Totally Random

I read PostSecret a lot. Today's was particularly disturbing, only because I know someone who would do something like this.

More on 'American Wife'

Sorry if I'm dwelling on this title, but Sittenfeld's Prep is really a great piece of literature, even if it isn't high-minded. Her character development and realistic plotlines make for gripping stuff... even if she isn't John Grisham. Her books are page-turners in other ways, and I admire that.

Here's a link to an interview with her.

And it appears she drew the short or long straw, depending on how Kakutani feels about it. The official review is here - the one I posted yesterday was by Joyce Carol Oates and was more reflective/descriptive. I haven't read it yet, but I'm praying for Sittenfeld's soul as Kakutani can be ruthless.

Curtis Sittenfeld, part deux

Curtis Sittenfeld, author of the great book Prep, has a new one out 'American Wife'. Here's the review. I'm not sure I'm interested in polisci chicklit, but it may be worth a read.

NYTimes 'American Wife' Review.

A Post-Trojan World.

I remember a time when I didn't have internet access. I remember a time when I didn't compulsively check my email or surf the internet. Without waxing nostalgic, I'm just going to say, boy, are those times over.

Two nights ago, my McAfee virus scan caught wiff of a virus. Ironically, I had run a scan a few days before that and there were no unusual results. This stubborn virus reared its ugly head quickly and powerfully. All of a sudden, I couldn't run any internet browsers. In the blink of an eye, I had no email. I started running multi-hour system scans. Each and every time I could detect the existence of the virus, but it couldn't be moved, deleted, or cleaned.

And it was all I could think about! The more stubborn the virus was, the later I stayed up. I'd just sit there in the dark, watching the DNC and contemplating my next move. Nothing I did worked. All the advice I researched at work was powerless against this crazy virus. And so I had no choice. After many discussions with myself and with others, I realized that the only solution would be to reinstall Windows.

I mean, this wasn't entirely unpredictable. My computer is 3 years old and has been gradually slowing down over the last several months. But I was really dreading this. Operating systems are one of those mysteriously complex pieces of software. It's not like updating iTunes, this is unchangeable stuff here.

I began my preparations. Putting my most valuable files onto my external harddrive felt a lot like packing before the gestapo raids your house: totally unsure if you have everything you need, if you're leaving anything behind, and fully knowing that everything left behind will be gone when you get back.... if you get back. I took my time looking through some of it. There were the 12 pages of memoir I wrote when I was 17 that has been moved through three computers in hopes of being continued, my senior thesis, pictures from my whole college career, and my music. The most important part I think - all $600 of iTunes glory.

So maybe I was overly emotional about the whole thing. It went fine, although I still harbor resentment against the powers that be for making me spend over 12 hours on this thing. At least it's a 3-day weekend and I staved off purchasing a multi-thousand dollar machine. I know it's only a matter of time, especially coming up on year four of abuse. I mean, this thing used to go everywhere with me throughout college: class, the theater, the dining hall, that one time I went to the library (not that I didn't study... just that the other people studying stressed me out. long story).

So I'm up and running again. Thankfully.

The Value of Experience?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last two years, you've been hearing at least tidbits about the presidential election and, more specifically, how inexperienced Barack Obama is. I'm not here to tell you whether or not to vote for him (that's your own choice), but I just want to say that, at this point, I'm unsure experience is what the country should be looking for in a presidential candidate.

Incumbency is at an all time high -- we have a 2-term president and so many repeat congressmen that the House of Representatives is actually "where everybody knows your name." So you could say we are at the height of the era of experienced politicians in this country. And yet, we're heading in the wrong direction. And I can say that with some certainty considering that over 70% of Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, agree with me.

You're going to hear John McCain harping on inexperience and Hillary harped on it before him. I honestly think that's because it's the only personality characteristic that they can attack. I mean, they could talk about policy and stuff, but that's boring for the American public! Apparently, no one really wants to hear about the differences in their beliefs; they just want to hear easy, small snippets about the age of an old man and the inexperience of a relatively new face in the Washington scene.

Here's my story for the night. I'm not going to draw conclusions from it, I think they are pretty obvious and my reader(s) are smart enough to figure it out on their own.

I work at a clothing retail company. We sell a lot of clothes that prominently display the name of our brand. Every week we have graphics meetings with merchandizing, design, and graphic design departments. We hang graphics of our current products on the wall. We change our minds a lot, so we tweak graphics again and again over the course of many months. We look at the same graphic a million times before it goes into production.

Being in these meetings is kind of crazy. We already know what sells and what doesn't, what colors our customers will like and which ones they won't. And of course this is learned information. When you first start, you sit in the back, you don't ask questions, you don't offer your opinion because you think you may know what our client wants, but most of the time, you don't. Experience is what gives you knowledge. Having experience validates your opinion. So the veterans discuss, and the newbies scribble down notes -- listening and watching instead of contributing to the discussion.

One Tuesday, there was a new face in the meeting. We'll call him Peter. Peter had just started at the company and he was completely overwhelmed by halfway through his second day (as we all are in the beginning). He was hanging back as the inexperienced ones do, not contributing, just watching and learning.

The discussion moved to the graphics for an item about to go into production. The graphic was in its final stages of modification. It had been reviewed over the last three and a half months, multiple times a week by many different employees. There weren't many comments on the graphic and the lead graphic designer was about to move the discussion to different artwork. "I guess we're fine with this and can move on to ---." Then Peter raised his hand. It was a timid kind of interruption. He said, "Um, guys? I think there's a mistake." And he pointed. He pointed at the graphic that everyone had been looking at, that everyone had been discussing and editing and tweaking for three and a half months.

We had misspelled our own name.

Steinbeck, the DNC, and waiting tables

The Grapes of Wrath is a fantastic book, but, for some reason, I just can't bring myself to get through it during the week. I've moved it to the 3-day weekend agenda and I'm sure that I'll be able to finish it with time to spare. So far, all I can say is that John Steinbeck is a good writer. Please note this is the understatement of the century. There's something so gratifying about reading a good book. It's kind of like watching the Olympics. I'm bearing witness to something I could never do, to something I couldn't even begin to tell you how to do. I have no idea how Steinbeck does what he does, but I'm glad I'm literate and can therefore enjoy it with the rest of us.

On top of that, I'm maxed out on politics with the DNC every night on top of Obamanomics. So I'm putting that aside until the convention is done. I'm working 12-hour days, so my nights need to be full of escapist reading. So what am I reading?

The answer is Waiter Rant, the story of a 30 year-old man who, through the oft unfortunate trials of life, went from a priestly aspirant to a waiter. Yup, a waiter. What once began as a transitional phase ended up as a career choice and after creating a hysterical blog, he was eventually approached with a book deal. And rightfully so, as he can write quite well and his tales from the other side of the corkscrew are both varied and well-presented. I've clicked through a bunch of his entries on Waiter Rant (the entries on the blog are isolated incidents, while the book is a more continuous narrative), and have yet to find an entry that hasn't made me snort out loud. The whole thing is non-fiction (a fact which you need to continuously repeat in the most ridiculous situations) and so far it's well-paced and definitely entertaining. I mean, part of me loves it because of my previous employment at this establishment. However, I really think it's an objectively fun read and a great way to escape your job, especially if you're going through a rough time like me.

Scraping the Bottom of the Motivational Barrel....

Recently, I've found it really hard to get my ass to the "Compose Post" page. I haven't been reading too much and what I had read hasn't really moved me to write on here. I've also come to an impasse in terms of readership. Checking the traffic flow, my readership has dwindled down to just me, checking in once a day (though I did get a few hits from Beijing which I chalked up to journalists testing the firewall). I credit myself for most of this decline. I haven't really been posting anything of substance and the writing has been subpar, so why would anyone visit here? So I am open to new ideas and have been reading other blogs to find out how they came about their 122-comment posts.
One blog that I came across is Waiter Rant. I discovered this at the New Non-Fiction table at B&N. Instead of purchasing on site, which is what I've been doing the past three months, I was writing down titles for goodreads/shelfari searches, so I scribbled in my day planner and kept moving. Upon googling, I found Waiter Rant, the blog that spawned the book deal and won the "Best Writing" award at the 2006 bloggies. Having been a waiter myself, I was instantly hooked by some of his posts, and, at times, laughed outloud. But what I was more interested in was how it started.
I know that my blog will never have as many readers as Waiter Rant. 75 comment posts are ridiculous. Where would I find that kind of material? I mean, yes, I work in merchandizing for a retailer. A retailer for which people would kill to know its inner-workings. If you think Anna Wintour/Vogue turned Miranda Priestly/Runway is literary gold, then you really haven't seen anything yet. For the most part, it does live up to that hype (though in ways you'd never imagine), but the problem is that I don't particularly want to get fired at this point, so the confidentiality contract is what it is. On top of that, I don't find much solace in working a 13 hr day, then coming home from my 13 hr a day job to write about my 13 hr a day job. You see?
So I was really interested to find out how Waiter Rant went from 0 comments a post to 150 comments a post in 4 years. I notice a bunch of things - forcing himself to post regularly (at which I'm a failure), linking to similar blogs, and incorporating bits of his real life into his stories (all of it is real life, but I mean non-waiter life). So first, I need to post regularly. I'm going to follow his lead and start with 3 times a week mandatory. And if I post more, that's great. As far as linking to similar blogs, I haven't found any. Apparently lots of disgruntled waiters use blogs as their therapy of choice. I can't find anyone without a stick up their ass who writes about books. I'm still looking though. Maybe I'll just post to fun blogs instead. And last, I'll try to write about my actual life without revealing too much of what I do.
So today, I have some errands, and I'm going to pick up Waiter Rant, and Eat, Shoots & Leaves (must work on my punctuation), then to the pool with me. Hope everyone is having an enjoyable close to their summer. For the most part, I am not. Work is dominating my life, I'm tired all the time (for which I blame the Olympics), but it seems that if I go to bed rather than passing out on the couch, then waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning, I am much more rested. Please excuse me now while I go listen to my Sunday talking heads.

Summer is almost over :(

and instead of tanning, I'm stuck inside working 12 hour days.  Hmm... I'm trying to remedy this and cram three months of tanning into two days this weekend.  This could potentially turn out poorly.  (Not-so-vague foreshadowing, here.)

Anyway, on the literary front, there was an interesting book review today in the Times about a good summer read.  If you're interested  The article is titled A Cynical Seer Unnerved by her Own Inner Psychic.  It seemed alternative and not a bad read.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm still chugging through The Grapes of Wrath (a fantastic book) and I've picked up another book in the airport during my travels, Obamanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics.  

As you can probably tell, I'm gearing up for the election.  One of my favorite things is to discuss with people (I'm staying away from the word "argue", though that's what it often turns into).  I think it's really important to be active in voting, and even if you disagree with current policy, you have no right to complain unless you participate!  To be honest, I disagree with almost everything happening in current policy today.  Instead of complaining about it, I want to learn more - a stifling amount of information - and then complain about it with facts.  I'm thinking this book will be mostly theoretical, which is unfortunate, but understandable.  This is supposed to be an easily digestible book that the general public can enjoy without falling asleep.  So I'm looking for some fresh ideas, but, aside from that, I'm not setting the bar very high.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Who knew Summer Reading could be boring?

Work has been ridiculous - is that always my excuse?  My boss has been transferred to another department, so I'm doing twice the work... or you could say I have half the time (either one will do).  

In the meantime I did finish a book: Hilma Wollitzer's Summer Reading.  Unfortunately, it was disappointing.  I'm not linking to it, I'm not even devoting much thought or writing to it.  It was 200 and some pages of vanilla.  The plot was so pointless and not in the Robert Altman's The Company/Tom Perotta's Little Children kind of way.  It wasn't a tastefully framed snapshot of life, though that's clearly what it tried to be.  There were supposed to be revelations and I didn't feel that any were particularly momentous, though I largely attribute that to the fact that I never became invested enough in the lives of the characters to really care if someone was hiding a case of dyslexia (yes, that's the burning secret... a Hamptons bookclubber with dyslexia).  

Her writing was good in terms of structure and description, but I guess part of writing is plot, so that leaves me back at my original point that this book was weak.  I'm all for the artistically minimalist plot, but not when you're characters aren't particularly real and the plot is so bleh.  It was neither realistic nor unrealistic, it was neither uncompelling nor compelling. Wollitzer needs to go back to the drawing board.  When you're an author, I consider the drawing board to be reading.    Wollitzer needs to look at what makes a magnetic character.  I mean, it's not easy to construct a person out of words.  I'm not dumbing down the difficulty of the task.  I guess I just expected better.

So I'm moving on to some great literature.  In some vast oversight in my education, I was never forced to read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.  So I'm reading it now.  My friends are divided.  Some have responded with, "Oh, that's a great book."  Others have merely grimaced.  I hope that reading it by choice and at my leisure will allow me to a appreciate it more than if I was memorizing irrelevant details while dreading the inevitable multiple choice quiz of high school English class.  Anyone out there ever read The Grapes of Wrath?  Thoughts?