Archive for ‘Writing’

« Older Entries  |  
March 9, 2011

I Am Now One of the Cool Kids

A little while ago, my four-year-old Compaq Presario* slowly and gracefully ground to pretty much a full halt, and I did some polling and conducted some limited focus groups about what sort of computer I should buy, and after a very short period of consideration (mostly because, not having spent anywhere near as much as I’d thought I would in Morocco, I had some extra funds), I bought a MacBook.  This is my first Mac, and I’ve had it for about 30 minutes now, and I’m proud to say, I’ve already figured out the trackpad and everything, and I think this is going to work out just fine.

The other thing I’ve done recently is I’ve started a Tumblr blog, entitled Pictures of Food, Daily Outfits, Celebrity Gossip and 10 Productivity Tips!  It is basically an extended joke about the internet generally, and it is also the polar opposite of Accismus.  I think those of you who will find it hilarious are already reading it, but I wanted to let the rest of you know, too, in case you’d like to check it out.

__
*Laugh if you want, but I bought that computer for around $400 when I repatriated in spring 2007, expecting it to last me a year until I was employed again and could buy a real one, and instead, it lasted for four years of heavy use with no problems, so, you know.

Posted in Technology, Writing | 9 Comments »

Tags: , , , ,
January 19, 2011

Morocco Update, Plus Bonus Metapost

Following up on my earlier post about Morocco, I am still going, and in fact, am leaving within the week. Turned out the cheapest, easiest option was to fly through London, so my friend R and I are flying out this Saturday night, then flying to Fes Sunday evening, then flying back to London on the 3rd, then home on Saturday the 5th. This trip marks a number of travel firsts for me: it’s the first time I’ve ever traveled anywhere (out of the country) for so short a time (previously, I was in Italy for 2 months and in Asia for 3½); it’s the first time I’ve traveled in winter; and it’s the first time I’ve traveled with anyone. For the first thing, I’m really trying not to be such an American about traveling – I haven’t been out of the country since I got back from Asia in 2006, because I’ve been waiting until the next time I move cities, but now I have decided that I should really try to take a short trip every year, even if I don’t have any money.

I’m mostly worried about the middle of those three concerns – I have no idea at all what to bring. I’m carrying my old pack (which my Dad very sweetly washed for me), but it’s pretty small and can’t hold two weeks worth of clothes, much less two weeks worth of winter clothes. Every other time I’ve traveled, I’ve brought a giant wad of tissue-weight sundresses and a pair of flip-flops.

As to traveling with someone, I think that R and I will travel well together, as we both have the same general philosophy, which is to just buy plane tickets and figure out everything else when we get there. Both of us like to wander around alone, and neither of us are particularly pressured about cramming things in (this weekend, some friends were saying that we have to ride a camel through the desert because it will be our only chance to do that, and both R and I were like, ‘Why would this be our only chance to do that?’). R has expressed some concern about the fact that I am constitutionally unable to speak up if I disagree with something or don’t want to do something, so she’s worried that I’ll tag along with her politely doing things I’m not really interested in. Which, you know, I probably will, but I’ve been doing that since birth, so I don’t see the issue.

I’m mostly just worried about leaving Thomasina for two weeks by herself – she’s going to be so lonely! What if she turns feral? She’s always just on the brink, as it is. My wonderful roommate has agreed to feed her, but I doubt she will spend 30 minutes a night petting Thomasina’s face, like I do. Partly because she actually has a life, and partly because if she gets anywhere near Thomasina, Thomasina will surely bite her. Our impending separation particularly concerns me just now, as we haven’t spent much time together over the past few weeks – I have, very uncharacteristically, been a right social butterfly lately, as it’s January and I’m attempting to combat my seasonal depression the natural way, by faking a manic episode, and meanwhile, Thomasina has been absolutely consumed by her latest project. She has tasked herself with entirely chewing through a 5’x7’ jute rug, which is quite the undertaking for a 2 pound rabbit, and she is pursuing her goal with a dedication and single-mindedness that any of us might envy (above is a photo of Thomasina under my bed, surrounded by the many, many things with which I have provided her for chewing, other than the rug; still, she prefers the rug and I have to respect that). So, we’ve both been busy and a little distant, and I worry she won’t even remember me when I get back.

Anyway!

Naturally, I will blog about my trip here and post photos and everything, so those of you who followed my travel blog but don’t read this one, this is where it will be. But here’s the thing, y’all – I’m not going to post in real-time, because I’m only going for two weeks and I’m not going to spend several hours every other night sitting in an internet cafe, so I’ll post it all when I get back. Sorry, I know that’s not as much fun, but it will be nice to have ready-made content for this blog for awhile. Check back on the 7th or 8th (or, well, 9th).

Speaking of content and the blog, I’ve never done any sort of metapost about this blog, and this seems like as good a time as any. Remember when this blog was consistently funny? Good times. That was back when I started this here thing, in March 2007, which was about a month after I first moved to NYC. So, it’s been up almost four years, but that also includes the several months during which I took the whole blog down entirely because someone I really admire said something mean to me and it made me sad. To date, the blog has nearly 47,000 views, which isn’t that many, and it consistently gets around 30-40 views a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.

At first, I posted something funny about once a week; then, for a long time, I posted something funny twice a week and something topical three times a week; then, I posted nothing for months; then, I posted a lot of very boring short posts about nonsense because I felt like it; and now I post anywhere from weekly to daily about whatever happens to occur to me.

On July 3, 2007, I posted this about the igoogle teahouse fox theme page. The igoogle team found it and emailed it around, which bumped me up in the google rankings, and to date, this is my most viewed post and most of my traffic comes from searches related to the teahouse fox theme.

On August 18, 2010, I posted this poem, and I made WordPress’s Freshly Pressed page, resulting in my highest viewed day (2,408 views) and my most commented post (96 comments). This is my second most-viewed post on the blog.

My third top post is this one, which is not one of my funnier posts by a long shot, but which is the source of a lot of my traffic, because people overwhelmingly come to this blog after searching for various iterations of “how to meet my dream man,” which is a constant source of amusement to me every time I look at my stats. In fact, the very top search that brings people to my blog, ahead of even ‘accismus’ or anything to do with teahouse fox, is “how to meet the man of your dreams.” Which, all I can say about that is, I am so sorry. I have no expertise on this subject at all, and never claimed to. The only thing I might say? Very gently, here in your ear, just us girls together? Is that if this dream man is so very elusive…perhaps he does not really want to be found. Just saying.

My fourth most-viewed post is this one, which people find by googling the Columbia J-school application test. I wrote this post because Columbia used to have this very multiple-choice test up on their site as a sample of what you would have to take as part of your application, but they removed it not long after I posted this and from what I can tell, they no longer require such a thing, probably because they realized how moronic it was.

My fifth top post is this one, because, YOU GUYS, I cannot even TELL you how many people out there are searching for “Kaley Cuoco diet and exercise routine.” Seriously, people, what is the deal? Get yourselves a hobby!

The sixth is this MySpace Quiz bit, which I only mention because, ha, MySpace, what? People still google that?

So, there you have it. When I first started this blog, I would never have believed that I would one day be the top source on the web for finding the man of your dreams, and for information on Kaley Cuoco’s diet and exercise routine, but life takes you places you don’t expect.

I don’t have any grand insights into blogging or anything. To have a successful blog, you need a topic, and obviously, this blog has no topic at all. I didn’t start it to have a successful blog, though – I just wanted to be entertaining on a small scale, and to have something to do with bits I thought up that didn’t really work in a play or a sketch. When I used to blog really regularly and I had a regular following, I used to freak out when I’d post something and get no positive feedback on it. That made me feel really lonely, and was a constant source of stress. But now that I don’t necessarily have a regular following, the occasional random post that gets a lot of compliments is just a happy accident, but I don’t sit around being all, “Oh, God, why can’t I think of anything funny? What if I can’t ever think of anything funny again?” Which is what I used to do when I was actually pursuing comedy out in the real world, and that’s understandable, but that type of stress for a tiny little blog I write for free is just not worth it, and that’s the answer to why this blog doesn’t feature as many humor pieces as it used to: because there’s nothing in it for ME, you ungrateful little shits!

Finally, looking back over my entries, here are some of my favorites over the years that don’t get that many views, and a few I’d forgotten about, but still made me laugh:

Anyway, it’s been a great four years, everyone! Thanks for reading!

Posted in Bunny Blogging, Humor, Travel, Writing | 4 Comments »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
November 30, 2010

Just Overkill

Ok, so I’ve just noticed something about my writing, both here and other places and  it’s really driving me nuts, but I just don’t know if I can fix it.  I use the word ‘just’ all the time.  Over and over and over.  I mean, it is just everywhere.  And the more I pay attention to it, the more I seem to use it, and I would just quit it except that in a lot of cases, the sentence really seems to require it for…I don’t know, just for phrasing or a pause or a qualification or something, or maybe it’s just such a part of my speech now that I just can’t quit it.  I don’t think I say it that much; I think it’s just in my written speech.  I’m a big ‘like’ talker in real life, which is embarrassing, but which I also can’t really help at this point.

Anyway, sorry about all the justs!  I just can’t help it.  They’re like bedbugs up in here – I didn’t notice them creeping in and now they’re just all over everything.  I’m working on it.

Posted in Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , ,
November 15, 2010

Revisions

Wells Tower interviewed Barry Hannah (RIP) for the October 2012 Believer, and Hannah says, of teaching writing students:

I tell these students there’s no use in revising something that’s bad.  I believe that, for short stories.  It’s brief, very brief, from four to twelve pages, getting something done.  I don’t believe in rewriting this one goddamned story.  If the first draft is no goddamned good, it’s no good.  It’s stupid to revise it, to me.  The first draft has got to be loaded with most of it.  Does it not?  It can’t just be a shell of what’s going to be.  I think it’s got to be exciting.

That’s refreshing to hear.  I’m a terrible workshop participant, because 9 times out of 10, the only thing I can think to say to people is, “This really doesn’t seem much worth messing with.”  I feel the same way about my own stories.  It’s just that 99 out of 100 stories are so slight.  You have to keep looking for that 100th story; anything else wastes everyone’s time and makes people depressed about the state of fiction.

The writing community has been largely negative about this article by Laura Miller in which she slams Nanowrimo and other efforts to encourage writing, but I pretty much agree with everything she says.

So I’m not worried about all the books that won’t get written if a hundred thousand people with a nagging but unfulfilled ambition to Be a Writer lack the necessary motivation to get the job done. I see no reason to cheer them on. Writers are, in fact, hellishly persistent; they will go on writing despite overwhelming evidence of public indifference and (in many cases) of their own lack of ability or anything especially interesting to say . . . it’s the readers who are fragile, a truly endangered species. They don’t make a big stink about how underappreciated they are; like Tinkerbell or any other disbelieved-in fairy, they just fade away.

There’s already more worthy literature out there than a single person could possibly get through in a lifetime of reading – and also, no one is even reading anything at all, apparently – so the question inevitably arises, why be so insistent about writing more of it?  And the answer for most aspiring writers is, “Because I deserve to have interesting days full of thinking and creative labor rather than boring days full of dull labor, and also, I deserve for other people to pay attention to me.”  To paraphrase Carrie Fisher in When Harry Met Sally, everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor and should be doing something creative, but they can’t all.  I’m not excusing myself from that; I mean, I “write,” too.  What else are you going to do?

But in general, I think writing teachers could afford to be a lot more discouraging.  The ones I’ve had were all incredibly encouraging, and, with very few exceptions, they should not have encouraged what I was writing at the time.  They should have told me to burn it and bury the ashes, and that if I ever had the gall to trot out something similarly lazy, vapid and dishonest for their review, they’d have me expelled.

Posted in Books, Writing | 6 Comments »

Tags: , , , , , , ,
May 25, 2010

“At the Night Market”

Hi all.  I have a piece over at The Morning News today about a cool event I attended a couple weekends ago.  Head on over and check it out!

If you’re not familiar with The Morning News, be sure to look around.  I’ve been a daily reader since 2002, and have posted here about their yearly Tournament of Books, among other things.

Posted in Brooklyn, Humor, Writing | 2 Comments »

Tags: , ,
February 1, 2010

11

I have not been blogging much lately, and so, in the style of the blog 11 Points, here are 11 things that I have been spending my time on lately, and enjoying immensely. All highly recommended:

1. Gail Collins. The New York Times was long overdue for a female columnist who wasn’t Maureen Dowd, and Gail Collins is more than the Times deserves: tart, smart, funny and perceptive, her takes on the issues of the day are both informative and cathartic. I just checked out one of her books, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, but have only read the first chapter so far. I’ll let you know how it is. Also, in addition to her columns, Collins’s conversations with David Brooks are a treat. I have to confess, in the past, I have occasionally liked David Brooks, but he’s been heinous lately, and as his tenure at the Times goes on, he contradicts himself ever more blatantly. I dearly love a good journo fight, and Matt Taibbi (an occasional guilty pleasure for me, I’ll admit – his reportage may be spotty, but sometimes you just need a good, unapologetic rant) has lately been picking Brooks’s columns up in his teeth and shaking them back and forth until their necks snap.

2. The public library. I like to write in my books, dogear them, and read them in the shower, so for years, I insisted on buying books and keeping them in piles along my baseboards. But I don’t make that kind of money these days, and have finally learned to make good use of the public library. Yes, the inability to write in the books is a serious handicap, but otherwise, I am a total library convert. There’s a small branch near my house, and I can order whatever I want through the system to be delivered there, and they notify me by email when my holds are ready. Best of all, you can renew your books on the computer, and as long as nobody puts a hold on them, you can renew them indefinitely (I’ve renewed one 12 times already). And all for not one red cent (not counting city taxes). Beat that, Kindle.

3. Susan Schorn’s McSweeney’s column. I go back and forth on McSweeney’s, and particularly on their columnists. Some are good, some are boring, many have long outlived their original gimmick, good for only a post or two, but weirdly extended. But one of their new columns, Susan Schorn’s meditations on martial arts, self-defense, anger, weakness, and related topics, is fantastic – and not just because I’m into karate lately. I agree with Schorn about everything, and wish she lived next door to me, so that I could bother her all the time (and all of her other humor pieces are great, too). Speaking of karate:

4. Shotokan karate. I have been training at a local dojo since August (I’m currently a yellow belt), and I am obsessed. Fantastic exercise, and a wonderful outlet for pent-up aggression, karate is sport, art form, self-defense training and a study in focus and discipline, all in one. I try to make three classes a week, and, while I still couldn’t beat up a four-year-old, my kiai has deepened from Chihuahua to Rottweiler.

5. Jezebel and The Awl. I am putting these together, because my enjoyment of them is similar. For some reason, when Jezebel debuted, I immediately decided that I didn’t care for it. I can’t remember what about it offended me, because I’ve really been enjoying it lately. In addition to the progressive and feminist news alerts, there are hearty round-ups of celebrity gossip. And while I am not interested enough in celebrity garbage to actually read up on it, I must admit, do I want to know when Brad and Angie finally break it off, or when Lindsay Lohan ODs in a club bathroom, or when somebody has a major weight reversal? Yes! Yes, okay? I do want to know that! I admit it! But I don’t need to know the deets – I just want a headline and a photo, and that’s what Jezebel delivers. Now, The Awl, helmed by former Gawker editor, Choire Sicha (aka the only person who ever wrote for Gawker that I actually liked), is a hilarious, well-written chronicle of all things that would particularly interest…well, Brooklyn dwelling, underemployed pseudo-writers like moi. Plus, it is one of those lovely, rare blogs in which the commenters expand on (and often outshine) the posts. Kinder than Gawker and sharper than The Gothamist, The Awl fits just right.  If I could only read one blog, this would probably be it.

6. Amanda Palmer. The former Dresdan Doll has an awesome solo album. Plus, she’s engaged to Neil Gaiman, and showed up at The Golden Globes with her boobs and her pit hair out. She’s a fucking badass.

7. Small, well-done, original blogs. Tiring of sprawling, massive, constantly updating blogs, I have lately been discovering small, creative, focused sites that do one thing and do it well. Edith Zimmerman writes hilarious very short stories. Tom Oatmeal (who I found through EZ) makes milk come out my nose. And firmuhment is continually brilliant and original – scanned documents that inspire essays, short stories, and humor. I’m not sure if firmuhment is a single author deal or a team effort, but every post has obviously had a lot of work put into it, and I appreciate that.

8. Firefox’s new skins. I spent the lion’s share of my day staring at my browser, so anything that makes it more visually appealing makes me happy. Firefox’s new skins are a small adjustment that, surprisingly, makes a big difference. Currently, I’m enjoying Spring II. Goes well with my igoogle theme.

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I resisted getting into this back in high school when everyone was super into it, and haven’t gotten into it since, because I didn’t want to consume seven seasons of TV. But my coworker has them all on DVD. Uncle, okay? I’m through six seasons already, and ready to register as an official member of the Joss Whedon fanbase. In addition to the overall awesomeness of the series, I enjoy identifying basic karate moves in the fight choreography.

10. My new phone. After three shameful years of hitchhiking on my parents’ family plan, I finally ponied up and got my own phone plan, and a phone with a full keyboard and a camera. And man, it makes a huge difference! I no longer wince at the sound of a text message arriving: it doesn’t take me a year to peck out a response anymore, and my phone looks cool and is really fun to use. And yesterday, when my brunch coffee came in a giant bowl with no handle, I was able to document it quickly and easily, no forethought required.

11. My rabbit, Thomasina. Thomasina is so freaking adorable!! And I love having a pet! This was a good move. She’s my little pal, and she does hilarious things and entertains me, and she’s cuddly and fun. Right now, for example, I am trying to write, and she is collapsing her little grass hut on top of her head, and making eyes at the rabbit she thinks lives in my closet mirror! OMG, she’s a gas. I won’t work at all today.

Posted in Books, Bunny Blogging, Feminism, Humor, People, Politics, Technology, Television, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
August 24, 2009

I’ve Been Reading: Reading Like a Writer

Most writers were heavy readers first; most heavy readers eventually try their hand at writing. Some successful writers pick up their trade through osmosis, but most need to carefully study their predecessors, to parse their work and identify precisely how they pulled it off. Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer explains (largely by example) how to be a close reader, mostly with the aim of instructing would-be writers in how to model their own prose. She begins, appropriately, with words, moves onto sentences and then paragraphs; after examining the basic components of text itself, she discusses the larger elements of fiction writing. She also includes an entire chapter raving about Chekhov, simply because she’s totally nuts for him. Nothing wrong with that.

Prose loves reading, and this book makes you want to read, even if her devotion to meticulous close reading makes the entire endeavor seem as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Personally, I am not a close reader. I am a frantic reader. While I appreciate Prose’s call to read less and better, I can’t get over feeling like I’m racing the clock. There are only so many books you can get through in a lifetime, and there are an infinite number of books I really want to read. Since graduating from college, I have never once reread a book, which is, of course, a shame. If anyone should feel at leisure to read closely and carefully, it would be me, as I currently have nothing but free time, but still, I read quickly, in gulps. Which, incidentally, is the best way to read non-fiction (or at least, to read non-fiction for informational purposes).

But fiction is about the read itself. Prose says, of reading Chekhov on a long daily bus commute during a particularly dismal period of her life:

Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as well as the answer to those who say that books will disappear. For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on the bus.

Posted in Books, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
August 9, 2009

I’ve Been Reading: Burn This Book

This slim book, edited by Toni Morrison, has eleven short essays originally delivered by various PEN writers on the issue of “censorship and the power of the written word.” There’s an interesting divide here between the authors whose subjects have not generally been political (John Updike, Francine Prose, Russell Banks) and those writers who live and work in turbulent or repressive areas (whether they grew up in these areas, or have traveled widely in them) (Morrison, Pico Iyer, Orhan Pamuk, Nadine Gorimer). The first group tends to talk about the literary crappiness of novels written specifically to draw attention to some cause, or to protest an outrage. They emphasize the importance of literature as an observant and non-judgmental work of art.

Banks:

A true novelist. . . has no thought of his or her audience. . . . Not when submitting oneself to the discipline and rigor and tradition of the history of the form, which require that one be at all times wholly honest and nonjudgmental and as intelligent as possible – that one be, as Henry James prescribed, a person ‘on whom nothing is lost.’

Prose:

The polemicist, or the theorist, or the strategist would have trouble with the stance that Chekhov identified as basic for the artist. That is, the notion that writers must admit they understand nothing of life, that nothing in this world makes sense, so all a writer can do is to try and describe it.

The second group, while often agreeing with the first, tends to focus more on the revolutionary potential of the written word, and on the absolute indignity and intolerability of censorship. Both groups essentially agree with each other: the job of writers is to mirror what is true, and nothing – no cause or party or regime or nation or event – that impedes this truth-telling can be tolerated. So that when Orhan Pamuk (whose essay was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting) writes about Turkey, he is writing what he sees in the society where he lives. Whether or not he intends to make an overtly political statement (and if his book is to be of any interest, hopefully, making a political statement would not be his purpose in writing it), his work might still be censored by those who don’t agree with or like the reality it reflects.

Pamuk:

Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights. These freedoms, which modern people long for as much as bread and water, should never be limited by using nationalist sentiment, moral sensitivities, or – worst of all – business or military interests. If many nations outside the West suffer poverty in shame, it is not because they have freedom of expression but because they don’t. . . . Yes, we must be alert to those who denigrate immigrants and minorities for their religion, their ethnic roots, or the oppression that the governments of the countries they’ve left behind have visited on their own people.

But to respect the humanity and religious beliefs of minorities is not to suggest hat we should limit freedom of thought on their behalf. Respect for the rights of religious or ethnic minorities should never be an excuse to violate freedom of speech.

The only form of activism appropriate for writers (when they are acting in the capacity of “writer” rather than, say, that of “citizen”) is witnessing, and it’s pretty much impossible to write anything of merit without witnessing. On that, it seems all these contributors agree.

Gordimer:

The extremity of human experience does not make a writer.

Updike:

To be sure, as a citizen, one votes, attends meetings, subscribes to liberal pieties, pays or withholds taxes, and contributes to charities . . . But as a writer, for me to attempt to expand my artistic scope into all the areas of my human concern, to substitute nobility of purpose for accuracy of execution, would certainly be to forfeit whatever social usefulness I do have.

Posted in Books, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
July 7, 2009

I’ve Been Reading: Don’t Get Too Comfortable

Attention, male writers: unless you particularly plan to alienate your readership, try not to cram a bunch of pointless derogatory comments about women into the first ten pages of your book, unless that’s really what you’re all about. I’ve noticed this with a number of books lately – I’ll get all alienated in the first chapter, and decide not to read the rest, and then keep going only to find the entire rest of the book totally devoid of casual misogyny. It’s so weird! I noticed this in Lost Cosmonaut, and now here in David Rakoff’s book of humorous essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable. In the first essay, “Love It or Leave It,” about applying for citizenship during the latter Bush administration, on page 2, we have:

After twenty-two years, it seemed a little bit coy to still be playing the Canadian card. I felt like the butt of the joke about the proper lady who, when asked if she would have sex with a strange man for a million dollars, allows that yes she would do it. But when asked if she would do the same thing for a can of Schlitz and a plastic sleeve of beer nuts, reels back with an affronted, ‘What do you think I am?’ to which the response is, ‘Madam, we have already established what you are. Now we’re just quibbling about the price.’

On page 7, Barbara Bush the Younger is described (to absolutely no point whatsoever) as “W’s liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter.” Particularly gratuitous, as Rakoff’s real beef is with Barbara, Sr. (page 8: “Stupid fucking cow.”).

Admittedly, on page 8, we do have a derogatory physical description of a man: “The hairy-knuckled, pinkie-ringed lawyer for a Vietnamese fellow behind me….” No mention of the man’s genitals, of course, or sexual appeal or lack thereof, but still, not exactly a flattering comment. But then on page 9, we’re back to women, describing a “Russian woman in her early forties” who has the misfortune to be standing on line nearby:

She wears painted-on acid-wash jeans, white stilettos, and a tight blouse of sheer leopard-print fabric. The sleeves are designed as a series of irregular tatters clinging to her arms, as if she’s just come from tearing the hide off the back of an actual leopard. A really slutty leopard.

It’s safe to assume that leopard was also female.

But here on page 9, we also have our first woman appear without being described physically, or with any tossed-off, irrelevant sexual slurs attached to her person. This is Agent Morales, who interviews Rakoff for citizenship. Then, by page 11, we’re on to Rakoff’s friend, Sarah (who, based on her introduction as “a self-described civics nerd,” I’m assuming is Sarah Vowell), and nobody describes their friends as pointless and/or distasteful vaginas, so we’re in the clear.

And that’s it, for the rest of the book’s 222 pages: no more offensive comments about women, at least not that reached out of the pages and slapped me, like these first ones. In fact, I really enjoyed the book after page 10. The essays were tart, well-written, observant and entertaining. Why the packed in slurs up front?

So, the moral here is: writers and editors (whether male, female, gay, straight or other): when you have your manuscript all ready for publishing, go through at least the first twenty pages or so, with an eye to how you describe or comment on any women mentioned, as contrasted with how you describe or comment on any men. If you note that every, single woman you bring up is described as a slut, a bitch, a stupid bimbo, a nag, or has been physically detailed for no specific reason (ugly, fat, wart-faced, saggy-boobed, clothes too tight, past her prime, sex on legs, etc.), and that every man is described in terms of his personality traits and actions, then think about whether or not you genuinely want half the population to toss you and your book right out at that point. Because not all readers are as patient as I am. A lot of women won’t make it to page 11. And I’d like to think some men wouldn’t either.

I really don’t direct the above rant particularly at David Rakoff. His is only the most recent book I’ve read to follow this off-putting pattern. But really, Don’t Get Too Comfortable is great otherwise. Rakoff is a sharp and articulate social satirist, and his targets aren’t the easy ones. If there is a unifying theme to these essays, I would say it is what we desire and what we buy, and why, and what we tell ourselves about it, with occasional diversions into the weird and often unpleasant things people like to do for fun. He has drawn a bead on class hypocrisy, and conspicuous consumption. He covers foodies, high fashion, fasting, plastic surgery, cryogenics and Puppetry of the Penis. He goes along on a Playboy shoot, attends a midnight scavenger hunt in Manhattan, forages for edible plants in Prospect Park and works as a pool boy at an upscale resort. He waits outside the Today Show, visits Martha Stewart’s crafts department, and shadows the director of the mystifying Log Cabin Republicans.

Fun stuff, all. With the above-mentioned caveat, I’d recommend it.

Posted in Books, Feminism, Rants, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , ,
July 6, 2009

I’ve Been Reading: The Disappointment Artist

The essays in Jonathan Lethem’s The Disappointment Artist are all very well written, and interesting, more or less. But yet, something about them bothered me, and I think I put my finger on it right around the time Lethem mentioned that when he was a kid in Brooklyn, he used to ride the subway every day to his performing arts school, with his friend and classmate, Lynn Nottage. Many of the essays in this book concern New York City, and life in New York City. The rest are meditations on books and movies.

Lethem was raised by a well-known painter. His mother died when he was 13. He lived in a commune for part of his upbringing. He spent his childhood surrounded by his parents’ Bohemian friends, and went to an arts high school in New York with a bunch of other students who have gone on to be known names. They were raised in an interesting place by interesting people, and taught from a young age that they were bound to be interesting themselves. In the same way as some people are raised in wealth, others are raised in art, and all these writers, playwrights, actors, etc. were to the manor born. There’s nothing wrong with Lethem’s writing or what he’s writing about, and it’s not like he’s never left New York – why, he went to Bennington, then lived in California! – but yet, I was bored by his well-written meditations on the various movies, writers and filmmakers that shaped him, as well as his experiences in a Brooklyn not sufficiently long gone to be so nostalgic about (Lethem was only about 40 when this essay collection was published).

You do not have to live an interesting life in order to be an interesting writer. Perhaps you have to live an interesting life to be an interesting personal essayist, however, or, barring that, at least be really funny. Certainly, you can write great fiction no matter how narrow and dull your circle, and Lethem has mostly been feted for his novels, none of which I’ve read, although I plan to at some point. Reading these essays, however, made me feel like I was sitting in a grad school MFA workshop listening to everyone read essays about being graduate MFA students, and reminiscing fondly about those long-ago days when they were but callow undergrads.

John Leonard in the New York Review of Books:

I’m glad to learn from The Disappointment Artist that Lethem’s father is more interesting than Dylan’s was; that his mother, unlike Dylan’s, didn’t abandon her boy out of narcissism; that Jonathan, unlike Dylan, has siblings. And I am sorry that none of us can fly, besides which we’re opaque. But it is time this gifted writer closed his comic books for good. Superpowers are not what magic realism was about in Bulgakov, Kobo Abe, Salman Rushdie, or the Latin American flying carpets. That Michael Chabon and Paul Auster have gone graphic, that one Jonathan, Lethem, writes on and on about John Ford, while another Jonathan, Franzen, writes on and on about “Peanuts,” even as Rick Moody confides to the Times Book Review that “comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is,” may just mean that the slick magazines with the scratch and sniff ads for vodka and opium are willing to pay a bundle for bombast about ephemera.

But all of it makes me itch. Welcome to New Dork! We have been airpopped and multimediated unto inanity and pastiche.

Posted in Books, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
June 7, 2009

I’ve Been Reading: The Last Novel

David Markson’s The Last Novel is a 200-some page book consisting entirely of factoids about various artists of all kinds and their failures, periods of stagnation, tragedies, thwartings, impoverishments, loneliness, setbacks and deaths. At the back of all this is a protagonist, a novelist who’s about done with writing, but he is only seen in relief, framed by the endless parade of trivia. Amazingly, the book is a roaring good read despite its total lack of story or overt presence of character or conflict. Or perhaps I just loved it, because reading about the failures of great and miserable geniuses is one of my keenest pleasures. Apparently, this book is the last in a trilogy, but I don’t feel I lost anything by starting with this one.

Posted in Books, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: ,
June 5, 2009

On Beckett

Perhaps we’ll all burst forth Samuel Becketts one day:

En attendant, Beckett writes self-­admittedly “pestilential” letters about waiting. In Dublin, he records the “fruitless retreat from Monday to Friday and then the degrading cotton wool interpolation of the weekend” and acknowledges that he’s “more than ever frightened by the prospect of effort, initiative & even the little self-assertion of getting about from one place to another.” In London, he sleeps “more and more — 10 hours at a stretch. I wish it were 20.” In Paris, he is “paralyzed in listlessness” and has “done nothing.”

Certainly describes my year.

Also this:

Laid upon this bare outline, in the course of the letters, is a palimpsest of all the other things that Beckett could have done, or sought to do, but never did. He put in for lectureships at Cape Town and Milan, though with little expectation, or even hope, of success. “Now that I have assembled testimonials,” he wrote of the South African plan, in 1937, “I am in a position to abstain from applying.”

Posted in Books, People, Theatre, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , ,
December 16, 2008

Further Excerpts From Susan Sontag’s Journals and Notebooks

Why do I stir my coffee counterclockwise? Is this more effective, or merely habit? Is it perhaps offensive + off-putting to others? Do not stir coffee counterclockwise, unless certain culture is tolerant of same.

–

Oh, how rapturously, tremendously, monumentally do I adore Gide! I want to wrap Gide around myself + go running through the streets! I want to wear Gide around as a hat! I want to lick every page of Gide, to absorb it through my pores, to drink it like water! I want to bathe myself in Gide. Which reminds me: bathe daily.

–

Was lying in bed telling H. how much I desired to possess her utterly. Not sure what she said in response, as I was busy contemplating how pretentious my use of word “utterly.” Do not use “utterly” in intimate confessions, as it sounds premeditated + insincere. At any rate, suppose H. did not feel same, as I am now writing this, rather than possessing her utterly. Wait, did she go home? …Shit.

–

Had baby.

–

Have discovered Kafka! Oh, bless! A thousand, shuddering, deep, rapturous cries of joy spring from my soul! How did I live + breathe + eat before I knew of this felicity? From now on, it’s all Kafka, all the time.

– 

Bathe every other day.

–

I do not feel X. with my son, as much as with H. Not at all X. with Philip. A little bit X. with our current congressional representative. X. with coworker Y. definitely, but only on Tuesdays. Not so much X. with anyone on the weekends…is this because of weekends, or because of X.?

–

It seems that a certain pore on my right cheek is slightly larger than those around it. Is this something that can be corrected without great trouble or expense? Look into it.

–

Today, created self, destroyed self, + created self again, as usual. Yesterday not so productive – did not create self so much as merely tinker with aspects of self. Philip walked in while tinkering with self. Embarrassed.

After reading the above, considered erasing. But then, reconsidered. I ought to be honest with myself, even (or especially?) in aspects of myself I would rather were not so. Don’t be embarrassed of revealing self in front of Philip, who, after all, loves me. And don’t be embarrassed of admitting (to self or [especially?] in print) own embarrassment about embarrassment, or, for that matter, of admitting embarrassment about embarrassment over own embarrassment.

Considered erasing above, as conclusion drawn seems to negate necessity of initial observation. Reconsidered. All is valid. Do not waste time on such circuitous contemplation in future.

–

Bathe, Susan. Bathe. Damn it, how hard is this to remember?!

Posted in Books, Humor, People, Writing | 3 Comments »

Tags: , , , , , ,
October 15, 2008

Elizabeth Barrett Loves Christian Bale

Hi everyone!  If you are not on my email list, you may be unaware that on Monday, October 27 at 9:30p.m., I’m performing a brief, funny one-woman show at Manhattan Theatre Source!  Here are the details – if you’re in the NYC area, come check it out!!

Elizabeth Barrett Loves Christian Bale

Written and performed by Elizabeth Urello

Directed by Joe Beuerlein

A scandalous love affair between a 19th-century teenage agoraphobic poet, and a 21st-century Hollywood film star…an affair conducted entirely through letters and ending in heartbreak…but whose? Elizabeth Barrett Loves Christian Bale will bring back memories of all the times you loved and lost, back before you were brave enough to leave your childhood bedroom.

Presented as part of Manhattan Theatre Source’s EstroGenius 2008 Festival, in the Sola Voce showcase of solo shows. One performance only — Monday, October 27th, 9:30 p.m. at Manhattan Theatre Source!

Click here to buy your tickets now!

Posted in Humor, New York City, Theatre, Writing | 5 Comments »

Tags: , , ,
September 8, 2008

The Primaries That Ate My Sense of Humor

Crap, I forgot to post all week again.  I keep intending to go back to posting regularly, and I keep not doing it, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on why.  Blogging just has not been as much fun for me lately.  Then, I read this post, and I realized that it perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling.

If you get too invested in things, there’s a point where ‘everyone’s stupid and I think it’s hilarious’ starts to become ‘everyone’s stupid and it MAKES ME FUCKING INSANE!!!!’  And I think I passed that point some time ago.  I keep drafting amusing little rants only to have them turn into vitriolic endless rants, and at some point during their composition, I leave off typing and begin circling my desk, flapping my hands around and shrieking to myself.

I grew up in the South, where nice people consider public displays of enthusiasm unseemly.  It’s understood that one has one’s political opinions, but to get yourself worked up about it is to show a level of involvement with life outside your immediate sphere that reflects poorly on your ability to manage your own affairs.  Likewise, while it’s expected that everyone be religious (in a general way), those who feel sufficiently possessed with the spirit as to go around talking about God all the time and wearing Jesus accessories are at best tacky, and possibly a little touched.  Nobody wants to be without money, but to admit of difficulties concerning it is to drop down a class level – money should simply flow, unseen and unremarked upon, into one’s coffers, as gently and steadily as rain from heaven.

All of this is to say that my blatant interest in this year’s primaries is making it difficult for me to maintain a cool, ironic detachment.  What’s needed is some perspective:

The two parties are, at heart, not very different from each other.  Neither will totally save us, or utterly damn us.  My complete lack of active (or financial) involvement in anything even remotely concerning politics (or other people, or life outside my apartment) makes any pretense of actual concern about the world in general or this country in particular hypocritical beyond all belief.  My own personal life will be unlikely to change in any significant way as a result of anything short of an apocalyptic disaster, or a profound personal attitude adjustment (which are both equally unlikely).  People are stupid, especially me, and it is hilarious.  Ten people read this blog on a good day.  I have many friends who are actually out there working real, positive changes in the world, rather than just sitting around bitching all the time.  And sometimes, it’s a blessing when the internet goes out.

To sum up:  Oh, wait, I forgot – I don’t care again!

Posted in Humor, Misanthropy, Politics, Rants, Writing | 6 Comments »

Tags: , , , , , ,
July 28, 2008

Sabbatical

Hello, lovelies. I feel utterly fried. And scrambled. And poached. This blog’s taking an impromptu vacation. See you back here a week from today.

Posted in Health, Writing | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , ,
June 3, 2008

The End of People, Movements, the World

Viennese artist Oscar Kokoschka had a doll made to resemble Alma Mahler (this is a letter to the doll’s maker):

“I was honestly shocked by your doll which, although I was long prepared for a certain distance from reality, contradicts what I demanded of it and hoped of you in too many ways! The outer shell is a polar-bear pelt, suitable for a shaggy imitation bedside rug rather than the soft and pliable skin of a woman. The result is that I cannot even dress the doll, which you knew was my intention, let alone array her in delicate and precious robes. Even attempting to pull on one stocking would be like asking a French dancing-master to waltz with a polar bear!”

(via Kottke)

Also, Jeremy Bentham’s corpse is an auto-icon:

As requested in his will, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet, termed his “Auto-icon”. . . . For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the Auto-icon was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where he was listed as “present but not voting”.[12] Tradition holds that if the council’s vote on any motion is tied, the auto-icon always breaks the tie by voting in favour of the motion.

Also, the creator of Pringles was just buried in a Pringles can.

–

George Packer on why it’s impossible for us to discuss Iraq intelligently:

Throughout the opinion classes, the impulse to keep a little part of the brain open to inconvenient facts seemed to have been extinguished. In magazine offices, bloggers’ bedrooms, Hollywood studios, and the White House, a fantasy war was underway, a demonstration of American virtue or a series of crimes against humanity-both of them self-serving fictions.

(via 3QD)

–

On those humorless Commies:

Humour offered the early communists the same philosophical conundrums that every other area of culture offered: what belonged to yesterday and what to tomorrow? Many argued that humour could be used to ridicule the old bourgeois habits that persisted … But, said others, given that the Soviets were creating a perfect world, there would soon be nothing left to laugh at in Russian politics or society …

(via 3QD)

–

Ian McEwan on why it’s probably not a good idea to romanticize the end of the world:

The apocalyptic mind can be demonising – that is to say, there are other groups, other faiths, that it despises for worshipping false gods, and these believers of course will not be saved from the fires of hell. And the apocalyptic mind tends to be totalitarian – which is to say that these are intact, all-encompassing ideas founded in longing and supernatural belief, immune to evidence or its lack, and well-protected against the implications of fresh data. Consequently, moments of unintentional pathos, even comedy, arise – and perhaps something in our nature is revealed – as the future is constantly having to be rewritten, new anti-Christs, new Beasts, new Babylons, new Whores located, and the old appointments with doom and redemption quickly replaced by the next.

(via A&LD)

–

Haruki Murakami likes to run:

Sometimes I find it too hot to run, and sometimes too cold. Or too cloudy. But I still go running. I know that if I didn’t go running, I wouldn’t go the next day either. It’s not in human nature to take unnecessary burdens upon oneself, so one’s body soon becomes disaccustomed. It mustn’t do that. It’s the same with writing. I write every day so that my mind doesn’t become disaccustomed. So that I can gradually set the literary yardstick higher and higher, just as running regularly makes your muscles stronger and stronger.

. . . Working artistically is unhealthy; an artist should lead a healthy life to make up for it.

(via The Book Bench)

Posted in Art, Books, Health, Humor, People, Politics, Writing | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
June 1, 2008

Published Again!

Just a quick post to say that “People I Am Sick Of Hearing About,” originally posted on this blog awhile back, is published in the new issue of Ducts.org.  Check it out!

Posted in Humor, Rants, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , ,
May 29, 2008

Birth, Death, Oppression

Newly discovered fossil shows live birth and egg-laying evolved together:

Dubbed “mother fish” by the scientists who discovered her in northwestern Australia, Materpiscis attenboroughi is not only an entirely new genus and species, but pushes back the first known case of live birth in the animal kingdom by some 200 million years.

(via tmn)

–

Photos of well-known prisons and other high-security buildings:

To question the pervasiveness of intimidating, “disgusting” architecture, the images in Ross’ book are both striking and inviting. Ross intentionally makes the photos of oppressive structures look seductive. “You can convince people a lot easier by whispering in their ear rather than hitting them over the head,” says Ross.

On a lighter note, a photo of a light fixture made of cereal. And fake libraries, for those who have no time to assemble picturesque collections of books.

–

On women:

In Iraq:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

Among the Roma:

[A girl's] value, as a virgin, is ascertained not by the young groom on the wedding night but, according to archaic folk custom, by the probing finger of a tribal crone: Eberstadt’s partially renegade Gypsy friend Linda explains, “For Gypsies, it’s a nasty old woman who is paid to penetrate the girl, like a gynecologist but with dirty hands, in front of all the husband’s family. It’s terrifying, it’s inhuman.” Landric sums up: “People talk about preserving Gypsy culture. But what am I as an educator supposed to do when the comportment of my students is frankly pathological?”

And again, back to the U.S. political situation, Feministing responds to the study saying we don’t have more women political leaders because women aren’t that ambitious (and does such a great job of it that I’m going to quote nearly all of it):

Most of these things, in my mind, just go back to the fact that we have a fundamentally unfeminist society. Women are saddled with more family obligations, and we have a government that has been unwilling to step in and lighten the load. Girls are bombarded with the message, from a young age, that they should aspire to be pretty, not powerful. (Or that pretty is powerful.) So is it any wonder that grown women doubt their qualifications? Also, saying that women are less likely than men to “be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign” fails to note that, compared to white men, the campaign trail is a helluva lot more rigorous for women. No wonder they’re less likely than men to “perceive a fair political environment.”

But to me, none of that speaks to ambition. Within the social constraints that are placed on women by a sexist society, how can you expect them to sign up for elections in droves? The two parties are basically boys’ clubs, the media is completely misogynist, there is virtually no government support for working mothers, and women get the message from a very young age that they have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to expect half as much. It’s hard to separate out all this junk and figure out how many women really do harbor higher career ambitions. And how many said they don’t because of these very unfeminist realities about our society. “Women may now think about running for office, but they probably think about it while they are making the bed,” as Beloit College political scientist Georgia Duerst-Lahti put it. For example, would it really be fair to call a single mom with three kids and two jobs “not ambitious” because she doesn’t realistically think she can run for political office?  Please.

These are big-picture problems — ones that feminists are working to solve, of course — but huge and pervasive problems nevertheless. Do these things keep women out of politics? Undoubtedly. But are they a problem of ambition? No. I’d wager a guess that if you reform the media, create better support systems for working mothers, and if the two parties actually made an effort to recruit women candidates, we’d see a huge spike in “ambition.”

Until that grand day, of course, we need a backup plan. So I refer you to the She Should Run campaign, which encourages people to push women to run for office, even in this imperfect world. The good news is when you actually ask women to run, they say yes at rates similar to men. I guess they suddenly discover they had ambitions, after all.

–

This man is living my exact same life (except he’s doing it successfully):

Of working in the theatre, he said: “It gets you out of the house, and then you start to hate the people. And then you can go back and sit in a room and write.” . . .Kureishi also said that when he goes to his desk each morning to commence writing, he thinks to himself: “Why am I doing this? Shall I commit suicide?”

I wonder if he’s single…

Also, Umberto Eco is awesome.

Posted in Books, Feminism, People, Politics, Science, Theatre, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , ,
May 23, 2008

I Have What the People Want

Whatever happened to that scandalous military analysts story that broke in the NY Times, and then utterly disappeared from the dialogue?

[It's] made the standard transition from “we don’t illegally manipulate the news” to “of course we did that, why are you still making a fuss about this old story”.

Also MIA: conservatives’ support for states’ rights:

Since the conservative ascendancy in Washington, many of these same people have stopped praising states’ rights and have begun burying them – not to protect citizens’ rights, but to take them away. The Bush administration and its Congressional allies have helped their friends in industry by enacting weak environmental, health and consumer regulations – and arguing that they wipe out more robust state protections.

–

The Christian dating site, Bigchurch.com, is owned by Penthouse:

It’s not like BigChurch isn’t about sex. It’s just more subtle than a site that’s explicitly aimed at swingers. BigChurch’s function is to connect people whose concepts of sex are tied so closely to faith and doctrine that it can be difficult to meet potential partners in more traditional settings.

–

There’s racism in Japan, and there’s also a parrot who, when lost, can tell you where he lives.

–

I am always looking for ways to get by with less sleep (ideally, I need about 14 hours per night to function properly). I also periodically have problems with insomnia, so I’m always on the lookout for causes: apparently, obese people are short sleepers. Wouldn’t you think it’d be the other way around?

What if all the “sleep hygiene” recommendations mean diddly-squat when the prime reason for one’s poor sleep is simply too much weight?

But then, on the other hand, I usually don’t eat enough, and will often wake up from sheer hunger at 2 or 3 a.m. and have to get out of bed and eat something, just so I can go back to sleep until a decent hour. So, you can’t win.

–

Is the Internet ruining humor?

Because the Internet lets normal people make as much noise as funny and original people, the lame humor that usually dead-ends in offices instead spreads like crazy.

The net doesn’t kill humor. People kill humor. (Incidentally, for the very best in original online humor content, click this link!!) [And, while I'm at it, do you agree with Jessa Crispin that "more misanthropes should write travel literature?" If so, then click this link!!]

Also funny:

The Wit and Humor of Immanuel Kant

…and others of the world’s shortest philosophy books.

(via The Morning News)

Posted in Books, Dating, Health, Humor, Misanthropy, People, Politics, Travel, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , ,
« Older Entries  |  
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 41 other followers