I found this on Shana‘s site and while I’m not normally a fan of memes, this is a bookish one, and I’m a fan of bookish things. See also, title of post. Diet! Coke! 6PM! Bad!
As Shana said, there are some glaring omissions on this list but it’s an interesting exercise so if you lift it from here, leave me a link. I’d love to see yours.
Read on, bookworms.
Archives for the month of: February, 2007
Let me make something very clear before I delve into this post. I don’t really mind when people mis-speak, or mis-pronounce, their words. In fact, I don’t even mind typos. Typos are like falling down on the ice. They’re completely unintentional, there’s usually very little you can do to stop them from happening, and sometimes they’re hilarious. Try replacing “friend” with “fiend” in almost any context and the result is usually much more fun.
Furthermore, let me make clear that there are words that I mispronounce all the time. I went through a brief but humiliating period of being totally incapable of saying “exorbitant”, because my tongue would get confused with “extortionate” on delivery and produce some sort of weird hybrid called “extorbitant”. I’ve got a cream for that.
There was a whole class period in college where I was unable to express my opinion because I had no idea how to pronounce “hegemony”. And “hierarchical” has baffled me more than once in a pinch.
No, this particular garbage stuck in my craw is of the written variety. If you’ll permit me to put on the snobhat I keep at close quarters at all times, I cannot stand written mis-use of the English language. Let me indignantly present three examples.
1. “The Most Addicting Show On Television!”
No. NO NO NO. We have a word. Someone, somewhere, grappling with language in the darkest depths of, let’s say, the Middle Ages or maybe the 1960′s, came up with a perfectly suitable word. A perfectly lovely little adjective. ADDICTIVE. That little adjective, it jumped into the world ready to be used to describe the state of something to which one gets addicted! Like drugs! Or 24! Or your mother! I am ADDICTED to drugs. Drugs, they are ADDICTIVE. It’s almost too easy.
When I ask my Oxford American Dictionary for “addicting”, it reaches out from the computer and smacks me roundly about the face. Do you know WHY? Because the word doesn’t exist, that’s why. Don’t let your dictionary smack you in the face, People Who Create Graphic Splashes For Popular TV Shows. It’s never a good sign. Unless it’s a sign of the impending linguistic apocalypse.
2. [at the end of a letter] “Respectively, ________”
Respective to what? The other people who didn’t write the letter? I, so-and-so, and this other person who is not mentioned, RESPECTIVELY sign this letter. No. NO! It is not RESPECTFUL to mangle the English language in an attempt to sound pompous or professional. You sound neither. RESPECTFULLY! Krissa.
This little demon is particularly insidious because falling into the wrong hands, it’s almost viral. It’s close enough to the truth of the word that your eyes pick it up and deem it acceptable and people, it is so not acceptable to not use the correct word when the correct word is so ubiquitously simple! Respectfully – full of respect! Respectively – in the order already mentioned!
Stop! Think! Tylenol Then Write! Is my new motto.
3. “…waiting on baited breath”
Let me get this straight. Your breath, you attached some sort of worm, or shiny dangling object, to the end of it, in an attempt to lure fish or lousy politicians? How can one have baited breath?
And moreover, how can one wait ON it? Is your breath, with its shiny dangling object, some sort of magic carpet that you are RESPECTIVELY sitting on, waiting for something to come along?
No. NO! I will not tolerate this. Your breath, it isn’t baited. You are not respectively signing a letter. And that television show is not ADDICTING.
And lord, help us, these are just three that come to mind. There are so many, many more. By people who should know better when they’re creating something for publication. Did some very specific plague come along and kill all the proofreaders? Did all the dictionaries in the entire world suddenly and fantastically combust, leaving us all helpless in the gaping, snarling maw of terrible grammar and atrocious word usage?
Please feel free to leave your outrages and indignances in the comment box for me to RESPECTIVELY stew over. And you! Kids! Gettoffa my lawn.
To Whom It May Concern:
Although I was originally not a supporter of Krissa’s doctrine of eating kittens for breakfast, I now heartily endorse her and all attendant eating habits to your organization. Kittens are a leftist conspiracy plague that threatens our great nation.
Krissa does not own any pets.
When you first meet Krissa, the third arm protruding from her chest might take you aback, but please keep in mind that it’s the very third arm which will help you carry your groceries, because that’s the kind of freak she is.
Krissa is strong and helpful.
I would like to take this opportunity to praise Krissa for the steps she’s taken in curing her habit of throwing pots and pans at the heads of passersby. This might seem like a hindrance, but Krissa has turned it into a campaign for justice. She now ONLY throws pots and pans at those individuals she deems subversive to society.
Krissa cares about her community.
Although Krissa voted Democrat in this past election, please be assured of her strong moral fibre, family values, and staying-the-coursedness. Her projected vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008 is expected to be reversed after many hours of re-education therapy paid for and supported by her dad.
Krissa votes will vote Republican.
Sincerely,
T.C.T.H.E.K.I.A.W.
(The Committee To Heartily Endorse Krissa In All Ways)
* completely fabricated and in all other ways bears no reality to any current or future referral letters.
Far be it from me to aspire to the heights of early-twenties apathy by posting song lyrics that, you know, resonate, but I’ve recently gotten into Regina Spektor and every time I hear “On the Radio”, from her new album, I get a twinge of recognition for some damn fine writing. Particularly this bit:
This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath
No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again.
I heartily endorse listening to this when you’re feeling just the smidgenest bit down about your reserves of Courage and Truth and other good things in capitals.
A week ago or so, I had my monthly full-scale panic attack about my life. It started because, since I’m trying to decide if I want to keep doing what I’m doing, I started looking around on the internet for what other ways I might bring in money while I write. It culminated in me crying a lot and wailing about, you know, LIFE. Stuart and I talked it through, like we always do, but the next day he sent me an email that I’ve been returning to since then. In the intervening week, there’s been some bad news (taxes! OMG!) and some good news (new job possibilities! OMG!) but through a lot of my waking hours, the things Stuart said have stuck by me like some invisible shield of faith and goodwill. Which, really, is the best thing ever (BTE).
So I’m sharing the email here, in its entirety. If it was so revelatory and useful to me, consider this a public service announcement to anyone else who’s trying to wrap a functioning model of life around an artistic goal. Most of the time, I blog here because something I say might have an impact on something you’re doing. This is, for the same reason, well worth reading. You reflective, ambitious types, click on.
Today, Stuart and I had to dig my car out of snow.
Correction: Today, Stuart and I had to dig my parents’ car out of snow.
Update to the correction: Today, Stuart and I had to dig my parents’ rear-wheel-drive Toyota 4Runner (see how nifty that is? NOT actually four wheel drive) out of snow.
Addendum to the update of the correction: Today, Stuart and I had to dig my parents’ rear-wheel-drive Toyota 4Runner out of snow that had been PACKED INTO SOLID ICE OVERNIGHT.
FINAL ADJUSTMENT to the addendum to the update of the correction: Today, Stuart and I were much aided by our neighbor GEORGE who helped us dig my parents’ rear-wheel-drive Toyota 4Runner out of the snow that had been packed into solid ice overnight, and George mostly helped by LAYING SHOULDER TO THE CAR WITH STUART AND PUSHING.
That’s right. Two tons of screaming metal actually requires humanpower, not horsepower, to get out of a fortified rampart of ice-packed snow. But you never see that in the Chevy commercials, oh no. Not built FORD TOUGH, is it, if it needs a few hundred pounds of man behind it, shoving for Britain.
Two lessons I learned today:
Always pay it forward, as we did with Carl this evening who was struggling to get his Saturn over Mount Vesuvius. And yes, Neighbors Who Just Looked Out the Window At Us Like Chumps, we DID open your driveway gates and use the slope for leverage, JERKS.
Secondly, even though you take the subway and spit-polish your sense of superiority for not being a car owner and you know we all do, New Yorkers, never ever laugh at those mounds of expensive mechanical machinery under two feet of snow. THOSE PEOPLE MIGHT BE YOU ONE DAY.
Thus endeth the lesson.
I’m not really for or against Valentine’s Day (although I am FIRMLY against heart-shaped food products). I’m probably closer to the pro camp, maybe because flowers are pretty and love is nice, I mean, come on. So are puppies. Flowers, love, and puppies = bonus. But it’s a little more complicated than that, isn’t it.
I suppose the word is ambivalent. I am of two minds, conflicted, with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve had some pretty miserable days in mid-February, when things were miserable anyway, and this one red-soaked day just exacerbated things. But usually on those days, I was making an effort – either with friends or potential lovers – and the effort went unnoticed or backfired. So, really, I was trying and it didn’t work. When you try stuff and it doesn’t work, that pretty much sucks the other 364 days of the year, too.
And, of course, I love Stuart and I tell him that every day, so other than making a heart with his pajama pants on the pillow last night (which I did), there’s no need for a pre-determined day to spend money on crappy chocolate. Again, see also: 364 other days.
I also don’t balk or rage at the Hallmark-ness of it all, mostly because I hate sounding like a boring cliche, but also because who can blame Hallmark? Every company that stands to make money off of holidays should do so, or fire their C.E.O. Are we really expecting that any decent restaurant, florist, or candy-maker should sit down its employees and discuss how this year, instead of lining their wallets as is their fiscal responsibility, they’re gonna take a STAND, man? Please. I choo-choo-choose a free-market economy, you know. I don’t begrudge those companies or hold them responsible for any and all present or past misery I might endure at having been single. It’s not ACTUALLY Hallmark’s fault that this one guy I liked one year invited me out and then sucked face with his ex in front of me. It’s not MY fault, either. It was his.
And while I’m sounding like a grumpy old man (kids! gettoffa my lawn!) I don’t like hypocrisy, either. I know people who’ve always hated Valentine’s Day, whether single or coupled, because they think it’s ______ (fill in your criticism here). Hey, I respect that. I also know people who always love it, think it’s a great idea to spread some love, whether they’re happily paired off or whether they’re hoping to have a hot moment with some stranger at a bar, or whether they just like the opportunity to send flowers to their best friend. I salute and respect both camps of people. Love it! Hate it! Just be consistent. I knew a guy that made a huge fuss one year of wearing black and drinking himself under the table, raging against this bullshit manufactured holiday, because a girl had just dumped him – a girl who, the year before, he’d wined and dined until they both happily drowned in honey or something. Please, dude. Your hypocrite is showing.
So, basically, this is where I stand: Eh! It’s a cute idea, it gets a little overplayed, and people definitely put themselves under too much pressure to enjoy or disown the whole day. I guess you could say I have the luxury of this point of view since I’m married, but I was more gushy about the whole concept when I was single. Now, Sundays are more romantic. Apartment-hunting is more romantic. Seeing him do the dishes is a pure aphrodisiac. My marriage, generally, is more romantic than flowers and chocolates. Which is pretty much as it should be. One day is never going to change your life for better or worse, so why would this one? So, I repeat: Eh! with a dash of pro because I don’t like the view from Bittertown.
And all told, I’ve caved to the standard interpretation of romance and either gone out to dinner or whipped up something decadent, but this year, we’re changing it up. Because while it’s definitely tempting to use the occasion to spend some dosh on dinner, Tim Hayward has now talked me out of it. He might talk you out of it, too. He’s convincing like that.
Good thing we’re going bowling, instead. It appeals to both my contrarian nature AND my willingness to use any excuse to have some fun. Because what says ROMANCE like soggy french fries, cheap beer, and ugly shoes?
Maybe a wheelbarrow of diamonds, actually.
I updated my book list on Wednesday only to discover that I’d read something like six books in the past week. I hold Scott Westerfeld and his wife, Justine Larbalestier, responsible for this, since I just got my hungry eyes on their latest books and read all four of them in a day or less each.
So although I don’t usually review books here, let me just run these past you.
Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld: Okay, it’s a book about vampirism as a parasite, set in New York City. Really? It doesn’t get more awesome. I’m a huge fan of Westerfeld’s from his Uglies trilogy and the cracklingly-great standalone, So Yesterday, and Peeps in no way disappoints.
Last Days, the sequel to Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld: I hate to admit, I didn’t love it QUITE as much as the first, but it’s an awesomely original take on the apocalypse as seen from the eyes of five teenagers starting a band on the brink of, well, the apocalypse. As with all his books, Westerfeld plays with slang and viral language and is remarkably good at it, especially in a book already about the cool kids in the band.
Magic or Madness and Magic Lessons, by Justine Larbalestier: Another fantasy trilogy (the end books comes out this year) that’s stunned me with its rich backstory and original details. Reason Cansino steps out from a back door in Sydney onto a cold street in New York, magical chaos ensues. Justine is every bit as talented as Scott but in a totally different way. She’s more emotional, less snappy, but equally powerful. My only complaint was that her fight scenes weren’t quite as crystal clear as they could have been but it’s a criticism made with the full understanding of how damned HARD it is to write fight scenes (and that Scott does it almost too well).
Russian Debutante’s Handbook, by Gary Shteyngart: Only though endless gothamist listings posts have I figured out how to spell his name (seriously, he does readings EVERYWHERE), but I only got around to this debut novel now. It’s good – and has improved by my favorable comparison to elements of The Corrections which I was never crazy about – and for a theoretically simple story of American assimilation, it goes some fun places, structurally. Like a city named Prava which is, in all other respects, Prague. Why the faking of Prague, Gary? I don’t know. But I enjoyed it – and like my friend Lavina pointed out, BEST AUTHOR PHOTO EVER. You will just have to go see for yourself.
The Promised Land, by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice: Now, I absolutely ADORE Connie Willis. In fact, thanks to the joint efforts of Biscuit and Shana, Connie Willis is the reason I’m finally venturing into reading science fiction. This book was, well, it’s a sci-fi frontier romance. I mean, within those narrow confines, it was great, and I admit that I finished it in a day. And, actually, it’s got fire monkeys in it. Monkeys! That set stuff on FIRE! Really, you can’t go wrong with fire monkeys. But I didn’t love it nearly as much as Willis’ solo ventures, namely The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (best title ever, btw). But I enjoyed it. Plus also, FIRE MONKEYS! Srsly.
Wow! That was fun. So there you have it. Six books I’ve read recently, and some very off-the-cuff reviews of them. Go forth and read, people of the internet.
* this post about the orgy of reading is dedicated to my awesome father on his birthday, who’s read more books than god, and changed my life by introducing me to the awesome John Le Carre. Hippo Birdie, dad.
I know there are a million reasons to love New York, viz.:
1. Street hot dogs
2. The way five different people will answer a tourist’s transit question on the subway with five different ways of getting there and twelve different restaurants to try when you get there [note: I am one of these five people always, what is it about me that makes tourists ask me questions? I don't MIND, I mean, but I'm just wondering.]
3. the pizza
4. The gays
and
5. my local supermarket stocks every available part of the chicken plus also brown iguana soup
… but I may just have heard reason million-and-one. Our newly-minted governor was obviously having a difficult time getting his demands across to someone, so he told them, “I am a fucking steamroller and I’ll roll over you and anybody else.”
I am a fucking steamroller! Our governor described himself as a STEAMROLLER! A fucking one! It’s just so many shades of awesome, it might actually beat that time that Tom Cruise was praising J.J. Abrams and exclaimed, “two J’s!” as if it was any sort of indication of his awesomeness that he had two of the same letter as a first name.
This is way better than that.
I mean, could that get any more awesome? It really, really could not. How proud am I that I voted for that guy? SO PROUD.
I’m a reasonably happy person. In fact, I’m sure there are people out there that think I’m ridiculously happy, almost drugged with satisfaction, and usually these people wear much more eyeliner than I do.
And from my saccharine-soaked platform of jubilance, I rarely get really angry. I mean, I experience negative emotions. I get upset about being ten minutes late to a movie, I get frantic with worry about the tiniest things, I get practically frenzied about What The Fuck I’m Going To Do With My Life, and I get annoyed when there is too much cutlery stuffed into the drying rack.
But look elsewhere for sugar right now. I am a woman and I am angry. For almost two weeks, I’ve been trying to temper my stifling rage at the Melissa Summers/Today Show situation. A promient and witty female blogger goes onto national television, no, is invited onto a national morning show to talk about her moderate and sensible point of view that women, as mothers, shouldn’t feel badly or castigate themselves for having a glass of wine during a playdate with their children and other mothers. Summers is articulate, temperate, and RIGHT.
And she’s basically set up by the Today Show to be labeled as the opposite of “healthy”. She’s not sitting up there having a rational discussion about what it means to have a moderate glass of wine. She’s part of a segment where three other women, having one glass of wine at their playdate, are filmed through the glassy alcoholic necks of wine bottles, where they show the same wine-pouring shot three times. She’s ambushed with idiotic questions and not allowed to say what she means. She’s set against a robotic talking-head psychologist that doesn’t answer either of her points, and she’s confronted by Meredith Viera who basically equates her capable full-time mothering to a babysitter.
Not a single element of this entire charade is about men. We are not watching men having a beer while their kids play in the yard. We are not talking about the pressures of fatherhood. We are not even talking about whether a husband and wife can relax with a drink whilst watching their children.
THIS IS ALL ABOUT WOMEN, and only women are subjected to this ridiculous debate.
Because they are WOMEN.
I cannot stress enough the way my throat closes over when I think this through. My brain gets very messy, and very loud. I can only equate it to a room full of filing cabinets, half of them flying violently open by an unseen hand, papers and folders and documents all being flung into a snowstorm of information by some Carrie-like wrathful angel of feminism.
File folders marked with angry red letters about the glass ceiling for motherhood in the corporate world, about the inherently unfair standards dropped on the shoulders of working mothers. Post-its that ask, if there was an equally body-specific and private decision like abortion available to men, would there even been a national platform for outrage over their choice to do it? Whole cabinets full of pissed-off notes about being objectified, being forced to swallow lies about what Men Want and What Gets Them To Marry You. An entire drawer on the issue of weight and curves and aging and sexiness.
I am angry that segments about women like the Today Show segment even exist, because they are not complex and thoughtful evaluations of modern motherhood, they are idiotic and prejudiced stones of judgement that are all too easy to hurl at this society’s favorite punching bag. It’s like some horrific national itch that no one will collectively face and eradicate because it’s too fucking enjoyable to drag it out into the harsh light of day and watch it scab over again.
The anger is like a blowdryer dropped into a series of interconnecting estuaries and canals – pretty much the whole body of water is vibrating with electric current. I want to scream, I want to rail, because I am so tired of the millions of subtle little papercuts that women are still enduring. How inequal can we possibly stay whilst having all the shallow pinnings of equality? What will change people’s MINDS?
I am not an angry person. But I am angry because all this means that we still suffer under a Madonna/Whore complex in every aspect of our public AND OUR PRIVATE LIVES. Women cannot have a glass of wine when their children are in the house, but men can have a beer at a barbeque? Are women less capable? Is that it? Or is this because only the mothers are really expected to be responsible for their children where fathers are expected play a secondary support role? Men are still, what, the point person for hunting and gathering, so the role of motherhood is the only thing women should be capable of doing? Motherhood, a beautiful and powerful force, is used as a confining straitjacket by people who still want women to do it to the exclusion of anything else?
Aren’t we tired of cavepeople, of Venus and Mars, of Ozzie and Harriet?
Are we women, or are we solitary martyrs? Are we people, entitled to all the tiny triumphs and flaws and choices and mistakes, or are we templates and objects and standards and platforms? Are women allowed to be human, or must we constantly be either angel or demon?
I am angry about this. I am sick of this. I am sick of women being type-cast, stereotyped, generalized, judged, and ultimately penned in to societal expectations and mass castigation when they act out of form. Summers made a joke about sometimes rolling her eyes when her kids cry. This doesn’t make her a bad mother. It makes her a normal human being.
I am sick of women judging each other, like directors that gladly named names at the McCarthy hearings only to get the heat off themselves. I am sick of the Mommy Wars and the glass ceilings and the choice/life battle and all the little injustices that men don’t ever have to squeeze their eyes shut to avoid, just to have a day free of anger.
I want to see women turning this judgemental unfairness and inequality away at the doorstep, never allowing into their lives, and getting angry together at the slights and slanders against us. I want to see one giant feminist Care Bear Stare of rejection for these norms, these wicked compartmentalizations, these absurd expectations and inevitable failures of being a woman.
I am going to leave the burner on for this. I am going to stay just angry enough to keep the blood pumping and the adrenaline-fueled awareness on high. I suggest you do, too.
