Also, note to self: take LB's name off the list of review copies the publicist is sending out.
Foreshadowing. It's how you tell quality blogging from the cheap stuff.
2: It's not as if I don't have a track record. Go back and read other reviews I've written, work out the odds, and see if you feel lucky.
Jesus, I'm not sending you my novel either. Hell, I'm not even going to write one now.
It's written in comprehensible English, and while it's noticeably not copy-edited properly, it's not too painful to read in that regard.
Dust jacket quote gold!
Now I want a cringe-worthy LB review of one my band's albums.
4: it's too late, I'm pretty sure. The die has been cast. This actually makes me much more excited to see the results. Prediction: boredom.
I don't really listen to music much, but I could ask Sally to listen to it and give me her thoughts. She can play "Blackbird" on the guitar, and is working on "Stairway to Heaven", so that makes her an expert, right?
I lost all interest in reading as soon as I saw "junior associate" but that has nothing to do with the review.
"I was a law firm associate" is not a genre rich in rewards, internal or external, for writers, I should think. Cameron Stracher got about as much out of his memoir as was possible, and that amounted to just a couple of late '90s/early '00s op-eds in the WSJ about how lawyers were getting paid too much. (Thanks, dude. Way to pull up the ladder.)
It shares the flaws of the genre ..., and is also independently not good.
C'mon LB, tell us what you think.
I read one of these once that I kind of liked -- it was recognizably the same sad-associate book in part, but it had been grafted on to a genre mystery that went goofy. The hero ended up being more of an endearing weirdo than the standard sad associate, and there was violence and hard-boiled police officers. But I don't remember the title or author.
Jesus.
I'm going to burn all my journals and wipe my hard drives using both the Guttman 35 pass overwrite technique and the DoD 5220.22-M standard and then I'll degauss them and take a sledgehammer to them. You can review the dust.
I would actually like it a lot if someone else read it and wanted to argue that I'm being unfair. (Like, I'm referring to the protagonist as AWNN (hat, serape) because I didn't spot one in a couple of readings. But possibly he does have a name that's mentioned in passing and I missed it.)
And there's a reason why I don't do anything creative. I know what I'd think of it.
It is a sign of my immense intellectual arrogance that I am now rather keen on sending LB my novel to review. (When I finish it.)
I feel safe because she had already reviewed it as "this may well be my ideal entertainment" before I had even started writing. http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_12223.html#1466592
17: it's a sign of my immense blog-crush on ajay that I'm genuinely pleased to hear that s/he's (I never know for sure) writing a novel.
I didn't realize this was an established genre, but I guess it should be, given its parallels with the academic novel. (Which never seems to have any close resemblance to academia as I know her, but wevs.)
20: I think this genre's closest cousin must surely be the long-suffering medical resident novel.
I want to read a novel about an overworked big law junior associate, but set at sea and with swordplay.
Or possibly a pornographic novel about a middle aged copyright litigator.
I want to read a novel about an overworked big law junior associate, but set at sea and with swordplay.
Intellectual Property Pirates of the Caribbean.
("Who is an Intellectual Property Pirate's worst enemy?"
"The ArrrrrIAA.")
Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. He took me to his cabin and he told me his secret. 'I am not the Dread Partner Roberts' he said. 'My name is Ryan; I inherited the law firm from the previous Dread Partner Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me.
On what defence do Intellectual Property Pirates rely when accused of copyright infringement?
Prior arrrrrt.
29 but that's only the first page.
20: Law, Academe--how many other professions have whole genres of novels written by bitter drop-outs?
Novels written about being a bitter, unsuccessful novelist are definitely a thing. Probably the worst variation on the theme there is.
Long ago I had an idea for a novel about a new associate who ends up working for a venerable law firm partner specializing in supernatural law (curses, Faustian bargains, very expensive haunted houses, etc.). I thought it would be fun to read about the sandwiched generations of ghosts that inhabit the site of the average Manhattan townhouse or building site.
John Grisham is the great bard of the law-associate experience. He doesn't get enough credit. He's a typical airport-thriller stylist but his plots are always gripping, his characters are the good/effective kind of caricature, and politically he's incredibly progressive and great. My memories of it are dim now, but isn't "The Firm" a great metaphor for the law-associate experience? Granted, Grisham had to change things so that the forces behind Biglaw were the interesting kinds of criminals instead of the deeply boring parasites that they actually are, but it ain't easy to write a best seller.
The last book I read of his, "The Litigators", was really fun and had a hilarious and biting take on the high-paid law associate experience. But he had to get the hero out of Biglaw within the first 30 pages to make the book interesting.
I don't think I've read anything of Grisham's since The Pelican Brief, but I don't think of his books as part of this specific sub-genre. I can't remember where he worked, but I think it must have been a different type of firm, one that didn't have that same "you are in a twisty maze of passages, all alike" feeling that sad-associate novels are usually about.
32: That could be very entertaining if done well -- sort of mid-last century Weird Tales stuff.
Bust if you must
This ghostly trust
But let's propitiate the resident spirits fust.
I would be entertained to read a novel about an embittered former apprentice greengrocer who was so disenchanted by the world of fresh produce that she took herself to law school nights and wound up as a junior associate in a big law firm.
[Full disclosure: when I went from being an experienced classical bookseller, which I loved, to a completely wet behind the ears coding monkey, which was mainly rather dull, my income immediately increased by 75%. I have little sympathy with people in jobs most people would give their eye teeth for who can only whinge about them.]
35: yea, an entire novel of the full sad-associate feeling would be too Kafka-esque and depressing. But what he often does is gesture to it and then bust his hero loose, usually to fight against his old big law firm. E.g. in The Litigators he gives us a few sharp pages of his hero's utter misery and then the guy gets roaring drunk, pisses everyone off, and gets fired.
Grisham also focuses a lot on the plaintiff's personal-injury world which seems different than the big corporate law firms so many Ivy types go into.
Grisham also focuses a lot on the plaintiff's personal-injury world which seems different than the big corporate law firms so many Ivy types go into.
I think this is it -- not that he doesn't talk about miserable associates, but it's a different flavor of misery, and one that I don't have personal experience with.
Having just read the free portion of Text's text, you know, it doesn't read like anything junior-law-associate specific. The first person reporting of exactly what happened (he said this, I said that, he put the thing on the table, the table was shiny, she said I'm weird, I went upstairs, etc. etc.) reminds me of, I dunno, Chuck Palahniuk or something. It's been years since I've read Palahniuk, mind; I may be misremembering.
In any case, based on just the free sample of the text, I'd not have thought this was about the travails of being a junior associate. More about some kind of dissociative disorder, if it's "about" anything at all other than writing in a very specific style.
about some kind of dissociative disorder
I agree with you that it's a writing style I've seen elsewhere -- I was thinking 1980s Brat Pack, Bright Lights Big City, that sort of thing. In context, though, I couldn't tell if the character was meant to be generally troubled, or if he'd been driven mad by the law firm, or what was supposed to be going on with him.
The only Grisham book I read concerned someone facing trial and execution now (well 1995 or whenever) for a crime committed in the 60s which is of course impossible and ruined (independent of any other problems) the book for me.
An unlikely coincidence bring together a Sad Associate, a Long-Suffering Medical Resident, and a Bitter Academic. They all find renewed faith in the world from a Happy Hooker.
44: Is that impossible? Maybe seeking the death penalty would be unlikely in such a case, but people can be tried for decades-old murders. Unless the person was being tried in a capital case for, like, shoplifting or something. In which case, yes, that is silly.
43: Maybe the rest of the text reveals more about the possibility of being driven mad by the law firm. Certainly being rendered dead inside by work isn't specific to big law.
text has mentioned an interest in Raymond Carver before. It's not a narrative style I like very much, myself, but it is a thing, certainly. I think there may be big fights in the literary community over tastes in this sort of thing.
The only Grisham book I've ever read was not a thriller and took place on a farm.
46: Supreme Court decision makes it impossible I think.
"Furman vs Georgia" isn't just a porn title.
I wouldn't have thought that I'd be interested in reading anything related to text. But this review was pretty fun!
50: Furman puts a time limit on seeking the death penalty? These are honest questions! I know it caused the moratorium and it basically banned capital punishment for anything but murder. Is that the problem then, that the "crime" Shearer is talking about in the Grisham book isn't murder? Because ok then!
All capital punishments from before the decision were turned into life sentences and I don't think that you could try somebody for a murder from the 60s using the new laws that let you sentence to death constitutionally.
Bright Lights Big City
I think I mentioned that I finally read BL,BC recently, and with the distance of almost 30 years it's hard to see what exactly what so exciting about it at the time. It's not *bad*, precisely, but I spent most of the book going "why am I reading this again?".
55: Aha! OK, I only know Grisham from the movies, really, and this sounds like it has to be The Chamber.
Who would've expected Flippanter to rip offbe inspired by Joss Whedon plot lines.
58 Yeah, I'd thought of Wolfram & Hart when I read Flippanter's idea but it seemed sufficiently differentiated. How I'm not exactly sure, maybe it was the Manhattan location.
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A dude who graduated from my high school 5 years after me died of a heroin overdose.* His obituary says he "passed away peacefully." I guess that's true.
*I only remember him as a little kid -- he was best friends with my best friend's little brother.
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LB's review reminded me of the book review in the Che movie.
58, 59: Damn it. I had in mind a more negotiation-based formula. "My clients are willing to concede the third-floor linen closet and, at solstices, the maid's room, but the kitchen is a deal point."
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I will probably be moving to Davis by myself through July. Convince me I won't end my stabbing myself with a pie-slice, please. (For extra credit, tell me I'll be wonderfully academically productive. Recycled personal rationalizations get green points.)
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Try _The Bone Key_, Flippanter. When your references to _Archer_ are sparse I cast you in it.
I have two people in my life who would make interesting subjects for books. If only i were John McPhee or Joan Didion.
63: I don't think they mined that vein fully or even very well. WaH was more a generic evil corporation than a law firm.
Fictional stories about a law practice have a difficult time competing with real lawyer stories. Assuming you prefer stories about people doing insane things.
64: I really liked Davis when I visited. I thought it was very sweet, and it's an easy drive from Cowgirl Creamery and a bunch of excellent wineries.
I like Davis, and within an hour or two there's everything you could possibly want (pacific coast, wineries, redwoods, city). And if you totally hate it you can move to Berkeley and commute by Amtrak.
The Jelly Belly factory is nearby. I haven't been. But it's there.
And if you totally hate it you can move to Berkeley and commute by Amtrak.
I know someone who does this and it seems insane.
It's not that unusual, I can think of at least 3 people who did that off the top of my head. I was considering it at one point, and decided it was kind of crazy and I'd want to rent a room there and do 3 or 4 days in each place rather than going back and forth daily.
Clew, it's a fun little town, and there are a lot of great events, people, and food to be found there. And Berkeley is less than an hour away - there are many commutes that are worse. You'll have a great time if you do go! Providing you like heat...
Davis is great, except for the assholes on the faculty.
70 gets it right, though it's missing some important information (partly covered in 72, but also that Davis is very close to the Sierras, if that's your thing). Oddly, 73 also gets it right.
If you'd like to, clew, feel free to send me an e-mail at my work address. I'll be happy to help in any way that I can. For instance, I can teach you to limp like a pro.
74 and 75 also get it right. Plus, Whole Foods just opened a location here, so we have added smugness!
I've been meaning to say, VW: steer clear of the university horse-pital. From what I hear, they don't take kindly to lameness there.
I'm going to sound like the horrible guest of AWB. I am spoiled because I currently live in Berkeley, and my idea of good is not 'drive someplace I can see something' but 'walk someplace I can do something'. Davis has the rep for the latter, but it doesn't even have a hackerspace yet. Well, fine, it's more glorious to help set one up, although while making one I won't have anywhere to fix my equipment. (Also, from the DavisWiki, Davis has process consensusism to a degree that would shock both Berkeley and Seattle, so it won't be fast.)
And I can probably carpool with someone to the waltz balls.
The real answer is that Davis is sensible so I can do a lot of fieldwork (short drive around short daylight) and finish my diss; I am not that bad at finding mild friends in dance classes and coffeeshops; and when I am too, too precious for Davis I can go either back to Berkeley and see my labmates or back to Seattle and see my sweetheart. And his soldering-iron.
Wow. You know the "professionally written" and "competent" you gave my novel now feel enormously more complimentary. And/or like my book dodged a bullet, I'm not sure which.
I'm fond of most of the Davis faculty I know. And its abundance of bicycles is impressive. Mostly, I'm thinking "it's less than a year, much worse towns than Davis could be tolerable for that long", but I was crazy enough to go to grad school in upstate New York for a few years, so clearly my opinion is valueless.
it doesn't even have a hackerspace yet
Goddamned weird future-world. In my day, if you wanted a hackerspace you had to invent the concept.
80: I'm terrible at giving compliments, I get all understated. But I really did mean that I think there's a good chance you could be getting published on paper and sold in bookstores -- while your books weren't squarely in a genre I read (they'd probably get shelved as romances, which is mostly not my area) I actively enjoyed them, and I didn't notice anything that would distinguish them from professionally published books I've read. And I meant that as a serious compliment -- most amateur fiction I've read reads very noticeably amateurish. (Again, most amateur fiction I've read is much better than anything I've ever written. Not claiming to able to do better myself.)
I'm an unpublished grad student, do I expect faculty to speak to me? Only if they limp too much to get away.
It's a short time mid-year, the chance that I'll have weeks in which no-one speaks to me seems high. I like solitude, but am realizing that I like more of it than is good for me. Of course, if I can't make friends, I'll just post here more.
82: In my day, you found a semi-retired oil or aero engineer with semi-retired equipment in his shed, and didn't need a name for it. Or Tshirts or stickers or a manifesto. Dinosaurs bestrode the earth.
We never had the cool machine shop stuff. Just a lot of vaxes and crap from the MIT flea.
I'm an unpublished grad student, do I expect faculty to speak to me?
Damn those hoity-toity faculty.
Maybe only Berkeley faculty hoit and toit. Hey, I could have both sides of a rivalry by myself. I'll have to if I don't admit that I can't remember anyone's real names and therefore can't remember who Von Wafer is the rest of the time. (Only just found out about the basketball player; had been assuming minor character in Tales of Hoffman or something.)
Would 'bestrode' be pronounced like 'bestrod'? Odd or owed?
owed
and the earth was bestridden, which sounds even nicer.
aero engineer with semi-retired equipment in his shed,
I call him "dad."
Long ago I had an idea for a novel about a new associate who ends up working for a venerable law firm partner specializing in supernatural law (curses, Faustian bargains, very expensive haunted houses, etc.).
Why not wreck this rod?
By generators past demounted, dropped, bestrode.
83:
Buck must have good self-esteem. First date:
Buck: "I had a really nice time with you tonight."
LB: "Your conversational skills were adequate."
Pretty much. But I smiled while I said it.
"You'd be barely handsome if you could do something with you hair."
" "Your conversational skills were adequate.Keep your mouth shut and I think we'll do fine. ... IYKWIMAITYD."
LB once reviewed a man's book in Reno just to watch him die.
Flippanter, you must write that book.
I'm wondering if the text text is in the vein of Paul Neilan's Apathy and Other Small Victories which dealt with jobs with the tedium yet no potential reward.
Even something so seemingly right as Bring Your Daughter to Work Day in that environment was horribly, horribly wrong. Marching a sweet, innocent nine year old who likes ponies and dreaming into an 8' x 8' cubicle and telling her that if she's strong and independent she'll get to spend forty years in there slowly wasting away is an exercise in feminist mysogyny. It was like a fucking Scared Straight program, a right-wing Christian conspiracy to create more stay-at-home moms. You grab a little girl by the pigtails and say "Suzy, this is what hell looks like!" and obviously she's going to kick off her shoes and get pregnant at fifteen. And she'll keep on going for as long as the clock runs, anything to stay out of that cubicle.
50 54
Furman v. Georgia . As Moby Hick noted, the Supreme Court in 1972 (in a ridiculous decision) invalidated all existing capital punishment laws. Most of the states promptly enacted new capital punishment laws but these can not be applied to crimes committed before the new laws were enacted because that would violate the ex post facto clause (you generally can't try old crimes under laws not in effect at the time).
If Grisham really needed this as a plot point he should have at least come up with some lame excuse for why the general rule didn't apply. Legal thrillers shouldn't contain glaring legal errors central to the plot.
101: Doubtful. Based on that excerpt, the Neilan has too many words to be the model.
97: LB negged! And it worked!
I'd forgotten all about this 'neg' thing, but now I recall a man I dated a few years ago who professed to be charmed, and yet my glasses, really we had to do something about my glasses, which were self-evidently terrible [really??], and why didn't I try some more like his .... It worked out okay (negatory on the glasses in his style, and basically if he wanted to play that teasing game, I could do it too), but I had forgotten that "negging" was a thing.
Buck: I do think that this dish I've prepared is delightful.
LB: Certainly, if you like that sort of thing.
so is text alive or has he gone an stuck his head in the oven or what? not that I have either a) read the free excerpt or b) am massively inclined to stick up for text but LB I would venture to say the narrative style is meant to be separable in principle from the hellish tedium of biglaw, since it is a "style" literary-wise (if, in my view, an impoverished one). additionally text himself seems at times to suffer from the very estrangement from things human that the narrative is meant to mimic; thus the disassociation is probably not entirely junior-associate-driven. also, I'm totally siced for LB to review my novel. it's going to be fucking awesome.
re: neg. at the end of cold comfort farm the heroine says to her hapless lover "you have such wonderful teeth."
"I didn't notice anything that would distinguish your dating performance from that of a professional escort, Buck. And I mean that as a serious compliment -- most amateurs I've dated date very noticeably amateurish."
alameida, you haven't read the free excerpt? You sound like you have.
But no, I don't think text should be sticking his head in the oven over LB's review.
Modern ovens you can't even stick your head in, practically.
I mean you can put your head physically in the oven but you can't put your head in the oven in ways our ancestors would have understood.
I should probably offer text a guest post with which to say rude things about me.
And Flora Poste meant to be sincerely complimentary -- who could say anything rude about a man with a plane called Speed Cop?
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Staying with my in-laws would be improved if there were beer in the house.
Please say all sorts of inappropriate things all night here to compensate for my staid environs.
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Drink the vanilla extract and leave me out of your problems.
113: it's like you were eavesdropping!
Please say all sorts of inappropriate things all night here to compensate for my staid environs.
So many inappropriate things were said where I thanksgave yesterday. It was quite wonderful. At one point the hostess, who was very full and had unbuttoned her trousers while reclining on a couch, asked the host (her fiancé) if, if she peed into one of the cups sitting on the coffee table, he would bear it away.
I almost made an inappropriate pun at Thanksgiving dinner but declined due to the presence of a five year-old renown for her ability to repeat absolutely everything. (The pun was about a dish at the table: soft-pore corn.)
We should assume she is a continual lurker if it stops puns.
This post is kind of amazing, LB. I don't think I have this kind of candor in me.
I'm probably all wrong, anyway. Everyone should buy the darn thing and tell me how wrong I am.
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Damn that Joan Greenwood's husky voice.
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I'm totally siced for LB to review my novel. it's going to be fucking awesome.
Are you really writing one? Hot damn!
Because I think it's worth saying, I'm going to say that I think this is an outstanding review*, much better -- by a good bit -- than the vast majority of the reviews that I regularly read in The Times Book Review or the TLS. It's not really comparable to something in the NYRB, and not just because LB's piece isn't as long but also because it's about the book in question rather than whatever the essayist chose to essayer about (I know that because of the French infinitive that's put poorly, but limp and Vicodin, so back off). Anyway, LB took seriously the writer's aims, took seriously the genre from whence such a project emerged, discussed why, specifically, she didn't like the book, and did all of the above with a fair amount of flair. Were I she, I'd send a link to Sam Tanenhaus, because lord knows he can use the help.
* Measured as a review, I mean. Obviously, she thinks the book in question blows.
I'd add that if I received a review like this, I'd be devastated, but in a good way. Someone would have taken my work pretty seriously, would have taken the time to read it carefully and weigh its merits using reasonable standards, and they would have found it wanting. That would hurt a lot, of course, but I couldn't really ask more from a reviewer. And I would know, from past experience (both as a writer of books and a reviewer of them) no less, that the overwhelming majority of writers receive far less.
he gets a clerkship despite not having served on a journal (not impossible, but without a connection with the judge also kind of unlikely)
I know someone who did this, but I don't know if what this person had was a connection with the judge, or a connection with a faculty member with a connection with the judge.
I concur completely with 122 and 123, except substitute "all the places where I read book reviews" for the TLS and NYRB, because I don't know those publications particularly.
Alameida is going to be one of those writers who led an incredibly interesting life filled with unbelievable and unique and unpredictable characters, and to take a break from that she writes novels about how some woman can't stand any of the babysitters her children like, or the epic struggle of one guy in a farmhouse somewhere trying to get one of his children to help repair his fence.
127. I think I have read those already in the New Yorker.
Don't despair text, a movie deal is surely in the offing.
You know, Kind Hearts and Coronets is not exactly a laff riot.
I was also going to suggest that if one's reviewer goes public with complaints about how their work is impinging on their holiday time, one might consider whether it is wise to respond with something along the lines of, "I hope this doesn't mean that my review will be delayed."
But then I released that some might interpret this as implying that LB's objectivity was compromised by a string of badgering comments.
OK, have now read the free extract and I go on record as disagreeing with LB. I don't think it's great as it stands because it needs an editor. One thing about self-publishing - you really, really need a candid friend to take a red pencil to what you fondly believe is your final draft. Frex, it opens with what is dangerously close to an info dump, whereas, especially if you're using the short, disconnected scene approach to narrative (what I think of as the index card style, which is fine in and of itself) you need to grab the reader as quick as you like.
But enough technical nitpicking. The characters work for me, including the narrator with his vacant interior life. In fact I find him immediately recognisable. I don't like the characters, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to. They speak to me though, although I tend to wish they'd shut up. The rhythm of the narrative is good, once it gets established, and well matched to the events or non-events it's describing. The humour (did LB notice the humour?) is well modulated and provides the right tone for the thing.
I'm trying here to separate my subjective reaction - that it's a book about people I don't care about doing stuff I don't care about - from an objective assessment of the book. I accept it wasn't written with me in mind. On the other hand, if text subjects himself to a few grueling sessions with aforesaid candid friend, I see no reason why he shouldn't end up with a version that has as good a chance of being noticed by a random penguin as anything out there, and better than most, because he can write.
This may seem like a daft point to make, but I know text can write -- effectively, wittily, well formedly, with a gift for creating not-quite-wanted nay semi-aggravating sparks in the minds of the audience -- because I can read him doing all this on unfogged, on a more-or-less daily basis: he's quick-witted, funny, observant and reliably good at tweaking people. So the issue (and I haven't yet read a single sentence of the e-book) is how to translate his actually evident gifts into longer form. And yes, chris y is right, he will need an editor. Really almost everyone needs a rigorous editor for longer form, because very few writers indeed retain the relevant precision at large- small- and medium-scale simultaneously. [End entirely unstartling commentary from professionally rigorous editor...]
Also: chris y! yikes! be well quickly and if well, stay it!
133: chris y was unwell! chris--sorry to hear it, and--if well now--glad about that too.
132: Oh, good, I'm glad to see some argument. What you're saying doesn't sound nuts to me: if you look at what I called the strong points (remembering, again, that me saying anything positive tends to be very, very understated), I did find bits amusing, and I did think he conveyed a recognizable feeling of law firm life, which he couldn't have done without some level of skill.
It wasn't terrible on a scene by scene level. As a couple of people have said, the flat-affect thing is a familiar style. What put me off it here is that where I've seen it work, it's been earned somehow: either the character has a history that has somehow broken their ability to feel, or the idea is that the world is such a brutally absurd place that feeling is also absurd. Here, the guy just seemed emotionless for no good reason. (There were a couple of passing mentions of the Abu Ghraib photos, but if that was meant to justify existential despair generally, it didn't work for me.)
I considered saying, but didn't want to sound condescending, that while this thing didn't seem good to me, I wouldn't be surprised if he could write something better if he kept working at it. If I hadn't genuinely meant that there were strong points, I wouldn't have said there were.
Oh, good, I'm glad to see some argument.
Sure, from someone who just had emergency brain surgery ...
136: Wait. What?! When exactly?
137. Here. Stormcrow is right. My judgement and personality have undergone a complete change.
In fact, he's now an affectless junior associate in a soulless law firm. One of the most unpleasant side effects of brain surgery.
(Has your personality actually changed? How so?)
This applicant believes that being the teacher involves playing the "devil's advocate" rather than the advocate in order to challenge everyone in the classroom. He may find that at Heebie U, what had been the devil's position is now the regular old advocate position.
140. I don't believe so. You're probably in a stronger position to tell than I am. Mrs y hasn't said anything.
142: if you turn into an Oliver Sacks character, you have to share.
141
This applicant believes that being the teacher involves playing the "devil's advocate" rather than the advocate in order to challenge everyone in the classroom. ...
While teaching math?
No, it's a social sciences position. I'm an external member.
I'm an external member
Laydeez
I'm an external member.
...laydeez.
141
... He may find that at Heebie U, what had been the devil's position is now the regular old advocate position.
Heebie U is a Satanic institution?
I felt compelled to read the free portion out of a mild sense of guilt since I had sort of weighed in already. So, more competently written than I would have expected from LB's review, but yeah, not feeling it as to any hook or other reason to keep reading*.
*As always, keep in mind that this judgment is rendered by a man who has been known to enjoy eating jello in various forms.
150 -- In all my life, gentlemen, I will never forget my first visit to the State of Texas. I had been bumped over its sterile plains for a week in an ambulance. I was tired, dusty and worn out. When I reached my destination I found some people there who wanted me to talk and be received and all that sort of thing, before I had a chance to get the sand out of my eyes and ears. One fellow was persistent. He asked me with pure American curiosity what I thought of Texas. In a moment of worry and annoyance I said if I owned hell and Texas, I would live in the former and rent out the latter.
OT: In what I shamefacedly acknowledge is a case of the tree not growing far from the apple, the Flip-Pater has taken the position that ice cream sandwiches are, for nutritional purposes, sandwiches, not ice cream.
She'd grown up believing in hell in an abstract nightmare way; but west Texas had given her something more concrete upon which to dread the afterlife.
I read the free excerpt and I mostly agree with chris y. It's hard for me to give a fair critique because it's not the type of writing that I enjoy, but it seems to be a reasonable exemplar of its kind.
For the most part, it's clear and readable, and given that this is emphatically not my taste in prose, that's saying something. I do agree that it needs serious editing. I understand that the dissociated monotone reporting (I did this. Then I did this. She said this. Then she walked away) is a deliberate choice, but it got irritating. That's partly a matter of personal taste, but I don't think I could get through an entire novel that goes on in that vein.
You can all go to Hell, and I'm going to Texas.
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NMM to Larry Hagman!
Barbara Eden still okay.
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French Canadian girls are surprisingly aggressive on the rugby field. Sally's team just got stomped but good.
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They probably bring in a hockey coach to warm them up.
155.2 does not seem materially different from the OR.
151: not feeling it as to any hook or other reason to keep reading
I really feel as though I'd have to more carefully read e.g. Raymond Carver, or someone else who writes in a similar style -- or read some reviews of same! -- in order to grok how some readers of that style find a reason to keep reading. It does little for me, but there are any number of dedicated fans out there. (Including the friend who pressed a copy of Will you Please Be Quiet, Please? on me. I wasn't intrigued by the handful of pieces I read, to the bemusement, close to dismissive disgust, of the friend, who figured I suffered from a failure of discernment, I think.)
This is another way of suggesting that, contra 122, LB may be making assumptions about the writer's aims and the genre from whence such a project emerged that may not be correct: I'm not sure text is trying to convey to the reader how awful being a biglaw junior associate is. That's not why the style is as it is (I speculate). As far as I've noticed, writers who adopt the style generally *don't* explain why the protagonist is so disaffected, so fretting about the lack of explanation is a non-starter, unless the review is just an exploration of the reviewer's personal narrative preferences.
IOW, I'm with chris y. Chris, hope you're recovering well!
Whatever one thinks of the book, the prerelease marketing campaign could have been handled better.
Not reading fiction.
Ohh, I don't know, some Gide , Beckett, Robbe-Grillet...that kind of stuff, if this is that kind, may be better in small doses. Or maybe not. How the "style" works, when the reader helps it work the way it is supposed to work, and what it is supposed to do when it works...I forgot what we were talking about. Cognitive estrangement, maybe.
Where is that long post I read yesterday about the writer's face seen in the work, the writer's voice? Henry James, ahh googled "Orwell on Henry James". You can too.
New Yorker article on the Grateful Dead, Deadheads, and especially the tape legacy. Long, but are you a Head or not?
A whole section of the vault housed the sixteen-track fourteen-inch reels from the Dead's tour of Europe in 1972. Last year, the Dead released the entire tour: a seventy-three-disk boxed set containing all twenty-two concerts and more than seventy hours of music. It came in a small steamer trunk and cost four hundred and fifty dollars. A run of twelve thousand two hundred sold out in four days.
I am not. I don't get it, but this writer tries to explain.
Lots of sweet communal stuff, like Lesh being at Levon Helm's bedside and the backstage goodies in the contracts.
in order to grok how some readers of that style find a reason to keep reading
I haven't read the excerpt, but the description makes me think of one book that I've recommended which is written in a deliberately flat, "he did x, then he did y" style is The Chains Of Chance by Stanislav Lem.
I found the style off-putting at first, but I came to think that it was a well executed choice. Of course, in that case, the point wasn't to be understated, it was that human beings have a poor understanding of the world because they want event to make sense, and fit a narrative, when that is frequently not the case.
My good wishes to Chris Y as well who, based on his comments here, is maintaining remarkably good cheer despite (literally) traumatic events.
Wikipedia tells me we might call the style Dirty realism.
French Canadian girls are surprisingly aggressive on the rugby field.
I think it would take a lot of French Canadian girl rugby aggression for me to think that the amount of aggression was surprising.
Dead at 27 from cirrhosis. That's some drinking.
Posted because Wiki doesn't credit the photo but I would bet it's by the person who did the Airplane Surrealistic Pillow cover and session. Somebody oughta do something.
164 is a external justification of a style but not an examination of how it feels, how it works. An engagement with art changes consciousness.
167. The odd thing about that Wikipedia article is that most of the authors referenced are given only one date. Were they Boltzmann brains which popped into existence, generated a body of work and then disappeared back into the vacuum, all in a matter of seconds? If so, it might explain their stylistic peculiarities.
168. Keyboard player with the Dead: the most dangerous job in America. They had 6 (I think); one survives and he quit after a couple of years.
169 was to 166.
169: I assume those single dates are their dates of birth? They're not dead yet?
164: Wow, I haven't read Lem in a long time (love him), and don't remember that about him. Thanks for the tip.
Herb Greene Haight Photographer. Although he worked in B & W mostly.
Gorgeous record. Stunner of Neal Cassady here.
Do you suppose the value of this went up today?
re: 158 and 167
Yeah. Both France (especially) and Canada have stronger rugby traditions than the US, and I'd guess (but might be totally wrong [after checking wiki, probably wrong]) that French-Canadians play it more than the other-Canadians.
[Checking Wiki]
"Rugby union ... is relatively strong as a participation sport, particularly in several hotspots like British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador ..."
"By a happy coincidence, Canada's two main languages are English and French, meaning that it has long been influenced by not only the Commonwealth, but the French rugby community."
Although, looking, the Canadian women's team don't have a very good record against the US. Although not quite as bad as their record against England and New Zealand [0 wins, against either].
174 Forgot Hornsby. 5 out of 7 then. Like Constaten, he avoided the curse (so far) by remaining semi-detached.
My, I didn't realize how fraught things were in the SF world back in the day.
Dick, however, believed that Stanisław Lem was a false name used by a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.
Actually, I did, but not this stuff specifically. Harlan Ellison, sure, everyone hated him.
169: I think the odd thing about that article is that it imagines Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, & Richard Ford as the literary progeny of Charles Bukowski!
Wasn't Dick literally psychotic? Might explain florid theories about other writers.
Yes, he was actually quite seriously mentally ill.
179: It is hard to disentangle the effects of all the speed and hallucinogens he took from his underlying mental illness, but he clearly had some severe mental problems that were not pharmaceutically induced.
178, clark diversey: I noted that as well. Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, anyway (haven't read Tobias Wolff) are exercises in the mundane, which I thought was not Bukowski's beat.
But I haven't actually read Bukowski, have something over there to be read, but I haven't.
I enjoyed Jesus's Son, Tree of Smoke, and Already Dead.
Thanks, will. I have Tree of Smoke here. It hasn't received the greatest of reviews from friends who have read it, but I believe it's an award winner.
I came to the question via the reading of the Wikipedia article on Chuck Palahniuk
Palahniuk's writing style has been influenced by authors such as the minimalist Tom Spanbauer (who taught Palahniuk in Portland from 1991 to 1996),[33] Amy Hempel, Mark Richard, Denis Johnson, Thom Jones, and Bret Easton Ellis.[34] In what the author refers to as a minimalistic approach, his writings include a limited vocabulary and short sentences to mimic the way that an average person telling a story would speak. In an interview, he said that he "prefers to write in verbs instead of adjectives".
I doubt I need to narrate my train of thought in all this. I'm just curious.
I've read his first three novels (Angels, Fiskadoro, The Stars at Noon) and Jesus' Son. I enjoyed all of them. Also a collection of poetry called The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, which was very good.
NZ Maori beat Canada in Oxford 32-19 over night, by the way.
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly is an amazing work of visionary art that is in the Smithsonian's collection. I hadn't heard of a poetry collection with that title. There is a short orchestral work with that title, inspired by the sculpture.
I believe it's an award winner
2007 National Book Award.
I hadn't heard of a poetry collection with that title.
It's an allusion to the Hampton sculpture. The title piece.
I love Jesus' Son so much. "I'm glad he's dead He's the one who started everybody calling me Fuck Head".
You know, starting reading Bordwell on classical continuity and narration in film helps me understand why I don't like novels anymore. Fiction, especially 1st person fiction, is a ridiculously abstract art of convention, localized and historical practices, that pretends to be representational. Fiction pretends to be a personal interaction with an author (with these six nouns and three adjectives you are placed in a room) when it is really ruthlessly socialized and social.
That is not to say that film doesn't carry its own bullshit and techniques, but try handing Mandel or Cormac McCarthy (if translation is possible) to a Chinese farmer and then give them Modern Times or Avengers.
Fiction is imperialist capitalist bourgeois bullshit.
The famous example is in Starship Troopers when the character looks in a mirror and we "see" he is black. Whoa, ass of u and me. No, the problem and the point isn't that we made the wrong or unjustified assumption. The point is that assumptions must be and are made in the process of reading fiction, and these assumptions are almost always socially determined. You have to have a minds-eye image of the character. One might guess that the kid reading ST in Swahili asks "What the heck is that scene for? I knew the protagonist was black"
I don't know, somewhere along the line I became aware of how much of the movie I was writing when I read a novel, and how much of what I was writing was according to somebody else's rules, and reading became impossible.
I read the free excerpt too. I think JMS and Chris Y and LB's original review are all compatible...it's the perspective you take on it. I do think it's competent piece of prose that flows well, and one might not have thought that from LB's emphasis on its faults. But I think the author greatly overestimates the appeal of his deadpan monotone. There is some dry wit mixed in at times that is occasionally amusing, but the overall affect is much too flat and loses the reader (or lost me anyway). He needs to vary the tone either with the plot or the authorial voice. This isn't too surprising as IMO text also has a tendency to overestimate how amusing his deadpan repetitive questions are around here...strikes me as a related issue.
You know, the whole thing only costs a dollar, and it's not that long. If someone else paid for it, we could argue about it at greater length.
193-194: totally agree that fiction is a ridiculously abstract art of convention, but hasn't that been true of all complex narrative forms going back thousands of years, like ancient theater and the Iliad and tribal legends, etc., not to mention the movies? Is your beef with the European novelistic tradition starting in the 19th century just that it is particularly pompous and makes excessive claims for itself?
I love Jesus' Son so much.
Great book I agree...did you see the movie? Really good too.
196: probably true.
During Happy Hour, when you pay for one drink, he gives you two. Happy Hour lasts two hours.
She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring. You had to go down to them like a hummingbird over a blossom.
Is your beef with the European novelistic tradition starting in the 19th century just that it is particularly pompous and makes excessive claims for itself?
The claims are part of the culture and have implication for the hegemony. "We are more realistic and scientific blah blah..." All old news, I suppose.
Maybe Joyce ruined me. Maybe I am old and ornery. But I read and get stuck asking what priors I am supposed to accept, what conventions assumed, what attitudes I am asked to assume, and I just don't wanna play anymore. I just feel English-language art is as bad for me as Chris Matthews or Fox:if I relax and suspend I will start thinking wrong. Wrong-think like an American.
So foreign language films, mostly Asian, where I am distanced by language, culture, visuals, styles.
163:
The article captured a lot of my feelings about the Dead. Listening to the Dead was a huge part of my youth.
177: What paranoid nonsense! We all know who the real Soviet mole was. .
I love philip k. dick and reading and re-reading the selection of 1st edition paperbacks at my dad's house (just because he bought them when they were shitty sf releases) was an important part of my childhood. however, he is SO seriously mentally ill, and in a fashion adjacent to myself, that sometimes I can't read them or I will enter a labile state in which I am more prone to lose the plot. ubik, particularly, makes my skin crawl. hey, remember last year, when I had a fucking mental breakdown in...um...all of september and october? good times. NOT. the next time that happens I am going to the psych ward. you guys can tell me, seriously, it's my new family policy. if you are in an argument about whether to go to the hospital, you have to go to the hospital. for injuries or illnesses also. "it'll stop bleeding in a minute, it's not that bad, I'll go to the insurance-covered gp tomorrow." nope, right to the hospital with you, electric hedge-clippers-accident-lady.
also, feel better chris y!!! my stuffed animals have powerful healing properties, and my daughters' moreso since they are beloved by children. I'll pass the word that they should be exercising invisible forces for your healing. saki, cranberry, mama hobbes, angelkitty, darcy, and bugbun are on the case.
Oh man do I love Dick. What's odd is that he adopts the style of 60s-70s trashy sci-fi in a half assed fashion, his language is careless, and his misogyny leaks out all over the place, but his batshit ideas, and in the better ones, his character's attitudes towards them, render all of that incidental. They're like icons drawn in crayon.
To 204.last: excellent, excellent policy.
Wow, I missed a lot in the last few days.Glad to hear you're on the mend, chris y.
193-194, 201: Movies are as mannered as novels. The only real difference is that you can passively watch a movie, so it requires less conscious effort to master the vocabulary.
HK action movies are a good example. They're designed to be as visceral thrills as possible, but you still have to watch several to get used to the conventions. They are full of surface details that strike Western audiences as risible, until you get used to them. (Why don't those twenty guys rush Jackie Chan all at once? Wait, why is that dude flying?)
Chinese farmers like The Avengers because they have totally mastered the manners of American movies, not because there is nothing to master. A Chinese farmer would find Modern Times boring, because it uses a vocabulary that that has died out.
You know bob's just trolling, right?
I quit reading "good" novels in the early 80s, Lurie and DeLilo were my breaking points, when I realized how much effort I was expending in manufacturing my desire to read them.
Damn. A newish and good review of Tiqqun's Theory of the Young Girl September 30, 2012.
her willingness to mold herself into one of the representations that Spectacle teaches her to worship makes external discipline unnecessary. Young-Girls are Empire's desired subjects because they police themselves with their phony desires. The State need not waste its time or data-gathering resources on the Young-Girl, who is the living representation of Empire's success with generating self-managed "social pacification." She takes good care of herself.
The only real difference is that you can passively watch a movie
I disagree. Read some Bordwell. It's only passive once the effort you expend assimilating the conventions becomes invisible to yourself. Why the heck does following the quick cuts and jumbled narrative in an American superhero movie feel "easier" than a 15 minute long take from Bela Tarr?
It's just dawn rising outside a bedroom window, dude, what could be hard about watching that?
but you still have to watch several to get used to the conventions.
And that's my point, and my reason. They aren't my conventions. And I don't want to get used to them, I want to use them.
Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine was just a super book. Highly recommended.
Finished NGE last night. My mind will not recover.
Now to CLAMPS's Chobits.
Only perversion can save us now.
212:Look up Chobits. Lamarre recommends it as a step more sane than Miyazaki or Anno Hideki but it is embarrassing. And "perversion?" Lamarre is neck-deep in Lacan and Zizek and Haraway.
Spectre not symptom, cyborg not goddess.
And NGE, 17 years ago, was about twenty years ahead of where America is now. Scarlet Johansson in Avengers? Get me the fuck out of this backward pit.
It's not quite up to Roy Orbison in cling film quality.
Semi-OT: Mara apparently had a dream about "a silly octopus and the animals that eat him" and she sleepily demanded I try to find a cooy at the library so she can watch it again. Someone has probably already written a dream library book, but I could see it working as the premise for a mid-grade light fantasy novel.
as her goodnight challenge, my niece (five last week) asks "what are you going to dream about tonight?"
Oh, god, he's into anime now. Just hurry up and start watching "Elfen Lied".
211.2: I don't know if I should be comforted or disturbed that the only people I know who ever talk about Tiqqun are my one nihilist friend and mcmanus. Somehow, I don't think they would get along IRL.
You know, it's funny, but if someone had said to me back in 2002 "in 2012 you'll be repeatedly annoyed by the ravings of this bomb-happy lunatic who wants to nuke everywhere and is obsessed with anime" I'd have thought he meant someone quite different.
Bob has a better and more refined aesthetic sensibility than den Beste. (And I happen to like Ozu and Elfen Lied too - just wait till he gets to FLCL).
Not yet to Elfen Lied or FLCL
just wait till he gets to FLCL
That is all.
You know I started anime just to learn Japan, and because it is good, and because I sometimes need a break from the double suicide movies. I don't know how much time I want to spend on close reading or other varieties of otaku practice. But Lamarre (and Hideki in NGE but not Miyazaki) kinda say that otaku production is part or most of the point.
NGE Ep 25 is described by most as being psychoanalysis, but Lacan is all through that shit not Freud. What was neat was the way Anno Hideki paraphrased Lacan, "void" instead of "lack" for instance. And of course the way the series led up to Ep 24-26. I would look, but Evageek is scary.
The 90 mph agony of Ep 24-26 was the most exhausting intense 90 minutes I have spent since Sogo Ishii's Burst City
Oh man do I love Dick.
I feel like I'm being baited.
Bob, I'm sure everyone's recommended Cowboy Bebop (great soundtrack by the way, Yoko Kanno rocks, the opening number reminds me of classic Mingus). FLCL has great music too. Also check out Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, the pacing of which is masterful in its foreboding and building sense of apocalyptic urgency. And Ghost in the Shell which seems highly prophetic in its portrayal of a techno-dystopian militarized surveillance society.
219 - Bob has not yet, to my knowledge, discussed how he would take down a terrorist on a plane if he were armed with only a pen.
That depends. Are there squirrels on this motherfucking plane, too?
Yes, but not in a way we could understand.
That Grateful Dead article really summed up why I'm so glad to see that whole scene long gone, and I even like some of their work.
230:
agreed. I still enjoy the music though.
230 -- Phooey. It was lots of fun. Like everything else, you just had to exercise some sort of brain functions about how and when to have it.
I was never a taper or anything like that, but it was neat to meet someone, and find out that they had some cool tapes you didn't have. (I don't remember when or where I got my Cornell May 1977 tape -- I went to shows at the beginning and end of that tour, March and June respectively, and they were also top notch -- probably 1980 though). And now, with Archive, you can get anything you want.
233 -- There's a solution to that.
I agree that with modern communications, it would be insufferable. Back then, though, it was easy enough to not be part of a thing whenever one didn't want to.
Actually, my time of that thing predated a lot of the outdoor part of it (which, I presume, was most tiresome). I never remember any sort of outdoor vendors (for example) at Winterland: you'd go in an hour or two before showtime, and they'd have volleyball games on the wooden floor. Pretty funny watching folks having such trouble hitting the ball, etc.
The '74 movie was pretty much spot on concerning the scene through '78.
Will, rustle up June 9, 1977, listen to that second set, and tell me about tiresome.
I'm not reading this whole thread, or even the review. But I am going to link to this on my Facebook page. Thanks LB!
What I'd really like is for Bob McManus to review my book. Can he do so here?
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OMG. Were you aware that women in certain movies *actually* have all the power because they are desirable objects for men, who will do anything, including rape the women, in order to "have" them? And so it's totally ironic for women to complain that they have no power in this situation? Because being a rapeable sex object is like totally powerful? Female power, y'all! (Grading undergraduate essays is always so fun.)
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So students at your college aren't perfect!
I am aware of this. It's just really awkward to explain that if "female power" means the power to get raped, then all the women should go back to the superhero store and get an exchange, because getting raped is a pretty shitty power to have.
I wasn't seeking to inform you of anything in 240, since it's clear that you, the reporter, were aware. It is simply amusing to me, as you paint a rather different picture elsewhere.
Seriously, y'all should read my book. If I read a review like this, knowing who wrote it, I'd buy the book.
243: A really overwhelming majority of them are awesome, and only a few suck in ways that require venting. The nice things I say about them are genuinely true--like that they are nice and don't complain. They cry a lot, but they don't complain.
I do think it's competent piece of prose that flows well
Cool, because that's totally what I was going for!
Crying is complaining by other means.
neb, when can I expect your nasty review?
The idea that being beautiful is a form of power has even crept into behavioral economics!
238:I read the excerpt, the way I read back and forth over and over maybe ten times, and liked it well enough. I want to know more about this character. In opposition to LB, I think quite a lot is going on inside and outside the character. Somebody, or some kinds of people, just need "feeling words" or emotional language in order to acknowledge that emotions are going on.
What does he describe and what does he leave out? The guy who spilled gravy (?) on his suit in the lunchroom? Why? That kind of thing.
As far as I can tell on first reading, the other people seem to like, respect, even admire our narrator, but are nervous and careful in his presence, not wanting to be judged and found wanting. Rebecca doesn't seem so scary.
Maybe tomorrow. I am not giving a dollar. And this is why I don't read fiction, because I read so slowly and carefully. Although maybe not well or with much pleasure.
will you post a review, anonymous commenter?
bob, if you post a review, I'll mail you a dollar. you don't have to send me your real address, just set up a p.o. box and then send that address to the email address here linked. I will include a nice thank-you note.
also I think that bob mcmanus reviewing my book would be cause for a main page post. doesn't everyone agree?
Setting up a post office box seems like a lot of work for a dollar. Maybe you could just agree to donate a dollar to Habitat for Man's Inhumanity?
I'm fully supportive of the idea. Also, text!
bob, I'll give a dollar to a communist if you do this.
Yup, it's me. LB, you have no taste in literature, but thank you for taking the time to read and write.
well I hope you like it this summer, mr. anonymous.
Text doesn't deserve for you to call her sexist just for making assumptions about gender.
255: Isn't this sort of thing what PayPal is for?
t's just really awkward to explain that if "female power" means the power to get raped, then all the women should go back to the superhero store and get an exchange, because getting raped is a pretty shitty power to have.
I hope dearly that you said exactly, or nearly exactly, this in your comments.
258, 259: maybe you could have read's up there, too!
I just bought a copy but don't want a front-page post when I've read it. I'm about as unsympathetic to dull, no-interior-life privileged white guys as it gets, though.
I'll try not to take that personally.
253.1 gets it right. Conflating no feeling-words with no emotions is as bizarre as assuming that the office stops existing when the protagonist is at home.
I'm a dull, privileged white guy, but I have a rich interior life... laydeez.
Assuming irrational fears count, of course.
If you have innumerate irrational fears, how will we ever compete in the international marketplace.
Did I mention that you should all buy my book?
I'm holding out for the film version.
I'm a dull, privileged white guy, but I have a rich interior life... laydeez menz.
Teo's fears are real, but not natural.
Great, now I feel offensive to everyone. Fuck!
It's okay, Thorn. I at least am not actually offended.
I'm offended but not in a way we can understand anymore.
278: Welcome their hatred, Thorn!
I'm offended but not in a way we can understand anymore.
There were haters, but they had no Haterade.
I'm still trying to figure out if I should work on developing an inner life or not. Lots of people say it is great, but I'm thinking there's probably a whole bunch of people who became miserable because of a rich inner life and these people are keeping quiet because they each assume they are the only one.
I don't think I have an inner life. What you see is what you get.
I think I just started having something like an inner life a few years ago. It's kind of neat.
We had a dog with an inner life. The vet made us give him pills.
I have an innie life. It's full of navel-gazing and lint.
Seriously? People like Heebie have fucking kids and no internal life? How do you rock for 45 minutes without losing your mind or watch and discuss Sid the Science Kid etc.? I have nothing but an internal life and I'd lose mind if I didn't. Nobody cares about my body, self included, and I'd only exist if I could talk about shit that doesn't actually exist. I'm getting more nervous thinking I'm weird about this, though. My worry was always about existing as a real person rather than a brain in a vat and having children who love me matters more than partners there, I guess.
So far I'm a few pages in and like Anna (which makes me think at some meta level this may not be about having no inner life, maybe) and think every word written about the pro bono case has been bogus like a mug.
My inner life involves a lot of procrastination.
I refute all y'all thus, except of course nosflow. But this is blowing my mind. You're like. "I eat enchiladas for dinner. I go home and watch an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm but only one for some reason. The end." Really??????
I feel like we're not all using the same definition for "inner life" here.
Oh, fucking I can't even close italics? Would that I had no self-hate but plenty of stupid iPad html skills instead of being an idiot.
So far I'm a few pages in and like Anna (which makes me think at some meta level this may not be about having no inner life, maybe) and think every word written about the pro bono case has been bogus like a mug.
Hooray! And Hooray! And maybe!
Thorn, you should totally do a liveblog review of this book while text watches.
I actually had enchiladas for dinner. The fuckers put such a small amount of sauce on them that I pictured murdering them. I really like mole.
So I guess I do have an inner life to the extent that murderous fantasy counts.
hmmm, maybe Thorn is really my favorite . . .
Maybe I'm thinking of something different, then. I certainly have a running interior commentary, and a generally well-behaved filter. I can certainly get lost in thought and tune out. I enjoy judging people and over-analyzing situations.
But I don't have secrets or some imaginary landscape where I escape to. I'm not even sure what is supposed to constitute a rich inner life.
Nobody cares about my body, self included, and I'd only exist if I could talk about shit that doesn't actually exist. I'm getting more nervous thinking I'm weird about this, though. My worry was always about existing as a real person rather than a brain in a vat and having children who love me matters more than partners there, I guess.
What on earth. Said lovingly, of course.
I never actually use the word enchiladas in my story. it's fajitas. significant? you decide.
Fajitas are objectively worse than enchiladas because the former nearly always have bell peppers and bell peppers suck.
I don't know what more to say, heebie. I'm a sucky atheist who would rather be transcendent in some way. I work a stuid desk job but could say more about it than Protagonist does but don't because we don't have enough competitor companies to keep me anonoymousish. My interior life is that I spend maybe 1% of my day speaking aloud to an adult and so I hooe that there is a lot more to me than that, though it's adorable that the girls are picking up manners and ownership of their bodies and so on. But I spend very little time in real life discussing anything I'd consider meaningful and I'd expect that to be normal. Or the rest of you talk about politics an what you're reading and what you're thinking?
My interior life is that I spend maybe 1% of my day speaking aloud to an adult...
That seems about right for me. However, it has been a long time since I was able to manage it. If I'm at home, the family wants to talk. Work used to be O.K., but now I have people under me and they need to be instructed, motivated, etc.
Fine. I didn't think "fajita day" sounded as plausible, nor do I fall for people talking about gussets the way these fictional figures talk about gussets, and I hang with fucking knitters. The narrator is so uncomfortable with a black guy though uncomfortable enough I don't think he's even designated said guy as black and so he's obviously not relaying their conversations in a meaningful or realistic way.
(in real, exterior life, we're discussing whether a fb picture of me is unflattering, accurate, both, or somethinge else, while also trying to figure out what's up with radical atonality at the BET music awards.)
I think the difference might be that I don't have much that's meaningful in my interior commentary, either. I have solid opinions on things I think are meaningful, but I don't revisit and update them very often, or dwell on areas where I feel conflicted.
304: Obviously your enchiladas should include Swedish fish instad. No?
I do wish I spent less of my time engaged with other people. I'm out of balance on solitude. I don't see that changing much any time soon except during summer vacation, when I hoard my solitude.
Now that I can't run long distances, I've really lost my sweet tooth.
You'd been hunting swift sweet potatoes?
We had yams, not sweet potatoes, at Thanksgiving. My sister was very emphatic on the difference.
Not really, but apparently the evolved on a completely different continent.
Or rather, two completely different continents neither of which is the one we are currently on.
We had yams, not sweet potatoes, at Thanksgiving.
So did the Jamaicans I had Thanksgiving with. They boiled them with green bananas. Quite good.
I ran 3.82 miles today. That was a long distance for me.
321: I wasn't worried about borderline cases in the set of marshmallows.
I don't feel like I have sufficient solitude, but that's because I suck at what I'm doing with my life instead. Spending my lunch breaks readong rather than talking to coworkers about their parenting/tv habits makes a world of difference. Maybe I am being delusional about the extent to which I exist within my head, though.
On this bok, I think I'm reframing it to see to what extent I'd be cool with it if it were a screenplay instead, because I think the lack of thought is indicative of that, people who thnk they can show emotion by showing rather than having/knowing.
I am intrigued by the dish referred to in 319.
People who think they can show emotion by showing? Surely they can?
We had a sweet potato dish with pecans and marshmellows which was miraculously not disgusting. I think the basic sweet potato mash was not itself sweet, and then the marshmellows on top were a very pretty toasted golden brown and, uh, easy to avoid.
marshmellows
Imported from Colorado?
Also much of what I've eaten today has tasted faintly rancid and no one else tastes it and I really wonder if my taste buds are off somehow. A bunch of things (but not everything) just have a foul undertaste. (Like the bite of pumpkin pie I just ate, which Jammies is cheerfully polishing off but made me shudder.)
327: There's not much to it, AFAICT. Boil green bananas (skin on) and yams together in a saucepan. When they're sufficiently boiled, take the skin off the bananas and serve.
I made turkey stock and stupidly thought I might taste it mid-simmer, and skimmed off basically pure grease and ate it, and grossed myself out for maybe an hour.
328: But in a narrative, narrated context?
And I think the text could benefit from borderline-racist dialogue maybe. "I think I see my friend Raymond place out this window. He live over 'round there, anyway." Might as waell, and saves usnreaders from having to guess exactly what class signifiers are being edited out. And what's up with "seven-up" or "seven up?"
328: That was a deliberate choice, but probably the only one I'll make.
It basically seems to serve as a starchy side-dish to counterbalance the spicier dishes such as curried goat (which they also had, although I didn't have any).
How come? Curried goat sounds delicious (and I didn't think you were a vegetarian?)
I reiterate 338.
Also much of what I've eaten today has tasted faintly rancid and no one else tastes it and I really wonder if my taste buds are off somehow.
Have you had any pine nuts lately?
How come? Curried goat sounds delicious (and I didn't think you were a vegetarian?)
It does sound delicious, and I would have tried some, but the boring answer is that they brought it out after most of the other food and I had already filled up on turkey and salmon at that point.
Whatevs, he's saying "but I ain't got a driver's license" and if the difference between that and "I ain't got no" means I'm the racist , bring it, read. The protagonist is regular-white-dude-with-privilege racist and so why deny it?
What's the exciting answer?
That I had filled up on such exotic foodstuffs as red beans and rice and green bananas and yams.
Actually Jammies just said that he found the pumpkin pie off, too. Only he ate it anyway.
And I did in fact eat that stuff too, but it was the turkey and salmon that really filled me up.
What's so hard to understand? teo wasn't trying two curry flavors with the Jamaicans.
Read cares about me! How many hot points is that toward having an inner life?
If "inner life" means "profound delusions of grandeur" then I'm all about the inner life.
So it turns out Thorn also has no idea what good writing is.
So it turns out Thorn also has no idea what good writing is.
So it turns out Thorn also has no idea what good writing is.
Some of what are thought of as yams in the US are actually a variant of sweet potato.
362: Mailing that to my sister. Thanks.
358: But if the character is racist and the narrative is racist, why whitewash it? That's what I'm saying, but kindle will only let me copy and paste to facebook or twitter and so I can't back it up yet.
Content far more embarrassing than the form.
366 > 363 also. The alligator bites the bigger number.
Sorry, text. I am just creeped our by all the Vincent sections that seem no different in tone or context than the "I" areas. I think if the Vincent narrator were closer to the actiob, we might get a view ibto how everything seems achievable when you're living but waiting for things to get better (or Kim on Real Housewives of Atlanta as I write this) but I's expect it not to be the same voice the first-year uses. I am concerned about voice and diction, not narrative, although I have no fucking clue what "Vincent" is up to on that front.
367: Because maybe racism isn't as obvious in households that aren't 3/4 black? I wouldn't know,
The alligator bites the bigger number.
Fuckin' sizist alligators.
I have no fucking clue what "Vincent" is up to on that front.
And I have no clue what you're up to, but they're all "I" areas -- it's all in first person. Aside from that I can't address the merits of what you've written, as it's incoherent.
Are there any hobbits? That's supposed to be trendy this year.
In other words, it's the same narrator telling the whole story, from his own very limited point of view. I took pains to make that really clear, as it's important to me. I wouldn't try to do first person Vincent because I don't pretend to understand his world that well.
In other words, it's the same narrator telling the whole story, from his own very limited point of view. I took pains to make that really clear, as it's important to me. I wouldn't try to do first person Vincent because I don't pretend to understand his world that well.
Text, mightn't you consider the possibility that the people who don't divine your intentions aren't just fools, and that your intentions aren't as clear as you think?
I mean, did you just ask people to read it so that we could all tell you it's wonderful?
374: I kind of want to see the Hobbit movies. While I've never been a LOtR fan (book or movies), watching The Hobbit cartoon movie was a yearly event in my childhood. Also, my brother played Bilbo in a high school drama production.
Text, I'm about to run out of battery power, but you've got a lot of first-person "I may suck as a lawyer but am an awesome human being sections" interspersed with "Vincent waited for the doctor but no one came and so he hung out there until the guards were ready to clock out and did and left him in his cell for whatever came next." If anyone thinks those are being written in the same voice, I'm happy to paypal enough for others to read the book. But it's incredibly disingenuous to think those constitute equivalent voices.
So I guess this is confusing for you, Thorn, but the whole thing is written in the first person. You can write about someone else's life from the first person, using the narrator's own personal knowledge as a basis for what's written. Thanks for your dollar.
Well, they could still all be first-personal if we take it that the third-person reporting on Vincent's doings come from the same person who says "I". Which isn't to say that it's in the same voice.
See, I can be on everyone's side.
A foot wig is good for playing a hobbit and for clearly establishing narrative voice in a novel.
381: No, the Stanley-family toes are blessed with an embarrassment of hirsuteness.
382: "these aren't written in the same voice" isn't the same as "this one is first-person and this one is third-person", text.
I'd like to know why you think they're different voices, actually. Do you still have battery power?
What is it about the Vincent sections that make them sound different than the other sections? Aside from the fact that the narrator is discussing Vincent rather than himself.
I'd like to know why you think they're different voices, actually.
Are you sure she isn't too stupid to give useful information to the great author?
I mean, if the only way we're supposed to see Vincent is through whatever files Protagonist gets, so be it. I've been clear that both my girls have major errors on their birth certificiates and it's emotionally painful to have to address that. I recognize that prison files (also part of both their histories) contain a lot of mistakes. Maybe that's too maudlin to make your narrative, but I'm trying to figure out what's so compelling about Vincent (or nothing's suppused to be since black convincts from Cabrini Green just suck even if they have intermittently loving partners?) and it shouldn't have been hard to come up with SOMETHING because I know I can manufacture stories educated white people care about because that's what I do. And maybe I should be focused on a level lower, but I think between the six kids who've been a meaningful part of my family, I've managed more than this story so far has. Sorry.
Thorn, I've got nothing against your family or their prison files. I did find Vincent to be interesting. If you thinks he sucks as a character, I don't think you should take it as a personal offense. He's probably not based on you.
My iPad says I have 3% so give me a minute. I wish copy and paste were easier. Let's say that 30% throughmit's unclear that the "Vincent" sctions are writtenfrom the narrator's perspective. And maybe he's a magician, because like I said I know where Nia's dad is locked up and have sone access to his life and story but would have no fucking clue what happens to him on any given night and am not optimistic enoght to hope his lawyer knows. Is that clear enough or do I have to get into why I thnk it's obccene that Mara's dad can't vote , because I actually think it's okay for Nia's dad, who didn't survive Cabrini Green but has other soft spots?
I really do think you should get into why it's obscene that Mara's dad can't vote.
Sorry to be prickly earlier. I was trying to get across the idea that Vincent told the narrator a few things about his life. During one of these sections, the narrator actually says that he doesn't know exactly what Vincent's home life is like. He's filling in gaps. When he talks about Vincent's life, he's a little more lyrical than when he talks about his own life because he's not just reporting facts, he's imagining some things.
394.1 He's a disenfranchised felon becase being 1K in arrears= felony in our state, which it's easy to get to if you have six kids you're not raising. I'm not saying he's a great dad, but that's some bullshit, abd with a permanent impact here.
See, and now the kindle isn't complyng at all but an editor would make it clrear it'd HIPAA and not HIPPA and thus whatever conversation is leading to anything kinky enough to make staying up worthwhile or if bedtime is more important.
I'm of the wildly unpopular belief that even currently imprisoned citizens of legal age should be able to vote.
How unpopular could it be if we both hold it, Stan?
Thorn, are you saying that he doesn't pay his child support on his six kids, so he can't vote? And that makes you upset? What state do you live in?
(not you, thorn, forgive me. i couldn't manage more than one word of engagement; this is disengagement.)
400: I don't know the details and he no longer had any financial obligations toward Mara after the termination of his parental rights, but ours (and feel free to email if you can't figure it out but truly want to) is one of the states in which being that sort of inadequate dad is sufficient for permanent disenfranchisement, which wtf?
I would think disengagement would just be not posting anything.
Lurkey, I'm too tired/drunk /low on batteries to look back at what you might have said but I can guarantee no hard feelngs. Frim my side.
70-sone percent through i'm out of battery and stand by racist/sexist/heterosexistm whether intentionally or not. Unnamed narrator has flown to Nashville and not even noticed the Parthenon, so we see the difference between liberal arts strivers and law ones.
Seriously, I'm almost convinced I'd care about this story if told from the diligen pt female perspective, but the narrator seems to suck as a roommate, lawyer, colleague, friend. I see no signs of competence anywhere and that would be deeplysad ifbhe had any awareness of it, but no.
Last comment for tonight, since I can't sleep: I apologize for the borderline-incoherent typing. I was holding Mara and typing with one hand. And I bring this up because I got online again to email Nia's CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocate) who's made me uncomfortable since day one on the job six weeks or so ago but whm I've been able to prove is flat-out lying about conversations with Nia's mom, the judge, the caseworker's supervisor, and yet with all that confirmed I have to let her come to our home and spend time with Nia unaccompanied until she's officially dismissed from the case for wrongdoing, which may not happen unetil the court date two+ months from now. And I am an educated white privileged person, and I'd be shocked if my feelings about that situation aren't clear despite what I wrote without specific emotion words.
I assume caharacter Vincent is in worse catch-22s and yet I think what I just wrote is mre compelling than what you'd get from him or from the narrator,.
I bring this up because I got online again to email Nia's CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocate) who's made me uncomfortable since day one on the job six weeks or so ago but whm I've been able to prove is flat-out lying about conversations with Nia's mom, the judge, the caseworker's supervisor, and yet with all that confirmed I have to let her come to our home and spend time with Nia unaccompanied until she's officially dismissed from the case for wrongdoing, which may not happen unetil the court date two+ months from now.
Ugh. That sucks. My sympathies.
Done with the novella and the most-maligned person is Voncent's girlfriend. The narrator has no name. I need to reread what LB said, but I do find it telling that the narrator wasn't able to parlay anything into sex, which seems like the most obvious manifesttion of whatever he's trying to deal with. I'd have had a lot more comments if I were a beta reader, but I'll say this didn't work for me at all ("girlfriend" vs. "baby mama" and simialr being key) but also it wasn't the worst book I've read this year or anything.
See, teo is sympathetic about what I just wrote about being a foster parent with no legal rights (though in being a non-Christian in an interracial lesbian relationship I think I'm worse off than the norm) and yet here's another story of what seems to be a straight white guy who can smoke pot and not expect a test to catch him and he's universal enough to not even need a name or any identifying characteristics and he's our window in the wirld of Big Law, no problem! (And do they call the "honky-taonks" in Nashville? Lee's stepdad says "bucket" is the old-fashioned term in central Oklahma, and something harder to google like that might have rung more true.) The good news is this isn't about Asperger's or psychopathy or any identifiable disorder, just a flat affect that isn't justified by a prior fraternity or familial history or anything. Not no there there, but no who.
Good night.
398
I'm of the wildly unpopular belief that even currently imprisoned citizens of legal age should be able to vote.
Another argument for the death penalty.
Fajitas are objectively worse than enchiladas because the former nearly always have bell peppers and bell peppers suck.
Finally, someone who understands my pain.
Thorn, not sure if you're feeling as freaked out in the light of day and sobriety, but I also don't understand the notion of having no interior life. I have to believe there's some confusion in terminology going on.
Yeah, sorry. Next time I have too much wine, I'll try to do something a little less cliched than argue with people on the internet about whether they have inner lives. Or maybe I'll just not have too much wine, although now having too much wateer to balance it does feel pretty good.
I was, I thought, obviously joking about the inner life thing. Not about bell peppers, which suck.
For lunch today, I packed a sandwich featuring sweet peppers, which serve as a reminder that even the shittiest bell pepper can be made edible through the magic of vinegar and sugar.
Ironically, vinegar and sugar alone are horrible tasting.
I eat bell peppers on the principle that anything that colorful has to be full of vitamins and anti-oxidants and so forth. It's like medicine. Also the crunchy texture is kind of nice. They taste like shit, though.
I'm of the wildly unpopular belief that even currently imprisoned citizens of legal age should be able to vote.
Speaking of felons, last night I arrested "female passenger".
Police got a disturbing 911 call Monday morning from the victim who said he had been stabbed and kidnapped and was inside a car's trunk. An argument over money allegedly got out of hand, leading to the incident...Police are still trying to figure out how the woman in the car was involved in everything; they say they don't know if she played a part in the initial kidnapping or if she too was a victim.
Her 100K agg kidnapping warrant I'm guessing meant they went with "played a part". Protip: if you're going to stuff a dude into your trunk at knifepoint, take away his phone. If you watch the first 15 seconds of dash cam video from this story you can see her back in Feb. attempt to ditch the cops by jumping out of the passenger side of a moving car after the tires had been spiked. Not a smart cookie.
I would like to strongly differentiate between red and orange bell peppers, which are sweet and yummy, and green bell peppers, which have highly constrained uses.
Protip: if you're going to stuff a dude into your trunk at knifepoint, take away his phone.
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u guys in a trunk also prob. stabbed orange post title hurry
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I find it convenient to outsource my inner life to unfogged.
My inner life posts from the trunk.
Inside my life it's too dark to read.
Huh, I couldn't interest anyone in speaking out against the evil of celery but I guess I'm on board for the defamation of bell peppers, which are also a menace.
You got junk in the trunk! Introspect!
(Big ups to the hip hop scientologist!)
423: Celery is horrible, but it adds flavor that can help in roasting. There's nothing wrong with it if you throw away the celery after cooking.
I'm now looking forward to Sifu's video Trapped In The Trunk, a musical rebuttal to R Kelly's Trapped In The Closet.
Fresh celery is good, especially with really hot buffalo wings. Cooked celery is meh.
Celery is fine for holding blue cheese dressing, but you shouldn't eat it.
Fuck you're a bunch of fussy eaters aren't you? Almost any Italian meat stock includes celery and carrot before you start wondering what else to put in. Also, green bell peppers are awesome in piperrada and arguably better stuffed than the red ones.
428: Right celery is structural. Eating it is like eating the gingerbread house.
Celery is fine in its soffrito/mirepoix form, as God intended. Also in fairly hefty chunks in minestrone. Celery soup is nice, too.
I largely concur with the green bell peppers, no, all other bell peppers, yes, though. Green is only fine in a few dishes.
Pwned by chris y on the Italian meat sauce.
Inside of a fajita, all peppers are the same color.
I don't think I have an inner life.
You're pregnant, heebs.
I like stuffed bell peppers, green better than the others, so fuck you all in the fucking face.
Peppers stuffed with rice, one assumes.
Celery is wonderful in all its manifestations.
I largely concur with the green bell peppers, no, all other bell peppers, yes, though. Green is only fine in a few dishes.
Time to update the list, I guess.
Meat-stuffed pepper
Full of taste
Fuck you in the fucking face.
Burma Shave
re: 438
Not as such. I quite like green peppers in certain things. They just don't work in some dishes, where the red, yellow and orange ones work better. Also, brown rice, I've come around on. The pumpkin/squash boak-family, never.
Thorn, I have no idea what you were saying, but I loved the way you said it.
439: Did somebody steal your bacon or what?
Robert Halford, I think you should pursue a life of poetry.
The only valid form of celery is Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Soda.
Ok, sometimes it's fine if it's cooked beyond recognition.
Celery salt. I'm going to go have some (on cottage cheese) right now.
You can never enter the same cheese twice.
On second though, it's probably 446 to 444 and that really isn't epistemology in a philosophical sense.
How would you know?
ought to be the title of something
Ok, sometimes it's fine if it's cooked beyond recognition.
Right, it's fine as vegetative filler in stock and stuffing and all that there kind of thing.
It's disappointing as a stocking stuffer, though.
It's telling that the Scots have a hundred words for vomit-inducing food.
re: 452
We have lots of words for improvised weaponry, and forms of violence, too.
"Haggis" the only one word that fits in all three categories.
Fair faw yer honest sonsie face, great cheiftain o' the puddin' race ...
After getting the umpteenth unbearable email from this locally-sourced gourmet market/restaurant, I really am thinking about founding some kind of armed anti-foodie resistance organization. I am so fucking sick of this food and restaurant talk -- just keep it simple, grilled meat and greens. What is the quote from Livy about the transformation of cooking from ordinary craft to "art" as the mark of the decline of the republic? Because that is totally true. Just eat animal fat, don't become obese, and shut the fuck up about what you're having for dinner.
I like my celery chopped into very small pieces, but have found the amounts of it that I want in various celery-containing recipes has been ever increasing over the years. I hardly ever make tuna salad any more because chopping up enough celery for my taste is a pain.
re: 459
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/28/lets-start-foodie-backlash
459: so people should shut the fuck up about food and listen to what you say about the fad diet they should be on?
The article linked in 461 is really good.
459: Covered in an Ask Metafilter here.
I only read locally-sourced foodie backlash stuff.
Oh wait. I am a vegetable hypocrite. I think there's somewhat recognizable celery in the cornbread stuffing my mother makes at Thanksgiving, which I could eat a whole pan of.
people should eat their gruel and be happy.
One point that article makes is that the rise of the term "foodie" and the related culture is basically concurrent with the rise of Reaganism and neoliberalism. The world really did go off a cliff after about 1975.
I don't think the foodie backlash is going to go very far if it's made up of people who are basically bleeding-heart liberals who like all the bleeding-heart liberal stuff but are annoyed because they live in one of the ten neighborhoods on earth where EXTREME bleeding-heart liberals are dominant.
Robert Halford is making lots of sense today. I'm excited about this day.
people should eat their gruel fajitas and be happy.
One point that article makes is that the rise of the term "foodie" and the related culture is basically concurrent with the rise of Reaganism and neoliberalism.
They MUST be related!
Truly, American cuisine reached its pinnacle in the '70s.
474 -- the connection is rising inequality, of course. I wonder if there's also a link between a vision of meals as primarily about conviviality and meals as primarily about consuming expensive luxury food items.
Yes, it couldn't have anything to do with the increasing numbers of women working outside the home.
Did you switch to getting bacon at the Safeway or does this just apply to other people?
I mean, a change from meals as primarily about conviviality to meals as something primarily about consuming luxury items (the province of the now-dominant foodie/gourmet, aka the glutton).
I doubt that women working outside the home has much to do with food blogging or people having orgasms over foams at El Bulli.
Women working outside the home means: 1. more meals outside the home and 2. more men cooking which leads to 1. increased attention to restaurant culture and 2. an increase in the cultural status of cooking and food.
It's not something I'm proud of, but seeing this article made me think of Mr. Burns singing "See my vest."
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Last night was End of Evangelion, for the first time, and I have been reading and thinking ever since.
It isn't my favoritist favorite best anything of its kind ever, but it is very great, and has the advantage of being recent, modern, and post-modern in a much less honest world than the classics of the past. Miss Julie (and other Strindberg, maybe Bergman, Antonioni) and Oguri Kohei's Sting of Death or Chikamatsu comes to mind. Sam Shepherd, True West. It is at least in that class.
I Need You in the archives forever. Cause it's fucking funny. PS:Official "Canon?" They lie.
If you love these two characters, and that is what the other 15 hours is for, to help you love them in spite and because of their horrible world-wrecking faults, then the scene, is among other feelings, fucking hilarious.
And of course, the last scene is bookended with the start of the television series ( Asuka's bandages are the mirror image (left eye) of Rei's in episode 1) and also bookended with the start of EoE. Shinji jerks to a naked unconscious Asuke in her hospital bed, and comes in his hand. (At the end, tears on Asuka's face. We know how AH really wanted to start his movie?) There is also a scene on a dream train with Shinji, Asuka, and Rei in the middle of the movie. (Rei is also part of this, Rei is the bullshit enabler/lover, and then the others)
Those three scenes are the point, everything else is bullshit. But that is essentially the point, that everything not yin and yang (to avoid heteronormativity, and I really do, nastily, it's about relationships not genders) is bullshit. Everything in Miss Julie is bullshit. Do we create the bullshit to avoid looking at relationships? Whatever. It is discussed in the movie (s) Shinji and Asuka come back for/to the bullshit.
Anyway. Yang hates yin, yin is disgusted by yang. Now then. Let's get in.
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There's probably some truth to 482, but I don't think it even goes 1/10th of the way towards explaining foodie-ism, which is primarily about treating food as a form of high luxury item or art, and rhapsodizing about it.
Halford: You can unsubscribe.
I'm not part of this thing, really at all, but count me in as objectively pro-orgasm. If people are getting joy out of something, let them.
There are certainly vast swaths of media that I find tiresome, and not worth the limited time I have to spend (a) with media and (b) on this earth. But really now, which is more worthy of backlash: people finding joy where they can, or curmudgeons whinging about other people finding joy where they can?
I have a purely subjective stance on orgasms, and I bring a healthy does of skepticism to all of them, as any good reporter would.
(Not that there is anything wrong with making fun of pretension. But that's different from complaining about the joy itself.)
487 -- Yeah fair enough I guess but this bullshit isn't really something I can unsubscribe from, it's pretty much omnipresent in places I hang out. And if you can't whine about annoying things here, where can you whine about annoying things.
487:I am pro-foreplay, flirting, and teasing. Orgasm is a bore, and a waste of my precious bodily fluids, what is left of them.
I find my joy in your tears, Charley. Is that okay?
I was, for a time, glad of the existence of Chowhound, which seemed to be creating the label chowhound meaning "person who thinks good food is worth seeking out since it's often around" instead of "person who makes sure it is known he has been to the new $475 prix fixe restaurant in a strip mall in Baden-Baden that you haven't and knows that foams were so last year two years ago" but it didn't catch on at all that I can tell. I think "foodie" is getting to be like "hipster", though--mostly used to describe an annoying person you haven't actually met.
I wonder how much of our joy is based in the other's pain, either in creating pain or relieving pain. Not quite the same, but both are based in power over the other, in objectifying the other into something instrumental, something we use to relieve our own pain and create our joy.
I think "foodie" is getting to be like "hipster", though--mostly used to describe an annoying person you haven't actually met.
Or when my mother-in-law applies it to me, a sort of semi-insulting way of saying I am a good cook.
My current joy is that the likelihood of my changing jobs has just increased to 75%!
Women working outside the home means: 1. more meals outside the home and 2. more men cooking which leads to 1. increased attention to restaurant culture and 2. an increase in the cultural status of cooking and food.
Something I'd add: my sense is that over the last 25-30 years goods & services have gotten relatively cheaper and health care and housing have gotten more expensive. So, while instability has increased, and median income hasn't changed much, it's still true that the average American can afford more goods & services.
There was a conversation at Thanksgiving about how the culture of gyms and personal trainers has changed in a similar way -- more people involved, and an increasingly development of specific tastes and preferences, and I think it's the same dynamic.
I like to strive for balance with my orgasms. As long as both sides are compaining, I must be doing something right.
It's also worth noting that high-end food is clearly, to some extent at least, a positional good. Part of what you're paying for isn't just the pure pleasure of the taste, but the fact that you're getting it and others aren't.
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Looking forward to seeing this at MOMA: Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde
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Foodie-ism also goes hand in hand with material items being so cheap that abundance doesn't mean squat anymore. Quality is the new quantity.
498: I don't see this at all. I mean, you can be snobbish about anything, and snobbery is a positional good -- you can't be snobbish about something unless what you have is superior to what other people have. But there's nothing specific to food that makes it positional: if I'm enjoying my pie, rather than bragging about it, it doesn't have any effect on me at all whether the neighbor's pie is better or worse.
you can't be snobbish about something unless what you have is superior to what other people have.
not without looking ridiculous. this distinction is the source of a wealth of humor.
For a while I tried, though not very hard, admittedly, to popularize the term "foodist" in opposition to "foodie". In my mind, a foodie was someone prone, as Halford described, to "treating food as a form of high luxury item or art, and rhapsodizing about it."
Whereas a foodist was someone perhaps equally obsessed with the pleasures of food, but also interested in/concerned with the ways food is produced, and therefore into issues like foodworker health & safety, sustainability, resource conservation, animal welfare, etc.
You'll find both at the farmer's market, but you're less likely to find the latter shopping at Whole Foods, or crying that some meanies are threatening the foie gras supply, for example. Of course such a person can be just as ridiculous and/or annoying, but usually more along the holier/leftier/localier-sourced than thou axis than the positional goods axis.
You don't think high end restaurants are (largely) a positional good? I'm now pretty sure you were lying about being a big firm lawyer in New York.
I quibble with this: you can't be snobbish about something unless what you have is superior to what other people have.
Snobbery is all about perceived superiority, not actual superiority. To be a snob about something there has to be some social endorsement of your snobbery, but the underlying reality can be anything at all. A lot of stuff that foodies get worked up about isn't any better than what you can get at Outback Steakhouse (to pick a random example). Also there's the fact that rarity or snob potential as often drives taste as the other way around. People eat nasty crap and love it, genuinely love it, but underneath it all is the fact that the enjoyment of the taste simply would not be there if the hoi polloi had easy access to it.
I guess I like the "foodist" idea.
Those onion bloom things are actually pretty good if you drink enough first.
507: Me too!
My popularization attempts must be working better than I thought!
Fooder would seem to be a synonym for prey.
510: Then there's the term "foodus", which I posited should be applied to anyone who goes on and on and on about bacon!Bacon!!BACON!!!1!.
And then there is reverse snobbery. I am going to go get some canned chili with Kraft cheese and Fritos. Ymmm.
And then is snobbery about snobbery. I am better than all those people who complain about other people's snobbery. It's just human nature, and unkind to judge.
510: Then there's the term "foodus", which I posited should be applied to anyone who goes on and on and on about bacon!Bacon!!BACON!!!1!.
We know all about those people.
That makes you a fonkey, McManus.
515.1: It's called a "walking taco" around here.
"Foodie" is a synonym for "Connoisseur of haute cuisine"? I thought it meant, like, a young bohemian person obsessive about food trends, as insulted in this backlash piece. How can the snobs of the upper-crust refer to themselves with such a stupid word?
A lot of stuff that foodies get worked up about isn't any better than what you can get at Outback Steakhouse
This is true only if you really limit what part of the menu you're talking about. Getting a steak with no sauce or seasoning? You'll be fine. But the sides and the more 'creative' things they do with steaks at those places (i.e., the big chain steakhouses) can be pretty bad. And it's mostly not nice cuts of steak that foodies are getting worked up about, right? Steakhouses seem mostly to be in a slightly different expensive food universe.
This reminds me of the debate over "Trotskyist" vs. "Trotskyite".
Steakhouses seem mostly to be in a slightly different expensive food universe.
Getting worked up about nice cuts of steak seems pretty emblematic of pre-"foodie" (i.e. basically all-male and status-oriented) fancy-restaurant culture.
Most of the foodies (I hate the term) I know are more interested in cooking excellent food than they are in trying out the latest restaurant. It's like a rule that one has to be into homebrewing and pickling around here. I am all for that, as long as they share.
501: But what counts as good to a foodie is as subject to trends as anything else. (e.g., pork belly, salted caramel, foams, etc.) It's not intrinsic to the food, sure, but rarity is surely part of the snobbish appeal.
521 gets it right. Enjoy your crappy iceberg and cardbord wedge tomato and shredded velveeta side salad, foodus.
And then there is reverse snobbery. I am going to go get some canned chili with Kraft cheese and Fritos. Ymmm.
This pretty much sums up my impression of Chowhound, but I have no idea if my impression is at all accurate.
"A Walking Taco for a Talking Wacko" would be a great title for a musical.
522: I was thinking of "trekkie" vs. "trekker" but sure Mr. versed-in-Russian-history.
"A Walking Taco for a Talking Wacko" would be a great title for a musical.
Obviously set in a Tex-mex joint in Waco.
I've never had a steak at the Outback. Do they age them? That's almost as important as the cut and the big sign of an actual "steakhouse".
529: don't they cover them in nasty-ass seasoning like Longhorn Steakhouse ("The Steakhose!")?
I haven't been to either the Outback or Longhorn in a dozen years. I don't know.
521: Broccoli was the thing I at the forefront of my mind when I wrote that. They do a good job with it there, and I've had worse at more expensive places. I'm sure you can get better steaks elsewhere but again, I've had worse and paid more.
have you ever tried just leaving your steak in the fridge a couple days too long and then searing it? or even just leaving it out on the counter all day before cooking. it tastes a lot like aged steak from a fancy restaurant. it would make sense that our palettes would like that taste if we ate carrion for much of our species' existence. it would also make sense that we like rib meat and are better able to consume it than the major muscle groups of large game. yes, because the veldt.
but I am a just a caveman and your modern world scares and confuses me.
One time I was out in west Texas and ordered shish kabobs at a steakhouse. They brought me 4 small steaks, probably 4 oz each, and two small chicken breasts, probably 3 oz, along with some prehistoric sized grilled vegetables, arranged on two spears.
It was possibly the most food I've ever been served at a time. Along with whatever side salad and side of fries or mashed potatoes, etc - there were definitely sides to fill up the plate.
I guess I'm not objectively pro-every orgasm after all. I'm not in favor of the rapist's orgasm. Or Snidely Whiplash's joy.
I'm far from convinced that snobbery is that big a part of foodism. It strikes me as more about devotion to particular details than competition with unseen masses.
I may not have understood the assingment.
I really do think there is a "bowling alone" story here that is interesting, though. As just a minor example, most people in my building (on certain days of the week) get food from nice gourmet cares or high-end food trucks that serve a wide variety of gourmet-ish things. They then take them back to their offices and eat them alone. 40 years ago people would have sat together in a mediocre office cafeteria or dining room. Similarly, there's been a shift from the (special) meal as focused on an excuse to bring people together -- who you had over to the dinner party -- to the special meal as primarily the opportunity for individual consumption of high-end foodstuffs.
This reminds me of the debate over "Trotskyist" vs. "Trotskyite".
Heh. I do think there's a real difference between the two populations though. This discussion reminded me of an old exchange on Bitter Greens.
To me Philpott is clearly a foodist and Leff a foodie, although Leff is a foodie of the reverse-snobbery sort. They have very different concerns and agendas when it comes to food.
I really do think there is a "bowling alone" story here that is interesting, though
This is wrong for almost all values of "here".
Trappists vs. Trapeze would make for a good comedy film.
It's been years since I've eaten in a bowling alley. Maybe the food has gotten better.
I would 1000x over prefer to get something from a delicious gourmet food cart that's slightly cheaper because of low overhead and eat it alone, in the privacy of my office with my internet on and door closed, rather than make smalltalk with collegues over crappy cafeteria food. Sign me up.
548: Me also. I used to eat lunch with colleagues but the internet fixed that problem.
"Have some brie" vs. "have a bris"
have you ever tried just leaving your steak in the fridge a couple days too long and then searing it? or even just leaving it out on the counter all day before cooking
You know who espouses this? That's right: Steve Albini.
||
I have two great suggestions for anyone who's pseud-shopping:
- Bockley Wickleheap (Via NYT)
- Citizen Saboteur (Via CIA)
|>
Similarly, there's been a shift from the (special) meal as focused on an excuse to bring people together -- who you had over to the dinner party -- to the special meal as primarily the opportunity for individual consumption of high-end foodstuffs.
What are you on about?
Also available:
-Matt Wiener
-Wry Cooter
Anyhow I have realized at this point in my life that I'm just very excitable about food. It does not matter why the food is supposed to be exciting. I will share in the excitement. Everything's locally grown? I'm excited! Everything's shipped from super far away? I'm excited! It's super delicate and fancy? I'm excited! It's enormous portions of a cheap regional specialty? I'm excited! It's a labor of love from a chef with idiosyncratic ideas? I'm excited! It's blandly corporate fast food that I have nonetheless never eaten before? I'm excited! The menu is huge? I'm excited! The menu is fixed? I'm excited!
555. ?? I thought SA was vegetarian, at least his copious food blog sounds that way.
at this point in my life that I'm just very excitable about food
And just 15-20 years away from being very excitable about defecation.
That's why he just leaves the steak in the fridge. Eventually he throws it away.
559 -- that food consumption itself which used to be thought of as a slightly distasteful pastime of gluttons, has become the primary focus of eating special meals, as opposed to the meal as primarily an opportunity for sociability.
561. Consider taking a food trip with your friend Steve Coogan.
halford's just mad that going to restaurants and dinner parties make him cheat on his diet.
563: I feel like they go together.
The mashed potatoes turned out well. Thanks for all the encouragement last week.
For the past two-three years, and especially after this weekend, my preoccupation with food has been getting the quantities right. I think I spent my twenties on how to cook (tasty but not fancy) foods, and my thirties on getting food to come out at the same time plus other details of hosting (people want to drink things too!!1!). Now I want to make the right amount of food. Everyone gets exactly the amount they want and there's not a single brussel sprout left over.
I think halford is 470ing all over the place.
as opposed to the meal as primarily an opportunity for sociability
In the 1950s, people used to die of starvation because they were too friendly to stop talking.
567: yup. Eating is no longer a slightly distasteful pastime because American food is no longer universally shitty.
I thought SA was vegetarian, at least his copious food blog sounds that way.
Are you kidding? He's always on about aged steak and "team pork" (bacon, sausage) and various other meaty things he's eaten. At least the last time I looked at his food blog he was; maybe he's changed. But I doubt it.
P.S. H/t to sral for the CIA thing, which is awesome and you should all read it. The academics will especially enjoy the section on organizations and conferences.
I wonder if anybody else here obsessively read Calvin Trillin's food books as a kid? I grew up believing that Kansas City was some kind of transcendent food mecca.
Props to text for self-publishing, by the way. Actually putting something out for others is a big deal.
Also, 569: Getting portions right and also getting quality just good enough to attract people at the right price (rather than as good as possible) are indicators of a professional cook.
574: The first time I looked at his food blog I thought, "It sure seems like he's a vegetarian, but there is no way on earth that he's a vegetarian." So I spent a bunch of time scrolling and eventually found something with meat in it. But it took a minute!
575: "Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion especially when confronted by government clerks."
My poor sweet boyfriend. I don't think he'd ever hosted real meals before we got together. He's a good cook, but hadn't thought to have people over. Not a couple months in, we had a dinner with a guest list of 20-40 people (depending on whether Chris brought an extra twenty). (Not sit-down, but burritos with lots of stuffs to assemble. For an occasion like that, I'm resigned to leftovers. I can't get a tight quantity control on such a loose guest list.)
After that, nothing phases him. Dinner for eight on an afternoon's notice? Fine. Brunch for four. No problem. Plans for 18 for next week, easy-peasy. He has been a real trooper.
That's right: Steve Albini.
do you think he'll be my Facebook friend?
I should look that up. I noticed someone here writing "fazes" and mentally correcting it. But it is just as likely I'm wrong. I will know in about fifteen seconds!
You are wrong, but I also looked it up before correcting you, just to make sure.
Hey, look at that. I will say "daunts" for "fazes" now that I know. For the record, I don't make the reciprocal error of thinking a faze is a phase.
566 is awesome. Lee and I got more out of that than probably anything else we've watched together.
I'm not going to read back and see how bad it was, but sorry for any/all incoherence. If you read text's book, I don't recommend just drinking wine like water the whole time. Or if you do, don't stop to post comments all the time and keep drinking through that. I probably stand by everything I said, though, basically that I found the tone off-putting and wanted to edit the hell out of it and didn't think the plot made up for lack of depth in protagonist, though it's probably about how life is so boring and meaningless for people with no depth that what actually happens is immaterial. I don't regret reading it or anything, but it's absolutely not the sort of story I prefer.
Also, "trouper" not "trooper". It's actors rather than soldiers who are up for anything.
Good lord. That one I went back and forth on. No more typing for me.
If you read text's book, I don't recommend just drinking wine like water the whole time. Or if you do, don't stop to post comments all the time and keep drinking through that.
On the contrary, I would like everyone to do this. That way you can write that you don't like it without ever having to be coherent as to why, then the next morning tell everyone how drunk you were, but that you were probably right, who knows, ha ha, drunk blogging is funny.
Just pay me a dollar and write about my book in this space.
ha ha, drunk blogging
Blottogging.
I am grateful that my son has been exposed to many of these concepts by helping his mother run a farmer's market.
He has also been fortunate to live in an area where we can get a variety of foods: Indian/Pakistan food, Vietnamese food, Thai, Eithiopian, sushi.
582: No, Megan's right. I tried the maximum setting, but it didn't even slow him down.
592: Surely not. I'm not even going to bother looking it up, I'm so sure.
'He's no trouper," he kept yelling. 'The kid's no trouper. Send him home!'"
Possibly apocryphal WC Fields story where he spiked Baby LeRoy's bottle.
"He's only complained near constantly about the relative size of his dressing room. He's been a real trouper."
501: Speaking of pie, I made the recipe you linked to for pecan pie, LB, and it was great. Thanks!
The truth seems to be that "trooper" and "trouper" are similarly-pronounced words with a similar meaning ("like a trooper"; with energy, endurance, or enthusiasm; as, to work like a trooper.) So I advise not caring that much.
Hasn't Albini written songs about how much he hates vegetarians? Maybe one that he recorded with Rapeman?
601: So I advise not caring that much.
Right, time better spent obsessing and writing about food.
Fascinatingly, per the dictionaries (excluding the goofy fake one Halford is using) LB is right, but per actual usage LB is wrong, wrong wrong.
So I advise not caring that much.
You think I'll let it go you're mad
You've got another thing comin'.
per actual usage LB is wrong, wrong wrong.
This is a Hone Truth.
So I advise not caring that much.
New mouseover text GOP slogan?
This thing seems to get it right.
Really though my mind is totally blown. I had no idea.
608: oho! I tried a bunch of varieties that had roughly the pattern in 604 but that seems like an important one.
To further explain 609, even on the fussybutt asshole dictionary definitions, "trooper" seems to mean "courageous" whereas "trouper" means "stalwart, show must go on." So in 99% of cases either usage will be "correct" though with a slightly different emphasis, and obviously "trooper" is winning the usage wars, quite rightly as no one remembers what a "trouper" is these days.
Is "trouper" at all a commonly used word, other than in the idiom "be a real trouper"? Perhaps it was back when acting troupes had higher relative presence and visibility?
I remember what a trouper is! Stop trying to keep me down, Halford!
613: trooper is not actually defined as meaning that in fussybutt asshole (which is to say "real") dictionaries. (Note in that dictionary it is defined (3) as meaning "trouper", presumably because confusion over the original idiom has become so endemic (per jms's curve in 608)).
604: "Like a trooper" doubtless includes much static in the form of instances of the usage "Swears like a trooper". There may be other "[verbs] like a trooper" idioms too, but that's the one I'm familiar with (although I think I've only heard it from Commonwealth types).
616 -- Per 609, it's so defined in the OED.
(Neither dictionary.com nor Oxford have anything like meaning 3 from m-w, by the way. They all stick to meanings similar to "cavalry soldier" or "mounted policeman". So I think M-W is coming down pretty far on the descriptivist side of things.)
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper/
Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper
618: not exactly? Not knowing much about how the OED is structured, it appears to be listed as a colloquial use (which is completely consonant with it being a misuse) not as an actual definition.
Surely "like a trouper" is also a colloquialism.
On a related note, while researching this important question I learned that the ABBA song isn't merely an instance of amusingly Scandinavian ESL, it actually refers to these things.
What I want to know is, who is the next person who will insult my book without trying to make sense, neither disowning nor supporting their criticisms?
Hmm. Trooper, in the expression of "he swears like a trooper ;" is as troppe-heer, q. e. the head of a gang,
"An Essay on the Archaiology of Popular English Phrases and Nursery Rhymes" - 1834
620: By the 1970's, those same troopers cost six million dollars.
Today, $6 million wouldn't get him out of the ICU before you start adding bionic parts.
Oh wait everybody, we're not paying enough attention to text.
Orange post title time!!!
623. Carbon arc lamps generate a lot of heat. I used to work at a place where one of those was the way to expose and set the emulsion on silkscreens. And that's why the book is weak.
Super duper!
With a walking strutting Taco.
632: No, such excitement is 15-20 years away.
575: the CIA thing is indeed great. I had a plan a couple of years ago to republish it with a bit of padding as a management textbook. The idea being that you read it and then look round your office to see how much of that sort of thing is happening anyway. "Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People".
Surely "like a trouper" is also a colloquialism.
It's an idiom.
Fine, "trouper" in the sense of "stalwart" as opposed to "actor" is also clearly a colloquialism.
FWIW, I'm not sure why Sifu thinks that the OED is leaving it open that "a brave or stalwart person" is a misuse of "trooper". Strictly, it means "a horse soldier", but colloquially, it means, among other things, someone who swears a lot, or a brave and stalwart person. Or someone who eats a lot, apparently, or lies a lot.
After all, the OED defines "colloquial" as "Of words, phrases, etc.: Belonging to common speech; characteristic of or proper to ordinary conversation, as distinguished from formal or elevated language. (The usual sense.)", which does not indicate that such common speech is using its words incorrectly.
There is similarly little difference between a mini coupe and a mini cooper.
I don't know what the OED says, but if you go around using "trooper" in place of "liar" you aren't going to be understood by anyone. I don't think it means glutton either.
"Like a trouper"/"like a trooper" actually doesn't bother me much -- the actor version is clearly the original, and the soldier version is a homonymization (or whatever you call it), but they both make sense. I only corrected Megan on it because I thought piling on after Sifu was funny.
641: Who are you, and what have you done with LizardBreath?
642: come on it's right there in her name. It's like you've never even read David Icke.
641: It was a very nice catch. I was jealous.
640: but that is in the context of the colloquialism "lies like a trooper", which I think people would understand.
No one thinks that "rug" means "liar", but everyone understands "lies like a rug".
644: jealous like a rug trooper!
jealous like a rug trooper
Homophobic and anti-military!
I dunno, if someone said "lies like a trooper," I'd probably imagine a soldier lying down, aiming his gun at something.
Don't watch apo's 632. Watch this.
(Previously linked, but I'm not R'ingTFA to find it.)
652: Everyone thinks theirs doesn't stink.
I can't decide if it should be "theirs" (following "its") or "their's".
What I want to know is, who is the next person who will insult my book without trying to make sense, neither disowning nor supporting their criticisms?
You know, I've been having a completely suck ass (couple of) day(s). Reading your book and being an unrelenting bitch about all its flaws might make me feel better. But my follow-through is atrocious, so no promises.
Now that Di Kotimy has done as expected, who's next?
The only funny part of Super Troopers is when the stoners are pulled over by the cop, and then the cop drives off and another cop pulls them over, and they start freaking out and wheedling "I'm already pulled over. I can't pull over any further."
Now that text has commented as expected, what next?
Now that text has commented as expected, what next?
pizza party?
658 is correct. Also: http://deadspin.com/5947408/falcons-safety-thomas-decoud-played-the-meow-game-during-an-interview-on-sportscenter
Fine, text, I just read your novella a second time. It's very sad. I mean, the protagonist doesn't seem clear on whether he's miserable or would prefer to be be happier, but reading about him and his world makes me sad. I still think just about everything about Vincent and his family rings false. As chris y or someone who read the excerpt said, there are moments of understated humor. I was not trying to be an unrelenting bitch and actually think I relented a lot. I'm sorry if nothing I said made sense, but you probably don't want my input anyway since we clearly have such different perspectives on how a story like this would work best.
It was meant to be sad, so that's good. I don't expect the book to agree with everyone's idea about how the world works or how one should behave in it. The narrator is one person and Vincent is one person. Neither of them are meant as stand-ins for large segments of the population.
I guess I read differently than most people in that I don't ask a book to confirm my ideas about the world, only that the world it presents be consistent.
On the whole I get the idea that you liked the book but are iffy on me, and frankly that's aces.
I guess I read differently than most people in that I don't ask a book to confirm my ideas about the world
to
On the whole I get the idea that you liked the book
Holy crap is anybody else ready for this whole pathetic spectacle to end?
Are you about to finally unveil the doomsday robot?
At least that would make a good story.
What should I say? I'm glad you didn't like the book if your only complaint is that it doesn't support your preconceived notions about the world? That's what I want a book to do.
Sifu, I have to say you are my least favorite person here, even below Robert Halford. And I'm pretty sure McManus was onto something.
Let's rank everybody by how much we like them!
670: oh, really not your fault. Actually I thought the drunkblogging was kind of great.
675: totally agree. More drunk blogging from the saintly unfoggers, please.
Oh Von Wafer, don't you know I can never stay cross with you?
Your preconceived notion about the world is that people other than the narrator have inner lives. What this book presupposes is ... maybe they don't.
664: Oh man, I hope you didn't think my use of the "unrelenting bitch" phrase was directed at you or anything, Thorn.
678:That's what I figured about the "despicable."
Wafer, in Haraway's battle between Cyborg and Goddess, has squatted in worship mode, and thinks he is a feminist.
I doubt there are any fucking saints around here, or even many who will admit to ambitions toward beatitude.
There are, OTOH, many drones, clowns, courtiers, and jesters servicing princesses.
Grandma, why do you think the book presupposes that non-narrator people don't have inner lives?
Is the idea that any book that stays within a single perspective presupposes that other perspectives don't exist? That's an interesting theory, one to which I don't subscribe.
Donna Haraway against essentialism
"Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females"
(Herein lies part of the critique of Miyazaki, incidentally)
jesters servicing princesses
Hey-o!
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jesters and the clowns ... when they all did tricks for you
682.last: I'm a data analyst myself. Where does that fit?
I'm down-rating anyone who feels the need to correct the lyric in 688.
689: The only thing necessary in the end is to keep an accurate accounting of the dead.
I doubt there are any fucking saints around here, or even many who will admit to ambitions toward beatitude.
There are, OTOH, many drones, clowns, courtiers, and jesters servicing princesses.
I class myself as a drone. I vary between the "learned and avuncular ex-Contact" on good days to the "psychotically anti-social Special Circumstances reject" on bad days.
691 see 163. Long thread
Been through more accountants than keyboardists.
Been through more accountants than keyboardists.
Isn't it the drummers that are supposed to keep dying?
and jesters servicing princesses.
Somehow I never see the job applications for this on craigslist.
You have to look under the special services provided by heirbnb.com.
This review seems aggressively mean-spirited. (Unless of course you had first emailed text and said: I can review the book, but the review will be harshly negative. And he said sure, please do, I'd like to hear your honest thoughts and anyway all publicity is good publicity. If that happened, then of course it's not mean-spirited.)
I like the cover of the book. I have not read it.
Knowing LB, I assumed that urple's parenthetical was the case.
That's the case. I have no problem with a mean-spirited or incompetent review, and I knew I was taking both risks in my first email. Y'all should buy my book.
699 violates the sanctity of off-blog communication.
This review seems aggressively mean-spirited.
Yeah, except it really doesn't. I mean, it well might be wrong -- and LB has made it clear that she'd like people to argue with her (quelle surprise!) -- but it comes nowhere near entering the realm of aggressively mean-spirited reviews. I stand by what I said in 122 and 123.
Shorter 702: No, it doesn't. Have you ever thought of trying to support your statements with actual reasoning, VW? It would open up a whole new world for you.
701: Well, there was also the on-blog badgering:
LizardBreath, don't you have a mean and nasty book review to be writing?
I hope this doesn't mean that my review will be delayed.
Oh come now, we have low standards for badgering these days, JP. That was more like being a rascally chipmunk.
699 confirmed the accuracy of 698, thus violating sanctity.
LB, I'm sorry if I ever violated your sanctity.
But we all know I write excellent prose, so any review indicating that I needed an editor was prima facie bad faith. You might say that I misuse commas or that the prose was too stripped down. You might say that the story was too boring, too obviously autobiographical, or that you just didn't feel anything for these characters. If that's all you'd said, I probably wouldn't have got any extra sympathy out of your review. But as is I'm pretty sure it sold more copies than I'd been able to manage up to this point.
You might say that the characters were immature, that I had nothing new to say, that the humor was infantile, the style derivative. But it's clean prose and that's apparent to anyone who clicks on the link. I must have pissed you off really badly at some point, and I was probably at fault, so sorry for that.
710: Not so much my sanctity, as the sanctity of the off-blog continuum generally. Which is now less sanctified, and it's all your fault.
711.1: Awesome.
But LB is not a pro-fessional book reviewer, Von Wafer, so all the stuff about how she "took seriously the writer's aims, took seriously the genre from whence such a project emerged, discussed why, specifically, she didn't like the book, and did all of the above with a fair amount of flair" is basically irrelevant.
"There are many books that can be read. Here, let me spit upon one of them."
706: The context of 705.last being that the reviewer was posting about the impingement of work on her holiday, counts at least as a hedgehog if not a badger. Or per 709 & 713, LB can easily defend herself.
Not to claim unassailable authority, text, but I review books as part of my job. And as I said above when it seemed like people might begin piling on LB, her review seemed thoughtful and fair to me. If you didn't like it, that doesn't surprise me. Were I you, I wouldn't have liked it either. But I would have been glad that my work received such a careful reading. If you don't know enough about how books are usually reviewed to know that I'm being serious about that, well, fair enough.
Also, learning that your return wasn't just because of mental health issues (what better reason to return to unfogged after a long absence!) but a kind of marketing campaign really didn't surprise me. Nor did your gratuitous allusion to bob's most disgusting moment at unfogged (now that's saying something!). You seem like a pretty small person, to be honest. Now if you want me to reason that out for you more thoroughly, I'm afraid I'll have to decline. I'm going to return to ignoring you.
Come on doomsday robot, where are you??
714: she's kind of the reviewer of record for this place, urple, and she does a better job at it than most pros do. That was my point. If you want to dismiss that as irrelevant, so be it.
718: Are you a caveman or a pussy? This is nature read in tooth and claw.
... but then again. what will teo think of us?
What I was trying inartfully to say in 714 is that all those features may make it a great book review (which, I don't disagree, btw), but they don't make it not mean-spirited. 699, however, makes it not mean-spirited, so all is still well with the world.
722: so all is still well with the world.
... now about that plumbing.
722: ah, okay. I had seen text bugging LB in the comments about reviewing his book, so I figured he had asked her about it off-blog as well.
711 is the sort of thing I would say.
Full disclosure: part of the reason I figured that text had asked LB about reviewing his book is that I've done the same thing regarding my own book. When she reviews it, I anticipate that she'll either hate it or be bored to tears. But I'm still interested in what she has to say, so I'm having a copy sent to her.
Re: 709
Fwiw, stoating is a Scots word. Used as an adjective to describe something as excellent. Something can also be a stoater. Which would be good.
It also refers to a particular kind of percussive or bouncing movement, or a type of gait or motion. With derivative slang, like 'Stoat the baw.' The folk explanation of which is that bouncing a ball (stoating a baw) is similar to the sinister but avuncular patting of a child's head.
712.last: Honestly, you haven't. You were annoying when you reappeared in trollbot mode, but that settled down fast and you reverted to normal abrasiveness, which I'm all for. Any errors or failures of interpretation in the post were straightforward bad taste on my part, rather than anything else.
I am glad to hear it's driving sales.
So a stoat-the-baw is a paedophile.
I recall reading the first couple of hundred comments on this thread and thinking to myself, wow, I mean just wow, look at that, I wonder what text is gonna say when he shows up in comments here; then a hundred or so more comments on and I'm thinking, I hope text wasn't too hurt or put off by LB's review and that's why he's not showing up in comments here. Now, well now I don't think those things anymore.
727: Oh, I know she's the reviewer of record. Buried somewhere in the archives she's got an open invitation to read and review anything anyone sends to her (which I think she intended as an offer for people who had written books themselves, but which I clarified with her was actually a valid offer even to review books written by third parties, if someone's willing to buy them for her and send them to her, which now with e-readers the "send them to her" part is even simpler; I think she must enjoy reviewing books, to make an offer like that, although I suspect if too many people took her up on it she might ultimately retract it); my point was that, having agreed to review a book written by a commenter, and having then read it and hated it, I'd think she owed the commenter an email along the lines of the parenthetical in 697--just publicly dropping a negative review on someone who bears some resemblance to a loose acquaintance seems harsh.
that settled down fast and you reverted to normal abrasiveness
All the better to sell books to the rubes, apparently.
The two comments linked in 705 went right over my head when I previously saw them, if I ever previously saw them which I quite possibly didn't, but in context they're hilarious.
Come on doomsday robot, where are you??
I too long for this.
But could this help in the meantime? Giant Robot Tarantula.
I have a young niece who asked for this for Christmas.
733: Unless more people read this blog than I think, that's not a plausible financial motivation.
Is it just me or does that look more like a giant robot black widow?
732: again, ah, that makes sense. In my world, though, if you write a book and have it sent it out for review, you do so knowing that the reviewer may rain abuse down up you.
OT: Where the hell is the CIA thing that sral posted that is referenced in 575, I remember seeing it at the time (is it actually in another thread) but I can't find it now.
There was a conversation at Thanksgiving about how the culture of gyms and personal trainers has changed in a similar way -- more people involved, and an increasingly development of specific tastes and preferences, and I think it's the same dynamic.
Made a similar comment the other day. More small industrial space going to crossfit gyms instead of small engine repair. I don't think I like where this is going.
736: oh god I hope it's not financial.
739: 2nd link in 557 in this thread.
Based on this thread, I would like to see all of us taken to our rightful destination by a just and vengeful God, but I'll settle for a bloodthirsty doomsday robot.
711 and 712 seem a fair enough capture of the range of things a reader might say about the book; text doesn't seem to me to be a wide-eyed writer in need of hand-holding.
As for the felt desire to sell copies of the book, well, I know musicians who carry copies of their CDs around and whip them out at every occasion. (Weird behavior! This is just a dinner party / get-together / house-warming party!) I don't think text is doing that.
all those features may make it a great book review (which, I don't disagree, btw), but they don't make it not mean-spirited
By these standards, you can't be critical of a book without it being "mean-spirited." That's just silly.
By these standards, you can't be critical of a book without it being "mean-spirited." That's just silly.
No, you just can't be publicly critical of a book written by an acquaintance, unless it's part of your job or your professional responsibility to be critical of these things, or someone asks you your opinion about it, or something similar. E.g., the limiting case: if my wife wrote a book (which she hasn't) and asked me to post a review on amazon, and I agreed and then without warning posted a scathing one-star review (even a thoughtful and honest and well-written review!), that seems assholish. This isn't that case, exactly, but it's also not just a professional book reviewer (or an academic reviewer, or whatnot) just doing their job. It's somewhere between.
*Again, all of this is purely hypothetical in light of 699.
557: Sir K is totally my secret sister! I thought the exact same thing when I read the NYT article.
Halford, I suspect you are confusing status and industry with era. Well-paid knowledge workers with professional-class jobs might be eating gourmet food truck lunches, but I don't think everyone is.
It wasn't very long ago that I was working in a small office where pretty much everybody hated their jobs (they were lawyers but not working as lawyers). We did nothing whatsoever for lunch beside get our food from one of three mediocre places, or heat up food from home, sit around the lunch table, and diligently wait the entire hour before returning to work.
And, since this is the food thread, can I gripe? Apparently Arizona does not allow shipments of organic fruit from out of state. ANNOYING.
which she hasn't
That you know about. [ Quickly hides copy of Fifty Shades of Bean Thing ]
748 was me. And I still stand by my endorsement of VW's 122 & 123.
I'm kind of bummed that all my writing is ghostwriting these days and I can't send anything to LB for dissection.
727: If is suitable for Christmas giving to someone who isn't a historian or Jewish or limping?
S/b "Is it suitable". Also, the person I'm thinking of does limp. It's been years, so I just forget about it.
People are doing so much standing by things these days.
753: because the limping makes it hard to move away, you mean?
Oh this is so much tedium. The review was in bad faith, but I like LB, and I'm glad I sent her that email, whatever the outcome.
I don't know what Von Wafer reviews, or for whom, but I doubt I'd take much stock in that publication.
Kim Jong-il standing by things.
755: Oh this is so much tedium.
But tomorrow, fajita day on the blog!
I'm not sure why! It's a compelling thing: standing by it. And yet ... and yet.
And I didn't come back here to sell a book, I came back to insult people. Then I thought that I should send LB my book, put her crazy response on Facebook, and sell more copies. But that only came to me later.
Is it really JP? I'll stay late for that.
755: text, I'm pretty sure Von Wafer reviews non-fiction; it might be a different thing from reviewing fiction/literature. Confidential to text: I'd say you should worry not; don't be off-put.
what will teo think of us?
Do you really have to ask?
Anyway, since we're already violating the sanctity of off-blog whatever all over the place, I can confirm that text really did link to LB's review from his Facebook page.
But if you're going to actively try to piss people off, you're on your own, obviously.
Apparently Arizona does not allow shipments of organic fruit from out of state.
Oh man, Arizona is insane about fruit. When I was a kid they used to stop you at the border driving in and ask if you were carrying any fruit. (They don't seem to do that anymore, or at least it's never happened to me as an adult.) They apparently think they have a major fruit industry that needs vigorous protection from outside threats.
I think things that Arizona is not insane about would make for a very short list.
762: I guess he'll pretend to not give us the benefit of the doubt on rhetorical questions.
767: True, but of all the insane things about Arizona I think their fruit-protectionism is probably the most hilarious/least depressing.
765: I remember that also. It was them and Canada that cared about our fruit. Canada seemed to have the better excuse, being a separate country and all.
What in the hell have you done to the apes!?
You blew them up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
I know musicians who carry copies of their CDs around
Come off it, parsimon. No serious musician puts out an album these days except on wax (for the cool kids) and digital download (for the normal people with iPods).
765: used to have that frequently between Oregon and Califonia. One time, either just to mess with me or because they didn't know which fruits were contraband, my folks had me eat a big load of bananas-so they wouldn't go to waste. Well they sure did. A few miles down the road.
I'm assuming 772 was a misdirected text until proven otherwise.
One time, either just to mess with me or because they didn't know which fruits were contraband, my folks had me eat a big load of bananas-so they wouldn't go to waste
Sometimes being a parent seems like it must be pretty amazing.
I am definitely looking forward to the mess-with-head opportunities (and SMBC has given me many bad ideas), but there's a lot of bootstrapping involved.
Bad ideas and bootstrapping sounds too much like my job.
775: It's possible that my experience is outdated -- from like 5 years ago. ? I thought it was weird myself, but I confess I bought a CD from the musician at the house party after he performed, and I liked his music, so.
I just don't understand the Arizona thing. How do they sell organic fruit in supermarkets, then? Isn't it the same kind of risk?
781: I was (for the most part) funnin' you. Because this thread seemed like it needed more funnin'.
783: I thought you were. I bet you don't whip out your CDs every whichaway, though.
751-52: it won't be out in time for the holidays, you antisemite, but that's not really any loss, as the subject matter doesn't really lend itself to the Christmas spirit (though it's not entirely out of step with the story of Hanukkah). Personally, I'm going to wait for LB's review before I decide whether or not to buy it.
It occurs to me to try to dig up LB's review of felix's book. Pretty sure she loved the hell out of that one.
It occurs to me, but then I don't do it.
So VW, there's hope, as long as your book is a crazy steampunk fantasy novel.
755
... The review was in bad faith ...
You think she actually liked your book?
And now felix is big-time enough to avoid stupid painted covers!
But if you're going to actively try to piss people off, you're on your own, obviously.
Oh come on, I'd never do that. Nor do I want to be all on my own. Was this all a big surprise that I ruined?
I didn't mean to insult LB by mentioning off-blog communique. We all have regrets, but sending those emails isn't one of them.
James Shearer! I thought you'd gone back to 1961 or somefing.
All I'm saying wrt this review is that my prose is beautiful, as anyone can see. I know the book's flaws and its strengths and the post reads as though I pissed off LB something fierce, I don't know when.
792: I hear that VW's book kills.
Has anybody here written an interesting book lately? Now that the Kindle is around, I've upped the number of books I give for the holidays and I haven't started looking yet.
794
... and the post reads as though I pissed off LB something fierce, ...
Actually the scary thing is, she was obviously trying to be nice.
791: I don't follow. I meant that saying that you came back in order to insult people is an exercise in trying to actively piss people off.
For the off-blog communiques, that's just a joke around here these days: I doubt very much that you insulted LB by revealing them.
James, the scary thing is that I don't know whether you sincerely believe that or anything else.
Parsimon, I was hoping you'd explain some more jokes for me. Maybe every time someone makes a joke and you find it, you could do a write-up?
Sorry, it's a weakness of mine. I can't read you very well. You're on your own.
801: oh come on, parsimon. what if I ask you to review my next one? it'll be coming out later this week.
I get prickly when my emails are considered a joke.
793: I will gladly join Halford in burning that place to the ground.
Well maybe I didn't miss you that much. The book could have been fairly criticized, but I figured it would be unfairly criticized, to my advantage, and I was right. I wish all the very best and regret no emails whatsoever, even drunk ones and bizarre ones I may have forgotten and then remembered.
good night read. people do have strange reactions.
798: That's how I read it, but "trying to be nice" is a common (though not predominant) style in the genre of hatchet jobs. Like that nice lady who reviewed the Olive Garden and was pleased to be able to report that the food was warm and the portions were large.
Ah, here it is:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/231419/
Although I don't think LB's review is in that category, because she uses the phrase "not good" repeatedly.
Benquo, any chance you'd actually read the book and then write what you think about it?
Well if you do and post your review in a public forum, I'll reimburse your dollar. I don't do paypal -- you'll have to give me an address.
I knew there would finally be a moment when blog commenter mental illness stopped being fascinating and started being scary, and I think we've reached that point for me. Adios amigos, at least for a while.
All I ask is that urple fill us in on the apes.
Sorry to be overly cryptic, JP--772 to 767.
So, am I alone in suspecting the book itself (well, along with the demand for a review) was an elaborate (and successfully executed) exercise in trollery? Or has that already been covered at Standpipe's blog?
824: I think 819 is closer to the mark.
I'm not scared of Halford even if he is living on bacon wrapped carrion.
I'm not quite sure who ate the jam off Halford's cake.
823: (Not directly.)
Evidently not. But since it does not seem to be that there is any kind of ongoing urple/ape interaction, never mind.
831: Perhaps you can discover an entirely novel urple/ape interaction?
830. "Who ate the jam off her/is cake?": Northern Irish expression meaning "Why has s/he got such a face on?*"
*Having a face on: mainly northern English expression meaning throwing a public sulk.
825 gets it right. I wonder if there's backstory to 819.
I assume text is standing outside of Halford's window.
But cake without jam has fewer carbs, so I figure Halford wouldn't mind.
"Who pissed in his/her cereal/Cheerios/Post Toasties?" is probably the closest American equivalent.
835: something like that, right.
Now if a commenter named "word" shows up ... well, that would be a thing.
I assume text is standing outside of Halford's window.
This is Sergeant Sacker. Listen to me. We've traced the texts... they're coming from inside the house. Now a squad car's coming over there right now, just get out of that house!
Well, I am utterly sick of my pseud, and Bockly Wockbottom lacks a certain dignity, so.
841: Bockly Wockbottom lacks a certain dignity, so.
word
re: 833
One Scottish equivalent would be when someone is described as 'torn faced'.
'She's a hackit torn-faced cow.' [for example]
cows have pretty faces but are dull. that's where the expression comes from.
I find the comment references in this thread baffling.
urple, you strike me as a cow connoisseur.
841: Comments have been re-numbered after the fact.
Comments are sold by weight, not volume. Some settling may have occurred during shipping.
Oh, I forgot. Voldemort was here, trying to have a civil conversation.
836: I always heard "Wheaties."
Definitely mount a spirited defense of read, you fucking schmuck.
849 not, as one might imagine, to smearcase.
His name is 'Bockly Wockbottom' but it's pronounced 'Wheaties'.
Definitely mount a spirited defense of read, you fucking schmuck.
Sure, why not. How did you find this blog, Sifu?
Dignity is, like bitterness, something that comes in quantities.
849: I was about to cite this as evidence for what's now 819. But upon further reflection, it is equally supportive of now 814. It's a very challenging question. Of to turn up the heat on my cannellini beans of death!
Dignity is, like bitterness, something that comes in quantities.
But there's still no way to turn it purple.
why would you have to turn it purple when it already comes that way?
So, am I alone in suspecting the book itself (well, along with the demand for a review) was an elaborate (and successfully executed) exercise in trollery?
I've said before that brilliant comment moderation is the unique strength of Unfogged. I've been fascinated to watch text mount such a powerful challenge, and intrigued by the response. It'll be interesting to see where this ends up.
858: Or the pretentious faux-French version, "Plew-seff Bong."
But there's still no way to turn it purple.
What if it's a people-eater's dignity?
It'll be interesting to see where this ends up.
I'll bet you one amazon review that it ends up with at least one additional bizarrely negative and incompetent hack job. That hack job will write a review and the review will drive additional sales. Then we have some coffee.
Has anyone yet called my book racist? That'd probably help things.
866:I thought somebody already did.
They apparently think they have a major fruit industry that needs vigorous protection from outside threats.
They do. Citrus is very big in AZ, but not as big a CA or FLA. They are trying to prevent the spread of Mediterranean fruit flies and other specific types of disease.
I thought somebody already did.
Well can they do it again? It also causes blood to rush to the genitals and leads the youth astray.
868: Yeah, I knew that, actually. I'm just not convinced it's a major enough industry to warrant the enormous efforts the state makes to protect it. But I'm far from an expert on the issue.
813: Nah, giving out my address to an internet stranger with an unknown agenda and something to sell isn't worth it for $1. But I'd accept a receipt for a $1 donation to Givewell or Against Malaria Foundation as reimbursement. Would that work for you?
If so, then I am not unlikely to read it & write a review.
I am just a jokey fellow who likes attention, benquo, but I understand your wariness. I'll give a donation to Against Malaria. Do you have an email address appropriate for that?
Done - and a review will be forthcoming once I've gotten around to reading it.
Oh, and my name in 874 links to my email.
Now go get a couple bottles of wine and live-blog this shit, Benquo.
Let's everyone change our pseuds to random three-letter sequences and review text's book.
I found the excerpt on Amazon boring in a way that seemed unlikely to be fruitful. Also the prose was not great. On the basis of the excerpt, LB's review seems pretty much correct.
also, buy the book if you're going to review in this thread. tell me beforehand and I'll donate to a charity of your liking.
at least making an attempt at taste and intelligence is also a good idea. i don't have the means or inclination to track anyone down, so if you want to issue a lazy review you ought to at least post your real fake name and let everyone here know you did it. thanks!
I tried to read the excerpt a while ago but it was so flat and toneless that I quit pretty quickly. It does read just like text's comments, I'll give it that.
I'm just throwing this out there. Do you think that tone might have been a deliberate choice, random coward?
877: Sadly, I only required one bottle of wine and am now sad about having given in on the trollfood front. I was weak! And drunkish, but weak first. I'm still afraid to go back and reread what I wrote for fear of being so humiliated I never come back here. I mean, I remember what I wrote, but possibly not in a way squirrels can understand. And I was trying way too hard to be nice,
889: psssh that doesn't even rate as far as embarrassing things to post on the internet while btocked. I should know.
If you want to give me an actual excuse to write insulting blog comments, I'm going to take it. People who use 'meh' in place of argument have girlfriends who perform fellatio on other people. And sometimes they wear hair extensions.
Thorn, are you drunk again? It's 6:27 pst.
Yes Sifu, I am reminded of the time when Bob McManus suggested that you hit women, and you freaked out in a way that convinced everyone that you probably did.
come at me, loved ones. tell me why my prose doesn't meet your standards.
Even my cold cereal doth taste like wormwood.
Thorn I take it you are drunk, as it is now 6:31 pst. Are you going to take these comments back in the a.m.?
text, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?
I actually enjoyed the excerpt - I felt like the main character and author had an outlook on life which was funny and observant, though too pessimistic for me to want to spend a whole book in their minds.
That said, text's comments in this thread = telling everyone who doesn't like your writing that they must not be reading it well enough = not a good look. But defensiveness is certainly an understandable reaction to a sudden influx of anonymous criticism.
Okeydoke. text/LB/nosflow win. I'm gone.
Wait, what? Are we fighting about something? Jesus, I've got to start paying closer attention.
Teo, not sure if you saw it in the other thread*, but even if you don;t wan to try to wade through the chaos of this guy's massive map, in the notes he's got a lot of great links to newer versions of chapters of Labov et al's Atlas of North American English than I have seen before. I really enjoyed Chapter 14 on "The North".
*Although I'm vaguely remembering that you once reported that you really are not that interested anymore--never mind if that's the case. (The dude does note the Mat-Su valley North Central "anomaly"--we may have discussed that here before in conjunction with Sarah Palin, however.)
I'm just throwing this out there. Do you think that tone might have been a deliberate choice, random coward?
I don't understand this defense at all. It may well have been flat and toneless deliberately rather than as a result of incompetence. If someone thinks flatness and tonelessness is a fault, its being deliberately flat and toneless doesn't address that. It just means that you deliberately wrote something the other party will have little interest in reading. Whoop de doo.
Link in 895 (click it for a change) -> 894.
905: I did see it in the other thread, and have seen it before. Pretty cool.
I think people should praise the writing of the person they think needs it the most.
My girlfriends perform fellatio on whomever they choose, including lucky strangers. I don't know them to wear hair extensions. Some things aren't worth 'argument'.
I'm going to shut down this thread. Sorry all.
