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The ads on the Metro can be as wonky as the people who ride it. Stuff about federal retirement benefits. Advertisements for military and defense aircraft. Ads that essentially lobby for the wind energy industry or for net neutrality. Geez, even the literary ads can be a little weird.
But this ad, from stopthedrill.org, really caught my attention. They have them for San Francisco and D.C. too, but the New York one made my jaw drop.
Does this remind you of anything? Anything, um, not an oil spill in New York Harbor? You know, the sunny day. New York. Black smoke billowing high up into the sky. Anyone?
My first reaction to this ad, and to the "What If It Happened Here?" on top was: what the fuck are you talking about? It did happen here! Only then did I notice "stopthedrill.org" at the bottom and that the smoke was rising from the water, not lower Manhattan.
do you see my point yet or should i upload more pictures??
I understand what they're trying to do. I agree we need to be much more responsible with offshore drilling. I'd even say the oil spill in the Gulf was probably more devastating than a comparable spill in New York or San Francisco would be - I'm guessing here a bit, but at least in terms of the marine ecosystem and its effects on the economy (not to mention the ease of containment).
But these are wonky details. My point is: who approved this particular ad and how tone-deaf can they possibly be? I note the D.C. ad has them cleaning up birds in the Tidal Basin (during Cherry Blossom Festival, no less) and quite notably does not show a pillar of black smoke rising from what just might be the Pentagon.
Give me a break.
I am intrigued with the discussion going on over at the Fiction Groupie blog about writers reviewing books. It's of relevance to me because: 1) I frequently, and often quite critically, review books on this blog; and 2) I am finding myself with more "real world" (that means "real name") opportunities to review, often quite critically, mostly nonfiction so far, but that may change. It's a multi-dimensional discussion that got me thinking a little bit about how I do things.
First, there's the distinction between nitpicking and reviewing. I'd like to think that I review, not nitpick. (Anyone care to disagree?)
Second, there is the fact that I use a pseudonym here and this blog is not a marketing platform (God help me if it was). Chances are I would be a bit less critical were I using my real name, or at least go a bit less on my overall impressions and a bit more on easily-substantiated particulars.
That being said, as someone trained as a scientist, I am used to anonymous peer-review, which can be incredibly harsh. Anonymous peer review tends not to get posted on the internet (though some argue it should be), but it is simply par for the course. If your work sucks, people aren't shy about telling you. If that makes you cry or makes you not do science anymore, que lastima. I believe in being constructive to a fault, but I do not believe in coddling mediocrity. If giving criticism properly has become a lost art form, so has accepting it. And I stand by that.
At the same time, even here - safely hidden behind my pseudonym and an unknown and unpublished quantity, anyway - I have made the decision not to review several books on this blog whose authors were nice to me in person when I met them or with whom there is some other connection or some other reason I didn't want to or felt it would be unprofessional to.
On the other hand, do Emma Donoghue or David Eagleman or - for fuck's sake - Snooki really care what I think? Please - they are laughing all the way to the bank, and in a previous post I highlighted research showing that even bad reviews in prestigious venues (this blog clearly is not one) can boost sales for new authors. When you enter the public sphere by publishing a book, you expose your work to criticism. That is one of the things that makes publishing difficult. People who don't like that can: a) not publish, b) use a pen name, and/or c) not ever read reviews.
One of the most interesting aspects of the conversation in the comments is this distinction between readers and writers. Some were arguing that writers shouldn't be trashing other writers online because we're all writers. One commenter even likened it to bashing a co-worker publicly, which is a baffling analogy. Anyway, I've got two problems with this assertion:
1) If you look at (fiction) book reviews in major newspapers and periodicals, you will find many reviews written by people who are not professional critics, but whose qualifications are that they are authors. If you're telling me those reviews are buttered up with false praise (though I accept they probably sometimes are), then I'm no longer interested in reading them. Certainly in scholarly circles and even in much mainstream nonfiction, you want a reviewer who knows the subject, and their own publications are often their credentials.
2) This implies that readers and writers are somehow different people. But many readers write and many (should be all) writers read. We are consumers and producers at the same time. And I as a consumer am unhappy when I read a book that's a total piece of crap. (On the other hand, I'm less likely to review that book here because it's not worth it - I'd rather review books that are at least mixed.) What if I write YA but review adult, write mystery but review romance, write fiction but review non-fiction, write technical papers but review Jonathan Franzen? I mean, this is a fairly ridiculous argument.
I review books on this blog for two interdependent reasons: 1) I like to analyze literature and writing the analysis down forces me to solidify my thoughts, the exercise of which I think helps improve my writing, and 2) reviews can foster discussion...not just about reading, but about writing. I have, in the past, elevated comments that disagree with my assessment of books to make my readers aware of them (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned comes to mind) because the thing I most want to do with my reviews is learn (not preach, instruct, bash or anything else).
If I review in other venues (where my name is attached), there is a third and selfish reason, which is to get my name out there. This requires that I think not only about my opinions about the work but about how they, and I, will be perceived. So those reviews are certainly prepared more carefully than my reviews here, though they may not be any less critical.
Now, all this being said, I think if I were Roni from Fiction Groupie - with a fiction publishing deal in hand, lots of followers (approximately 50x the Lt.), a blog focused on writers - I would do just what she does because, as she says, the cost-benefit is pretty clear. (I might make an exception if the New York Times asked me to review, vs. on my own blog.) Her advice seems designed simply to help novice writers avoid coming across as unprofessional by reminding them that publishing is a small world and the internet is indeed public. I thought it was funny to watch the discussion because she was arguing a pretty sensible middle ground, but the commenters kept expanding her meaning to extremes, and she kept reminding them what she'd actually said.
Anyway, a pretty thought-provoking discussion....
The question on my mind this past week was whether it didn't seem like such a bad week to me because: a) I had just returned from vacation and actually felt like a human being, or b) it really wasn't such a bad week. I think a little of both. Cautiously, I predict the end of the ridiculous times at work for a while, which means a little more of the Lt. in your lives as we move towards the summer. Assuming, of course, that I can think of what to post about.
I can tell you that last year, when I returned from vacation, the peace lasted until around noon at my first day back at work, because by that point in my time at that place there was a person the mere sight of whom made my blood boil and made me want to grab the nearest hard object and start swinging it him. So as soon as I saw him, upon my return, all bets were off. There are aggravations in my current job, too, but nothing even within an order of magnitude of that in its acuteness. My peace lasted the first three days or so.
And this time, we won't wait a whole other year before taking another vacation.
On another note, it goes without saying, but the Lt. was not raptured on Saturday. I'm an atheist, but I didn't entirely dismiss the possibility, because truly: who can know the mind of God? I thought of a short story idea, though: God announces the rapture to a select few individuals and of course nobody believes them. The day comes and goes and nobody is raptured. It turns out this is because nobody can meet God's high standards - basically, we're all fucked. Even the "select few individuals," are just vessels for spreading God's word and not themselves raptured.
Alternatively, God announces on the airwaves, on Twitter, on everywhere that the Rapture is coming Saturday. He orders everyone to strip naked and prostrate themselves in the middle of a big field. The time comes and Independent Day-esque spaceships descend from the sky on a helpless, naked, prostrated humanity. Ha, ha! say our new alien overlords. Fooled you superstitious humans!
(There is, indeed, a good reason why I do not write short stories.)
WTF?
Jeez, Lt., what is the connection between these two threads in your post? you ask, assuming you are one of the stalwart few still reading. Oh, it's tenuous. Only that I feel like if God were to redesign Heaven, he might want to look at the resort my wife and I stayed at last week for some ideas. Because that's what Heaven is, right? Like a big vacation that doesn't end.
Have you ever seen those illustrations of Heaven from Jehovah's Witness literature? It's like everyone got dressed up and headed to a zoo without cages for a big picnic. Go ahead and tell me those are just symbolic representations, but I'm sorry, I don't believe it. I mean, there's no swim-up bar!
Humans: we really are such silly creatures.
Having said in my guest post on Sierra's blog that I don't read much about e-books because they just ain't my problem yet (which is true), I have to admit to the one exception to my lack of interest: my real life experiences.
To the point: as many of you know from my frequent bitching and moaning, Lt. commutes by Metro each day, and for months I've had the wacky idea of keeping a totally non-scientific tally of how many paper books vs. e-books I see people reading on the train.
What would this tell me? Probably nothing. Why don't I do it? Well, see answer to first question...plus, it'd be a lot of work because I'd need to think about it and write down what I saw each day, rather than just totally zoning out or fantasizing about pounding the shit out of my fellow passengers or whatever it is I might otherwise do. (Which does not include reading because, as I've mentioned before, the Lt. gets incredibly motion-sick if he tries to read, especially on a transportation system as herky-jerky as the Metro.) But the idea doesn't go away.
Of course I would have to exclude Bibles or overtly religious stuff, and I see people reading that stuff with surprising regularity. Perhaps people hope that such material will give them the spiritual and moral strength necessary to survive their crappy commute - I don't blame them. Might also have to exclude the folks who read management textbooks and other school type stuff on the train, though I admire their work ethic.
I also thought about this while we were on vacation last week. As you might expect, most people out by the pool or on the beach read paper books (and man, what a bountiful cornucopia of shitty authors were represented!), but I did see a couple of e-readers. (However, I probably saw more laptops than e-readers, and not more than three of each. And yes, my wife and I rolled our eyes at the people with laptops, until I considered perhaps they were using the time to write a novel. Then I made a nasty face at them. And no, I didn't see anyone stupid enough to have their laptop with them on the beach. But I saw one at the pool and a few inside the hotel.)
On another note, the only things I'll say about Philip Roth and the Man Booker: I like Roth but I'm by no means a huge fan. Three judges was a bad idea - there should have been a panel. The judge who resigned had what I consider a clear conflict of interest and never should have been asked to judge a field that included Roth. I know publishing is a relatively small world, but the people who set this thing up should have taken more care. Here's a piece on the situation I more or less agree with, though again - I think the real problem here is that the people who chose the judges did a poor job in only selecting three people, and not vetting for conflicts of interest.
I am (very reluctantly) back from vay-cay after much sun and much cerveza and many hours spent floating in the tropical sea. But luckily I do not have to write a post because Sierra Godrey was nice enough to ask me to write a guest post, which appears today on her blog. It's about how I've tried to make writing a bigger part of my life than just trying to get an agent for my novel, and how that's helped me be persistent.
Go check it out (and on the off chance you don't already follow Sierra - she's a must if you're a writer)!
Some of you may remember this one, but it still makes me chuckle, especially the part about Jonathan Coulton and Haman.
I'm on vacation this week, which I desperately need, but I thought I would use the opportunity of my absence to highlight some older posts. My posting lately hasn't been very good, but I've still got around 350 posts in my blog history - if 80s sitcoms can do it, the occasional rerun won't kill me, either.
So look for a "new" old post here each day this week, and then next Monday look for the Lt.'s first guest blog post ever!
Have a great week.
They got the motherfucking bastard, and that makes me happy for reasons including: 1) as many of you know, I'm from New York, and events ten years ago struck quite close to home; 2) it shows the world that we don't give up and we don't forget.
I count myself among those who would have liked to have seen pictures of the body, not just to dispel the inevitable conspiracy theories, but also just for personal edification.
When I posted a couple of months ago about media coverage as a reward, some of you seemed puzzled. But now here is a great example. The American media establishment is salivating to get at those Navy SEALs. Imagine those guys on the "Today Show" answering questions like, "How did it feel to know you had a chance to kill Osama bin Laden?" Imagine them "writing" a book like A Promise To Keep or Faith Of My Fathers or (God help us all) Highest Duty dressing up their entire lives to make them a prelude to those 40 minutes. Next thing you know they're on Dancing With the Stars or locked in a cave with one of the Palin kids for our entertainment or remaking a Lady Gaga song. Seriously, this is what we've come to.
But that will never happen. We will never know who they are. We will be deprived of our hero cycle. And, if you think about it, isn't that more inspiring? Hear me out. Not only do many of us do heroic, and unacknowledged, work at our jobs (every time you watch the news about DC you are seeing the fruits of the labor of thousands of staffers whose names you will never know, heroic or not), but just raising our families and being good spouses, children, siblings, friends is the most important stuff most of us will ever do, and it goes all but unacknowledged by society. We have to seek out our satisfaction elsewhere, not from the fame machine.
Those of us who write, at some level, all want some recognition for our work - be it huge commercial success or just a small but devoted following. Our art is one thing. The rest of life is another.
I'm proud of those SEALs. I'm proud of our military in general. I'm proud we never gave up.
But to make them household names, parade them on talk shows, let them sit where the cameras can see them at the Superbowl and the State of the Union: do they need that? Do we?
They did their jobs, and the satisfaction for them is surely in that. Let's all of us seek more of our satisfaction in the same place.
As for Osama bin Laden, I can't help but think his quick death was a mercy for him. Many innocent, hardworking folks who never hurt a fly will suffer a lot more - in hospital beds, on the battlefield - before their own ends. But I'm glad we got him. And glad we never gave up. And I'm glad we'll never know who the heros are. Because they are those men, all the SEALS, all our military, and - to the extent we live up to it - all of us.
do you see my point yet or should i upload more pictures??
