August 7th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *The Book of Awesome*

I got The Book of Awesome as a gift, but I was already aware of it because Fred pointed it out as very similar to our penta-annual (that’s the word, right?) listing of 1000 Things We Like. I was happy to read the book to help fill the time until Fall 2012, when we do the third thousand!

Neil Pasricha’s book is based on his blog, which is very close to our concept except a) it’s all one guy, not a collective liking team (as far as I can tell), and b) he writes little blurbs about how the good thing works or, often, the bad thing that is avoided/thwarted by the good thing.

This is a happy-making project and it works: I smiled a lot remembering simple pleasures like the unsafe playground equipment of my youth, the chip crumbs in the bottom of the bag, and the cool side of the pillow. I was also fascinated by pleasures I’ve yet to experience: guess who’s going to be staying up for a while trying to catch someone laughing in their sleep?) Pasricha has a frat-boy prose style you don’t read very often (at least, I don’t), and it’s charming although repetitive and I don’t *really* think he had to manipulate each entry to end with the word AWESOME (yes, in caps!)

In truth, I probably went at this book wrong–I think it’s some sort of coffee-table or occasional book, something you are supposed to dip into, scan, flip around in. I did try to do this, sorta: I kept it by my bedside and tried to read one awesome thing before I went to sleep each night. This was actually an excellent idea, a really good way to go to sleep cheerful, though perhaps a little terrified of all the things that can be done with fast-food. But I am not a dip-in reader, and I would sometimes crack out and read 15 or 20 awesome things in a row, and get to a giggly hyper place not at all condusive to sleep. Finally I just gave up and started reading it on the bus, my ideal reading environment. Which led to it being my second-ever bus book conversation (the other was Special Topics in Calamity Physics).

So I wound up reading it pretty much straight through, and getting a little obsessive about stylistic quirks that probably should have been ignored. Like, Pasricha clearly has a persona of a goofy suburban everydude who likes to eat and commutes to an office job in a car. This comes out in his voice, and the things he chooses to write about: cars and food and childhood and…there’s a lot about food (which made me happy; I like food too and am actually eating curry while I type this). But someone (an editor?) seems to have made a rule that the book be for everyone, and that Pasricha not use too many examples from his personal life.

So all the entries are written in the second person (“You’re lovin it lots!”) and the gender of pronouns often flips back and forth within a paragraph, which made the author seem not inclusive but MPD. And even though he was clearly mocking those who relish finding the last of a particular item in their size at a clothing store and much more sincere in his love of the Man Couch (apparently, a couch in mall stores where women can leave their pouty partners while they shop), he keeps on trying to be all things to all people. There’s even an entry on getting into clean sheets with freshly shaved legs–yes, that is actually an amazing sensation, but how would *he* know?

The best of these entries are actually the most personal. There’s a really really really sweet one about halftime orange slices when you are a kid playing soccer, which isn’t about orange slices at all but about his awesome mom. I’m pretty sure it would be worth the purchase price to just photocopy this entry and give it to your mom for Mother’s Day. And an entry towards the end about a friend who had passed away sort of anchored the book and made clearer its purpose.

Of course, it goes without saying there are no intellectual pleasures on this list, not even ones like, “When a frustrated crossword doer mutters a clue out loud and you happen to know the answer.” This is about more basic, visceral stuff than that–when you get the nacho with the most toppings, when the batteries in the remote control work a little longer than they should, when someone gives you a really solid hug. Those things deserve to be celebrated, and the inclusiveness of this list does show how similar we all are in the end. And that made me feel pretty AWESOME!

August 5th, 2010

Great, just great

My apartment building’s basement, 8:34 this evening (click to enlarge):

Crazy basement note (and rebuttal)

Oh yeah, this won’t end well. I’m actually pretty worried–this is a ramp up on the crazy, even for this building. That’s not paper, by the way; it’s a 2×3 foot piece of bristol board, like you do a science project on in grade three. Worried (but still pleased by use of “signage”–the rebutter has clearly worked in retail!)

August 4th, 2010

Life–so much stuff!

So I went to Winnipeg! Did I mention everyone should go to Winnipeg? Oh yeah, I did! As it turns out, it’s equally fun the second time! Maybe even more so, because there was no work involved in this trip, just Olive Garden and old friends and new friends and a very pretty wedding with strawberry pie instead of wedding cake (genius!) and a very weird hotel with a two-story waterslide in the pool and fluorescent lights in the bedrooms. And Grand Beach at Lake Winnipeg and SO many kinds of ice cream, and hugs, and a very orderly airport (even though they confiscated my hair mousse). Oh, and cheap sushi. And a cat who could sit on command.

So, yes, I had a good weekend, though it kept me from blogging, which is ever sad. So I haven’t mentioned yet that my short story “Sweet” is now online at the Canadian Notes and Queries site. Or that my reading at Pivot at the Press Club is one week from tonight.

Or that that cartoon about never being a grownup that everyone is posting these days is very hilarious and yet nothing like me! Yes, I apparently am the only person in my age category who feels no solidarity with this woman. I *love* grocery shopping and going to the bank! I owe a few emails, it’s true, but they’re in my queue. I even occasionally look forward to cleaning stuff. Before i leave the house this morning, I’m going to scrub the sink and maybe the bathtub.

I’m totally not bragging–I’d be the first to admit that I use groceries and laundry as procrastinatory activities in order to escape doing, like, actual work on my writing. And I *still* find time to surf the internet like an attention-deficit squirrel on PCP. If my sink were dirtier and I had a less-full complement of groceries, I would get more/have to get more work done. And where’s the fun in that? I think this is an element those chore-avoiders haven’t caught onto yet!

July 27th, 2010

Moodily speaking

Various items of late have been contributing to my good mood–sunshine, Toy Story 3, nice friends, pizza, etc. I also got what probably the nicest massmail ever, and I thought I’d share it. It was from the guy who used to run CD Baby. I bought a cd from him back in the day (according to his records, 2003), not because I had ever even heard of CD Baby, but because it was the only thing that came up when I tried to buy Electroshock Blues Live album (they no longer have it; weirdly, they do have something by a band called Unagi, which came up in my Eels search!)

Point? What point? Oh, yeah, so apparently a couple years ago the founder of CDBaby, Derek Sivers, gave the company to charity and himself to other projects. Why do I know this? Because he sent me a really friendly massmail to tell me. I don’t think his other projects are going to make him the kind of millions selling music did, but they are pretty cool. Especially the Music Thoughts website, which has a “random thought” generator that is good fun. I am a sucker for random (as you regular readers will know), but unlike say, the random kitten generator, the random music thoughts actually make me feel a bit smarter! Ie., “The poem the reader reads may be better than that which the writer wrote.” (Brian Eno) This actually helps me! (ok, so do the kittens, but in a different way).

What else is good? Ooooh, new Meatloaf song! You can totally mock me after you listen to it–but you won’t, because it’s brilliant. I liked ML when I was a youth, too, and knew even then it wasn’t cool. Then a couple years ago, I got sucked into watched a Meatloaf biopick (stupid internet appears to deny all knowledge of said film) and he was clearly a guy I could get behind–and admit it! I mean, “I’m just a white boy/I play a guitar/I put my pants on/I drive a sh*t car.” Hooray for rock and roll!

You know, I think the main problem with my life right now is that I don’t have a toad. In my childhood, summers were full of toads–it seemed like every day I would come across one hopping through the grass and I would put it in a sandbucket and give it grass and rocks to eat and we’d hang out together, maybe with my brother if he was being good that day.

Inevitably, I would be called into the house for a meal or bed, and while the toad appeared content in his sandbucket world, my father would release the toad the second my back was turned. Of course, my dad likes animals and did not one to die due to my not knowing what toads eat or that they like freedom. However, my father never adequately explained this to me and for years I thought he did it simply to be mean and deprive me of toad-friends.

Now, there are no toads. Partly because I no longer live in a rural environment, and partly I think I just don’t see them because my eyes are farther from the ground than they used to be. And I’d really like to see a toad again. *Not* because I’m seeking to defy my father by keeping it indefinitely in a bucket, but because they are so fun, so patient and blinky and good at hopping, and their little bellies are silky when you stroke them (although FYI, toads excrete poison from their skin when they are frightened, so always wash your hands after stroking at toad’s belly). I would just like to hang out with a toad for a little bit, and maybe even my brother, too.

So really, can’t complain about things around here. Hope you guys are well too…and if you have any surplus toads, please send’em my way!

July 22nd, 2010

More on villains

Just a little while ago, I published an article on villains, about how badly written villains are plot twists and not characters, and well-written ones have humanity and motivations, even if they are loathesome.I have just come across a really great example of the kind of precisely worked, humanly rendered, utterly obnoxious fictional jerk I so admire–too bad I hadn’t read this book when I was writing the article.

The protagonist of Russell Smith’s Girl Crazy is 32-year-old Justin Harrison. He teaches Business English and Online Writing at a suburban vocation school, while taking an interest in neither the material nor his students nor his colleagues, hating his boss, ogling the departmental secretary, and doing as little work as possible. He spends his evenings playing violent video games and having tepid conversations with his ex-girlfriend, whom he seems never to have liked. He has few friends, though he stretches the count by including school acquaintances from 10 years ago who occasionally send him mass-mail invitations to parties. And when he sees a girl crying by the side of the road, his first thoughts are of sleeping with her.

In short, Justin is an utter asshole, who spends the entire book feeling entitled to a lifestyle that he has made no effort to achieve, and being snarky to those he believes aren’t on-side with his pathetic cause, which is pretty much everyone. Luckily, those Justin hurts are pretty much as awful as he is, and for most of the book he is too deluded and inefficient to do terribly much damage to anyone. What’s terrifying at the end is that maybe he’s gotten it together, efficiency-wise without gaining any actual insight–maybe the damage is coming.

And what’s amazing is that *Girl Crazy* is really engaging–I genuinely wanted to know what would happen to Justin at every turn, and was fascinated by the inner workings of his mind. I am very much aware that there are folks in the world–in my world–very similar to this guy. His self-interest and self-regard are utterly resonant with lesser jerks I have known. I liked the book because of Smith’s sharp prose, his funny/mean jokes, the narrative drive, but also because I’d always wanted to know what guys like this are thinking. And now, a little, I feel I do.

Justin feels it’s ok to stare at attractive women as long and obviously as he likes because they’ll never consent to sleep with him, so he deserves to take what he can get, as much of it as possible, whenever he can. Justin is dying to teach literature to his students, though they are training in trades and don’t want to learn it, and the department doesn’t want to offer it. When someone finally asks, “What do you care…about how much English lit our students know about?” Justin thought about this. It was not such an easy question. “I don’t,” he said finally. “I would just find it more interesting.”

I recognize this sort of self-absorbed pathos though I can’t hang out with guys like Justin because my breasts are too small to merit interest and I’d probably try to kill him with a butter knife after twenty minutes, anyway. But it’s great to read Smith’s dead-on evocation of a loser with a theory about everything, and watch how he tries to project himself into the big leagues and the life of a sexy girl.

I am sure no one cares what I think is wrong with fiction today, but for what it’s worth, I think a lot of writers go wrong conflating “protagonist” and “hero.” Of course, there is much great literature to be written about people who overcome adversity, learn from their mistakes, reach out to their loved ones, help the unfortunate, and achieve greatness without ever comprimising their values–but do *all* books have to be about them? I suppose we are the heroes of our own lives, but by any other standard I’d see Justin Harrison as a villain. Reading *Girl Crazy* let me live his life with interest for a week. I even queasily identified with him in places, and that, I think, is a great literary accomplishment for Smith–and certainly a tougher challenge than getting a reader to feel a commonality with the heroes we all feel ourselves to be.

July 20th, 2010

Randomality

I have been working on an actual literarily related post that’s really long and complicated and totally not done, and now I don’t have time to work on it. But I also haven’t posted in ages, and that leaves a void in my life, so here’s a few funny things people have said and done in my proximaty lately:

My yoga teacher: “Just let your tongue sort of hang out in the centre of your mouth.”

Well-dressed middle-aged woman at bus stop, after asking me directions to a place she had only a number for, but did not know what street that number was supposed to be on: stuck her finger directly (and far!) up her nose while listening to my baffled reply.

Teenaged girl I eavesdropped on at Starbucks while she was talking to a male friend: (repeatedly) “I know I’m not, like, ugly or anything, but I just don’t think I’m *that* pretty.”

I heart this town. Especially now that is not 10 000 degrees. More soon!

July 16th, 2010

Things to do on a “writing day” that are not writing

Despite the fact that none of the activities listed below are actually writing, they all offerred comfort or encouragement to the heat-besieged writer, and I have no regrets whatsoever about anything that happened yesterday. (I also got a little writing in between all the other stuff.)

–go to the gym where, because of the air-conditioning, you actually sweat less than elsewhere
–pick raspberries
–eat the raspberries immediately. Do not even bring a bowl to put them in–eat’em right off the bush.
–read and read and read Russell Smith’s Girl Crazy. I am only at the halfway point, so I can’t fully tell you whether it is a brilliant novel or not, but I know that I am mad every time I reach my TTC stop and can’t read anymore for a while, so that’s a good sign.
–have lunch at Ackee Tree, where the staff is incredibly nice and everything seems to come with coleslaw.
–go sit on the lawn downtown that no one ever sits on (they sit on benches and stare out at it, as if it were the sea). I will leave out the exact location of the lawn to protect the identity of my partner in crime, but that is one nice lawn–all long and lush, with no worn bits (because no one ever sits on it or even walks on it) and certainly no cigarette butts or dog poo.
–give blood! I am still trying to figure out where to donate money, but at least there’s really only one place to give blood. I asked and the supply is currenly not bad, but they always need more, especially B- and O-, if you happen to have those. (Side story: as part of the usual intake assessment, the nurse asked to examine my inner arms to check for track marks. I had none of those, but I did have a cookie crumb embedded in the sweat of the crook my elbow–sex-ay!)
–watch Nicole Holofcener’s amazing film Please Give starring Catherine Keener and a really talented woman named Rebecca!! (Hall). I am not famous for my interest in complicated, serious, grown-up movies, but I did get blown away by Lovely and Amazing, also by Holofcener and also staring Keener, way back in 2001. I’m actually going to try to review this at some point, so I’ll shut up now.
–scuttle about the city in the heat, and enjoy watching folks in suits and ties eating ice-cream, skateboarders, children pitching fits, tour groups, street charity solitictations, and the nice people from a hair products company, whom I ran into both at Queen and Spadina and later at Yonge and College (I get around) and who gave me a mini bottle of conditioner both times.
–when you get home from all this, pour astringent on a white cotton pad, and then run it over your makeup-free face. If you are disgusting and immature like me, you will be fascinated to see the brownish colour of Toronto smog that has accumulated in your pores. I do this every night in summer! (Is this TMI? I never know.)

What a nice city I live in!

July 14th, 2010

Observation

Maybe so much fiction has been written about male-female dynamics because because then the author can be clear who is speaking/acting/emoting with only pronouns. Every time I write a scene with two or more people of the same gender, I go insane for how many times I have to use everyone’s stupid names–pronouns are all but useless when multiple people are *he* or *she*!

Am I the only one who is still struggling with this sort of mechanical minutiae? At this point on a hot day, I feel like the answer to that is probably yes.

New Literary Critic

Yes, I am aware there is another CanLit deba(te/cle) going on right now, and of course I am following it even though I find it depressing. Smart people *are* making astute points, but when it’s criticism of criticism of criticism, I find it hard to believe their efforts aren’t better spend elsewhere.

Thus, I won’t link to it, in case you are as-yet undepressed (I just checked and googling “literary debate canadian” doesn’t bring this one up–it’s mainly Canada Reads, though the first one is about the Salon des Refuses!)

Instead I’ll just share this nice little short-story shout-out from my current most favourite band, The New Pornographers. Since I think AC Newman is a genius, it makes me happy to think he likes the thing I do. And I think he describes it pretty well, too:

You always love short story form
The science behind it, the hidden doors

(from MY Shepherd on the album Togetherness)

July 13th, 2010

Charitable Failure

I think I am way too affected by telemarketers, because this is my second post in recent memory about one, but whatever–this incident freaked me out. If you have experience with charities or for some other reason can explain it to me, I’d be grateful.

So! About a month ago I got lured into chatting with one of those street canvassers for a charitable organization. I already knew of it and it sounded like a good group to me, so I offered to give the guy what was in my wallet, but he wanted to sign me up for a monthly donation plan with automatic withdrawals from my credit card. I said I was not going to give out my card # on the street, and he said he could take my phone number and we’d talk about it at a time I could pick, after I’d done some research and thought it over. I said ok.

They called last night. After a bit of chatter about the organization, I said I’d like to give them $100 (which is actually a lot of money to me). The very sweet, earnest young woman on the phone said they prefer to have monthly donations via direct withdrawal because processing costs are so much lower and also then they have a steady income to fund long-term projects. I didn’t see how the first worked–why would it be easier to process 12 little donations instead of 1 big one–but there is much I don’t know. Hesitantly (because I hate direct withdrawal and been screwed by it in the past), I said perhaps I could give $10 a month, and then in a year that would be just a bit more than my planned $100.

The volunteer (I asked her; that’s what she was) said that their minimum donation was $20/month and I said, “oh, I’m not going to do that.” I am worried this makes me sound cheap, but whatever, it wasn’t what I had budgeted. She suggested I just sign up for the monthly withdrawal and after 5 months I could quit. I said that didn’t sound like it would be very good for their long-term projects and she didn’t really answer, and then I said, “Let’s just go with the $100.”

This got me the spiel about spiralling processing and administrative costs again, and when I remained unmoved, a thanks for my time and honesty. “You won’t take the $100?” No, she wouldn’t, but I could always go to the website and figure it out for myself how to send the money. Politely, but firmly, she ended the conversation.

WTF? Are legit charities really discouraging modest donations these days? Was it some sort of scam operating under the name of a legit organization? Even so, it wasn’t a very good scam, since I offered my credit card number and she turned it down. Or is the entire organization (which has a *lot* of visibility in the media, to the point where even a media-loser like myself sees it) somehow less legit than I thought? Or am I just too cheap/afraid of scamsters to do the right thing?

Also, what should I do with that $100 I have now decided I want to give to a good cause? I could of course figure it out from the website–it’s not that difficult. But I am somewhat alarmed about those admin costs–what if it really *is* a waste of half the money? Also, well, my little feelings are hurt! I was feeling really good about being able to do something nice, and now I feel awful about the whole thing. I will end up giving it elsewhere–certainly, there’s no shortage of good causes. But I would still really like to know what went wrong with my sad failure to be generous.

All insights appreciated.