Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The theme for this morning is letters. Aggressive letters that purport to be nice.
I’ve been reading Travis Pangburn’s personal history of the downfall of Pangburn Philosophy, and wow. I had no idea that a saint was living among us. From the outside, what I saw was an impresario who was busy sucking up to the alt-right, who over-committed himself to multiple big ticket events around the world, and then discovered that Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson only have niche appeal and there were only so many tickets for so much that could be sold. He crashed and burned when he couldn’t pay his ‘talent’, when events collapsed, and when he couldn’t even refund ticket-holders money. What I didn’t know, according to Travis, was that none of it was his fault. It was all the result of a conspiracy by his backstabbing employees, and the faithlessness of the people he was paying big money to to perform.
I think Peak Pangburn was reached when his rage at his staff prompted him to send this email to all of them.
Sneaking around, hiding things from me, recording my voice without my knowledge, absurd questioning of my motives and practice, feeling urges of physical violence towards me, citing things from my past work relationships and using that as fuel for your cowardly motives, long conversations on Facebook to plan to confront me on issues in group think, thinking your have admissions of some kind of guilt from me etc etc etc…….. Some of you came to me to report this insanity, but much too late. You had already contributed your drivel to this failure.
You have all disappointed and failed me. (TD’s) email of demands exposed your callousness and/or cowardice. I have no use for cowards. You will never be forgiven, as far as I can tell, for the stress & pressure you put on me and my family the night before my flight to Dublin. You disgust me in your carelessness. My trust for each of you has reached absolute zero.
Effective immediately:
-All of your current contracts with Pangburn Philosophy are terminated. The contract you had me sign under duress at the Vancouver airport is null and void and was never active.
-Your Pangburn email addresses have been deactivated.
-You have no permission to access any Pangburn Philosophy credit cards, PayPal, social media accounts or anything else owned and operated by Travis Pangburn or Pangburn Philosophy.
-The locks, alarm system & surveillance at the Pangburn Philosophy headquarters have all been changed. You are not permitted on the premises, as you are no longer a member of the Pangburn Philosophy team due to your contract termination. If you have personal items left behind, you can schedule a pickup time with me through your personal email.
-You can send me final invoices from your personal email, that are based on your standard operating contract prior to me being put under duress from Masha’s email of collective demands.
-If you have in your possession anything owned by Travis Pangburn or Pangburn Philosophy, make arrangements to return those items swiftly.
A dim light from this precipice:
Each of you has the opportunity, this Friday, July 20th, to call me to attempt to stay on with Pangburn Philosophy in a lesser capacity. If your reasons for calling are outside of your love for the Pangburn Philosophy or myself, don’t waste my time. If your reason for calling is for the love of working with the speakers or artists I pay for, don’t waste my time.
Do not respond to this email in any way. I have no time for your excuses or explanations.
*Any distribution of this email or any other Pangburn Philosophy communication marked confidential will result in fierce legal action. This also includes any contacts that were shared with you confidentially.
I can’t imagine why his staff detested Captain Queeg…I mean, Travis Pangburn. It wasn’t Trav’s fault, it was all their fault, and they deserved to be fired. Unless they’re willing to crawl back and work for less money.
Also amusing: he blames Sam Harris for abandoning him, but at the same time calls him a “great human being”. The obsequious and loquacious tongue-laving, simultaneously sucking up while seething with resentment, reminds me of another character: EB Farnum from the series Deadwood. He’s a bottom-feeder who relies on the patronage of others more popular than he, who lashes out at his underlings whenever he thinks he is unobserved.
Oh, wait, I forgot — he’s a blameless saint.
However, the transmission was garbled. What is that 8-legged abomination on the left, with antennae and three tagma? Such a thing would never manifest itself in my dreams.
My bedtime reading lately has been Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which can partly be blamed for my dreams. It’s a fantasy novel, the usual quest to defeat the evil big bad with a party of a priest, a fighter, a rogue, etc. with one significant twist: they recruit (that is, force) a giant spider to join the team, after magically making it sort of a human/spider hybrid so they can talk to it. It’s entertaining. It’s got spiders in it, so of course it’s fun.
What Christmas Eve? My wife and I are two old people abandoned by their children. Alaric has a movie date for Christmas, so he’s not going to visit. Connlann is in far-off Texas with Ji and their toddler, Knut; he can’t get away. Skatje is in Boulder, Colorado with Kyle and Iliana, and they’re not coming, either. This is the fate of all parents, that their kids grow up and move away and no longer have time for them. It doesn’t help that in my childhood, the big extended family all lived near the grandparents, and we were used to gigantic noisy family get-togethers over the holidays. My kids have all dispersed to distant places, and frigid isolated Morris is not exactly an attractive vacation spot.
That reminds me — I better call my mother. If you’ve got ’em, you should call any beloved relatives, too.
(It’s OK, they shouldn’t feel guilty. We’re proud to have independent, self-sufficient children.)
JK Rowling is now enrolled in the League of Disappointing Authors. Their clubhouse has to be like a Tardis or something to accommodate all of the membership.
I don’t even want to imagine the after-dinner conversation, once they’ve had a little wine and loosened up and find themselves in like-minded company.
I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for the 2019 Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog. Wait no more!
One thing (at least) mystifies me. Williams-Sonoma is supposed to be marketing all this high-end, “classy,” useless stuff at an extravagant price, so why is there all this kitschy Star Wars junk for sale? This cheesy plastic Stormtrooper Toaster for $49.95 just screams that the owner is someone with no taste at all.
Even the stuff that is all crystal and chrome and plaid is an announcement that someone is low-class sucker, for that matter.
I’m in a fog today, so I decided to do mindless things for a day. Would you believe I got the syllabi done for Spring term classes all done? I was in the right state of mind to work through a calendar and update my schedule. I even submitted it all to the division secretary! I hope she survives the shock, she usually has to nag me to get it done.
I also got my schedule all mapped out. I’m going to have Fridays free of all classes, and you know what that means: Friday will be SpiderDay!
Monday and Wednesday won’t be bad, either. Although, realistically, a lot of that blank space will get chewed up with committees and other work.
I do! Lots! Yesterday I was working on a paper, writing up a script for a video, and fussing over spiders, and I still have a couple of term papers to finish grading. I started to fade in the mid-afternoon, though, and was feeling exhausted, because I haven’t been sleeping well, waking up way too early. So last night I programmed our lights to dim at 9:30, went to bed promptly at 10, and went right to sleep. I had also programmed the lights to come up gradually at 6:30, and wake me gently by 7. I was determined to get a good night’s sleep and break this cycle.
Unfortunately, I had not planned on the behavior of the two large mammalian organisms I share the house with, one of whom started eating crackers crunchily in bed and checking their phone at sometime around 5am, and the other started snuggling up to my neck and purring at about the same time. I won’t say which was which, to protect the guilty.
So no, I didn’t get my good night’s sleep.
I’m so tired right now I might just go stretch out on the sofa and spend the day in a lazy haze of stupid television. Or maybe go the other way and take a long walk in the cold, although there’s no place to go on a Sunday (everything is closed) in Morris. Oh, I know! I’ll sit dazed and stupidly incapable of making up my mind all day long!
Knut is also showing off his physique.
He’s always running around half-naked every time we see him. I think it comes of living in the savage tropical land of San Antonio, Texas, because here in Minnesota I’m constantly putting on more clothes.
