Rainy Days and Mondays...

"The man of March he sees the Spring and

Wonders what the year will bring

And hopes for better weather"

 

Waiting and hoping some more. Sometimes it seems like that's pretty much all I do anymore.

Bookshelf Lust

 

One day I am going to have this bookcase. Even if I have to build it myself--which is possible because there seems to be no indication of where to buy such a thing but which judging by my Ikea skills would be possibly the most disastrous thing ever.

Deep Thought of the Day

Are you supposed to be able to walk in these? Because for $600 you'd really think you'd at least get a shoe that you could wear when standing upright. Also, I am troubled by how often I write about shoes--also by how often I buy shoes (brown flats for 20 bucks and my current pair of brown flats have holes all the way through to my heel. Totally warranted.). Shoe addiction--as disturbing as my caffeine addiction? Probably not, though pricier.

 

Navel-Gazing Nerds

I just love it when newspapers navel-gaze and write front-page articles about how newspapers cover things.

 

And by love it I mean that while I may find it interesting, I would venture that most people don't really care about how the news media is coping, just that the newspaper comes to their stoop every morning--if they care that much. I would also venture that most people, myself included, don't really care for the awful alliteration of "The Buzz on the Bus: Pinched, Press Steps Off."

 

I did, however, like this graf:

For anyone familiar with "The Boys on the Bus," Timothy Crouse's rollicking account of the reporters from papers large and small who provided blanket coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign — or with later accounts that noted the prominence of girls on the bus, and the swapping of typewriters for laptops by nerds on the bus — the presence of relatively few print reporters on the candidates' buses and planes this year is striking.

 

I take pride in my nerdiness and like to see others do the same.

Insert Seven-Letter Epithet Here

In continuing my theme of words are important...

 

I was reading this excellent and interesting article about antipsychotics and their side effects when, toward the end, I was jarred from the article to give my full attention to figuring out what unpublishable word the Gray Lady was referring to with,

 

"There's nothing wrong with my head in the first place," he said to the judge, inserting a seven-letter epithet.

 

I wonder how many people resorted to counting the letters in curse words on their fingers when they got to that point. Surely, that seems counter-productive.

 

In general, I think The Times' policy that it is a family newspaper and so will never under any circumstances publish offensive words or quotes is pretty ridiculous. Especially considering that so much of the actual news it prints is pretty offensive (Spitzer, ahem, Spitzer). Which is not to say that I think the newspaper should start using expletives all the time, but I don't see why it should go out of its way in quotes to avoid expletives. 

 

And I found this article in defense of using the n-word (a word I certainly don't take lightly but also don't think should be avoided if it's pivotal to the story) fascinating. I especially liked:

 

You probably can guess where I stand on this. Admittedly, I'm a biased party—a writer with a vendetta against words, is an archer who resents arrows, or a quarterback who begrudges pass patterns. I would speak in defense of virtually any word's right to be used in the proper context.

 

 

Sticks and Stones

"I hear that it was you who died alone
And I offer no sympathy for that
Better off I sparkle on my own"

 

I'm a copy editor. Which means, aside from the inherent dorkiness and obsession with grammar, I know words are important.

 

It means I spend my days subtly changing reporters' words to make their articles as clear as possible and so as to avoid unintentional bias. It means I'll stop in the middle of an article about a man who beat his stepdaughter to death (manslaughter, not murder, the jury said) to wonder how "till" instead of "until" got into the Newspaper of Record. It means I think this column about how Obama's speech on race was ridiculous--because we shouldn't be talking about race because talking about things is useless--is ridiculous.

 

It means that when somebody lobs hurtful accusations at me, they, well, hurt. A lot.

TK [No, That's Not a Typo]

TK: A place marker used in drafts of an article to indicate missing information. It's short for tokum, which is the intentional misspelling of "to come," as in "more info to come." [Media Bistro]

I feel like I'm just waiting, waiting for more information right now. Waiting for an apology from someone who deeply hurt me recently, waiting for other people to make decisions that could drastically affect my life, waiting to figure it all out. I'm waiting for all the pieces to fall into place so my life makes sense.

I'm feeling very impatient.

No. 1 On The 'Things That Shouldn't Be Furry' List

 

 

Flip-flops. By Ugg (who else?).

Life, Redux

Repeat old post in new space. I still really, really need a rabbi. Argh.

The World Is My Stress Ball

"Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness"

If I Were a Shoe ...

 

... this is the shoe I'd be. So says a friend. I'll settle, however, for just wearing them (since I got them on sale after eyeing them for a long time) and not being them.

 

But next time I have to play a stupid name game at a large Shabbos meal of people who don't know each other, I am totally suggesting we play "If you were a shoe, what shoe would you be?" Great way to get people to hate me, perhaps, though my RA once made my entire floor play "What did your childhood smell like?"

 

 

Stand, Columbia, Alma Mater

Once upon a time in 2006, Columbia sent out admissions decisions to its class of 2010 applicants. It sent the acceptance packages out via FedEx, which was made clear by pictures posted on a campus blog.

 

So, some resourceful Columbia prefrosh called FedEx to find out if there was a package from Columbia coming for them. If there was, they knew they got in. If there wasn't, they knew they had been rejected along with 91% of applicants.

 

This, I think, is a pretty pathetic way of finding out whether you got into college.

 

A friend points out that this Web site, however, is equally pathetic. I agree. And I am blocking it. Really. 

Happy Dork Day

Happy National Grammar Day. Go out and do something crazy--like, um, speak grammatically or use spellcheck or give your copy editor a hug. Or chocolates. I'd take chocolate...

The Newspaper of (Yesterday's) Record

I like the NY Times a lot. Enough that I pay a ridiculous amount of money to get it in hard copy every day. And I'm sure that the reporters and editors who work there are really very intelligent and talented. Maybe even some of the most intelligent and talented individuals in the field.

At least most of the time I'm sure of that.

Sometimes, like when I find this article on the front page, I really doubt these things. Did you know that there's this game called Scrabulous (a version of Scrabble) on Facebook (a social-networking site) that tons and tons of people play? Did you know that? Well, apparently the NY Times just figured it out.

Change of Career #364

Maybe I should just live in Brooklyn and write novels forever.

"Never before have we enjoyed such a bounty of villanelles about waiting for the F train."

Or I could just be their shrink.

"We need more Brooklyn-based shrinks for our artistically capable but mentally delicate scriveners. Do you know how much writing time is lost while taking the subway into Manhattan for a weekly tuneup? Who cries for these stillborn sestinas?"