Bill’s lips aren’t moving. Just the lips on the reflection as it responds as a pitch-perfect Don Corleone.

BILL’S REFLECTION  
You come to me and you say, ‘Don Corleone give me justice.’ But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married and you ask me to do murder, for money.
### Which way should you go?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/which-way-should-you-go/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:48:08.000Z
What’s done is done. What’s gone is gone.

One of life’s lessons is to be always moving on. It’s okay to look back to see how far you’ve come but keep moving forward.

Don’t dawdle in the past. Don’t long for the good old days.

Don’t become a has-been.

Go forward.
### Bill Hicks: Miles Davis soundtrack
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-miles-davis-soundtrack/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T20:42:05.000Z
Use pieces from Miles Davis to accentuate Bill’s evolution through the story.

From stubborn to flexible. From angry to happy. From brutal to gentle. From egotistical to altruistic.

From arrogant to humble. From boastful to deprecating. From impatient to calm.

From clumsy to graceful. From reckless to careful.

From vindictive to forgiving.

From fire to water.

From hate to love.
### Don’t wait for the perfect writing time
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/do-not-wait-for-perfect-writing-time/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:40:40.000Z
There is no perfect time for anything.

You need to start writing any which way. Pen, pencil, keyboard, straight razor and blood.

Start slinging and stringing the words together. One word after another. After a few sentences, the writing will take on a life of its own.

Just follow along. Take careful notes. Pay attention.

Especially to any distant whispers.
### Let’s fuck up
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/let-us-fuck-up/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:39:50.000Z
Don’t worry about failing.

Worry about not failing enough. When your biggest fear is how your work or project is going to be perceived by others, it’s easy to delay making any real progress.

When something becomes important to you, it’s easy to fear sharing it with others. You worry that something you care so much about will be shot down in flames. So it’s easier to hide or keep working on things in the shadows.

Bring the work into the open, into the light. Yes, it might fail.

But without that failure, you can’t move forward.

You can’t ultimately succeed.
### Bill Hicks: Misogynist scene
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-misogynist-scene/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:39:12.000Z
It’s 1994\. Bill Hicks is at the bar after a show, drinking a hefty margarita and reading a Noam Chomsky book\*.

A tipsy woman with big hair approaches, crosses her arms and lolls her head.

WOMAN  
You’re a bit of a misogynist, aren’t you?

BILL  
Oh, it’s not a bit.

WOMAN  
Why do you hate women so much?

Bill laughs, doesn’t look up from his book.

BILL  
I don’t hate women, m’am.

WOMAN  
You suck.

Bill thinks, still doesn’t look up.

BILL  
You suck? That’s it?!! That’s best you can do?

Bill looks up at her.

BILL  
You fuckin’ cunt! Get the fuck out of here right now! Get out! Fuuuck you, you idiot! You’re everything that America should flush down the toilet, you fuckin’ turd. Fuck you! Get out! Get out! You fuuuckin’ drunk bitch!

Bill screams at security.

BILL  
Take her out! Take her fuuuuckin’ out! Go and see fuckin’ Madonna, you fuckin’ idiot piece of shit! I want you to go find a fuckin’ soul!

Woman totters away, sobbing. Bill turns to the startled barman.

BILL  
Sorry y’all had to see that.

Bill takes a sip of his margarita and returns to his book.

\*Bill reads Noam Chomsky books throughout. Although the story is set in 1994, all the Chomsky books he reads are future titles. Bill is always ahead of the times.
### How to change unhealthy habits
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/change-unhealthy-habits/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:38:05.000Z
Do you ever find yourself standing at the refrigerator when you’re not hungry?

Have you ever reached for the one food in your cupboard that is guaranteed to be bad for you?

Relax. It’s not just you. We all do it. And we all know they’re bad habits. (Yes, frustrating and bad to the bone.)

Knowing they’re bad doesn’t help shift them. It simply makes us feel guilty and, well, bad.

To change anything you need to change the language, change how the information is processed and recalled and acted on.

Replace the word ‘bad’ with ‘unhealthy’ and those habits will change themselves.
### Bill Hicks: Missing parrot scene
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-missing-parrot-scene/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:36:37.000Z
It's 1994\. Bill Hicks is ambling down a sidewalk in a back suburb of Los Angeles.

He notices a flyer pinned to a tree, bottom fringed with tiny slips of paper. He stops and stares at it.

It’s a poster for a missing parrot. With a photo of the parrot posing outside a cage. Apparently it answers to the name ‘Clarence’. There’s a reward of $500\. And a phone number repeated on each slip, ruffling in the light breeze. None are torn off.

Bill scratches his head. Is this a joke? Is this pet owner an idiot? How can anyone imagine that anyone can find a parrot in a city? Or anywhere for that matter?

He looks up and down the street. Then up and over the trees. And finally up into the piercing blue sky.

There are no birds, no planes, no clouds. He looks back at the flyer. The blue sky behind him shifts.

Bill plucks the flyer off the tree and begins folding it origami-like into a bird. He tucks the wings back and bends the beak forward so it looks like a paper parrot. Places it in a branch and smiles at his handiwork. Then plucks one of the slips of paper like a feather from the tail. Pops it in his shirt pocket. Hey, $500 is $500.

\>> In a later scene, Bill is pacing his apartment, anxious over his lack of money. A parrot lands on his balcony, cocks its head.

HICKS  
Clarence?!?

CLARENCE THE PARROT  
What the fuck you looking at?

Bill can’t believe it, franticlaly pats down his pockets. Retrieves the slip of paper from his shirt pocket with the phone number to call for the reward when Clarence swoops in, bites it out of his fingers and flaps away.
### Edgar Allan Poe, interior designer
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/edgar-allan-poe-interior-designer/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:35:37.000Z
*In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture, of their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and colors. In France meliora probant, deteriora sequuntur \[approve the better, follow the worse\]—the people are too much a race of gadabouts to study and maintain those household proprieties, of which indeed they have a delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The Chinese, and most of the Eastern races, have a warm but inappropriate fancy. The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have merely a vague idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are all curtains—a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way—the Yankees alone are preposterous.*

*How this happens it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy of blood, and having therefore as a natural and indeed as an inevitable thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the display of wealth has here to take the place and perform the office of the heraldic display in monarchical countries. In America, dollars being the supreme insignia of aristocracy, their display may be said, in general terms, to be the sole means of aristocratic distinction; and the populace, looking up for models, are insensibly led to confound the two entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost of an article of furniture has, at length, come to be, with us, nearly the sole test of its merit in a decorative point of view. And this test, once established, has led the way to many analogous errors, readily traceable to the one primitive folly.*

*There could be scarcely anything more directly offensive to the eye of an artist than the interior of what is termed, in the United States, a well-furnished apartment. Its most usual defect is a preposterous want of keeping, observable sometimes in the character of the several pieces of furniture, but generally in their colors or modes of adaptation to use. Very often the eye is offended by their inartistic arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent, too uninterruptedly continued, or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. Undue precision spoils the appearance of many a room.*
### Universe
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/universe-advertising-agency/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:35:03.000Z
A new advertising agency that only takes on clients that are interested in making humanity an interplanetary species.

New products, new systems, new worlds.

New gods.
### Where did Jack Reacher come from?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/where-did-jack-reacher-come-from/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:33:53.000Z
Ask Lee Child and he’ll happily tell you his most famous creation comes from a long line of vigilante outsiders.

He wrote based on instinct - which is to say, based on everything he had ever read and subliminally absorbed before. And sure enough, Jack Reacher turned out to be a man of rank (a major, a West Point graduate) now cast out from mainstream society (albeit voluntarily, by his own hand) and dispensing rough justice outside the mainstream rules.

As such, Reacher slotted very neatly into the folk hero tradition. Specifically the knight-errant subgroup, which seems to be universal in appeal. Like in the Japanese ronin myths where a samurai, disowned by his master, is sentenced to wander the land, doing good.

For Lee, the trope was so strong it overrode common sense and quotidian realism. Think Batman and a slew of Marvel characters

Everyone feels they’re misunderstood. Everyone feels like they’re an outsider.

Hence the universal appeal.
### Corporate religion
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/corporate-religion/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:32:27.000Z
Corporations are becoming more and more religious, more and more evangelical about capitalism.

Big companies have an origin story, a mission, a range of ethics, and a particular set of practices. Many of them have charismatic leaders. (Or at least a leader who believes they’re charismatic.)

These are all basic and necessary components of organised religion. Finding salvation through employment. Finding redemption through old gods dressed up as new gods.

The Hollywood industrial entertainment complex has taken over religion. People happily gather to pay to see Thor, the god of thunder, played by a muscled Australian actor in their local multiplex.

The gods have moved from stained glass backlit by a setting sun to a billion pixels of light projected onto a screen in cathedrals we call cinemas and Americans call theaters.

And in the process the gods of old have become a little more sassy, a little more, well, entertaining.

Rather than tithings to the church we now pay subscriptions to a multitude of streaming platforms.

All business is now show business.
### What’s on your slate?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/your-slate/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:30:34.000Z
You might think you’re a screenwriter.

But you have to be more than that. You have to be a studio.

When someone asks you what you’re working on, you have to have a slate.

Every studio has a slate. Fox, Disney, Warners, Paramount, Columbia - they’ve all got a lineup of pictures they’re making and more in the pipeline.

Think about who you’re competing against. It’s not just other writers. You’re competing against studios. You have to have the same professional attitude they have about finances, contingencies, material.

As a writer, you have to have at least three finished scripts and half a dozen in the works at all times. In a meeting, when a producer asks you what else you have, you must be able to rattle off four, five, six projects - and be able to pitch them all.

Just because you’re creative doesn’t give you permission to be an idiot. The reason writers are condescended to and treated like children is because they act like children.

Those days are over. You’re in business. You’re competing against multi-billion-dollar enterprises.

Get professional.
### How to write a story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/write-a-story/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:27:35.000Z
Every story is first borrowed, then adapted, then established, then reinvented.

Then rinsed and the process repeated again. Over and over and over. Not just for hundreds but for thousands of years.

New details are sprinkled, new plots derived, new twists added. But the evolving character is always the living, breathing heart of every story

Take the basic shape of the character and give people what they’ve always wanted - a suspenseful story full of dangers and perils, over which a memorable character eventually triumphs in a decisive manner.
### How the wealthy live
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-wealthy-live/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:26:54.000Z
The rich are kind of fun and stupid.

Typically overspending their way through life as a way to compensate for the financial bounty that befalls them.

Some tell themselves it’s all down to hard work. Of course, it’s not. It never is. If hard work is all it took, everyone that works hard would have millions of dollars in the bank.

It’s all luck. The rich were in the right place at the right time and bought the right ticket.

The wealthy? That’s another story. Especially intergenerational wealth. They are born apart from other people.

The wealthy use other people, use the landscape, use the body politic. They inhabit privilege. They shirk scrutiny. Other people are there to profit them.

If other people cannot make them more money, they’re discarded for people who can.

If people can’t do something for them, they’re of no use.

Every moment of life is a transaction.

Even in the silences and the shadows.
### Fate awaits us
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/fate-awaits-us/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:28:24.000Z
Because capitalism is based on numerology rather than poetry, it tries to make sense of the world with binary logic.

Which sounds incredibly sensible and altogether reasonable. You look at the numbers and percentages and predict accordingly. You sift through the data sets and forecast the future.

But it’s a fallacy. As soon as you apply a dash of logic to the logic it crumbles and falls apart. Looking at past numbers to predict the future is like driving a car by looking at the rearview mirror rather than through the windscreen.

Looking at the rearview mirror is great for reversing. But when you’re rushing forward, it’s an excellent way to crash and kill you and any passengers in the car. And anyone else on the road.

Looking at data is a great history lesson. By definition, history is the past. Not the future.

Be mindful that if you’re hiring a data analyst, you’re hiring a historian.

History doesn’t repeat itself. It cannot.

That’s why tomorrow is not today.

Or yesterday.
### Creative intelligence test
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/creative-intelligence-test/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:24:54.000Z
Developers and engineers are happy to tell you how incredibly creative they are.

But a manager at Microsoft wasn’t so sure. So he devised a simple test called The Spaghetti Problem. The goal was to build the tallest tower possible using 20 pieces of dry spaghetti, some tape, some string and a marshmallow.

This manager ran this challenge for five years. He tested over 700 people including engineers, developers and MBA students.

Do you know who outperformed everyone? Kindergartners. Yes, six-year-olds beat everyone.

Did they have some special knowledge about Italian food or the consistency of marshmallows? Expert knowledge about the structural dynamics of spaghetti? Not at all.

What was their secret? They just jumped in and tried more stuff. They started failing immediately and learning quickly.

The more mistakes they made the taller they got their towers built.
### Stupid machines
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/stupid-machines/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:22:47.000Z
It’s 2020 and England is befouled by a raging pandemic.

Millions of citizens are locked down in their homes, banned from meeting their neighbors or traveling any further than their local supermarket.

One of the chief architects of the UK’s strict Covid-19 lockdown was Dominic Cummings who, as if often the case by the ruling class, completely defied his own orders and took a 500-mile trip in breach of the rules he wrote.

Enraged by such hypocrisy, everyone took to social media. But despite dominating the national conversation, the word ‘Cummings’ did not appear on Twitter’s trending topics. Or Facebook. Or Instagram. Or any of the platforms. It was as if the issue was being hidden from public sight.

Nefarious hackers? Political favors? Obedient technologists? It had nothing to do with high politics. ‘Cummings’ was censored because the word “cumming” was on Twitter’s roster of forbidden pornographic terms.

Dominic got a free pass because technology is essentially stupid. It’s binary. On or off. And nothing in between.

Free speech is now regulated by private firms who have the power to censor, block and boost.

They now decide who is seen and who is heard. What is made public and what is hidden.

They now determine the public discourse and ideas that shape our humanity.

Can we be surprised that society is becoming so senseless?
### You’re better off dead
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/better-off-dead/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:21:21.000Z
Tom Clancy was an insurance agent when he started writing novels on the side. “The Hunt for Red October” was his first military thriller released in 1984 by a small military press.

It originally sold a few thousand copies until President Ronald Reagan praised it as the best thing since sliced communists and was picked up by Putnam and went on to become a national then international bestseller. And a blockbuster film with Sean Connery playing the soviet sub commander Captain Marko Ramius with a Scottish accent. And multiple hit video games on consoles everywhere. And a series of novels featuring the fictional hero Jack Ryan.

Tom quickly became the cornerstone of a publishing list by Putnam which emphasized authors who could produce a new book every year. He pumped out as many books as he could before his heart gave out in 2013 at the age of sixty-six.

Since his death, Tom’s Jack Ryan series has been continued by his family estate through a slew of ghostwriters.

Tom has now miraculously produced more books dead than alive.
### Four people
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/four-people/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:19:55.000Z
According to Susan Sontag, as a writer you must be four people.

1) The nut, the obsédé.

2) The moron.

3) The stylist.

4) The critic.

1) Supplies the material. 2) Lets it come out. 3) Is taste. 4) Is intelligence.

A great writer has all four - but you can still be a good writer with only 1) and 2). They’re the most important.

You have to be obsessed.
### Welcome to surveillance communism
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/welcome-to-surveillance-communism/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:19:11.000Z
If you think surveillance capitalism is intrusive, thank your lucky stars you don’t live in China.

China in the the throes of buildings the world’s biggest automatic panopticon. It’s not just cameras. And it’s not pretty.

Family DNA databases, microphones in public spaces with speech recognition, clothes tracking following people around a city through long distance cameras, phone trackers, ethnicity ID analysis and much more. So much more.

You’re essentially a prisoner of the state masquerading as a citizen. Thanks to the Chinese Communist Party you have no individual rights. Not even human rights.

China is promoting a new synthesis of Maoism, nationalism and statism with ideas copied from Carl Schmitt - the notorious German political thinker who helped inspire and forment the rise of Nazism.

It’s the kind of thinking that justifies political murder and a leader’s dictatorial authority as the highest form of administrative justice.

Isn’t it odd we never seem to learn the lessons of history.
### You become what you kill
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-become-what-you-kill/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:17:58.000Z
It’s time to pick up the remote control again.

After all these years of smooth viewing, commercials are finally coming to Netflix.

The streaming service will create a new ad-supported tier in an attempt to expand the addressable base and try to stop subscribers from fleeing. Google is the front-runner to run ad sales.

What could go wrong? Aside from everything.

You become what you kill.
### Beauty matters
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/beauty-matters/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:18:33.000Z
Usability rarely leads to beauty.

Making something useful and functional is the shallowest of skills. It mechanizes thoughts and possibilities. Making something useful makes it culturally useless. It turns us into machines of labor, reproduction and consumption. It derides and diminishes our humanity.

Beauty isn’t just ornamentation for the sake of it. Gold toilets aren’t beautiful. Conspicuous consumption is vanity, not beauty.

Beauty is that aesthetic quality which elevates ordinary things into something more meaningful, something extraordinary. It’s what gives us something more than just a material, automated, machine-like existence.

Everything we build, everything we make can be beautiful.
### Be different
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/be-different/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:16:48.000Z
Adam Mastroianni reminds us that we live in the age of oligopolies.

A shrinking group of franchises own a bigger chunk of art, books, music, movies, television, video game, everything.

Before 2000, only about 25 percent of top-grossing movies were sequels, spinoffs, and remakes. Now it’s well over 75 percent. You can’t step into a major art gallery without seeing a blockbuster from a dead artist everyone has heard of. And everyone is queuing up to see.

Every market evolves (or if we prefer, devolves) to two major players. Then one. Until it crumbles or shatters thanks to antitrust legislation or shifting tastes.

Oligopolies are on the rise everywhere you look. A few people make more money. A few supermarkets sell the most goods. A few businesses produce more GDP. A few scientific papers get more of the citations. A few newspapers get more of the readers. A few websites get more of the traffic.

A few religions get more of the believers. A few cities get more of the people. A few parties get most of the votes.

Economists call it agglomeration. Psychologists put it down to choice overload. Choosing between two is a lot easier than choosing between twenty-two.

People choose the familiar, first movers can win near-permanent portions of market share, and big things tend to outcompete small things unless something stops them.

Oligopolies can fall as well as rise. Income inequality increased from 1910 to 1930 but then declined for forty years before beginning its most recent neoliberal ascent. The Fortune 500 share of the economy ticked downward during the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Cults exploded in the 60s and 70s and then receded again.

In an oligopoly, being different is a form of civil disobedience. We can’t pass antitrust legislation all by ourselves, and we don’t have the capacity to change policy.

But we can spend our attention, our time and our money where few others are spending theirs. We can be a big part of a small audience.

The arc of history doesn’t have to bend toward a few having most. We’re the ones who bend it.

Why not twist it towards the rule-breakers, the free thinkers.

The trouble makers.

The different.
### Overcoming resistance
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/overcoming-resistance/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:15:30.000Z
Steven Pressfield knows resistance is a motherfucker.

And the more important a project or an enterprise is to the evolution of your soul, the more resistance you’ll feel to it.

How does Steven define resistance? It’s the tendency to procrastinate, to listen to self-doubt, to give in to distraction, arrogance, fear, self-loathing. All the things that’ll sabotage your work.

If you are about to embark on a project, a screenplay, a novel, a dance, a symphony, a play, a whatever, and you find yourself overwhelmed by resistance or powerful doubt, that’s a good sign.

Because that means that this project is really important to your evolution, to your growth.

Right now, Steven is at the very beginning of a new project and he’s overwhelmed with self-doubt and confusion and fear.

But he’s telling himself that’s a good sign because it shows him this project is something that really means something to his soul.

That he has to sit down, shut up, and do it.
### Book banning
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/book-banning/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:14:52.000Z
Julie Otsuka’s award-winning 2002 novel “When the Emperor Was Divine” about a Japanese internment camp has been rejected by the Wisconsin school district board and barred from the tenth-grade English class curriculum.

Based on her family’s own story, this novel follows a Japanese American family forced out of their California home and sent to an internment camp in Utah. It’s a heartbreaking and vital tale - and it’s being contested for study on the grounds that it’s too diverse and, well, just too damn sad.

Where are those happy-go-lucky internment camp books when you need ‘em?
### How birds learn to sing
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-birds-learn-to-sing/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T10:13:48.000Z
Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) are passerine birds native to Australia.

One of the evolutionary challenges these birds face is they must learn their song from their parents and siblings since it’s not innate.

Researchers wondered whether sleep might also play a role in song acquisition. Could sleep help juvenile finches internalize the acoustic patterns they hear from their family members and commit them to long-term memory? Could these birds learn their song at least in part by rehearsing it in their minds while asleep?

When researchers mapped the neural patterns that emerged in the same brain region when the finches practiced their song while awake and compared them to the patterns elicited during sleep, their findings were astonishing.

They discovered that the pattern elicited by the act of singing while awake was an exact structural replica of the patterns elicited during the period of sleep marked by sudden bursts of high-level neural activity.

The match was so perfect that these patterns matched one another note-for-note. Zebra finches learn their song not only by practicing it out loud while awake but also by mentally replaying it while asleep without making a chirp.

During replay while asleep, the birds’ vocal cords expand and contract exactly as they do during play. Aside from mentally rehearsing their song during sleep, they also practice the bodily skills needed to actualize their song.

They dream their song to life.
### Character flaws
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/character-flaws/
Last updated: 2024-02-11T22:05:42.000Z
Character flaws are what make stories tick.

It’s the flaws that reveal themselves in each character in the beginning of a story that gives you a means to arc their transformation.

Unless of course you’re working on a tragedy that compounds the flaws so the character either doesn’t change or changes for the worse.

Below is a stack of them from annoying to dreadful to absolutely terrible. (Even good characters have bad flaws because, well, we’re all flawed, right. Shading a character with a flaw or two makes them human. Same goes for bad characters who need a sliver of good or a kind gesture to make them a little more real and keep audiences guessing.)

A minor flaw for one character can be a fatal flaw for another. (Amy’s vanity in “Little Women” is a small, amusing aspect of her character she matures out of. While for Narcissus, vanity proves deadly.)

Even a seemingly innocuous flaw can turn fatal if not recognized and kept in check. Subvert audiences’ expectations to keep them guessing.

**Awkward** – socially uneasy, uncomfortable.

**Boring** – dull, tedious, uninteresting.

**Capricious** – given to flights of fancy, impulsive behaviors.

**Childish** – silly, immature, innocent.

**Clumsy** – uncoordinated, fumbling, often accident-prone.

**Foolish** – lacking good judgment, common sense.

**Gossipy** – inclined to spread rumors, talk about others behind their backs.

**Gullible** – easily fooled, persuaded to believe something.

**Humorless** – having no sense of humor, solemn.

**Lazy** – unwilling to work, slothful.

**Meek** – overly gentle, submissive.

**Mischievous** – playfully troublesome, rascally, roguish.

**Naïve** – childlike, trusting, unworldly.

**Obnoxious** – highly irritating, unpleasant.

**Prideful** – having a lofty opinion of themselves, rarely admitting to being wrong.

**Shallow** – having few profound thoughts, caring only for insignificant things.

**Skeptical** – doubtful, disbelieving.

**Spacey** – having one’s head in the clouds, absent-minded.

**Spoiled** – bratty, self-centered as a result of overindulgence.

**Stubborn** – willful, headstrong, refusing to give up.

**Tactless** – not very nuanced, insensitive in dealings with others.

**Vain** – preoccupied with their physical appearance.

**Adulterous** – cheating on their partner or spouse.

**Anxious** – experiencing frequent nerves, apprehensions.

**Apathetic** – having little interest in life, lacking enthusiasm.

**Arrogant** – haughty, conceited, exaggeratedly self-important.

**Belligerent** – hostile and aggressive, even when unprovoked.

**Bitter** – resentful, unpleasant because of a past experience.

**Cowardly** – lacking the courage to stand up for what’s right.

**Dishonest** – lying, behaving in a deceitful manner, usually to take advantage of others.

**Envious** – wanting to possess what another has whether it’s a physical object or a character trait.

**Greedy** – always desiring more whether it’s food, wealth, attention, anything to their own detriment.

**Hedonistic** – indulging completely in the pursuit of pleasure.

**Hubristic** – excessively self-confident in one’s ideas, abilities.

**Hypocritical** – acting in opposition to their beliefs or proclamations about others, typically because they believe they’re above them.

**Ignorant** – possessing little practical knowledge, awareness of the world.

**Incompetent** – unable to perform basic tasks.

**Inconsiderate** – caring little for the feelings of others.

**Judgmental** – critical, disapproving, often in an outspoken way.

**Lustful** – overwhelmed with sexual desire.

**Morally gray** – neither good nor evil in a conventional sense, moral ambiguity.

**Obsequious** – so deferential and flattering as to be unsettling.

**Possessive** – overprotective, controlling.

**Quixotic** – overly idealistic, hindered by their own expectations.

**Rigid** – utterly inflexible in one’s principles, even when presented with reason to change.

**Selfish** – being solely concerned with their own needs and desires.

**Short-tempered** – quick to anger.

**Spiteful** – bitter, malicious.

**Stingy** – mean, ungenerous.

**Stupid** – showing little intelligence in their decisions or actions.

**Vengeful** – seeking ramifications for others as a form of revenge.

**Weak-willed** – timid, spineless.

**Abusive** – engaging in habitual, extreme cruelty or violence.

**Bigoted** – harboring fierce, immovable prejudices about a certain group.

**Cruel** – willfully causing pain and suffering to others.

**Disloyal** – failing to remain true to the person or entity they pledged their allegiance to.

**Fanatical** – extremely zealous to the point of delusion.

**Intolerant** – narrow-minded, unaccepting of others, sometimes to the point of violence.

**Machiavellian** – cunning, manipulative, unscrupulous in their schemes.

**Manipulative** – conniving, controlling others to get what they want.

**Murderous** – desiring to kill, homicidal.

**Neglectful** – failing to give proper care or attention to someone or something.

**Obsessive** – so consumed by a single subject that they cannot function normally.

**Oppressive** – brutally authoritarian toward a group of people considered lesser.

**Paranoid** – unusually suspicious, mistrustful, nervous that something bad will happen to them.

**Remorseless** – feeling no shame, regret, or sympathy when they’ve done something wrong.

**Sadistic** – taking pleasure in inflicting pain or humiliation upon others.

**Self-destructive** – acting in such a way as to destroy their own health and happiness.

**Treacherous** – deeply disloyal, traitorous, usually for personal gain.

**Violent** – viciously, physically harmful to others.

It’s the flaws that shapes our characters, however petty or brutal.
### Keep working
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/keep-working/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:24:54.000Z
Head down, keep the tools you need within reach and work.

That’s the only way to get anything done.

You have to keep working.
### One hour a day
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/one-hour-a-day/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:24:05.000Z
Are you juggling work and gigs and projects while pursuing your art?

Wondering whether putting in an hour a day on your art is enough? Wondering whether an hour a day is too paltry?

An hour a day is plenty. Over a year, an hour a day adds up to 365 hours. Which is more than nine weeks working full time.

As Steven Pressfield says, if you’re showing up, fully committed and getting to it every day – you’re not aspiring, you’re not a wannabe.

You are a writer, artist, musician, dancer, fill-in-the-blank. You are making your art.

Don’t underestimate the power of one hour a day.

Keep showing up.
### Bill Hicks: Life’s a ride
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-life-is-a-ride/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:21:06.000Z
Towards the end, hard-hitting and subversive comedian Bill Hicks would think nothing of standing on stage, delivering epiphanies.

Divine revelations to live life by. Manifest templates for living, beat by beat, turn by turn.

*The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are.*

*The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while.*

*Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, ‘Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?’*

*But some people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, ‘Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’*

*And we ... kill those people. ‘Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.’*

*It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok.*

*But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want.*

*It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money.*

*Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.*

*The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.*

*Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.*

*Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world - which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded - and we could explore space, together.*

*Both inner and outer, forever, in peace.*
### Write the big moment
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/write-big-moment/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:19:16.000Z
Steven Pressfield offered some great advice the other day.

It came from a successful literary agent in Los Angeles who represents screenwriters.

Steven had asked her what’s the most common reason screenwriters fall flat? She didn’t hesitate to answer.

‘When they come to the Big Scene, they chicken out.’

We all tend to be risk-averse in our lives and in our stories. It’s human nature. This agent knows why.

‘Partly it’s because they’ve been told that subtext is more powerful than text. Or they’re afraid that if they go balls-out for emotion and the moment doesn’t work, they’ll look foolish. So they deliberately under-write. They back off from having Carmela scream at Tony, I was in love with Furio! Or from Tony slamming his fist through the wall two inches from Carmela’s face.’

Your job as a writer is to write the Big Scene. Don’t underwrite. Don’t underplay. Don’t play nice.

Don’t chicken out.

Hold nothing back.

Got for it.
### Coppola cuts to the quick
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/coppola-cuts-to-the-quick/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:19:59.000Z
Ask Francis Ford Coppola what “The Godfather” is about and you won’t get a long-winded answer.

You won’t get pages and pages of treatment. Or a one-page outline. Or even a snappy logline. You’ll get a single key word as a thematic touchstone.

For “The Godfather” that word is succession.

“The Conversation”? Privacy.

“Apocalypse Now”? Morality.

Such clean and simple encapsulations help ultra-focus his large-scale pictures and avoid derailment (unless it’s part of the story) in production.

A single keyword aligns actors and crew to a singular common and easy-to-understand purpose. For Coppola, it helps the movie make itself. Such singular impetus becomes its own flywheel.

Can you sum up the project you’re currently working on in just one word?
### 101 best movie loglines
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/101-best-movie-loglines/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:17:33.000Z
Loglines are one-or-two sentence summaries of a story or screenplay.

They help the audience (whether it’s readers or development executives or crew) immediately understand what the story or screenplay is about in 25 words or less.

Quick shorthands, quick sketches for the story to come. Story engines that are enticing and intriguing enough for the audience to want to see more.

Ken Miyamoto of Screencraft chose the 101 best movie loglines below.

See how many of these movies you can name by the logline alone?

1\. The ageing patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

2\. After a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.

3\. A depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis decides to turn his hectic life around after becoming infatuated with his daughter’s attractive friend.

4\. A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process.

5\. With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

6\. During the U.S.-Vietnam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe.

7\. An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maid’s point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

8\. Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

9\. A Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen who lose their about-to-be-wed buddy during their drunken misadventures must retrace their steps to find him.

10\. A cop has to talk down a bank robber after the criminal’s perfect heist spirals into a hostage situation.

11\. A young F.B.I. cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help in catching another serial killer who skins his victims.

12\. The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster’s wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

13\. A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.

14\. A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

15\. A quirky family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.

16\. A group of seven former college friends gathers for a weekend reunion at a South Carolina winter house after the funeral of one of their friends.

17\. A man creates a strange system to help him remember things so he can hunt for the murderer of his wife without his short-term memory loss being an obstacle.

18\. A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO.

19\. When a teenage girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her daughter.

20\. A fast-track lawyer can’t lie for 24 hours due to his son’s birthday wish after the lawyer let his son down for the last time.

21\. An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soapmaker form an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more.

22\. Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.

23\. A nun, while comforting a convicted killer on death row, empathizes with both the killer and his victim’s families.

24\. A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

25\. A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

26\. During a preview tour, a theme park suffers a major power breakdown that allows its cloned dinosaur exhibits to run amok.

27\. A Lion cub crown prince is tricked by a treacherous uncle into thinking he caused his father’s death and flees into exile in despair, only to learn in adulthood his identity and his responsibilities.

28\. After young Riley is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco, her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness - conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school.

29\. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search of her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshiper, and a drifter named Max.

30\. A washed-up superhero actor attempts to revive his fading career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway production.

31\. In the Falangist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

32\. A teenage girl raids a man’s home to expose him under suspicion that he is a pedophile.

33\. When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories.

34\. A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes after he narrowly escapes a bizarre accident.

35\. A self-indulgent and vain publishing magnate finds his privileged life upended after a vehicular accident with a resentful lover.

36\. A boy who communicates with spirits seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.

37\. Seventy-eight-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his home equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway.

38\. In order to power the city, monsters have to scare children so that they scream. However, the children are toxic to the monsters, and after a child gets through, two monsters realize things may not be what they think.

39\. When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community, it’s up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.

40\. In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.

41\. A prince cursed to spend his days as a hideous monster sets out to regain his humanity by earning a young woman’s love.

42\. A hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons becomes the unlikely friend of a young dragon himself and learns there may be more to the creatures than he assumed.

43\. Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers goes behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

44\. A 17-year-old high school student is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, a maverick scientist.

45\. A cowboy doll is profoundly threatened and jealous when a new spaceman figure supplants him as the top toy in a boy’s room.

46\. A team of explorers travels through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity’s survival.

47\. A former Roman General sets out to exact vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery.

48\. With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent.

49\. A young soldier in Vietnam faces a moral crisis when confronted with the horrors of war and the duality of man.

50\. A young janitor at M.I.T. has a gift for mathematics but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life.

51\. The lives of guards on Death Row are affected by one of their charges - a black man accused of child murder and rape, yet who has a mysterious gift.

52\. An undercover cop and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other while infiltrating an Irish gang in South Boston.

53\. After a young man is murdered, his spirit stays behind to warn his lover of impending danger, with the help of a reluctant psychic.

54\. In 1954, a U.S. Marshal investigates the disappearance of a murderer, who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane.

55\. An insurance salesman discovers his whole life is actually a reality TV show.

56\. A small-time boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight a heavy-weight champion in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.

57\. A criminal pleads insanity after getting into trouble again and once in the mental institution rebels against the oppressive nurse and rallies up the scared patients.

58\. A retired Old West gunslinger reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner and a young man.

59\. A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.

60\. Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.

61\. A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

62\. An NYPD officer tries to save his wife and several others taken hostage by German terrorists during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.

63\. After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as a distress call, its landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious lifeform, and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

64\. Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.

65\. A weatherman finds himself inexplicably living the same day over and over again.

66\. After awakening from a four-year coma, a former assassin wreaks vengeance on the team of assassins who betrayed her.

67\. A group of professional bank robbers starts to feel the heat from police when they unknowingly leave a clue at their latest heist.

68\. As corruption grows in 1950s Los Angeles, three policemen — one strait-laced, one brutal, and one sleazy — investigate a series of murders with their own brand of justice.

69\. When an open-minded Jewish librarian and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor, and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp.

70\. After discovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the lunar surface, mankind sets off on a quest to find its origins with help from intelligent supercomputer HAL 9000.

71\. A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

72\. After a tragic accident, two stage magicians engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion while sacrificing everything they have to outwit each other.

73\. After the death of a friend, a writer recounts a boyhood journey to find the body of a missing boy.

74\. A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.

75\. A tale of greed, deception, money, power, and murder occurs between two best friends - a mafia enforcer and a casino executive - who compete against each other over a gambling empire, and over a fast living and fast loving socialite.

76\. A seemingly indestructible android is sent from 2029 to 1984 to assassinate a waitress, whose unborn son will lead humanity in a war against the machines, while a soldier from that war is sent to protect her at all costs.

77\. A Phoenix secretary embezzles forty thousand dollars from her employer’s client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.

78\. A private detective hired to expose an adulterer finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.

79\. A sole survivor tells of the twisty events leading up to a horrific gun battle on a boat, which began when five criminals met at a seemingly random police lineup.

80\. Held captive for seven years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.

81\. A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.

82\. A New York City advertising executive goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies.

83\. A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential.

84\. Allied prisoners of war plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II.

85\. A former neo-nazi skinhead tries to prevent his younger brother from going down the same wrong path that he did.

86\. A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe and wind up spending one evening together in Vienna. Unfortunately, both know that this will probably be their only night together.

87\. A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.

88\. An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.

89\. A toon-hating detective is a cartoon rabbit’s only hope to prove his innocence when he is accused of murder.

90\. Two 1990s teenage siblings find themselves in a 1950s sitcom, where their influence begins to profoundly change that complacent world.

91\. A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.

92\. Two astronauts work together to survive after an accident leaves them stranded in space.

93\. An I.R.S. auditor suddenly finds himself the subject of narration only he can hear - narration that begins to affect his entire life, from his work, to his love interest, to his death.

94\. The spirits of a deceased couple are harassed by an unbearable family that has moved into their home, and hire a malicious spirit to drive them out.

95\. A young African-American visits his white girlfriend’s parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.

96\. A young couple moves into an apartment only to be surrounded by peculiar neighbors and occurrences. When the wife becomes mysteriously pregnant, paranoia over the safety of her unborn child begins to control her life.

97\. In a post-apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in silence while hiding from monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing.

98\. The monstrous spirit of a slain janitor seeks revenge by invading the dreams of teenagers whose parents were responsible for his untimely death.

99\. An eight-year-old troublemaker must protect his house from a pair of burglars when he is accidentally left home alone by his family during Christmas vacation.

100\. A man must struggle to travel home for Thanksgiving with an obnoxious slob of a shower curtain ring salesman as his only companion.

101\. A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape Earth and return to his home world.

So how many of these movies did you recognize by the logline alone?
### Writing a great logline
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/writing-great-logline/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:16:46.000Z
Summarising an entire story or idea in an engaging and compelling one or two sentence logline is tricky as hell.

Loglines are a necessary evil. It’s the shorthand that you, managers, agents, development executives, and producers will initially use to get your script considered, pitched, purchased, developed, packaged, financed, produced, and distributed.

A logline is not meant to tell the whole story. It’s the story of the story. The core concept in its barest form.

A shitty logline will get you nowhere. A great logline can take you and your work to places you can only dream of.

The story engine and critical elements must be clear and present, intriguing and beguiling. It must include the main character(s), the world they live in, the inciting incident, the major conflict they must face, and the stakes at hand.

It’s a lot to cram into one or two sentences without sounding rote and formulaic. Or getting lost in B stories and supporting characters, twists and turns. Save all that for the script.

For the logline, focus on the concept of the story. Start with a basic fill-in-the-blanks outline.

When \[inciting incident occurs\]

a \[main character type(s)\]

must \[objective\]

before \[stakes\].

Using that basic outline, here’s a logline for “Jaws” - When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community, a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer must hunt the beast down before it kills again.

The logline outline above is only to help you feel out your story. It’s like the sketch pad. It’s not meant to be the final summary.

It’s going to take quite a few drafts to get it right. To get it so it’s short, sweet, and inspiring. It has to suggest a multitude of story possibilities, a stack of drama. It has to leave the reader wanting more. And it has to be twenty-five words or less.

Keep whittling away verbage and distracting details. Avoid character names. Think character types so anyone can see the protagonist in an instant.

A retired detective.

A rookie cop.

An inner-city teacher.

A single mother.

A struggling writer.

Focusing on character types also creates instant conflict context for the reader.

A retired detective isn’t going to have the authority they once had to solve the case.

A rookie cop is going to struggle with inexperience and pushback from authority figures.

An inner-city teacher may be dealing with lack of funding and other struggles.

A single mother may have to overcome additional struggles to reach an objective.

A struggling writer is going to have to deal with poverty and insecurity.

If the character types seem cliche, mix ‘em up.

A struggling detective.

A single cop.

A retired teacher.

A rookie mother.

An inner-city writer.

Change the character types and you change the instant conflict context.

A struggling detective is going to have to deal with poverty and insecurity.

A single cop may have to overcome additional struggles to reach an objective.

A retired teacher isn’t going to have the authority they once had to solve the case.

A rookie mother is going to struggle with inexperience and pushback from authority figures.

An inner-city writer may be dealing with lack of money and other struggles.

The best writing is not about what’s on the page but what’s in a reader’s mind. A logline must spark and fire up the imagination.

Look for opposites and irony. Why? Because irony juxtaposes possibilities for more meaning and impact, more resonance.

A fast-track lawyer can’t lie for 24 hours due to his son’s birthday wish after the lawyer lets his son down for the last time.

A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

A toon-hating detective is a cartoon rabbit’s only hope to prove his innocence when he’s accused of murder.

Start with a structure and identify the elements within your concept that you need to drive your story. Then tweak what you have by shifting the placement of those elements within the sentence. Rinse. Repeat.

Write ten, twenty, or thirty versions of the same logline, then review them all and create hybrids of certain ones that stand out most.

You’ll find that two or three versions have elements you can combine to create the most effective logline.

Swirl them into something magical.
### Write a logline first
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/write-logline-first/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T09:57:09.000Z
Before you commit to weeks and months of writing a screenplay, write a logline.

Sketch out the story of the story in twenty-five words or less. (Sample: When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community, a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer must hunt the beast down before it kills again.)

Write the logline before the script. When you start with a logline, you’re helping yourself identify the core of your story, making it easier to focus on the story lens of your screenplay.

Less frustration and hair pulling. More words on the page heading in the right direction.

Bonus points if you can wangle a theme in there.
### Fuck content
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/fuck-content/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:15:16.000Z
Stop making content.

Stop reducing your creativity to content creation. Stop chasing branding and audience size.

You might be telling yourself that once you get a decent audience, then you’ll be able to experiment and make the creative work you actually want to make instead of just more and more content.

Good in theory but terrible in practice because that kind of expiration risks alienating the very audience you’ve worked so hard to build. While all along you’ve atrophied your ability to create that kind of experimentation because you’ve trained your creativity to suit an algorithm.

It’s a lose-lose situation.
### What failure actually means
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-failure-actually-means/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:12:39.000Z
When a project fails, it doesn’t mean you’re not good enough.

Failure means the project isn’t good enough for so many reasons outside your control that it’s hardly worth worrying about. Never let failure define what you’re capable of.

Walt Disney was sacked from his first animation job.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple.

Don’t let failure limit you.

Let it spur you on.
### I influence therefore I am
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/i-influence-therefore-i-am/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:11:50.000Z
You may belittle social media influencers as dipshit airheads only interested in their own cosmetic fame and promo fees.

You may see influencers as only interested in being famous for being famous. And you wouldn’t be wrong.

But you’re probably missing the larger point. We care about people who are famous for being famous. It’s an evolutionary phenomenon.

When we feel intimidated in a new environment, we imitate people who are successful in that environment.

Our online world ebbing with social media is a narcissistic wonderland. Influencers are society’s’s most successful narcissists.

This survival characteristic is a deeply ingrained and the mechanism by which culture is propagated. A dash of grandiose narcissism in our public sphere is not a bad thing. Sometimes it’s highly entertaining. But social media has elevated narcissism far beyond what’s healthy.

Social media is the narcissist’s playground. Through likes and shares, it re-engineers their social feedback loop towards the superficiality they thrive on, fuelling a sense of superiority and rewarding manipulative tendencies.

No wonder narcissists are more likely to become addicted to social media. (Interestingly, studies show that narcissists on the right show greater tendencies towards entitlement while those on the left towards exhibitionism.)

Social media is a self-validating hall of mirrors where the narcissist stares at their reflection until they die.
### Media runs on attention
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/media-runs-on-attention/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:10:23.000Z
Social media? It’s still media.

And what most people and corporations don’t understand is that media runs on attention.

Attention goes to things that break convention. Attention goes to the new and the outrageous.

With everyone clamoring for attention, louder no longer works. Weirder, ruder, ballsier is what gets attention.

Donald Trump normalized crazy when he was president of the United States.

What was considered institutionally insane a few years ago is now normal.

To gain attention you have to be crazier still.
### “The Diamond Sutra”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-diamond-sutra/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:08:54.000Z
In 868 AD, Wang Jie commissioned a block printer to create a 17-and-a-half-foot-long scroll of the sacred Buddhist text “The Diamond Sutra”, making it the oldest dated printed book in existence.

The text was originally discovered in 1900 by a monk in Dunhuang, China, an old outpost of the Silk Road on the edge of the Gobi Desert. “The Diamond Sutra”, a Sanskrit text translated into Chinese, was one of 40,000 scrolls and documents hidden in “The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas”, a secret library sealed up around the year 1,000 when the area was threatened by a neighboring kingdom.

“The Diamond Sutra” is relatively short, only 6,000 words and is part of a larger canon of sacred texts in Mahayana Buddhism, the branch of Buddhism most common in China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia.

Many practitioners believe that the Mahayana Sutras were dictated directly by the Buddha. “The Diamond Sutra” takes the form of a conversation between the Buddha’s pupil Subhati and his master to cut through our perceptions of this world and its illusion.

This fleeting world is nothing but a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream. A flash of lightning in a summer cloud.

A flickering lamp, a phantom.

A dream.
### Be bold
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/be-bold/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T07:09:34.000Z
A funny thing happens when you commit to a course of action.

The universe comes to your aid. The universe comes to your rescue.

When you dive into a totally new creative endeavor, the universe feels the splash, senses the ripples.

You are displacing possibilities and potentialities. You are displacing the future.

You are evolving. You are no longer the same person you were just a moment ago.

You have stepped out of the character of the passive and self-paralyzed and into the role of the active protagonist through an act of will, love, and boldness.

You have crossed the threshold out of the old ordinary world into a new extraordinary world.

The universe is waiting to help you.
### Compound growth
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/compound-growth/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:59:26.000Z
Because you’re ambitious, you’ll tend to overestimate what you can do in a day.

And because you’re human, you’ll definitely underestimated what you can achieve in a decade.

Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it ten years. Working for the long term will compound small gains to overcome even big mistakes.

Let compound growth help you grow.
### Sure but what do you actually do?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-do-you-actually-do/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:57:52.000Z
Designers share a problem with politicians and business consultants.

It’s not a taste for bad suits but rather the simple fact that nobody (not even their mothers) know what they actually do.

Designers shape our daily lives. How? By shaping our daily environment. How? By making things.

Things like products, communications or systems that meet our needs and offer meaning.

Designers make these things understandable, useful and beautiful.

They introduce new ideas into our daily lives.
### You’re not crazy
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-are-not-crazy/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:55:59.000Z
You’re going this way, you’re going that way!

What!?! Something else just caught your attention! There’s another way!

Wait!! Did someone say squirrels?! Getting through life every which way can feel more than a little crazy.

Everyone tells you to focus. To follow your one true passion, your one true calling (while you shudder and recoil from the possibility of doing the same thing forever).

Relax. There’s nothing wrong with you. In fact, there’s a lot right. You’re not and never will be a specialist. You’re a generalist. You don’t see potential. You see potentialities. Many potentialities.

Multipotentiality is the ability and preference of a person - particularly one with strong intellectual or artistic curiosity - to excel in two or more fields. Someone whose interests span multiple areas and disciplines, rather than being strong in just one.

Do these seven traits feel familiar to you?

\+ You’re insatiably curious

\+ You’re a big picture thinker who solves problems and thinks strategically

\+ You’re passionate about multiple topics and interests

\+ You’re multi-talented and highly creative

\+ You’re an unconventional thinker

\+ You’re a non-conformist

\+ You’re easily bored

Yes, with so many passions and interests, you struggle to specialise. And yes, you quickly get bored of one subject. But this isn’t a curse, this is a blessing. This is what makes you special. This is your competitive advantage.

This is what sets you apart. This is what you bring to the party.

\+ Rapid Learner

\+ Growth mindset

\+ Strategic thinker

\+ Highly imaginative

\+ Problem solver

\+ Unconventional

\+ Very creative

\+ Adaptable

\+ Curious

You’re not crazy. You’re different. Your brain is wired differently. Revel in it.

The more you try and fit in with society’s expectations, the more you’ll feel left out.

Don’t look for a pre-existing box.

Design and make your own.
### Twitterville
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/twitterville/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:54:41.000Z
Is it me or is Twitter as the de facto public town square falling into Elon Musk’s hands a contradiction in terms?

Aside from Disneyland and a handful of dystopian hyper-guarded real estate developments, when is a public town square ever private? How can a public square belong to private interests?

Surely by definition a public town square belongs to the public?
### Be here now
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/be-here-now/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:55:15.000Z
Nonduality describes the transcendence into a state of being at one with everything.

Being wholly present in the here and now. Not fleeing back into the past or flitting into the future.

Nonduality is a state of being here right now, a practice of present-moment awareness. When you stop and think about it, present-moment awareness is all there is.

Understand that and you’re able to be here now with renewed appreciation and clarity.

Make an uncompromising commitment to the present moment without the distractions of distorted thinking, artificial comparisons and impossible ideals.

Be here.

Now.
### CNN minus
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/cnn-minus/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:53:35.000Z
Talk about a fucking clusterfuck!

Senior executive at CNN, Discovery and Warner Bros. are dodging bullets, live bombshells and knife-wielding back stabbers prowling hallways and Zoom meetings after the dead-in-the-water launch of CNN+.

The highly-touted news streaming CNN brand extension was launched on March 29, 2022 to feeble numbers. Then unceremoniously snuffed out a fortnight later.

Around a billion dollars was spent on defining, building and delivering the new service. Star talent like Chris Wallace joined for ungodly gobs of money. Even more money was spent on an infantile marketing campaign. (Seriously, the television launch commercial looked like it was put together by first year design students from a bottom-tier college.)

And the strategy? Some hodgepodge devised by first year accountants masquerading as business consultants as opposed to seasoned news people.

CNN originally succeeded because it brought you the news other networks couldn’t.

The first Gulf War was a defining moment for CNN. A roller coaster that started with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.

During the first days of the bombing, the CNN team was able to report live via radio from their hotel suite in the Rashid Hotel. Then they got the camera crews on the ground and beamed edited footage into everyone’s homes. They made history.

Instead of spending money on executives, celebrity programming, tv spots and glittering billboards, CNN+ should have sent 100 field reporters armed with GoPro cameras and branded helmets and flak jackets into Ukraine to cover the current war in real-time.

Stream 100 real-time points of view simultaneously into everyone’s homes and phones. Let viewers choose which reporters and stories to follow. Given them angles they cannot see or hear any other way. Raw, unfiltered news.

Call it CNN++ to differentiate from every other media brand adding streaming services with a single plus sign after their name. Twice as plus!!

Better yet, call it CNN REAL NEWS (yes, in all caps) to position away from every other news brand. And away from the stigma of fake news that is permeating mainstream news brands everywhere.

Actually, a really great name would be CNN PRESS. It does triple duty. Reinforces the brand’s breaking news DNA, provides designation and protection on the battlefield according to Geneva Conventions, and actions what viewers have to do on their remotes to choose their point(s) of view.

CNN PRESS is still going to need promos and billboards. Don’t add an extra layer of meaning or interpolate the message or use talking heads. Ditch celebrities.

Build from the DNA. Build all advertising from the reporters’ footage. For tv spots, pull out from a single war image to multiple images until a bigger picture is revealed.

Use that bigger picture for billboards and everything else.
### Stop problem-solving
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/stop-problem-solving/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:47:21.000Z
The era of design as problem-solving is over.

It’s too reactive in a world where the future arrives too damn fast.

As a c reative you must now be a problem seeker, finding and anticipating problems before they arrive at your desk. Because by that point, it’s already too late.

Look for problems that aren’t even a problem yet.
### You’re not failing
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/not-failing/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:48:35.000Z
Sometimes you want to call it quits.

You’re working harder than ever, striving to get ahead. But nothing feels like it’s going your way.

You’ve been struggling for three or four years, struggling to find an identity. You try tactic after tactic without gaining any traction. You try anything and everything.

You try to tell yourself you’re not a failure even though it certainly feels like you are. How can success be so hard?

Take a breath. Take a deep breath. That failure you think you’re feeling is not failure at all. It’s the process.

You’re not failing. You’re building the foundation of something new. Something that didn’t exist before you started.

Failure would be doing nothing. You haven’t been doing nothing. You’ve been doing everything you can.

Building anything takes time. The longer you spend working on the foundations, the more secure it will be. The stronger it will be.

The more successful it will be.
### Love is all you need
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/love-is-all-you-need/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:45:19.000Z
When you work for money, your work will lack life and empathy and energy.

It will be flat and lifeless. It may tick the boxes and answer the brief. But that’s not the point.

Without any love for what you do in and of itself, your work will lack energy. People will instinctively feel that lack of life.

Put love into everything you do. Make something that someone else might actually care about.

Something that someone else will love.
### Less is more
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/less-is-more/
Last updated: 2023-07-08T06:44:34.000Z
If you’re ambitious you want to do more, get more.

You want to do everything. You figure you’ll go as wide as possible to improve your success rate. More is better, right?

Actually, more is just more. Better to focus on less but better. The fewer goals you set, the more likely you are to achieve them.

The fewer social platforms you use, the faster your audience will grow.

The fewer services you offer, the more clients you’ll get.

Want to get more? Do less.
### Anne Sexton: Twisted, brilliant poems
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anne-sexton-twisted-brilliant-poems/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:48:55.000Z
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton reconstructed foundational fairy tales to tell other stories altogether.

Deeper, darker stories. Strange, wondrous retelling of female archetypes in Grimms’ fairy tales. (Let’s not forget the original Grimm’s tales were far more sinister and malevolent than the sanitized versions read out loud to children. Rape, incest, cannibalism, torture and other heinous crimes while tripping through evil woods.)

“Transformations” binds her twisted, brilliant poems together with sex, death, violence, cruelty, suicide, disability, and madness.

*It’s not the prince at all,*   
*but my father*  
*drunkeningly bends over my bed,*   
*circling the abyss like a shark,*   
*my father thick upon me*  
*like some sleeping jellyfish*
### How to get on in the world
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/get-on-in-world/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:48:19.000Z
First off, don’t wait for permission.

Reach out and grab it. Power is never given, it’s always taken.

Take a bias for action. Let everyone else sit about and wait for fortune to come in and pull up a chair. Go out and grab fortune. It favors the brave.

Choose spirited clients who want to make a little history. Reach high. Don’t pander to the lowest common dominator. Look for small teams that can produce excellent creative work across all media.

Avoid large agency groups, stagnant committees and office politics. (Except maybe for lucrative freelancing on quick projects, pitches, saving-a-campaign-from-the-jaws-of-failure.)

Steer clear of human resources. Seriously, human resources was what the Nazis called the trainloads of innocents sent to concentration camps. Nobody wants to be on that train.

Seek out big problems that need big ideas that can build and strengthen a brand with each iteration. See a brand as a story tree. A brand’s underlying principles are the roots, core values the trunk, emotional benefits the branches, media the leaves.

Either all the elements are synthesizing and growing a healthy, vibrant tree that attracts people. Or the tree becomes unkempt, withered and dies. It no longer brings people together. Don’t work on dead trees.

Realize that whatever experience and insights you find in one category can be introduced into another. The history of innovation is essentially taking a learning from one area and applying to another.

Challenger brands are fun to work with. Push them to avoid competing with an incumbent with more money and market dominance. Establish a new market where there is no competitor.

Make differentiation and positioning key attributes.
### Fuck off
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/fuck-off/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:44:58.000Z
She was sitting at the bar and so he asked her if she’d like a glass of wine?

She told him to fuck off and so he asked her if she’d like a glass of water because he had a really good trick to show her.

She told him to fuck off and so he did.

And she never saw him again.
### How to write a better ending for “Windfall”
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/better-ending-for-windfall/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:43:51.000Z
Endings are the most important part of any story.

Whether it’s a short story, screenplay, novel, film. It’s the ending that counts.

The best endings are surprising, yet inevitable. Ideally the last scene should spin the story on its axis so the reader/viewer revisits and readdresses every preceding scene with new meaning and possibilities. Synapses snap and fuse, mind officially blown. It’s quite a trick to pull off.

“Windfall” is a tense, Hitchcockian thriller that follows a billionaire CEO husband and his wife who stumble onto a sad sack thief when they arrive for a last-minute getaway at their remote picture-perfect vacation home in Ojai, California.

It’s stripped back to this one location to ratchet the tension in this three-hander. Shot a bit like a 1970s Jean-Luc Godard movie. Follows Aristotelian dramaturgy by keeping the drama to one location over two days with people who are intimately bound. Sharply written by Justin Lader and Andrew Kevin Walker. Sharply directed by Charlie McDowell.

Yes, the ending was shocking. But was it good? Was it satisfying? Not really. Even The Hollywood Reporter thought it could have used a tad more foreshadowing.

The wife striking and killing the thief with the marble table sculpture and then shooting the husband to death and escaping with the thief’s money is good but not great.

It’s shocking but not inevitable, unexpected but not moving. That’s where foreshadowing would have helped. How?

Rather than the wife’s violence coming out of the blue to the degree it’s almost unbelievable, subtle hints could have paved the way. So her violence becomes inescapable, almost her destiny. So it’s completely right and so wrong at the same time.

Here are a few ideas that would have made the violence and the story more impactful.

\+ Wife’s charity helps prisoners

\+ Wife is paranoid about dust

\+ Thief’s shoelace snaps when he does it up the first time (so subsequent and ultimate tying up shoelace is not simply happenstance, iterates the thief’s bad luck nothing-ever-goes-right vibe)

\+ Wife has spent time in prison

\+ Husband taunts wife

\+ Wife is in therapy, taking medication

\+ Thief threatens couple with a knife rather than a gun in the beginning (to amp up drama and tension when the gun is later uncovered)

\+ Wife dusts off a coffee table

\+ Wife’s father was killed in prison

\+ Husband may have beaten wife in the past

\+ Wife had a miscarriage

\+ Wife wipes lipstick off the glass

\+ Wife adds another $100,000 to the thief’s money (just to be safe)

\+ Thief asks how much the marble table sculpture cost (husband has no idea, ask the interior designer, whoever that is)

\+ Wife’s miscarriage was actually an abortion

\+ Make the marble table sculpture a heavy marble vase (reflects husband’s complaints about lack of flowers, plays on ending)

\+ Before stepping out with the bag of money, thief admits he did work at one of the companies the husband down-sized (a touch of justification/redemption before he’s killed)

\+ It’s the wife’s gun that’s hidden in the vacation home (so when the husband tells the thief he hasn’t got a gun and the thief finds it, he can say he told the truth while throwing his wife under the bus, explains wife’s capacity to empty round into her husband’s chest)

\+ Wife says she wishes her husband was dead

\+ Wife wipes her prints off the gun

\+ Wife drives off in gardener’s truck

Not flashbacks or set pieces. Nothing too elaborate or too on the nose.

Just a hint, clue, a look, a shadow, a line of dialog is all it takes.

To flip the drama and expectations with a twist at the end is good.

But a twist that twists on itself is even better.
### Jesus Christ, Easter
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/jesus-christ-easter/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:42:27.000Z
Imagine you’re Jesus Christ.

You’ve been given eternal life. But you don’t want to make a fuss or freak people out so you’ve settled down in the suburbs, trying not to be disappointed by humanity at every turn.

It’s a sunny day. You amble down to the mailbox in the front yard and your mood quickly turns dark. The mailbox is stuffed with Easter catalogs from every retailer known to man. Every year they come earlier and earlier.

You died on a cross for this? You died for everyone’s sins for Endless Easter Fun and Eggstra Savings?

How did the celebration of your resurrection come to this? The whole point was to transcend death and sin and the devil too. Not to spend money eating too much chocolate.

You glance at the covers and it’s a sea of chocolate eggs, mostly wrapped in thin garishly-colored foil overprinted with manufacturers’ logos. It makes you feel ill to the stomach.

Tiny chocolate eggs, giant chocolate eggs, medium-sized chocolate eggs. Chocolate eggs within chocolate eggs, chocolate rabbits holding chocolate eggs, chocolate eggs lined with caramel, chocolate eggs filled with some sort of yellowish goo.

You shake your head. One page promotes Easter hat parades where shoppers are pestered to buy cardboard hats and bonnets and make them their own with Easter-inspired merchandise. Easter mini chicks, Easter shields, Easter ribbons, Easter pins, Easter craft tubs.

They can’t leave well enough alone. They’ve forsaken you.

You toss the catalogs straight into the recycle bin.
### Fiction readers feel more
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/fiction-readers-feel-more/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:40:38.000Z
Reading novels makes you more empathetic.

A study showed participants pictures of people’s eyes and asked them what those people were feeling. Those who read novels were better able to judge what they were feeling.

At the Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab, psychologist Diana Tamir demonstrated that people who often read fiction have better social cognition. In other words, they’re more skilled at working out what other people are thinking and feeling.

Using brain scans, she found that while reading fiction, there is more activity in parts of the default mode network of the brain that are involved in simulating what other people are thinking.

Participants assigned to read a fictional story showed increased levels of affective empathy, but only when highly transported.

Participants assigned to read a piece of non-fiction showed no increase in empathy.
### Marshall McLuhan predicts the internet
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/marshall-mcluhan-predicts-internet/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:41:36.000Z
It’s 1966\. Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan is being interviewed by Robert Fulford in a bare television studio.

Close on McLuhan as he leans forward, brutally honest.

McLUHAN  
Television gave the old electric circuitry that is already here, gave it a huge extra push in this direction of involvement and inwardness. You see the circuit doesn’t just simply push things out for inspection. It pushes you in to the circuit. It involves you.

Medium over Fullford’s shoulder. Both men are seated on white Eero Saarinen tulip chairs. McLuhan is becoming excited.

McLUHAN  
When you’ve got a new medium into play in a population, all their sensory light shifts a bit. Sometimes shifts a lot. This changes their outlook, their attitudes. Changes their feelings about studies, about school, about politics.

Fulford nods. McLuhan saddens.

McLUHAN  
Since TV both Canadian and British and American politics have cooled off almost to the point of rigor mortis. Our politics require much more hotting up than the TV medium will give them.

Close on McLuhan.

McLUHAN  
TV is ideal when you get two experts like ourselves discussing TV. This is good TV because there’s a process going on of mutual challenge, discovery and processing. TV is good for that. And same with ads.

McLuhan thinks.

McLUHAN  
If the audience can become involved in the actual process of making the ad, then it’s happy. It’s like the old quiz shows. They were great TV because it gave the audience a role, something to do. They were horrified when they discovered they’d really been left out all the time because the shows are rigged. This is a horrible misunderstanding of TV on the part of the programmers.

McLuhan nods.

McLUHAN  
In the same way most advertisers do not understand the TV medium. Do you know that most people read ads about things they already own? They don’t read things to buy them but to feel reassured that they have already bought the right thing. In other words, they get huge information satisfaction from ads. Far more than they do from the product itself.

McLuhan smiles.

McLUHAN  
Where advertising is heading is quite simply into a world where the ad will become a substitute for the product. And all the satisfaction will be derived informationally from the ad and the product will be a merely a number in some file somewhere. Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems and say, ‘I’m working now on the history of Egyptian arithmetic. I know a bit of Sanskrit, I am qualified in German and I am a good mathematician.’ They say, ‘It’ll be right over.’ And they at once Xerox with the help of computers from the libraries of the world all the latest material just for you personally. Not as something to be put out on the bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service.

McLuhan eyes Fulford.

McLUHAN  
This is where we’re heading under electronic information conditions. Products are increasingly becoming services.FULFORD  
What kind of a world would you rather live in? Is there a period in the past or a possible community in the future you’d rather be in?McLUHAN  
No, no. I’d rather be in any period at all as long as people are going to leave it alone for a while. Just let go, just leave it.FULFORD  
But they’re not going to are they?

McLuhan laughs.

McLUHAN  
No! So the only alternative is to understand everything that’s going on and then counter and neutralize it as much as possible. Turn off as many buttons as you can and frustrate them as much as you can.

McLuhan tightens.

McLUHAN  
I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change. But I am determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose to just sit and let the juggernaut roll over me.

McLuhan recoils.

McLUHAN  
Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly to be something I’m resolutely against.

McLuhan grins.

McLUHAN  
It seems the best way of opposing it is to understand it and then you know where to turn off the button.
### Where have all the readers gone?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/where-have-readers-gone/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:39:41.000Z
Sustained reading has fallen to new lows.

Recreational reading is now at the lowest levels ever recorded. From 2004 to 2017, the number of American men who read for pleasure dropped by 40 percent, women by 29 percent.

The number of people who have never read a book in the past few decades has tripled.

Yikes!
### Speed reading is for idiots
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/speed-reading-idiots/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:38:00.000Z
You’ve probably seen those annoying ads for apps or browser extensions promising to help you read 300 percent faster.

Essentially they scan for keywords, chunk ideas together and minimize subvocalization. Skipping all the individual words and syllables is meant to allow you to read faster than ever. That’s the theory.

Only problem is the faster you read, the less you understand and the less you retain. Just because everything feels like it’s getting quicker doesn’t mean you have to speed up.

Maybe it’s time to change gears and slow down.
### Reading the internet
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/reading-the-internet/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:37:24.000Z
Ann Mangen studies how reading has changed.

Ann says reading used to train us to focus in a linear manner, from one thing to the next. Sequential and consequential thought. Rational. Logical.

But Ann’s research shows reading has changed significantly since the internet. Because the internet has trained us to manically jump from one thing to another. We’re more likely to scan and skim, to run our eyes over the information to extract what we need.

This frenzied reading on the internet bleeds over to normal reading and causes us to do the same with books.

It’s how we read now.

And how we think.
### Mediums and messages
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/mediums-and-messages/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:36:44.000Z
Every medium fundamentally changes the way we think.

Printing with its ordered, sequential processing of information led to rationalism and the standardization of culture. Radio broke with linearity. Film even more so. Television most of all.

Every medium sends its own message. It’s not just a pipeline. It’s a filter, it’s a format of meaning and perception.

Twitter sends the message that life is simple and anyone’s half-baked opinions need to be thrown into the void.

Books imply that life is complicated and requires time, focus and thought to begin to understand.

The context is just as important as the content.

Perhaps more so.
### What have we wrought?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-have-we-wrought/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T09:57:59.000Z
People in Silicon Valley are mourning what they’ve created.

The collective downgrading of humans, and the upgrading of machines, are causing far-reaching effects on society.

We’re becoming less focused, less rational, less compassionate. Our negativity bias causes media platforms to push negativity and extremism.

Our negativity bias evolved as a biological and physiological default to ensure our survival. But this bias has outlived its usefulness.

Unless we move beyond this bias it will be the death of us.
### Autonomy economy
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/autonomy-economy/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:30:36.000Z
There’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to get people thinking about autonomy.

When all the institutions people trust begin to fail them (governments, corporations, colleges, politics, markets, media, environment, et al) what choice do people have but to put their trust in themselves.

The great resignation is driven by millions of people seeking more autonomy, more control. People don’t want to return to the office because the office has been the locus of a command-and-control approach to work that forces workers to sacrifice their autonomy.

People want more control in their lives. They don’t want to seek permission from middle management to visit a doctor. They don’t want to commute an hour each way to attend fruitless meetings.

They don’t want to give their life to a corporation that preaches family but treats them like shit.
### Resignation nation
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/resignation-nation/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:29:48.000Z
Last year 47 million Americans quit their jobs.

The majority didn’t do it for higher pay or benefits. They left because their values no longer matched their jobs.

They redefined themselves as people first and workers second.

This is a tectonic change in American society.

This is an upheaval of the capitalist way.
### Not so fast
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/not-so-fast/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:29:22.000Z
So it’s a Monday and the CEO David Solomon of Goldman Sachs has had enough.

Those remote work trials, hybrid work modes, flexible work arrangements? They’re over.

The CEO wants everyone back at the 44-story headquarters in lower Manhattan. So all 10,000 employees are ordered back to the office full-time.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who’s been on his own dogged mission to bring office workers back to the city, hosts a town hall meeting to welcome back the bank’s employees.

But only a few thousand employees turn up. Over the week, a thousand here and a thousand there come in to work a day or two.

More than half of the employees defy the CEO’s order.

What’s the world coming to?
### When things fall apart
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/when-things-fall-apart/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T09:56:27.000Z
How do you overcome life’s many and varied difficulties?

How do you not lose your mind when everyone is losing theirs and everything is turning to shit?

Quieten down. be aware. Pay attention. Don’t let the hurly-burly swirl you along. Don’t let the screaming drown out your thoughts.

Step out of your ego and habits and expectations. Remember that you cannot change anything that’s happened. No matter how hard you try.

All you can change is how you react to something that’s happened.

When things fall apart, make sure you don’t join them.
### How important is story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-important-is-story/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:26:03.000Z
You may think the world no longer cares for writing.

You may think all the world wants is images and graphics and that words have fallen by the wayside. But you would be wrong.

Especially when it comes to story. Author, lecturer and story consultant Robert McKee knows the fundamental role story plays in shaping our lives.

The world now consumes films, novels, theatre, and television in such quantities and with such ravenous hunger that the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration.

We yearn for story because we seek to order chaos and gain insight into our life, into our being. Story is how we make sense of it all. How we understand our existence.

Our appetite for story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the patterns of living. Not merely as an intellectual exercise but within a very personal, emotional experience.

Some see this craving for story as simple entertainment, an escape from life rather than an exploration of it. A mere distraction.

But what is entertainment? To be entertained is to be immersed in the ceremony of story to an intellectually and emotionally satisfying end.

To be entertained is to live more fully.
### Envy the old
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/envy-the-old/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:24:57.000Z
Don’t envy the young.

If you’re old you have the same possibilities and more.

You have realities and experiences in the past to guide you.

You have potentialities you’ve actualised, meanings you’ve fulfilled, values you’ve realised.

No one can take these assets from the past from you.

They strengthen you as you move forward.
### Courage and dignity
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/courage-and-dignity/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:24:18.000Z
Don’t overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which you’ve brought the harvest of your life.

The deeds done. The loves loved. The sufferings you’ve gone through with courage and dignity.
### Happiness ensues
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/happiness-ensues/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:23:50.000Z
Happiness cannot be pursued.

It can only ensue. You must have a reason to be happy.

Once the reason is found you automatically become happy.

Don’t pursue happiness but rather search for a reason to become happy through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and waiting in any given situation.

Let happiness come to you.
### Don’t aim for success
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/do-not-aim-for-success/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:23:24.000Z
The more you aim for success and make it a target, the more you’re going to miss it.

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue as the unintended side effect of your dedication to a cause greater than yourself or as the byproduct of your surrender to a person other than yourself.

Happiness must happen. Same goes for success. You have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge and ability.

Success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
### How to self-actualise
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/self-actualise/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:22:49.000Z
You are responsible for actualising the potential meaning of your life.

Not by going inside but rather by venturing outside. The true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within your psyche.

The self-transcendence of human existence is always directed to something, or someone, other than oneself. Whether it’s a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.

The more you forget yourself by giving yourself to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human you are and the more you actualize yourself.

Self-actualisation is not attainable as a goal because the more you strive for it, the more you miss it. Self-actualisation is only possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

You can discover the meaning in life in three different ways.

1\. By creating a work or doing a deed. This is the way of achievement or accomplishment.

2\. By experiencing something or encountering someone. This is the way of coming in contact with and recognizing goodness, truth, beauty, and love. Through love potentiality is awakened and realised.

3\. By the positive attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. This is the way of facing a situation that cannot be changed by changing yourself. Transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, turn a predicament into a human achievement.
### Never throw away a life
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/never-throw-away-a-life/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:28:01.000Z
In the Nazi death camps there were very strict rules forbidding efforts to save a prisoner who attempted suicide.

It was forbidden to cut down a man who was trying to hang himself. For Victor Frankl it was all-important to prevent these attempts from occurring.

Two cases of would-be suicide bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide.

Both used the typical argument that they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them, something in the future was expected of them.

For one, it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other, it was a thing, not a person.

This man was a scientist and had written a series of books that still needed to be finished. His work couldn’t be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child’s affections.

Anyone who becomes conscious of the responsibility they bear toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away their life.
### Existentialism
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/existentialism/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:20:22.000Z
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying.

But no one can tell you what your purpose is. You must find out for yourself and must accept the responsibility that the answer prescribes.

If you succeed you will continue to grow despite any and all indignities.

Your suffering will bring you joy.
### Change everything
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/change-everything/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:13:34.000Z
There’s nothing quite like a pandemic to mess with your sense of time.

Time has been shifting for the past few years. Sometimes it feels like it’s endlessly washing over you. Other times it’s slipping between your fingers.

Hours feel like days and days like minutes. It’s been an odd sensation, often focused on what we’ve lost and what opportunities we’ve missed rather than a new world of future possibilities.

As the current pandemic abates, it’s time to start thinking and planning for the days and months and years ahead.

Some of you may feel resigned to a future out of your control. Others may even feel hopeless.

There’s no time for that. The reality is that the life you’ll be living 10 years from now will largely be determined by what you do from here on out.

The life you’re stepping into is a function of your priorities and decisions.

It’s not out of your hands. It’s completely in your hands.

You have the power to change everything.
### In the palm of your hand
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/palm-of-hand/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:12:57.000Z
Imagine a grid with 52 rows across and 90 rows down.

That’s your life if you live for 90 years. Just a few thousand weeks that fit in a single image that easily fits in the palm of your hand.

Do you find that depressing? Why? It’s reality. You can’t make any more time (unless you know something I don’t).

Why not think of that image as liberating? Motivating?

Why not let it set you free?
### Robert Mitchum and Dick Cavett
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/robert-mitchum-dick-cavett/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:12:22.000Z
It’s 1971\. Dick Cavett is on the set of The Dick Cavett Show, standing and delivering his opening monologue. Wide tie, orange hues and anxious self-deprecating talk show wit at the ready.

Cavett promises we’ll be back with Mitchum after the break. Commercials play for Max Factor cosmetics, Coronet tissues and Electrolux vacuums.

Cavett is back, sitting on a lounge chair on set. Talks about Robert Mitchum, a movie star with more than a hundred movies to his name. Charles Laughton described Mitchum as a very tender man, a very great gentleman, one of his favorite people in the whole world.

Cavett admits Mitchum also has a reputation for terrifying interviewers before standing and welcoming him on set.

Mitchum saunters onto the set, small white disposable plastic drinking cup in his right hand, nodding to the applauding studio audience. Mitchum is 51 years old, dapper in a black three-piece suit and wide-collared white shirt. Black silk tie with white-edged diamond pattern. Black framed glasses with dark lenses.

Cavett and Mitchum both sit down as the applause fades down. Mitchum leans forward and pushes back the bridge of his glasses. Glances at a monitor off stage, checking his profile. Checking his demeanor.

Mitchum plays the cool, cynical loner on stage and off. Cavett seems more anxious than usual, fingers knitting together, thumbs flexing.

Mitchum slips an unlit cigarette between his lips.

CAVETT  
I think if one more person had told me how many times you’ve terrified interviewers, I wouldn’t have been able to do this? Is that exaggerated at all?

MITCHUM  
I really don’t know. I don’t feel that I terrify interviewers.

Mitchum flames the tip of his cigarette with a lighter. Inhales then exhales a thread of thin smoke out the side of his mouth.

MITCHUM  
They more or less terrify me.
### Twelve powerful questions
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/twelve-powerful-questions/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:05:22.000Z
Josh Spector wants you to be a creator.

Josh knows it’s not easy. There’s a lot of push and pull. A lot of doubt.

Whenever you embark on a new venture, your heart is full of hope and your head overflowing with ideas.

Josh has twelve questions you can ask yourself to help clarify your thinking, refine your motivation and bolster your confidence.

****1\. Why do you want to be a creator?** It doesn’t have to be to make money. It doesn’t have to be to express yourself. It doesn’t have to be because you see an opportunity. But there needs to be a reason you’re creating. You need to know what it is. This is your impetus.

****2\. Who do you want to serve?** You create things to create value. The more clearly you understand who you want to create value for and what those people value, the more likely you are to do it.

****3\. What transformation do you want to help people make through your creations?** Once you know who you want to serve, consider how you can help them get from Point A to Point B. Your creations are a bridge to get them where they want to go.

****4\. What won’t you do?** You can’t do everything and you don’t have to. Be intentional about where you invest time, money, and effort. Don’t let others define success for you.

****5\. Whose audience would you want?** If you could magically switch audiences with any creator, who would you switch with? Answer this to help you clarify the type of audience you want to attract for yourself.

****6\. What does success look like?** You need to define what it means to succeed as a creator. Your version of success is your own.

****7\. What’s something you believe that most people don’t?** Your answer to this question helps you differentiate yourself. It allows you to draw a line in the sand about who your work is not for. Create for someone, not everyone.

****8\. What can you create and publish at least once a week?** Consistency is crucial. If you’re not regularly putting value into the world, it’s almost impossible to succeed. Quantity or quality? You need both.

****9\. Where do you fall on the artist-entrepreneur spectrum?** It’s fine to be more of one or the other, but it’s not fine to only be one or the other. Success as a creator requires an embrace of both.

****10\. What are you willing to invest?** Success as a creator requires a significant investment of time, effort, and money. The more you’re willing or able to invest of one of those elements, the less you’ll need to invest of the others.

****11\. Do you prefer writing, video, audio, or images?** You can succeed with any format. But don’t choose a format because you think it’s the hot or trendy one. Focus your efforts on the format you most enjoy. You don’t need to be everywhere or create everything. Focus.

****12\. What would you do with a huge platform if you had one?** How would you operate if you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams? Let that guide your actions until you get there and one day you just might. Assume success.
### How to make authors more successful
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/make-authors-more-successful/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T21:03:22.000Z
If you’re an author, you make your meaning and your living by expressing your ideas into words and creative works.

By law, you automatically retain copyright in those words and works. Without copyright protection, your work and your ability to determine its future are not protected.

Sadly the current Draft of the Australian Copyright Amendment Bill 2021 represents a continuing drift in copyright law towards greater rights to aggregators and lesser rights to creators and publishers. This is completely ass about. If there are to be any changes to copyright legislation, they must be in favor of creators and publishers.

Masking the interests of large-scale aggregators like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. by suggesting the proposed strip-mining of copyright is in the interest of libraries and users is sophistry at best and malicious at worst. It’s a shallow and short-term legal argument that profits the world’s largest accumulators and aggregators of information at the expense of Australian authors and creators. Ultimately it will starve culture to make the world’s richest technology corporations even richer.

In short, it’s a fucking dumb idea. If Australian creators are not protected and rewarded for their creative work by copyright, who will produce the creative work of the future? Who can afford to work for free? Why not make amends to reward creators more fairly?

Here are three quick ideas to help Australia and Australian authors, creators and publishers become more productive and more successful.

****1\. Boost Australia’s creator economy**

According to Macquarie Business School, Australian authors make on average $12,900 a year from their copyrighted work. This is well below the $23,764 annual poverty line. Expecting authors and creators to live and work in extreme poverty is stupid and short-sighted. Laws, especially copyright laws, should be amended to provide best in class protection, value and income for Australian authors and creators. Boosting Australia’s creator economy can make Australia the most culturally powerful nation on earth.

****2\. Extend copyright in Australia to 140 years**

Double existing copyright to 140 years after the year of the Australian creator’s death. This expands the value of a creator’s back catalog and makes more creative work more viable. It also allows for new business models where investors provide upfront payments to creators in exchange for monetisation rights to their back catalogue. Creators can take that advance and use it to scale their work for greater cultural reach. Making copyright more valuable makes copyrighted works more valuable. This would make the work from Australian authors and creators the most valuable on earth.

****3\. Make Australia a beacon and safe haven for creators**

It’s time to put Australian authors and creators front and center as economic drivers. Expanding the protection and value of creative work improves learning and health, increases tolerance, brings society together. It improves the wellbeing of individuals and communities. By lifting the importance of culture, authors and creators from around the world will vie to become Australian citizens.

By amending copyright legislation to provide greater - rather than lesser - protection for Australian authors and creators, Australia has the opportunity to lead the world.

Don’t fucking blow it.
### Anne Sexton: Why commit suicide?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anne-sexton-why-commit-suicide/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:59:10.000Z
Sometimes people’s lives become so complex they’d rather be dead.

They seek death through suicide to make the complexity go away. Because complexity causes suffering.

If you’re hit by three or four catastrophes at the same time - maybe you’re husband leaves you, you lose your publishing contract, someone you love dies, and maybe you get cancer - you might just think there’s no getting out of this. It’s just too damn much.

People don’t go to a psychologist or psychiatrist because they have mental illnesses. That’s rarely true.

People seek help because their lives are so damn complicated they cannot stay on top of them. It’s the complexity of life that causes the symptoms.

Take a balloon and blow it up until it’s beyond its tolerance and it’s going to blow out at the weakest point. Take a genetic susceptibility, keep adding complexity on top of it and at some point you’ll blow out at your weakest point.

Maybe you’ll get physiologically ill, maybe you’ll start drinking, maybe you’ll develop an anxiety disorder, maybe you’ll get OCD, maybe you’ll get depressed. There’ll be something that’s the weakest point, where you’ll blow out.

Mental illness is not the cause. Mental illness is the symptom of too much pressure, of being hammered two or three different ways.

And then collapsing in the direction of a biological weakness.
### How to change someone’s mind
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/change-someones-mind/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:54:24.000Z
No matter how hard you try, you cannot change anyone’s mind.

Facts? Statistics? Science? Rational and irrefutable data? Nailgun loaded with silver-coated ideas? Neural plug that locks into the back of the brains and pours in a constant flow of new concepts?

It’s not going in no matter how hard you push. It’s going to be deflected by confirmation biases and pre-existing beliefs.

Don’t look to change anyone’s mind. Look to confirm established patterns of thinking. Look at the scaffolding that’s holding up that thinking. That’s what you want to change.

Put in new scaffolding and the mind changes itself
### It’s time for change
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/time-for-change/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T09:48:37.000Z
Every single crisis the world is facing is ultimately a crisis of leadership.

Our leaders have failed us. Our leaders have slaughtered us at the altar of politics. Our leaders have lied to us and led us into a world of death and despair.

They cannot change their ways. They are incapable - despite the litany of campaign promises to do better - of altering the course of environmental and societal collapse. All they are capable of is playing incendiary politics as the world burns.

We have no hope of changing anything unless we change the people in charge. This is not about spin or better communications. This is not about policy initiatives. This is not about town hall meetings.

This is about a wholesale restructuring of the body politic. Like any market, so-called democratic politics devolves to a two-brand play, a two-party system, a duopoly.

It’s time for change. It’s time to break down all the systemic barriers that stop regular people running for office.

It’s time for a government that actually represents its constituents.

Not ideology, not party affiliations, not power brokers.

A government of the people from the people.
### Create a better story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/create-better-story/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:59:52.000Z
All successful stories follow a common pattern.

Despite cultural and linguistic differences, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey template has stood the test of time. This universal pattern underlies the success of everything from the rise of Christianity to the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

****1\. Everyday hero**

The group or individual to be inspired to do things differently. We need to be interested in what happens to them. How is the hero relatable? How is the hero like us?

****2\. Ordinary world**

The everyday world which is increasingly frustrating for our heroes to live in. We need to feel their frustration. Why would we want to see this world changed too?

****3\. Compelling villain**

An attention-grabbing manifestation of the selfish behavior that stands in the way of change. We want to see it defeated. Why is the villain compelling?

****4\. Call to adventure**

The trigger for change, which could be the pull of inspiration or the push of necessity. We care about what sparks others to act. What’s holding the hero back? What compels the hero to leave the ordinary world?

****5\. Crossing the threshold**

The start of doing something different. We want to see what commitment looks like. What is the first step on the journey of change? What portal is crossed?

****6\. Allies and gifts**

The people and help that are needed for change to happen. We judge the likelihood   
of success by the company the hero keeps. What friends does the hero need?

****7\. Mentor and gifts**

The giver of wisdom and support from someone that has been on the journey. We believe their presence will help the hero fulfill their destiny. How does the mentor help? how does the mentor give guidance?

****8\. Three challenges**

Three difficult but confidence-building (and escalating) hurdles to be overcome. We know change is hard and we learn from experiences. What challenges does the hero face?

****9\. Better world**

The positive change to the hero and the difference the hero has made. We need to see inner growth as well as a better world. Why is the journey worthwhile? How has the hero changed?

Every story is a story of change.
### Bill Hicks: Agent of evolution
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-agent-of-evolution/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:47:13.000Z
Bill Hicks said a lot of things to make you feel and see and think differently.

*I just have this weird theory. The best kind of comedy to me is when you make people laugh at things they’ve never laughed at, when you take a light into the darkened corners of people’s minds, exposing them to the light. I thought the whole point of it was to make you feel un-alone.*

*We’re all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, son. It’s only an illusion that we are separate beings. In actuality we are all one kind. God is love and love is all there is, and if that’s all there is, there can be no opposite.*

*We are the perfect and holy children of God. And if we’re the perfect and holy children of God, how can there be any limits? None at all. That’s the point of my act.*

*Jung had this idea of a collective unconscious which we all share. I agree. But I think this collective mind is supposed to be conscious, not unconscious! And our job as the agents of evolution is to enlighten - to bring light into the dark corners of that netherworld and thus awaken our mind to truth and complete the circle that was broken with the dream of our fall from grace.*

*Before going any further, you must understand one thing about my personal philosophy. I do not believe making money in order to consume goods is mankind’s sole purpose on this planet. If you’re wondering what I believe our purpose on this planet is, I’ll give you a hint - it has to do with creating and sharing.*

*You don’t need priests and pastors. I’m an evolved being who deals solely with the source of light which exists in all of us, in all our minds. No middle man required.*

*There’s no difference between good music and good comedy, it’s entertainment. And entertainment is the suspension of time and space so that you realize your true nature which is spaceless and timeless.*

*As for me, I believe that God is Love, and that he created us, and that we are his beloved children. I believe his love is unconditional, and that there’s nothing we could do to ever change that. I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that lead to every self-created hell you’ll find in this world. I also believe forgiveness is the key to healing our perceptions and allowing us to remember God and his everlasting love of us.*

*It’s supposed to be where your ego dissolves and you realize the true nature of our reality which is that we literally all are one and there’s no such thing as death and our bodies are an illusion and God’s eternal love is unconditional and never have we left it other than the dream from the fall from grace which is just an illusory dream and never has God been unloving to us and we can wake up and remember God’s eternal unconditional love. Wake up!*

*It’s time for a new philosophy, folks. One based on, yes, the principles of Jesus where you love your brother as yourself, because you know what? He is yourself. Literally. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. We are literally all one, okay. The body is an illusion, life is an illusion.*

*What’s that old song? ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream’? See, we knew it as children. We forgot it since.*

*I believe that we all have the voice of reason inside us and that voice is the same in everyone. And if I may open up even more, I believe that voice (you may call it conscience) is the voice of the holy spirit that God has instilled in us all to gently lead us out of our own self-created hells - those feelings and thoughts of hopelessness, fear, sin, and guilt which have never and could never exist in reality, but only in your mind.*

*I’m at peace with myself and the world and my God, I only pray everyone will find that same peace within themselves, as know in my heart they will. The voice of reason told me that, and if you think about it, it really is the only thing that makes sense.*

*We are undergoing evolution, and will continue to do so until all of us awaken to this truth. Our awakening can be as gentle or harsh as we want to make it. Personally. I prefer the gentle awakening I’ve experienced in my own life, But, as always. you are free to choose your own route to heaven. In the end, it really doesn’t matter. We’ll all make it there in end.*

*You have people that want to hear comedy where they don’t have to think about anything, To me they are missing the point. They say, ‘I just want to escape from reality’. No you don’t. You want to escape from illusions.*

*We have to learn to separate illusions from reality. The best comedy is where people wake up to that. They actually leave feeling lighter, they feel hope.*

*I was raised Southern Baptist. What is one of the first things that you learn? The kingdom of heaven is within you. I am saying that it realty is in you. Seriously. These aren’t just hollow words that we repeat from generation to generation. The voice of reason tells you that it is within you.*

*The word is ‘enthusiasm’. It’s from ‘enthios’ which means the God within. You know what that means? You do what excites you, what really brings you joy. It’s God’s way of saying you are on the right path. We are on it together and isn’t it fun? Do what brings you joy and all else will follow.*

*On June 16, 1993 1 was diagnosed with having liver cancer that had spread from the pancreas. One of life’s weirdest and worst jokes imaginable. I’d been making such progress recently in my attitude, my career and realizing my dreams, that it just stood me on my head for a while. Why me!? Why now!?*

*Well, I know now there may never be any answers to those particular questions. But maybe in telling a little about myself, we can find some other answers to other questions. This might help our way down our particular paths, towards realizing my dream of new hope and new happiness.*

*I left in love, in laughter, and in truth. And wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.*

*Amen.*
### Path of least resistance
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/path-of-least-resistance/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:44:47.000Z
Everything flows to its easiest point.

People want to get things quickly and easily, with as little effort or trouble as possible.

Make the next step clear and risk-free. Make it as natural as possible. Don’t complicate matters.

If you’re designing and developing a website, have only one simple call to action.
### My kingdom for a pencil
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/my-kingdom-for-a-pencil/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:41:39.000Z
Consider the humble pencil.

Did you know the core of a pencil is made of graphite in which the molecules are stacked in layers?

When you write with a pencil, they slide off and get transferred to the paper. Erasers work because graphite sticks to rubber better than it does to paper.

Earlier pencils were made using a stick of solid graphite wrapped around in leather or string. The design of the modern pencil was created by Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti in the 1550s when they hollowed out two wooden halves and glued them with graphite sticks inside.

Pencil manufacturing was largely a European pursuit until the early 1900’s. Companies like Faber Castell, Lyra, Staedtler, and others leveraged easy access to Bavarian graphite and Bavarian forests to drive pencil manufacturing.

Early innovations included customizing the hardness of the lead by blending the graphite with clay, a process pioneered by Conté.

There are 20 grades of pencil, from the softest, 9B, to the hardest 9H, with the most popular intermediate value, HB, lying midway between H and B. ‘H’ means hard and ‘B’ means black. The higher the B number, the more graphite gets left on the paper.

There is no global standard for this, so each brand feels and looks a little different.
### What comes next?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-comes-next/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:41:00.000Z
The information revolution we have all lived through takes no prisoners.

For the first time in human history, the human individual has been fragmented and atomized. The human individual, which was the foundation of humanism and liberalism, has been disintegrated and disintermediated.

The new foundation for humanity becomes the flow of data information in the world. This changes everything.

A human being is no longer an imaginary, autonomous self with free will that makes decisions about the world. A human being is an information-processing system that is in continuous flow.

It has no fixed assets. It is liberated from the self and previous understandings of what it was to be human.

Old politics and old social mores no longer serve our new humanity.

Old fictions are holding us back.
### How to get in the flow
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/get-in-the-flow/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:35:03.000Z
You cannot achieve deep focus while continually switching back and forth from one task to another.

To perform any task with an optimal state of focus you need to reach a state of flow. You can’t do this just by wishing it so. Or snapping your fingers.

First you need to block out any immediate physical, digital and mental distractions. Then spend around 15 minutes of uninterrupted work on the task to reach a state of flow.

Time will bend, work will become effortless and doubt will evaporate.
### 20 percent worse
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/20-percent-worse/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:34:33.000Z
Your attention is being hijacked by invasive and pernicious forces beyond your control.

A maelstrom of technological, environmental and societal shifts keep you hopping from one thing to the next, more frazzled than ever.

Media in all its guises is ransacking your thought process and your ability to think deeply. Everything flits across the surface, distracted and disconnected. Switching back and forth.

All this switching has a price. Your performance drops. You’re slower. And you lose time every time you mentally transition from one topic to another.

When you check your texts while trying to work, you aren’t only losing the little bursts of time you spend looking at the texts themselves – you’re also losing the time it takes to refocus afterward.

It can take more than 25 minutes to resume a task after being interrupted. That’s because distractions actively break down your ability to focus. A scattered mind makes mistakes.

One study at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute took 136 students and got them to sit a test. Some students had to have their phones switched off, and others had their phones on and received intermittent text messages.

The students who received messages during the test performed 20 percent worse.
### Henry Miller’s 11 writing commandments
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/henry-miller-11-writing-commandments/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T20:33:49.000Z
It’s 1932\. Henry Miller is in Paris trying to become a writer.

Miller is trying to work on a manuscript that will become “Tropic of Cancer.” But he’s distracted, annoyed, reckless, frustrated, confused, poor, drunk. A ripe fucking mess.

So he comes up with a daily Program to get his shit together and words down on the page. A routine for productivity, inspiration, and mental health. Part of the blueprint is 11 writing commandments he pens and nails to the wall above his typewriter.

1\. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2\. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”

3\. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

4\. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5\. When you can’t *create* you can *work*.

6\. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7\. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8\. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9\. Discard the Program when you feel like it - but go back to it next day. *Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.*

10\. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11\. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
### Too much power
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/too-much-power/
Last updated: 2023-07-07T01:11:10.000Z
People in power display the same tendencies as the mentally ill.

Study after study shows people in power develop sociopathic behavior. An antisocial personality disorder becomes part of their operating system.

They’re more impulsive, self-centered, reckless, arrogant and rude than average. They’re more likely to cheat on their spouses, become less attentive to other people and less interested in others’ perspectives.

They’re also more shameless, often failing to manifest the one facial phenomenon that makes human beings unique among primates.

They can no longer blush.
### Powerfully disconnected
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/powerfully-disconnected/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T22:17:22.000Z
In a 2014 study, three American neurologists used a transcranial magnetic stimulation machine to test the cognitive functioning of powerful and less powerful people.

They discovered that a sense of power disrupts what is known as mirroring, a mental process that plays a key role in empathy.

Ordinarily, people mirror all the time. Someone else laughs, you laugh. Someone yawns, so do you.

But powerful individuals mirror much less. It’s like they no longer feel connected to their fellow human beings. As if they’ve come unplugged.

If powerful people feel less connected to others, is it any wonder they also tend to be more cynical? One of the effects of power is it makes people see others in a negative light.

If you’re powerful you’re more likely to think most people are lazy and unreliable. That other people need to be supervised and monitored, managed and regulated, censored and told what to do.

And because power makes you feel superior to other people, you’ll unquestionably believe all this monitoring should be entrusted to you.

And to you alone.
### Literary technology
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/literary-technology/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T22:16:35.000Z
In 1850, Britain was producing about 100,000 tons of paper per year.

By 1900, that had increased to 800,000 tons per year. Printers started setting type by machine, which was five times faster than setting it by hand and allowed page proofs to be easily shared and corrected.

Soon authors were guiding their books through a long and potentially fertile process - first a manuscript, then a typescript, perhaps a magazine serial, and finally a series of proofs for the book.

Such technology allowed for a different kind of revision that handwriting didn’t. It was a massive structural and literary transformation.

The most important technology at the beginning of the twentieth century was the typewriter. Today we equate a keyboard with speed, touch typing, the fastest way to get words down.

But a typescript offered modernist writers a chance to slow down. Most modernist writers wrote by hand and then painstakingly typed up the results.

That took time. But seeing their writing in such dramatically different forms - handwritten in a notebook, typed on a page, printed as a proof - encouraged these writers to revise it aggressively.

W.H. Auden loathed the typewriter but welcomed its capacity for self-criticism. He found typescript impersonal and hideous to look at.

But he also found if he typed out a poem, he could immediately see defects which he missed when looking over a handwritten manuscript.
### Literature
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/literature/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T22:16:01.000Z
Produce literature that is less spontaneous and enthusiastic.

More startling and enigmatic.

Spare, dense and lyrical.
### Every ending is a new beginning
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/every-ending-is-a-new-beginning/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T22:15:29.000Z
Chris Csont has a few things to say about the power of endings.

Not those endings that limp over the finish line, tying up a few loose bits of business and hoping for the best. Not those endings that fizzle out. Not even those explosive endings.

But those endings that take your breath away and allow you to see the entire story afresh.

*Endings derive their value from the investment the audience has in the characters and the story. When the characters reach their climatic moment of action, the audience feels it with them.*

*These endings matter because of everything that came before them - and everything that came before them is clarified by the ending.*

*The ending is the philosophical payload of the story, the punchline to the joke. It only delivers if you’ve set it up right, and that starts at page one.*

*The shark in “Jaws” was set up through horrifying attacks on swimmers and a crowded beach. A whole town and its visiting tourists’ lives are in danger. That’s what’s at stake.*

*However, when it’s time for the big fight between man and beast, it takes place out in open water. Miles from shore, only the men on the Orca are in danger.*

*Everything is stripped down in the climax of the movie to Brody vs. shark. Brody wants to kill the shark and protect Amity. That’s been the driving force of the movie. Now, at the end, he gets his (literal) shot.*

*Think about it like a cinematographer. If your climax and resolution are in wide shot, full of calamity and carnage, you keep the audience at a distance from your characters.*

*The audience needs those close up moments to make that emotional connection and fully appreciate not just what has happened, but how the characters feel about it.*

*Weigh every character’s potential to change the direction of the story. The less impact they have, the less you need them for the finale.*

*Subplots and supporting characters can be cleared away as you reach the final minutes of the story to focus on who has the most control over the final outcome.*

*Beating the odds isn’t enough. Great endings act as a final examination on all the previous challenges your hero has faced. It’s time to see what they’ve learned as they’ve knowingly or unwittingly chipped away at the truth.*

*Having that final test of beliefs requires a strong starting point. Sometimes it’s a friendship. Sometimes it’s a moral code. (Sometimes it’s both.)*

*That’s part of the key to constructing a compelling final test. It needs to repeat the theme of tests the hero has already faced, but to a more acute degree than what they’ve previously endured.*

*All the tests up to this point have been different, but should have a running theme: Can the hero succeed by adhering to their old ways, or do they need to adapt?*

*The final test of this theme should confront them with a situation where they must show they can change or risk total failure. (Or not change and lose it all if you’re writing a tragedy.)*

*Look for the things that can trip up your protagonist. Look for the potential unintended consequences of their actions. What’s the collateral damage created by their pursuit of their goal? How can their attempts at answering the question posed by the premise of the story give birth to new obstacles that await them at the end?*

*Ideally, character choices play into this. At the beginning of “Jaws,” you see again and again how ill-suited Chief Brody is to fight this shark. He hates going out in the water, he’s not a native islander, and compared to Quint and Hooper’s battle scars, all he has to show is where he had his appendix taken out.*

*But we know that someone is going to have to take that last shot at the shark. Quint has the track record and commands the ship, but he’s eaten. Hooper has scientific knowledge, but disappears after an attempt to poison the shark. That leaves Brody, the unlikely warrior.*

*This both satisfies the question of the premise (Can anyone stop this killer shark?), and does so in a way that wasn’t completely suspected from the introduction of the possible shark assassins. Can Brody rise to the challenge? Can the efforts of his allies pave the way to his victory?*

*But don’t just consider the most positive outcome for the protagonist as the audience’s expectation. Look to the expected confrontation and consider all possible outcomes.*

*In “Rocky,” Apollo Creed wins the match, but Rocky still earns a sense of self-respect. This fight for him was never just about winning. His belief that he’s a worthy person was at stake. By staying with Rocky, watching him train, and hoping for his success, the audience wants that win for him not as an end unto itself, but as a way for him to realize his self-worth.*

*It’s in subverting that expectation that the ending achieves greatness. Rocky can lose the fight and still feel like a champion.*

*Happy endings are for characters and their goals, but satisfying endings are about the audience and their investment in the story.*

*If too much is the same, the journey will feel meaningless. If too much has changed, it may be hard to see the meaningful differences.*

*The changes in a character and their life after the climax of their story are easier to identify if some parts of their life remain the same. At the end, show us echoes of how their story began.*

*Ask yourself what aspects of your character’s journey relate back to where they started. What would they do differently if they had another chance? How can you give them that chance?*

*It’s not just about directly presenting them with the same exact scene as something from earlier on, but looking for an echo. Reaching back to the audience’s memory of who this character was before and showing what about them has changed.*

*At the beginning of “The Godfather,” Michael Corleone tells Kaye that he is not like the rest of his family. He’s honest and upstanding. They’re criminals. But they’re still his family.*

*Having watched him make compromise after compromise on his moral compass, justifying his actions as a means to protect his father and the rest of his family, Michael ends the film on the opposite side.*

*Now he is his family. He leads them. And he sends Kaye out of the room, lying to her about the brutal murder he ordered on his brother-in-law.*

*As the door shuts in Kaye’s face, there’s a clear distinction of what’s changed from the beginning to the end. Michael and Kaye were close at the beginning, staying at arm’s length from the Corleone family legacy. Now Michael embraces that legacy and pushes Kaye away.*

*Not only has something changed, but their world is moving in a new direction.*

*It’s the extension of considering what’s changed with the characters. Because if they’ve changed, so has their perspective on the world. Returning home from their journey, things shouldn’t feel the same.*

*Ask yourself what comes next. With what they’ve experienced, how will a character re-adjust to the ordinary life they lead before their adventure? Will they be able to?*

*Consider “Taxi Driver.” Travis Bickle, fresh out of the hospital after the bloody shootout with a pimp and his goons, gets a thank you letter from Iris’s parents and gets back in his cab.*

*The audience is left with the feeling that this unstable man may have let some of the pressure out of his system, but that it could build up again. This lonely man might once more turn to violence, and that there’s no guarantee who will end up in his crosshairs.*

*Look at the classic final scene of “The Graduate.” Benjamin pulls Elaine out of her wedding, and the two flee to a nearby bus. As they get on, the camera holds on them as the joy and exhilaration from the mad dash drain from their faces.*

*They begin to realize the consequences of what they’ve done. They start to become uncertain about what to do next. Their story is both finished and beginning.*

*That’s ultimately what you’re aiming for when writing an ending. A sense that everything in your story has led to this moment, yet there are new moments beyond this.*

*Your heroes have changed, and in the process, changed the world around them.*
### Every good story is about change
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/every-good-story-is-about-change/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:49:25.000Z
The object and subject of a story is change.

Regardless of medium or length or even message, every good story is about change. If it’s not about change, it’s an anecdote. And probably a boring one at that.

A story is a recipe for change, a prescription for the necessary courage to overcome the fear and uncertainty of transformation. By its nature, change is generally uncomfortable, unsettling and uncontrollable.

But change is necessary to keep life moving forward. Without a story you stop growing and die. Doesn’t matter if you’re a god, a sentient being or a transnational corporation.

Life is dynamic.

Keep changing.
### Inhale twice to calm down
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/inhale-twice-to-calm-down/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:47:56.000Z
Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman says double inhaling is the fastest way to calm yourself down.

An inhale through the nose, and then another inhale at the top, and then a long exhale.

That’s the quickest way to slow your heart down and calm down.
### Anne Sexton: Suicide
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anne-sexton-suicide/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:40:34.000Z
In 1973, Sexton and her husband Kayo get divorced.

Mental illness ebbs and flows. A mad housewife whose life - and loves - unravel from her fingers. A mordant fear of being alone and losing her mind. Marooned in the Boston suburbs seeking fame among the alcohol and pills.

To cope with all the loss and her loneliness she escapes into spirituality, writes “Death Notebook” and one year later “The Awful Rowing Toward God.”

On October 4, 1974, Sexton has lunch with Maxine Kumin to make the last changes to the galleys for “The Awful Rowing Toward God.” She had already stopped taking her Thorazine for several weeks.

On returning home she puts on her dead mother’s fur coat, removes all her rings, pours herself a glass of vodka, locks herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, ending her life by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Thorazine, generic chlorpromazine, is an antipsychotic medication prescribed for schizophrenia, manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and severe behavioral problems. Thorazine is a drug from the early 1950s era of pharmaceutical discoveries and is the first medication to be named an antipsychotic drug.

Withdrawal effects commonly reported include nausea, vomiting, shaking, tremors, delusions, hallucinations, depression, mania, rage, excitability, aggressive or violent behavior.

‘Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem,’ Sexton writes in a memoir of Sylvia Plath.

But in the end, Sexton knows she’s not going to get well.

It’s the work that is the redemptive gesture.

The saving grace.
### What to do when the world is on fire
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-to-do-when-world-on-fire/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:40:04.000Z
Just because we’ve lost the war on climate change doesn’t mean we’ve lost our humanity.

Jonathan Franzen wants us to prepare for the climate apocalypse not by wishful thinking or policy directives or whatever. Franzen wants us to be realists to avoid a dystopian hellscape where only the rich and armed survive.

*All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable.*

*Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example.*

*But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities.*

*In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action. Securing fair elections is a climate action. Combatting extreme wealth inequality is a climate action. Shutting down the hate machines on social media is a climate action.*

*Instituting humane immigration policy, advocating for racial and gender equality, promoting respect for laws and their enforcement, supporting a free and independent press, ridding the country of assault weapons—these are all meaningful climate actions.*

*To survive rising temperatures, every system, whether of the natural world or of the human world, will need to be as strong and healthy as we can make it.*
### Merry Solstice
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/merry-solstice/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:39:16.000Z
For more than a few centuries, early Christians didn’t even celebrate the birth of Jesus let alone Christmas.

The first recorded date of Christmas being celebrated on December 25th was in 336, during the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine.

As the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine was keen to spread the faith. But there was already an official Roman state festival on that date.

For the Romans, December 25th was the date of the Solstice - the day that marked the turning of winter towards longer, lighter days. In 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian created and celebrated December 25th as Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the birthday of the unconquered sun.

Yes, there was much reveling and feasting and drinking and gift-giving. And yes, when the Christians finally decided they wanted to mark the birth of Jesus, Constantine simply swapped out this existing pagan holiday.

Much of Christianity simply superseded and unified existing pagan believes and practices (and real estate) under a singular monotheistic religion.

All the better to spread and control everyone within the empire.

And wipe out any other means of salvation in the process.
### Beyond the nation state
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/beyond-nation-state/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:37:47.000Z
Before nation states, empires ruled the world.

The dominion of Rome stretched across much of civilization for more than a thousand years.

The United States of America? Not even 250 years. Russia in its current incarnation? Not even 30 years.

Nation states are modern conceits. There’s no reason to presume they’ll last forever.

Innovation forces societal restructuring. Society’s transition from divine rulers to more (or less) democratic nations was driven by the printing press, the printed word and the printed thought. Newer technologies like the internet and blockchain will cause similar societal disruption and reorganization.

Currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Terra, and even Dogecoin are internet-native monies. They resemble an economy of transitory bits and pixels endemic to the digital realm. Decentralized digital currencies flourish in a decentralized world.

Decentralized countries may well supersede nations. The most influential civilization-scale entities will exist entirely online, a consequence of digital lives evolving to become more valuable than physical ones. Decentralized countries will coordinate and govern the virtual world.

Your sense of identity will be altered by these changes. Today, you have a mostly monogamous relationship to a nation — try and profess allegiance to more than one and things get complicated. In a future where borders will be blown to bits, you’ll move freely between digital states depending on circumstance. Nationalism will become extinct.

The internet forces the reappraisal of time and (more importantly) space. This network of networks allows all of us to communicate, collaborate, transact, play and pay irrespective of physical location.

The internet occupies multiple territories at once. Like an imaginary god, you can be in two or more places at once. Such fantastical freedom is one of the reasons why digital life is more exciting and increasingly more valuable than corporeal life. You are, quite literally, extra-dimensional.

Currencies - one of the defining characteristics of value in nation states - are giving way to decentralized cryptocurrencies. Currently, there are 180 currencies recognized as legal tender in United Nation member states. But there are almost 8,000 cryptocurrencies in the digital realm.

The old markers of national value are tied to physical manifestations. The new digital markers force context collapse in which meaning is lost or subverted as it reaches an unintended audience. The gold standard will give way to the meme standard.

It will take time for old structures to fall but may arrive faster than you think. Lenin reminds us there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.

Leveraging the internet’s power and scale, the decentralized virtual country of the future will thrive by embracing the vernacular, both linguistically and economically.

It will undermine existing governance structures and sit beyond them. It will further change our concept of time and space and identity.

By defintion nations cannot last forever.

It’s time to consider what comes next.
### How to win elections in Hong Kong
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-to-win-hong-kong-elections/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:38:15.000Z
It’s a lot easier than you think.

1\. Eliminate any opposition by jailing or banishing pro-democracy candidates.

2\. Cut the number of directly elected Legislative Council seats from 35 to 20.

3\. Allow only candidates who pledge allegiance to Beijing to run for office.

4\. Flood the zone with voters from mainland China on election day.

5\. Congratulate the voters on having made the right decision.

Whatever you do, don’t let the historic low voter turnout of 30.2 percent get you down. Link it to good governance and public satisfaction with the administration.

And don’t forget to smile.
### Long live the past
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/long-live-the-past/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:36:34.000Z
Sometimes you have to burn the past to see the future more clearly.

Almost 2,500 years ago, Li Si served as chancellor to the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang who had unified the nation after decades of disorder and civil war.

Li Shi reminded Qin that before the great unification, various feudal lords rose to power. ‘In their discourses, they all praised the past in order to disparage the present and embellished empty words to confuse the truth. Everyone cherished his own favorite school of learning and criticized what had been instituted by the authorities,’ he wrote.

‘But at present Your Majesty possesses a unified empire, has regulated the distinctions of black and white, and has firmly established for yourself a position of sole supremacy.

‘And yet these independent schools, joining with each other, criticize the codes of laws and instructions. They seek a reputation by discrediting their sovereign; they appear superior by expressing contrary views, and they lead the lowly multitude in the spreading of slander.

‘If such license is not prohibited, the sovereign power will decline above and partisan factions will form below. It would be well to prohibit this.’

Li Si offered a simple and effective solution for Qin to maintain absolute power - burn all the books in the imperial archives, save the memoirs of Qin.

‘All persons in the empire—except members of the Academy of Learned Scholars—in possession of the Classic of Odes, the Classic of Documents, and discourses of the hundred philosophers should take them to the local governors and have them indiscriminately burned,’ he wrote.

‘Those who dare to talk to each other about the Odes and Documents should be executed and their bodies exposed in the marketplace. Anyone referring to the past to criticize the present should, together with all members of his family, be put to death.

‘Officials who fail to report cases that have come under attention are equally guilty. After thirty days from the time of issuing the decree, those who have not destroyed their books are to be branded and sent to build the Great Wall.’

The future is history waiting to happen.
### Spare a thought for the ridiculously rich
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/spare-a-thought-for-ridiculously-rich/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:31:09.000Z
Many, many people become filthy rich for no other reason than luck and happenstance.

But this truth is anathema to their somewhat fragile belief systems. To realize that fate rather than their supposedly innate genius is responsible for the pooling of wealth and societal status cuts too close to the bone.

They want to convince themselves their wealth and power are the direct results of their smarts, insights and ability to foretell the future and profit from it.

Venture capitalists are particularly prone to such magical thinking. Despite being in an industry where the strike rate is one success (if you’re lucky) for every nine failures. What sort of a genius gets it wrong nine times out of ten?

This is not what venture capitalists think about. What they think about is how they’ve been maligned and misunderstood by the mainstream media. And how they should become their own media company. And how the next iteration of the web will save the world. And how crypto is go. And how whatever they’ve invested in will disrupt history.

Even when they’ve invested in a dumb idea with little utility and terrible user experience. A shallow idea with value to venture capitalists (usually in the form of social cachet) but no value to users (because it’s been poorly thought out).

Arrogance and insecurity make strange bedfellows. Venture capitalists are particularly thin-skinned about their investments. In searching for meaning, they invest themselves as well as their wealth. Given they define themselves by their wealth, they essentially have everything riding on an investment.

To question the fundamentals of an investment by a venture capitalist is taken as a personal affront. How dare you question the (in their minds) oracle.

It’s a personal insult to suggest a venture capitalist may not be the smartest brain in a room.

When by definition that’s so obviously true.
### Keep digging
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/keep-digging/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:30:12.000Z
Don’t fall in love with your first ideas.

That’s what clients do. That’s not what you’re paid to do. You’re paid to dig.

And continue digging until you find the best, most creative ideas. Sublime ideas that sparkle like diamonds, glow like gold. Ideas that are lucid, pleasing and strange.

This means you have to dig past all the initial ideas. These ideas are what your brain throws up because they’re close to the surface and require significantly less time, effort and energy to find. Your brain - in order to keep you alive - is an energy-saving device. Whatever it can route to automatic thinking it will because that uses less calories.

For more creative ideas you need to dig deeper to find connections your brain has never tried before. This will take you out of your comfort zone. It will be uncomfortable. And your brain will likely resist.

Keep digging. Dig past all the bad and stupid ideas, past all the useless ideas that don’t even make sense. Past all the memories falling between the cracks. (The memories might be comforting but they’re not helpful.)

Clear them out of the way and dig deeper still.

Dig until you reach the treasure below.
### A better campaign slogan
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/better-campaign-slogan/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T20:28:01.000Z
Australia is heading for a Federal election next year.

This means a face off-between the Liberal party (think Republicans who believe in universal health care) and the Labor party (think Democrats without quite as many millionaires in office).

A few days ago the Labor party hosted an official unofficial campaign launch where the newly slimmed-down opposition leader Anthony Albanese sported a new pair of Aaron Sorkinesque tortoiseshell glasses and unveiled a barrage of confusing and contradictory policies.

Albanese also unveiled the officially official campaign slogan. Are you sitting down? Okay, here it is in all its glory. ‘A better future.’

How would you describe this slogan? How would anyone describe it? Anodyne. Uninspiring. Flat. Stupid. Tiresome. Boring. Lifeless. Stale. Bland. Tedious. Uninteresting. Cloying. Pedestrian. Monotonous. Weak. Insipid. Drab. Colorless. Bankrupt. Innocuous. Banal. Unimaginative. Vapid. Anemic. Hackneyed. Trite. Inane. Wearisome. Ineffective, Threadbare. Pointless.

Dumb as a bag of hammers and dull as dishwater. A load of sensible codswallop but codswallop all the same. (Despite everyone in the focus group agreeing with the sentiment after a few glasses of white wine.)

Overly researched and watered-down slogans like this fail to inspire and gain traction. It’s almost obscene to call it a slogan. These days a slogan is seen as a catchphrase that appears under a brand logo like ‘Just do it’ for Nike.

The origin of the word slogan is slogorne or war cry, used by Scottish Highland clans to rouse their troops into battle. And rattle their foes. With each clan screaming their own slogan into the fray. (Fierce fighters like the Camerons would scream ‘Sons of the hounds come here and get flesh!’ at fever pitch as they waged carnage.)

How the Labor Party think they’re going to win the next Federal election with the slogan ‘A better future’ in beyond me. It ain’t going to happen.

A better campaign slogan would be ‘A Better Australia.’ Why? Here are a few reasons.

\+ More specific (makes it more believable)

\+ Reinforces Australian-made messaging (makes it pull double duty)

\+ Appeals to what unites both sides of politics (makes it bipartisan)

\+ Title caps (makes it more important)

\+ Alliterates the ‘a’ and ‘l’ and the vowel sound ‘ee’ of ‘Albanese' (makes it more associative and memorable)

\+ Beats the Liberal party to the punch (makes Labor lead)

All rationale aside, there’s an even more critical reason to use a better campaign slogan.

The Liberal party is already running around with a half-twisted slogan from the last Federal election around building for the future. It already owns the word future. For the Labor party to think it can co-opt the word future is ridiculous.

Instead every time the Labor party uses its campaign slogan with the word future in it, it’s just reminding people to vote Liberal.

If the Labor party wants to win the next Federal election, it’s time they used a better slogan.
### Things go better with Coke™
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/things-go-better-with-coke/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:57:28.000Z
Everyone knows Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine along with half a dozen other flavorings and more than enough sugar.

Coca-Cola was first concocted by Dr. John S. Pemberton, a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886\. Pemberton was addicted to morphine and needed a pick-me-up to combat the drowsiness brought on by pain killer. Coca-Cola quickly became Atlanta’s most popular soft drink.

Today it’s by far the world’s most popular soft drink with almost 2 billion servings a day across 200 countries. And it’s still flavored with a non-narcotic extract from coca leaves.

It’s supplied by [Stepan Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan%5FCompany?ref=boscutti.com) in Maywood, New Jersey. Stepan Company is the only business in the US that has a license to import and process coca leaf. The dried coca leaf is imported from Peru and sometimes Bolivia.

How much dried coca leaf is legally imported each year? Around 100 metric tons.
### Bill Hicks: Imagery
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-imagery/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:54:55.000Z
Some images to sketch and weave into the Bill Hicks screenplay.

\+ Speeding sedan tips and crashes over a safety barrier, tumbling through the air as plumes of thick grey smoke billow out.

\+ Approaching a doorway of brilliant white light in an empty suburban street.

\+ In an open field, rocks levitate and rise around a floating orb of light.

\+ Burning sedan plummets off an overpass.

\+ Sand encroaches through a derelict house in the desert.

\+ In a dark woodland, a thin beam of light shoots down from the night sky straight down to the forest floor. Then another. And another.

\+ American Indian elder watches Hicks drive past, a tear rolls down his cheek.

\+ Sedan submerged under the waters of a gray lake.

\+ Edges of the moon shift and ripple and tear away.

\+ Looking up from the bottom of a swimming pool, fallen leaves floating on the surface of the shifting water. Someone steps up to the edge and looks down.

What other images and symbols can be leveraged to show vulnerability, isolation, anger, rage, confusion, disassociation, ego, laughter, acceptance, redemption, rebirth?
### Anne Sexton: Confessional poetry
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anne-sexton-confessional-poetry/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:52:39.000Z
Anne Sexton is a confessional poet.

She tells her truth in the fragmentation of the poet, in the fragmentation of modern American life in general after World War II. Themes of divorce, sexual infidelity, childhood, neglect, and the mental disorders that follow from deep emotional wounds received early in life. A confessional poem contains the first-person speaker, I. It is all about I.

Sexton is intrigued by death. Multiple suicide attempts. She carries pills in her handbag just in case. After breaking up with her psychiatrist, Dr Zweizung, with whom she had a love affair, she takes an overdose of pills and is hospitalized for forty-eight hours. She self-medicates with alcohol. Depression, remorse, sleeplessness, paranoia, loneliness.

Her mother dies from breast cancer in March 1959, her father only two months later from a stroke. One year later her father-in-law George Sexton dies in a car accident. The temptation of her own death returns.

‘I’m so fascinated with Sylvia’s death, the idea of dying perfect.’

‘I’m afraid to die. Yet I think it might do a few favors. If I could I’d just die inside, let the heart-soul shrink like a prune, and only to this typewriter, let out the truth. I feel awfully alone - crying in the bathroom so no one need hear - crying over these keys, where they sit as patient as an old granny. Can I save myself? I can try. I can keep right on trying.’
### Real imagination
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/real-imagination/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:51:53.000Z
Plato? Plato was an asshat.

Plato’s notions of a centric Republic boil down to a slave-invested hellhole lorded over by high-minded autocrats and blowhards.

A sad, hard place where logic rules supreme and poets and performers, artists and adventurers, are forever banished. Where fiction is seen as folly rather than fulsome truth. Where imagination is dismissed as distraction. (Seriously? Kill me now!)

Aristotle? Aristotle was the truth. Aristotle saw imagination as the foundation of all knowledge. Because imagination creates new ideas and possibilities. New ways of living.

All human problems (and therefore all business problems) are a failure of imagination. Failure to seek new ideas and solutions. Failure of creativity.

Imagination drives creativity in all its mystery and confabulation of colors, shapes, movements, textures, patterns, connections and moire (that last word is an unintentionally correct typo that proves the point).

Imagination can go anywhere and do anything. It’s the golden path to everywhere.

Everything you can imagine is real.
### Swinging politicians
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/swinging-politicians/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:49:14.000Z
Our politicians are getting angsty.

In Melbourne, Australia, ongoing protests around coronavirus vaccines and government overreach have been swirling around the steps of the state parliament building while politicians inside vote on the legislation.

Thousands of loud and angry protestors with megaphones, flags, posters, chanting, drumming. Lots of bravado and brouhaha. Oh, yes, and a makeshift gallows with trapdoor and roped noose. There’s nothing like coming prepared.

But a full-size working guillotine might be a better way to get the point across to those feckless politicians. A little less dangly, a lot more on point.

A better beacon for democracy in these estranged times.
### Bill Hicks: One
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-one/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:48:37.000Z
Bill Hicks on stage, slight sneer as he nods to the audience.

HICKS  
I’m glad mushrooms are against the law. Because I took them one time, and you know what happened to me?

Hicks looks up into the spotlight.

HICKS  
I laid in a field of green grass for four hours going, ‘My God! I love everything!’

Scatter of laughter from the audience. Hicks shakes his head.

HICKS  
Yeah. Now, if that isn’t a hazard to our country. How are we gonna keep building nuclear weapons, you know what I mean? What’s gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize that we’re all one?!
### Ten ways to be a miserable artist
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ten-ways-to-be-a-miserable-artist/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:46:13.000Z
Originally penciled by Keri Smith and passed from artist to artist to you.

1\. Constantly compare yourself to other artists.

2\. Talk to your family about what you do and expect them to cheer you on.

3\. Base the success of your entire career on one project.

4\. Stick with what you know.

5\. Undervalue your expertise.

6\. Let money dictate what you do.

7\. Bow to societal pressure.

8\. Only do work that your family would love.

9\. Do whatever the client/customer/gallery/patron/investor asks.

10\. Set unachievable goals to be accomplished by tomorrow.
### Time and space
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/time-and-space/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T10:43:56.000Z
Everyone loves The New Yorker magazine, right?

This odd gambol of a magazine that flits through the decades with its particular (and some would say peculiar) slant on the world.

You subscribe because there’s no other media quite like it. You still remember looking and feeling through your first copy. The sheen of the paper, the shine of the words. The odd, tiny, almost impossible details.

Like the thin, shaky hand-drawn black lines between the small advertisements on the back pages. You’re certain they’re drawn by a finished artist with a Rotring Rapidograph Ink Drafting Pen. The one with a 0.18mm stainless steel nib. The thinnest of the thin.

Salt Lake City high school drop-out Harold Ross launched The New Yorker in 1925\. Ross wanted the magazine to deal with modern life in a sophisticated and unsensational way, truthful and honest. And humorous too.

The New Yorker uses four fonts - Futura, Vogue, Caslon and the original face designed by Rea Irvin for the title on the cover and the titles inside.

Irvin also first drew ‘Eustace Tilley,’ the high-hatted and euphonious dandy-about-town with his monocle, white silk scarf and snobbish righteousness. Spirited illustrations and illuminating cartoons became part of the magazine’s urbane charm.

You subscribe because there’s nothing quite like it. Everything that was ever scribbled or painted or published is available online. Almost a century of marvelous but a click away.

And every week a printed issue arrives in your actual mailbox in a clear plastic envelop that’s not even close to recyclable. No matter.

Depending on where you are in the world, you may receive two or three or even four issues at once. A month’s worth of The New Yorker magazines that need to be unwrapped and read. But who has the time to read a month’s worth of magazines in one sitting? Especially after having already read the best pieces online?

As you unwrap the issues, you wonder how many people open and read printed magazines anymore? Maybe all they do is look them over and put them down? Perhaps the ads on the back cover are the only ads anyone sees?

You look over the four issues and three of the back cover ads are for expensive Swiss watches and one is for tasteful paintings by an American artist.

Maybe these are now the only products that can afford mass advertising. Costly timepieces and costly artworks.

Time and space as status symbols.
### Decarbonization time
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/decarbonization-time/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T05:22:49.000Z
The CO2 level in our atmosphere now measures [413.61 ppm](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/?ref=boscutti.com) (parts per million).

This time last year atmospheric CO2 was 411.38 ppm. This time 25 years ago it was 360 ppm.

At the current rate of increase, we’ll pass the 450 ppm carbon threshold in just 3,182 days. Which is less than nine years away.

What happens when we reach the 450ppm threshold? A catastrophic and irreversible explosion in global heating.

Essentially it’s going to be hell on earth.

Unless we turn it around.
### Get it together
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/get-it-together/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T05:21:58.000Z
You’re a mess and your mind is all over the place.

Your thoughts are fractured, your motivations are wavering at best and dubious at worst.

You’ve been making media and messaging and advertising and whatever the hell communications are morphing into your whole damn life.

You’ve won a bunch of awards, the apparent respect of your peers and more than a few accounts. (You’ve pitched your heart out, wrenched success from the jaws of failure, showered partners with gold. You’ve microdosed, you’ve overdosed. You’ve done it all.)

And for what? You worry you’ve given the best of you to save some brands that couldn’t care less. You feel you’ve wasted your creativity on making corporations ever larger, ever richer.

You’ve justified it all because, hey, you need money. Who doesn’t? But stop for a moment. Check your bank account, draw a line over your assets, look at everything you have.

Seriously, look at how much you’ve earned over the years. Look at how much tax you’ve paid. It’s astonishing. Especially as you don’t really care for money, do you?

You’re all about ideas. The new, the next. The unusual, the unfamiliar, the unexpected. Those things you’re inexplicably drawn to. That’s what the world needs now.

In case you haven’t noticed, the world is a complete and utter fucking mess. It’s on fire, drowning and battling a raging pandemic all at the same fucking time. We need help.

Facts won’t save us, rhetoric won’t save us. Politics definitely won’t save us. All the old ideas are going to kill us. We need new ideas. Your ideas.

Gather all those slips of paper, half-started screenplays, broken poems and paeans. Your imagination writ large in all its splendor. Wonders only you can bring to life.

The world is pining for the new ideas hiding in your heart. Electrify them.

Let them fly.
### Mystery and suspense
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/mystery-and-suspense/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T05:19:58.000Z
Alfred Hitchcock understood the essential difference between mystery and suspense.

There’s a great deal of confusion around mystery and suspense. They’re often tossed around in the same pitch meeting or over script notes. But the two are not analogous. The two are absolutely miles apart.

Mystery is an intellectual process while suspense is essentially an emotional process. You can only get suspense going by giving the audience more information than the characters.

For Hitchcock, films that have mysterious goings-on where you don’t know what’s happening or why someone is doing this or that, are a waste of time and footage. There’s no emotion, no feeling.

A twist or revelation with no emotion is shallow indeed. Mystique and mystification may seem an appealing strategy to keep an audience interested but have the opposite effect.

Because when you mystify an audience, you don’t hold them.

You lose them.
### It’s not your fault
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/not-your-fault/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T10:57:32.000Z
The new bookshelves have arrived and moved into place in the living room.

They’re sleek, they’re low, they’re formed from aircraft-grade aluminium folded to avoid the shelves sagging. They look great in that expensive yet understated nothing-to-look at way.

You place the books on the thin lightweight shelves. Two bookshelves side by side. Three meters of books across two lean shelves.

You sit on a sofa on the other side of the room. Everything you hold dear is expressed in those rows of books. Art, literature, stories, knowledge, ideas, essays, thoughts.

But something’s not right. The second shelf on the left seems to sag ever so slightly in the centre. (Seriously, what’s wrong with you? Who notices something like this? Who worries about such minutiae?)

You zip out the tape measure. The centre sags exactly 2.8mm. Damn. It’s because you’ve stacked the heavier folios in the centre.

You swap them out with the lighter folios on the ends. You sit back on the sofa and you know it’s still not perfect. You measure again and you see the centre now sags just under 1mm.

Relax. It’s not your fault.
### The story of the imperfect piano
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/story-imperfect-piano/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:18:16.000Z
In 1975, Vera Brandes invited Keith Jarrett, an American Jazz pianist, to play at the opera house in Cologne.

Keith accepted and specified he would need a Bösendorfer grand piano - a particular piano with a unique character.

Keith and his work were hugely popular. He was already considered one of the best solo jazz pianists of all time.

He was also a notorious perfectionist. Keith was known to give out cough lollies before a concert to prevent coughing. If someone did cough, he would sometimes stop playing altogether and storm off the stage.

On the day of his Cologne performance, Keith drove the four hours from Zurich to Cologne. He arrived with back pain but entered the opera house, keen to see the grand piano. What he found was a Bösendorfer piano, but not a Bösendorfer grand piano. It was much smaller, in poor shape and out of tune.

Keith was livid. ‘You brought me all the way here for this? I’m not going to play this piano,’ he fumed. ‘I’m going back to my hotel. My back is in agony.’

So he went outside, into the rain, and got in his car. Vera ran after him. ‘Please, Keith, please play this concert. I’ve got 1,300 people coming to this opera house tonight to hear you play,' she pleaded through his open window.

After some time, she finally convinced him. Engineers set to work on the piano, trying to tune it and make it playable. They got it to an acceptable state, but it was still far below Keith’s usual standard.

Manfred Eicher, a sound engineer, was asked by Keith to record the performance, thinking it would become a cautionary tale for future promoters.

At 11:30pm, the Köln Concert started. Some 1,300 people were in the audience.

Throughout the recording, you can hear Keith groaning. He was working hard, in pain, having to do things he wouldn’t normally, to get the sound he wanted.

His record company released the recording as an album. It became the best selling solo album in jazz.
### Anne Sexton: New York Times obituary
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anne-sexton-new-york-times-obituary/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T05:18:21.000Z
October, 6, 1974, broadsheet newsprint issue of the New York Times.

Page 65\. Ads for New York funeral chapels and funeral homes. Columns upon columns stacked with death notices. Three obituaries. Three headlines.

Zalman Shazar Is Dead at 84; President of Israel for 10 Years

Kenneth Goolagong Dead at 44; Tennis Star’s Father Hit by Car

****ANNE SEXTON DIES; PULITZER POET, 45**

WESTON, Mass., Oct. 5 (AP) —Anne Sexton, the poet who won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for her volume “Live or Die,” was found dead yesterday inside an idling car, parked in her garage.

“It was either suicide or natural causes,” Lieut. Lawrence Cugini, a police detective, said.

The poet, who was 45 years old, had recently been divorced from her husband, Alfred. Sur. vivors include two daughters, Linda and Joyce.

****‘Bad Case of Melancholy’**

A “confessional” poet, a disciple of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton fashioned her art out of anguish, breakdown and a preoccupation with death. Of the poems in “Live or Die,” for which Mrs. Sexton von the Pulitizer Prize, she said, “they read like a fever chart for a bad case of melancholy,”

“Live or die,” she wrote. “Make up your mind. If you’re going to hang around don’t ruin everything. Don’t poison the world.”

Her first book, “To Bedlam. And Part Way Back,” was published by the Houghton Mifflin Company in 1960\. Thomas Lask, reviewing it in The New York Times, said: “It’s hub has a natural built‐in interest: a mental breakdown, pictured with a pitiless eye and clairvoyant sharpness.

Typical of the book’s merciless self‐examination are these lines from the poem “Ringing the Bells”:

*And this is the way they ring the bells in Bedlam and this is the bell‐lady who comes each Tuesday morning to give us a music lesson and because the attendants make you go and because we mind by instinct, like bees caught in the wrong hive, we are the circle of the crazy ladies ...*

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin, 1960

Mrs. Sexton’s second book, All My Pretty Ones,” was published in 1962\. Like “No Bedlam,” it was acclaimed by by critics and helped establish her as one of America’s outstanding poets. Her work was ranked alongside that of Mr. Lowell and Sylvia Plath, the poet who died by suicide in 1963 and about whose death Mrs. Sexton wrote one of the poems in “Live or Die.”

“All My Pretty Ones” included the verses characterized by the critic M. L. Rosenthal in “The New Poets” as “the brief, perfect ‘The Starry Night’”:

*The town does not exist except where one blackhaired tree slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.*

*The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.*

*O starry starry night! This is how I want to die.*

*It moves. They are all alive.*

*Even the moon bulges in its orange irons to push the children, like a god, from its eye.*

*The old unseen serpent swallowed up the stars.*

*O starry starry night! This is how I want to die: into that rushing beast of night.*

*sucked up it, that great dragon, to split from my life with no flag, no belly, no cry.*

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin, 1961

****Updated the Grimms**

Mrs. Sexton’s “Love Poems” was published in 1969; “Transformations,” often ‐ macabre verse updatings of the Grimms’ fairy tales, in 1971, and “The Book of Folly” in 1972\. Her most recent work was “The Death Notebooks.”

In 1969, “Mercy Street,” a play by the poet, was presented in New York at the American Place Theater. Clive Barnes, reviewing it in She Times, said:

“‘Mercy Street’ is the story of a woman searching her way home from the valley of madness. The personal voice is there: When Daisy \[the heroine\] says, ‘I don’t know any prayers, or any lullabies either,’ it is a voice for a generation.”

Anne Harvey Sexton was born in Newton, Mass., on Nov. 9, 1928\. She grew up in Wellesley, Mass., where she went to school.

“I wrote my first poem in 1957 or 1958,” Mrs. Sexton later recalled. “I was watching television, a program on the form of the sonnet and I said, ‘I can do that.’ So I wrote a poem. It wasn’t very good and I didn’t offer it for publication.”

Thereafter, she became a frequent contributor to magazines. Her poems appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic and Saturday Review.

****Received Awards**

Mrs. Sexton held the Robert Frost Fellowship at the summer writers conference in Bread Loaf, Vt., and was a scholar with Radcliffe College’s New Institute for Independent Study from 1961 to 1963.

She received a Guggenheim award in 1969, a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1964‐65 and in 1965 the first literary magazine travel grant under the auspices of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. In 1965 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. She held honorary doctorates from Tufts, Regis College and Fairfield University.

Mrs. Sexton taught at Wayland (Mass.) High School in 1967–68, served as a professor on the faculty of Boston University from 1970 to 1972 and was Cranshaw Professor of Literature at Colgate University in 1972.

“I begin a poem with a phrase or an idea,” she once explained, “and then there is sudden interruption of my whole life.”

The poet, whose work was so largely devoted to the theme of death, gave to the last poem in “Live or Die” the title “Live.” It begins:

*Well, death’s been here for a long time ...*

*And it ends: I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.*
### Church
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/church/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:16:23.000Z
It’s 1950 in Greenwich Village. Early summer. Sunday morning. Steel gray. Raining.

Patricia Highsmith is in her small apartment, lying on the sofa. A popular country song plays softly on the radio. ”Let’s Go to Church (Next Sunday Morning)” by Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely.

The duo croon about kneelin’ and prayin’ and lovin’ thy neighbor.

And Patricia thinks about a young couple and the friend they’ll meet on the way to church. How next Saturday night, the young man will hold up a candy store and the girl will sleep with the friend who will necessitate an abortion.

How these two will marry in less than a year and produce five more Catholics. They will vote in the Catholic senators and boycott the best artists and writers.

They will provide sons for the next war and dedicate the next superwar mondial to the unknown soldier. They will prevent people from parking on their block and they will turn the stomachs of the rest of us when they appear in bathing suits on public beaches. They will be honored because they carry on the race.

But they will not be the people by whom this century will be known.
### Archaeologist of the soul
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/archaeologist-of-the-soul/
Last updated: 2024-04-28T12:16:44.000Z
As a child, Carl Jung dreamt of becoming a world-famous archaeologist.

Traversing the globe, excavating treasures from the collective past. Unearthing artefacts lost below the surface to see history and humanity anew.

But due to limited financial resources, Jung studied medicine at the University of Basel to become a doctor like his grandfather. It was the sensible thing to do, the acceptable thing to do.

It wasn’t long before Jung switched his studies to psychiatry to pursue his interests in theology, dreams and the mind.

Instead of searching for bones and broken pottery underground, he sought to uncover the mysteries of the subconscious.

He became an archaeologist of the soul.

What will you become?
### Where do poems come from?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/where-do-poems-come-from/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:14:01.000Z
Poems ride on the wind, across the lands high and wide, seeking out a hand to bring them down to earth.

To write them down and make them real.
### Bill Hicks: Banned on Letterman
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-banned-on-letterman/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:13:31.000Z
Bill Hicks had performed on the David Letterman’s Late Night Show 11 times.

Every set had been hit. Letterman liked him, audiences loved him. Being on Letterman validated Hicks and let him see where the lines were, where the possibilites to take humor further were.

Hicks was invited to perform for the twelfth time on the show on October 1, 1993.

When Hicks stepped onto the center stage at CBS’s Ed Sullivan Theater for the afternoon taping, he knew he was dying. His pancreatic cancer had spread to his liver. He only had months to live.

This set was going to be the best set ever. He opened with news of his new television show called “Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus.” The audience roared with laughter. Dancing, gays, cursing, lesbians, pro-lifers, orphans, cemeteries, smokers, non-smokers, heaven, hell, Jesus, rabbits and dead old ladies all take a hit.

A hilarious set. Backstage in the Green Room, everyone seemed pleased. Thumbs up from showrunners and producers.

Hicks left pleased. But later that night in his hotel room he got a call from the show’s executive producer Robert Morton telling him the set had been axed for being too controversial and wouldn’t make it to air.

It was the first comedy act to be censored on the show.
### Bill Hicks: Keep up!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-keep-up/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:10:54.000Z
It’s 1993\. Bill Hicks is on stage at a comedy club in Chicago, bemused by a female signer who stands to one side, repeating everything he says in sign language.

‘I’m pissed off, you know, watching these fucking military hearings and all these military guys and all these serious pundits and everyone talking about morality.’

Hicks pulls back.

‘Excuse me, aren't you all just hired thugs. You’re mass murderers with accessories. That’s what you are. You're blowing up fucking innocent people all over the world while we form our own Orwellian American fucking new world order. Don’t tell me about your morality, you motherfuckers.’

Hicks prowls. Female signer tries to keep up.

‘Fuck the military, fuck the FBI, fuck the ATF, fuck president Clinton, fuck George Bush, fuck Ronald Reagan, fuck - keep up!’

Signer doubles over in laughter. Crowd laughs and claps and cheers.
### Bill Hicks: Welcome the silence
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-welcome-the-silence/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:07:16.000Z
How does a blistering, loud mouth stand up comedian embrace the quiet moments?

How does he move from bits to moments? How does he learn not to fear the silence? The moments between the jokes, the setups, the punchlines. The moments between the laughs?

How does the epiphany happen onstage?

And play out in life?
### There was rubble in the street, there were cars on fire, and the entire air was littered with burning paper
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/rubble-in-street-cars-on-fire-entire-air-littered-with-burning-paper/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T01:02:47.000Z
It’s September 11, 2001\. This is Hans Kunnen’s eyewitness account after surviving the al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers in New York’s financial district.

*‘I started the day at a breakfast meeting of economists at the World Trade Center Marriott Hotel, which sits right between the Twin Towers, ground floor.*

*‘We were listening to a speaker from Morgan Stanley, and all of a sudden, the room shook. The table shook, the chandelier shook. It felt a bit like, you know, an earthquake. I thought it was maybe an explosion of a generator. But people just up and left.*

*‘People were coming in from outside and with one particular lady, she was singed. She’d been burned. And she was crying and screaming and people ran to help her and others. They’d come inside because debris had fallen down the side of the towers.*

*‘There was no panic, or huge, you know, pandemonium at that stage. But the folk said, ‘Look, you can’t go upstairs, alarm bells are ringing, you have to leave.’*

*‘And it was then that it became obvious that something really strange was happening. Because there was rubble in the street, there were cars on fire, and the entire air was littered with burning paper.*

*‘I left the hotel and went across the road and looked up. And that’s when I first saw the smoke billowing out of the North Tower.*

*‘I was sixty metres, maybe a hundred from the bottom of the building. Which in comparison to the height of the towers, was right underneath. It’s like the pyramids, they just overwhelm you with their size.*

*‘So I’m standing there, on my own. Just looking up and you see this evil black smoke pouring out the building and you think, What on earth happened?*

*‘Because we didn’t know it was a plane. But then as we’re standing there, I heard a plane coming. And it was low. And it was accelerating and it banked.*

*‘And the noise of the plane over your head, and then the explosion was just jaw-dropping. I’ll never forget it.*

*‘And that’s when pandemonium took hold. People actually saw it for themselves.*

*‘One thing that has stayed with me was the sight of a particular lady blown out of a window and she cartwheeled across my horizon, like a rag doll.*

*‘That was a sight I shall never forget and said, ‘Okay, Hans you really need to get out.’*

*‘You realize you in the bull’s eye of an attack. And there could be three, four, five, six more planes coming in the next minute. And it’s good not to be here.*

*‘I decided the best place for me was to catch a ferry across to Staten Island but like the Manly ferry - 800 meters, a kilometer I think it might be to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.*

*‘And then sat inside the ferry terminal, waiting for a ferry. You could cut the air it was so tense with anger, fear, distrust.*

*‘I thought I’m gonna die because all of a sudden, the entire Ferry Terminal shook.’*

Al Qaeda struck at the heart of the United States, taking down the twin towers in New York's financial centre, striking the Pentagon, and crashing another plane in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the assaults, which catapulted the US and the West into a 20-year war in Afghanistan.
### Bill Hicks: Kill yourself!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-kill-yourself/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:59:41.000Z
Hicks’ glorious bit about working in advertising builds and extends through various stand-ups in various clubs throughout the movie.

In each scene, the bit loops to the start and plays out an extra line or two, an extra round or two, an extra topper or two of rising laughter.

Hicks stands on stage, microphone in hand.

‘By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself!

Audience laughter crackles. Hicks nods and smiles.

‘Thank you, thank you. It’s just a little thought, I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can.

Hicks tosses out imaginary seeds into the audience.

‘Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really. There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself!

‘Seriously, you are the ruiner of all things good. No, this is not a joke.

Hicks mimics a gleeful audience member.

‘You’re like, *there’s going to be a joke coming* ...

Hicks straightens up.

‘There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself! It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself!

Audience breaks into cheer. Hicks skips and tosses out more imaginary seeds.

‘Thank you, thank you. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, *He’s doing a joke ...* There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations.

Hicks looks aside.

‘I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now. *Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.*

Hicks bites his tongue. Annoyed.

‘Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags! *Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.*

Hicks hunches, lips against the microphone. Angry.

‘Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scumbags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet. *Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill’s very bright to do that.*

Hicks mimics being trapped.

‘God, I’m just caught in a fucking web. *Ooh, the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar.*

Hicks hangs his head.

‘God, how do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you?

Hicks lays down on the stage as if in bed with his wife.

*‘What did you do today, honey? Oh, we made arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight.*

Hicks snores peacefully.

*‘Yeah we just said, you know, is your baby really loud? The mums will love it.*

Hicks stands. Prowls the stage.

‘Sleep like fucking children, don’t you. This is your world, isn’t it?’
### Let there be digital light
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/let-there-be-digital-light/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:58:02.000Z
It was at the beginning of this century when the long-predicted digital convergence coalesced.

Not so much the singularity as the impossible tangle of wires and electricity and code and bits refracting through the air, through the ether.

All expression - visual, textual, audio, video, you name it - has moved to the machine world, which, perhaps counter­intuitively, is no less real than our physical reality.

And that is not a metaphorical equivalence. It is now our reality. (What happens when the sunset on a digital billboard burns brighter than the supposedly real thing? When the digital supersedes the parameters of the natural world? When it exceeds biological constraints? When reality is set free?)

Alvy Ray Smith calls this digital light. It’s what we’re bathed in every day when we’re not in the middle of a forest or surfing a wave.

Digital light is going to become more electric, more illuminating, more present.

More all-knowing.
### Bill Hicks: Heaven on earth
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bill-hicks-heaven-on-earth/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:58:34.000Z
Bill Hicks waits for the laughter to sputter out. Holds a beat.

‘Here’s my point.’

Hicks leans forward.

‘In the blink of an eye, we can have heaven on earth.

‘It’s a choice, that’s all it is. There’s no evolution, no need to go any farther. We know it now. It’s all here. It’s all clear. It’s all right now.

‘It’s a choice. You can look through the eyes of fear, you can look through the eyes of love. That’s the only two ways to look.

‘The eyes of fear is insanity, it’s not really there. The eyes of love you realize bingo! Bin-fucking-go!

‘Heaven on earth right now, if you want. It’s a choice to look through the eyes of love instead of the eyes of fear.

‘That money we spend on weapons of defense each year, the money we spend on buying bigger locks and more fucking cops, instead if we spent that money feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world - which it would pay for many times over - not one human being excluded, we could as one race explore outer space together in peace, forever. That is my dream.

‘Thank you very much. You’ve been fantastic. I appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed it.’
### Alpha state
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/alpha-state/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:56:28.000Z
Spare a thought for the humble pixel.

The building block of our digital life, the smallest addressable element in a raster image. Loaded, stacked and arranged at will to simulate and stimulate reality.

Add three basic color channels of red, green and blue which can be combined to create full-color palettes.

But it was the addition of the alpha channel to control the transparency of pixels that brought everything to life. Tweaking an objects opacity in animation blurs motion and corrects any staccato movements.

Blocks of colored light become fluid. It’s the absence of definition that makes them look real.
### History of the Easter egg
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/history-of-easter-egg/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:55:44.000Z
No, not the chocolate egg first produced in the 19th century to bizarrely celebrate the reanimation of Jesus from the dead.

But rather the hidden surprise inside a piece of software to unexpectedly delight the user.

The first software Easter egg inside a game appeared in the 1979 Atari game, Adventure. Programmer identities were jealously guarded and not made public. Software studios didn’t want staff to gain celebrity status or eclipse the brand.

So programmer Warren Robinett hid a feature with his name in the game. (No, not the most imaginative easter egg but what do you expect from a programmer.)

Easter eggs in games became more elaborate and self-referential over time. The cake probably goes to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Aside from all the hidden hookers and blow, when you jump from the top of a certain building you’ll miraculously go through the window of a neighboring building. You’ll be inside a room with a pedestal, on top of which is a big chocolate egg with “Happy Easter!” written on it.

The earliest known Easter egg was placed in the ‘make’ command for PDP-6/PDP-10 minicomputers in 1967 by William Weiher at the Stanford AI Lab.

When you attempt to create a file named ‘love’ by typing ‘make love,’ the program responds ‘not war?’ before proceeding.

It’s the little things that count.
### Forward
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/forward/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:32:19.000Z
I am loved  
And I am forgotten  
I am broken-hearted  
And I am lost  
I am found again  
Sweet surrender  
I am back to start again  
I am old and dissipated  
I am young and riding free  
I am yesterday and tomorrow  
I am rivers high and mountains long  
I am sun and moon and stars  
I am here and gone at once  
I am everything that ever was  
I am potential all unbound  
I am now and ready  
Stepping forward  
Into your arms
### Marks and scratches
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/marks-and-scratches/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:31:36.000Z
Every script, every article of faith, every law in the land, every poem ever uttered is from a couple of dozen letters, ten numbers and a handful of punctuation marks.

All knowledge is penned from sounds represented in scrawls and symbols, marks and scratches, type and words and sentences.

Whoever among us makes the words makes the world.

And whoever controls the flow controls the world.
### New beginning
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/new-beginning/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:29:56.000Z
Every end is a new beginning.

Nothing truly ends. It spreads and wanders and seeks. Rolling on and on.

Until it ends and begins again.
### Are Republicans mentally ill?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/are-republicans-mentally-ill/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:22:51.000Z
Republicans are showing all the signs of mental illness.

Conservatives got everything in 2016\. The White House, Senate, Congress, governorships and statehouses. And messed everything up to the point where they were booted out of office in 2020.

Right-wing conservatives we’re sent packing with their tails between their legs. That’s what happened. That’s a fact.

And how did they respond? They laid out a string of lies about voter fraud and lashed out by storming the United States Capitol and killing innocent people. That’s what happened. That’s a fact.

Now they’re blocking any attempt to investigate the insurrection on the grounds that it was all some sort of deep state left-wing false flag insider job. Without realising they were still in power at the time. The riots, killings and attacks on democracy happened on their watch. Such cognitive dissonance is staggering.

It’s difficult to know where pandering to the conservative base ends and mental illness begins. Most modern right-wing conservatives are mentally ill. They’re suffering severe and mounting PTSD from a self-created lack of dignity, respect and relevance.

Signs and symptoms of mental illness vary depending on the disorder, circumstances and other factors. Mental illness symptoms affect emotions, thoughts and behaviours.

According to the Mayo Clinic, signs and symptoms of mental illness include the following.

- Feeling sad or down.
- Confused thinking or reduced ability to concentrate.
- Excessive fears or worries.
- Extreme mood changes of highs and lows.
- Withdrawal from friends and activities.
- Significant tiredness, low energy or problems sleeping.
- Detachment from reality (delusions), paranoia or hallucinations.
- Inability to cope with daily problems or stress.
- Trouble understanding and relating to situations and to people.
- Problems with alcohol or drug use.
- Excessive anger, hostility or violence.

This is right-wing conservatives current frame of mind. This is the Republican Party in a nutshell. This is the problem that democracy faces.

It’s only once we recognise what the real problem is can we hope to alleviate it.

## **References**

[2018 ‘Mental illness’ Mayo Clinic](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mental-illness/symptoms-causes/syc-20374968?ref=boscutti.com)

[Ranna Parekh R 2018 ‘Warning signs of mental illness’ American Psychiatric Association](https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/warning-signs-of-mental-illness?ref=boscutti.com)
### Fucking Bunnings!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/fucking-bunnings/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:02:08.000Z
It’s the weekend in Australia.

Which means it’s time for the ritual drive to your nearest cathedral of latter-day handymen and women, your nearest Bunnings Warehouse.

You leave home early to beat the rush, figuring the local charity won’t have yet fired up the barbecue under the green popup gazebo. Which means you can avoid buying a sausage because what the hell’s in a sausage anyway? And could the bread be any whiter? Or spongier?

You can definitely do without the charity sausage. You’ve got some home improvements to get to work on. You’re not here to waste your precious weekend.

You find a park close to the entrance and stride straight in. Acknowledge the quick hello from the young greeter that’s supposed to disuade you from [shoplifting](https://fortune.com/2016/05/04/walmart-brings-back-greeters-to-improve-service-and-fight-theft/?ref=boscutti.com).

You’re on a mission. You need a skirting board and nails. Ask another team member to point you to the right aisle. And there they are. But there are just two skirting boards left in the size you need. And both are warped. Fucking Bunnings!

You choose the one that’s least warped. You pick up a packet of nails and try not to think of all the blades and tools and hoses and taps and screws and bits and bobs and whatnots you’ve bought from Bunnings over the years that are, well, complete crap made to the cheapest price.

It’s stunning to realise the household hardware chain sells around $2 billion of crap every year. It’s a pretty good business model. Sell household crap that either breaks or deteriorates quickly and needs to be replaced with new crap. Why sell a quality toilet that’s going to last decades when you can sell a cheaper toilet that only lasts a couple of years over and over and over. Fucking Bunnings!

You check the people already lining up at the checkouts. You think about all the houses built with bits and pieces from Bunnings that are already falling apart. You wonder where real builders shop. You scan the warped skirting board but fumble to scan the plastic packet of nails because the staple that’s securing the lid shut snags on the side of your finger. Now your bleeding and scanning at the same time. Fucking Bunnings!

You wait for the receipt to spit out and head towards the exit, past the biggest pile of the smallest cardboard boxes you’ve ever seen. You try not to knock anyone out with the warped skirting board as you step out. Wait a sec. What’s that smell in the air. Hell, the gazebo’s out and sausages are sizzling. Fucking Bunnings!

You buy one sausage with onions on what’s supposed to be multigrain bread. You try not to bleed all over it as you wolf it down, hoping you won’t get indigestion or blood poisoning. Fucking Bunnings!

When you get back home you size up the skirting board, measure it within a millimetre of its life and delicately cut and hammer it in place. Wait. What? It’s warped worse than you thought. It rises a millimetre and a bit in the centre. Given the whole function of a skirting board is to straighten out any errors, you’re a little pissed. Fucking Bunnings!

You try and pull out a nail but the head snaps off. Seriously! What was supposed to be a simple job becomes absurdly complicated because of crappy materials. With lots and lots of repositioning and fixing to get is a close to perfect as you can.

Just as well you picked up some Polyfilla and sandpaper last weekend.

Fucking Bunnings!
### Myer: Truth in advertising
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/myer-truth-in-advertising/
Last updated: 2023-07-06T00:03:58.000Z
You’re a good writer and a halfway decent designer.

And you’re looking for a job. So you sign up with Seek for daily updates as a copywriter.

A position advertised by Myer for a Content Design Lead lands in your inbox. This is the job ad verbatim.

## Content Design Lead - Myer

*Work is a whole lot better when you love what you do, we know that. That’s why we make sure that the loves and interests of our people match their responsibilities. We take what they love, and we let them live it.*

*So, do you want to be part of a team who loves coming to work each day? A team that makes Myer a great place to shop, and an even greater place to work?*

*As the Content Design Lead, you will play a pivotal role in briefing and creating content for Myer social media channels. In addition, you will also be a subject matter expert in social, digital and mobile content, and are responsible for reporting on the performance of content and sharing best practice and insights back into the business.*

- *Opportunity to be a part of and execute special projects*
- *Make an impact within a dynamic and collaborative team*
- *Ongoing training and development for your progression*

***About the Role:***

- *Creative lead for content published on Myer social media channels (paid and organic), managing calendars and ensuring all content drives key success metrics*
- *Produce relevant and engaging content for use across Myer social media and digital channels, including but not limited to resizing of existing assets, designing new assets, organic copywriting, and the creation and editing of GIFs and MP4s*
- *Working with the Content Production Lead on concepting, receiving feedback, and leading the art direction and execution of in-house social media content shoots*
- *Advising on the creation of supplier content, including influencer created content*
- *Assisting in the creation of creative collateral for business and marketing purposes, subject to capacity*
- *Briefing creative agency on social media requirements for marketing campaigns and providing guidance and feedback on shoots where necessary to ensure social-friendly assets are being considered*
- *Briefing and collaborating with freelance designers in the production of content for use across Myer social media and digital channels, ensuring content adheres to brand guidelines and is received in a timely manner*
- *Maintaining awareness of best practices and trends in social and mobile content and educating the broader team and key stakeholders on best practice*
- *Identifying opportunities for channel enhancements and initiatives, working with the Social Media and Marketing teams to bring ideas to life*
- *Analysing and reporting on content performance metrics, making suggestions for improvement week on week and sharing insights with key stakeholders on a regular basis*

***About You:***

- *4+ years social/digital design experience, including graphic design, copywriting, branding, storyboarding and art direction*
- *Previous experience as a Content Design Lead, Digital Designer, Content Producer, Production Lead (or equivalent)*
- *Advanced knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects or Premier Pro (sic)*
- *Knowledge and understanding of key social channels for business purposes including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest*
- *Ability to guide creative decision making in conjunction with other team members*
- *Retail industry experience highly valued*

***Benefits to You:***

- *Generous team member discounts on all Myer products*
- *The experience to work alongside industry pioneers*
- *Ongoing training and development for your career progression*
- *The opportunity to be a part of and contribute to the Myer growth strategy*

*If you are ready to make your mark within Australia’s Largest Department store, don’t miss this opportunity.*

*APPLY NOW!*

You look at the $110,000 salary. It’s less than your last salary but, hey, maybe all that love will make up the difference.

So you ask some people what it’s like working at Myer. It’s not good.

Common complaints include underpayment, aggressive management techniques, imbalanced workloads within teams, unclear expectations, micromanagement, stress.

About the only good thing is you’re allowed to bring in your own coffee or coffee pods as part of the latest cost-cutting exercise.

Let’s rewrite the job ad so it’s closer to the truth.

****Social Media Follower - Myer**

Work is a whole lot better when you love what you do, especially as we’re going to ask you to work extra hours without extra pay. We take what you love, and we let you imagine you live it while paying you as little as possible.

Somehow we’ll convince you that working for love is so much better than working for holiday pay, superannuation, bonuses and all the security workers have earned over the years.

You’ll play a pivotal role in briefing and creating content for Myer social media channels in the vain attempt that platforms that deliver less than 0.01% sales conversion will miraculously save a flailing department store that fails to understand that tactics are not strategy.

Because we don’t know anything about social, digital and mobile content, we expect you to bring the entire department store up to speed.

- Opportunity to be a part of and execute special projects that make senior managers and executives look good as they look for new positions
- Make an impact within a dynamic and collaborative team while not ruffling any feathers or questioning how we’ve always done things
- Ongoing training and development for your progression as long as it’s not Harvard, Stanford or any other world-leading tertiary institution

****About the role:**

- Creative lead for content published on Myer social media channels (paid and organic), managing calendars and ensuring all content drives key success metrics which will be constantly changing on-the-fly
- Produce relevant and engaging content for use across Myer social media and digital channels, including but not limited to resizing of existing assets, designing new assets, organic copywriting, and the creation and editing of GIFs and MP4s to basically mimic our print catalogue because we don’t do standalone ideas
- Working with the Content Production Lead on concepting, receiving feedback, and leading the art direction and execution of in-house social media content shoots which means you’re essentially the creative director working barely above minimum wage
- Advising on the creation of supplier content, including influencer created content because apparently influencers are still a thing to somebody somewhere
- Assisting in the creation of creative collateral for business and marketing purposes as we don’t have enough creatives on staff and you love working after work without getting paid
- Briefing Clemenger BBDO on social media requirements for marketing campaigns and providing guidance and feedback on shoots where necessary to ensure social-friendly assets are being considered but ultimately rejected because there’s never enough time
- Briefing and collaborating with freelance designers in the production of content for use across Myer social media and digital channels, ensuring content adheres to brand guidelines and is received in a timely manner while screwing down their quotes and losing their invoices
- Maintaining awareness of best practices and trends in social and mobile content and educating the broader team and key stakeholders on best practice in the full knowledge that it will go in one ear and out the other
- Identifying opportunities for channel enhancements and initiatives, working with the Social Media and Marketing teams to bring poorly thought out ideas to life on your day off
- Analysing and reporting on content performance metrics, making suggestions for improvement week on week and sharing insights with key stakeholders who will pretend to know what you’re reporting about on a regular basis

****About you:**

- 4+ years social/digital design experience, including graphic design, copywriting, branding, storyboarding, art direction, psychology, brain surgery
- Previous experience as a Content Design Lead, Digital Designer, Content Producer, Production Lead (or equivalent), Senior Design Director, Executive Creative Director, Secretary of State
- Advanced knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects or Premiere Pro because you’ll need to do final effects edits and professional colour grades on top of everything else
- Knowledge and understanding of key social channels for business purposes including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest which senior management still think are free delivery networks despite falling reach
- Ability to guide creative decision making in conjunction with other team members to compromise any good ideas into a futile waste of pixels
- Retail industry experience highly valued despite such experience essentially being the kiss of death

****Benefits to you:**

- Generous team member discounts of up to 25% on poorly made Myer merchandise that no one wants to buy let alone wear
- The experience to work alongside industry pioneers if we could somehow turn the hands of time back a hundred years to 1921 when Sydney Myer (born Simcha Myer Baevski) bought the building in Bourke Street to create what was to become the Myer chain of department stores
- Ongoing training and development for your career progression without any of the founding humanist values such as medical and nursing aid for the staff, and rest homes for them at the seaside and in the Dandenong Ranges
- The opportunity to be a part of and contribute to the Myer death spiral strategy

If you think you can make your mark within Australia’s largest department store that only managed to return a profit this year thanks to wage subsidies and rent waivers, run the other way.

NEVER APPLY!

Yes, Myer has some issues. Least of which are the pariahs and vultures waiting to feed on its corpse.

The sad truth is that Myer has become a discount brand of its own making. It literally discounted its own future.

For all its talk of disrupting retailing from the inside out, it chose the cheapest option.

Total sales continue to plunge. It cut off its nose to spite its face.

Is it any wonder it’s bleeding to death?
### What’s most important?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/most-important/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T23:42:34.000Z
There will always be too much to do.

You will never do everything you want to do. You will never get on top of everything.

But you can choose what not to do in favor of what matters most to you.

Disregard the unimportant that drains your energy and time.

Focus only on what’s most important to you.
### Let’s renew creativity
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/renew-creativity/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T23:38:07.000Z
You know how they say everyone can be creative?

They’re lying. Yes, everyone can write, everyone can paint a picture, everyone can take a photo. But having a skill or pressing a button doesn’t mean you’re creative. More often than not it means your replicative. You’re just replicating someone else’s creativity.

And that dickweed executive who says creativity is simply connecting two previously unconnected things is a simple-minded idiot. By that measure, banging your head against a brick wall is creative.

Such diminution of creativity undervalues its power. It reduces creatives to interchangeable widgets. Even worse it leads to the wrong people making creative decisions.

When the wrong people are making creative decisions, the wrong creative gets made. As is evident by the sad state of creativity in advertising these days. Is it just me or have you noticed how ads have become insufferable in recent years?

As a former creative director, all I see is one brief after another masquerading as an ad. No creativity, no charm, no wit. No reason to pay attention. Just one boring headline or stream of numbers after another. A waste of time and space. (Speaking of numbers, did you know you’re now more likely to die in a shark attack than click a banner ad?)

Whatever happened to creativity in advertising? All those mergers over the years have resulted in a handful of advertising conglomerates that make more money selling media than selling creativity. They’ve become incentivized to produce less effective advertising that requires a client to commit to a bigger media buy because that’s where they make the money. Always follow the money.)

This explains why advertising is in a death spiral. The fact it shot itself in the foot and the head at the same time is kind of funny. Connecting two previously unconnected things together, eh.

We need to renew creativity now more than ever. We need new ideas and new ways of living to move us out of the age of plagues to a new age of wonder.

If you look closer at the word ‘create’ you’ll discover it’s from Latin creare.

Which means to bring into being, to bring forth, to grow.

Let’s grow like never before.
### A brief apology
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/brief-apology/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T23:37:17.000Z
Hundreds of posts, thousands of words.

If any failed to hit their mark or hit it just a little too hard, I apologize.

If the occasional f-bomb exploded all over a sentence and left you reeling, I fucking apologize.

If any comedic references to Jesus offended your fragile belief system, well, I ain’t going to apologize for that.

If you don’t think God has a sense of humor, you’re not paying attention. And if you don’t think Jesus was the original standup, you need to check your history.

Of the many things Jesus was, pious wasn’t amongst them.
### You are your own villain
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-are-your-own-villain/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T23:36:16.000Z
You may think that what is holding you back is outside your control.

The colour of your skin, the social standing of your parents, the nature of your colleagues.

They may be the symptoms but they are certainly not the cause. They may be where your attention is drawn, but they are not the culprits.

What’s holding you back is buried deep within you. It may be bottled with a dash of anger. It may be hiding behind a broken heart. It may be a flimsy belief that served you as a child but now hinders you as an adult.

It’s easy to look away, to blame others. But the truth is you are to blame for holding yourself back.

You are your own villain.
### Ideas bank
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ideas-bank/
Last updated: 2024-02-14T04:39:48.000Z
Hmmm, that idea that popped into your head?

Write it down. Don’t try to make sense of it. Or think about how to monetise it. Or Instagram it.

Forget all that nonsense. Just get it out of our heads and write it down. Screen or paper, pixel or pencil. Write it down and put it in an ideas folder.

This ideas folder is your ideas bank. This is where all your ideas go after they’ve been written down. (Your ideas are your assets. When they’re in your idea bank, like any asset they gain compound interest. They double in value every seven years.)

Every once in a while, open the ideas folder and peek inside. Glance over the ideas. Stare at any that catch the eye.

Let them tick over in the mind, click over in the subconscious.
### Final epiphany
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/final-epiphany/
Last updated: 2024-02-06T20:04:13.000Z
Stephen Cannell believes the hero’s final epiphany about the villain is critical.  
  
This is the point where the hero gets the final piece of information they need to do battle with the antagonist. The hero may not even learn who their real enemy is until the final epiphany, the final revelation.  
  
This is the moment that reveals the true stature of their nemesis.  
  
The true nature of their hidden self.
### Blow shit up
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/blow-shit-up/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T23:28:51.000Z
Have you seen the new James Bond 007 movie trailer? When in doubt, blow shit up. Open with an amazing death defying-stunt and then start blowing shit up.

Blow up cars, planes, apartments, shafts, hallways, elevators, people, more cars, planes, tunnels, bridges, landmarks, clubs, bars, more people, casinos, stairs, festivals, restaurants, terraces, trucks, satellites, offices, submarines.

Blow shit up above the ground, under the ground, on the mountain tops, under the sea, in the clouds, out in outer space.

Hell, blow up the whole planet.

Blow up the whole damn thing.
### Personal hell
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/personal-hell/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T22:02:34.000Z
It can happen dead smack in the middle of Act Two.

It can occur at the end of Act Two. Or leading up to the climax in Act Three. Maybe somewhere else entirely. And often more than once.

The hero has to face their own personal hell, their own worst fears writ large. It doesn’t mean flaming devils and pitchforks (unless they’re, say, Mike Pence). It means the place they least want to be. With the people they least want to be with.

It could be sitting tightly between two sweaty fat people on a plane that never, ever lands. It could be stepping down into the dark cellar where the psychopath is filing hos teeth into fangs. It could be waking up in a coffin freshly buried in the damp autumn soil.

Space and time become constricted. A narrow gate, a gauntlet, a crucible.

Death awaits.
### Solving problems
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/solving-problems/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T22:02:03.000Z
Every problem has an area of weakness.

It’s not immediately apparent. It’s not on the surface. It’s not a symptom.

It’s an area of weakness that hides the cause of the problem.

This is the magic key you’re looking for.

Turn it and the problem resolves itself.

Unlock the problem and it evaporates.
### What’s the price?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-is-the-price/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T22:01:38.000Z
Desire and dependence are excellent force multipliers in drama.

When we pit characters for and against each other, we can shade and colour their actions beyond black and white, beyond cause and effect. Overt decisions can suddenly be second-guessed. What we think we know is true can be called into question.

Teetering characters are more interesting, more compelling than the rigid and the sure. Scenes that unsettle expectations are more fun to write. And watch.

When one character absolutely loathes another but is inexorably tied to them to achieve a desired outcome, drama is born.

Similarly when a character loves another but must hurt them to attain a goal, drama is escalated.

Whatever any character gets must always come at a price.
### Cultural infrastructure
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/cultural-infrastructure/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T22:01:04.000Z
We don’t actually want the object itself.

What we really want is to be like the person we admire who happens to be associated with that object. The object is just a means to be more like the person we admire.

That’s the cultural infrastructure of advertising and designing and communications and everything in between.

Even politics.
### The medium is the messenger
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/medium-is-messenger/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T22:00:40.000Z
What sets humans apart from other species is our ability to learn by observing and imitating others.

We watch and imitate what other people desire. Especially people we admire. They are the mediums of our desires.

The medium is not the message.

The medium is the messenger.
### Personal identity
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/personal-identity/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:59:42.000Z
The problem of personal identity is often found in good drama.

It’s an excellent theme to play with. Who does the hero think they are? Why can’t they see who they really are? What’s their Achilles heel?

Making them unsure of who they are is a good (albeit unsteady) first step towards their transformation. Or lack thereof if the drama is to be a tragedy.

Seeding elements of the antagonist into the identity of the protagonist is a fine way to internalize the drama, to embody the friction.

Pitting the hero against themselves is a fine way to incorporate the drama.

Put their plight in their own hands.
### Think freely
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/think-freely/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:50:24.000Z
Why limit our thinking to our domain of expertise?

Why hold back our thinking to what we think we know is true?

We are on the cusp of a new world. Whatever has got us to this point won’t get us to the next point.

We need to shake up our thinking from one disciple into another. Not a simple shift of associated skills and sectors but wholesale upending of beliefs and expectations.

How else can we ever create anything new?
### Face your boredom
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/face-boredom/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:49:50.000Z
Put the phone down, breathe through the near-instant irritability and lean back with eyes closed.

Stretch and shift your position to break muscle memory. Empty your mind of that mindless chatter, that low-grade skitter of background media. Listen for the silence.

Open your eyes and see the world anew.
### Self-epiphany
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/self-epiphany/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:46:59.000Z
There’s a crucial moment in every great novel or film or play.

That moment when the hero is struck by a powerful self-epiphany. For the first time in the drama, the hero is emotionally and psychologically stripped bare to reveal who they really are.

Who they thought they were? Gone. What they thought they believed? Adios. This shattering moment of self-discovery will either destroy the hero. Or make them stronger.

A tragedy is when the hero is destroyed by the self-revelation. When the hero is transformed into a better version of themselves?

That’s the ascendancy we all seek.
### Modern-day slavery
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/modern-day-slavery/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:45:21.000Z
The best minds of my generation are not working in quantitative finance or finding a cure for cancer.

The best minds of my generation are busy formulating persuasive user experiences that turn social media users into social media addicts, thumbing endlessly through one instant dopamine hit to the next.

Fodder for social media networks to parcel and collateralize and auction to the highest bidder.

Media as modern-day slave market.
### Addicts
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/addicts/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:44:12.000Z
Three generations of heroin addicts

Staggering down the street

Without masks or shields

Father, son and holy ghost

Rotten teeth and sunken cheeks

Stumbling from the pain

Of the modern world
### Move on
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/move-on/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:42:10.000Z
Every idea has its day.

Every project has its end.

That’s the beauty of a deadline. It brings everything to a close.

No more scuttling about trying to make sense of it all. No more scrambling to keep making it better. No more hoping.

When it’s over, it’s over.

And time to move on.
### Value of life
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/value-of-life/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:41:47.000Z
All the work we do is supposed to generate more freedom, more leisure.

So why are we working and designing and writing and directing and producing harder than ever? Why has our leisure time evaporated?

We’re so stressed we feel guilty if we’re not working, not doing something day and night. Maybe we feel a sense of control in these slightly unsteady time. Maybe by constantly focusing on work we can justify not stopping to pause and consider more important values.

Like the value of life itself.
### Three things I need to say to Kamala Harris
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/three-things-i-need-to-say-to-kamala-harris/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:41:12.000Z
Kamala, what the fuck?

It’s not a dog and pony show. It’s a television debate.

You’re supposed to wrangle words and language in your favour. Mike Pence triumphed over you by simply dropping the words ‘America’ and ‘American’ every chance he got. Used them as nouns, verbs, adjectives, whatever.

You kept talking about facts. It’s a television debate. On television.

Television doesn’t care about facts. It’s drama all the way. Narrative from go to whoah.

1\. Jiujutsu the language away from the Republicans. How? Stop calling people ‘people’. Call them ‘Americans.’ Stop saying ‘people died’. Start saying ‘innocent Americans died’.

2\. Fuck with Pence every chance you get. Ask him if he wants to invite his wife on stage because you know how uncomfortable he is one on one with any other woman. Ask him who does his hair? If he ever changes his suit? How his Russian language lessons are coming along?

2\. Never refer to Donald Trump as ‘President Trump’. Refer to him as ‘President Slump’.

Like I said to Joe, give Americans a simple three-step plan to kill the monster, save their lives and heal the land. You don’t want to win 51 percent of the vote.

You want a landslide that will carry you across multiple terms.

Take ‘em out once and for all, Kamala.
### Designing for perpetuity
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/designing-for-perpetuity/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:40:00.000Z
Bruce Mau believes sustainability is the baseline - a necessary place from which to start.

It is the price of entry, not the endgame. Sustainability is actually the least we can do. It is far from the most we are capable of.

Most sustainability projects, however valid in themselves, rest on a platform or infrastructure that is inherently unsustainable.

Instead of sustainability, we should think in terms of perpetuity - a mode of life that is intrinsically self-sustaining.

Designing for perpetuity requires us to reexamine the deep, underlying structures that support us. Designing for perpetuity means looking for forms that not only reduce waste but produce new life.
### Resilience
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/resilience/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:39:27.000Z
Juliet Schor believes the national/international model looks more efficient than it is because it’s not paying its true costs in terms of carbon pollution, and the unemployment it leads to at home.

Localizing will reduce unemployment by creating more demand locally, and that in turn leads to more fairness/less inequality. New high tech small scale technology makes local production more efficient than in the past.

That’s one key to why local economies are now a viable alternative to the giant corporations and globalized structures. Their resilience in the face of uncertainties such as disasters and financial panics is another.
### A design choice
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/a-design-choice/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:39:00.000Z
Bruce Mau believes progress is only progress if it enhances our lives.

And progress can only be perpetual if it aligns with the environment that supports us.

Technological advance is inevitable, but its outcomes are not.

Technology can enslave us and degrade the planet. Or it can free us and enrich the planet.

This is a choice - a design choice, which is becoming increasingly urgent.
### Public consumption
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/public-consumption/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:38:25.000Z
Juliet Schor believes all private consumption is a substitute for an alternative use of economic resources.

And what are those alternatives? Instead of private consumption, one can save money, take leisure or pay for more public consumption.

The excessive orientation to private consumption has squeezed these other things, which I would argue yield more welfare to people once they reach the middle class.

More savings, more leisure time and more public consumption would raise wellbeing more than extra TVs, cashmere sweaters and shifting from a regular car to an SUV.
### Make life easier
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/make-life-easier/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:37:47.000Z
Bruce Mau believes as we create greater efficiencies, we get to choose how we use them.

We can progressively reduce the costs of time and resources demanded by manufacturing, but there is nothing inevitable about how we deploy the benefits that technology produces.

We can use those benefits to make life easier or to produce and consume more. We can use them to enhance our environment or accelerate its decline.

The early-twentieth-century promise of technology was to create more leisure time by freeing us from routine chores. But the average hours worked per week did not fall during the last century.

For the past twenty years, in fact, average working hours in the US have been increasing - by about one full day's work per year.

Here is the problem. We have allowed the benefits of technology to increase dramatically what we perceive as our needs. Fulfilling these new needs demands more and more effort and impact.

For several decades, automotive performance has increased at a compounding rate of approximately 1 percent every year. We could have used that achievement to reduce the cost and environmental impact of cars.

Instead, we’ve used most of it to make vehicles bigger heavier more powerful and more expensive. In fact, anxieties now run so high that people feel they need a tank to go shopping! So now we have to work longer hours to pay for our mobile fortresses.
### Environmental degradation
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/environmental-degradation/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:22:32.000Z
Juliet Schor believes people tend not to connect clothing with environmental degradation.

But there are a variety of degrading effects of apparel production, such as pesticide-intensive cotton cultivation or the synthetic/toxic dyes used in almost all apparel production.

Leather is another example of a good which has gone from a luxury to a mass consumer good available at very low prices. Leather tanning is extraordinarily toxic and has enormous health impacts on tannery workers as well as the people dependent on the local water supplies which are polluted by the toxic chemicals used in tanning.
### Designing and distributing new tools
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/designing-and-distributing-new-tools/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:22:06.000Z
Bruce Mau believes it’s tempting to focus on the details of our failure when we should be looking at the broad brushstrokes of our success.

We can put new tools for positive development into the hands of more people today than have ever experienced them in history.

The most extraordinary opportunity and the most pressing challenge of our time is designing and distributing new tools that we can all contribute to and benefit from.
### Relevant consumption
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/relevant-consumption/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:21:28.000Z
Juliet Schor believes our most serious problem is the impact of consumer activity on the planetary ecology.

Our consumption is a key cause of global warming as well as species extinction, ecosystem degradation and toxic chemical poisoning.

Relevant consumption includes vehicles, which are a salient example, especially with the shift to sport utility vehicles and the decline in average fleet mileage in the US.

The tremendous growth in housing size is also important. Residential energy use is now rising in the US after decades of decline. We are building more energy-efficient houses, but that has been more than compensated for by much bigger houses with many more appliances, such as jacuzzis and steam showers and extra freezers and the proliferation of consumer electronics.

Air travel is another very, very carbon-intensive activity. Meat consumption is also highly environmentally degrading. Shrimp is another good example. We’ve gone from a world in which shrimp was a luxury, eaten by the wealthy and as a special treat by the middle classes. Now there are ‘all you can eat’ shrimp buffets for $7.99.

Shrimp is cheap and the reason is that we have shifted to shrimp cultivation, which is destroying mangroves and coastline ecosystems in many parts of the world and is one of the most environmentally damaging products that we’re consuming right now.
### Creative transformation
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/creative-transformation/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:20:49.000Z
Bruce Mau believes successful designers seek out the worst problems to discover the greatest creative possibilities.

It’s a simple principle. The biggest challenges in human history make for the biggest opportunities in human history.

The worst problem the human race has yet encountered has the potential to unleash the greatest creativity that has ever been seen on the planet.

Look beyond the chilling feed of daily news and you'll discover that a creative explosion is already beginning.

Entrepreneurs, activists, inventors, and philanthropists are devising extraordinary ways in which to stem, and even reverse, the current tide of destruction.

Energy, construction, buildings, transportation, food. In each of these areas lie massive opportunities for creative transformation.
### Change and adapt
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/change-and-adapt/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:18:14.000Z
Paola Antonelli believes we will all have to change and adapt.

Design will change in its most concrete manifestations. Of course, design as a methodology does not change. Like all industries, the design industry is in a crisis.

Designers have less work and are looking at the future with a feeling of uncertainty. I have a feeling that there’s going to be a restructuring of the way design studios work.

The idea of having a more dispersed and open-ended studio that works on different locations and on different projects could be a way to go, but no matter what, our professions will have to adapt.

I don’t think that there’s going to be anyone whose life will remain the same.
### A better life
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/better-life/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:17:46.000Z
Bruce Mau believes there is no way to reverse the global demand for a better life.

If we think of our current crisis as a runaway train then we need to replace the old diesel engine with an ecology of clean energy drawing on many renewable sources.

Energy first and foremost not a technology problem but a design problem. Only by reconceptualizing our relationship with energy - both its production and its consumption - can we resolve the challenge that it poses.

We need to replace the material from which the old train is made so that it is lighter quieter stronger smarter cleaner consumer products define to a large extent our impact on the environment. The selection (and invention) of materials is another fundamental design problem at the global level, but also for every individual product.

We need to redesign the experience of being on the train so that we are not waiting or suffering but living the best of human possibility and enjoying our time together - learning, collaborating, growing.

The compulsive consumption that threatens our future is driven by innocent and eradicable motives. The universal pursuit of comfort ease, and wellbeing.

To resolve the problem we have to design new ways to deliver those same experiences and exceed the yield of happiness that our current model provides.

We need to reinvent the way in which the train connects with everything else, and understand it as a network ecology of movement. Objects and events are easy to see; systems are invisible. But only by understanding the invisible systems that connect our reality - and sharing that understanding in simple and vivid ways - can we achieve the scale of transformation that we require.

To redesign the runaway train of mass consumerism will require a mass movement of small and large changes. The result of this collective effort will be more not less, abundance not sacrifice, beauty not deprivation, life not death.

An economy of movement toward a new way of life, and no longer a runaway train.
### Redesign it
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/redesign-it/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:17:07.000Z
Bruce Mau believes the Western ideal of an affluent lifestyle has been marketed to an ever-growing audience-thanks largely to advances in communication technologies.

Images of limitless consumption have become normalized around the world. As a result, a global population is emerging from poverty and demanding the glamor, convenience, and luxury of the advanced economies - the same lifestyle they see on their TV sets and cell phones.

But the dream is unattainable. We have set in motion a runaway train of consumption worldwide, and this train threatens to derail life on Earth. The train cannot be stopped. But it can be redesigned.

The runaway train of consumption is a direct effect of the collision of population growth with technological growth, coupled with the relentless spread of Western cultural norms.

Every effort to stop the train by demanding personal sacrifice or abandoning the powerful dream of democratic wealth, first realized by the United States, has failed. We will not get this life-threatening train into reverse.

Our only hope is to redesign it - while it is racing down the track.
### Radical changes
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/radical-changes/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:16:26.000Z
Paola Antonelli believes design is one of our most powerful tools in the COVID-19 crisis.

The ingenuity, resourcefulness, and generosity of designers and their collaborators worldwide has produced innovations that are helping to protect us from the pandemic, to improve its treatment and to prepare for the radical changes it will introduce to our lives in the future.

Design can help, not only designers and corporations, but also citizens, politicians, and every human being reach their goals.

Especially if their goals are a movement toward justice and more responsibility toward other humans, other species, and the environment.
### Existential limits of hubris
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/existential-limits-of-hubris/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:15:34.000Z
Bruce Mau believes there’s no reason to believe our ancestors were kinder or better than us - there were simply fewer of them.

One key distinction of the modern era is scale. The world's population has more than quadrupled since 1900 - a massive acceleration in growth.

The other key distinction is technology, which amplifies our power to impact the environment. The scale of our impact can give us new insights into our relationship with nature.

We are finding that nature does not merely submit to our interventions, it also responds. Ultimately, that response - climate change, soil erosion, species extinction - will prove more powerful than any conceivable human technology.

Nature’s response to our activities now threatens to overwhelm us. We are ultimately reaching the existential limits of hubris.

Now is the time to radically rethink our status as a species, and to re-engineer our activities in order to reflect our true context within the natural world.
### Positive outcome
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/positive-outcome/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:14:52.000Z
Sadly, most countries’ public Covid-19 information campaigns have been fuzzy, inaccurate and forgettable.

They’re poorly thought-out, confusingly designed and so inconsistent as to be a waste of time and resources. And lives.

We’re not talking about aesthetics. This is bad design that actually kills people. Australia’s Covid-19 information campaigns are still a mishmash of good intentions and disastrous outcomes. Bad strategy, bad creative, bad writing, bad design, bad fonts, bad colors.

America’s Covid-19 information campaigns are figuratively and literally a death wish. An existential crisis masquerading as public health campaigns. It would be more accurate to call them public death campaigns.

But there is one glowing exception. Unite Against Covid-19, which was commissioned by the New Zealand government and designed by Clemenger BBDO Wellington. More than a few people believe it’s the most intelligently and sensitively designed public information programme in this pandemic.

Mark Dalton, creative director of the campaign and Clemenger BDDO, had to devise, develop and deliver across all platforms and media channels in a week. A simple, considerate and consistent campaign which visually balances black pictograms and black type with warm yellow angled stripes.

Mark wanted to make whatever people were being asked to do to seem simple and achievable. Telling a story with a picture is a good and fast way to help people to recognize what they need to do. No one wants to read 15-word headlines on posters when they’re walking around town.

The pictograms also allowed the campaign to add a human touch. The agency tried hard to make them look like they’d been drawn by a person, rather than coming from an icon library, so it felt like there were people behind the campaign who were trying to do whatever they could to help. They didn’t want it to feel like a robotic government announcement.

If you’re trying to help people, the last thing you want to tell them is not to do something.

You need to tell them what to do to achieve a positive outcome.
### Look for difficult
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/look-for-difficult/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:12:01.000Z
Bruce Mau believes the biggest problems create the biggest opportunities.

The worse things are, the happier designers become. A good situation is not interesting, a bad situation is good, a terrible situation is inspirational.

Wherever things are not working there is an entrepreneurial opportunity for design. We should look for the toughest challenges in the world today -- they are also the biggest business opportunities in human history.

The greater the problem, the bigger the potential impact. The pursuit of hard problems can be applied on a small scale too. You may not be tackling great global issues; your design challenges may be local and specific.

Nevertheless, the same principle applies. Look for difficulty and love the impossible.

Where others see defeat, discover possibility.
### Levels of thinking
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/levels-of-thinking/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:11:05.000Z
Bruce Mau believes we have to redesign the car into a whole new economy.

Of course, the process is slow and messy, corrupted by vested interests, inhibited by technological challenges, and imperfect in its environmental implications!

But change is happening, in the right direction. And despite appearances, it’s happening extraordinarily fast.

Problems are never discrete things; you cannot take a problem out of its context and expect to solve it satisfactorily. You have to expand the brief and think about the problem in the context of its entire ecology.

Once you articulate this ecology, you can design at a higher level of complexity. This leads to a rapid expansion of possibility, because the solution you’re looking for may lie in entirely other domains to the expected ones.

As designers, we must always be ready to shift our levels of thinking. The larger the view, the greater the optimism and the better the potential outcome.
### A pulse
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/pulse/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:10:28.000Z
Paul Hawken believes if you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data.  
  
But, if you meet the people who are working to restore this Earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.
### Tireless work of design
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/tireless-work-of-design/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:09:15.000Z
Bruce Mau believes we have to keep remembering that the major crises in the world today are primarily crises of success.

This is a recurring pattern. Many of our greatest triumphs inadvertently produce disasters, which can then lead to new triumphs.

Our success in such fields as reducing disease, improving sanitation, and growing food has crowded the planet with over seven billion people. Our success in providing cheap transport, abundant energy, and all the comforts of consumer products has put the environment in danger.

In other words, our current problems are the direct consequence of earlier solutions. These problems must now provoke us to generate new solutions at a higher order of complexity: that’s the optimistic part.

And our next solutions will produce a whole new class of problems and requires an endless pursuit of better solutions.

This is the tireless work of design.
### Informed thinking
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/informed-thinking/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T21:08:07.000Z
Bruce Mau believes the greatest challenges we face today were produced by design, and must be solved by design.

They originated in optimism - most of all, the optimism of the industrial revolution. We have to understand our place in history and embrace the optimistic outlook that got us here. But we must refine that outlook with informed thinking.

Only with fact-based optimism can we apply design to such massive problems as hunger, disease, climate change, and globalization.
### Shape the world
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/shape-world/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:57:52.000Z
Bruce Mau believes it’s time transform the conventional order of things.

Visualize the shift from old world, where design was a subset of business, business a function of culture, and culture happened in a natural context.

Over the last fifty years the capacity to shape the world has so dramatically expanded that design is now the biggest project of all.

The new reality of design is that business, culture, and nature are now design projects.

It’s not about control. It’s about responsibility. We now have such profound capacity to shape the world, to transform the planet, that if we don’t take responsibility for it, we could inflict untold damage.

In fact, we already have. Where we failed to design we designed for failure. All over the world, we were destroying the ecosystems we relied on to sustain us.

We need to go back to design and recover the ecosystems we had previously neglected and destroyed.

This new worldview for design means that responsibility for the welfare of all of life is now our mandate, our challenge, and our inspiration.
### Three more things I need to say to Joe Biden
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/three-more-things-i-need-to-say-to-joe-biden/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:56:48.000Z
Joe, man, are you determined to lose the next US presidential election?

What’s with the anti-Trump stance? We all know the game. We all know the premise. Of course you have to beat Trump. That goes without saying.

But be damned if that bankrupt real estate developer and all his Republican cronies haven’t boxed you and the Democrats into a corner of your own making. You’ve become the Mexican rapists, you’ve become the attackers Trump is defending Americans from. Instead of the attackers flooding into the land of the free from crime-ridden Mexico, you’re now the attackers flooding into the suburbs from crime-ridden and plague-addled cities.

Elections aren’t about politics or policies or politburos. Elections are about people.

People don’t care what you can do. They only care what you can do for them.

1\. You’re pitching good. The other side is pitching great. You don’t have to be a genius to see which pitch Americans are going to prefer when they cast their votes.

2\. It’s all advertising. It’s not meant to be real. It’s not meant to be the truth (whatever the hell that is). It’s all about the promise.

3\. Don’t promise a better future (or some hackneyed Build Back Better slogan). Promise a future where you will slay the monster that is social injustice and upheaval brought about by the Republicans who rob from the poor to pay the rich, who get fat from the sweat of the working class.

Promise to publicly shame and jail every Republican politician who’s put their own interests ahead of the people. Draw a list. Add names.

Smash the upcoming election out of the park. Don’t just win with a congressional seat here and there. Knock the Republicans out of the game.

Win with a massive landslide that will carry you across multiple terms.

And change politics forever, Joe.
### Resolving the contradiction
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/resolving-contradiction/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:55:51.000Z
Bruce Mau admits that sometimes we slip up.

Sometimes we fail to match our actions to our words. That’s the time for candor.

When there’s a discrepancy between ideal and action, we should be open about it and work toward resolving the contradiction.

Our human weaknesses can enhance the inspiration we provide but only if we acknowledge and combat them.
### Honest, fresh, insightful and generative
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/honest-fresh-insightful-and-generative/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:54:36.000Z
Bruce Mau believes integrity of word and action is the soul of inspiration.

People don’t follow mere ideas, at least not for long. They follow exemplary action.

Rhetoric can whip up a crowd and create a momentary high for the individual. But only when words meet deeds can inspiration be sustained for the long haul.

The formula for leadership by inspiration is challenging but simple - walk your talk.

That’s the key to sustained inspiration - and also the meaning of exemplary action.

Exemplary action is honest, fresh, insightful and generative.

It makes words believable, and visions attainable.
### Brand new world
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/brand-new-world/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:53:45.000Z
Welcome to our brand new world.

It’s not quite like our old world. Making money is no longer the be-all and end-all. Elements have been reordered from the typical capitalist paradigm to something more human, more universal.

Every company - regardless of industry - is now a media company first, a health company second, and whatever product/service they sell third.

All companies need to follow this pattern to survive and thrive in the new world.

All creatives need to follow this pattern to make a sustainable impact.

All those that don’t will be sold for parts.
### Begin anywhere
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/begin-anywhere/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:53:17.000Z
John Cage believes that many times we wait for the perfect moment to do something.  
  
Instead, consider starting exactly where you are. Once you begin, the momentum builds and it’s easier to keep going.  
  
Don’t worry about starting at a certain point or needing it to look a certain way, just start.  
  
Begin anywhere.
### Three things I need to say to Joe Biden
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/three-things-i-need-to-say-to-joe-biden/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:51:29.000Z
Joe, champ, good job at the convention.

Now let’s get to it. I presume you want to win the next US presidential election. The platitudes, the calling for a higher standard, the let’s-roll-up-our-sleeves-and-beat-that-darn-Trump is all good and well. But they’re table stakes. They just get you in the game.

If you want to win, you’re going to have to do things differently. I know holding the higher ground makes you feel good. Unfortunately, it makes the working class feel like shit. And makes the middle and upper-middle class feel scared shitless because they have further to fall.

It’s not about polls. Or campaign yah-yahs. Or tactics. It’s not about the bunting and merch. That’s not going to determine who will be the next president.

Whoever tells the best story will win. Don’t tell the story of policy and politics. And don’t tell the usual us vs. them story. Don’t compare anything to Trump. Or Trump to anything. Instead, paint him out of the picture, out of history. Never mention his name or his deeds. Box him into his own echo chamber. Deadlock the door and throw away the key. Supersede the motherfucker.

People don’t care what you can do. They only care what you can do for them.

1. Despite what every campaign strategist says, you are not the hero of the story. American voters of all stripes and persuasions are the hero. (Replace the word ‘America’ with ‘Americans’ at every turn.)
2. You are the mentor who understands their plight and will save them from the antagonist, the monster. (Keep selling the monster so it becomes more and more and more dangerous.)
3. The antagonist, the monster isn’t Trump and those scallywags in the Republican party. The antagonist is the forces tearing Americans apart.

Give them a simple three-step plan to kill the monster, save their lives and heal the land. You don’t want to win 51% of the vote.

You want a landslide that will carry you across multiple terms.

Knock ‘em dead, Joe.
### Extraordinary solutions
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/extraordinary-solutions/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:50:37.000Z
Bruce Mau believes that as a designer, inspiration is your primary responsibility.

Great design continues to produce inspiration long after it is completed. It not only solves a particular problem, it also inspires people to solve new problems by demonstrating that extraordinary solutions can be realized.

Even the most banal design impacts the future. But to change the future in a way that inspires, you must bring others along with you. For that reason, collaboration and inspiration are inseparable.

After all what we call design is a collective enterprise, a collaboration to reshape the future.

Which is only possible with inspiration.
### Inspiration first
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/inspiration-first/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:50:00.000Z
Bruce Mau believes if you fail to inspire, you will produce activity but not transformation.

When timelines are short and stress is high, it’s tempting to dive straight into the mechanics of a project.

But that's a fatal error. You will cut off your primary energy source.

Without inspiration, no one is going anywhere.
### Childlike conviction
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/childlike-conviction/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:48:51.000Z
Bruce Mau knows inspiration must always be the starting point.

Inspiration springs from the belief that anything is possible - that the most challenging problems can be solved.

This belief will sometimes appear irrational. And it needs to be. There’s a place for reason in design, but not at the beginning.

We need to set out with a childlike conviction that anything we can imagine, we can manifest.
### Different questions
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/different-questions/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:48:11.000Z
Anna Balizs wants to capture accidents.

The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question.

Collect wrong answers as part of the process.

Ask different questions.
### Wild, insane, spectacular success
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/wild-insane-spectacular-success/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:46:08.000Z
Mark Manson knows that to achieve something exceptional and extraordinary, you must - by definition - do something that few or no other people are doing or willing to do.

Therefore, wild, insane, spectacular success can only be achieved by actively going against what others have done and/or believing you can do things that others believe they cannot do.

Therefore, anything that can accurately be codified into a step-by-step system on the internet is full of shit and not going to help you achieve this kind of success.
### Futura burning
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/futura-burning/
Last updated: 2024-02-10T20:42:24.000Z
Let me tell you a little story about Futura.

Yes, the geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner and released in 1927\. You probably know it was created as a contribution to the New Frankfurt project. You probably also know it’s been used on film posters, iconic publications like Vanity Fair and even on the plaque at the foot of the lunar landing vehicle on the moon to alert any visitors that we come apparently in peace.

A typeface of its time and somehow for all time. The perfect circled ‘o’, the twisted ‘?’, the dashing ‘&’. Modern, egalitarian, forward, focused. Crisp and easy to read.

Renner was not interested in fashion and the latest trends rippling through Germany. His prime inspiration was Roman Capitalis with its basic geometric shapes as his foundation. He wanted a typeface that would never grow old.

The Nazis had other ideas. They favored heavyweight 15th Century black Gothic typefaces because they spoke of real German values. They saw them as an indispensable defence against the threat of becoming less German.

The Nazis felt that Renner and other revolutionary designers trying to break free from the past were essentially anti-German. They denounced Renner as ‘nationally untrustworthy.’ In 1933, they labeled him an intellectual subversive and at the age of 55 was forbidden to work at a regular job for the rest of his life.

Ironically, two years later, the Nazis reversed their policy on typography. They condemned Gothic typefaces as abominations promoted by Jewish printers and proclaimed clean fonts to be the state-sanctioned letterform. Futura quickly became their favorite.

Especially for printed invites to Nazi book burnings.
### Stephen Cannell never saw so many guys in Armani
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/stephen-cannell-never-saw-so-many-guys-in-armani/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:44:04.000Z
*When I went to Internal Affairs, I learned so much about what was going on down there that I had no idea was happening.*

*The first thing I found out is that they aren’t all a bunch of ne’er do wells down there who hate the police department. That initial concept that I had — that everybody else has — is incorrect.*

*You know what they all are? They’re the climbers. They’re the guys who want to go to administration. They’re the smartest and sharpest. They’re the best-looking. I never saw so many guys in Armani.*

*There isn’t one guy in Internal Affairs who wears his gun on his hip — they’ve all got ankle holsters because they don’t want to spoil the cut of their clothes. It’s fucking amazing.*
### Emerging needs
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/emerging-needs/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:43:24.000Z
Anna Lisinski reminds us that as we’re reminded every day, life may never go back to the way it was.

So now is a rare opportunity for product people like you and I who are in the business of creating habits.

An opportunity to discover and provide solutions for problems and needs that are only just emerging, to help users adapt to the new normal.
### More ruthless, more dangerous
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/more-ruthless-more-dangerous/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:42:51.000Z
Steven Pressfield says in Act One, we in the audience may be introduced to the Villain (think of Charnier in France preparing his heroin-smuggling operation or the Tripods being activated in their subterranean lairs by the super storm from space).

We may experience anticipatory chills at the Evil One’s apparition. But it’s not till Act Two that the Hero truly becomes engaged with the Bad Guy. That’s when you and I as writers have to pour oil on the fire.

I know, when I’m stuck in my Second Act, I remind myself, ‘Go back to the Villain. Make him or her smarter, make him/her more formidable, more ruthless, more dangerous.’
### Adversaries must be in motion
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/adversaries-in-motion/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:24:35.000Z
Stephen Cannell says Act Two belongs to the Villain.

The Villain can help define the Hero. Ideally, the Hero expands in terms of stature and quality as the Villain evolves from prospective opponent to actual opponent.

Your Adversaries must be in motion. Adversaries should not be standing around, waiting to be caught.

At the end of Act Two is the second act curtain. This is the destruction of the Hero’s plan. At the end of Act Two the Protagonist should be almost destroyed, and at the lowest point in the drama, either physically and/or emotionally.

He (or she) is flat on his back and it looks like there is no way in hell he can succeed.
### Defunded and redesigned
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/defunded-and-redesigned/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:23:51.000Z
Jordan Hall says our social institutions are relics of the past.

We must redesign and replace all of our institutions, and make this decade the most creative and generative in human history.

Time is corrosive and the forces that tend to push all institutions into corruption have been hard at work across every aspect of our social field for decades.

At the same time, the context in which those institutions were born is also far in our past. Both the problems and possibilities of 2020 are very different to those of 1960\. What was a good car, phone or computer in 1960 is now a relic. Our social institutions are likewise relics of a past remembered by only the eldest among us. Designed by and for a different age.

It is not stretching the truth to say that *effectively all* of our social institutions are a bad combination of corrupt and obsolete. Our education system. Our healthcare system. Our food production systems. Our banking and finance systems. Our journalism and science systems. Our political systems.

They are all beyond the pale and they all should be defunded and redesigned.
### Become saner
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/become-saner/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:23:07.000Z
Stay centered as the world spins madly around you.

Know how to be still. Avoid distractions and stay fully present. Breathe into the moment.

Your greatest insights come out of your quietest moments.

As the world gets faster (and crazier) become quieter.

And saner.
### New future
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/new-future/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:22:36.000Z
We’re heading into a new future.

We’re on a new path, a new way, a new road.

A new road has direction. It carries us from an old life to a new one.
### Bring back the wolves
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bring-back-the-wolves/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:21:26.000Z
By 1925, the last wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park had been killed by park wardens as part of a policy to eliminate all predators.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Take out the predators and let nature flourish. Except that’s not what happened.

In the 70 years of the wolves’ absence, the entire Yellowstone ecosystem fell out of balance. Coyotes ran rampant while the elk and deer population exploded, overgrazing willows and aspens. And without those trees, songbirds began to decline, beavers could no longer build their dams and riverbanks started to erode. Without beaver dams and the shade from trees and other plants, water temperatures were too high for cold-water fish.

So in 1995 wolves were reintroduced into the park to reduce the elk and deer population amidst much controversy. Tourism operators feared the wolves would attack tourists and bring visitors numbers to a halt. But that’s not what happened.

Instead the elk and deer populations started diminishing immediately. Within 10 years, willows rebounded. In 20 years, the aspen began flourishing. Riverbanks stabilized and fish thrived. Songbirds returned as did beavers, eagles, foxes and badgers.

The wolves also killed coyotes. Which led to more rabbits and mice which means more hawks, badgers, weasels and foxes. There’s also more carrion lying around to feed bald eagles and bears.

The beauty of unintended consequences.
### Against the grain
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/against-the-grain/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:20:10.000Z
Go against the grain, challenge conventional wisdom and embrace unpredictability.

Don’t let your comfort zone limit your potentiality. Don’t be boxed in by your habits. Don’t get stuck in your thinking.

Get uncomfortable.

Shake things up.
### Home suite home
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/home-suite-home/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:02:47.000Z
A long house divided down the middle.

A suite of wet areas to one side (kitchen, bathroom, toilet, laundry, where all the rain harvested from the roof is stored in a waterwall with taps for direct access). A suite of dry areas to the other side (dining, living, sleeping, working, relaxing).

A suite of temperate areas for growing vegetables, herbs and other plants in between.

All lit by skylights.

All lit by the sun.
### Ideas
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ideas/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:01:47.000Z
Be careful with ideas.

They’re delicate things, fragile things.

Let them gently blossom.

And bloom.
### Capital
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/capital/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:01:13.000Z
What is to become of capital

In our age of pandemics

When money cannot save us

And debt looms larger still

When collateral starts to crumble

When instruments disintegrate

When promises decay
### Feeling stuck?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/feeling-stuck/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:59:56.000Z
Pick up a pen (or pencil or paintbrush or stylus) and write (or draw or paint or style) the first thing that pops into your mind.

Something abstract and strange. Something to startle the imagination.

Something unsettling.
### Look for eternal truths
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/look-for-eternal-truths/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:58:51.000Z
They won’t be found in the facts or the statistics or the data.

They won’t be found in the politics of the day. They won’t be found in the courts, the police, the lawyers, the justice system.

Eternal truths live in the symbols and the archetypes and stories that first brought us together.

Essential truths that outlast technological wonders and temporal distractions.

Crucial truths that point us to a better future.
### How not to become a Nazi
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-not-to-become-a-nazi/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:57:50.000Z
Freedom makes most people uncomfortable.

Unless we have the aspirations and talents to make something of ourselves, freedom is a burden. It weighs on us, on our individual responsibility.

That’s why most people seek a mass. We join mass movements to escape individual responsibility.

It’s why ardent young Nazis would chant ‘to be free from freedom, to be free at last’.

Don’t become a Nazi. Don’t join the masses.

Stand up for your personal freedom.

Stand up for yourself.
### It’s Saturday
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/it-is-saturday/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:57:03.000Z
It’s Saturday without our gods.

Without our films, without our movies, without our blockbusters. Without our cinemas and cineplexes that are our churches and cathedrals. Without our stars playing our gods.

The collective role of cinema is for us to experience the triumph of good over evil, right over wrong. All at once and all at the same time. All those struggles that all those protagonists endure and overcome - whether interplanetary spectacles or intimate art films - remind us that we will ultimately triumph despite whatever hurdles befall us.

That public catharsis as the movie peaks and crescendos and everything is right in the end? That purging of negative emotions — particularly pity and fear — necessary for renewal and restoration?

All a memory as we scroll through one bad story and another and another and another until it feels like our phones are sucking in the light around us.

It’s Saturday and the cinemas are closed.

And our dreams are empty.
### New beginnings
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/new-beginnings/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:56:12.000Z
The best thing about burying the past is that it no longer holds you back.

Unless, of course, you choose not to let go.
### How to cope in postnormal times
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/cope-in-postnormal-times/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T20:03:25.000Z
Creativity and imagination are the most important ingredients for coping in postnormal times.

Why? Because we have no other way of dealing with complexity, contradictions and chaos. Imagination is the only tool which takes us from simple reasoned analysis to higher synthesis.

There’s no other way forward. Every other way is backwards. Every other way returns us to chaos.

We either create the future or repeat the past.

Start imagining a better future.

Now go and create it.

Bring it to life.
### Dead
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/dead/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:53:30.000Z
The dead travel far

Through history into the present

Dragging lost long memories

Into the now
### A little poetry
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/little-poetry/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:51:41.000Z
Feeling stuck?

Can’t express those thoughts and ideas? Can’t find the right words?

Try a little poetry. Run on the words without worrying about punctuation or grammar or syntax. Tumble over sentences that stumble and fumble and rumble and crumble.

Push and pull the language as far as it will go.

Spin a little meaning in between the flow.
### Heroin
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/heroin-advertising-agency/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:51:02.000Z
Would it be bad to start a new advertising agency called Heroin?

With the sole purpose of making addictive advertising? Advertising we can’t look away from? Advertising that lures us in and keeps us coming back for more?

Not the hate machine that is Facebook. Not the useless interruption that is YouTube. Not the whatever the hell the Communist Party of China plans to unleash with TikTok.

But a form of advertising so pure, so pleasurable that people will pay for.
### Clean up your mess
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/clean-up-mess/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:50:18.000Z
It’s hard to move forward and create something new when something old is holding you back.

Yes, that bright shiny future initially becomes more and more appealing with each task you put in the too hard, too boring, too much of a pain in the ass basket.

But the problem is that putting those tasks in that basket doesn’t get rid of them. It might put them out of sight, but it doesn’t put them out of mind.

Those nagging tasks you’ve been putting off? Those niggling chores you’ve been trying to avoid? Set a timer for 20 minutes and do them.

Clean up your mess. Clear your plate.

Move forward without any hindrance.

Let nothing hold you back.
### Five key moments
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/five-key-moments/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:45:49.000Z
Screenwriter Robert Towne says a film really boils down to just five key moments.

Everything else? Every other page? Every other scene and line of dialogue? They exist to give those moments their impact and resonance.

1. ****Inciting incident.** This is the first premonition of impending trouble, dilemma, or circumstance that will create the main tension of the story. This is when the story really starts. Usually at the end of the first sequence but sometimes in the first few minutes. Pressure starts.
2. ****Lock-in.** The protagonist is locked into the predicament that is central to the story and there’s no turning back. This occurs at the end of the first act and propels the protagonist into a new direction in order to accomplish their new objective throughout the second act. Pressure stokes.
3. ****First culmination.** Generally occurs around the midpoint of the second act and is a pivotal (but not the most pivotal) moment. It’s the second-highest or second-lowest point in the second act, the second-highest hurdle the protagonist faces. Pressure builds.
4. ****Main culmination.** Occurs at the end of the second act and brings the main tension to a close while simultaneously helping to create a new tension for the third act. Everything ratchets up to a new level of stress. Pressure mounts.
5. ****Third act twist.** This is an unexpected but all too believable turn of events in the third act. Without a twist, the third act can seem too linear and predictable. Typically it’s the last test of the protagonist. Pressure releases.

The story ends after the point of catharsis, where the protagonist and the audience leave cleansed and purified.

Where they leave ready for a new beginning.

Ready for a new story.
### Bloom
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/bloom/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:45:07.000Z
Bury our fathers, bury our sons

Bury the old men all left behind

Murder the king, the prince, the court jester

Burn down the castles, the houses of power

Strip back the banks and clubs of dominion

Abraham, Issac and Jacob be gone

Let a new world emerge

Let equality bloom
### Coloured light
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/coloured-light/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:42:51.000Z
A film. A movie. A series.

An idea expressed in coloured light. Either projected or interjected by pixels. An idea expressed in fleeting colour and movement, sound and music, dialogue and drama.

Not a service. Not a product. Not an object yet an object our desire
### Let’s protest
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/let-us-protest/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:38:00.000Z
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts.

If we want to change society, we don’t need to change everyone all at once. We don’t need a cataclysmic revolution. We don’t need to burn it all down the ground. All we need to achieve the change we seek is the active engagement of just 3.5% of the general population. Not 35%. Just 3.5% guarantees success.

Unlike violent protests that require brute force, technological advantage and necessary carnage, nonviolent protests maintain the moral high ground. They provide better role models, better mediators.

René Girard knows we seek to imitate those we aspire to be. Most of us abhor and fear bloodshed. Most of us seek peace.

With fewer physical barriers to participation, nonviolent campaigns can maintain engagement over time. We don’t need weapons. We don’t need to be trained in combat.

By becoming the peaceful role models and mediators, nonviolent protestors become the peer group that more and more people want to be like.

The peer group that more and more people want to join.
### Secrets
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/secrets/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:37:20.000Z
The secrets we keep

Buried inside our hearts

For none to see and wonder

For none to marvel and reveal

For none to awe and liberate

For none to freedom be
### Work it out
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/work-it-out/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:33:48.000Z
Slow it down

Breathe it out

Work it out

No need to rush

And bluster

And blow

No need to fluster

And panic

And go

Breathe in deep

And breathe in slow

Bring it down

Work it out
### How to be a writer
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-to-be-a-writer/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:31:26.000Z
Get up, sit down and start writing.

One letter, one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one page at a time.

We know you don’t want to. We know you want to check your emails and your feeds. (Just a quick check. How bad can that be? Worse than you think. A lot worse. Switching between tasks robs you of cognitive focus. It can take you up to 20 minutes to get back into the flow of what you were doing. Switching between tasks every 10 minutes or so like most people means you never get into the flow. You never get to go deep on anything. You never get to the treasure.)

Do you know why you’re switching? Fear. You have absurdly high standards, you have a very strong need for approval, you have a compulsion to please. You’re a perfectionist, compulsive, conscientious, ambitious, driven, self-critical.

You’re fearful of producing poor quality work, of people’s disapproval, of causing displeasure. Why risk all that negativity when you can just go and make a cup of coffee? Why not avoid those bad feelings by avoiding writing altogether?

Because if you don’t write it’s not the disapproval of others you face. It’s the disapproval of your own self. Negating your existence is no way to get through life.

Pull up a chair and start writing. And keep writing.

That’s how to be a writer.
### Murderman
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/murderman/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:30:16.000Z
When the murderman steps in

A wrist slit wide open

A bullet to the brain

A push from a building

Through a window of pain

A handful of pills

Spilt whisky and rye

When the murderman comes in

There’s to turning and running

No fleeing and fawning

No begging and crying

Just death everlasting
### Story, strong and true
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/story-strong-and-true/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:29:23.000Z
The Queen died and the King died. This is a fact, plain and simple.

The Queen died and the King died of grief. This is a story, strong and true. It’s how we enliven a fact to make meaning, to forge understanding.

A story is also how we form and recall a memory.

Facts are not enough. Facts are never enough.
### Forget facts
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/forget-facts/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:28:49.000Z
Can you recall The Ten Commandments?

Seriously, all ten? In the correct order? Unless you’re undertaking a doctorate in theology or you’re a priest, you’ll get to about three or four and then peter out. Something something thou shalt not kill, something something thou shalt not take something in vain, something something something.

Now think about Adam and Eve. Can you recall the story?

Of course you can. Everyone can. The first man and woman are frolicking in the Garden of Eden. Life is sweet until God tells them not to ask too many questions and not to seek knowledge and (under no circumstances) eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil. God explains to them that if they eat from this tree they will die. Enter Satan in the form of a snake who convinces Eve that eating from this tree will make her become like God. Eve takes a bite from the forbidden fruit and gives some to Adam to eat. Boom. Original sin is born. Humanity is cast out of paradise forever.

We remember stories.

We forget facts.
### It’s all in the remaking
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/it-is-all-in-the-remaking/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:27:15.000Z
To make something good, do it.

To make something great, re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. And then re-do it again.

The secret to making great things is in remaking them.

In remaking them better.
### Two-step process
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/two-step-process/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T10:56:22.000Z
Creating and editing are not one and the same.

Separate the processes of creating from improving. We can’t simultaneously write and edit, or simultaneously sculpt and polish, or simultaneously make and analyze. When we try we just block ourselves. It’s like pressing down on the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal at the same time in a car. It’s a great way to get nowhere. And probably blow up the engine in the process.

When we invent, don’t select. When we sketch, don’t inspect. When we write, don’t reflect.

When we begin, the creative mind must be unleashed from judgement.

Create without a second thought.

Or second guess.
### Pure information
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/pure-information/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:25:50.000Z
Gods exist in a realm beyond mortality, beyond time, beyond space, beyond reason. They give form and solace to our neurosis. They live forever.

They show us our destiny. As we atomize ourselves into information packages and data streams across multiple platforms, we transcend our physical limitations. We enter the heavens as slithers of code that will never die.

A nirvana of communications.

A paradise of wonder.
### “The Epic of Gilgamesh” in seven steps
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-in-seven-steps/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:24:51.000Z
Aging and death are the deepest obsessions of humanity.

“The Epic of Gilgamesh” - our oldest surviving work of literature - wrestles with these timeless themes.

1. Gilgamesh, faced with the death of his friend, is horrified at his own mortality.
2. He sets out to find Utnapishtim, a mentor who survived the Great Flood and was granted immortality by the gods.
3. Utnapishtim warns Gilgamesh against seeking eternal life, telling him that all things except gods die. Why fight it?
4. But on the urging of his wife, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a plant that may not grant immortality but will restore his youth.
5. Gilgamesh finds the plant by strapping weights to his feet and diving to the bottom of the sea.
6. But before he can use the plant, it is stolen by a snake. Gilgamesh does not accomplish his quest.
7. Weeping, he returns to the city where he is king.
### Three story questions
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/three-story-questions/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T06:23:54.000Z
1. What does the main character want?
2. Why does the main character want it?
3. What keeps the main character from getting it?

Overall a story has to be about how the main character changes for the better. Or not.
### Make more mistakes
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/make-more-mistakes/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T04:06:36.000Z
Mistakes happen all the time.

Of course we learn from them. That’s what they’re for.

Of course we can choose not to learn from mistakes and keep repeating them expecting different outcomes. At best it’s wishful thinking. At worst it’s a tragedy.

Sometimes we learn that mistakes are not what they first seem. What we immediately believe to be an error in one context can be a complete success in another. New products, businesses and even markets can come from perceived mistakes.

Play-Doh® was a failed wallpaper cleaner.

Kellogg’s® Corn Flakes was a failed sanatorium meal replacement.

Viagra® was a failed hypertension medicine.

Make more brilliant mistakes.
### Second act midpoint turning point
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/second-act-midpoint-turning-point/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T04:05:39.000Z
Our world is at the second act midpoint turning point.

Screenwriters will be familiar with this. When all the scene cards are up on the wall, it’s the middle one with too many highlights and extra notes scrawled all over the surface. Scratched arrows, circled words and lots of exclamation points.

Stories and narratives and worlds (yes, our world included) shape our existence and transformation. That’s what a story does. A story maps out transcendence. A story is how we see and accept the possibility of a new way of living. How we move from selfish to selfless.

Regardless of genre or medium, a story shows how and why we shift loyalty from ourselves to others. From self-love to loving someone or something else. It could be a girl, a guy, a cause, an idea. It could even be a herd of cows.

A character always starts out with loyalty to themselves and loyalty to their personal goal. Every screenwriter knows that’s the A-Story. And every screenwriter knows that the B-Story kicks in when a spanner is thrown in the name of love. For the first time the main character begins (usually grudgingly) to shift allegiance and loyalty from self to the prospect or promise of what that another character represents.

In “Tootsie”, Michael Dorsey stops thinking about getting laid and starts falling in love with Julie. He shifts his loyalty from himself to her.

In “The Godfather”, Michael Corleone stops thinking about his future and starts thinking about the family. He shifts his loyalty from his interests to the family.

In “Star Wars”, Luke Skywalker shifts his loyalty from his self-interest and escape to the cause of the Rebel Alliance.

In “City Slickers”, Mitch Robbins is having a fine Texas time ridin’ and ropin’ until he falls in love with Norman who is a cow. He shifts his loyalty from entertaining himself to saving the herd.

The heart of every good story is the second act midpoint turning point where loyalty shifts from the main character’s hedonism to another’s more noble cause.

We are now at this midpoint in our collective story, in our collective world. It’s time to shift from the hedonism of capitalism to a new era of altruism.

It’s time to begin our transformation.
### New screenplay
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/new-screenplay/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T04:05:04.000Z
Oh, the joys of starting a new screenplay.

Scenes up on the wall. Beats marked out. Ideas spilling all over sticky notes ready to be reiterated, removed, replaced, reorganised, redirected, revisualized, reflected.

Trying to figure out how to transition Pablo Escobar from a sociopath into a saint, how to turn a monster into a benefactor. How to reveal the man behind the mask.

Trying to crack a new angle on an old tragedy.

Trying to realize the theme.
### Crisis of imagination
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/crisis-of-imagination/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T04:03:08.000Z
So much of business in the past few decades has been a simple question of capital allocation.

Where do we allocate the most capital to garner the most returns? Typically this involves monopolies (legal or otherwise) that can extract wealth rather than create wealth.

Extracting wealth is the most boring way to get money. Neutering competition, cutting costs and pulling capital out of a corporation to pay exorbitant executive compensation and just enough dividends to keep the shareholders from storming the annual general meeting with pitchforks has had its day.

It’s exactly this retarded approach to wealth that has led us to our current crisis. More than a health crisis that has risked the lives and livelihood of billions of people, this crisis is a crisis of imagination.

We failed to imagine and act on what was entirely predictable and predicted. We kept relying on old ideas when only new ideas will save us.

It’s time to put capital allocation to rest. Time to start allocating new ideas.

Time to bring poets into the boardroom.
### Whatever makes you happiest
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/whatever-makes-you-happiest/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T04:02:25.000Z
You don’t have to do everything.

Pick what interests you, what makes you smile.

That annoying thing? That painful thing? Forget about it. Drop it.

Be tireless in whatever makes you happiest.
### Everyone gets one
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/everyone-gets-one/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T04:00:40.000Z
So it’s definitely a crisis, right?

A global pandemic that’s brought the world to a shuddering halt. Billions of people around the globe under lockdown with no movement, no commerce, no economy.

Simple escapes for groceries and essentials. Short walks to stretch the legs and the mind.

I’m lost in thought when I spot two young boys perched behind a small table on the footpath. There’s no one else around.

‘Would you like to buy something?’ the youngest calls out.

‘I would but I have no money,’ I reply.

The youngest thinks for a moment and then picks up something from the table and holds it out to me.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘Everyone who goes past gets one.’

He drops a small glass pebble in the palm of my hand.
### Light
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/light/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:59:49.000Z
Lure yourself back into the words

Back into the fold, back into the space

Where meaning falls between the gaps

To be picked up and held aloft

So truth can come to light
### Working for the weekend
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/working-for-the-weekend/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:59:18.000Z
The weekend we all take for granted is only a relatively recent blessing.

President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 to establish a five-day, 40-hour workweek by law for many workers. In 1940 it went into effect and the two-day weekend was adopted across America.

Over the succeeding decades, particularly in the 1940s to 1960s, an increasing number of countries adopted either a Friday–Saturday or a Saturday–Sunday weekend to harmonize with international markets.

A series of workweek reforms in the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s brought much of the Arab World in line with the majority of countries around the globe, in terms of working hours, the length of the workweek and the days of the weekend.
### Show me the honey
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/show-me-the-honey/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:58:05.000Z
Seems money isn’t anywhere as strong a motivator as you think it is.

Research has found a little bit of extra money will spur a little bit of extra effort for mundane or physical task. Once you want someone to be more creative, throwing more money at them doesn’t make them more creative. (Though it will take some of the sting out of working on a crappy account.)

Internal drive is what matters. Creative people need to become intrinsically motivated to produce better creative.

So put the checkbook down and focus on giving creatives these three key drivers.

1. Autonomy.
2. Mastery.
3. Purpose.
### It’s all advertising
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/all-advertising/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:54:21.000Z
It’s weird when someone says - even swears - they’re immune to advertising.

They don’t seem to realize they’re an advertisement for their supposed immunity.

You’ve probably seen them, maybe even met them. They’re very earnest, generally wear subdued colors and try not to make a big deal of anything. They pride themselves on deflecting culture.

Advertising isn’t just what you see on commercial television or YouTube. Advertising is more than annoying banner ads or sponsored content on online news sites. Advertising is beyond all those billboards and backlit logos you see shimmering in every metropolis on earth.

Advertising is the sun shining through the morning. Advertising is the tree flowering into life. Advertising is the bees humming the way to the nectar.

Advertising is how attention is gathered and transformed.

It’s all advertising.
### Pressed against history
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/pressed-against-history/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:53:16.000Z
Double double

Spoil and trouble

Harsh sounds of angry men

Pressed against history

Screaming into a forgotten future
### You’re not making mistakes
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/not-making-mistakes/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:52:09.000Z
You’re making it better, you’re making it tighter.

You’re getting closer and closer.

Until you’ve got it.
### Imagination
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/imagination/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:48:53.000Z
Why merely adapt to changing circumstances?

Why settle for reacting when you can be creating?

It’s not hard. All you have to do is use a little imagination. All you have to do is move the letter ‘c’ from the middle of the word to the start.

Open your mind to new ideas, new possibilities, new opportunities.

Every crisis is a gift. The status quo is upended as old patterns crumble and new ways emerge. New attitudes, new needs and new behaviours.

Imagination - the capacity to create, evolve and exploit mental models of things or situations that don’t yet exist - is the crucial factor in seizing and creating new opportunities and finding new paths to growth.

Why wait for others to lead the way forward? Why accept second-hand ideas?

Why not use your imagination to shape the future you want?
### High as fuck
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/high-as-fuck/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:47:49.000Z
How do you feel about drugs?

Me? I love them. After all these years and all those grams I still have a soft spot for cocaine. Pharmaceutical grade psychedelics are a godsend. And cannabis is better than ever.

Creative people are curious, adventurous. They want to go where others fear to tread. They need to go that little bit (okay, sometimes a lot) further.

Getting high is a shortcut to transcendence. Often fleeting, sometimes profound.

Don’t say no. Say yes. Kick those doors of perception wide open, storm the heavens.

But keep your wits about you. Use drugs. Don’t let drugs use you. Getting completely fucked up on drugs is a right of passage not a way of life. Getting high as fuck is a waste of time if you don’t do anything with the experience.

Open your mind in ways you never thought possible. Detach unconscious habits. Think anew.

Tune in, turn on, seek out.
### Perfect draft
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/perfect-draft/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:46:38.000Z
Here’s the thing about writing a draft.

It’s not supposed to be perfect. It’s not supposed to be error-free.

It’s supposed to be full of mistakes and literally one fuck up after the other. That’s the fun part.

Let it out. Let it all tumble out. Let it land wherever it wants to land.

A perfect draft is full of perfect mistakes. Every mistake is perfect because it takes you one step further. Each mistake is a chance to learn and refine and move forward.

The sooner you start writing a draft the sooner you’ll get to where you want to go.

What are you waiting for?
### The time is now
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-time-is-now/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:46:10.000Z
Have you had an idea rolling around your head for a while?

Weighing up the pros and cons? Deliberating one way or another? Second guessing the future? Second guessing yourself?

Maybe you’ve started putting together a business plan. Or downloading spreadsheet templates to crunch the numbers.

That’s all good and well. And it may help you think you’re doing the right thing, the sensible thing.

But at some point you’re going to have to turn that idea into a reality. You going to have to make it real.

Creating something out of nothing is what being creative is all about. It’s not about the software or the filter or the kerning or whatever. It’s about the creation of something new.

Could be a new design business. New diet kombucha drink. New screenplay. New portrait. New poem.

There’s never been a better time to bring something new into the world.

Don’t hesitate. Don’t overthink it.

Do it now.
### Job application
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/job-application/
Last updated: 2024-02-14T04:33:53.000Z
So you’re applying for a job.

Well, it’s certainly not the last job you’ll be applying for.

Here’s some advice for standing out for any position going forward. As Walt Disney would say, it’s the cross-section of one man’s opinion, so treat it accordingly ...

1. Being qualified and experienced is expected
2. Write your cover email in the company voice (as if the CEO wrote it)
3. Position yourself as the expert, the prize (without being a dick or a blowhard about it)
4. Don’t humble brag (it’s kind of annoying)
5. Stack the cover email like drama (Aristotle, Campbell, Sorkin, Mamet, whoever works for you)
6. Focus on getting an online meeting with them (end the cover email with a suitable call to action)
7. At the online meeting ask questions and interview them (make the questions impressive)
8. If you get the interview/meeting/job thank them in writing (physical letter, signed and mailed)
9. If you don’t get the interview or meeting or job ask them why in writing (physical letter, signed and mailed)

Quick story ...

There’s a young, ambitious man wants who to get a job in advertising. One of the best agencies in New York advertises for a new position. Hundreds apply. He discovers he’s been shortlisted to the final 10\. Goes for an interview where he thinks everything goes great. But then finds he didn’t get the position. So he writes a letter and asks why because he wants to get better. Because he wants to apply for the position next year and keep applying until he gets it.

The day his letter lands at the agency he gets a phone call and gets the job. And learns the agency had told everyone who’d been shortlisted that they didn’t get the job. He was the only one to keep pushing. It was a test. And he passed.

Resilience is the mother of success.
### The revolution will not be advertised
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/the-revolution-will-not-be-advertised/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:08:12.000Z
You will not be able to stay home, sister

You will not be able to charge up, switch on and get online

You will not be able to stream yourself

The revolution will not be advertised
### If in doubt, cut it out
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/if-in-doubt-cut-it-out/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:07:36.000Z
If you think you should cut a scene or a line or a word, cut.

All you have to worry about is keeping people’s attention moment to moment.

Keep cutting until all you’re left with is the simplest version of the story. (Yes, cut the too clever twist, the too smart sentence. The word that shines too bright? Cut that too.)

Aim for the simplest incantation of the story.
### Do better
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/do-better/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:05:19.000Z
Work on your weak points. Think harder. Do better.

Always do better.
### Where does the hero get the idea from?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/where-does-the-hero-get-the-idea-from/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T10:51:58.000Z
The problem with too many modern movies these days is that the hero just gets the idea.

It was inside them all along. All they had to do was realize what was already there. Gee, ain’t life swell.

Such realization is a cop-out. It’s the easy, lazy path. The hero can’t just magically get the idea.

Something has to happen from outside that inspires the hero in a way he or she didn’t realize before. (Because if they could realize before, why now?)

Write deeper to unearth the outside forces, the unexpected action that will inspire the hero to realize something new.

Write better.
### Hate
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/hate/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:04:12.000Z
You are the banal one, the evil one

You are nothing to me

You are the song of misery

The wail of hate

The pain repugnant

The evil one

You are nothing to me

You are the forgotten history

Of bitter love

Turned hard

You are nothing to me

You are dead to me
### Aristotle’s unity
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/aristotle-unity/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:02:58.000Z
Aristotle has a simple rule for the unity of action, place and time.

The hero has to be doing only one thing. If he’s doing anything other than that one thing, he’s breaking the rule.

It has to happen in one place, over a period of 48 hours.
### Follow the drama
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/follow-the-drama/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T03:02:24.000Z
Drama has rules. The hero wants something.

You follow the hero through a journey until they get what they inevitably want and surprisingly need.
### Who is the hero?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/who-is-the-hero/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:58:54.000Z
Every story is the hero journey in which you are the hero.
### Aha!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/aha/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:57:41.000Z
Creativity in art is real creativity.

It’s true creation. Something that never existed before is created out of nothing. It’s not invention. It’s not discovery.

An artist creates something out of nothing and is impossible to explain.

Aha!
### Aristotle’s rules for story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/aristotle-rules-for-story/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:57:14.000Z
A couple of thousand years ago, Aristotle wrote a pamphlet on playwriting called “Poetics.”

It comes down to a few simple rules. It’s the hero journey from A to B with the hero being transformed - from a beggar to a king, from a king to a beggar.

It has to have the least number of possible steps. It has to happen in one place, over 48 hours.

In the end the hero has to undergo recognition and reversal of the situation.

In a tragedy the hero has to recognize his own undoing by his own hand.

As the audience we share his recognition with shock and awe.

We feel his fear and offer our pity.

We are cleansed.
### Huzzah!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/huzzah/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:55:21.000Z
Creativity in technology is not really creativity.

It’s more invention. Two things already exist and a technologist puts them together in an innovative way.

A technologist patents something new and easily explainable.

Huzzah!
### Three ways to stop taking things personally
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/stop-taking-things-personally/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:54:43.000Z
Your self-worth depends on you.

Your self-worth doesn’t depend on what others say about you. While such slings and arrows may wound your ego, remember they’re only words. A jumble of letters masquerading as meaning. Usually they say more about the person saying them than you.

Taking such words personally when they’re not actually about you is a little bit ridiculous, yes? Here are three other questions to ask yourself to stop taking things so personally.

1\. Ask yourself what else the comments or behavior might mean? Someone not saying hello to you might not mean they’re giving you the cold shoulder or ignoring you. They might just be shy.

2\. Ask yourself how an unbiased outsider might see the situation? Remove the ego and you shed an entirely new light on any situation. Being objective makes way for other interpretations, other possibilities.

3\. Ask yourself if there might be a glimmer of truth in what’s being said? Turn that glimmer into constructive criticism. Let it shine a path forward.
### Hurrah!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/hurrah/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:53:45.000Z
Creativity in science is not really creativity.

It’s more discovery. Something already exists and a scientist discovers it.

A scientist makes something apparent and easily explainable.

Hurrah!
### No single idea is born good
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/no-single-idea-is-born-good/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:51:40.000Z
Usually it starts life as a middling idea that over time becomes good.

Typically it becomes bad then slightly better then worse then a little bit better. Then if the stars align and everything falls in its favor, the idea evolves to a new good.
### David Mamet’s favorite joke
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/david-mamet-favorite-joke/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:50:32.000Z
What did Washington say to his men before crossing the Delaware?

Get in the fucking boat!
### Overcoming pushback - Part 5 of 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/overcoming-pushback-part-5-of-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T02:49:53.000Z
You’ve got a big idea.

You’ve got a big client who’s a perfect fit for your big idea. It’s world-changing. It’s amazing.

But getting the client to change their mind is hard. Real hard. (It’s about now in your career that you realize coming up with the big idea is the easy part. Getting the client on board is where the magic really happens.)

You’re only one person. It’s not enough to change their mind. Look for strength in numbers to back you up.

Find corroborating evidence to support your proposition. Especially sources your client trusts.

This helps authenticate and substantiate your idea. It’s easy to disagree with one person.

It’s a lot harder to pushback against an army of peers.
### Overcoming pushback - Part 4 of 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/overcoming-pushback-part-4-of-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:09:57.000Z
Your client looks worried.

Yes, they agree your new idea is a great idea. But like any change, they’re concerned about risk.

Logically they know nothing ventured, nothing gained. They’re not stupid. They’re uneasy. Telling them over and over to do it will not make them do it. Telling them over and over won’t alleviate uncertainty. It won’t calm their anxiety and stress.

The easiest way for your client to ease any apprehension is to do nothing. If you want to ease uncertainty, lower the barrier to trial. Give them a small taste to they can experience the beginning of change themselves. So they can start to diminish the risk they feel.

You can also reduce uncertainty for them by making things reversible. Let’s say you’ve created an amazing new website. New navigation, new user experience, new paths to purchase. New everything.

Let the client know that if some new element doesn’t work, you can switch it back in seconds.

Evaporate the risk in front of their eyes.
### Don’t judge yourself too harshly
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/dont-judge-yourself-too-harshly/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:09:25.000Z
You know no one likes to be judged.

So why judge yourself so harshly? Why beat yourself up over something you imagine you could have done better?

So what if you made a mistake. It’s how you learn. Course correction is the secret to sailing through life. A mistake is only a failure if you don’t learn from it.

Ease up a little. Breathe a touch deeper. Forgive yourself.

You can only do the best you can.
### Overcoming pushback - Part 3 of 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/overcoming-pushback-part-3-of-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:08:54.000Z
It’s the third time you’ve presented the information and your client still doesn’t get it.

You’ve increased the font size, underlined the key point and made the most important number bold. Yet your client is still scratching their head.

Did they have a lobotomy since the last meeting? Have they misplaced an important part of their brain in a drawer somewhere? Perhaps a doppelgänger has hijacked them body and soul?

The truth is a little less dramatic. Anyone presented with new information immediately references it to their existing information and viewpoints. Does it match their current understanding? Is it close?

There’s a zone of acceptance where new information that’s close enough to people’s existing beliefs will be acknowledged and approved. New information outside the zone of acceptance will be automatically rejected. Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. The closer to existing beliefs, the more likely it will be believed.

To avoid pushback, introduce new information like stepping stones from the centre of the zone of acceptance out. From your client’s established beliefs out step-by-step to where you want them to change.

Don’t open with the change. Open with the agreement of what they most fundamentally believe. Then lead them to the change with incremental shifts in beliefs and subsequent actions.

They’ll get it every time.
### Overcoming pushback - Part 2 of 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/overcoming-pushback-part-2-of-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:08:22.000Z
You love change, right?

The shock of the new? The knock of the next?

Diversity, difference? Piece of cake. Innovation, modification? Bring it on. Transition, transformation, transfiguration? Do it.

You don’t have a problem with change. You know who does? Your client and most everyone else on the planet. People everywhere are over-attached to the status quo. It’s called the endowment effect.

The more people do something, the more likely they’ll keep doing it. Changing to do something new in a major disruption. It also inadvertently calls into question past decisions. Of course, those past decisions and changes were probably just fine when first introduced. But time pushes everything forward. Past innovations are superseded faster than ever.

Pointing this logic out to your client will get them nodding their heads in agreement while simultaneously deciding not to move forward with the change you’ve suggested. Yes, it can be frustrating.

Yelling at them won’t help. (Trust me on this. I’ve tried yelling and screaming. And throwing things. Not helpful.)

A better approach is to show a little understanding, some all kindness. Ask your client to explain why they’re so tied to the past. Their answers will surprise you. Keep asking why. Let them talk it out. Let them hear the thoughts and justifications rolling around in their mind out loud.

One of the immediate reasons for pushback will be cost-savings. The old if-I-don’t-do-anything-it-won’t-cost-me-anything line of thinking.

This is your opportunity to show how sticking to the status quo isn’t as cost-free as it seems. Add up how much the client is losing - and will continue increasingly to lose - by not changing. This will get them to see inaction in a new and costly light. Amp up the financial pain to open them to change.

Don’t demand major change in one hit unless you want to completely freak them out. Break it down into small, easy steps that mitigate risk and pushback.

Your client will soon love change as much as you.
### Overcoming pushback - Part 1 of 5
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/overcoming-pushback-part-1-of-5/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:07:18.000Z
Are you getting pushback from a client on that great idea of yours?

You’ve cajoled, charmed, thrown in the kitchen sink? You’ve done everything in your powers to convince them of your solution? You’ve pushed as hard as you can and they’re still resisting?

Stop pushing. Seriously, stop pushing and start removing the barriers that stand in their way.

Honestly ask them why they haven’t changed already? What’s holding them back? What’s stopping them?

Clients, partners, children, neighbours, even educated bees do the opposite of what they’re told. Especially when they perceive threats to personal freedom.

People don’t like to feel disempowered. They like to feel in control. Feel is the operative word here. More logic or reason won’t change their minds. More feeling will.

If they feel badgered, manoeuvred or manipulated into something, they’ll do the opposite. This negative response - which typically sees a no when you’re looking for a yes - is called reactance.

Offering a client options makes them feel like they’re in the driver’s seat, they’re in control. Giving options reduces reactance. Two or three options give them something to dismiss. Don’t focus on trying to convince them of the right option. Focus on why the other options don’t work.

Highlighting gaps between thoughts and actions also reduces knee-jerk reactance. How? Ask a client if they believe X why are they doing Y? Underscore the dissonance, the uncomfortable feeling.

Let them realise how great your idea is.
### Make your life simpler and easier
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/make-your-life-simpler-and-easier/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:06:29.000Z
Is your life becoming unbearably complex?

Too many projects up in the air? Too much running around? Too much hustling?

If you want to make your life even more complex and infuriating, keep adding and adding projects and tasks and whatnots. Keep adding without subtracting.

To make your life simpler and easier, subtract more than you add. Accomplish more with less.

Get rid of one small thing right now.
### Jazz mind
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/jazz-mind/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:05:48.000Z
What do you see when you slide a jazz musician inside an [MRI scanner](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001679&ref=boscutti.com)?

Which areas of their brain sparkle when they start improvising on a keyboard? Which areas quieten down?

It’s the areas of the brain associated with focused attention, inhibition and self-censoring that slow down. It’s as if the brain turns off its own ability to criticize itself.

While improvising, jazz musicians do the opposite of consciously identifying errors and correcting them.

They roll with them. They fuse them into something new.

They don’t look for what’s right or what’s wrong.

They go with the flow.
### Improvising something altogether new
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/improvising-something-altogether-new/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:04:26.000Z
A classical musician is a re-creative artist.

While there’s much to be said for expertise and technique, you’ll never find or reveal your own voice. At best you’ll be a perfect copy of the original. It’s a neat party trick but not the best - or most fun - way through this life.

A jazz musician is a creative artist. Being a perfect copy of anything is not the aim of the game. It’s improvising something altogether new.

Whatever your art, you want to be a jazz musician.

You want to make it up as you’re going along.

You want to make it all your own.
### How to finish a project
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/finish-a-project/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:02:53.000Z
How quickly you finish a project is not under your control.

There’s only one thing that’s under your control. And that’s whether to give up or not.

You don’t have to be passionate and inspired. You don’t have to be reasonable and sensible. You don’t have to be calm and clear-eyed.

You just have to not give up.
### Ask a simple question
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ask-a-simple-question/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:01:54.000Z
You know that moment when you’re pitching an idea and the client tries not to look confused.

If they’re polite, they won’t come out and just ask you what the fuck are you talking about? If they’re saving face, they won’t say they don’t understand. They’ll just wince a little.

That’s the moment when you can ask, ‘What can I clarify for you?’

It’s a simple, open question. It’s less threatening. Less demanding.

It deepens the conversation.
### Engaged
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/engaged/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T11:01:15.000Z
How do you end your presentations?

Do you typically smile with a sense of relief and ask, ‘Any questions?’

For more compelling response, stand tall and ask, ‘What questions do you have for me?’

Asking if there are any questions assumes there might not be. Asking what questions assumes there are.

Move from a sense of obligation to a spirit of adventure. Move from a place of weakness to strength and confidence.

Give people a little more freedom to engage.
### Burn, baby, burn
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/burn-baby-burn/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:59:36.000Z
It’s time to take a match to the United Kingdom’s Labour Party.

At the last election, it managed to box itself into an ever-shrinking corner with an unelectable leader spewing unelectable promises.

Incredible as it seems, the bumbling Boris Johnson managed to pitch himself as a man of the people and turn the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party into the workers’ party.

All it took was donning a high-vis vest and some photo ops in a few factories and warehouses. And a simple almost monosyllabic three-word campaign slogan.

What has Labour got left? Sweet fuck all.

They should throw out their charter, shred their manifesto and change their name to the Gig Party.

Britain’s booming gig economy has more than doubled over the past three years and now accounts for 5 million workers.

In the next three years, it will double again to 10 million gig workers.

That’s more than enough to win the next election.
### David Mamet explains the hero journey
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/david-mamet-explains-the-hero-journey/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:58:12.000Z
*There’s Moses, he’s a Prince of Egypt.*

*Moses says, ‘I can’t take it anymore. I saw this Jewish guy getting beat up, this slave. I said to him do you like being a slave and he said, yes I do. So I killed the slavemaster. And I went off to the wilderness. I got to figure this thing out. I’m going to be King. I’m a Jew. I don’t like it.’*

*He goes off to the wilderness and there’s a burning bush. Okay, now the story starts. The burning bush says, ‘Guess who I am? I got something I want you to do.’*

*So what does Moses say? He says, ‘Hmmm, now is not good for me. Saving the Jewish people and listening to a burning bush? That’s great. Why don’t you take my brother Aaron, he speaks beautifully. I have a speech impediment. My brother Aaron is smarter than I am, why don’t you pick him?’ God says, ‘No, actually I want to pick you.’*

*Moses doesn’t want to go. The whole story of “The Five Books of Moses” is him having difficulty with these idiot people, my own people, the Jews, trying at every stage to go back to slavery.*

*Moses keeps wanting to give up. He says, ‘God, start again or give me one more chance, I don’t know what to do, I’m lost. I was up there on the mountain getting the word of God and came down 30 minutes later and they’re worshipping the golden calf. These are the same people we took out of Egypt two weeks ago when you parted the Red Sea, they’re worshipping the golden calf. I can’t take any more.’ God says, ‘No, you’re not done yet. I’ll tell you when.’*

*“The Five Books of Moses” is the paradigmatic story of all drama. It ends with Moses just about to get into the promised land. We’re just about to get to this wonderful ending with the fuzzy little bunnies and all that. And God says, ‘No, you’re going to die here.”*

*Moses says, ‘Well, you remember from before, I was the guy with the burning bush, we had such a good time, all those adventures, I worked real hard?”*

*God says, ‘Yeah, you’re done.’ Bink! And that’s the end of the story. It’s surprising and inevitable.*

*It’s the hero journey.*
### What could possibly go right?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-could-possibly-go-right/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:56:52.000Z
It’s the morning and I’m sitting in the medical reception, filling in the paperwork for my potential drug trial/rehab/writing retreat.

There are three youngish women waiting, fidgeting on their phones. After a little while one leaves, saying she can’t wait any longer because she has another appointment. Truth or jangled nerves? I’ll never know.

The receptionist has told me it will be a one to two-hour wait for an in-person screening with a doctor before I can give my final consent. I figure it’s a test to see if you can sit still for hours on end without frazzling out.

As I’m filling out the form I realize it’s the exact same questions I was asked on the earlier screening phone call. Ridiculous medical bureaucracy or rigorous double testing to ensure accuracy? Because I’m in a good mood (and might be about to sign my life away) I go with the later. I want to put my faith in the medical establishment.

I hand the completed form to the receptionist and step back to my chair. I flip through a few news sites, trying to avoid any stories on medical disasters or pandemics. I never realized how much modern news is tied to health or lack thereof.

Maybe I should I meditate? Excellent in theory and always doomed in reality. My thoughts fumble and tumble to the drug trial. It’s a study on an anti-Alzheimer’s drug to improve focus and attention.

Two 9-day stints where nutritionally balanced meals, hospital grade accommodation and boundless wifi are provided free while trialing a drug to make me mentally sharper.

I’ll have nothing to do but work on a Bill Hicks screenplay I’ve been trying to write for years. No distractions. No projects. No worries.

I mentioned the $13,000 stipend, right? It’s a paid rehab and writing retreat. With 24/7 medical care. Lots of medical care. All I have to do is hand over my body and right to sue if anything goes amiss.

As I look through the glass door to the corridor and wards, I see bustling medical staff, doctors and consultants zipping left and right. More than a few are balancing trays of test tubes loaded with blood. Vampire heaven.

Another would-be participant steps into reception, a youngish man who gives his name to the receptionist and is given paperwork to fill out. After a few minutes, he asks the receptionist about the warning in bold capital letters that states MAY CAUSE DEATH.

‘We have to put that in,’ says the receptionist.

I take out my phone and start writing this piece in an app. I’ve never done that before. It feels like I’m playing a game. Course-correcting as I go along. Maybe that’s the pleasure of writing. Correcting mistakes.

When my name is called the first time I don’t even hear it. By the third time I look up to see two doctors in white lab coats, smiling and asking me to follow them.

Down the corridor we go to a minuscule side room and sit down, huddled together. The first doctor is a woman, well-practised and professional. She’s done this before. The second doctor is a man, training to be the first doctor. This is his first in-person screening session.

‘Do I mind if he participates?’ asks the first doctor.

‘Not at all,’ I say. But think why is he looking so nervous?

Maybe he knows something I don’t? The first doctor explains the drug (donepezil) and how it works (inhibits an enzyme in the brain responsible for the destruction of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine) and what they’re trialing (administering through transdermal skin patch rather than oral tablet).

I start to feel all righteous about advancing medical science and helping people suffering from Alzheimer’s until the doctor specifies exactly what they’re testing. Towards the end of the production run of the patches, the drug crystallizes on the surface. What they’re testing is whether the crystallized drug is just as effective as the non-crystallized drug.

Just to be clear. What they’re testing on humans is whether a shortcoming in the production process has a deleterious effect on their profits. Whether capitalism can get away with an inferior product without having to retool the production line.

I thank the doctor for the clarification. She then runs through all the same questions again across multiple forms. I answer them all truthfully again, including the fact I suffer from migraines.

‘Do you take any medication?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I answer. ‘Imigran. I wrote in on the form and mentioned it on the phone call.’

The two doctors confer, foreheads frown, dosages are murmured and I’m politely thanked for my time.

‘I’m afraid you’re excluded from this study,’ the first doctor says as she stands. The second doctor scrambles to his feet and opens the door. As we walk down the corridor towards the glass door I ask if I’ve done anything wrong.

‘Oh no,’ says the first doctor. ‘You’ve done everything right.’
### What could possibly go wrong?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:56:03.000Z
How far are you prepared to go for your art?

Sell your house? Sell your children? Sell your soul?

How about signing up for an 18-day inpatient drug trial where you can’t step outside, can’t choose what food to eat, can’t drink alcohol, can’t smoke cigarettes, can’t do drugs, can’t do anything but write?

Sounds extreme? Well, I’ve just finished an exhaustive screening phone call to see if I fit the bill. I must have given the right answers because I’m scheduled for an in-person screening with a doctor tomorrow at 8 am.

Now before you write me off as completely crazy, it’s not like I’m trialing a new kidney removal procedure or an experimental compound that causes cancer/limb loss. It’s for a study on an anti-Alzheimer’s drug to improve focus and attention.

So let’s be perfectly clear. I might be signing up for two 9-day stints where nutritionally balanced meals, hospital grade accommodation and boundless wifi are provided free while trialing a drug to make me mentally sharper.

Oh, did I mention the $13,000 stipend? It’s a paid rehab and writing retreat made in heaven. With 24/7 medical care. Lots of medical care.

What’s the downside? My hair could fall out. My dick could drop off. My fingers could shrivel up. I could suffer - as the screener on the phone casually noted - fatal side effects.

What’s the upside? I’ll finally write that Bill Hicks screenplay I’ve been thinking about for years. Finally box myself in where (aside from the constant drawing of blood) the only way out is through a 120-page screenplay.

Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Stay tuned.
### The drama of politics
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/drama-of-politics/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:55:26.000Z
Politics is not really about politics.

It’s about the story of politics, the story of opposing forces. Of slaying imaginary monsters that threaten the people. Drug fueled rapists flooding in over the border stealing everyone’s jobs, filthy fake refugees landing in broken boats to push their dirty religion down everyone’s throat, six-toed sloths with a taste for baby blood.

The threats don’t have to be true. They just have to be dramatic and life-threatening.

The leader who promises to be the only one to save the people from those imaginary horrors wins the election.

It’s not about facts or policies or polls. It’s not about the machinations of the party machine.

It’s all about the story, the narrative.

A vote is a ticket to the show.

Enjoy!
### Story wars
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/story-wars/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:54:40.000Z
We live in the age of narrative.

Our news has become a war of words and feuding ideologies. Consideration has given way to anger and accusation. Opinions masquerade as facts.

Data just gets in the way of a good story.
### How to get better creative work
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/get-better-creative-work/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:53:35.000Z
I used to be an asshole creative director.

Swearing at juniors, throwing awards across offices, screaming at teams that their work was complete shit and they should leave the agency now - no, right fucking now - while they still had a chance of getting another job.

That was a good day. At the end of a bad day after too much coke and too much liquor, I was a real prick. And I used to pride myself on it. Thought the whole macho thing hardened creatives to the realities of business and made them produce better work. Losing their dignity was a small price to pay for great work.

It took me a while to realise how wrong I was. Making people feel bad is no way to get the best out of them. Belittling people helps no one. Least of all yourself. (Seriously, being an asshole is no way to get through life. It has repercussions beyond work. It bleeds into everything. Even your soul.)

If you want to get better creative work, don’t make it personal. Compliment the person, critique the work.

As a creative director, you don’t want criticism to be taken personally. Creative people are thin-skinned by nature. This is a good thing. This is a strength, not a weakness. You want everyone in your creative department to be more open to everything.

Your job as a creative director is to protect them.
### No one knows everything
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/no-one-knows-everything/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:52:29.000Z
What if someone asks you a question and you don’t have the answer?

Don’t try and bluff them. Don’t pretend you know something you don’t. Don’t bluster. Or fluster.

Admit if you don’t know something. Promise you’ll investigate and get back to them.

And then deliver on your promise.
### How to really solve a problem
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/solve-problem/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:51:31.000Z
The best way to solve a problem once and for all is to eliminate it altogether.

Solving a problem at a surface level and not atomizing it out of existence means it will keep returning again and again and again until the end of time. (Of course, solving the appearance of a problem is an excellent way to constantly make money. Masking the symptoms accounts for 99% of the pharmaceutical industry’s profits from $1.5 trillion annual sales.)

Management often throws the same solution to a long-standing problem and wonders why there’s no improvement. Unsurprisingly, they try and manage the problem. Managing problems doesn’t make them go away.

Obvious solutions aren’t the answer. All the logical and sensible solutions have been tried and still the problem exists.

Time for you to step in and look at what’s causing the problem. The answer you’re looking for will be there.

Don’t just solve the problem. Resolve it.

And make it disappear.
### Best endings
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/best-endings/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:50:32.000Z
How good are your endings?

Do they fade out? Do they snap shut? Do they entangle and trip over themselves?

Everything is drama. That ad you’re working on? Drama. That speech you’re polishing? Drama. That choreography you just can’t get quite right? Drama. That website you’re sick of coding? Drama.

Aristotle tells us the best endings are both surprising and inevitable.

Aha! With a twist.

Or vice versa.
### Are you living to your potential?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/are-you-living-to-your-potential/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:48:54.000Z
Have you settled into someone else’s version of your life?

Are you living your dream or a dream someone else put there long ago?

Are you becoming who it is you are meant to be?

Are you moving towards self-fulfilment?

Are you self-actualising?
### Ritual
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/ritual/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:47:57.000Z
Any habit. Any small ritual.

Whatever it takes you to switch off life and turn on art, do it.
### Raising the stakes
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/raising-the-stakes/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:47:24.000Z
Aristotle reminds us that drama works best when the protagonist and antagonist are inexorably linked.

Putting them in the same location works. Putting them in the same room works better.

Amp up the drama by drawing the opposing forces closer together.

Two men face each other, fists cuffed ready to fight.

Give each of them a dagger, bind their forearms together so neither can flee, watch as they circle each other for the right moment to strike.

Want more resonance? Make them twin brothers, Princes by blood. Make the King explain to them that whoever wins the fight, wins the crown and the kingdom.

Keep raising the stakes.
### How to deal with creative block
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/deal-with-creative-block/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:46:52.000Z
You know the feeling. That sense of dread that creeps up behind you, tightens your throat, catches your breath.

You sit down to do your work and nothing comes. You draw a blank. You write nothing. You do nothing.

And the more you struggle to overcome creative block the worse it gets. It solidifies and feels increasingly insurmountable.

Time to put things in perspective. The reason you’re blocked is not because you’re an idiot, undeserving or unworthy. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s because you care too much and want what you’re working on to be perfect.

You’re stuck because you don’t want it to be less than it can be. You don’t want it to be unsuccessful. You don’t want to fail.

Perfectly human. Perfectly understandable. And perfectly less than helpful. Struggling to produce anything is no fun. It sounds noble but it’s incredibly dispiriting.

The best way to deal with creative block? Don’t try and fight it, climb over it, under it, around it. Don’t try and trick it. Don’t do any of those things.

Instead turn the other cheek, turn away. Work on something else and the creative block will dissipate.

Turn your back on creative block and it will vanish of its own accord.

You’ll breathe easy and wonder what all the fuss was about.
### The benefit of a schedule
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/benefit-of-a-schedule/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:46:16.000Z
Putting yourself to a schedule really does help.

Telling yourself you’re going to write/draw/paint/dance/design/code between, say, 8am and 11am, really does focus you.

Scheduling helps you avoid disruptions and distractions. It commits you to a course of action you have predetermined to serve you. It’s the best way of making your future come true.

It’s your life. It’s your time. Schedule it accordingly.
### Keep striving
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/keep-striving/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:45:14.000Z
What works for you, works.

There is no one way to be creative.

There’s no science to being creative. If there was, it would be called science.

Being creative requires you to create something into existence, into the world.

Find what works for you.

And do it.
### Attention!
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/attention/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:44:42.000Z
When the lights go down, you’ve got their attention.

It’s yours to lose. When you lose it, you don’t get it back.

This applies to a play, concert or movie. It also applies to any creative endeavor in or out of a theater.

Everything comes from the theater. Sitting around a campfire telling stories about that great deer hunt is the original theater in the round. Cave art leads to the proscenium leads to the cinema leads to the television leads to the computer leads to the mobile device in your hand capable of connecting you to every human as well as every story on the planet.

Everything is fighting for everyone’s attention. Every day everyone sees thousands of stories scrambling to be noticed.

Whatever you’re working on will be lost forever if it doesn’t capture and hold someone’s attention.
### How do you make a great movie?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/make-a-great-movie/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:43:48.000Z
Throw out anything that’s not the plot.

Throw out the best lines, the neat twists, the bits that show everyone how clever you are.

If it gets in the way of the progression, throw it away. If it’s not the plot, it’s out.

If in doubt, cut it out.
### No rules
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/no-rules/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:41:35.000Z
There’s no rules but only one law.

Don’t be boring.
### What is and what isn’t possible
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-is-and-what-is-not-possible/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:41:04.000Z
When you’re rolling out a television show or series, you put together a bible so other writers and contributors understand the world you’re creating.

You’ve no doubt seen the simple rules that Chuck Jones penned for the “Road Runner” series of animated shorts featuring a hungry Wile E. Coyote furiously trying and failing (flailing?) to catch a zippy Road Runner.

1\. The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going ‘beep-beep!’

2\. No outside force can harm the Coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.

3\. The Coyote could stop anytime - if he were a fanatic. (Repeat: ‘A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.’ George Santaya)

4\. No dialogue ever, except ‘beep-beep!’

5\. The Road Runner must stay on the road - otherwise, logically, he would not be called Road Runner.

6\. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters - the southwest American desert.

7\. All materials, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.

8\. Wherever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.

9\. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

It’s a good reminder that creative limitations are your friends. Especially in drama where keeping the protagonist and antagonist bound together is essential

That’s not to say you can’t break them every now and then. They’re your rules. You can do whatever you like with them.

You can subvert them, twist them, tear them in two.

But only after you’ve established them.
### Fact vs. story
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/fact-vs-story/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:40:05.000Z
Fact: The Queen died.

Story: The Queen died, and then the King died of grief.

A fact is soon forgotten. A story lives forever.
### Your brain is not a computer
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/your-brain-is-not-a-computer/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:39:27.000Z
Your brain is more like a garden, constantly growing and throwing off seeds.

It’s not a neat board of computer chips collecting and correlating information at the speed of light. It’s a garden that grows synaptic connections between billions of neurons. These connections allow neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin to flow through your brain.

Learning grows your brain and your consciousness by binding and strengthening new neural connections.

Less used connections are pruned and discarded by microglial cells while you sleep. Even a 20-minute nap clears away unused connections so new ones can grow.

You can determine how your garden grows by deciding what you think about, what connections you enhance and what connections you eliminate.

You can have a weed-filled decaying garden of despair and revenge fantasies.

Or you can have a garden overflowing with delight.
### Saving face
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/saving-face/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:38:21.000Z
Did you see Vladimir Putin’s latest television appearance?

Speaking at a stage-managed press conference with heavily-armed security guards, the Russian president showed not a glimmer of emotion as he fronted the cameras and pontificated away.

Strong-willed? Resolute? Actually that steely gaze and smooth, untroubled forehead are all thanks to his Botox addiction.

Botox blocks signals from the nerves to the muscles. It’s the perfect metaphor for Russian politics.

It’s also technically a neurotoxic nerve agent. Ironically a less potent strain of the poisons Putin uses to assassinate his political opponents.
### New politics
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/new-politics/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:37:47.000Z
Politics around the globe is in a quagmire.

Old men with old ideas pulling the same old tricks. Demagogues hellbent on destroying democracy. Oligarchs to the left of us, autocrats to the right.

Politics at every level needs more creativity more than ever.

We need more new ideas for moving everyone forward.
### More equal democracy
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/more-equal-democracy/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:37:18.000Z
Modern representational democracy has major system flaws.

When democracy was first introduced, our population was largely agrarian and more evenly dispersed. People were more evenly represented.

Today more people live in cities than ever before but without any increase in political capital.

The Senate signs off on bills that become law. It’s made up of two senators from each state, regardless of population. So Alaska (representing 700,000 people) has the same voting power as California (representing 37 million people).

Whatever side of politics you think you’re on, this gives disproportionate influence to people essentially not willing to move for their own advancement. Unprogressives, if you will.

It skews backwater thinking as more prominent than it is, feeds incorrect confirmation bias, violates democracy.

It means 7 people have the same power as 370 people. Which is unfair, undemocratic and mathematically impossible.

Moving forward, the political power of elected representatives should be weighted in direct proportion to the number of constituents they represent.

Only then will politics become more equal.
### Activist Cookbook - 1. Public Speeches
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/activist-cookbook-1-public-speeches/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:36:16.000Z
****Appetizer - The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion**

****Formal Statements - 1\. Public Speeches**

****Serve**

4 - 4 million

****Ingredients**

1 Pen

1 Paper (Sheet)

1 Megaphone

****Directions**

Choose words carefully and blend together with pen on paper for emotional impact. Focus on the nature of power as deriving from people and ultimately dependent on people. Speak from the heart. Season lightly with rhetoric.

Use megaphone or any medium that will amplify your speech. This may be using a video-sharing platform, speaking at council meetings, addressing public events. Anywhere you can reach an audience.

Speak of the injustices dividing people and how these can be resolved to bring people together. Serve with kindness.

*Put the molotov cocktail down. Any activist using violence against a more powerful and militarized opponent will be killed by the courts or the bullets. Or both.*

*Nonviolent struggle as a technique for moving society forward is largely misunderstood. Nonviolent action is more than street protests. It works by destroying an opponent by denying their source of power.*

*Dr Gene Sharp researched and catalogued [“198 Methods of Nonviolent Action”](https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/?ref=boscutti.com) to increase the chances of revolutionary success. Swarthmore College produced and maintains a [“Global Nonviolent Action Database”](https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/browse%5Fmethods?ref=boscutti.com) that lists hundreds of examples of succesful actions and campaigns.*

*Think of a revolution as a full, nutritious meal. A single course won’t satisfy the appetite for change. You need a complete meal plan.*
### Freethinker
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/freethinker/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:35:03.000Z
Step outside the box, around the block, through the other side.

Why follow the crowd, the accepted, the status quo, the business as usual, the please-don’t-rock-the-boat? Why settle for the same old same-old?

Go outside the box. Even only slightly. See how things can be different.

Don’t be a samethinker.

Be a freethinker.
### It’s not your fault
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/it-is-not-your-fault/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T10:57:48.000Z
If you’re in your 20s, you’re probably underemployed, loaded with student debt and wondering how the fuck you’re going to get ahead in the world.

The price of education, housing and health have exploded while wages have remained stagnant. Neoliberalism has skewed the economy in favor of older generations who ironically enjoyed free education, affordable housing and employee health care.

Full-time jobs with benefits are being replaced with short-term contracts and a side order of indiscriminate low-paying gigs. The promise of a college education guaranteeing a higher earning career over time has turned out to be a lie that has led to around $1 trillion in student debt in the United States. (A debt bomb that is currently being recollateralized, repackaged and resold just like subprime mortgages.)

The worst of it is that if you’re in your 20s, you think it’s your fault. It’s not your fault. Stop blaming yourself for the predicament you’re in.

You did everything you were told to do. You did all the work required. You jumped through the hoops. You kept your nose clean. You sat the tests.

For what? To be told to stop complaining, pull up your socks, work harder, blah, blah, blah. Blaming the victims absolves the culprits of moral responsibility.

You don’t deserve to be treated like an idiot. And you don’t have the time to explain to older generations why the numbers are stacked against you.

What you have to do is restack the numbers in your favor. Diminish or defray costs by opting out of the consumer cycle, find an accommodation solution that avoids having to pay rent, and pay back any loans so you’re not beholden to anyone. This will liberate your finances. More importantly it will free your mind, your soul.

Stop charging yourself out by the hour or day or week.

Start charging a percentage of the value you create.

Focus all your efforts on creating more value.

And you can make the world your own.
### You are not your thoughts
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-are-not-your-thoughts/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:32:59.000Z
Breathe in. Hold that breath. Breathe out slowly until your lungs are completely empty.

All those thoughts that are flooding in to fill the void? It’s important to remind yourself that you are not your thoughts.

You are the observer of your thoughts. Especially those negative thoughts that can plague the best of us.

I’m not qualified. I’m not good enough. I’m an utter impostor who has no right to be here.

You don’t have to believe your thoughts. Just step back and observe them. Look at them from all angles and perspectives. Let them go.

Breathe in. Hold that breath. Breathe out slowly until your lungs are completely empty.

Clear your thoughts.

Clear your mind.
### Drawing changes your mind
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/drawing-changes-your-mind/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:28:42.000Z
One of the good things about drawing is that it forces you to look at things.

Really look at things. Not glimpse without a second thought. Not look without seeing. But really pay attention.

The form, the light, the colors, the spaces in between. By taking attention off you (I know, I know) and onto something else, something shifts.

It probably doesn’t feel profound but it is. By focusing attention you’re using different areas of your mind, different ways of thinking.

Different possibilities open up.
### A third way to present
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/third-way-to-present/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:27:40.000Z
There’s usually two ways to present your creative.

One way is the multiple-choice approach where you present three or four options and let the client decide. Which usually ends with the client choosing your least favorite option you wished you’d never included. After rounds and rounds of changes, this is usually hobbled together with bits and pieces of other options to keep the client happy because the client always wants everything.

The other way is the lamb-to-slaughter approach where you present a couple of shitty options you vilify and tear apart as you lead up to your preferred option. Which usually ends with the client choosing the second to last option and then undermining it with round after round of changes because they’d like you to know they’re actually pretty creative too.

But there’s a third way. The Paul Rand way. Where you don’t present a slew of options or choice after choice after choice (because the client has told you they’ll know it when they see it).

Paul Rand was an American art director and graphic designer, responsible for striking and timeless modernist corporate logos for IBM, UPS, Cummins, Yale, ABC.

Paul would spend an inordinate amount of time clarifying the design problem. He was very big on defamiliarizing the ordinary. He abhorred fads.

Presentation was one of Paul’s key design principles. He placed great importance on presenting a design to a client. His way to present creative was meticulous. His thoughts, explorations, applications, reasoning and single-option solution would be fully articulated in presentation booklets.

No PowerPoint. No slide deck. No song and dance. Just hand out the presentation booklet with a brief introduction and let the client understand the design at their own pace.

Paul’s single-option is no option at all. When clients asked if he could come up with a few options, Paul had a standard answer.

‘No,’ he would tell them. ‘I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people.’
### New idea
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/new-idea/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:26:09.000Z
It sparkles like a diamond in your mind.

A new idea, glimmering with novel possibilities and spectral opportunities.

Trying to solve an old problem with an old idea will only produce the same old outcome. If you want a new outcome, only a new idea will do the trick.

A new idea is a rare thing, a fragile thing. It’s easy to misplace or dismiss. Especially if you present it too early. (Some people only have the power to say no. They’ll gladly clobber a new idea to death before it’s had a chance to stand on its own two feet.)

Nurture a new idea. Give it room to breathe. Resolve it and test it. Strengthen it before you bring it to others.
### You are the prize
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-are-the-prize/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:24:33.000Z
The client has no idea.

That’s why the client is thinking of hiring you.

Always remember you are the expert, you are the prize.

Act accordingly.
### How to get rid of existential dread
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/get-rid-of-existential-dread/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:24:02.000Z
We all suffer from it more than we know.

That slow creeping anxiety that the world (and everything is it) is going to hell. Literally.

The rainforests are on fire, birds are falling out of the sky, bees are disappearing.

One way to cope is to turn a blind eye and pretend climate change isn’t happening. Another way is to blast away reality with drugs and drink. Which is definitely fun for a while until it isn’t. (Of course you could become a nihilist but then everyone will hate you. Including yourself.)

A far better way to relieve that dread is to face the climate crisis head-on. Do what you can to combat climate change. Do the right thing.

Positive change will only happen when we all play our part.

It’s up to us to create a better world.
### Was Plato an asshat?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/was-plato-an-asshat/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T10:54:16.000Z
What kind of philosopher banishes poets and artists.

Plato declared that his ideal republic was to have no poets and no artists because they can move people through emotion and passion without a skerrick of logic. Plato considered them dangerous beyond words.

Except those who could extol the virtues of courage in battle, honor in war. Poets and artists as propagandists for the city-state were just fine in Plato’s mind.

It was those freewheeling poets and artists who defied reason that were the problem.

Freewheeling poets and artists like you.
### You’re in the ideas business
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/you-are-in-the-ideas-business/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:22:21.000Z
Any fool can download a template and type in a company name.

Any fuckwit can drag a stock photo into a layout and punch in a headline.

You are more than your filters, your linguistic tricks, your go-to color, your sense of style, your favorite typeface, your suite of tools and aesthetic shortcuts.

As a creative, you’re in the ideas business. How you dress them up (or down) is secondary to the actual idea. It’s the idea that has all the value, all the attraction, all the potency.

A good idea transcends the limits of styles and trends, techniques and finishes.

A good idea lives forever.
### What makes a good idea?
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/what-makes-a-good-idea/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:21:30.000Z
According to Aristotle, a good idea is lucid, pleasing and strange.

A good idea surprises the mind and quickens the heart yet somehow settles the senses. It seems right, it feels whole.

A good idea is often met with a tilt of the head and a sly smile. It’s self-evident, self-reflective.

A good idea draws people in.
### Sweet Jesus
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/sweet-jesus/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:20:56.000Z
It’s Christmas!

Time to celebrate the birth of a) savior, b) son of God, or c) troublemaking Jewish preacher and maverick religious leader who suffered epilepsy and bizarre sense of self-aggrandizement? Perhaps all three.

What we do know for a fact is that Jesus of Nazareth certainly wasn’t born on December 25\. Historical records point to his birth sometime in September.

It wasn’t until 440 years after Christ’s death that the church officially proclaimed December 25 as the date of his birth. That date was already a public holiday enjoyed by the Romans to mark the winter solstice and the birth of the sun.

The church simply renamed and rebranded an existing holiday to make it their own.

Hope you find what you’re looking for in all those presents.
### How to write
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/how-to-write/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:20:25.000Z
Just start writing.

Don’t stop writing. Keep writing.

Don’t second guess yourself. Don’t try and make it perfect. In fact, mess it up. Fack it up.

Don’t make it right. Make it write. Make like you’re playing music rather than ‘writing’. Too many people freeze up thinking they’re going to make a mistake.

Writing is learning. And learning is the process of making mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the quicker you discover what not to do and learn what to do.

You can go back and clean anything up. It’s just letters and words, pencils and pixels.

Keep writing until you’ve eliminated everything you’re not happy with.
### Money for nothing
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/money-for-nothing/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:16:58.000Z
Come on, be honest.

If you’re a true creative, it’s never about the money.

You’d do it for free. Hell, you’d pay someone to let you do what you do.

Which is noble and righteous and profoundly stupid. Now more than ever you create all the value that others are prepared to pay for.

It could be a painting, a song, a logo. It could be a feeling, a tone, a notion.

Capital no longer creates the growth it used to. You used to be able to rub money together to make more money. No more. Interest rates have fallen through the floor. Exchanges are taking a battering.

In an age of product and service parity (parody?), the only thing that makes a brand stand apart is the idea. Your idea.

Rub ideas together to make more ideas. Don’t settle for the first wave or second wave of ideas. Keep surfing. Go for an idea that can shift culture, move markets.

Charge what the idea is worth. Calculate how much value your idea is creating and charge accordingly.

Charge what’s fair.
### Anxiety is a blessing
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/anxiety-is-a-blessing/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:15:48.000Z
Don’t let apprehension or trepidation stop you.

Let it spur you on to bigger ideas, greater heights.

That knot you feel in your stomach before you start working on an idea? That knot is your friend.

It quickens your heart rate, increases your breathing, flows blood to your brain, releases a surge of neurochemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine. Your senses double up time and perception.

It’s the same physiological response as when you’re excited. Your body can’t tell the difference. It’s what you tell your mind that determines whether you’ll react positively or negatively.

When you feel anxiety rising, breathe deep and smile through the apprehension.

The bigger your smile, the more excited you’ll feel.

And the more your ideas will flow.
### The truth about keyboards
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/truth-about-keyboards/
Last updated: 2024-02-16T09:47:45.000Z
There are lots of tales and myths about the arrangement of individual letters on a modern QWERTY keyboard.

There’s a story about how the inventor of the first mechanical typewriter in 1873 had to space the letters apart to avoid the metal arms of the most common letters clumping together.

There’s a supposition that early adopters were telegraph operators who found the placement of the letters made for quick and accurate transcriptions.

There’s even a conspiracy theory that the first manufacturer purposely made it difficult to use so they could sell typewriting courses.

Here’s the truth. These were new-fangled devices that no one knew how to use. Least of all the salesmen.

To make it easy for the salesman to show how ‘easy’ it was to use, the letters t y p e w r i t e r were all placed on the top row.

The salesman smiles, rolls in a fresh sheet of paper and pecks out the product name in front of a startled customer.

The medium is transformed into the message.
### A tale of two sets of numbers
URL: https://www.boscutti.com/tale-two-sets-of-numbers/
Last updated: 2023-07-04T10:14:06.000Z
It’s easy to take things for granted.

Take the numeric keyboards you use without a second thought every day.

Why is that on a phone keypad the numbers ascend in four rows from left to right 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 while on a calculator keypad they descend in four rows from right to left 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0?

Obviously someone didn’t get the memo.

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