The Chum Box
I came into the office full of energy this morning. I don’t even have time to tell you what Joe was doing.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Joe said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Call me ‘Joe’. I go by ‘Fat Joe.’ Everybody calls me ‘Fat Joe’ except you.”
“OK,” I said, “I’ll call you ‘Fat Joe’. Is there anything else you want?”
“You should ask me my question of the day.” He said.
“I don’t have time for the question of the day, but since you insist, how about, ‘What do you have planned for this morning?”
“Oh,” said Joe, sitting up in his beach chair and taking the earbud to his iPad out of his ear, “I’m going to box the 1–2–8 trifecta at Pimlico this afternoon.”
He was obviously excited to talk about the races. Maybe it was a mistake to watch the simulcast with him on the big screen in the conference room directly after his interview. I tried to to establish an inter-personal boundary by saying, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that only degenerates bet on horse flesh?”
He bristled at that. He sat up as straight as he could in his beach chair, put his giant sneakers directly beneath him, looked straight at me and said, “So, the Queen of England is a degenerate, is she?”
I didn’t want to argue about the Queen’s relative degeneracy, but the short answer is, no, of course she’s not a degenerate. Everyone knows that when royals do degenerate things they just shout “The Aristocrats” at the end and everyone laughs.
I wanted to get to the Chum Box I’ve been working on with the Art department. I didn’t even know a chum box was called a chum box until I read this article:
It turns out, I’m kind of a Chum Box aficionado. I’ve clicked through “Horrifying Pics Show a Different Side to Woodstock”, “15 Celebs That Were Bombshells Back in the Day”, and “10 Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained.”
I asked the ASS42000 to profile our readers and “model” what they might be willing to click on. Using the “Big Data” that we gathered by triangulating your browsing habits, insurance claim history, and purchases at ‘food stands’ (which is why I always pay cash at the Dawg Howse) we were able to construct our highly clickable Chum Box.
So now, without further ado, would the AS42000 please RELEASE THE CHUM BOX:
Soon after we released the chum box I heard Fat Joe grunting in the corner.
“This is the dumbest chum box I’ve ever seen,” he said, “I wouldn’t click on any of this garbage, but I did and nothing is happening.”
“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t work because Medium won’t let us construct a real chum box, so it’s just a giant .png file that I thought the ASS42000 might image map for us.”
“Image map, as in 1990 style image map?” Joe asked.
“Yes, exactly,” I said. Then I asked, “ASS42000, how much revenue have we generated so far from the chum box?”
“2,500 Mildew Bucks,” came the reply.
“That’s great! How come so much?” I asked.
“It turns out that a broken chum box generates more clicks than a working one. We knew this. It is simple operant conditioning. Joe has now clicked the chum box 437 times.”
“It’s still not working,” said Joe.
We may be saved.
Image Credits
Woman wearing blue dress, Genthe, Arnold, 1869–1942,
Portrait of Jack London, Genthe, Arnold, 1869–1942
John Bray, half-length portrait, standing with hand on shoulder, Amelia, Louisiana, Lomax, Alan, 1915–2002, photographer
Isadora Duncan dancers, Genthe, Arnold, 1869–1942, photographer
Young girl walking down the street, looking into the camera, Chinatown, San Francisco, Genthe, Arnold, 1869–1942, photographer
Silvester child with Buzzer the cat, portrait photograph, Genthe, Arnold, — 1869–1942 — Animals & pets.
Massachusetts Tercentury Celebration, from the Boston Public Library’s Boston Pictorial Archive
Others in this series include, in LIFO order: