Welcome to Sanity on Backorder — the monthly column that exists because Synapse & Spectacle made the questionable decision to hand me a microphone and then step back like it was a live grenade. The story goes like this: their managing editor commissioned a painting from me — a perfectly respectable piece of art, mind you — and during our chats over deadlines and whether “mauve” was a real color or just emotional beige, they discovered I was looking for a writing gig. Next thing I know, they’re whispering to the chief editor like I’m some rare truffle they’d found under a tree. Only instead of a rare delicacy, they got… well, me.
Synapse & Spectacle is a high-class, privately syndicated magazine — the kind where the paper is so thick you feel guilty folding it. Their staff are impossibly clever, elegantly dressed, and prone to using words like “interlocutor” before coffee. They poke fun at me for being the resident chaos element; I return the favor by reminding them that their idea of casual Friday still involves cufflinks. It’s a mutual roast built on mutual respect, the way all great literary relationships are. And somehow, between their editorial sophistication and my relentless pursuit of absurdity, Sanity on Backorder became a thing. You’re welcome.
And Jacob — if you’re reading this — nobody uses perspicacious in a sentence when describing golf pants. They’re burnt orange, Jacob, not a Renaissance-era tapestry. Also, if you insist on dressing like a country club divorce lawyer on safari, I’m coming into the office next month in neon Crocs, a sequined bathrobe, and whatever hat most loudly violates your HOA’s dress code. I’m kidding, of course. You’re the reason this column looks as good as it does — editing my chaos into something readable with the grace of a man folding origami in a hurricane. Still, one day, I’m going to replace all the commas in my drafts with semicolons just to watch you twitch.
