'Tis True, 'Tis True 'Tis Pity, And Pity 'Tis 'Tis True

Ways I Could Have Gotten Rich, No. 137

My friend's daughter had this book lying around.

And so I've realized how badly I missed out on a book deal. Throughout high school, we went through several notebooks just like that. I even think one girl's yearbook quote was "where's the notebook?" And that's apart from the notes... the bookcovers... the locker murals....

I hope at least some of it still exists somewhere, because I'm sure they're priceless. "Priceless" in the sense of "funny", I would've thought. (I believe one of my bookcover masterpieces was briefly framed, but that was about all the acclaim it got.) But now, I see that even teenage navel-gazing has its price.

And I wrote that stuff for free. Sucker.

Updated to add: it makes me very happy to hear that the framed bookcover still exists.

Social Media Friday: Bits and Bobs

I really have to clean up my post tags. I’m not looking forward to it. Sigh.

. . .

So after over a year trying, I may finally be figuring out the point of Twitter. Sometimes, yeah, (like this morning) it’s trying to get songs stuck in people’s heads. Sharing links or catching up or being silly. But sometimes you do see the implications of the ability to share quick information broadly, instantly, wherever. Wednesday a USAir passenger claimed he had a bomb - and a passenger Twittered it. How will this change what we call breaking news? It's going to be wild to see how wide-ranging the implications will be.

. . .

As companies slowly wrap their brains (and budgets) around social media, it’s interesting to see the acknowledgment of effort. Honestly trying gets appreciated, while being disingenuous gets called out. The J&J Camp Baby debacle – scheduling a mommyblogger gathering concurrent to BlogHer, and then not making accommodations for kids – has gotten plenty of scorn, but seems to have been understood as mostly a mistake borne of ignorance and awkwardness in an honest effort. Unlike, for instance, the fake WalMart/Edelman blog, which in my opinion was worse. I think the problem is laziness - when you try to use old-media tactics, it's going to be painfully obvious. Think like people, not like companies... and go from there.

. . .

Brian Solis talks about how social media are evolving to distribute conversations. So news might start with a blog post, that gets commented on, that gets Twittered about, that gets other blogs linking to it, which get commented on… etc. Yes, obviously. The point? Well, for starters, I realize that media reports are going to be rapidly more useless. Unless and until the semantic web makes terms more cross-platform searchable. And, of course, I realize this while writing… a media report. Oooh, the irony, she is palpable.

. . .

Finally, I wonder, is it greedy to want rather desparately to see Patrick Stewart on stage yet again when I’ve already seen him in The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, The Tempest and King Lear? It is, isn't it? Hm. Well. I guess you can just call me greedy.

. . .

By the way, Maria, go read Embers.

Out-of-Body Experiences... Also, a Book Review

Like last week, I'm going to try to describe something that doesn't need describing if you understand it - and probably can't be described if you don't.

I've been reading for pretty much 27 years straight. I guess that's probably more than I've done anything else in my life except breathe and sleep.

Sometimes it's just a pastime. I flip. I'll read magazines back to front. I peruse. I'll read a few chapters till I get sleepy. Like that.

But every now and then it's not like that. It's a drug or a love or an obsession. Or maybe it's just getting stuck. I get locked in and I don't want to do anything else - or really, I can't do anything else. I don't hear what's going on, and I don't get sleepy, and I don't realize that I'm moving my eyes or that I'm turning pages or even that I'm there in any bodily sense.

Rarely, I'll I smile. More rarely, get excited. Rarest of all, get teary. Mostly I suppose I don't do anything at all. I have no idea. I sort of forget I'm there.

And then when it's over and I have to come out of it, I'm not quite right. I walk around sort of dazed. Everything is too much and I don't want to be around anybody. It's all too loud and too strong. I guess it probably feels like a hangover.

It's like coming home from a trip where you did a lot, but not much happened while you were gone. The sameness of everything is too jarring and you just want to get back because you're not ready to be here again yet.

Maria told me I'd love The Time Traveler's Wife and I doubted her because I am snobby and elitist and skeptical of Book Club Books and Airport Bookstore Books. But she was so right and it was perfect and I can't wait to read it again. And of course she was right because she's got perfect taste and she's known me for almost 20 years. But she was extra special right this time.

Shopping List: Books

So I can maybe be a little choosy. Also maybe a little indecisive. Also maybe a little clutter-phobic.

Hush, you. I hear your derisive snorting. So maybe it might not be maybe, and maybe it might be a little more than a little. Whatever.

The point is, I don't usually buy a book till I know I like it. Same with music or movies. I only want ones I'm going to want to keep around. So to make the list, it's already passed a few tests. Here's what's there at present.

Atonement. I haven't read it, but I did love the movie, and I've heard the book is better.

Status Anxiety. I loved Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel, found this when I went looking for How Proust Can Change Your Life, and it's completely fascinating.

The Art of War and The Prince. Surreptitiously borrowed from my brother. (Matt, I'll totally mail them back to you, I swear.) Now I want my own copies.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Karen made me take this, and she was right - I adored it.

I'm always looking for new ideas. What's on your list?

Weekly Roundup: Like, Love, and Everything In Between

Some real links for you this week, because it's been a long time and I'm feeling some Catholic guilt over it all.

• Stuffed animals turned inside out. Some say they're creepy, or sad. But I thought they were surprisingly, endearingly, somehow defiantly, still loveable. (via zefrank)
  
• Amazing, peacefully dreamy, cut-paper animation. (via zefrank)
  
• THIS is the purpose of Twitter: stalking Snoop. (via Peter)
  
• Aw, poor guy. (via popbitch)
  
• A tip, or at least a small epiphany: when you get do-gooder-daydreamy, but the haircut video on Locks of Love gives you actual shivers... you are not ready. (Anyway: ...hmm.)
• Stuff White People Like. Pretty self-explanatory, very zeitgeist-funny, but still worth a smirk or two. (via Pamie)
• Dear Catastrophe Waitress, which I just finished, has me completely, head-over-heels in love. (via Karen)
  

Happy Banned Books Week

People who ban books are right up there with Michael Vick and Paris Hilton on my list. Possibly completely evil, definitely at least vacuous and troublesome.

So go enjoy being free and go read one. Go read a few, actually. Armfuls.

Out of the top 100, I've read maybe a quarter.

(I must digress to ask... who on earth would ban Where's Waldo? [Unless you are sick of bratty 13-year-old Latin students riffing on your resemblance? ...Three people will get that. Sorry.] Anyway.)

Some I read for school; thank goodness I didn't have to fight bans to get them. Please, we read Madonna's Sex in an undergrad comm classes; it wasn't even the stuff I had to read in Human Sexuality. (...You don't even want to know.)

I didn't like some of them. Lord of the Flies creeped me out something fierce. I was way too young for Catcher in the Rye when I read it. Goosebumps were kind of crap, if I remember. But I got to choose them and read them and decide for my own self what I thought.

And some of them are some of my very favorite books ever.

You don't love to read unless you love the stories that you're reading, and you don't love the stories that you're reading unless you're interested. Forgot where you were, forgot what time it was, didn't hear people talking to you, didn't notice the sun going down around you kind of interested. Anastasia; Tom and Huck; Harry; Jesse and Leslie; Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace - totally sucked in to their lives and what they're going through and there with them.

Ban that? Why learn to read in the first place?

Bits and Pieces

So sometimes, I write something down fast and save it as a draft blog so I won't forget it. And then I'll pick it up again later and write something totally scintillating and hysterical and incisive.

Right? Well. Sometimes. Or, I'll realize I have rather a lot of those lying around and I should probably start fresh.

So, in a fit of housecleaning, here they all are. Some of them are probably years old. It's pretty embarrassing, and I come off looking like a complete schizophrenic. Whatever. Fresh start. Think of them as a peek into my curly little head. I offer no explanation, no elaboration, no elucidation. Go for it.

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Best movie kisses

• Kyra Sedgwick and John Travolta in the kitchen in Phenomenon even though I don't like him, or even that movie
• Lucia Muniz and Colin Firth in the restaurant in Love Actually but really just the whole movie
• Rene Russo and Pierce Brosnan on the stairs in The Thomas Crown Affair but yeah, the whole movie too
• Franka Potente and Matt Damon in the bathroom in The Bourne Identity, "
• Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt in the rain in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, "
  
• Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfayden at the end of Pride & Prejudice
  

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Passive Aggressive Notes

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• You know you're Catholic when you misread a sign for "Quilt Shop" as "Guilt Shop."
• You can order cell phone wallpaper from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
• How much is our emerging "Perez Hilton working out of a coffee shop" lifestyle just a return - or at least an attempt to fit our 21st century careers back - to our old-fashioned "cafe in the plaza" European lifestyles of centuries ago?
• Best thing someone's said to me recently: "Good luck with your artistry" - when I didn't think I was being particularly artistic.
  
• People who have achieved world domination, based on a recent unscientific sampling: Justin Timberlake, Chuck Taylor, Bob Marley, and whoever invented Crocs.
  

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Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
The Dark Is Rising series -
The Chronicles of Narnia series - C.S. Lewis
Five Children and It - E. Nesbit
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Secret Garden
The Little Princess
The Anne of Green Gables series and everything by L.M. Montgomery
The Four-Story Mistake
Bridge to Terabithia

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It was a never-ending story... with no luck dragon.

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The way you smile when you look at me
The way my hand feels in yours
The way your shoulders fill out your t-shirt
The way your jeans sit on your hips
The way you talk to a little kid
Whether you hold the door for me
If you can make me feel like I can dance

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Truth number one: mornings come too early.
Truth number two: apart from once or twice a year, I don't drink anything caffeinated.

So how do I wake up? Really loud, really, really, really cheesy music.

Why - you ask - which songs? Because I must do this as well! Help me!

Certainly, I reply. And I'm not just doing this because I'm low on ideas for posts, either. Nope. It's just that the people catching me singing at the top of my lungs and bopping around? They're missing out. And they? They could be you. So yup. I'm all about the public service. Not at all about the desperate for content. Nope. Not here.

And fortunately, for you, I am also connoisseur of the cheesy music.

Buckcherry, Crazy Bitch. Especially good for when you still have hoarse sleepy voice.
Gia Farrell, Hit Me Up. For when you feel like a penguin. And who doesn't.
Dutch featuring Crystal Waters, My Time.
Avril Lavigne, Girlfriend.
Las Ketchup, Asereje. Only if you can do the hand jive.
Going Out of My Head, Fatboy Slim. The combination of the guitar riff and the Kaoss pad distortion is truly ideal for seeing how loud your speakers get.

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I am one of Hallmark's best customers.

I'm a dork. You knew this. But I love the idea of somebody I like opening something that makes them happy.

In my defense, I do hate all that other Hallmark tchotchke crap. And I don't own a card organizer or anything, I promise. But yeah. I'm a soppy girly goofball. I know.

All of which to explain that I really loved these ideas on... alternative greeting cards.

• Under-communicated sentiments from the fabulous finslippy, one of my favorite new places
  

• From the Bittersweet Collection

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I hate finding street parking, but I love parallel parking.
I'm more of a morning person than a night person, but I hate getting up.
I hate Pennsylvania, but a lot of people I love live all over that darn state.

Hope nothing you're served is anything like a Squirrel Melt.

http://www.jeremybroomfield.com/

Trading Spaces. Frank and Ty, after eating dog biscuits:
Frank: Do you have the urge to chase a cat now?
Ty: I always have the urge to chase the cat, if you know what I mean.

• The 60s: Flinstones hawking Winstons.
• The 70s: 7-11.
• The 80s: Madonna for Pepsi.
  

Justin and Britney duet

"The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash" - which I never read, just saw on "Reading Rainbow." I can hear Levar Burton reading it out loud in my head.

I can't find the Polaroid commercial where the kids (including Tobey Maguire, apparently) make a family-tree poster for their grandparents. YouTube failed me.

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First concert
The very first Z100 Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden, December of I think 1995. Not sure - maybe 1994. Bon Jovi, Green Day, Melissa Etheridge, Indigo Girls, and a few other bands. And I met my first lesbians that night.

First album
The California Raisins, "I Heard it on the Grapevine." I got it for Christmas with a My First Sony Walkman. I was 10, so I remember being a little embarrassed because I felt that I was too old for a goofy red kid Walkman.

My first Sony
Originally uploaded by rogiro

I guess it was just underpaid singers doing Motown covers, but it's why I still love "Dancing in the Streets". I also got New Kids on the Block "Hangin' Tough" that year. O, the shame.

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Weekly Roundup: Links Edition

Erin: do either of these work?

This makes me laugh every time. It's the kind of couple I love to be around. The kind I want to be.



One in four American adults didn't read a single book last year? Really? I completely agree with Jessica (of the Fug Girls): that is incredibly depressing.

Even if you can't get Converse as cool as mine (because I got mine in Prague 1) you can make your own, like Kristin did, which is also pretty cool.

If you geek out on maps, try Wayfaring.

Calypso Cards makes funny cards. Albertine Press makes beautiful cards.

I love me some Oscar Wilde. But I did not love his fairy tale.

If you have an old cell phone, drop it off or mail it for free (that's what I'm doing, since I'm incapable of remembering to drop them off)to Call to Protect to help a domestic violence agency.

Get yourself a shopping spree day at Macy's with up to 20% off on October 13 by making a $5 donation to Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey. Funds provide colposcopy equipment to help women prevent cervical cancer. I am a very big believer in this organization. (I used to volunteer at the Flemington center.) I am also a big believer in shopping, lately. So: good stuff, good cause. Go get your coupon at a center:

• 575 Main Street, Hackensack
• 40 North Van Brunt Street, Englewood
• 349 Route 31 South in the Countryside Plaza Complex, Flemington
• 196 Speedwell Avenue, Morristown
• 30 North Morris Street, Dover
• 203 South Main Street, Manville
• 8 Moran Street, Newton
• 123 Park Avenue, Plainfield
• 1150 Dickinson Street, Elizabeth
• 402 Coventry Place, Phillipsburg

Happy Harry Day

What are you doing here when you should be reading?

What Have We Here?

Some explaining:

Yes, I missed the Sunday roundup. I am deeply sorry. Although that's still no reason for bitchy IMs. I thought I was the passive-aggressive one, Tracy?

I've been in New Orleans. And oh my gosh I love that place. I like my job normally. But when it's concentrated and amped up like at a meeting, I've gotten to really love it. It shows who knows their stuff and who's good at what. And when it's someplace that fun? If you can do what you're good at and what you like and then go out drinking and dancing and laughing all night? Why would you want to leave?

Well, maybe to get more than four hours' sleep. And also to get to my fantastic chiro, who's basically becoming my GP. Bad news, he banned working out for at least a week. Good news is, it seems he's figured out what was wrong with my ankle. I mean, apart from walking around in heels all day and then dancing all night, every night.

Some housekeeping:

I've cleaned up the blogroll a little to get rid of blogs I didn't read or friends who gave it up. If you're gone, I don't hate you, you just stopped updating. Well, except for you. YOU, I hate.

Some (belated) rounduping:

• For Jilly: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows cover art released. If you understand that, you don't need an explanation; if you don't, you don't want one.
• For Erin: more Blackberry games. For when Deblocked stops doing it for you.
  
• For Olga: Definition of "come-hither". Yeah, no.
  
• For lefties: Anything Left Handed. Because hell hath no fury like me trying to use a pair of scissors shaped all stupid. Last night even the butter knife was backward. The hell?
  
• (I just learned "ciotóg" - Gaelic. "Strange one" or "clumsy" or "left-handed". Sounds like "kithogue." It should be my middle name. I love it.)
  
• For just in general: What flavor Pocky are you? (I am Chocolat Orange Pocky: the perfect partner in crime, apparently. If you don't know what Pocky is, you are missing out on life, friend.)

And now I've satisfied Miss T, time for a whole lot of laundry and a nice long sleep.

Kerrin's Weekly Roundup

• The "Bridge to Terabithia" movie is coming out and, like GFY Jess, I want to know what the fuck Disney did to it. That isn't the story I read. And Leslie looks like a cross between Punky Brewster and Keira Knightley. And there's a video. Which is all very Disney but it just hasn't got anything to do with the story. So I'm sad. (And, possibly, old and crotchety.)
  

• Also on books, it's been a million years since I've read a new one. I'm rereading Emma, which is always lovely, but any suggestions for something different?

• If you like The Office, go watch God, Inc.
  

• If, hypothetically, you find white crystals on the shelf next to your perfume, and you're pretty sure you haven't been sprinkling either sugar or cocaine around, exactly how long has it been since you dusted, and do you have another personality with a much wilder life?

• If, equally hypothetically, you want to have a discussion about a tapas bar, it helps to enunciate very clearly. Particularly at work.
  

• Here's a new Internet meme: your first Amazon. Mine was Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, on September 29 1998. And again I realize, I'm old.
  

• In that same vein, birthday thoughts predominate. What am I going to do with myself to celebrate? Better yet, what are YOU going to do with myself to celebrate? Stay tuned.

Kerrin's Weekly Roundup: Tiny, Shiny and Pretty

• Movies I watch in a normal month: maybe one. Movies watched in the last three days: over five (The Queen, very good; Little Miss Sunshine, of whose indie-angstyness I was skeptical but which was actually also quite good; Crash, incredible but really intense; Dreamgirls, very very good if you know it's going to be a full-on musical, and now I want the soundtrack; a little part of The Guardian, nothing special but then when has the presence of Kevin Costner meant much else; and Mean Girls, on now) With one business trip, I might actually be able to have an opinion this Oscar season.
  

• Favorite new immigrants: Victoria and David Beckham. I think it's pretty sad that he's basically washing up over here, but since it's an awfully lucrative washing-up, I don't feel too bad. And this means more U.S. coverage of them, which, yay, they are so pretty!

• Favorite email this week: from Matt, which read only, "Girl news:" and provided a link to the pretty, pretty new iPhone. (Or whatever they'll call it, I don't care about Apple's fight with Cisco.) He knows me well.
  

• And since I am such a sucker for tiny, shiny, pretty things, here's another one out of CES: an MP3 player about the size of oh, say, maybe a wristwatch face. I am totally sucked in to the iTunes cult, so I'm not too envious - and I honestly don't understand what a USB bracelet would do exactly, but again: tiny, shiny, pretty? Good.
  

• Oooh, and speaking of tiny, shiny and pretty, here's yet another reason to get a Mini.

Melon Collie and the Transient Sadness

Don't be dismal; it's Friday. I'm not. I promise. It's just that I've collected a few sad links. So if you're ever in a bit of a mood, and you need a little wallowing, come back here. Because life is pretty great, certainly - but sometimes you do just get to feeling sad, and that's okay.

We watch (the American version of) "The Office" at lunch on Friday at work. I know: that's so meta that you can't decide if it's ironic or pathetic, right? Yeah. And now I see Dwight has a blog. So... is blogging therefore equally vaguely pathetic? I'm unsure.

PostSecret always leaves me with sort of an ache inside. Yet it's simultaneously comforting. Maybe it's schadenfreude. Maybe it's companionship. Maybe it's an urge to help.

But sweet Jesus. If you just need a cry? Give The Saddest Thing I Own two minutes.

There now. We're all purged. Back to your regularly scheduled, non-depressing blogging.

The Short Short Version

Everybody's blogging about this, but I'm joining the bandwagon.

Hemingway's favorite story was his shortest: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Breaks your heart in one breath. He was a bastard, but a genius.

Wired magazine asked for lots of famous authors' six-word story submissions. So what's yours? More on this later. In the meantime, here are my favorites:

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please.
- Steven Meretzky

It’s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O’Bannon

Lost, then found. Too bad.
- Graeme Gibson

I saw, darling, but do lie.
- Orson Scott Card

In the beginning was the word.
- Gregory Maguire

He read his obituary with confusion.
- Steven Meretzky

Dorothy: "Fuck it, I'll stay here."
- Steven Meretzky

Edited to add:

• Saw him on the street. Hurting.
• I could never eat jam again.
• Stepping over; pausing; turning around; recognizing.
• "So now what?” “I don’t know.”

It did, by the way. Live up to the hype, I mean. New Year's Eve, that is. I realized I set myself up all pretty and never did anything with it. So yes: the Omni Berkshire hotel was stunning, dinner across the street at Il Postino (or similar unintelligible Italian name) was incredible, and we got close enough to Times Square to have that moment of clarity that can only come when you're standing in the middle of the street watching several hundred lunatics trample a barrier and come straight for you.

And I suppose this would be the time to wax poetic about all I've learned in 2002. But I won't. Partly because I think it's terribly boring when other people do it; and partly because I don't know if I learned all that very much last year. 2001 - yes. I learned quite a lot. That's why it was such a miserable year. It was one of those "learning experiences" that everyone with any sense dreads and avoids. But 2002 was sort of a resettling after all that learning. It was the Jell-O solidifying in the fridge, after a 2001 of boiling and freezing.

And now... Jigglers for everyone. ? So much for that metaphor. Although it is apropos of my one-and-only New Year's resolution. And what that is, friends, is very politely not your business.

In other good news, however, I've just learned that Karen has jumped on this self-important bandwagon of sharing your personal minutiae with the world. Check her link out. She's quite a bit more coherent than I am, and buckets more fun to boot.

And, what else? A wonderful bookish Christmas brought me several wonderful new ones to bury my nose in. "Good in Bed" by Jennifer Weiner: funny, true, sad, hopeful... all those things that Oprah wishes her book club disasters were. I don't like sad books; I like happy books. And this is definitely one of them. It's about a girl, Bridget-Jonesey demos, who's always been fat but is okay with it... until she picks up a magazine and sees that her ex-boyfriend has become its new columnist... with his first article, "Loving a Larger Woman." And, what I just finished last night, "The Bitch in the House." So good. Don't consider moving, falling in love, getting married, having kids, or growing up without reading this. It's like having drinks with a bunch of friends, if your friends were all older, incredibly intelligent, worldly, funny, and wise. And, as nobody's social circle is quite that good... and as mine is more of a social postage stamp... it was a lovely book.