As a person with social anxiety issues, I am often happy when I can find what I'm looking for and check out without making contact with another human being. I like self-check-out. In the best of all possible worlds it frees up staff to actually be helpful and deal with transactions that can't be automated.
...In reality it's an excuse to cut staff.
As a librarian in a library that's quickly becoming very automated, I find that the automation seems to be designed for a brightish twentysomething with no vision problems or physical disabilities. People who have trembling fingers, or poor eyesight, or learning disabilities, are sometimes completely stymied by the payment kiosk and self-check-out, and what's designed to save staff time ends up having the opposite effect.
Xopher @ 458, I'd like to take a stab at that one! There is a specific kind of micro-goal-enjoyment at work when I read difficult fiction, like when I'm trying to troubleshoot my computer. It's not a pride in having read the Big Complicated Book, because the process itself (not just getting to the end) is enjoyable. Rather, I meet a difficulty in my reading, and I feel myself stretching to overcome it, I look for solutions, I try one tack and then another, and I get all these little "Ah-ha!" moments when I manage to get past a barrier.
Part of the enjoyment is a kind of pride in my own competence, I suppose, and I think part of it is the satisfaction of curiosity or trust--I hit a confusing part, and I say, "Okay, author, I will trust you with this," and 100 pages later my trust is rewarded. Which is, perhaps, very much like the satisfaction of baking, when you put in your eggs and your milk and your flour and you have to have faith that it will turn into a cake.
Inner 10-year-olds should note that this past year has been probably one of the best ever for YA science fiction and fantasy (as Hugo voters recognized by putting The Graveyard Book and Little Brother on their shortlist)--
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan is far from a comfort read, a brutal fairy tale with intense, evocative prose. Lanagan's collections of short stories have the same dense prose and deep themes.
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness is science fiction that tackles religious fundamentalism, colonialism, misogyny, and the ties between violence and our conception of masculinity, set on a world where the men are constantly bombarded with one another's thoughts and the women are all dead. Warning: there is a dog. You know what happens to dogs in YA books.
Graceling is what I recommend to people who recoil at their daughters and sisters and nieces reading Twilight, a suspenseful high fantasy about a young woman whose grace--her special talent--is killing people. Features a non-stupid romance with actual human beings.
One thing about guilty pleasures-- I walked out of Pirates of the Caribbean feeling delighted, and also somewhat--not guilty, but certainly discomfited. Because here was a movie that seemed almost to be made just for me. It was all, "Oh, you like pretty men and period costumes and pirates and having adventures and saying witty things? Okay, here you go." And that has more in common with pandering, or pornography, than with art. Not that there's anything wrong with pornography.
The beauty of love, and of art, is in what happens when there's friction between one person and another, when you have to stretch yourself a bit to see things form the other point of view, or when they show you something you would never have seen by yourself. I'm always a little suspicious of the books I enjoy that seem, on closer reflection, to just be echoing my own biases.
YA author John Green recently made the point in his blog that reviewers often concentrate on the likeability of a book as if the only thing a book can do is be likeable.
I'm in no way a fan of reading-as-broccoli and reading-as-medicine, but since I read Beloved in ninth grade I've been hitting up against books I found challenging, frustrating, infuriating, and wonderful if I refused to let myself be deterred. Rabelais in French, Murakami in Japanese, James Joyce, Greer Gilman, Kelly Link. It's not broccoli; it's pleasure, though it's the pleasure of hiking up a mountain or wrestling with packages in Linux. Often it's something I wouldn't do if I didn't have to, and yet, when I have to I'm glad I did it. Every so often--not as often as I should, perhaps, but the "shoulds" of reading are problems in themselves--I do try to tackle something far from my expertise and enjoyment, just to discover what’s there that I don’t know yet.
I’m 27. I’m not too old to discover that I do, in fact, like eggplant (when it’s broiled in miso).
A few months ago I picked up the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories. I pretty much hate it, or at least, it’s way too much of exactly the same thing: the alcoholics, the desperate relationships, the flat-on-purpose prose. I don’t, in fact, think that it improved me, except in allowing me to cross that particular style of short fiction off the list of things I should try just in case they’re actually really neat. Maybe all it’s given me is this experience of confronting my own frustration with the stories. That was kind of… worth it. And just as reading for pleasure should never be dismissed as mere escapism, I wouldn’t want that experience dismissed as broccoli. Or “worthy.â€
I am optimistic because the era of the steady day job with health benefits is drawing to a close. More people are freelancing than ever before. More people have steady day jobs that classify them as freelancers -- albeit freelancers who have to come in on Saturday for no extra pay -- to avoid paying health benefits. More people are being kept on payroll as contractors or part-time staff or... whatever justification corporations can use in order to avoid paying for health insurance.
And people are not going to put up forever with not having insurance, with not having their children and siblings and friends insured.
I've had a ridiculous run of medical bad luck over the past couple years -- none of it truly serious, all of it expensive. This, while my twin sister was a "permalancer" and (as a twenty-something woman in perfect health) being quoted $700 a month for health insurance. What I can't get out of my head, what makes me willing to try anything different, is what if the broken bones and the expensive tests had happened to her?
If electronic submissions are a class issue, it's at least as much a class issue how many jobs require e-mail resumes or electronic applications -- including a surprising number of retail, manual labor, and food service jobs; and how many social service organizations are switching to electronic communications.
But a computer and internet access is still cheaper than a car and gas and insurance, and try getting a job in most of the country without those.
Since I started querying my novel a year ago, the entire process has been digital -- query by e-mail, full submission by e-mail, two rounds of edits and a round of line edits by e-mail (yep -- using MSWord's Track Changes feature).
Fortunately Open Office is just about 99% compatible with Word by now, since I refuse to pay for Word.
I've done the paper submissions thing. But paper is really heavy.
Will Shetterly:
That's the same Marcus Epstein who assaulted a pedestrian and yelled racial slurs at her? That's the same Michelle Malkin who thinks that concentration camps are a good idea?
Look at the stuff Vdare has to say about Martin Luther King. Look at the stuff it has to say "debunking" the achievement of famous African Americans.
Amazon.com hasn't even had time for a coverup yet. I can make a guess at how many customer service people they have in on an Easter Sunday, and I'm somehow not surprised that they're getting their stories crossed.
After all, if it's something like Patrick guesses, it's both a 'glitch' and a 'new policy': a 'new policy' to quietly unrank straight-up porn, and a 'glitch' that a lot of books that aren't straight-up porn got caught in the filter.
It's not even 9:00 a.m. in Seattle yet. Frankly, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least until midmorning Seattle time...
Writing ability is orthogonal to thickness of skin -- but thickness of skin isn't only required when you're still an unpublished writer shopping around for an agent; you need it when you get your marked-up manuscript back from your editor, you need it when marketing hates your title, you need it when reviews come in. I'm profoundly grateful that I didn't write a publishable novel until I developed a slightly thicker skin.
ajay@30, a couple weeks ago I whined on Facebook that, would my editor just please accept hand-knit socks, in lieu of my revision? Now I'm tempted to throw in some socks with it for real.
Reading the graphic novel, I strongly felt that the point of Watchmen was that we don't get to draw that line between "justifiable" violence and that which isn't justifiable. As soon as we say, yeah, it's all right to step outside the law and impose your own personal version of justice on the world, it becomes almost impossible to say that those people deserve violent retribution and these people don't; or that it's worth destroying one life for a better world, but not worth it to destroy fifteen million. THAT is the pathology of the very idea of the superhero: not that these eight people are terribly flawed, but that even the best people would head down a terrible road if they pursued the ideal of superheroism (as Adrian Veigt does; and aside from that folder marked 'boys' on his computer, we have no evidence that he's not indeed a very sane, smart, well-adjusted person. Except that, well, he kills fifteen million people.)
That's where I felt the movie failed for me, especially where it played up Veigt's villainy and played down the pathologies of the "good" guys.
Alas -- I found that opening sequence to be one of the only things I loved about the movie, whether because I was too squicked by the violence to see the bright spots (and, yes, I DID know what I was getting into) or because I thought the heart of the original was missing. But I sure did love the opening sequence. (And I intend to watch it a couple more times when I get off work.)
When I was in eighth grade I took an elective on science fiction. (Another butterfly moment: I went to a different school from my twin sister that year because of persistent bullying, a school with a science fiction elective...)
I was already dipping my toes into science fiction: huge Star Trek fan, reading the Hitchhiker's Guide books and Pern. But that class showed me Kafka and Clarke and Something Wicked This Way Comes...
And my teacher scrawled on one of my stories, at the end of the school year: "Have you ever thought of becoming a writer?"
I am waiting for the butter to soften so that I can get a start on cookies for the office party. Two Christmases ago my sister gave me dinosaur cookie cutters, so I'll be making dinosaur cookies with orange glaze and M&Ms for the eyes; I will go, "Hee, dinosaur sodomy," and my roommate will think I'm weird. I am so bad at navigating office politics--having walked in on two coworkers discussing my general laziness and incompetence just last month--but I can do this; I can make cookies.
I was having dinner with my aunt from Canada and my sister, who freelances (conveniently, she gets regular paychecks and can be required to work overtime, but if they call her a freelancer they don't have to give her any benefits.)
Sister: So I looked into getting health insurance for myself, but the cheapest I could find it was $600...
Aunt: Well, that doesn't sound too bad for a year.
Sister: ...A month.
Aunt: My god! What do people do for health care?
Me: You know how the U.S. has more religious fundamentalists? It's because people have to pray they don't get sick.
I am making a Big Lie, only it's a Lie for young adults, so more like a Middle-Sized Lie.
Two months ago I acquired a new digital piano and started working again on making music. But it has kicked up my tendinitis, which I thought I'd beat, and I'm on restricted practice time. I don't know if I'll be able to come back to it, and that's making me anxious.
I moved in with roommates eight months ago; no room in the kitchen to cook, no room for my sewing machine. It has been driving me up the wall! Because I need making.
I need playing with colors, textures, and sounds. I need thorny problems with elegant solutions. I need accomplishment. I need beauty. I need being unskilled at things; it's good for my soul. And so is being skilled at things.
I think it is time for me to get back to my Lie.
A lot of government jobs offer comparatively good benefits in exchange for lousy pay. If teachers and librarians end up taxed on their health plans... they're going to have much less reason to be teachers or librarians.
And goodness knows their salaries aren't going to go up under McCain.
Everyone in my family has more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.
I have an unusually international family; my little sister was born in France, I've lived in Japan, my little sisters are in college in Montreal and party in southeast Asia, my stepfather works in India, China, and Singapore, and all us kids hit every country in western Europe on summer vacation road trips. (We're not obscenely wealthy, just frequently relocated.)
Nevertheless: it's terrifying to me that every member of my family has more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.
(Yes, I'm in the Facebook group.)
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| 2009 | 15 |
| 2008 | 25 |
| 2007 | 5 |
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