Over at www.newsfromme.com, Mark Evanier writes yet again about the late night wars. He makes a very important point, one that is at the heart of why I was screaming at the TV earlier this year when Andy Richter was on Regis and Kelly. Richter said that The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien had good ratings during the summer before Jay Leno came on at 10:00. That's a bald-faced lie, and one that once again leads the audience away from the fact of the matter: Conan was failing in his time slot even during the summer. I was so angry when the audience of Regis and Kelly wildly applauded Richer's statement.
The truth is that Conan O'Brien was failing and then Jay Leno came on at 10:00 and he failed and so surrounding the 11:00 news was a bunch of failure. Leno never, ever impacted O'Brien's ratings. He impacted the ad revenue for the 11:00 affiliates. I'm not saying Leno wasn't a failure. At 10:00 p.m., he was.
(I do, however, disagree that he failed because his show was too much like his old Tonight Show. I thought The Jay Leno Show was trying too hard to have humor like The Office and all of these droll, dry sketch shows we see popping up. The younger comedians he brought on want so badly to be as deadpan as Colbert or outraged as Jon Stewart - which if you think about it, are just rehashes of how Letterman was [deadpan] and Leno was [outraged] during the glorious Late Night with David Letterman years.)
I don't watch any of these shows anymore but I still, deep down, root for Jay Leno. I don't understand what decision he was supposed to make in 2004. The only decision anyone would have accepted, truly, was if he retired and left television altogether. If he had said, "No, I won't give up The Tonight Show in 2009," he would have been called a bully who wouldn't let anyone else play with his toys (although, according to Bill Carter's new book, Leno didn't have a choice in the matter anyway - NBC told him Conan was getting the show instead of negotiating with him like previously thought). The media, that hated him anyway, was not going to accept any situation other than Leno going away, out of sight out of mind. When it was announced he would do a 10:00 p.m. show, everyone was waiting for him to fail which, in my opinion, was really unfair.
It's just like the book, the bane of my existence, That Book (not it's real title), wherein the editors tell aspiring writers that when they (the editors, who work for book publishers) get a manuscript, they go into reading it looking for a reason to reject it. You know, just no. That's a horrible mindset. Then these editors go on to show examples of how writers who took their advice were published (by them) and writers who didn't weren't published (by them). Then - THEN! - they take excerpts from The Great Gatsby and rewrite it to show how following their advice could make even a classic all the better. I think I may have written about this before, but it's a really sore subject with me.
Anyway, I just think it was unfair of basically the entire television and media world to be waiting for Leno to fail. And then he did, and I'm not saying I don't agree that he did, but part of me wonders if the media might not have poisoned a few viewer's minds. I just feel like it's hard to succeed when what seems like the entire world is rooting against you.
December 30, 2010
December 28, 2010
December 17, 2010
Stalker
I believe my 15-year-old nephew is headed down a dangerous road. This morning, as I was getting out of the shower I noticed that someone had written fuck you LDJ on the mirror so when the mirror steams up you can read it. Now, you know, it's his handwriting.
I told my mom. She said, "Well someone's going to have to have a talk with him about it." I was like, "Yeah, you, where you tell him and his mother to get out."
Instead she calls his mother, who says, "How do you know it was him? Why does everyone accuse him of doing these things?"
Well...
a) He has said point blank to my face that he hates me. He really hates me, you know.
b) It's his handrwriting.
c) Who else has been here the past two days who hates me?
He tried to say he hasn't even taken a shower in the last, like, four days.
a) Ew.
b) Bullshit.
My mother kept saying they had no place to go, so she couldn't tell them to leave. I don't care at this point. I don't really have anywhere to go either, because this is my parents' house and it's where the harrassment is. I packed everything of value to take with me to work today, because I was sure that while no one was in the house my nephew would try to break down my locked door and destroy everything. Unfortunately for him, my brother decided to stay and protect the house for the first half of the day and my older nephew came home for the second half. Now I'm here, and he's already gotten in a fight with my mother because when he didn't help her bring in the groceries like she asked him and instead ignored her, she yelled and he said, "Of course, another thing I'm getting blamed for." What do you fucking mean? This isn't some discreet message on a bathroom wall. This is sitting right in front of her doing nothing when she asked you to help. You aren't getting blamed, you're getting held responsible. Except you're not, because you're still sitting there and you didn't have to help in the end anyway.
His older brother "had a talk with him today" and I'm supposed to feel better.
My sister said she's moving out at the first of the year. She says that every year. I told my mother that I was still moving out, too. But until one of us is gone, I won't come out of my bedroom for anything but the necessities.
My mother keeps trying to say she can't choose between her children. I want to understand, but when you have one daughter who won't contribute money, who smokes in the house when you've asked her not to (and in the car, and in your face), who cusses and screams everything she says, who doesn't always flush the toilet after taking a crap (and neither does her son), who doesn't have a car but won't give gas money for the car that takes her everywhere, who says she doesn't think she should have to use her foodstamps or her child support to pay the bills in the house she lives in because technically it isn't her house, who defends her child who terrorizes a small cat and has now begun to terrorize a human being, who has a son who punches holes in the wall when he doesn't get his way, who has a son who messes with you car when he's mad at you...
...and you have another daughter who keeps hidden in her room, may not do much of the housework but stays hidden so the messes shouldn't be her responsibility anyway, who pays the cable bill, the phone bill, the water bill, sometimes the insurance, and the credit cards every month, who makes sure there is always money left over to buy food, who pays for all of the repairs on the car everyone in the entire family uses, who puts 90% of the gas in said car, who paid off YOUR debts with the money from her second job, who paid off YOUR debt earlier this year so YOU wouldn't have to worry about it anymore and YOU went and put YOURSELF back in that debt because the other daughter needed money for god knows what because she has a job, no conceivable bills, and child support, who, when she takes over the household expenses always pulls us out of debt by the end of two months but YOU take back over because I'm asking for too much money when I ask for $500 a month from each person, and now that daughter is being stalked by a 15-year-old?
It's time to make a choice.
I told my mom. She said, "Well someone's going to have to have a talk with him about it." I was like, "Yeah, you, where you tell him and his mother to get out."
Instead she calls his mother, who says, "How do you know it was him? Why does everyone accuse him of doing these things?"
Well...
a) He has said point blank to my face that he hates me. He really hates me, you know.
b) It's his handrwriting.
c) Who else has been here the past two days who hates me?
He tried to say he hasn't even taken a shower in the last, like, four days.
a) Ew.
b) Bullshit.
My mother kept saying they had no place to go, so she couldn't tell them to leave. I don't care at this point. I don't really have anywhere to go either, because this is my parents' house and it's where the harrassment is. I packed everything of value to take with me to work today, because I was sure that while no one was in the house my nephew would try to break down my locked door and destroy everything. Unfortunately for him, my brother decided to stay and protect the house for the first half of the day and my older nephew came home for the second half. Now I'm here, and he's already gotten in a fight with my mother because when he didn't help her bring in the groceries like she asked him and instead ignored her, she yelled and he said, "Of course, another thing I'm getting blamed for." What do you fucking mean? This isn't some discreet message on a bathroom wall. This is sitting right in front of her doing nothing when she asked you to help. You aren't getting blamed, you're getting held responsible. Except you're not, because you're still sitting there and you didn't have to help in the end anyway.
His older brother "had a talk with him today" and I'm supposed to feel better.
My sister said she's moving out at the first of the year. She says that every year. I told my mother that I was still moving out, too. But until one of us is gone, I won't come out of my bedroom for anything but the necessities.
My mother keeps trying to say she can't choose between her children. I want to understand, but when you have one daughter who won't contribute money, who smokes in the house when you've asked her not to (and in the car, and in your face), who cusses and screams everything she says, who doesn't always flush the toilet after taking a crap (and neither does her son), who doesn't have a car but won't give gas money for the car that takes her everywhere, who says she doesn't think she should have to use her foodstamps or her child support to pay the bills in the house she lives in because technically it isn't her house, who defends her child who terrorizes a small cat and has now begun to terrorize a human being, who has a son who punches holes in the wall when he doesn't get his way, who has a son who messes with you car when he's mad at you...
...and you have another daughter who keeps hidden in her room, may not do much of the housework but stays hidden so the messes shouldn't be her responsibility anyway, who pays the cable bill, the phone bill, the water bill, sometimes the insurance, and the credit cards every month, who makes sure there is always money left over to buy food, who pays for all of the repairs on the car everyone in the entire family uses, who puts 90% of the gas in said car, who paid off YOUR debts with the money from her second job, who paid off YOUR debt earlier this year so YOU wouldn't have to worry about it anymore and YOU went and put YOURSELF back in that debt because the other daughter needed money for god knows what because she has a job, no conceivable bills, and child support, who, when she takes over the household expenses always pulls us out of debt by the end of two months but YOU take back over because I'm asking for too much money when I ask for $500 a month from each person, and now that daughter is being stalked by a 15-year-old?
It's time to make a choice.
December 16, 2010
If I Ever Won the Lottery
Honest to Shivu, I would travel from hotel to hotel, staying about a week or so in each. I would take train rides just for the hell of it. I would buy a decent laptop, and I would order books through the local bookstore of whatever town I was in and stay long enough for each of them to arrive (usually three days, as far as I've seen). I would pack my Kindle and find podunk laundromats where I would read creepy stories like Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates.
(I thoroughly enjoyed that experience a few summers ago when we had no washer and dryer and one of the last remaining laundromats here was just around the corner from our apartment.)
One of my fears is that I don't have any life to draw from when I'm writing. I looked at one of Tony Doerr's books at the library the other day and I remember him telling us how he used to live in Africa, and also how he worked in Alaska gutting fish for a year, too. He travelled to Rome with his wife and sons. I wanted one of my characters to run away to a big city and the more I thought about it the more I wondered how authentic it would sound. I think I need to go somewhere.
Here's what stops me, and I know it might sound pathetic or childish to some, but it's my psychology. My parents are old. My father is obviously getting sick. Their other children are sucking the life out of them. They've always done everything I've ever needed of them. I don't know what they would do without me.
It's hard to abandon people you know would never abandon you. But I do need to get away. I've never felt more confident or more sexy or more restless than I have since I turned thirty. I feel a little like this is the last youth of my life and I don't want to waste it anymore. I've been telling my mother for the past few days that I'm planning on moving out when March comes because I'll have extra money once all the credit cards are paid off. I'm still going to need a second job. I don't even care right now if that job is at a grocery store.
I just applied at another technical college. I don't think their needs for teaching composition are the same as a liberal arts college, but I'm desperate. I'm waiting on a phone call back from my district manager to tell me if Meijer would be considered a competitor to my current job because they sell clothing. If they aren't considered a competitor, or if she tells me I can work there if I don't work in clothing, shoes, or jewelry, then my brother can probably get me a guaranteed job there.
Maybe I should move to Chicago. Maybe I should apply for a Ph.D. program. (My dissertation would be about the use of memory in literature, focusing on Borges's iconic vs. individual memory, backed by Nabokov's invoked vs. evoked memory, drawing on Abe Akira's woven memories, and Lauren Slater's false memories, and my own false memories, and Dorothy Allison's memories of the dead children who are replaceable because Southern women are baby factories. Or it would be about the separate way we read fiction as opposed to non-fiction. When we read fiction we often think of the events as choices made by the author as opposed to non-fiction, which we think of as a set of circumstances that happened to the "characters." Of course the two occasionally overlap, but not often. Or maybe I can combine the two, and talk about how fiction is iconic as it's often symbolic and non-fiction is individual as it's often recounting a specifically, supposedly true set of experiences.)
Anyway, maybe soon I'll start applying for Alaskan fish-gutting jobs on Careerbuilder.
(I thoroughly enjoyed that experience a few summers ago when we had no washer and dryer and one of the last remaining laundromats here was just around the corner from our apartment.)
One of my fears is that I don't have any life to draw from when I'm writing. I looked at one of Tony Doerr's books at the library the other day and I remember him telling us how he used to live in Africa, and also how he worked in Alaska gutting fish for a year, too. He travelled to Rome with his wife and sons. I wanted one of my characters to run away to a big city and the more I thought about it the more I wondered how authentic it would sound. I think I need to go somewhere.
Here's what stops me, and I know it might sound pathetic or childish to some, but it's my psychology. My parents are old. My father is obviously getting sick. Their other children are sucking the life out of them. They've always done everything I've ever needed of them. I don't know what they would do without me.
It's hard to abandon people you know would never abandon you. But I do need to get away. I've never felt more confident or more sexy or more restless than I have since I turned thirty. I feel a little like this is the last youth of my life and I don't want to waste it anymore. I've been telling my mother for the past few days that I'm planning on moving out when March comes because I'll have extra money once all the credit cards are paid off. I'm still going to need a second job. I don't even care right now if that job is at a grocery store.
I just applied at another technical college. I don't think their needs for teaching composition are the same as a liberal arts college, but I'm desperate. I'm waiting on a phone call back from my district manager to tell me if Meijer would be considered a competitor to my current job because they sell clothing. If they aren't considered a competitor, or if she tells me I can work there if I don't work in clothing, shoes, or jewelry, then my brother can probably get me a guaranteed job there.
Maybe I should move to Chicago. Maybe I should apply for a Ph.D. program. (My dissertation would be about the use of memory in literature, focusing on Borges's iconic vs. individual memory, backed by Nabokov's invoked vs. evoked memory, drawing on Abe Akira's woven memories, and Lauren Slater's false memories, and my own false memories, and Dorothy Allison's memories of the dead children who are replaceable because Southern women are baby factories. Or it would be about the separate way we read fiction as opposed to non-fiction. When we read fiction we often think of the events as choices made by the author as opposed to non-fiction, which we think of as a set of circumstances that happened to the "characters." Of course the two occasionally overlap, but not often. Or maybe I can combine the two, and talk about how fiction is iconic as it's often symbolic and non-fiction is individual as it's often recounting a specifically, supposedly true set of experiences.)
Anyway, maybe soon I'll start applying for Alaskan fish-gutting jobs on Careerbuilder.
Wednesday Meals
Breakfast:
Burrito:
Leftover Mexican Casserole
Mexican Cheese: $1.50
Wheat/Flavored Tortilla Shells: $1.80
Avocado: a bag of four for $2.99
Ranch Dressing: $1.99
Coffee with Milk and Sugar
Oh, yeah, I forgot sugar: $1.99
Lunch:
The rest of the avocado/ranch dip
Tortilla chips
Campbell's Mexican Tortilla soup: $1.59
Juice
Dinner:
Chef Boyardee Pizza Kit: $2.99
(All-inclusive and I only use half of the dough - the other half can go in the fridge for lunch the next day)
Juice
So, that's $14.85. So for two days we're up to a little less than $50, but a lot of this stuff will be used over and over again for the next few days. I'll need to replace the juice, the tortilla chips, and the bread most often, most likely.
Let's go ahead and plan for Thursday:
Breakfast:
Breakfast sandwich:
Bread
Cheese
Eggs: $.84 a dozen
Ham: $3.50 a package of 9 oz.
Coffee, blah blah blah....
Lunch:
Pizza, all-inclusive from the day before
juice
Dinner:
Cous-cous: $2.39 a box
Pork Chops: $3.29 or so for a small package
Brussel Sprouts (yummy!): $1.50 for a frozen bag
juice (this will probably be the last of the juice)
$10.02 for Thursday. I'm up to about $54.07.
Burrito:
Leftover Mexican Casserole
Mexican Cheese: $1.50
Wheat/Flavored Tortilla Shells: $1.80
Avocado: a bag of four for $2.99
Ranch Dressing: $1.99
Coffee with Milk and Sugar
Oh, yeah, I forgot sugar: $1.99
Lunch:
The rest of the avocado/ranch dip
Tortilla chips
Campbell's Mexican Tortilla soup: $1.59
Juice
Dinner:
Chef Boyardee Pizza Kit: $2.99
(All-inclusive and I only use half of the dough - the other half can go in the fridge for lunch the next day)
Juice
So, that's $14.85. So for two days we're up to a little less than $50, but a lot of this stuff will be used over and over again for the next few days. I'll need to replace the juice, the tortilla chips, and the bread most often, most likely.
Let's go ahead and plan for Thursday:
Breakfast:
Breakfast sandwich:
Bread
Cheese
Eggs: $.84 a dozen
Ham: $3.50 a package of 9 oz.
Coffee, blah blah blah....
Lunch:
Pizza, all-inclusive from the day before
juice
Dinner:
Cous-cous: $2.39 a box
Pork Chops: $3.29 or so for a small package
Brussel Sprouts (yummy!): $1.50 for a frozen bag
juice (this will probably be the last of the juice)
$10.02 for Thursday. I'm up to about $54.07.
December 14, 2010
Lunch and Dinner
Lunch:
Campbell's Chunky New England Clam Chowder: $1.59 a can
Cranberry/Strawberry juice: $2.12 for 2 QTs
Dinner:
Hamburger Helper Mexican Casserole: $1.50
Black beans: $1.00 a can
Tortilla chips: $1.50 a bag
juice
Snack:
Tostitos Restaurant Style Salsa: 2.99 a jar
chips
juice
$11.70 for two meals but they can be leftovers. I can use the casserole in a burrito for breakfast or lunch the next day, too, and take some to work so I don't have to eat out. You know what? This is fun. Are you sick of my five thousand posts yet?
Campbell's Chunky New England Clam Chowder: $1.59 a can
Cranberry/Strawberry juice: $2.12 for 2 QTs
Dinner:
Hamburger Helper Mexican Casserole: $1.50
Black beans: $1.00 a can
Tortilla chips: $1.50 a bag
juice
Snack:
Tostitos Restaurant Style Salsa: 2.99 a jar
chips
juice
$11.70 for two meals but they can be leftovers. I can use the casserole in a burrito for breakfast or lunch the next day, too, and take some to work so I don't have to eat out. You know what? This is fun. Are you sick of my five thousand posts yet?
Student Loans
This year, I requested that my student loans be income contingent. The Direct Loan Center lowered my bills to a doable amount and I was happy. Suddenly this month, my payment quadrupled. Quadrupled.
I called to ask them why. They told me that the IRS sent them my 2009 tax information and since I made a little more money than I did the previous year, they raised my payment. I explained to them that I had already gone through this with them and was at that time told to send in a letter and a current paystub so they could see what my current pay was trending toward. I did so and that was when they lowered the bill to the good amount.
I asked them why:
a) it took so long to get my 2009 tax information
b) why I had to resubmit the paystub when I had already done so
They said that because I made $3500 extra last year (working a temporary job) they had recalculated my payment. I, again, explained that I had already been through this and that it was already on record that my income was less for 2010. They said it didn't matter and I would have to resubmit the forms and go through the whole process again.
I still don't understand, though, why the extra $3500 made them quadruple the payment.
I called to ask them why. They told me that the IRS sent them my 2009 tax information and since I made a little more money than I did the previous year, they raised my payment. I explained to them that I had already gone through this with them and was at that time told to send in a letter and a current paystub so they could see what my current pay was trending toward. I did so and that was when they lowered the bill to the good amount.
I asked them why:
a) it took so long to get my 2009 tax information
b) why I had to resubmit the paystub when I had already done so
They said that because I made $3500 extra last year (working a temporary job) they had recalculated my payment. I, again, explained that I had already been through this and that it was already on record that my income was less for 2010. They said it didn't matter and I would have to resubmit the forms and go through the whole process again.
I still don't understand, though, why the extra $3500 made them quadruple the payment.
Food Journal
I think i'll start keeping a food journal so I can see how much it would cost each week to feed myself.
My planned breakfast in the morning: a grilled-cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Bread: $1.50 for one loaf.
Cheeses: 2 for $5.00 (Muenster and Swiss)
Butter: $2.00 a container
Coffee: A good kind is about $7.00
Milk: $2.00 a gallon
That's $17.50 but the bread, cheese, butter, and milk will serve other purposes, too. We'll see what lunch costs me tomorrow and try to figure out about how much money I would need each week for just little old me.
My planned breakfast in the morning: a grilled-cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Bread: $1.50 for one loaf.
Cheeses: 2 for $5.00 (Muenster and Swiss)
Butter: $2.00 a container
Coffee: A good kind is about $7.00
Milk: $2.00 a gallon
That's $17.50 but the bread, cheese, butter, and milk will serve other purposes, too. We'll see what lunch costs me tomorrow and try to figure out about how much money I would need each week for just little old me.
December 13, 2010
Everytime I Think I Could Be Happy....
I went into the upstairs bathroom today to wash my face and I noticed, in the mirror, something written on the wall behind me. I recognized my own name, so I turned around to see what it said (secretly already knowing) and it said: LDJ is a slut. Except it said my real name, of course.
My nephew (obviously) carved - and I mean carved - this into the wall and then went over it with blue pen. It is not really all that small, and my seriously protective father is going to see it soon. I don't know what's going to happen when he does.
So here's a small secret that I'm ashamed of: I kinda hate this kid. I don't know what to do anymore. His mother and my mother won't do anything about him and he constantly does things like this to me. He has chosen me as the person he is allowed to harrass. Because he knows they'll protect him. He and I have had physical fights before when I can't take it anymore. There's only so many times a kid can call you a bitch, tell you he's going to kick your head in, and then talk on the phone to his girlfriend about what a stupid whore you are. There are only so many times a kid can let his nineteen-year-old girlfriend steal your underwear (you read that). There are only so many times he can go through your underwear drawers himself and steal things you had hidden in there.
I have a padlock on my bedroom door that I lock before I leave the house now. Today he was in the room next to mine when I left, and all I can think is that he got angry that he can't steal from me or violate my privacy anymore. We've barely spoken ten words to each other for the last six months, let alone had a fight, so he must have been wanting something out of my bedroom and was frustrated to see that I made sure to lock it up. The padlock has been there almost a year, though, so why the sudden outburst?
Part of me feels bad for him, because he is the product of bad parenting all around. My sister babied him when he was little and when he grew big enough to fight her she grew afraid of him. My mother is afraid of him. They let him get away with things because they think he'll have a violent outburst and hurt them. His father isn't around and when he is around it's a crapshoot whether he spends time with his son. We don't have much money, so he doesn't get a lot of the things his friends at school get, like a new phone every six months or all the latest video game consoles. I'm sure life is frustrating when you see what everyone else has and compare it to what you don't have.
But, why me? Why has he chosen me as the focus of all his rage? Because when he was little I didn't baby him and when he fought me I fought him back? Does he find me that threatening? I guess he does. I think it's also because he doesn't understand I'm not a child. That's a big problem with my whole family. Even though I put in way more money for the bills and food than my sister who lives here with her two children, she talks about how I do nothing all the time. He hears that. Then he sees that I have things. I have a computer, a netbook, the Kindle, I had a few video game consoles (which almost all of them are gone now, stolen), I have a small refrigerator. But you know what? I bought all of that after I paid the bills that needed to be paid and bought the food that needed to be bought. I bought the computer with part of one of my paychecks from my second job teaching college. My parents bought me the netbook for my thirtieth birthday, but his mother bought him a $500 IPod for his birthday this year (he threw it at her and broke her tooth). I bought the Kindle with saved money and an extra paycheck, after I paid the water bill and bought food. This is my money because I'm a grown-up with no children and a job.
When we all moved in together, I had pretty fair credit. During the first year here, there were seven people and at one point four of them didn't have jobs, including my sister. I took out FIVE credit cards to pay bills, buy food, and keep us above water. In March four of those credit cards will be paid off (I put them in consolidation, along with my Maurices card, which was my fault). I have repaid all of those credit cards while still paying for part of the bills and food. I don't buy much and if I have a vice, like they have cigarettes, my vice is books.
Oooohhh, my mother is looking at the wall right now. I wonder what's going to happen. I can hear her trying to rub it off. Of course she's just going to hide it and pretend like it didn't happen.
My nephew (obviously) carved - and I mean carved - this into the wall and then went over it with blue pen. It is not really all that small, and my seriously protective father is going to see it soon. I don't know what's going to happen when he does.
So here's a small secret that I'm ashamed of: I kinda hate this kid. I don't know what to do anymore. His mother and my mother won't do anything about him and he constantly does things like this to me. He has chosen me as the person he is allowed to harrass. Because he knows they'll protect him. He and I have had physical fights before when I can't take it anymore. There's only so many times a kid can call you a bitch, tell you he's going to kick your head in, and then talk on the phone to his girlfriend about what a stupid whore you are. There are only so many times a kid can let his nineteen-year-old girlfriend steal your underwear (you read that). There are only so many times he can go through your underwear drawers himself and steal things you had hidden in there.
I have a padlock on my bedroom door that I lock before I leave the house now. Today he was in the room next to mine when I left, and all I can think is that he got angry that he can't steal from me or violate my privacy anymore. We've barely spoken ten words to each other for the last six months, let alone had a fight, so he must have been wanting something out of my bedroom and was frustrated to see that I made sure to lock it up. The padlock has been there almost a year, though, so why the sudden outburst?
Part of me feels bad for him, because he is the product of bad parenting all around. My sister babied him when he was little and when he grew big enough to fight her she grew afraid of him. My mother is afraid of him. They let him get away with things because they think he'll have a violent outburst and hurt them. His father isn't around and when he is around it's a crapshoot whether he spends time with his son. We don't have much money, so he doesn't get a lot of the things his friends at school get, like a new phone every six months or all the latest video game consoles. I'm sure life is frustrating when you see what everyone else has and compare it to what you don't have.
But, why me? Why has he chosen me as the focus of all his rage? Because when he was little I didn't baby him and when he fought me I fought him back? Does he find me that threatening? I guess he does. I think it's also because he doesn't understand I'm not a child. That's a big problem with my whole family. Even though I put in way more money for the bills and food than my sister who lives here with her two children, she talks about how I do nothing all the time. He hears that. Then he sees that I have things. I have a computer, a netbook, the Kindle, I had a few video game consoles (which almost all of them are gone now, stolen), I have a small refrigerator. But you know what? I bought all of that after I paid the bills that needed to be paid and bought the food that needed to be bought. I bought the computer with part of one of my paychecks from my second job teaching college. My parents bought me the netbook for my thirtieth birthday, but his mother bought him a $500 IPod for his birthday this year (he threw it at her and broke her tooth). I bought the Kindle with saved money and an extra paycheck, after I paid the water bill and bought food. This is my money because I'm a grown-up with no children and a job.
When we all moved in together, I had pretty fair credit. During the first year here, there were seven people and at one point four of them didn't have jobs, including my sister. I took out FIVE credit cards to pay bills, buy food, and keep us above water. In March four of those credit cards will be paid off (I put them in consolidation, along with my Maurices card, which was my fault). I have repaid all of those credit cards while still paying for part of the bills and food. I don't buy much and if I have a vice, like they have cigarettes, my vice is books.
Oooohhh, my mother is looking at the wall right now. I wonder what's going to happen. I can hear her trying to rub it off. Of course she's just going to hide it and pretend like it didn't happen.
December 7, 2010
The Scene with the Lisps
During the choosing of the 104 books, I chose God Knows by Joseph Heller just based on this clip from a customer review at Amazon:
"There are many novels out there that make me smile and/or chuckle, but God Knows is one of the few that made me laugh out loud in several places. Read it if only for the passage with the lisps. You'll know what I mean when you get there."
How can I not want to read the scene with the lisps, no matter what it may be?
"There are many novels out there that make me smile and/or chuckle, but God Knows is one of the few that made me laugh out loud in several places. Read it if only for the passage with the lisps. You'll know what I mean when you get there."
How can I not want to read the scene with the lisps, no matter what it may be?
December 6, 2010
The Great Time-Waster
Today I tried to decide what book to read next and I literally almost had a nervous breakdown. It went something...like this....
Should I buy an expensive book for the Kindle? It isn't getting much love. What if I don't like the book I buy? There are many free books. But I haven't enjoyed a free book yet. Will that be a waste of time? I don't want to go to the library. There's never any parking. I could order another book. I could just read The Magic Mountain for the next twelve hours and feel as though I got nowhere with it...again. I could read more of the Joyce Collection or the P.G. Wodehouse collection. There, I read a chapter each. I feel like I accomplished...nothing. I want to read non-fiction. Do I want to read non-fiction? All the non-fiction for less than a dollar on the Kindle is from, like, 1908. I could break down and buy one of those expensive linguistics books I've been eyeing. Or I could just break down.
Hours, people. So what I'm doing now is compiling a list of the 104 books I'll read in 2011 (two books each week). I have all of these various lists I typed up long ago, including a list of all the movies made from books (about sixty pages); a list of books by female authors I photocopied from a book at a school I worked for; two separate lists of canon classics; lists of previous award-winners; a list from a literary book that listed (ding!) hundreds of literary genres and books that / authors who represent those genres; the one hundred must-read books of 2010 according to The New York Times, of which I chose eight (including one by Tony Doerr!); slots for random novels, including the one NGS told me she wanted me to read; and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Plus other sources.
I have 27 books so far, and I will have a complete list by the end of the night. I'm leaving thirteen slots for random books (including NGS's book). This partially worked for me when I had a goal of reading 100 pages a day, the difference being that I just chose random books from those lists. This time, I'm researching them and only choosing books I think I'll enjoy.
You know I struggle with the idea that I'll never know whether I'll enjoy a book until I read it, so part of me bucks this idea. But, I'm also forcing myself to understand no one can read every book every other person has read, or every book someone considers a classic. Each of the books I'm choosing sounds like a story, character, or idea I can get behind. I'm very excited.
Should I buy an expensive book for the Kindle? It isn't getting much love. What if I don't like the book I buy? There are many free books. But I haven't enjoyed a free book yet. Will that be a waste of time? I don't want to go to the library. There's never any parking. I could order another book. I could just read The Magic Mountain for the next twelve hours and feel as though I got nowhere with it...again. I could read more of the Joyce Collection or the P.G. Wodehouse collection. There, I read a chapter each. I feel like I accomplished...nothing. I want to read non-fiction. Do I want to read non-fiction? All the non-fiction for less than a dollar on the Kindle is from, like, 1908. I could break down and buy one of those expensive linguistics books I've been eyeing. Or I could just break down.
Hours, people. So what I'm doing now is compiling a list of the 104 books I'll read in 2011 (two books each week). I have all of these various lists I typed up long ago, including a list of all the movies made from books (about sixty pages); a list of books by female authors I photocopied from a book at a school I worked for; two separate lists of canon classics; lists of previous award-winners; a list from a literary book that listed (ding!) hundreds of literary genres and books that / authors who represent those genres; the one hundred must-read books of 2010 according to The New York Times, of which I chose eight (including one by Tony Doerr!); slots for random novels, including the one NGS told me she wanted me to read; and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Plus other sources.
I have 27 books so far, and I will have a complete list by the end of the night. I'm leaving thirteen slots for random books (including NGS's book). This partially worked for me when I had a goal of reading 100 pages a day, the difference being that I just chose random books from those lists. This time, I'm researching them and only choosing books I think I'll enjoy.
You know I struggle with the idea that I'll never know whether I'll enjoy a book until I read it, so part of me bucks this idea. But, I'm also forcing myself to understand no one can read every book every other person has read, or every book someone considers a classic. Each of the books I'm choosing sounds like a story, character, or idea I can get behind. I'm very excited.
November 17, 2010
Well F___ Me
In the previous post, I just realized, I used the wrong "affect/effect" twice. I am truly, truly ashamed of myself.
I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because peanut butter contains both sugar for an immediate EFFECT and protein for a lating EFFECT.
/shame
I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because peanut butter contains both sugar for an immediate EFFECT and protein for a lating EFFECT.
/shame
November 16, 2010
My Eating Habits
When I started at my job five years ago, I had a pretty poor diet. One thing which didn't help was the store I work at was two minutes from Taco Bell and I'm a sucker for that place. A likely meal for me would be a bean burrito with no onions and extra cheese, a Reeces Cup, and a Mountain Dew. I drove to get those things.
In the past three years or so, a lot has changed. Two years ago the store moved, which helped a lot, but the changes had begun even before then. I began walking to Kroger down the strip to buy a frozen dinner and a juice. I stopped eating things like candy and cake. I slowly stopped drinking pop.
This year alone, I can truly count on my fingers the times I've had pop. I have had maybe five orange-soda-floats from Wendy's. I've had, I believe, two Mountain Dews from Taco Bell and two from KFC. Cakes, brownies, and whole candy bars make me want to vomit (cake really, truly makes me feel ill when I eat it).
My parents keep buying me sweets when they go to the store, and right now, I can see a package of carmalized waffle cookies, a box of smores cereal, a box of strawberry shortcake rolls, and a giant Hershey's bar which does have a few bites out of it but that's because my mother wanted some. I have eaten a few of the cakes, with milk, and only when I feel shaky like I'm having a low blood sugar attack (hypoglycemia). What I prefer when I feel an attack is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, mostly because peanut butter supplies both the sugar for immediate affect and protein for a lasting affect. Sometimes I munch here and there out of the cereal but it's taking a long time.
So here's the bottom line: I don't like sweets. And I'm beginning to abhor "home cooking" because all my mother ever makes is fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and hamburger steaks (fried) and fried potatoes and etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's disgusting. I try to keep back-ups for these occasions. Salsa, hummus, cous-cous, guacamole, assortments of cheeses, deli-thin ham.
And breakfast has become some kind of religious experience for me. When I was in grad school, I got out of bed, took a bath, left for school, returned home, ate a bowl of soup, returned to school, returned home, ate cheese and crackers, did homework (ahem, um, yeah) and went back to bed. I lost forty pounds.
Now, breakfast can't just be waffles (my mother happily pulled them out of the bag as though I should have jumped up and down because she bought them - I reminded her I'd throw up within the hour if I ate waffles for breakfast), and it can't just be cereal, and it can't just be a banana. It has to be a meal. A typical breakfast for me, with ingredients hoarded away in the little refrigerator in my bedroom, is an English muffin with an egg, ham, amish swiss cheese, and garden vegetable cream cheese on it. Or it's a breakfast burrito with sausage, egg, cheese, avocado-ranch mix, and taco sauce. Or it's chili cheese home fries with a few slices of turkey bacon. Tomorrow morning I think it's going to be a grilled cheese sandwich with one slice American, one slice muenster, on honey-wheat bread with turkey bacon.
In general I just can't eat like they do. It's hard to buy groceries for six people on $100 or so a week, so what we buy are things like hamburger and huge pork loins that can be divided up. Chicken legs are always extremely cheap for a large package. The rest of my family thinks macaroni and cheese is a gourmet meal. Spaghetti is relatively cheap. Chili is enjoyed by all (including me) and makes a huge pot so we make it about twice a week (it gets old, though, eating the same thing over and over). Tonight we had chicken legs and macaroni and cheese and corn and cottage cheese. I tried to eat a piece of chicken (but it was undercooked so I stopped), some mac and cheese (but it was undercooked so I stopped), and some cottage cheese (it wasn't cooked so it was fine).
The more and more that things like this go on, the more I dream of a studio apartment where I only have to buy food for myself and since I don't eat much, I can get what I want and make it last. And it will be good food, like fruits and vegetables and juice (I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and juice or occasionally tea the rest of the day). I can only imagine the dinners I could make with $100 a week for just me. I don't know that I would even need that much money.
In the past three years or so, a lot has changed. Two years ago the store moved, which helped a lot, but the changes had begun even before then. I began walking to Kroger down the strip to buy a frozen dinner and a juice. I stopped eating things like candy and cake. I slowly stopped drinking pop.
This year alone, I can truly count on my fingers the times I've had pop. I have had maybe five orange-soda-floats from Wendy's. I've had, I believe, two Mountain Dews from Taco Bell and two from KFC. Cakes, brownies, and whole candy bars make me want to vomit (cake really, truly makes me feel ill when I eat it).
My parents keep buying me sweets when they go to the store, and right now, I can see a package of carmalized waffle cookies, a box of smores cereal, a box of strawberry shortcake rolls, and a giant Hershey's bar which does have a few bites out of it but that's because my mother wanted some. I have eaten a few of the cakes, with milk, and only when I feel shaky like I'm having a low blood sugar attack (hypoglycemia). What I prefer when I feel an attack is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, mostly because peanut butter supplies both the sugar for immediate affect and protein for a lasting affect. Sometimes I munch here and there out of the cereal but it's taking a long time.
So here's the bottom line: I don't like sweets. And I'm beginning to abhor "home cooking" because all my mother ever makes is fried chicken and macaroni and cheese and hamburger steaks (fried) and fried potatoes and etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's disgusting. I try to keep back-ups for these occasions. Salsa, hummus, cous-cous, guacamole, assortments of cheeses, deli-thin ham.
And breakfast has become some kind of religious experience for me. When I was in grad school, I got out of bed, took a bath, left for school, returned home, ate a bowl of soup, returned to school, returned home, ate cheese and crackers, did homework (ahem, um, yeah) and went back to bed. I lost forty pounds.
Now, breakfast can't just be waffles (my mother happily pulled them out of the bag as though I should have jumped up and down because she bought them - I reminded her I'd throw up within the hour if I ate waffles for breakfast), and it can't just be cereal, and it can't just be a banana. It has to be a meal. A typical breakfast for me, with ingredients hoarded away in the little refrigerator in my bedroom, is an English muffin with an egg, ham, amish swiss cheese, and garden vegetable cream cheese on it. Or it's a breakfast burrito with sausage, egg, cheese, avocado-ranch mix, and taco sauce. Or it's chili cheese home fries with a few slices of turkey bacon. Tomorrow morning I think it's going to be a grilled cheese sandwich with one slice American, one slice muenster, on honey-wheat bread with turkey bacon.
In general I just can't eat like they do. It's hard to buy groceries for six people on $100 or so a week, so what we buy are things like hamburger and huge pork loins that can be divided up. Chicken legs are always extremely cheap for a large package. The rest of my family thinks macaroni and cheese is a gourmet meal. Spaghetti is relatively cheap. Chili is enjoyed by all (including me) and makes a huge pot so we make it about twice a week (it gets old, though, eating the same thing over and over). Tonight we had chicken legs and macaroni and cheese and corn and cottage cheese. I tried to eat a piece of chicken (but it was undercooked so I stopped), some mac and cheese (but it was undercooked so I stopped), and some cottage cheese (it wasn't cooked so it was fine).
The more and more that things like this go on, the more I dream of a studio apartment where I only have to buy food for myself and since I don't eat much, I can get what I want and make it last. And it will be good food, like fruits and vegetables and juice (I drink one cup of coffee in the morning and juice or occasionally tea the rest of the day). I can only imagine the dinners I could make with $100 a week for just me. I don't know that I would even need that much money.
November 15, 2010
Indistinguishable Work Rant #4000
I called in today to find out my hours for Wednesday. I didn't have them written down. Of course the conversation turned to scheduling the Thanksgiving holiday week and that's when everything blew up and the conversation ended with a looonnngggg awkward silence.
I work at a retail job. You know, if your career goal is to manage your own store or work you way up through a company to CEO or something, that's great. What bothers me is when managers try to force everyone on staff to think of their jobs as the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THEIR LIVES.
I work 3-5 days a week. This job has a good deal of importance to me right now because it's my only job. We have some people, though, who are in high school or who are just using this job as a supplemental income for their full-time job. They shouldn't have to worry about this job being intrusive on their everyday lives. It shouldn't be a priority to them.
But our company tries to force them to feel like it's a priority. One of the "rules" we have is that you can't expect a set schedule, and you also can't expect weekends off. But you know, if you have a forty-hour job you've worked at for ten years and you're used to having weekends off, or you're used to a set schedule, it might be hard going to get used to being told "no" when you ask for a lot of days off. But on the other hand, you were hired to only work 1-2 days a week anyway, so as long as you're doing that, and as long as there are others who are willing to work the days you're not willing to work, there should be no problem.
And this is what I argued today, because we have an employee who works a full-time job where she has had weekends off for the past ten years or so and she is used to certain traditional vacations and such. She doesn't always request weekends off, but at this time of the year, with extended holidays and traditions, she has requested a good number of days off (still giving us leeway to schedule her 1-2 shifts each week, though). But she isn't working any weekend day in November. She has told us she's almost completely open in December to make up for this. What's the problem, right?
It's a huuugggeee problem to the company. Because we have to look at this as a business, you know. And if our needs say you can't go on your traditional Thanksgiving trip for no other reason than we think you should be forced to work at least one weekend in November, then you'll just have to suffer. We never promised you'd get days off if you request them.
My manager and I got into a huge (but calm) argument where she tried to remind me that she can't be worried about the other coworker's perspective, but has to think about our needs. But you know what? We don't need her to work any of those weekends. We have plenty of people who are available and WILLING to work those weekends. This is nothing more than the company's power play, underscored by my manager's words of "I can't give [the coworker] the upper hand." And I just interrupted her after a while and said, simply, "I don't agree." And I repeated it after she tried to convince me a few more times and then there was awkward silence which she ended by saying, "So you just needed your schedule," and my reply of "Yep."
I'm just so tired of hearing the words "This is retail." So the fuck what? And furthermore, exactly! I really, really don't have what it takes to care about a business like this.
I work at a retail job. You know, if your career goal is to manage your own store or work you way up through a company to CEO or something, that's great. What bothers me is when managers try to force everyone on staff to think of their jobs as the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THEIR LIVES.
I work 3-5 days a week. This job has a good deal of importance to me right now because it's my only job. We have some people, though, who are in high school or who are just using this job as a supplemental income for their full-time job. They shouldn't have to worry about this job being intrusive on their everyday lives. It shouldn't be a priority to them.
But our company tries to force them to feel like it's a priority. One of the "rules" we have is that you can't expect a set schedule, and you also can't expect weekends off. But you know, if you have a forty-hour job you've worked at for ten years and you're used to having weekends off, or you're used to a set schedule, it might be hard going to get used to being told "no" when you ask for a lot of days off. But on the other hand, you were hired to only work 1-2 days a week anyway, so as long as you're doing that, and as long as there are others who are willing to work the days you're not willing to work, there should be no problem.
And this is what I argued today, because we have an employee who works a full-time job where she has had weekends off for the past ten years or so and she is used to certain traditional vacations and such. She doesn't always request weekends off, but at this time of the year, with extended holidays and traditions, she has requested a good number of days off (still giving us leeway to schedule her 1-2 shifts each week, though). But she isn't working any weekend day in November. She has told us she's almost completely open in December to make up for this. What's the problem, right?
It's a huuugggeee problem to the company. Because we have to look at this as a business, you know. And if our needs say you can't go on your traditional Thanksgiving trip for no other reason than we think you should be forced to work at least one weekend in November, then you'll just have to suffer. We never promised you'd get days off if you request them.
My manager and I got into a huge (but calm) argument where she tried to remind me that she can't be worried about the other coworker's perspective, but has to think about our needs. But you know what? We don't need her to work any of those weekends. We have plenty of people who are available and WILLING to work those weekends. This is nothing more than the company's power play, underscored by my manager's words of "I can't give [the coworker] the upper hand." And I just interrupted her after a while and said, simply, "I don't agree." And I repeated it after she tried to convince me a few more times and then there was awkward silence which she ended by saying, "So you just needed your schedule," and my reply of "Yep."
I'm just so tired of hearing the words "This is retail." So the fuck what? And furthermore, exactly! I really, really don't have what it takes to care about a business like this.
November 13, 2010
"By"
I wish when people did translations/put out editions/wrote forwards for books, places like Amazon wouldn't list the book by the translator's/editor's/forwarder's name. I went to purchase The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, and the first book is listed as "By H.T. Lowe-Porter, Thomas Mann, and John E. Woods." I don't know who Lowe-Porter is in the book, but John Woods is the dude who translated from German to English. You know, mad props to him because that's an endeavor, but it still doesn't mean that he wrote it. It should just be by Thomas Mann, with special thanks somewhere else on the Amazon page and somewhere in the beginning of he book (on the title page?) for the other guys. This is really, really confusing to kids who have no idea how to do a bibliography and who have no idea who really wrote this book.
This also applies to the date a certain edition was published. I bought The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby by Charles Kingsley and my edition (elsewhere in the house and I'm not getting it right now) has a copyright of, like, 1956 or something. Now, I know, because I know, that the book was written around 1834. But what if someone didn't know that? I just went to make sure I was getting the title right and the edition I saw said 2008. It just makes me insane. And sometimes, the copyright page does not have the original date on it. Trust me, my edition of The Water-Babies doesn't.
This also applies to the date a certain edition was published. I bought The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby by Charles Kingsley and my edition (elsewhere in the house and I'm not getting it right now) has a copyright of, like, 1956 or something. Now, I know, because I know, that the book was written around 1834. But what if someone didn't know that? I just went to make sure I was getting the title right and the edition I saw said 2008. It just makes me insane. And sometimes, the copyright page does not have the original date on it. Trust me, my edition of The Water-Babies doesn't.
November 9, 2010
Conan's Ratings
Last night, Conan O'Brien's new show debuted on TBS. It drew 4.2 million viewers, beating both Jay Leno and David Letterman. Um, but not by much and, worse, that's no spectacular debut even for cable. Where are all the fans who promised to follow him and support him? His ratings might go up, but by most accounts that will probably drop and he'll eventually be even with Leno and Letterman. So, what did this get him other than a martyr card? A good deal of the reviews I've seen are all about the ratings because when it is about the content it's mediocre at best, especially the interviewing. So he's just going to do another damn talk show? Like the one he failed with at NBC? Like all of the ones that are failing on all the networks right now?
In Response
This is in response to a post on another site. It will be short and sweet.
Once you told me you knew you wanted to spend the rest of your life with your husband when you realized you wanted to talk to him, day and night, and be with him, day and night.
When you call me about whatever it is you call me about...friends, family, the smelly guy on the bus...I answer because I want to talk to you day and night.
There's a man I let get away while chasing another man. He was a Prince in literal terms - it was his last name. I loved talking to him because I felt like he understood me on every level I could imagine and boy was that sexy once I realized he was gone.
I know you might not understand every decision I make but I feel like you understand me. We don't always agree but that's not what friendship or marriage or world peace is about. And I feel like you understand this as much as I do.
Once you told me you knew you wanted to spend the rest of your life with your husband when you realized you wanted to talk to him, day and night, and be with him, day and night.
When you call me about whatever it is you call me about...friends, family, the smelly guy on the bus...I answer because I want to talk to you day and night.
There's a man I let get away while chasing another man. He was a Prince in literal terms - it was his last name. I loved talking to him because I felt like he understood me on every level I could imagine and boy was that sexy once I realized he was gone.
I know you might not understand every decision I make but I feel like you understand me. We don't always agree but that's not what friendship or marriage or world peace is about. And I feel like you understand this as much as I do.
Series Reading
Ever since I was little, I've read book series...es. It started off with The Sleepover Friends and a little of The Babysitters Club and from there graduated on to series...es with multiple authors like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Dragonlance. Of course, you know how much I love The Dark Tower Series, not to mention The Dark Is Rising and Harry Potter.
Oh, and there's The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. But not so much, really.
I just enjoy, more than anything, becoming attached to these characters. A friend of mine in college said he couldn't get into Harry Potter (during the time our entire magazine staff was passing around my copy of The Goblet of Fire) because it involved getting committed to the characters. Of course, he had at that time a reputation for dating all the women in the department. I remember another friend saying she was going to be the one who changed him, and then he dumped her like a month later. What does it say about our characters by the books we choose?
I also get attached to celebrities. Vehemently. And always older men. It started with strange small crushes when I was little...like Ed Begley F...ing Jr. You read that. Transylvania 6-5000 anyone? While my sisters were swooning for Jeff Goldblum I was in love with Ed. Begley. F...ing. Jr. (I still, stupidly, get butterflies when I see him.)
Then it was Garth Brooks. Then Jay Leno. Now it's Tim Gunn. Attached.
The heroes of my favorite books are all men. Roland from Dark Tower. Commander Riker and then Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek. Not just from series...es, but also from novels in general. Aureliano Buendia from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Agamemnon from The Iliad. The author Jorge Luis Borges (most brilliant mind in all of literature). What does this obsession with men say about me?
I know what one person out there is thinking. And, well, yeah, I do. But I've been thinking a lot about what one of my college professors asked me about my writing: "Why don't you ever have female characters?" My main characters are always men. My book series, the one I'm writing, has two male leads and one female lead. She isn't the main character (although close). When her parts were a separate (somewhat autobiographical) novel, I felt like it would get critical acclaim but that I wouldn't love it. The series I'm writing is one I feel like I could love, like I could write it forever, but I think it's going to get a lot of flack. It's...grand, and I mean that in the sense that magical shit along with preposterous shit is going to happen, but...it's my fantasy. Even though the female character is in a sense me plopped down into my own fantasy I feel closest to the two men. I don't know how to describe it, which is my job, you know?
I'm just trying to make heads or tails with what I'm doing as I plug along in my writing. I feel like it's silly to feel like I have to justify why I'm writing this series. It goes back to what one of my favorite professors asked me once, somewhat painfully, "Why would anyone ever write this story?" I think now that he was trying to get me to answer important questions about my purpose in my own writing - was I in it for entertainment or critical acclaim or what - but at sometimes I worry that he meant the story was just plain awful. I don't know.
Oh, and there's The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. But not so much, really.
I just enjoy, more than anything, becoming attached to these characters. A friend of mine in college said he couldn't get into Harry Potter (during the time our entire magazine staff was passing around my copy of The Goblet of Fire) because it involved getting committed to the characters. Of course, he had at that time a reputation for dating all the women in the department. I remember another friend saying she was going to be the one who changed him, and then he dumped her like a month later. What does it say about our characters by the books we choose?
I also get attached to celebrities. Vehemently. And always older men. It started with strange small crushes when I was little...like Ed Begley F...ing Jr. You read that. Transylvania 6-5000 anyone? While my sisters were swooning for Jeff Goldblum I was in love with Ed. Begley. F...ing. Jr. (I still, stupidly, get butterflies when I see him.)
Then it was Garth Brooks. Then Jay Leno. Now it's Tim Gunn. Attached.
The heroes of my favorite books are all men. Roland from Dark Tower. Commander Riker and then Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek. Not just from series...es, but also from novels in general. Aureliano Buendia from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Agamemnon from The Iliad. The author Jorge Luis Borges (most brilliant mind in all of literature). What does this obsession with men say about me?
I know what one person out there is thinking. And, well, yeah, I do. But I've been thinking a lot about what one of my college professors asked me about my writing: "Why don't you ever have female characters?" My main characters are always men. My book series, the one I'm writing, has two male leads and one female lead. She isn't the main character (although close). When her parts were a separate (somewhat autobiographical) novel, I felt like it would get critical acclaim but that I wouldn't love it. The series I'm writing is one I feel like I could love, like I could write it forever, but I think it's going to get a lot of flack. It's...grand, and I mean that in the sense that magical shit along with preposterous shit is going to happen, but...it's my fantasy. Even though the female character is in a sense me plopped down into my own fantasy I feel closest to the two men. I don't know how to describe it, which is my job, you know?
I'm just trying to make heads or tails with what I'm doing as I plug along in my writing. I feel like it's silly to feel like I have to justify why I'm writing this series. It goes back to what one of my favorite professors asked me once, somewhat painfully, "Why would anyone ever write this story?" I think now that he was trying to get me to answer important questions about my purpose in my own writing - was I in it for entertainment or critical acclaim or what - but at sometimes I worry that he meant the story was just plain awful. I don't know.
November 1, 2010
A Post.Script.
I don't talk about my FEELINGS very often because I don't feel like I really deserve to have any form of depression. What do I have to be depressed about? Who the hell am I? Aren't there people I know, who I love, who have real problems and I'm just a horrible human being for selfishly talking about me?
The answers to these questions are: Nothing. Nobody. Yes and, quite frankly, yes.
I don't know what to do with all of this. It's coming out in the novel, which has morphed from being two separate stories into one gigantic, epic...thing.
Maybe I've been misunderstanding what I can talk about here. Maybe this can be a sort of therapy, even if I am both patient and therapist. Maybe I can purge myself and maybe this can be a good enough screaming session.
It's also because I don't want anyone to really worry about me. I can take care of myself, mentally. I think. Please just read this and don't worry because I'm just venting and maybe this will at least give me some kind of relief. It is already, I can tell you that.
The answers to these questions are: Nothing. Nobody. Yes and, quite frankly, yes.
I don't know what to do with all of this. It's coming out in the novel, which has morphed from being two separate stories into one gigantic, epic...thing.
Maybe I've been misunderstanding what I can talk about here. Maybe this can be a sort of therapy, even if I am both patient and therapist. Maybe I can purge myself and maybe this can be a good enough screaming session.
It's also because I don't want anyone to really worry about me. I can take care of myself, mentally. I think. Please just read this and don't worry because I'm just venting and maybe this will at least give me some kind of relief. It is already, I can tell you that.
Get Out of My Fucking House!
Please give me a job, Marion Technical College.
I have to get out of here.
Right now, there are eight other people in my house. Every five minutes they say they're leaving and then something - remembering why they need to use our phone or why they need to drink another glass of milk - stops them. There are two five-year-olds, two teenagers, a twenty-something, a married couple who do nothing but scream at each other, and my mother. Oh, wait, my mother just took my debit card to put gas in my car to go get another teenager. The two five-year-olds are throwing fits and the one who isn't related to me is being extremely rude. I don't like her. I refuse to hide it.
They are right now going in and out and slamming the door and yelling and I JUST. CAN'T. TAKE. IT. Why aren't you doing this at your own house? Why, every day, do you ALL have to come into mine?
I applied at the Columbus Dispatch and the Delaware Gazette. I applied at Marion Tech. I recontacted Ohio Wesleyan and put my name in their brains again. I asked for an application at the library and they told me they weren't hiring. I'm thinking of applying at Kroger.
It's not really for lack of money or for want of anything. I (with the coming of the Kindle) have everything I could ever want, materialistically. I have shelter and food and enough spending money to splurge here and there.
But what I NEED is peace and mutha fuckin' quiet. You know, back in the day, I wanted so badly to have twelve kids and now - NOW - I just want a studio apartment where I grow old with my cat. Because I've had enough socialization. I'm not a social butterfly by nature and even with my bedroom door closed and locked I can feel their negativity oozing in under the door. I might begin insulating it with towels. They call to me to ask if I have Ibuprofen. They call to me to ask if I want candy from last night. They call to me to ask if I have money.
I can't even leave because my mother is off with the car. When I do leave to go somewhere, say the library or the local bookstore/coffee shop, my mother calls me five minutes after I get there to ask if I can go pick up my niece from school (where she's pretending to be sick) or if I can go to the bank and get ten dollars so my brother can have gas for his car (money I will never see again). Can I drop my nephew off at work on the other side of town before I head off to work? Can I give my sister twenty dollars so she can get some cigarettes and pop? Can I be dropped off and therefore imprisoned at work so yet another niece can be picked up from work in the meantime with my gas and with an attitude like she's entitled to the world?
I used to bite my fingers when I wanted to scream and I don't want to get to that place again. Because I just did it.
I'm getting $100 from my work in a few days for being there for five years. That's what (or more accurately - all) five years is worth to them. I plan to buy all business clothes with it.
The Serious Novel (this is not its title) is about this place I used to be in. Don't worry about me because I'm not going to let myself get there again, but I can't tell you how happy I am when I'm alone. And I can't tell you how alone I feel with all of these people on top of me.
I can't believe I just expressed all of these FEELINGS. I have never, ever spoken about them except to my non-fiction workshop because I had to. Not because I was forced to but because when I WAS forced to write a memoir there was only one topic that felt like the truth. There are eight other people who know about that former place. Sometimes it amazes me what I can give to the public that I can't give to someone face-to-face.
I have to get out of here.
Right now, there are eight other people in my house. Every five minutes they say they're leaving and then something - remembering why they need to use our phone or why they need to drink another glass of milk - stops them. There are two five-year-olds, two teenagers, a twenty-something, a married couple who do nothing but scream at each other, and my mother. Oh, wait, my mother just took my debit card to put gas in my car to go get another teenager. The two five-year-olds are throwing fits and the one who isn't related to me is being extremely rude. I don't like her. I refuse to hide it.
They are right now going in and out and slamming the door and yelling and I JUST. CAN'T. TAKE. IT. Why aren't you doing this at your own house? Why, every day, do you ALL have to come into mine?
I applied at the Columbus Dispatch and the Delaware Gazette. I applied at Marion Tech. I recontacted Ohio Wesleyan and put my name in their brains again. I asked for an application at the library and they told me they weren't hiring. I'm thinking of applying at Kroger.
It's not really for lack of money or for want of anything. I (with the coming of the Kindle) have everything I could ever want, materialistically. I have shelter and food and enough spending money to splurge here and there.
But what I NEED is peace and mutha fuckin' quiet. You know, back in the day, I wanted so badly to have twelve kids and now - NOW - I just want a studio apartment where I grow old with my cat. Because I've had enough socialization. I'm not a social butterfly by nature and even with my bedroom door closed and locked I can feel their negativity oozing in under the door. I might begin insulating it with towels. They call to me to ask if I have Ibuprofen. They call to me to ask if I want candy from last night. They call to me to ask if I have money.
I can't even leave because my mother is off with the car. When I do leave to go somewhere, say the library or the local bookstore/coffee shop, my mother calls me five minutes after I get there to ask if I can go pick up my niece from school (where she's pretending to be sick) or if I can go to the bank and get ten dollars so my brother can have gas for his car (money I will never see again). Can I drop my nephew off at work on the other side of town before I head off to work? Can I give my sister twenty dollars so she can get some cigarettes and pop? Can I be dropped off and therefore imprisoned at work so yet another niece can be picked up from work in the meantime with my gas and with an attitude like she's entitled to the world?
I used to bite my fingers when I wanted to scream and I don't want to get to that place again. Because I just did it.
I'm getting $100 from my work in a few days for being there for five years. That's what (or more accurately - all) five years is worth to them. I plan to buy all business clothes with it.
The Serious Novel (this is not its title) is about this place I used to be in. Don't worry about me because I'm not going to let myself get there again, but I can't tell you how happy I am when I'm alone. And I can't tell you how alone I feel with all of these people on top of me.
I can't believe I just expressed all of these FEELINGS. I have never, ever spoken about them except to my non-fiction workshop because I had to. Not because I was forced to but because when I WAS forced to write a memoir there was only one topic that felt like the truth. There are eight other people who know about that former place. Sometimes it amazes me what I can give to the public that I can't give to someone face-to-face.
October 30, 2010
I Got It! I Got It!
I got your number on the wa-all...
...just kidding.
What I got was the Kindle! I have been friggin' saving and scraping and waiting for this thing and finally, yesterday morning, I ordered it and shelled out an extra $13 to have it overnighted. For the most part, I've spent the day experimenting on it and in general cradling it like it was my baby. Which made the cat extremely jealous and I had put down the Kindle to have an extended petting session with Mr. Basil.
I really couldn't have fathomed how tiny it really is. I had my mother make me a purse out of yarn and an old Led Zeppelin t-shirt thinking the K and the case would be about as big as a large journal. Nope! I bought a little neoprene case for it and it really will fit in a small-to-medium-sized handbag. I'm so excited I want to cry.
I'm also so excited I'm ignoring the power-struggle going on between two of my co-workers over who gets to plan the party (and who gets invited) for a third co-worker's fiftieth birthday dinner.
...just kidding.
What I got was the Kindle! I have been friggin' saving and scraping and waiting for this thing and finally, yesterday morning, I ordered it and shelled out an extra $13 to have it overnighted. For the most part, I've spent the day experimenting on it and in general cradling it like it was my baby. Which made the cat extremely jealous and I had put down the Kindle to have an extended petting session with Mr. Basil.
I really couldn't have fathomed how tiny it really is. I had my mother make me a purse out of yarn and an old Led Zeppelin t-shirt thinking the K and the case would be about as big as a large journal. Nope! I bought a little neoprene case for it and it really will fit in a small-to-medium-sized handbag. I'm so excited I want to cry.
I'm also so excited I'm ignoring the power-struggle going on between two of my co-workers over who gets to plan the party (and who gets invited) for a third co-worker's fiftieth birthday dinner.
October 25, 2010
My DAWG
Why I love my best friend:
Because if she ever does hyphenate her last name with that of her husband, her initials will be DAWG.
What up?
Love,
Me
Because if she ever does hyphenate her last name with that of her husband, her initials will be DAWG.
What up?
Love,
Me
October 9, 2010
Ungrateful
I'm sorry I'm always ranting.
At work (crappy retail work) today, a colleague who also happens to be one of my good friends really, really upset me to the point of wanting to quit then and there. The only thing that stopped me was knowing that at the end of this month, I will receive $100 for being with the company for five years. I can hold out for a few more weeks. It gives me time to job hunt.
Look, I love this woman dearly. She cannot, however, understand for one second when other people are sacrificing for her. Just so you understand, our raises, reviews, and promotions depend on our statistics, such as how many items we sell in each transaction or how many credit card applications we can get. I try not to stress over them too much, but I kinda have to in an economy where a job is hard to come by.
On Friday, we had to cancel a girl's shift and I was forced to work open to close (9:30-9:30). That, because I had two half-hour breaks, is eleven hours clocked in, people. Well, my friend was working that day, too, on an eight-hour shift. We looked at our stats. She needed sales and many-item sales and I, well, didn't. I took a lot of one-item sales to help her. Right before my second break I told her to take over with a sale that ended up being more than $500. Overall, at the end of the night, she had in more sales volume than I did and higher stats all-around. We agreed to watch out for each other the next day, too.
She did that for the most part. When I came in today, she had been rotating sales between herself and me, and she had tried to take most of the smaller sales on herself and she gave me a credit card application to help me out. Great, I thanked her, told her she did a good thing. At the time I walked in, she was ringing a huge sale that she hadn't realized was going to be as big as it was (two girls put their sales together) and she had begun ringing under me. Well, she began to regret that. I pulled out our sales book and tried to figure out a way to change the sales associate once the sale had started but there wasn't a way. She would have either had to cancel it and start all over or wait until they paid, void the sale, and re-ring the entire thing. It was a $600 sale. She didn't want to bother re-ringing anything so she just put it under me.
Well, that makes up for Friday's $500 sale, I'm thinking.
She wasn't thinking that. In the backroom, she says to me, "Well, you owe me."
I say, "Except that I helped you out yesterday and let you have that $500 sale."
"You didn't give me that sale," she says, "I worked for it. You didn't work for this sale."
I tried to explain to her that I could have come back from my second break and said, "Thanks for taking care of my customers while I was gone, I'll take back over now." She bursts out laughing, chokes a little on the food in her mouth, and says, "If that's the way YOU want to look at it, honey."
How ungrateful can you be? I didn't have to go on break at that time, we don't have set times. I could have totally hogged that sale for myself. BUT I DIDN'T. I also tried to explain to her that I took a lot of one-item sales on myself Friday and she just rolled her eyes and said she had done that Saturday. I'm thinking that makes us even, right? I don't understand why she needs everyone to owe her but she can't see when she owes other people and is paying her debt. Anything she sacrificed Saturday was paying a debt to me for Friday. I was so stressed out about it I later made my sister fill out a credit card application so I could put it under my friend so I could feel like I didn't owe her anything at all. For the rest of Saturday night, I took all of the one-item sales and tried to give her as many big sales as I could.
The point I keep thinking about is how she seemed to be blaming me for the choices she made on Saturday of which sales to give to me and which to put under herself. A few weeks ago she told me she doesn't know how to figure out which people are in trouble and who needs the most help, so she just does what she wants. Well, don't blame others when that backfires. You also don't do good deeds just to see what you'll get in return or so you can hold it over the other person's head.
At work (crappy retail work) today, a colleague who also happens to be one of my good friends really, really upset me to the point of wanting to quit then and there. The only thing that stopped me was knowing that at the end of this month, I will receive $100 for being with the company for five years. I can hold out for a few more weeks. It gives me time to job hunt.
Look, I love this woman dearly. She cannot, however, understand for one second when other people are sacrificing for her. Just so you understand, our raises, reviews, and promotions depend on our statistics, such as how many items we sell in each transaction or how many credit card applications we can get. I try not to stress over them too much, but I kinda have to in an economy where a job is hard to come by.
On Friday, we had to cancel a girl's shift and I was forced to work open to close (9:30-9:30). That, because I had two half-hour breaks, is eleven hours clocked in, people. Well, my friend was working that day, too, on an eight-hour shift. We looked at our stats. She needed sales and many-item sales and I, well, didn't. I took a lot of one-item sales to help her. Right before my second break I told her to take over with a sale that ended up being more than $500. Overall, at the end of the night, she had in more sales volume than I did and higher stats all-around. We agreed to watch out for each other the next day, too.
She did that for the most part. When I came in today, she had been rotating sales between herself and me, and she had tried to take most of the smaller sales on herself and she gave me a credit card application to help me out. Great, I thanked her, told her she did a good thing. At the time I walked in, she was ringing a huge sale that she hadn't realized was going to be as big as it was (two girls put their sales together) and she had begun ringing under me. Well, she began to regret that. I pulled out our sales book and tried to figure out a way to change the sales associate once the sale had started but there wasn't a way. She would have either had to cancel it and start all over or wait until they paid, void the sale, and re-ring the entire thing. It was a $600 sale. She didn't want to bother re-ringing anything so she just put it under me.
Well, that makes up for Friday's $500 sale, I'm thinking.
She wasn't thinking that. In the backroom, she says to me, "Well, you owe me."
I say, "Except that I helped you out yesterday and let you have that $500 sale."
"You didn't give me that sale," she says, "I worked for it. You didn't work for this sale."
I tried to explain to her that I could have come back from my second break and said, "Thanks for taking care of my customers while I was gone, I'll take back over now." She bursts out laughing, chokes a little on the food in her mouth, and says, "If that's the way YOU want to look at it, honey."
How ungrateful can you be? I didn't have to go on break at that time, we don't have set times. I could have totally hogged that sale for myself. BUT I DIDN'T. I also tried to explain to her that I took a lot of one-item sales on myself Friday and she just rolled her eyes and said she had done that Saturday. I'm thinking that makes us even, right? I don't understand why she needs everyone to owe her but she can't see when she owes other people and is paying her debt. Anything she sacrificed Saturday was paying a debt to me for Friday. I was so stressed out about it I later made my sister fill out a credit card application so I could put it under my friend so I could feel like I didn't owe her anything at all. For the rest of Saturday night, I took all of the one-item sales and tried to give her as many big sales as I could.
The point I keep thinking about is how she seemed to be blaming me for the choices she made on Saturday of which sales to give to me and which to put under herself. A few weeks ago she told me she doesn't know how to figure out which people are in trouble and who needs the most help, so she just does what she wants. Well, don't blame others when that backfires. You also don't do good deeds just to see what you'll get in return or so you can hold it over the other person's head.
October 1, 2010
A Little Vindication
A quote from a blogger named T-Bone, who co-writes a blog called Blogging Project Runway:
"I suspect that Mondo was required to reveal this [his HIV status] up front even before filming began for Season 8. I've seen the applications for this show, they are quite extensive."
FYI, this is really all I said in my original comment yesterday. I said he was probably required to disclose this in order to appear on the show and that if it was a requirement and he hadn't disclosed it, it might be grounds for dismissal from the show. How that comment was read as my fearing that I'll get HIV from an infected person breathing near me is beyond me.
P.S. And I didn't even mean he had to disclose it on his application nor did I mean he would have to disclose it to every person working on the show. But I would think he would need to disclose it to someone (there is usually some kind of medical staff on hand) so proper precautions could be put into place. And if that isn't true and his HIV status was his business and that's the end of the story, that's fine and once again, all anyone needed to point out.
"I suspect that Mondo was required to reveal this [his HIV status] up front even before filming began for Season 8. I've seen the applications for this show, they are quite extensive."
FYI, this is really all I said in my original comment yesterday. I said he was probably required to disclose this in order to appear on the show and that if it was a requirement and he hadn't disclosed it, it might be grounds for dismissal from the show. How that comment was read as my fearing that I'll get HIV from an infected person breathing near me is beyond me.
P.S. And I didn't even mean he had to disclose it on his application nor did I mean he would have to disclose it to every person working on the show. But I would think he would need to disclose it to someone (there is usually some kind of medical staff on hand) so proper precautions could be put into place. And if that isn't true and his HIV status was his business and that's the end of the story, that's fine and once again, all anyone needed to point out.
September 30, 2010
I Feel Like I Should Start Reading Medical Journals
So, I feel like a total, full-tilt dumbass right now. And I'm not sure that I should. Look, I'm the first person to admit that I don't know much about office politics or privacy policies mainly because I've never needed protection through one. So that's fine, if I make a statement that makes me look dumb on that account I'll own up to it. Let me set the stage on what leads to this post.
I visit a blog that I love. It's snarky and funny and about a TV show. There was a discussion about the HIV virus. I wondered if, on said TV show, a contestant (It's Project Runway) would have to disclose HIV status so that proper medical attention could be applied if the contestant ever did something like sew through his finger. I set up a hypothetical situation (which has partly actually happened) where a designer sews through her finger - which would bleed - and another designer with an extremely unlikely, coincidental open sore extracts said needle, getting blood in the wound. I admitted to this being very, very hypothetical and downright implausible.
Now, the responses to this really needed to be nothing more than a)that's too unlikely for most employers/production to worry about and b) it doesn't matter because health privacy acts protect people from having to disclose personal issues about their health. End of story. Okay? I'd say, "Now I understand and I learned something about privacy statements."
But it couldn't end there. Am I just that behind in reading up on the transmission of the HIV virus (which I freudian slipped calling AIDS in the first comment and woe is me for that little mistake)? Because what ensued was people telling me that you can't get HIV in that scenario, and also telling me they were worried about my knowledge of how HIV is spread. It isn't true that HIV could (implausibly but not impossibly) be spread through drops of infected blood in an open wound? I actually had a person who thought I thought HIV was a flu virus you could get through the air. Um, you know what, I'm not that dumb. And furthermore, isn't the problem that way too much was read into what was essentially a question about office politics? Where in my scenario, which was clearly laid out as is above, did I imply I thought contestant #2 would get it through the air?
I tried to stay humble, thanking people who genuinely explained things like listing how HIV is spread and who patiently explained about health status privacy. But, it just couldn't end. And I think the real problem is that people read the first comment and immediately wanted to respond without taking the time to see if anything else had transpired before the end of the total comments. There was a person who reminded me about sports where a player is taken quickly off the field before any blood can be transferred onto another body. There was a nice person who reminded me that an HIV positive contestant on the show would probably tell another one not to try to help with the needle without having to disclose why. That made a ton of sense and I agreed that this would most likely solve the problem. I was grateful to a person who said s/he didn't want me to feel like s/he was attacking me because in the time it took to respond many, many more comments had popped up and I tried to reassure that person I had no hard feelings.
My point, though, is that almost 100 comments later it wasn't over, complete with the aforementioned "worried" person and the "you can't get it through the air like the flu" person. Oh, and the person who had to point out that it was freightening that I didn't know the difference between AIDS and HIV which was funny, because many people responded using AIDS when they meant HIV as well. You know, infer that it's a freudian slip. My champion was a person who reminded everyone that HIV could be spread by getting a drop of infected blood in your eye or nose. I knew that but was so afraid of saying it.
Maybe I'm just an idiot who knows nothing about the potential ways of spreading the HIV virus. I feel like I should buy a current book on the subject so I have more information, though. I mean, I try to understand when people just don't have the knowledge I have but I may be asking too much out of others. Anyway, thanks to all the people who were kind about it and patient and just tried to see what I meant and explain where my thinking was off-base. I think I'm just not cut out to be a commenter.
I visit a blog that I love. It's snarky and funny and about a TV show. There was a discussion about the HIV virus. I wondered if, on said TV show, a contestant (It's Project Runway) would have to disclose HIV status so that proper medical attention could be applied if the contestant ever did something like sew through his finger. I set up a hypothetical situation (which has partly actually happened) where a designer sews through her finger - which would bleed - and another designer with an extremely unlikely, coincidental open sore extracts said needle, getting blood in the wound. I admitted to this being very, very hypothetical and downright implausible.
Now, the responses to this really needed to be nothing more than a)that's too unlikely for most employers/production to worry about and b) it doesn't matter because health privacy acts protect people from having to disclose personal issues about their health. End of story. Okay? I'd say, "Now I understand and I learned something about privacy statements."
But it couldn't end there. Am I just that behind in reading up on the transmission of the HIV virus (which I freudian slipped calling AIDS in the first comment and woe is me for that little mistake)? Because what ensued was people telling me that you can't get HIV in that scenario, and also telling me they were worried about my knowledge of how HIV is spread. It isn't true that HIV could (implausibly but not impossibly) be spread through drops of infected blood in an open wound? I actually had a person who thought I thought HIV was a flu virus you could get through the air. Um, you know what, I'm not that dumb. And furthermore, isn't the problem that way too much was read into what was essentially a question about office politics? Where in my scenario, which was clearly laid out as is above, did I imply I thought contestant #2 would get it through the air?
I tried to stay humble, thanking people who genuinely explained things like listing how HIV is spread and who patiently explained about health status privacy. But, it just couldn't end. And I think the real problem is that people read the first comment and immediately wanted to respond without taking the time to see if anything else had transpired before the end of the total comments. There was a person who reminded me about sports where a player is taken quickly off the field before any blood can be transferred onto another body. There was a nice person who reminded me that an HIV positive contestant on the show would probably tell another one not to try to help with the needle without having to disclose why. That made a ton of sense and I agreed that this would most likely solve the problem. I was grateful to a person who said s/he didn't want me to feel like s/he was attacking me because in the time it took to respond many, many more comments had popped up and I tried to reassure that person I had no hard feelings.
My point, though, is that almost 100 comments later it wasn't over, complete with the aforementioned "worried" person and the "you can't get it through the air like the flu" person. Oh, and the person who had to point out that it was freightening that I didn't know the difference between AIDS and HIV which was funny, because many people responded using AIDS when they meant HIV as well. You know, infer that it's a freudian slip. My champion was a person who reminded everyone that HIV could be spread by getting a drop of infected blood in your eye or nose. I knew that but was so afraid of saying it.
Maybe I'm just an idiot who knows nothing about the potential ways of spreading the HIV virus. I feel like I should buy a current book on the subject so I have more information, though. I mean, I try to understand when people just don't have the knowledge I have but I may be asking too much out of others. Anyway, thanks to all the people who were kind about it and patient and just tried to see what I meant and explain where my thinking was off-base. I think I'm just not cut out to be a commenter.
September 5, 2010
Google Search
Earlier today I went to use google and one of the words I typed was "loose." When I got back my results, not only was the word "loose" in bold letters, but also the word "lose." I did not type in the word "lose." Why has Google decided to find instances where closely spelled words are accepted? Is it because too many people misspell words and Google has decided that anything close will do? I also did a search where I used the word "kook" (don't ask) and Google kept also finding webpages with the word "cook." It brought up thousands more entries than I needed, some of them not ever containing the original word I typed. It was really frustrating. Well, maybe just more perplexing.
August 18, 2010
Stung By a Bee
So, Saturday night as I was coming into my house, I was stung by a bee. I'm not sure it was a bee, but from the little bump that stayed after the horrible allergic reaction, my family and I can only gather that something either stung me or bit me, and most likely it was a bee. Anyway, I walked in and began itching under my bra. At first, we thought this was a reaction to some new detergent or just from sweat. Well, then it spread up my shoulders, up my neck, down my stomach, began itching on my feet and hands. And it wasn't just hives - it was red, shiny, and looked like I had second-degree burns. All of this happened in a span of about ten minutes.
Did we go to the hospital? Of course not, because I wasn't gasping or swelling.
What we did do was go buy Benadryl, use some antibiotic acne medication that I had on hand, and follow that up with some itching lotion. The next morning it had gone away everywhere but my hands, which were stiff and shiny and with bumps all over my wrists. I sat through most of the day with my hands in my lap (when I was awake - I also had some generic Prednisone left over from a previous inflammation on my legs and spent most of Sunday sleeping heavily).
Everything is fine now. During parts of Sunday and Monday I had stabbing pains in the side right where that little original bump still is, but even those have passed. I'd still like to know what the hell it was that stung me, though, so I can avoid it in the future.
Meanwhile, I'd also like to declare that my divorce from a certain recapping website is now final. I've tried to stick to a recap here, a forum read there [I refuse to post ever again after the terrible (but also hilariously victorious) Jay Leno Show debacle]. But even the recaps are really, really boring. Or wrong. Or just there for the recapper to psychoanalyze himself or tell us how he loved Billy Crudup in Eat, Pray, Love. NGS used to say she found they had developed a mean bite that she didn't like, but I still found the meanness funny. But after having given it one more go, venturing in the latest recap of Project Runway, I just don't think I can take it anymore.
First of all the recapper seemed lazy, barely describing anything at all and only glossing over each event without nary a witty remark. Second, he seems like he doesn't even like this show anymore. I remember when recappers used to be in-the-know about everything that went on behind-the-scenes. Not anymore. Tim Gunn was laughing 'til he almost cried and told a designer to turn that lump of coal up her ass into a diamond. Now, it used to be we'd get the scoop on how Tim Gunn had had a petit mal seizure a few nights before, cut his face and bruised himself badly by falling on a bunch of folding chairs, and was probably on a hefty dose of pain meds during filming. Did we get said info (which is all true, by the way)? Did we get any questions about why the ambulance at the end of the episode was placed at the end of this episode when it was really at the end of the previous challenge that THREE ambulance were called (one for Tim Gunn, one for an out designer for unknown reasons, and the shown third for a designer named Ivy)? No questions.
I just thought the whole recap, and a lot of the recaps on other shows, was just boring and uninteresting, which I suppose are the same thing but also I suppose it needed repeating.
Plus, I have divorced other readers. A good number of them are stuck up their own asses. I'm really tired of the attitude that this website is where real intellectuals go, and how seriously PC it seems to be getting. And by PC, I mean people who have to point out how disrespectful every remark made BY someone TO someone is. Or just how overanalyzed every reaction is. Casanova (a Spanish designer) did a cartwheel when he wasn't voted off? That means he didn't respect the judges' collective descision that he is worth another shot. It can't mean he was HAPPY TO NOT BE OFF THE SHOW. Oh, no, it was really a big fuck-you. This is being debated right now. Also being debated? Whether one designer, who kept interrupting another designer, should have been asked to stop talking over designer #2. Shouldn't we give #1 a pass because she's socially awkward and just thinks she's being encouraging even though it comes off as rude? Should it matter if she's always talking over people if she's doing it with intellectual insights into fashion/technique/analysis? The other desgingers asked #1 to stop talking and somehow, that was rude OF THEM.
I will not even begin the story of the Jay Leno Show argument.
I have more examples. The House thread and all the people who point out every little medical (or plotline) implausibility. People who pick apart Hugh Laurie's American accent because he pronounced one word un-New-Jersian. People who pick apart Tim Gunn because he uses a word pseudo-incorrectly (he said "Tin Woodsman" instead of "Tin Woodman" - isn't he smarter than that? I'm so disappointed in his supposed intellect. Really? REALLY? Get a life! - No, that's not what I want to say - Fuck off!). It is not intellectual to nitpick. Not to the point of having to find a flaw just so you can say you found it. It's your pet peeve when people say "Woodsman?" FUCK OFF!
Oh, and because I will never again log in I will never type the post I've been dying to for a while: To the person who said "cacaphonous" is a sound word but Tim Gunn used it as a sight word, I give you synesthesia. Scroll down to the bottom for the best definition. It was totally appropriate that he would see cacaphony when looking at a garment, used in the poetic sense. Fuck off!
(I've been watching Project Runway the most recently, so that's why most of my examples are from there.)
Anyway, that was a way long post. Thanks for reading it, you one, faithful reader you. I hope it doesn't annoy you when people say "Woodsman."
Did we go to the hospital? Of course not, because I wasn't gasping or swelling.
What we did do was go buy Benadryl, use some antibiotic acne medication that I had on hand, and follow that up with some itching lotion. The next morning it had gone away everywhere but my hands, which were stiff and shiny and with bumps all over my wrists. I sat through most of the day with my hands in my lap (when I was awake - I also had some generic Prednisone left over from a previous inflammation on my legs and spent most of Sunday sleeping heavily).
Everything is fine now. During parts of Sunday and Monday I had stabbing pains in the side right where that little original bump still is, but even those have passed. I'd still like to know what the hell it was that stung me, though, so I can avoid it in the future.
Meanwhile, I'd also like to declare that my divorce from a certain recapping website is now final. I've tried to stick to a recap here, a forum read there [I refuse to post ever again after the terrible (but also hilariously victorious) Jay Leno Show debacle]. But even the recaps are really, really boring. Or wrong. Or just there for the recapper to psychoanalyze himself or tell us how he loved Billy Crudup in Eat, Pray, Love. NGS used to say she found they had developed a mean bite that she didn't like, but I still found the meanness funny. But after having given it one more go, venturing in the latest recap of Project Runway, I just don't think I can take it anymore.
First of all the recapper seemed lazy, barely describing anything at all and only glossing over each event without nary a witty remark. Second, he seems like he doesn't even like this show anymore. I remember when recappers used to be in-the-know about everything that went on behind-the-scenes. Not anymore. Tim Gunn was laughing 'til he almost cried and told a designer to turn that lump of coal up her ass into a diamond. Now, it used to be we'd get the scoop on how Tim Gunn had had a petit mal seizure a few nights before, cut his face and bruised himself badly by falling on a bunch of folding chairs, and was probably on a hefty dose of pain meds during filming. Did we get said info (which is all true, by the way)? Did we get any questions about why the ambulance at the end of the episode was placed at the end of this episode when it was really at the end of the previous challenge that THREE ambulance were called (one for Tim Gunn, one for an out designer for unknown reasons, and the shown third for a designer named Ivy)? No questions.
I just thought the whole recap, and a lot of the recaps on other shows, was just boring and uninteresting, which I suppose are the same thing but also I suppose it needed repeating.
Plus, I have divorced other readers. A good number of them are stuck up their own asses. I'm really tired of the attitude that this website is where real intellectuals go, and how seriously PC it seems to be getting. And by PC, I mean people who have to point out how disrespectful every remark made BY someone TO someone is. Or just how overanalyzed every reaction is. Casanova (a Spanish designer) did a cartwheel when he wasn't voted off? That means he didn't respect the judges' collective descision that he is worth another shot. It can't mean he was HAPPY TO NOT BE OFF THE SHOW. Oh, no, it was really a big fuck-you. This is being debated right now. Also being debated? Whether one designer, who kept interrupting another designer, should have been asked to stop talking over designer #2. Shouldn't we give #1 a pass because she's socially awkward and just thinks she's being encouraging even though it comes off as rude? Should it matter if she's always talking over people if she's doing it with intellectual insights into fashion/technique/analysis? The other desgingers asked #1 to stop talking and somehow, that was rude OF THEM.
I will not even begin the story of the Jay Leno Show argument.
I have more examples. The House thread and all the people who point out every little medical (or plotline) implausibility. People who pick apart Hugh Laurie's American accent because he pronounced one word un-New-Jersian. People who pick apart Tim Gunn because he uses a word pseudo-incorrectly (he said "Tin Woodsman" instead of "Tin Woodman" - isn't he smarter than that? I'm so disappointed in his supposed intellect. Really? REALLY? Get a life! - No, that's not what I want to say - Fuck off!). It is not intellectual to nitpick. Not to the point of having to find a flaw just so you can say you found it. It's your pet peeve when people say "Woodsman?" FUCK OFF!
Oh, and because I will never again log in I will never type the post I've been dying to for a while: To the person who said "cacaphonous" is a sound word but Tim Gunn used it as a sight word, I give you synesthesia. Scroll down to the bottom for the best definition. It was totally appropriate that he would see cacaphony when looking at a garment, used in the poetic sense. Fuck off!
(I've been watching Project Runway the most recently, so that's why most of my examples are from there.)
Anyway, that was a way long post. Thanks for reading it, you one, faithful reader you. I hope it doesn't annoy you when people say "Woodsman."
August 9, 2010
Mark's Costco Chicken Crisis
So, I follow two or three blogs and I introduced you to one of them a while back in the whole late-night mess. It's written by a guy named Mark Evanier and it's pretty entertaining. The other day, he wrote about an incident at Costco where a few guys hogged every rotisserie chicken that particular Costco had at the moment. You can read the original post here and a follow-up here. A lady was so upset that she would have to wait forty minutes for her chicken she threw a massive temper tantrum to the point of using foul language, insulting employees, and making other customers uncomfortable.
One of the things Mr. Evanier says is that the employees had to take it. That is Costco's problem for making it a policy to accept that behavior. I work at a clothing store, and at the first cuss word or insult hurled at one of our employees the customer would be asked to leave. If the tantrum continued they would be banned from the store. To an extent we have to try to be patient, but it's all about the customer's behavior. This lady's was way out of line and unnacceptable.
My biggest beef with this story, though, is the reaction of the other customers, including Mr. Evanier, who you should know I have a lot of respect for. But, none of them spoke up or countered this lady. I'm sorry, but as soon as someone declares she speaks on behalf of everyone I'm going to interject. Furthermore, other customers should have pointed out how they understood the situation and knew it wouldn't be the norm. OTHER CUSTOMERS should have done something. Is it their job? No. Is it the right thing to do? Yes.
But what does this lady think will be the overall outcome of this experience? Costco can't change their routine for these chickens, really, because they can't make excess chickens for the reason they stated and also for the reason that if they didn't have the two-hour rule this lady would probably constantly get old chickens. She wants a fresh chicken but doesn't want to wait while someone else does the work for her? You can't always have fresh and immediate. You just can't, lady.
P.S. I think the word "chicken" should be plural like "fish" and "sheep."
One of the things Mr. Evanier says is that the employees had to take it. That is Costco's problem for making it a policy to accept that behavior. I work at a clothing store, and at the first cuss word or insult hurled at one of our employees the customer would be asked to leave. If the tantrum continued they would be banned from the store. To an extent we have to try to be patient, but it's all about the customer's behavior. This lady's was way out of line and unnacceptable.
My biggest beef with this story, though, is the reaction of the other customers, including Mr. Evanier, who you should know I have a lot of respect for. But, none of them spoke up or countered this lady. I'm sorry, but as soon as someone declares she speaks on behalf of everyone I'm going to interject. Furthermore, other customers should have pointed out how they understood the situation and knew it wouldn't be the norm. OTHER CUSTOMERS should have done something. Is it their job? No. Is it the right thing to do? Yes.
But what does this lady think will be the overall outcome of this experience? Costco can't change their routine for these chickens, really, because they can't make excess chickens for the reason they stated and also for the reason that if they didn't have the two-hour rule this lady would probably constantly get old chickens. She wants a fresh chicken but doesn't want to wait while someone else does the work for her? You can't always have fresh and immediate. You just can't, lady.
P.S. I think the word "chicken" should be plural like "fish" and "sheep."
August 4, 2010
The Reincarnation of the Netbook
After an automatic update earlier this morning, the netbook died. It was stuck in a loop of telling me that Windows couldn't start normally, so when I would try the thousand things the internet told me to do (I got on my father's computer) it would just loop back to the same screen over and over again. Thankfully, our local rent-to-own shoppe - which my mother has a serious relationship with - told me that there was a secret way to recover the system.
So I lost everything I had stored on here. Luckily, I have learned the hard way to back up anything I fear losing on a flash drive, so I didn't lose much. I did lose the Kindle, and even though I got it back later, I lost all of my notes and marks. Small price to pay to have one of my prized possessions back.
The sucky part was that right after the computer recovered a storm hit and we lost power. I hadn't downloaded the Kindle yet at that point, so I had to read a book - a real book - by flashlight to pass the time. It was kind of hilarious. This is another pro in my long-standing debate on whether to shell out the money for an actual Kindle: it would have, most likely, been able to sustain power to read through that two-hour period. But here's another con: we could have been without power for a long time, and a regular book needs nothing other than a source of light. There's always candlelight.
So I lost everything I had stored on here. Luckily, I have learned the hard way to back up anything I fear losing on a flash drive, so I didn't lose much. I did lose the Kindle, and even though I got it back later, I lost all of my notes and marks. Small price to pay to have one of my prized possessions back.
The sucky part was that right after the computer recovered a storm hit and we lost power. I hadn't downloaded the Kindle yet at that point, so I had to read a book - a real book - by flashlight to pass the time. It was kind of hilarious. This is another pro in my long-standing debate on whether to shell out the money for an actual Kindle: it would have, most likely, been able to sustain power to read through that two-hour period. But here's another con: we could have been without power for a long time, and a regular book needs nothing other than a source of light. There's always candlelight.
July 29, 2010
Northern Nut Growers Association
Last night I was tooling around on Amazon and stumbled across this. I just had to know, and it was free, so I downloaded and read it. And I think I came out a better person.
It seems it's a series, because it's a serious thing. I'm such a freak, because I'm considering downloading more.
It seems it's a series, because it's a serious thing. I'm such a freak, because I'm considering downloading more.
July 5, 2010
Wodehouse
I read the first of the P.G. Wodehouse novels, called The Adventure of Sally. It was pretty funny and interesting. I spent a long night needing to get to the end, which is always a sign of a good book, when it's 2:00 a.m. and there's no way it's getting put down until it's through. It's set in 1920s New York and the dialogue, characters, and plot where quite clever. I only laughed out loud once, but I found myself smiling a lot at Wodehouse's wit (usually through his characters). I'm excited to read the next one.
The Book I Said I Was Reading....
I said a while back I was reading a book called One More Day Everywhere, by Glen Heggstad, but Sherlock Holmes got in the way. Well, I finally finished the Heggstad book and unfortunately I was a tad disappointed. I'm so horrible. I just can't seem to get interested in a book that isn't a story. Yes, of course it was a story, the author rode his motorcycle through many, many countries to meet with people to prove that one-on-one most people are fair and giving. He had to narrate the details in a storylike manner.
But it seems like half the book is about technically getting from border to border, and less than a fourth of it is actual scenes of humanity. Most of the descriptions of cities are accompanied by political riffing or philosophizing and while that's cool it's just more my bag to be shown rather than told. If the pictures in the torture house in Phnom Penh are being described, I don't need any further explanation of what message I'm supposed to get out of them. The horrors of the past need not be forgotten nor repeated. People fearing for their lives if they don't conform to their government are capable of terrible acts against their fellow human beings. Some people in general are capable of horrible acts. I didn't need pages of pontification about it. The pictures (there were actual pictures in the book from this place) speak for themselves.
There was a scene in particular that I remember vividly - one where Heggstad is invited to stay with a Russian farming couple for a few days in order to rest and take a bath. He's just tired, dirty, hungry, and standing in the middle of the road and they happily invite him in, and he just tells the story without all of the hoopla of needing to explain how we should feel about this couple.
I just wish there had been more of these scenes. They were powerful. His scene in an alley with the street mafia of the Gaza Strip was powerful. His Thai lover asking him, Thai-English dictionary in hand, to "Plees no foget me Gaan," was powerful. The teenage Muslim women stripping off their headscarves and robes in a tent and revealing jeans and t-shirts while giggling and doing his (temporary) (pretend) wife's hair was powerful.
I suppose it's my own fault for not have the knowledge to understand his problems with the motorcycle. I think he focused on that too much. Maybe if this was a book just about riding his motorcycle and reporting back the conditions one would find in, say, the backroads of Borneo it would have been okay to focus so much on the details of the motorcycle. But in doing so, he had to leave out a lot of the human stories and the human scenes, and that's what I thought the postscript in the title was all about, Crossing 50 Borders on the Road to Global Understanding.
But it seems like half the book is about technically getting from border to border, and less than a fourth of it is actual scenes of humanity. Most of the descriptions of cities are accompanied by political riffing or philosophizing and while that's cool it's just more my bag to be shown rather than told. If the pictures in the torture house in Phnom Penh are being described, I don't need any further explanation of what message I'm supposed to get out of them. The horrors of the past need not be forgotten nor repeated. People fearing for their lives if they don't conform to their government are capable of terrible acts against their fellow human beings. Some people in general are capable of horrible acts. I didn't need pages of pontification about it. The pictures (there were actual pictures in the book from this place) speak for themselves.
There was a scene in particular that I remember vividly - one where Heggstad is invited to stay with a Russian farming couple for a few days in order to rest and take a bath. He's just tired, dirty, hungry, and standing in the middle of the road and they happily invite him in, and he just tells the story without all of the hoopla of needing to explain how we should feel about this couple.
I just wish there had been more of these scenes. They were powerful. His scene in an alley with the street mafia of the Gaza Strip was powerful. His Thai lover asking him, Thai-English dictionary in hand, to "Plees no foget me Gaan," was powerful. The teenage Muslim women stripping off their headscarves and robes in a tent and revealing jeans and t-shirts while giggling and doing his (temporary) (pretend) wife's hair was powerful.
I suppose it's my own fault for not have the knowledge to understand his problems with the motorcycle. I think he focused on that too much. Maybe if this was a book just about riding his motorcycle and reporting back the conditions one would find in, say, the backroads of Borneo it would have been okay to focus so much on the details of the motorcycle. But in doing so, he had to leave out a lot of the human stories and the human scenes, and that's what I thought the postscript in the title was all about, Crossing 50 Borders on the Road to Global Understanding.
June 26, 2010
Shane Sullivan, You Were Right.
So my friend Shane used to argue with me when we were in grad school at Ball State University. What did we argue about? He said that the future of reading would be computerized and I said, quite emphatically, "No." I reasoned that no machine could ever replace the feeling of having a book in your hands or the satisfaction of finding a rare, good read.
Vehemently I argued this. And now, I've spent the last few months reading on my...machine. And drooling over other machines whereupon I could read and store more books (I'm thinking now of getting a Nook, because it would be extra room since it couldn't be the same books as the ones that are on my Kindle PC - well, it COULD be, if I bought them twice, but you know what I mean). Anyway, I always think of him whenever I'm reading on here and whenever I browse Amazon looking for rare, good(free) reads.
Shane died my second year of school, but if there's a Heaven (you know it's got a hell of a band) Shane is pointing and laughing and doing some kind of I-told-you-so-dance.
Vehemently I argued this. And now, I've spent the last few months reading on my...machine. And drooling over other machines whereupon I could read and store more books (I'm thinking now of getting a Nook, because it would be extra room since it couldn't be the same books as the ones that are on my Kindle PC - well, it COULD be, if I bought them twice, but you know what I mean). Anyway, I always think of him whenever I'm reading on here and whenever I browse Amazon looking for rare, good(free) reads.
Shane died my second year of school, but if there's a Heaven (you know it's got a hell of a band) Shane is pointing and laughing and doing some kind of I-told-you-so-dance.
June 20, 2010
And the New Book Is...
Oh, yeah, and now I'll also be starting the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. You know, Jeeves and Wooster! There are thirty-three. $2.99. I'll try to make sure I read one novel, then read something else altogether, then read the next Wodehouse novel, etc.
Done with Sherlock (Really, Done with Watson)
I finished reading the complete stories of Sherlock Holmes! Four novellas and fifty-four short stories. I had read some in the past, but took on the entire collection when I was able to buy it for $.99 at Amazon on the Kindle.
Some thoughts:
Watson, like so many other sidekicks, is a complete moron. Now, I know that's not true, and the truth is I liked Watson a lot and looked forward to passages where he was alone on a little side mission or in harm's way. It was the passages where he interacted with Holmes after a solitary escapade (where Holmes would point out the things Watson should have done, things I found myself yelling about while Watson was there, too) and the passages where he is just too far behind Holmes (and even the reader) for me to tolerate. This happens in all your TV shows with really smart main characters, though (Monk and House, to name a few). In the case of Monk, how many times has a seemingly stupid clue caught his attention and proven to be vital in the end? Why can't his cohorts just accept his eccentricity without constantly trying to undermine it? If he thinks the kind of bubblegum the killer was chewing is important, why do his sidekicks have to make fun of him with their "Monk, how could that possible be important?" Well, assholes, you know he's just that friggin' smart and you've seen him solve a case on less, so why can't you just learn to STFU? You KNOW it's an important clue if he notices. I wanted to strangle Watson everytime Holmes pointed something small out and Watson said, "How can that possibly important?" Because it just IS, man. It just IS.
But this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's doing. Why couldn't he, in just one story, just ONE, make Watson competent? It is possible to have two main characters. He didn't have to ever solve a case, or be a step ahead of Holmes, or suddenly whip out his blackbelt or anything. He could have just...not run into the street shouting at a suspect, alarming the suspect that he was suspected and getting the life choked out of him in the process. As soon as he darted out of the house I was screaming, "No, bad Watson!" He had no common sense. As much as I think Holmes was not much of a grand companion in his own right (smoking, drugs, insensitivity to others, shooting firearms in an enclosed area), Doyle made me feel like he thought readers couldn't possibly keep up with his narrative and so used that age old chorus to represent what he thought readers must be thinking, and he named it Watson.
I suggest that any reader not read the collection en masse as I did. The cases became monotonous, and trust me, they aren't so in any way. It's just that when the same thing basically happens over and over (of course Holmes will solve it, for better or worse - of course Watson will come to no harm, he's recounting the story) it gets repetitive in it's own way. If the stories are broken up so that maybe another story is read in between each one, I think it would be much better.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much. I'm also glad I found it for incredibly cheap at Amazon. I had downloaded it for free from one of the "pre-1923" websites but there were obviously so many missing passages and strange typos I couldn't read it. Finding the entire collection for $.99 was fabulous. Toward the end I began to notice a few typos (more than there should have been) but I also began to wonder if it was Doyle's own typos - he would have had an old manual typewriter where mistakes were not as easily fixed, not to mention how they wouldn't be fixed very often if they slipped through to the printing.
All in all I give it a good solid B. Definitely it should be read by every serious reader but I just can't quite give it that perfect score because of the dumbing-down of our dear Dr. Watson. (By the way, I conjecture this anthology was between 1500-2000 pages. I couldn't tell because the Kindle doesn't give pages due to the way you can change the font or make notes. But there was about 20 lines per page and there were about 40,000 lines.)
Some thoughts:
Watson, like so many other sidekicks, is a complete moron. Now, I know that's not true, and the truth is I liked Watson a lot and looked forward to passages where he was alone on a little side mission or in harm's way. It was the passages where he interacted with Holmes after a solitary escapade (where Holmes would point out the things Watson should have done, things I found myself yelling about while Watson was there, too) and the passages where he is just too far behind Holmes (and even the reader) for me to tolerate. This happens in all your TV shows with really smart main characters, though (Monk and House, to name a few). In the case of Monk, how many times has a seemingly stupid clue caught his attention and proven to be vital in the end? Why can't his cohorts just accept his eccentricity without constantly trying to undermine it? If he thinks the kind of bubblegum the killer was chewing is important, why do his sidekicks have to make fun of him with their "Monk, how could that possible be important?" Well, assholes, you know he's just that friggin' smart and you've seen him solve a case on less, so why can't you just learn to STFU? You KNOW it's an important clue if he notices. I wanted to strangle Watson everytime Holmes pointed something small out and Watson said, "How can that possibly important?" Because it just IS, man. It just IS.
But this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's doing. Why couldn't he, in just one story, just ONE, make Watson competent? It is possible to have two main characters. He didn't have to ever solve a case, or be a step ahead of Holmes, or suddenly whip out his blackbelt or anything. He could have just...not run into the street shouting at a suspect, alarming the suspect that he was suspected and getting the life choked out of him in the process. As soon as he darted out of the house I was screaming, "No, bad Watson!" He had no common sense. As much as I think Holmes was not much of a grand companion in his own right (smoking, drugs, insensitivity to others, shooting firearms in an enclosed area), Doyle made me feel like he thought readers couldn't possibly keep up with his narrative and so used that age old chorus to represent what he thought readers must be thinking, and he named it Watson.
I suggest that any reader not read the collection en masse as I did. The cases became monotonous, and trust me, they aren't so in any way. It's just that when the same thing basically happens over and over (of course Holmes will solve it, for better or worse - of course Watson will come to no harm, he's recounting the story) it gets repetitive in it's own way. If the stories are broken up so that maybe another story is read in between each one, I think it would be much better.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much. I'm also glad I found it for incredibly cheap at Amazon. I had downloaded it for free from one of the "pre-1923" websites but there were obviously so many missing passages and strange typos I couldn't read it. Finding the entire collection for $.99 was fabulous. Toward the end I began to notice a few typos (more than there should have been) but I also began to wonder if it was Doyle's own typos - he would have had an old manual typewriter where mistakes were not as easily fixed, not to mention how they wouldn't be fixed very often if they slipped through to the printing.
All in all I give it a good solid B. Definitely it should be read by every serious reader but I just can't quite give it that perfect score because of the dumbing-down of our dear Dr. Watson. (By the way, I conjecture this anthology was between 1500-2000 pages. I couldn't tell because the Kindle doesn't give pages due to the way you can change the font or make notes. But there was about 20 lines per page and there were about 40,000 lines.)
May 22, 2010
March 12! March 12!?! Gadzooks, Batman!
Yeah, I'm a friggin' lazy bum. Anyway, here's a random thought for the day to get me back into writing on here each day.
Let’s play a game where we make up a meaning for some of the random words generated by internet ID checker thingies. Today I got the word “liummure” and I just kept looking at it wondering if it’s a word. It isn’t. But what could it mean if it were a word? It rhymes with demure, mature, and endure. Sounds like lemons, linoleum, or illuminate. Begins with lie, ends with you, in the middle is “um.” Maybe it can mean, like, a selective truth? Like when you aren’t lying but instead you just aren’t telling the whole truth? You liummure the truth. Um…yeah.
I'm currently reading One More Day Everywhere on my Kindle PC. Which, by the way, is fantastic as the other day I realized I was watching a movie on my real PC, I had my netbook (which houses the Kindle) propped open in front of the PC screen, while eating dinner on the pull-out shelf that my keyboard sits on. HANDS-FREE READING! It...was...glorious. As it were.
Let’s play a game where we make up a meaning for some of the random words generated by internet ID checker thingies. Today I got the word “liummure” and I just kept looking at it wondering if it’s a word. It isn’t. But what could it mean if it were a word? It rhymes with demure, mature, and endure. Sounds like lemons, linoleum, or illuminate. Begins with lie, ends with you, in the middle is “um.” Maybe it can mean, like, a selective truth? Like when you aren’t lying but instead you just aren’t telling the whole truth? You liummure the truth. Um…yeah.
I'm currently reading One More Day Everywhere on my Kindle PC. Which, by the way, is fantastic as the other day I realized I was watching a movie on my real PC, I had my netbook (which houses the Kindle) propped open in front of the PC screen, while eating dinner on the pull-out shelf that my keyboard sits on. HANDS-FREE READING! It...was...glorious. As it were.
March 12, 2010
It's a New Week
I will start fresh with a new book this week. I got through about 40% of Rigs, so I will continue to read it and my other travel books on the sly, little by little. In the meantime, the book this week is massive. It's Ada by Vladimir Nabokov (pronounced Na-BO-kov, per an interview I read with him where he set the pronounciation straight; too many people were pronouncing it NAB-okov). As a lot of people know, Nabokov is one of my idols.
March 10, 2010
Two Down
Two to go. I made it through Catcher and Fahrenheit. I don't know if I can do 1984. I know it's, like, one of the most classic, must-read books of all time but after abandoning Brave New World and hating Fahrenheit, I just don't know if I can do it. I might have to push it back to another time and substitute some different short book in its place. Maybe two of my travel books or something.
But I am looking incredibly forward to Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs!
But I am looking incredibly forward to Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs!
March 7, 2010
Goal To Have Read by March 11
The Catcher in the Rye
1984
Fahrenheit 451
Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs
These four books will catch me up for what I've missed and are short enough (except perhaps Rigs) to read in a few days. I will now abandon all other distractions except work (and would even that if I could). No more video games, Netflix, Freddie Mercury documentaries (yep, in the plural), or Mika dancing sessions.
1984
Fahrenheit 451
Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs
These four books will catch me up for what I've missed and are short enough (except perhaps Rigs) to read in a few days. I will now abandon all other distractions except work (and would even that if I could). No more video games, Netflix, Freddie Mercury documentaries (yep, in the plural), or Mika dancing sessions.
Choosing What to Read
What's wrong with me? Why am I so afraid to read what I want to and why do I force myself to read books that I normally wouldn't give a second glance to?
There is no possible way that any reader reads all the books that are considered some kind of classic. You have your ancient literature, your medieval epics, your renaissance poetry, your romantic novels, your modern masterpieces, your contemporary classics, and now your post-contemporary bore-me-to-tears pieces of crap. How do I decide which ones are worth my time and why do I care what other people have read?
My fear is that someday I'll meet one of my idols, let's say Stephen King or Jonathan Lethem, and they'll ask me what I thought of Fahrenheit 451 and I'll stare blankly ahead and drool. I'll be forced to say something like, "Duh, I got confused in parts and though I usually like poetry in prose, I couldn't read that thing." And they will walk away, aghast.
So why not just read it, you ask? It's, like, less than two hundred pages.
Because it's boring me. And so is *gasp* The Catcher in the Rye. The narrator and dialect of Salinger's book is really amazing, especially for its time period, but I'm so bored. Holy tube socks, Batman, Sylvia Plath was more interesting than these two books. And I hated Plath's poetry.
When in a book is it a good time to give up? These are two classics that I know are classics for a reason. And, again, they are less than two hundred pages each. What's my major malfunction? Am I refusing to give them a chance? Is it okay to admit that I don't want to read them? If I took a list of one hundred classics to any literature professor, what are the odds he or she would have read even half of those books? Slim to none? There are certainly people who would have read all of them because they made doing so a personal goal, but does it have to be my personal goal?
The thing about it is that while I'm bored to tears I allow myself to get distracted and then I go off my schedule because I dread picking the book up again. So it's really wasting more time than I can afford to slowly read two pages an hour. The hitchhiking book? I loved it, couldn't stop reading, read it on two different computers, and used my lovely Amazon gift card to get more travel books for my Kindle PC. Why do I stress about reading these travel books? I enjoy them and I learn something and, most importantly, I enjoy them. Isn't that what it's about.?
But (ah, here's the rub) what if I miss out on the greatest thing I've ever read because I lost interest? Won't the fact that I had to wait so long in a book for it to get interesting teach me about pacing and how to keep readers involved throughout the entire story? Didn't King say I would learn more from the bad books than I do from the good ones? How do I make that distinction because art is subjective? When will I stop asking so many questions?
I just don't know. What I do know is that I'm now about two weeks behind schedule because I couldn't stay interested in those books. They are books I would normally be able to read in a few hours and I couldn't even read them in two weeks, and that's frightening. I'm just not sure whether the blame lies with those books, with society, with my fear of the community I want to be a part of, or with my own procrastination.
Though I am sure it's some kind of combination of each and all.
There is no possible way that any reader reads all the books that are considered some kind of classic. You have your ancient literature, your medieval epics, your renaissance poetry, your romantic novels, your modern masterpieces, your contemporary classics, and now your post-contemporary bore-me-to-tears pieces of crap. How do I decide which ones are worth my time and why do I care what other people have read?
My fear is that someday I'll meet one of my idols, let's say Stephen King or Jonathan Lethem, and they'll ask me what I thought of Fahrenheit 451 and I'll stare blankly ahead and drool. I'll be forced to say something like, "Duh, I got confused in parts and though I usually like poetry in prose, I couldn't read that thing." And they will walk away, aghast.
So why not just read it, you ask? It's, like, less than two hundred pages.
Because it's boring me. And so is *gasp* The Catcher in the Rye. The narrator and dialect of Salinger's book is really amazing, especially for its time period, but I'm so bored. Holy tube socks, Batman, Sylvia Plath was more interesting than these two books. And I hated Plath's poetry.
When in a book is it a good time to give up? These are two classics that I know are classics for a reason. And, again, they are less than two hundred pages each. What's my major malfunction? Am I refusing to give them a chance? Is it okay to admit that I don't want to read them? If I took a list of one hundred classics to any literature professor, what are the odds he or she would have read even half of those books? Slim to none? There are certainly people who would have read all of them because they made doing so a personal goal, but does it have to be my personal goal?
The thing about it is that while I'm bored to tears I allow myself to get distracted and then I go off my schedule because I dread picking the book up again. So it's really wasting more time than I can afford to slowly read two pages an hour. The hitchhiking book? I loved it, couldn't stop reading, read it on two different computers, and used my lovely Amazon gift card to get more travel books for my Kindle PC. Why do I stress about reading these travel books? I enjoy them and I learn something and, most importantly, I enjoy them. Isn't that what it's about.?
But (ah, here's the rub) what if I miss out on the greatest thing I've ever read because I lost interest? Won't the fact that I had to wait so long in a book for it to get interesting teach me about pacing and how to keep readers involved throughout the entire story? Didn't King say I would learn more from the bad books than I do from the good ones? How do I make that distinction because art is subjective? When will I stop asking so many questions?
I just don't know. What I do know is that I'm now about two weeks behind schedule because I couldn't stay interested in those books. They are books I would normally be able to read in a few hours and I couldn't even read them in two weeks, and that's frightening. I'm just not sure whether the blame lies with those books, with society, with my fear of the community I want to be a part of, or with my own procrastination.
Though I am sure it's some kind of combination of each and all.
February 22, 2010
Money
Why is it that when the end of a long run is nigh, there are those people who would still rather skip corners or take blind shortcuts because they don't want to struggle up hill for a few more minutes? I live with my parents and we are finally in sight of a little relief because my sister and her two children moved out. This cut many of our bills in half. But, my parents don't want to have to struggle for even one minute, it seems. Twice a month, I borrowed money, grudgingly, from one of those awful check-into-loan places. We'd get $190 dollars and have to pay back $230. We lost forty dollars each time, which is eighty dollars a month or $960 a year. We were losing $1000! I hated it. But, for the most part, we did it because the bills wouldn't wait another five days because they were due (*cough* behind *cough*). Now they are all caught up except one, which will be caught up by March 5 if we just struggle for the next few days.
We just have to get through the next three days until my father gets paid on Friday, then everything will be all right. But, we don't really have many options and money is tight. We have food but we'll have to make some crazy, surprise, make-em-up kind of meals out of it. We have gas, but it means that all other people will have to be told "NO!" when they ask us to take them to their girlfriend's, then to work, then to their house, then back to their girlfriend's, etc.
But you see, my parents don't want to have to worry about struggling. So, they want me to go get another check-loan thing so we can buy some groceries but then we'll lose out on that $230 we would have to buy groceries on Friday. Why can't we just wait a few days and struggle and get out from under lost money? I ate cheese, summer sausage, and crackers every day for dinner for my first month of grad school. It sucked but I lived.
Anyway, I refused to go get the loan. My father threw a fit and my mother cried, but you know what? It had to be done. I told them that if we never did it - if we always said, "Maybe this will be the last time," it really never would be the last time. So I'm saying, "The last time, it was the last time. We'll live."
We just have to get through the next three days until my father gets paid on Friday, then everything will be all right. But, we don't really have many options and money is tight. We have food but we'll have to make some crazy, surprise, make-em-up kind of meals out of it. We have gas, but it means that all other people will have to be told "NO!" when they ask us to take them to their girlfriend's, then to work, then to their house, then back to their girlfriend's, etc.
But you see, my parents don't want to have to worry about struggling. So, they want me to go get another check-loan thing so we can buy some groceries but then we'll lose out on that $230 we would have to buy groceries on Friday. Why can't we just wait a few days and struggle and get out from under lost money? I ate cheese, summer sausage, and crackers every day for dinner for my first month of grad school. It sucked but I lived.
Anyway, I refused to go get the loan. My father threw a fit and my mother cried, but you know what? It had to be done. I told them that if we never did it - if we always said, "Maybe this will be the last time," it really never would be the last time. So I'm saying, "The last time, it was the last time. We'll live."
February 21, 2010
Big Words
I'm reading a book about hitchhiking called Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey by Elijah Wald. I can't tell you the page because I'm reading it on my Kindle PC, but somewheres about 75% of the way through the book he uses the word lagniappe.
February 18, 2010
Sylvia Plath, Aldous Huxley, and Freddie Mercury
My reading goal this week was to read two relatively short books. The first was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I enjoyed it well enough. I can see its significance but didn't find myself ripping through the pages worried about what would become of the narrator. I did very much love the similes she used throughout. It was charged with a lot of breakthroughs for its time period, with raw descriptions of depression and sexual revolution and the true meaning of asylum. I would personally give it a "C," though I think it important for every generation to read to understand how far we've come and how much farther we need to go as far as understanding our own psychologies.
The second book was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It's been a long time since I've had to abandon a book. I just cannot read this. I have never been the biggest fan of science fiction, especially that which depicts an elitist future. I think it's that I get too angry and I don't want to spend the whole of a book being too angry. A professor gave me Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for my birthday one year and I tried to read it but had to stop. It's on my list of books to read this year, but I'm dreading it.
Right now I'm watching live concerts of Queen on Youtube. Freddie Mercury was the greatest performer. I really do wish at times I was a gay man. I found myself singing along with crowd - Freddie Mercury always used to lead the crowd in doing some trilling and the crowd would try to mimic him as closely as possible. I had to participate. Long live Freddie.
The second book was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It's been a long time since I've had to abandon a book. I just cannot read this. I have never been the biggest fan of science fiction, especially that which depicts an elitist future. I think it's that I get too angry and I don't want to spend the whole of a book being too angry. A professor gave me Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for my birthday one year and I tried to read it but had to stop. It's on my list of books to read this year, but I'm dreading it.
Right now I'm watching live concerts of Queen on Youtube. Freddie Mercury was the greatest performer. I really do wish at times I was a gay man. I found myself singing along with crowd - Freddie Mercury always used to lead the crowd in doing some trilling and the crowd would try to mimic him as closely as possible. I had to participate. Long live Freddie.
February 16, 2010
Writer's Block
Oh-my-friggin'-god...I'm going to call myself an artist.
Because that's what I am. I'm an artist. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Not just Arts - Fine Arts. I'm a fine artist. Except, I've abandoned my art because I've become a little yellow scaredy pussy cat. "Are you sure this was written at the graduate level?" she asked. "It feels like undergraduate writing to me." And my first (and current) inclination was to say, "Where do you draw that line?" Because I knew a good deal of undergraduate writers whose art blew the socks off of some graduate writing. Off of most graduate writing, really.
It wasn't about my writing, though. It was about putting me in a class of writers because I enjoyed playing with that red-headed step-sister we all know as "genre writing."
Fucking literati.
It's a problem with the writing programs in general. They are brainwashing writers into using the same dull, safe techniques in order to be considered "literature" as opposed to "mainstream" or the dreaded "formulaic." Um, I really hate (love) to tell them this, but when I've cracked open the past few years' worth of the Best American Short Stories I can't help but feel all of the stories are so...FORMULAIC. I feel like I can open any page and read it, then skip ahead to a totally different, random story and it's as though I never stopped reading the first story. They all want to talk about the psychology of their mundane lives, or the pain of trauma A, or the details of trauma B...blah blah blah!
I love trauma. My characters are always cliched-ly abused or perverted in some way. I know I fall into this habit, as well. But isn't there an interesting way to weave it into a captivating story anymore? Are we past the point where we want adventure, or entertainment, or fantasy when we read? Are we past the point where those things can mean intelligence instead of immaturity? In the world of graduate writing programs, the answer is "yes." The lady from the second paragraph, the one who had to make a distinction between graduate and undergraduate writing, said that Harry Potter isn't deep or complex. Pardon? This, of course, led to my infamous retort to her that made all of my classmates go "OHHHHHH." I don't even remember what I said because I was so angry. After this conversation, she took every advantage to make me feel like I didn't deserve to be there anymore. Which, for a long time, I began to believe.
You wanna know the formula for current literature?
Small town + trauma + feelings = literature.
Slice-of-life. Ugh. Double Ugh. I'm fully aware this may be my preference for epics coming through, but I know I've read exciting slice-of-life fiction and this current crop of writing ain't exciting. Earlier in one of my posts I talked about the Virgin Suicides, which follows the formula and is still riveting.
Small Ohio town + multiple suicides + narrator's feelings = fuckin' awesome.
I think here it is the absolute obsession of the narrator with what went wrong, and the fact that we are removed from the actual feelings of the sisters, that make this story so engaging. We won't ever really know why the girls committed suicide, we can only speculate, we are only given clues. The story isn't told from the "I" point of view. The boys in town are telling their obsessive "we" point of view.
I feel like every current short story is "I." Because that's the narrator who can tell his own feelings best.
Maybe I can't just talk about feelings. Maybe I have to be cryptic. Maybe I feel all icky and maybe I feel like it's telling instead of showing and maybe I feel like that goes against the grain of good storytelling and maybe I feel like people can't understand someone else's feelings unless they're shown where those feelings came from in the greatest detail possible. Current short stories...all they do is give the least amount of detail possible to set a scene so it can showcase all the FEELINGS the characters are experiencing.
And so, for a long time, I tried to write about feelings. I tried to mimic those stories in the Best American Short Stories, because a book called about editing told me I should do this. Well, what it tells writers is that a writer should follow all of the advice these two editors (who wrote the editing book) give in the book if you ever want to be published, and then they go on to give examples of writers who did what they were told and got published, and writers who did not do what they were told and got nothing. And then...AND THEN...they take excerpts from The Great Gatsby and re-write them using their advised techniques to show how the book could have been better.
To show how The Great Gatsby could have been better. With their help.
And you know what? After they laid their hands on those books and stories and the Great Gatsby each piece of writing lost all of its character.
But I thought, what if this is what I have to do to get published? What if this is what I have to do to be called "serious?" What if I have to abandon my own voice in order to have any voice at all? I was scared.
No fucking more.
I will do as I please.
Watership Down reminded me of what I love to read and why I love to read it. I tease my best friend about her romance novels, but in the end I understand what they give her. What did a book about rabbits give me? Adventure and suspense and characters I gave a damn about. They, in effect, ceased to be rabbits and by that point the story is all that mattered and it was a BRILLIANT story. So is Harry Potter. So is The Dark Tower series. The rabbits are a metaphor for survival, war, and brotherly love. Harry Potter is a symbol of the abilities of everyday human beings who aren't really all that "special" but are clever and heroic. Roland is an obsessive, abused, smart man who feels he must save the world and feels he must personally lose everything to do so. How are those things less artistic than: Watership Down vs. Animal Farm; Harry Potter vs. The Old Man and the Sea;
The Dark Tower vs. The Grapes of Wrath?
But all of the second entries in each comparison are considered "literature." NO FUCKING MORE. I think there is some kind of unspoken rule that if you enjoy the book, grotesquely enjoy it, it is not allowed to be literature. I have decided not to care. I have decided that if I enjoy reading about an 800,000-year-old cybernetic bear who is taken down by a gunslinger and his white, heroin-addicted sidekick and in turn his black amputee lover, I will enjoy writing said sort of story and, therefore, others will enjoy reading my story. Will these stories win me a Pulitzer Prize? Nope, not in a million years. Is that what I'm giving up to save the world? I believe so. I believe art cannot be homogenized anymore. Something must be done. It looks like I'm going to be the one who does it.
Longest. Post. Ever. (not really)
Because that's what I am. I'm an artist. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Not just Arts - Fine Arts. I'm a fine artist. Except, I've abandoned my art because I've become a little yellow scaredy pussy cat. "Are you sure this was written at the graduate level?" she asked. "It feels like undergraduate writing to me." And my first (and current) inclination was to say, "Where do you draw that line?" Because I knew a good deal of undergraduate writers whose art blew the socks off of some graduate writing. Off of most graduate writing, really.
It wasn't about my writing, though. It was about putting me in a class of writers because I enjoyed playing with that red-headed step-sister we all know as "genre writing."
Fucking literati.
It's a problem with the writing programs in general. They are brainwashing writers into using the same dull, safe techniques in order to be considered "literature" as opposed to "mainstream" or the dreaded "formulaic." Um, I really hate (love) to tell them this, but when I've cracked open the past few years' worth of the Best American Short Stories I can't help but feel all of the stories are so...FORMULAIC. I feel like I can open any page and read it, then skip ahead to a totally different, random story and it's as though I never stopped reading the first story. They all want to talk about the psychology of their mundane lives, or the pain of trauma A, or the details of trauma B...blah blah blah!
I love trauma. My characters are always cliched-ly abused or perverted in some way. I know I fall into this habit, as well. But isn't there an interesting way to weave it into a captivating story anymore? Are we past the point where we want adventure, or entertainment, or fantasy when we read? Are we past the point where those things can mean intelligence instead of immaturity? In the world of graduate writing programs, the answer is "yes." The lady from the second paragraph, the one who had to make a distinction between graduate and undergraduate writing, said that Harry Potter isn't deep or complex. Pardon? This, of course, led to my infamous retort to her that made all of my classmates go "OHHHHHH." I don't even remember what I said because I was so angry. After this conversation, she took every advantage to make me feel like I didn't deserve to be there anymore. Which, for a long time, I began to believe.
You wanna know the formula for current literature?
Small town + trauma + feelings = literature.
Slice-of-life. Ugh. Double Ugh. I'm fully aware this may be my preference for epics coming through, but I know I've read exciting slice-of-life fiction and this current crop of writing ain't exciting. Earlier in one of my posts I talked about the Virgin Suicides, which follows the formula and is still riveting.
Small Ohio town + multiple suicides + narrator's feelings = fuckin' awesome.
I think here it is the absolute obsession of the narrator with what went wrong, and the fact that we are removed from the actual feelings of the sisters, that make this story so engaging. We won't ever really know why the girls committed suicide, we can only speculate, we are only given clues. The story isn't told from the "I" point of view. The boys in town are telling their obsessive "we" point of view.
I feel like every current short story is "I." Because that's the narrator who can tell his own feelings best.
Maybe I can't just talk about feelings. Maybe I have to be cryptic. Maybe I feel all icky and maybe I feel like it's telling instead of showing and maybe I feel like that goes against the grain of good storytelling and maybe I feel like people can't understand someone else's feelings unless they're shown where those feelings came from in the greatest detail possible. Current short stories...all they do is give the least amount of detail possible to set a scene so it can showcase all the FEELINGS the characters are experiencing.
And so, for a long time, I tried to write about feelings. I tried to mimic those stories in the Best American Short Stories, because a book called about editing told me I should do this. Well, what it tells writers is that a writer should follow all of the advice these two editors (who wrote the editing book) give in the book if you ever want to be published, and then they go on to give examples of writers who did what they were told and got published, and writers who did not do what they were told and got nothing. And then...AND THEN...they take excerpts from The Great Gatsby and re-write them using their advised techniques to show how the book could have been better.
To show how The Great Gatsby could have been better. With their help.
And you know what? After they laid their hands on those books and stories and the Great Gatsby each piece of writing lost all of its character.
But I thought, what if this is what I have to do to get published? What if this is what I have to do to be called "serious?" What if I have to abandon my own voice in order to have any voice at all? I was scared.
No fucking more.
I will do as I please.
Watership Down reminded me of what I love to read and why I love to read it. I tease my best friend about her romance novels, but in the end I understand what they give her. What did a book about rabbits give me? Adventure and suspense and characters I gave a damn about. They, in effect, ceased to be rabbits and by that point the story is all that mattered and it was a BRILLIANT story. So is Harry Potter. So is The Dark Tower series. The rabbits are a metaphor for survival, war, and brotherly love. Harry Potter is a symbol of the abilities of everyday human beings who aren't really all that "special" but are clever and heroic. Roland is an obsessive, abused, smart man who feels he must save the world and feels he must personally lose everything to do so. How are those things less artistic than: Watership Down vs. Animal Farm; Harry Potter vs. The Old Man and the Sea;
The Dark Tower vs. The Grapes of Wrath?
But all of the second entries in each comparison are considered "literature." NO FUCKING MORE. I think there is some kind of unspoken rule that if you enjoy the book, grotesquely enjoy it, it is not allowed to be literature. I have decided not to care. I have decided that if I enjoy reading about an 800,000-year-old cybernetic bear who is taken down by a gunslinger and his white, heroin-addicted sidekick and in turn his black amputee lover, I will enjoy writing said sort of story and, therefore, others will enjoy reading my story. Will these stories win me a Pulitzer Prize? Nope, not in a million years. Is that what I'm giving up to save the world? I believe so. I believe art cannot be homogenized anymore. Something must be done. It looks like I'm going to be the one who does it.
Longest. Post. Ever. (not really)
February 11, 2010
Violently Ill
Well, I haven't posted in a while because I've been incredibly sick. A flu went around my family and I laid in bed for about three days and ate nothing but popsicles. I didn't eat anything from 1:30 p.m. last Monday until the evening last Wednesday. Then I didn't have an appetite for a few days so I ate like a little bird. I lost about four pounds.
Anyway, last week I didn't read the book I was supposed to but I did this week. Hilariously, I read 300 pages of it in one seven-hour period. The last time I read 300 pages in one sitting was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This time, the book was Watership Down .
I've always wanted to read it because I disturbingly look back fondly on watching the movie when I was little. Disturbing because it was bloody and frightening although one redeeming quality was Art Garfunkel singing a song called "Bright Eyes" at the end when the Black Rabbit comes to get Hazel. I played the song in my head at the end of the book.
The book reminded me of everything I love about reading. It's a straightforward journey with a protagonist, obstacles, and a climactic fight. I really wanted to know what happened next at every turn. I also cared incredibly for the characters. Like I said a while back, it's hard to read a book when you don't care about the characters in it.
And it reminded me of a lesson I've learned about writing, one I impart to my students - particularly those who try to write fantasy. Here it is: the language and dialogue does not have to be Old English or fancy or anything of the sort. It can be everyday language. It can include colloquialisms. It can be "wrong" for its time period. I've always had a problem with this. I don't want to read a lot of jargon I have to decode to understand. Furthermore, no matter how the dialect, accent, and language would have actually sounded, to those who speak it and those who hear it on a daily basis nothing sounds out of the ordinary and to their ears it sounds like "normal" speech. And don't get me started on American actors trying to do accents - please, Hollywood, stop it now.
Anyway, in the book, a sea gull says "Piss off!" and though you do have to be paying attention to the "Lapine" (rabbit language) in the book (so there is, in fact, a bit of this problem in it) at one point you realize one rabbit says "Eat shit and die!" to another rabbit. It cracked me up when I figured it out, which didn't take long because I had been paying attention. In John Gardner's Grendel , a retelling of Beowulf from the monster's point of view, the monster, old as the Earth itself almost, says "fuck" and I believe maybe even "dude." I love it. This is okay because the way the two books are set up, you believe the monster would say this and you believe the rabbits would, too. Anyway, it makes the characters more real, in my opinion.
I used to write fantasy stories and the characters - princes, angels, knights - would speak in horribly affected accents or all in capital letters. A knight might say, "Thou must stay and I wilst protecteth thee." You want to vomit, eh? An angel would say, "I MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH FOR YOU." Yeah, all in caps like that. Cheesy, "Spew forth this frothy vomit that contains my soul" kind of stuff. Then, when I was fiction editor for the undergraduate magazine at college a story was submitted. Thirty-two pages of elves and princesses and flying and swords and dialogue like I used to write. I ran screaming and decided right then I would not try to change my characters' dialogue. They would just talk to each other, be it ancient times, 1800, or the future.
For a friend of mine, I would also like to warn that not enough rabbits die in horrible ways for you to enjoy this book. These are, inexplicably, good rabbits who don't deserve torturous deaths. I know that's hard for you to swallow. There is one violent scene where many, many rabbits are murdered by humans and though I know you abhor violence I think you needed to know that in this one scene all the your rabbit hate is satiated.
Anyway, Watership Down gets an A.
Anyway, last week I didn't read the book I was supposed to but I did this week. Hilariously, I read 300 pages of it in one seven-hour period. The last time I read 300 pages in one sitting was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This time, the book was Watership Down .
I've always wanted to read it because I disturbingly look back fondly on watching the movie when I was little. Disturbing because it was bloody and frightening although one redeeming quality was Art Garfunkel singing a song called "Bright Eyes" at the end when the Black Rabbit comes to get Hazel. I played the song in my head at the end of the book.
The book reminded me of everything I love about reading. It's a straightforward journey with a protagonist, obstacles, and a climactic fight. I really wanted to know what happened next at every turn. I also cared incredibly for the characters. Like I said a while back, it's hard to read a book when you don't care about the characters in it.
And it reminded me of a lesson I've learned about writing, one I impart to my students - particularly those who try to write fantasy. Here it is: the language and dialogue does not have to be Old English or fancy or anything of the sort. It can be everyday language. It can include colloquialisms. It can be "wrong" for its time period. I've always had a problem with this. I don't want to read a lot of jargon I have to decode to understand. Furthermore, no matter how the dialect, accent, and language would have actually sounded, to those who speak it and those who hear it on a daily basis nothing sounds out of the ordinary and to their ears it sounds like "normal" speech. And don't get me started on American actors trying to do accents - please, Hollywood, stop it now.
Anyway, in the book, a sea gull says "Piss off!" and though you do have to be paying attention to the "Lapine" (rabbit language) in the book (so there is, in fact, a bit of this problem in it) at one point you realize one rabbit says "Eat shit and die!" to another rabbit. It cracked me up when I figured it out, which didn't take long because I had been paying attention. In John Gardner's Grendel , a retelling of Beowulf from the monster's point of view, the monster, old as the Earth itself almost, says "fuck" and I believe maybe even "dude." I love it. This is okay because the way the two books are set up, you believe the monster would say this and you believe the rabbits would, too. Anyway, it makes the characters more real, in my opinion.
I used to write fantasy stories and the characters - princes, angels, knights - would speak in horribly affected accents or all in capital letters. A knight might say, "Thou must stay and I wilst protecteth thee." You want to vomit, eh? An angel would say, "I MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH FOR YOU." Yeah, all in caps like that. Cheesy, "Spew forth this frothy vomit that contains my soul" kind of stuff. Then, when I was fiction editor for the undergraduate magazine at college a story was submitted. Thirty-two pages of elves and princesses and flying and swords and dialogue like I used to write. I ran screaming and decided right then I would not try to change my characters' dialogue. They would just talk to each other, be it ancient times, 1800, or the future.
For a friend of mine, I would also like to warn that not enough rabbits die in horrible ways for you to enjoy this book. These are, inexplicably, good rabbits who don't deserve torturous deaths. I know that's hard for you to swallow. There is one violent scene where many, many rabbits are murdered by humans and though I know you abhor violence I think you needed to know that in this one scene all the your rabbit hate is satiated.
Anyway, Watership Down gets an A.
January 29, 2010
And I've Come to a Conclusion...
...that I'm just going to do what Conan's fans didn't - watch Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and support him that way. I like Jay, and I'll follow him wherever he goes. I watched the interview with Oprah yesterday and I watched the little after-show on her website. There are a few important facts many journalists are not including:
1) Craig Ferguson had nearly equal ratings to Conan O'Brien at the end of 2008. Which means that most likely Late Night with Conan O'Brien would have been #2 had he still been there through 2009. There are other things of interest in the link, including how much Jay Leno was beating his competition while still host of the Tonight Show. Aaron Barnhart, the author of the blog in the link, is usually more coherent than he is in a few lines, so cut him some slack. He's been a reporter about television of for a long time and is respected by many.
One thing I find hilarious in the link, and it might not be there when (if) you click on it, is the little tweet at the side that mentions the integrity of TMZ being tarnished. Um...TMZ is really just the Enquirer of the internet. It has never been a reputable source. It is a sensational gossip magazine.
2) CONAN O'BRIEN WAS LOSING TO DAVID LETTERMAN BEFORE THE JAY LENO SHOW CAME ON. Yep, I'm shouting it, because in every freaking news article the Jay Leno Show gets blamed for being a poor lead-in, which would be fine if Conan had been winning and then after September was losing. But you know what? That is false.
3) Leno's sample audience for 2008 = between 3.9 (this statistic is in a link below) to 5.1 million viewers (you have to understand ratings and kind of poke around the link to find this).
Letterman's sample audience for 2009 when he was against Conan for seven months = 3.27 million viewers. And that - THAT - is in second place behind Nightline for that week at 3.36 million and Conan at around three million. These are statistics for one particular week, but the truth is they do represent an average.
4) Leno's finale rating for the Tonight Show = 8.8. Conan's? 7.0.
1 rating point = 1,128,000 viewers approximately. Therefore, Conan's 7 = 7,896,000. I'm not sure then where they are getting the 10.3 million from. Jay's 8.8 = 9,926,400.
Anyway, the point is that Conan's fans couldn't even be bothered to tune in to show NBC why they were making a mistake - they couldn't even give him a bigger sendoff than Jay Leno's fans gave him. Why would NBC be rethinking anything? Conan fans: you couldn't even be loyal for one night! You couldn't even be bothered to help him out in his one hour of need. You know what? That was the point where I began shouting "Shut up, Team CoCo!"
1) Craig Ferguson had nearly equal ratings to Conan O'Brien at the end of 2008. Which means that most likely Late Night with Conan O'Brien would have been #2 had he still been there through 2009. There are other things of interest in the link, including how much Jay Leno was beating his competition while still host of the Tonight Show. Aaron Barnhart, the author of the blog in the link, is usually more coherent than he is in a few lines, so cut him some slack. He's been a reporter about television of for a long time and is respected by many.
One thing I find hilarious in the link, and it might not be there when (if) you click on it, is the little tweet at the side that mentions the integrity of TMZ being tarnished. Um...TMZ is really just the Enquirer of the internet. It has never been a reputable source. It is a sensational gossip magazine.
2) CONAN O'BRIEN WAS LOSING TO DAVID LETTERMAN BEFORE THE JAY LENO SHOW CAME ON. Yep, I'm shouting it, because in every freaking news article the Jay Leno Show gets blamed for being a poor lead-in, which would be fine if Conan had been winning and then after September was losing. But you know what? That is false.
3) Leno's sample audience for 2008 = between 3.9 (this statistic is in a link below) to 5.1 million viewers (you have to understand ratings and kind of poke around the link to find this).
Letterman's sample audience for 2009 when he was against Conan for seven months = 3.27 million viewers. And that - THAT - is in second place behind Nightline for that week at 3.36 million and Conan at around three million. These are statistics for one particular week, but the truth is they do represent an average.
4) Leno's finale rating for the Tonight Show = 8.8. Conan's? 7.0.
1 rating point = 1,128,000 viewers approximately. Therefore, Conan's 7 = 7,896,000. I'm not sure then where they are getting the 10.3 million from. Jay's 8.8 = 9,926,400.
Anyway, the point is that Conan's fans couldn't even be bothered to tune in to show NBC why they were making a mistake - they couldn't even give him a bigger sendoff than Jay Leno's fans gave him. Why would NBC be rethinking anything? Conan fans: you couldn't even be loyal for one night! You couldn't even be bothered to help him out in his one hour of need. You know what? That was the point where I began shouting "Shut up, Team CoCo!"
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