Suck It Up (Or Cry Like the Little Baby You Are)

“New format of Times is freaky. I’m freaking out. I’m going to sue everybody.”

As a defender of journalists, I replied to this text at 9 a.m.: “That would put us at odds. [REDACTED] Bring it on.”

“I’ll sue you too,” he wrote.

(No one ever said the Welder was subtle.)

But yeah. “Freaking out” is probable for the city today. Or for those of us who read newspapers in the city today. Which, at last count, is three-to-forty of us. In case you missed it: The Times cut its physical paper width finally to the size of The Washington Post. It is nothing short of terrifying. Or jarring, maybe. Depends how overdramatic I feel like being right now. And right now, I feel like being pretty fucking overdramatic. Terrifying. I’m going to go with “terrifying.” Picture mass panic: Tourists in Times Square being clubbed in the head by newspaper-wielding New Yorkers with insanity in their eyes. Dogs attacking like 1,000 angry Cujos with foreshortened New York Times in their teeth. Commuters waving their arms around in confusion and thwacking small children and pregnant ladies with rolled up papers. Just like that.

Totally aside, or perhaps entirely relatedly, this lyric from One Ring Zero will not get out of my brain (damn you, you know who you are):

“All…the plants…are on…fire…
All…the plants…are on…fire…
They’re…looking for a wife.”