Archives: February 01, 2004

The iPod Paradox

Friday, 27 February 2004 07:38 PM

Izzy Grinspan in The Village Voice reflects on why a device that is most often used solo engenders feelings of community.

I'm not ready to go swapping my little green buddy with anyone yet. I haven't had the chance to use it enough, to fill it with all the right songs, to build a history of use, to have a comfort level with it yet. It wouldn't show enough of my musical taste to anyone now. Maybe in a few weeks. Of course this presupposes that there's anyone I could swap with ... not at all guaranteed in a small town in western PA. Sigh.

(Article link thanks to Rob Walker's Journal of Murketing.)

Gonna make you sweat

Wednesday, 25 February 2004 06:45 PM

I attended an all girls' boarding school -- Villa Maria High School, unfortunately now closed -- and I lived in the dorm for the first three years. Each year around this time all the girls would start to worry about weight we'd gained over the winter months. The cafeteria specialized in heavy carbs, and there was ice cream every night, so it wasn't surprising some of us would bulk up a bit each year. We'd then go through every possible diet and exercise craze to slim down.

My friend Mary Jean and I ran stairs each night. We'd jog up and down the back stairs of the dorm, three flights, sometimes listening to a boom box we'd park on the top landing.

Mary Jean was particularly weight-conscious. She had lived most of her life in the Aramco company compound in Saudi Arabia, an American outpost full of families and kids and basically on the beach, and she was almost Los Angelean in her concern for remaining bikini-ready. She hung a pink and green string bikini from the light fixture in her ceiling, as a constant reminder of the goal.

Anyway, Mary Jean took the stair running extra-seriously, and to give her efforts a boost she wrapped herself -- each leg and her torso, and sometimes her arms -- in cellophane wrap, underneath her sweat suit. You could hear the cellophane squeak and rustle as she ran up and down. I don't know that the cellophane accelerated her progress but she was convinced it was a good thing.

I was reminded of this technique when I saw this photo. Except I think this woman would have trouble running in her getup.

Curiouser and curiouser

Wednesday, 25 February 2004 09:41 AM

Exactly the result I would hope for: My Book Quiz Match is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is one of my all-time favorite books.

You're Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!

by Lewis Carroll

After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you've had your mind opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser, you have to ask yourself what's real and what's the picture of illusion. Little is coming to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that it's starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to much, and just avoid hat shops altogether.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

(Link via The Elegant Variation.)

Impressive

Tuesday, 24 February 2004 08:43 PM

In the current issue, the Economist considers several reasons why Matteo Arpe, the 38-year old head of Capitalia, Italy's fourth-largest banking group, is having such great success in modernising and reforming the traditionally corrupt Italian banking system. They mention his talent, his mentors, his experience, his flair. Yet they leave unstated one obvious factor: He's hott!

My mental state, depicted graphically

Tuesday, 24 February 2004 09:01 AM

Gapingvoid has tapped into my brainwaves somehow. How else to explain this poignant image? It's amazing what he can do with a pen and a business card.

Think big

Monday, 23 February 2004 03:17 PM

Following up on my previous posts on cultural standards in the U.S. and the U.K. and on bucking the established system, I recommend this interesting article
that considers the risks inherent in not taking risks. It's focused on marketing, but I think it applies to more.

Ridiculous Drink of the Week: Surfer on Acid

Monday, 23 February 2004 02:49 PM

From Happy Hours: Drink Recipes:

SURFER ON ACID
Creator: N/A

Ingredients:
1 oz. Jägermeister®
1 oz. Malibu Coconut Rum
0.5 oz. Pineapple Juice

Glassware: Shot Glass

Directions: Shake with ice and strain into shot glass

Ick. But in the interests of mixological science, My Brilliant Mistakes offers to try this -- perhaps for Mardi Gras! -- and will report back with results. Stay tuned!

All the world's a stage

Monday, 23 February 2004 02:17 PM

Terry Teachout, theater critic for the Wall Street Journal among other roles/publications, discusses the enjoyment he finds in small, non-Broadway theater.

Since moving back to the town I grew up in, I've gotten involved in our terrific community theater, the Butler Little Theatre. (Shameless plug: My sister Katy Wayne is starring in the next production, Proof, which runs March 19-21 and 23-27.) I'm continually impressed by the quality and intensity of the effort that everyone puts into our productions -- not least because it's entirely a volunteer organization. I get a lot more out of an evening spent rehearsing a play or building a set than I do watching television. I don't understand why more people don't feel the same way.

Expense report issues

Monday, 23 February 2004 02:00 PM

From a series of emails debating the reimbursability of certain Christmas Day working meals at NYC firm Skadden, Arps:

"In the absence of reimbursement for my meal on December 25th, I would appreciate your office having someone available this upcoming Christmas Day so that when I am stuck here, I will have someone to call for advance approval on a meal."

Agent provocateur

Monday, 23 February 2004 01:12 PM

From Teresa Nielsen Hayden, regarding the need for and quality of literary agents: "A bad agent is worse than no agent at all. A really bad agent is worse than not being a writer. Getting past the “no unagented submissions” barrier is not sufficient justification for hooking up with a bad agent." And then she explains the four main categories of agents.

It seem clear that publishing relies on centuries-old standards that were created for very good reasons. Surely some of those reasons are gone now, and an entrepreneurially-minded person like myself is tempted to look for ways to streamline the system, to trim out inefficiencies. Why does it take so long to publish a book? why are there so many people involved, splitting the money so many ways? Why are publishing contracts different from "regular" contracts? And the accomplished, experienced publishing professionals roll their eyes and explain that things are how they are and one can't fight City Hall.

I don't disagree with what Ms. Nielsen Hayden writes about working with agents and publishers. She clearly knows whereof she speaks. But I believe that if a writer can get past the desire to be published by a big conglomerate publisher and focus first on writing the best possible book and then on thinking who would want to read it and how to get the book directly into those readers' hands, then he can run around alot of standard publishing hurdles.

(Also, one of the surest ways to get me to try something is to tell me I can't do it.)

(Link via Maud Newton.)

Summarizing in three to five pages

Monday, 23 February 2004 09:21 AM

Maud Newton continues the discussion of the problems with synopsis-based publishing. Her starting point is Robert McCrum's article, "The Curse of the Synopsis," which is both insightful and depressing.

Yesterday in my writing group, we worked on the synopsis of one member's nonfiction book. This member (J) has read at least a half-dozen books on how to write a "winning" synopsis, and has attended workshops, conferences, etc. Her conclusion: No one agrees on the way to do it. J's case is slightly different from the authors mentioned in McCrumb's article in that she has the book drafted -- she can create a complete synopsis now without fear that the book will take a radically different direction by the time she has finished it. All the same, she wants to write a synopsis that will sell her book, and she's looking for a best way to do that.

My advice to her is to write the most compelling summary she can, in whatever style she prefers, and stop worrying about the "right" way to do it. It's clear that there's more than a little luck required to publish a book today, at least if one hopes to work with a major publisher.

The beverage with a thousand faces

Friday, 20 February 2004 11:07 AM

The Toronto Star says we are living in the Age of Vodka:

"The entrenchment of vodka comes down to one part alcohol and one part advertising. The drink itself is not a complex spirit. To make it, you simply need a material that contains starch -- anything like a grain, corn, carrot, potato or molasses. Essentially, the starch ferments, the resulting alcohol is distilled, then filtered. Lastly, water is mixed in, and the concoction is ready to drink -- no aging required.

"As a drink, vodka's outstanding feature is that it has none. Accordingly, companies hype their vodkas as either "the smoothest" or "the purest." "No taste, no smell" went one Smirnoff campaign from the 1930s, back when the spirit was billed as "Smirnoff White Whiskey."

"But with no distinguishing features, selling vodka becomes a bit of a trick. Marketing a product that tastes like nothing requires a certain amount of imagination, whereas if you have a product that tastes like something, you market whatever that something is."

Just like selling sugar water ... um, I mean cola.

(Link via Agenda.)

The Thing in My Pants

Friday, 20 February 2004 10:50 AM

A short bit of nonfiction by Maud Newton.

Also see the Gothamist Interview with Maud. Funny and talented!

Uglydolls

Friday, 20 February 2004 10:28 AM

Talk about an emergent strategy: The creators of Uglydolls didn't start with a plan in mind. But theirs is a case of the product selling itself. And the creators have discovered a great way to build appeal:

"Each character comes with a tag explaining the character's back story and how they all ''know'' one another and what each one is like. Wage works diligently at Super Mart, although, poignantly, no one at the store knows he works there; Jeero, meanwhile, wishes Wage and Babo wouldn't ask him so many questions, since he ''just wants to sit on the couch with you and eat some snacks.'' Hits with kids like the American Girl dolls have a similar narrative glue. To Tracy Edwards, the Barneys vice president who oversees the chain's home and kids businesses, the Uglydoll characterizations are important: ''The stories, in the end, sell the dolls.''"

The Uglydolls website is amusing, with photos and stories of the dolls, odd comics, and animated graphics. Tres quirky. I suspect the dolls are irresistable in person, but part of their appeal lies in their obscurity, so selling them is tricky: you want people to see them but you don't want people to see them everywhere.

I'm thinking of getting Ice Bat, despite my having no discernible need for a plush toy companion. Although ... my sister seems to enjoy traveling with Mr. Toast, who is similarly cute/odd. And don't we each need a fellow traveler in Life?

(NYT link via Stephany Aulenback @ Maud Newton.)

Unexpected bonuses

Thursday, 19 February 2004 08:24 PM

I bought my house from a woman who was moving into a nursing home. I never met her; rather, I dealt entirely with her son, who was taking care of her affairs because she was incapacitated. When I moved in, I found a number of items that had been left behind because they were too much trouble for the son to deal with, and I have been using several of them. For example, the lawn mower. It is an electric mower, powered by a long and damaged cord -- damaged by people running over it with the mower, I assume -- that makes me feel as though I'm vacuuming my lawn rather than cutting grass. Also a couple of ugly, mid-60s lamps, a nasty green plastic trash can, a 50s-era chrome-trimmed kitchen table with pull-out leaves, and an ironing board that has seen better days but retains a hip, stylish air.

And in the basement there's this pencil sharpener. It's attached to the wall in the laundry/furnace area. Why this spot was chosen for a pencil sharpener I can't imagine. Maybe it was the only available bit of exposed wood to which the homeowner didn't mind screwing the thing. There's a fully functional gas stove down there too, so the owners must have had different ways of using areas of their home than I would think of.

As you can see in the photo, it's the Midget model. It features a clear plastic body that conveniently lets one see when it's full of shavings. The shavings in it currently have, I think, been there since I bought the place. I may have used it once, but I can't remember for sure.

I first noticed it when I was touring the house the first time. I remember thinking, "How odd." And at the same time, I was excited about it -- a little freebie.

I thought of it just now only because frizzyLogic has come in contact with what's apparently my sharpener's big brother, the APSCO Giant 51. An impressive specimen, for certain. How many more are still in operation?

I have no willpower

Thursday, 19 February 2004 05:18 PM

Updating my earlier post: I couldn't wait. I started looking through the user manual, and when I saw that iTunes was on the CD and it has all the song-management stuff and hot-synching built in (yeah, I should probably have noticed that when I ordered the thing, but I just figured if it didn't come with I'd find software somethere), anyway, when I saw it was all right there on the disk, waiting to be installed, I lost the remaining bit of self-control.

The first album I downloaded, incidentally, was The Botanic Verses by the March Violets, which I acquired only recently. The second was Sitting on the Curbstone by my friend Helen Casabona. She's another former NeXT employee, so there was an Apple connection.

And then I went to the iTunes store and bought a bunch of stuff. It became immediately clear that I'm going to need to set and hold to a budget or I'm going to spend a fortune.

And given recent displays of my thorough lack of personal restraint, I'll be homeless within three months.

Who says all the good men are taken?

Thursday, 19 February 2004 02:40 PM

"I am wearing my blazer and a light cologne, with my hair parted at the side, a glint in my eye, and my left hand in my coat pocket in a half-intellectual, half-sexual way. I am also smoking a cigarette, but my breath smells good because I carry mints. If it is springtime, I have a light tan. I have also been working out. I have at my disposal several disarming quotes which I have memorized to make you laugh, and one very interesting story of Raj Gaja, Elephant King of Northern India. Moreover, I am 25, and can reasonably expect to grow better and more distinguished looking for each delicious year of the next two decades."

D-Nasty looks to the future.

(Link via TMF,TML.)

Actually, I like crap

Thursday, 19 February 2004 01:21 PM

Terrific t-shirts and more from buyolympia.com. Make sure to look for "Reading is sexy" (boy and girl-cut versions), "Save the fork, there's pie!" and "What would Devo do?"

(Link via Maud.)

The morning routine

Thursday, 19 February 2004 10:36 AM

Confessions of a New Coffee Drinker:

"I'm thinking about getting addicted to cigarettes! I'm going to buy the patch and work my way up! Now I see why all these things are so popular. I'm totally serious. This isn't satire. I have a lot of catching up to do! I wonder where I would be today if I had started drinking coffee earlier? It doesn't matter, I live in the now, now!"

Stranger than fiction

Thursday, 19 February 2004 10:10 AM

Larry Ellison has married a fiction writer, and apparently people are speculating that he has a hand in writing her books.

Having worked for Mr. Ellison at Oracle, I can say that a lot of the documentation and marketing that came out of that company was fiction, and perhaps still is. He is very good at making stuff up on the spot.

It's also interesting to me that the woman he has most recently married is about my age, was once a technical writer living in San Francisco, and is from Pittsburgh. Just like me! I was so close to marrying a billionaire! I can't tell her hair color from the Wall Street Journal's line drawing, but I'm betting it's blonde. I saw him only in the company of attractive blondes. So no doubt that's what held me back. There but for a bit of peroxide go I.

(Thanks to Maud for the link.)

Mine is on the FedEx truck on its way to my house right now!

Thursday, 19 February 2004 09:44 AM

Apple Computer Inc. said on Tuesday it has received 100,000 orders for its iPod mini digital music player, which goes on sale on Friday at Apple's retail outlets, its online store and through resellers.

I've been tracking the progress of mine, which I preordered the day they were announced. (The geekist thing I've done in a long while, I think.) FedEx picked it up in Pan Chiao City, Taiwan, on Monday, took it to CKS International Airport, flew it to Anchorage, and then sent it to Indianapolis. There it was hung up for a few hours yesterday; the comment on FedEx said, "Regulatory Agency Clearance Delay." This morning it was on a plane to Pittsburgh at 5:30am. At 8:14 it arrived at the FedEx sort facility in Cranberry Township, and at 8:25 it was on the truck headed to Butler.

Several thoughts:

1. FedEx has amazing information systems and is absolutely unbeatable in processing packages.

2. I was surprised that the tracking started in Taiwan. I had expected that a big bin of these mini iPods would be sent from the factory to somewhere in the middle of the US and packaged and shipped from here. Not the case. I wonder if the fact that I had mine engraved made a difference: Perhaps all the iPods destined for the retail stores and for orders placed now were sent in bulk, and this is part of why they won't be available until tomorrow. Actually, I bet that shipments for various retail outlets were packaged and shipped directly from Taiwan as well, so it's a modified sort of bulk shipment. All of this speaks to the efficiency and cost controls of FedEx's systems.

3. I don't actually know how to rip songs from CDs, so I have a bit of a learning curve ahead of me. I've been holding off from buying an MP3 player, trying to avoid buying too early and finding myself stuck with one I didn't like. I assume it's not hard to learn, but my schedule lately is so full I don't know when I'm going to have time to come up to speed. My hope is that the interfaces are intuitive enough that there's little learning anyway.

4. But what will I load first??

UPDATE: It's here! I have successfully programmed the time and date. The packaging is very clean and cool and Apple-ish. A sticker on the front of the thing warned me, in four languages: "Don't steal music."

I am using all my willpower -- which is not a lot, sadly -- not to load music onto it until I get more work done today. If I can clean up the paperwork littering my office and put in two hours of web work, I'll consider it a success.

Might as well face it

Thursday, 19 February 2004 09:17 AM

Cole Porter may have been onto something when he wrote "I Get a Kick Out of You."

"For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. "It is fascinating to reflect", the pair conclude, "that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex." The second surprise was that the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. "We are literally addicted to love," Dr Young observes."

Also, from the same issue of The Economist, a Shakespearean sonnet on the theme of love, "Love Makes Voles of Us All."

Not enough hours in the day

Thursday, 19 February 2004 09:09 AM

Danny Gregory scolds us, albeit gently, for not finding time during the day to exercise our creative energies.

Hipper than thou

Thursday, 19 February 2004 09:02 AM

Hipster Detritus hints at an upcoming screed against indie music credsnobs and suggests Ten Hipster-Baiting Statements to liven up any party or club gathering. I don't hang out in the clubs enough to make adequate use of this, but I want to be part of spreading the love.

(Link via The Minor Fall, The Major Lift.)

You're soaking in it

Wednesday, 18 February 2004 06:53 PM

Adrants laments the death of lasting brand positions in the course of noting that Jan Miner (Palmolive's Madge the Manicurist in the long running ad campaign) died on Sunday at age 86.

Interestingly, Palmolive is not among the entries in the "Advertising Hall of Fame." For me, having grown up watching TV in the 70s, the phrases "You're soaking in it" and "Softens hands while you do dishes" resonante far more than "Nothing runs like a Deere" (a John Deere slogan from the same time period).

Harder than it looks

Tuesday, 17 February 2004 10:24 AM

A former British cabinet minister spends a week as a teacher, and the teacher she replaced has to watch on "reality TV."

(I'm currently teaching a theater workshop to third and fourth graders, and the single hardest thing so far is maintaining discipline while also engaging the kids and keeping everything fun and informative. Well, that and remembering the names. I'm afraid I've more in common with Clare Short than Celine Viner, the replaced teacher, although I symphathise more with the plight of the latter.)

If you can't post something nice, don't post anything at all

Tuesday, 17 February 2004 09:57 AM

Here's an excellent, carefully thought and worded post on corporate blogging. I wasn't sure at first what "corporate blogging" might be, but it turns out to be blogging from a company standpoint (as opposed to an individual's standpoint). It's what I'm recommending my web clients to consider ... although so far all of them have said they haven't the time, that they can't commit to making daily or even weekly updates to a website, no matter how convenient the means of updating might be. I'm afraid they're being short-sighted: Quick daily updates would keep their clients interested and aware of their products/services and help differentiate them (my clients) from the pack.

Then again, I have trouble getting to allt he tasks on my plate, so I also see the inherent problem in adding a new service that requires frequent attention.

Here also is Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto. The points are mainly focused on technology companies (because they're the ones most likely to try weblogs at this stage) but they apply as well to companies providing other products and services.

(Both links courtesy of the delightful gapingvoid.)

Cats ask for it by name

Monday, 16 February 2004 01:50 PM

From AdSlogans.com, The Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame. I like that the Brylcreem slogan is in the top 10: I don't remember a single Brylcreem ad (they may have been retired by the time I became aware of advertising) and yet I know this slogan. That's a memorable line.

(Link via Cup of Chicha.)

Everyone who lives in Lidsville really flips his lid

Saturday, 14 February 2004 04:40 PM

"Have you ever thought you liked a terrible song just because you remembered it, mistaking mere recollection for actual nostalgia? That's the way it is for me and "H. R. Pufnstuf." I thought I had fond memories of the show until I had a chance to see it again, to hear the shrieks of an angry Witchie-Poo (the actress Billie Hayes in a ketchup-red wig), to be assaulted by swirling Day-Glo colors and a Freudian plot featuring a talking flute. Turns out that when I was 7, I had really, really bad taste."

Emily Nessbaum of the New York Times Reruns: reconsiders the television legacy of Sid and Marty Krofft.

I was never very fond of most of the Krofft shows except for Lidsville, which featured Charles Nelson Reilly as an evil magician.

The TV Land website summaries the show this way: "After being wowed by a magician at an amusement park, teenager Mark is bent on learning the secrets that must be inside the illusionist’s magic hat. To his shock and surprise, when Mark gets his hands on the hat, it grows to enormous proportions and he falls in. Imprisoned by evil wizard Horatio J. Whoo Doo, Mark is befriended by Weenie the Genie, who becomes Mark's charge after stealing Whoo Do's magic ring. Mark promises to set Weenie free, so she and the good hats of Lidsville unite to help Mark find his way back home."

What I liked about it I can't recall. Maybe it was the super-sized talking hats, or the idea of an alternative world that waited to be discovered -- like the ones at the bottom of Alice's rabbit hole and through her looking glass, or Narnia inside the wardrobe.

(I'll have the theme song in my head for the rest of the week.)

Gaming the system

Saturday, 14 February 2004 04:12 PM

A system error makes clear what everyone expected but couldn't demonstrate: Writers and their friends anonymously give their own works high reviews on Amazon.

"Close observers of Amazon.com noticed something peculiar this week: the company's Canadian site had suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had anonymously posted book reviews on the United States site under signatures like "a reader from New York."

"The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan a book — when they think no one is watching.

"John Rechy, author of the best-selling 1963 novel "City of Night" and winner of the PEN-USA West lifetime achievement award, is one of several prominent authors who have apparently pseudonymously written themselves five-star reviews, Amazon's highest rating. Mr. Rechy, who laughed about it when approached, sees it as a means to survival when online stars mean sales."

A new breed of Valentine's Day card

Friday, 13 February 2004 10:27 AM

Happy Friday the 13th before Valentine's Day.

(Link via Stephany Aulenback at Maud Newton.)

A quivering of mint over the cask-wood wine-depth of brandy

Thursday, 12 February 2004 12:11 PM

"I'm certain that most of you have never even heard of the stinger, and you should not feel ashamed. An obscure after-dinner drink, eighty years past the prime of its popularity, it is enjoyed now, when enjoyed at all, not really as a digestive but almost as a kind of liquor dessert. As such, the stinger is sometimes not even considered a "cocktail," which implies a libation to be consumed in quantity during pre-sit-down hours set aside for affected, if well-oiled, conversation. But a cocktail it certainly is, and, like all classic cocktails, the stinger has its singular pleasures."

Scott Eden discusses life as his father's designated stinger maker.

I've never had a stinger, although I've often considered the recipe. The creme de menthe always threw me off. Turns out that you're supposed to use white creme de menthe, which few bars now seem to stock -- that makes a big difference for my taste. I adopted the brandy-cased sidecar as my Official Drink of 2003, so perhaps the stinger would be a natural next beverage of choice....

I'll take "Masters of the Underworld" for a thousand, Alex

Wednesday, 11 February 2004 04:55 PM

"The quizmaster is describing various monsterish toys sold at Toys'R'Us and the teams are asked to identify them. The real monsters are having a difficult time. They are good with faces, but bad with names. They seem to "know" all of the monsters but cannot correctly identify them, so perhaps one member of the team will see a photograph or a replica of a scale-covered, slime-oozing ogre armed with a spiked hammer and the monster teammate says something like, "Argh! I know that guy!! What's his name? Lives in the Shadow Forest. He used to be in my car pool!! Oh, by Valdemont's Crack, I cannot summon his name!" And so on."

tremble details a recent gameshow-oriented dream.

Lush life

Wednesday, 11 February 2004 10:56 AM

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board announced yesterday that sales of wine and spirits at state stores in 2003 increased 7.7 percent over 2002. The increase is assumed to be caused in large part by changes in how Pennsylvania sells alcohol to its residents: new Sunday hours in select stores, outlet stores nears state borders, trials of liquor sections in supermarkets, etc.

The ongoing economic downturn, heightened awareness of terrorism and war, and general malaise do not seem to have considered as contributing factors.

My photocopying technique is unstoppable

Wednesday, 11 February 2004 09:37 AM

"Then the world blossomed into a rainbow of possibility: I was approached by someone who said he enjoyed reading My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable. This flummoxed me because I had not given him a copy for Christmas as I did not know him. Was he perhaps on the review committee for the grant? No. And yet he had definitely read the book? The one with the karate guys yelling and cursing? Yes. After a little more prodding he admitted that his friend worked at the zine-friendly photocopy shop and had faxed him the entire book, page by page."

David Rees details how he "self-published" his book My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable through pirated photocopies and ingenuity.

(Link via The Morning News.)

It's "fra-gee-lay" ... it must be from Italy!

Tuesday, 10 February 2004 02:09 PM

For those who want to construct their own fancy leg lamps, as seen in A Christmas Story, this is a good starting place.

(Link via The Straight Dope.)

Trials of the slush pile

Monday, 09 February 2004 08:35 PM

More on rejection... Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light discusses what it's like to be responsible for reviewing unsolicited manuscripts. I agree with her: It's not as easy as writers seem to think. She talks specifically about the comments at RejectionCollection.com, where writers send and react to the rejections they've received.

(Thanks to Inner Bitch for the link.)

A few years ago, I needed to create a template for rejection letters from Inkburns. I had been trying to respond to each submission individually but as the volume of submissions grew, individual and unique responses became impossible.

And depressing: There is no joy in telling someone, even a stranger, that I am not interested in publishing their work. I never want to quash any writer's hopes or to deny talent, and I often doubt whether I'm making a right choice. What if I'm missing a true gem? What if I'm not well-read enough to see a work's value? Are my biases limiting my appreciation?

All the same, as editor I have to make the decisions, and at heart I do know what I want to publish and support. So I checked out RejectionCollection.com to see what most of the writers there wanted from a submission response.

What writers seemed to want was this: To feel loved and wanted.

Obviously a submission response, and in particular a rejection, is not going to help the writer feel loved. So there's a limit to what even the most personal submission response can do.

I settled on trying to demonstrate that the work had been considered and given full attention. I mention the writer and the work by name to show we were paying attention. I then say that the work doesn't fit the needs of the publication at this time, but that we appreciate the writer's interest and want to see more in the future.

I try to avoid establishing too personal a tone, as I don't want to give false hope or leave the writer thinking that I'm looking to make friends. At the same time, I sincerely appreciate every submission and the effort each represents, and want the writers to keep writing and submitting, to Inkburns and elsewhere.

It's still outrageously hard to reject writing. I do it, but each one is painful. I've thought about saying so in the rejection letters, but I think the writer is more focused on his or her own pain when reading and is more likely to be insulted to hear how I feel. So i just keep it to myself.

(Except for mentioning it here. Actually, I feel a little better having done so.)

Rejection and publication

Monday, 09 February 2004 08:14 PM

"Two years ago, the manuscript of what was to be "Everyday Matters" was lying in a drawer. At the time, it was pretty much like the book that's in stores today but it was called simply "A New York Diary".

"In late January, 2002, I had lunch with a friend who had just published a monograph of his work. He encouraged me to pick a list of publishers who had made books I liked and just send out my manuscript. "Invest a hundred bucks in copies and stamps and see if anything happens," he urged.
"So I made a list of thirty publishers and over the next few weeks, filled the mail with manilla envelopes. It took a year for twenty six of them to get around to sending me rejection letters (I'm still waiting on the last four)."

Danny Gregory shares some of the rejections he received in trying to publish Everyday Matters.

I wonder if he considered publishing it himself.

Rockwellesque tableaus of multi-generational TV-watching

Monday, 09 February 2004 01:32 PM

Jonah Goldberg was so shell-shocked by the incident that he suffered a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder that left him completely unable to generate timely pop-culture references. "Think of the more outrageous art controversies of the recent past," he stammered, trying to think of something, anything, that fit that bill, while stumbling around the smoking rubble of his brain. Alas, the searing blast of Jackson's breast had left only the sturdiest, decade-old cliches intact: "Karen Finley covers herself in faux feces to say something 'shocking' about capitalism or something. Robert Mapplethorpe did 'new' and 'exciting' (translation: proctological) things with inanimate objects."

Soundbitten summarizes and analyzes the right-wing hyperbole generated by the Super Bowl halftime show.

We who are about to drink salute you

Monday, 09 February 2004 11:15 AM

A fine collection of ads this week at AdAge.com's advertising roundup. The Beyonce/Britney/Pink ad for Pepsi is unfun--no loss that it's intended for the European market only. (And how uncomfortable must those metal bikinis have been in the sweltering, dusty Roman air? No wonder the girls were scowling the whole time.)

More amusing are the compare/contrast ads for and against music downloading and for and against the Bush administration's Medicare changes.

The Human Clock

Monday, 09 February 2004 10:29 AM

The Human Clock - A Photo for Every Minute of the Day

David Foster Wallace parody competition

Friday, 06 February 2004 10:00 PM

DFW Parody Competition Finalists.

An excerpt from my favorite entry:
The Y-shaped Styles of Certain Flowers

So. There are two people on a date and they're eating dinner, and the guy is telling this long involved story about another guy who was having some difficulties and was diagnosed as having some sort of quote-unquote syndrome, some long german word, meaning extreme psychic pain and existential angst which could only be cured by becoming a rock star or a religious zealot. Meanwhile the woman's thinking about all the things she could be doing, like working out on the stairmaster and reading Time, or going to Brookstone and playing with the Max massager, and there is some embarrassed dialog in her head vis-a-vis wanting the Max but not wanting people to see it in her house and also not wanting it near her genitals as it is not that kind of massager. And also Mogu.

(Link via Cup of Chicha.)

All Things Hodgman

Friday, 06 February 2004 06:10 PM

I recently came across this interview with John Hodgman for Media Bistro.

I'm a big fan of Hodgman. He went to school in the Boston area (as I did, although not at the same school and with only perhaps a year overlap, time-wise). He writes really funny yet introspective stuff. He appears frequently on This American Life. He is the host of the Little Gray Book Lecture Series in NYC.

And if you're not familiar with John Hodgman, here are a few more links to help you get acquainted.

You can find Real Audio of his This American Life segments on the website. Do a search for his name to get a list, and enjoy this expression from his piece on being Bruce Campbell's literary agent: "It was time to bring the Pope over to cat-sit."

For Transom, he hosted a discussion topic for a week. An excerpt:
Where television luridly reveals everything, radio is coy; radio conceals its sources. It is a voice behind a curtain, and you must provide the face. Or, if you do not keep your radio behind a curtain, as I do, you can imagine it as voices in the next room. This is what makes radio so powerfully consoling to the lonely--it creates the illusion of company in a way that few other media can. Public radio is particularly adept at creating this illusion of companionship, in part because they do not advertise (pledge drives don't spoil the illusion--while it would be unusual for a friend to suddenly start yelling at you from the next room about the low financing on this year's Toyotas, it is almost expected that he will occasionally ask you for money over and over, for days on end), and because of the close and uncanny naturalness of its voices.

For McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Hodgman wrote a series of Q&As, Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent. Here's a sample:
Josh: My life experiences, thoughts and opinions are remarkably similar to many others who publish. Should this unoriginality discourage me from writing?

JKH, FPLA: It is axiomatic that every good novel is written twice, and every bad novel is written over and over again. Having the same voice, style, and background as another writer will never hurt you, but it is more important to have the same voice, style, and background as your editor. That is why novels which feature as characters well-heeled college graduates with no marketable skills who perhaps wanted to be writers once but now are publishing professionals living in New York will always be published. Always. Also: be sure to include a rousing gardening scene

Josh: When do I get to go to the cocktail party with clever, uninhibited women and chummy, eccentric men who admire and respect me?

JKH, FPLA: If by "chummy" you mean smelling of shark bait, then this can be arranged immediately. Otherwise, I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to, and please don't ask me about this again.

Upcoming Event: Gist Street Reading Series, Feb 14

Friday, 06 February 2004 02:27 PM

From the mailing list announcement from Sherrie Flick:
"The February Gist Street is on SATURDAY, February 14th. That's right--a Valentine's Gist. Come with your honey, come stag--but please do come to hear Anthony McCann and Matt Rohrer read their poetry.

"Both in from Brooklyn for the occasion, these guys have promised love poems and other poems--love, angst, ennui. How could you pass that up?

"Anthony's first book, Father of Noise out with Fence Press has been getting praises far and wide. Matt Rohrer, co-founder of Fence Press and author of Satellite (Verse Press) is, in fact, one of the best things since sliced bread. Looking for a romantic gesture? There will
be books for sale.

"There will be (unsliced) homemade bread and ice cream, and several heart shaped cakes and cookies. Please do bring your choice 'food of love' to the festivities. BYOB. Socializing begins at 7:30. Readings begin at 8:00. Please COME EARLY if you'd like a seat. Raffle. Friendliness. Acceptance.

"305 Gist Street, James Simon's Sculpture studio, Uptown--Pittsburgh. 412-434-5629 if you're lost. $3 suggested donation also gets you in on the raffle. www.giststreet.org"

Fan fiction promotes writing skills in children

Friday, 06 February 2004 11:57 AM

An article in Technology Review, "Why Heather Can Write," looks at the fan fiction communities that have sprung up around the Harry Potter books and their influence on children's creativity and literacy.

From the article:
"Like many of the other young writers, Agonistes says that Rowling's books provide her with a helpful creative scaffolding: “It's easier to develop a good sense of plot and characterization and other literary techniques if your reader already knows something of the world where the story takes place," she says. By poaching off Rowling, the writers are able to start with a well-established world and a set of familiar characters and thus are able to focus on other aspects of their craft. Often, unresolved issues in the books stimulate them to think through their own plots or to develop new insights into the characters."

It's a new day, a new site

Friday, 06 February 2004 11:31 AM

I've decided to take a new tack in blogging -- more original writing, more personal observations, less of an emphasis on small business news. (Not that I was executing on the small business news & recommendations as planned anyway....)

The old name didn't seem appropriate for this new direction ... which makes it a perfect excuse to create a new name/brand. And with that, I'm starting this new blog.

If I can figure how to export the material from the old database and put it in this one, I'll consolidate; for now, to see the witty observations I made in the past you'll need to go here. (There's a link in the menu at the bottom of the page too, for future reference.)

And now, on with the show!

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey