I get migraines too. The only thing that works for me is if I take 1,000 miligrams of ibuprofun (five tablets) and a tums to head off the horror that they do to my stomach. Then I lie in the dark and pray that I don't puke before the magic pills do their work.
That mercenary who posts from Baghdad, this is his latest:
Shit, I am still here (and drinking...)
Just heardm a big explosion 10 mins ago (VBIED??), followed by some .50 cal machine gun fire, then 1 min ago 6 outgoing mortar rounds. I think it has started...
Thanks guys for your support, almost have to laugh, I am sitting here with an American Intel Offcier and my boss who is South African, giggling, wondering what will be next.
It seems like burnt bodies now ranks up there with 'the children' when it comes to making a political point.
I am horrified every time I see a charred corpse, whether it's an Iraqi baby with the pacifier still in its mouth (remember that one?), or the recent spectacle.
The display of the proper amount of human compassion in reaction to various atrocities has become political capital. It's like a public show of piety, and turning events into an ouch-fest doesn't help much when it's time to figure out what is actually going on.
The truth is, (as I see it) the Bush administration promised to liberate Iraq and democratize the region. Rumsfeld's strategy, as Jim M. has mentioned, was to accomplish this with a smaller force than his generals wanted.
Well, Iraq is a nightmare now. Whether or not you pity the dead, there are not supposed to be charred bodies hanging from bridges in Iraq. This adventure has gone spectacularly wrong. That's the real issue, not whether or not we shed tears at their passing.
I post regularly on a politics board where one of the posters is a contract security worker in Baghdad. He's a nice guy, based on his online personality. His take on the situation is that this new cleric is making a bid for power and things are looking very, very bad. He is writing evacuation plans, Iraqi workers are not showing up to work, and his colleagues are talking about Saigon.
I'm always drawn to these maudlin accounts of how publishing is a siren song that leads to despair. I always get a hang-over after I read them. Harper's Magazine regularly runs this type of essay, too, for some reason.
I was in a short play with a bone doctor. She complained that all she did all day was operate on people's knees and it got really boring after a while. She didn't sound heart-broken and devastated though.
I sometimes worry because I've forsaken a career so that I have more time to write. I have a family that I could better support by working in advertising or banking. I think what really grates about this article is the sense of victimhood. The woman is a published author and she's oppressed because she still has to work for a living. Lame. If her prose is infected with the same kind of ouchfest rambling, then no wonder she hasn't done better. She needs a shrink and a compelling point of view.
Gawker.com has some fun stuff on this piece as well.
Teresa and Patrick: You two are going to have to get sick a lot more often if it leads to posts and threads like this one! Your public demands it.
TNH, you nailed it with the "I have the same business anyone else has, and I have no time for people who appoint me to strange roles in their rich inner fantasy lives. I’m not responsible for whatever it is I do in their dreams."
And PNH, the whole thing about the knee-jerk temptation to afflict the unafflicted and unafflict the afflicted-- genius. That sums up my personality in one sentence, I'm sad to say.
If you could fit a line in about being a hypocrite, you'd have me in a nutshell. Oh, but wait, this isn't about me. Maybe throw in a line about self-centerdness for good measure.
Oh Man! That is a true bummer. I'm sorry you're still suffering. I hope you get well quickly!
I think I speak for all of us when I say that I get giddy at the mere thought of you taking on Yngve. Woohoo! That would have been fun to read. Ah well. Rest up and eat that chicken noodle. (Veselka in the E. Village has great chicken noodle to go. If you need a noodle run, just say the word.)
Wow. That's a bummer.
My very first published article was in Scholastic's Scope Magazine. They spelled my name wrong in the byline. I was so bummed.
Any writer who hates rejection just needs to spend a year writing ad copy. I've never had a rejection from an editor that was nearly as harsh and painful as client feedback. Marketing flunkies who destroy your ideas over speakerphone while they dawdle over their tri-colored pasta are the cruelist people in cubicleland.
At least editors don't expect your work to do something that stories can't do. Unlike marketeers, who want your short ad to compel billions of folks to buy some crap that they don't want or need. Editors just want to publish something that they think people will buy. If we disagree on that, I do feel disappointment, but I don't feel personal rejection. They didn't like my story, for whatever reason. Generally, if I send something out, it's because I think it succeeds at what I was trying to accomplish. By the time I'm getting the rejections, I'm on to the next story anyway.
Maybe the anger comes from the relationship of the client and the worker. The worker must resent the client, it's the way. You want fries with that?
OK, shameless praise:
Steve, I love your comment. I, too, was mindblown way back when I first heard of virtual items selling for cash on ebay. Now this... To quote Cardinal Bishop, "I feel and exquisite pain."
Teresa, yes, why can't I come up with something, anything in my fiction that is remotely as bizarre and utterly perfect as these sweatshops? It's an endless challenge to outdo the oddity of life, let alone reproduce it. These entrepreneurs don't have the internal editor who says, "Nah, that's too bizarre!"
As for the adam and eve story...my big lesson came in my first creative writing class. The teacher said "Hands up...whose stories featured someone who commits suicide?" Half of us raised our hands. "OK, how many go insane?" The rest of us raised our hands. "No more suicide or madness for the rest of the semester, OK?" We all nodded solemnly.
I'm a little concerned about the terrorist...er..."tour guide" that you mention in our post, Teresa. Sleeper cells of Islamicists may very well be giving tours of the famous mob hits in Little Italy while planning something very, very, evil and almanacish.
Mitch-
umm...yeah...but...umm...
Look, more information is good, except when it contradicts MY information.
signed,
the newdge
Hey Mitch,
Sorry to nitpick, but a factiod is something that is stated as a fact but is actually untrue.
From dictionary.com: 1. A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition
Sorry to be a nudge. (noodge?)
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