Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Bi Mon Sci Fi Con?



I am not a fan of literature of fantasy. I don't like books about dragons and talking animals, long-lost heirs to the throne, evil wizards, and knights in shining armor. I have no patience for distant planets or medieval alternate universes with silly names. I didn't enjoy the Lord of the Rings trilogy or The Chronicles of Narnia when I read them in school. The only exception to this rule, however, is the Harry Potter series. Even though HP is full of wizards and witches, trolls, gnomes, dragons and mermaids, the story is set not in some fictional kingdom of yore or on another planet, but in present-day England. The characters are ordinary people who just happen to have magical abilities. So the stories seem less, well, fantastic. But long before J.K. Rowling could ever dream of becoming the richest woman in all of Great Britain, there was Terry Pratchett. And I now have another exception to my anti-literature of fantasy rule.

My sister recently exposed me to Pratchett, one of her favorite authors. She is a devout sci-fi and fantasy fan and always has been. She loved Planet of the Apes and Star Trek as a child. When we were kids she had to see Star Wars a second time when it first came out, and I had to go with her because it was the only way our mother would let her go to the movies without being accompanied by a parent or guardian. As an adult, I've gone with her to no less than three Star Trek TNG conventions (that's The Next Generation), but only on the condition that she pay my admission fees, of course. (For the record, I've now seen Stryker, Data, and Troi in person, not that I'd readily admit it, though). My sister has seen every episode of Dr. Who and can name all ten actors who portrayed him. Me, I'm only interested in the current one because David Tennant is only the HOTTEST Dr. Who ever! (Plus, I must admit, the writing and production values are way superior to the previous series).

My sister has about thirteen books by Pratchett. Seeing them all lined up on her bookshelf one day, so many that she started a second row in front of the first, I became curious. I asked her what she would recommend I start with, seeing that I can't really get "into" dragons and wizards and such, unless, as I've mentioned, it's at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She explained the whole premise of Discworld, the land in which all of Pratchett's books take place. Discworld is, like in most literature of fantasy novels, a medieval kind of world. But it's full of modern anachronisms, like neon lights, takeout pizzas and rib joints, and strip clubs. Currency is in dollars and pence. Discworld, in the author's own words, started out as a parody of the fantasy literature boom of the early Eighties (hmm, that might be why I like it!). There are several segments of society within Discworld -- mini-series within the series. Some books deal with the witches of Discworld, some deal with the local law enforcement, etc. My sister recommended I start out with the City Watch books, the ones dealing with law enforcement in Discworld, and lent me "Guards! Guards!" It's the first book in the City Watch series, and I find that I can't put it down.

Pratchett's books, although firmly catagorized as literature of fantasy, are hysterically funny and satirical. They're like Monty Python meets J.R.R. Tolkein. Pratchett has a gift for crafting dialogue that is at once seemingly mundane yet hysterically funny. It's the dialogue that advances the story effortlessly and makes it so enjoyable to read.

The first Discworld book was published in 1983. There are now 33 books in the series. Which means I have a lot of reading to catch up on.

Terry Pratchett's official website is www.terrypratchettbooks.com.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Look Back in Anarchy



A great photo retrospective on the Hulton Getty archive site today. A Look Back at Punk collects 49 images from 1976 to 1986 for an at-a-glance overview of the punk rock movement. It features photos of the infamous (Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Billy Idol, and Joe Strummer), as well as the unfamous (punk kids with their spiked hair and wild makeup). Hard to believe punk is over thirty years old.

A Blessing in Disguise (or, The Bloggings of an Insomniac at Three o'Clock in the Morning)



In January, I got fired from my job. I had never been fired from a job before, but to be quite honest, I wasn't all that upset. I hated my job. I was an administrative assistant-slash-receptionist, the lowest rung on the ladder in a completely dysfunctional office. Just like Pam, from The Office (or Dawn, in the British version - both brilliant shows), but without the humor. Quite a cast of characters my co-workers were, too. (Again, like The Office,...). The dragon lady of an office manager was a bully who came from an extremely dysfunctional family. She felt she had something to prove because she didn't have the education or qualifications someone in her position would normally have. She managed to manipulate the partners of the firm every time she wanted things her way, usually by threatening to quit. But she never would. Frankly, I think she knew she wouldn't have it as good anywhere else as she had it at this job, hence her fierce determination to preserve her own standing in the company.

Then there were the partners who constantly pulled the "I'm working at home today" b.s. They barely put in a 9-to-5 work week, especially the one who would come in at 9:30 and leave at 4:45 every day because he had a "long commute." Except that the work week at this place was supposed to be 9-to-6, just to squeeze that extra hour of work each day from people without going over the 40-hour-a-week limit before being required to pay overtime. But the partners would all leave at 5 anyway. Yet they wanted the extra phone coverage during that last hour, so of course I got stuck staying until 6 every night. But the extra hour of work didn't make any sense. If anyone had called for the partners between 5 and 6 o'clock, (which no one did because everyone else in the entire city leaves work at 5), they wouldn't have been able to talk to them anyway because they had already gone home. Even when the office upgraded to a new voice mail system, I still ended up staying later than almost everyone else.

Then there was the Director of Marketing. What a freak! An aging hippie who prided himself on being liberal, he was an extremely repulsive little man with a Napoleon complex. He would walk around the office in his dirty old socks like the free spirit he pretended to be. He had b.o. and the vilest breath imaginable. And worst of all, he would fart whenever he felt like it and then act like nothing happened. He was also a creep. He leered at the women in the office. He would say the most inappropriate things in staff meetings. Whenever he spoke to me, his eyes would always dart down to my bust. He lived two hours away by train from his job so he routinely came in to work at 11:00 am and left at 3:00 pm, except for Wednesdays when he, too, pulled the "working at home" crap. Because he put in so little time at the office, he was always behind in his work. I guess "working at home" wasn't particularly effective for him, especially the days that I'd call him at home about something, only to be told that he was out riding his bike. Because he fell behind in his work all the time, I was given marketing tasks well beyond my job description, often working through lunch or past quitting time. In one case, I put together an entire proposal by myself for a major potential client, and the firm was awarded the job. I always held out hope that by doing the extra work, they would realize they needed another marketing person and promote me. But I never got a promotion. All I got was taken advantage of, in terms of my time and skills. Then one day, about a month before they let me go, they asked me to type up a classified ad they wanted to put in the newspaper - an ad for another marketing person. By that time, I didn't want to be promoted anymore, because it would have meant working directly for that repulsive little man. No thank you!

When the day came that I was called into the office of one of the partners and told that "there is no longer a place for you with the firm" (one week after returning from Christmas break), I was happy. I had been praying that I would get fired so that I could leave this job without having to give two weeks notice and train a replacement. And the day before I was let go, I had been in church again. An answer to my prayers, literally. I had been in therapy because of that job. Of course, getting fired meant I lost my insurance and was unable to continue with therapy. Then again, getting fired alleviated 99% of the problems that made me seek out a therapist in the first place. Over dinner one night after work with the only co-worker that I considered a friend, I confided in her that I was in therapy because of this job. My friend, who also hated her job at this place, then told me that she was also in therapy because of her job. I think we both took comfort in the fact that the other was in therapy too. It meant that it wasn't us, that we weren't crazy or unable to do our jobs. It validated our feelings that there was something wrong with that office and the people we worked for. "What is is about that place that made two nice girls go into therapy?" my friend asked. She ended up quitting her job two weeks after I got fired.

So now I find myself unemployed, and wondering whether I really want to take another office job. I'm gunshy about taking another secretarial job that will probably not lead to anything except more dashed hopes and unrealized ambitions. I shudder when I read the classifieds, and avoid all ads that say "Must be able to multi-task in a fast-paced environment." I am seriously considering taking a job in a tea shop, or a bookstore. Something that I enjoy, and that won't subject me to the corporate bullshit office dynamic. I just want a job with less stress. I derived no personal fulfillment or joy from my last job. Just let me go to work without crying on the bus, have a relatively easy day, come home, do a little writing, and then go to bed. I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not cut out for an office job. Maybe I'm just the "creative type." I once read an interview with the ceramic artist and interior designer Jonathan Adler. He said that he was almost fired from every single job he'd ever had. But once he quit the corporate world and began making his own pottery designs, he became successful. I remind myself of this every time I ponder whether I should take a job that has a certain level of security and pay, or do something that will make me happy. I'm leaning towards Happy. The world is my oyster, as the saying goes.

Does anyone else have any job-related horror stories they want to share?

By the way, if any of you fellow office slaves haven't seen the film "Clockwatchers" with Toni Collette and Lisa Kudrow, you totally should! Especially if you've ever been a temp (guilty!). The person who wrote the screenplay must have been a temp at some point (but ultimately went on to become a screenwriter - see, there is life after Corporate). The film captures spot-on the invisibility, dreariness, and lack of appreciation that goes along with the territory of being a temp in the corporate office environment.

And on a completely unrelated note before I'm off to bed:

Separated at birth?

Monday, May 28, 2007

Support Your Local Bookstore



A Missouri bookstore owner held his own bookburning yesterday. It was not, as one might imagine, a Bible-Belt protest against questionable content or subject matter of the books themselves. Tom Wayne burned his overstock of used books as a protest against what he sees as society's decline in interest in reading. This after he discovered that he was unable to give away his overstock to local libraries and thrift stores. He called his bookburning "A funeral pyre for thought in America today." His bonfire blazed for about 50 minutes before the fire department came and put it out because he didn't have a permit. But he intends to get one and to hold monthly bonfires until his overstock of about 20,000 books is gone.

Despite dozens of people showing up to purchase books at the last minute to save them from the bonfire, the majority of fiction, art, history, children's literature, and even antiquarian books are ultimately headed for a fiery demise. Mr. Wayne pointed to a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982. He cites the Internet, with its easy access to information, as one cause of declining readership. And the trickle-down effect of dwindling sales in his own store has led to his overstock situation.

It's unfortuante that local institutions in Mr. Wayne's area were unable to acquire his overstock. Perhaps the national publicity Mr. Wayne's story is generating will help rescue the remainder of his overstock from suffering the same fate as yesterday's batch of books. Surely there must be schools, homeless shelters, hospices, nursing homes, etc. across the country that would welcome a large supply of books? Maybe we'll see a follow-up story to this, one in which more of his books will find good homes. I certainly hope so.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Job Insecurity



What workplace environment wouldn't be complete without motivational posters? First there was "Hang in There, Baby" -- who could forget the image of that cat hanging by its front paws for dear life from a tree limb? Today, a new generation of truly inspirational posters offers a more sophisticated way of decorating that cubicle, water cooler area, or break room. Demotivators from Despair, Inc. offer no less than eighty-six different truisms. No matter what your issues are, they've got you covered.

Worried about not climbing the corporate ladder fast enough? Slow down, you'll get there. In the meantime, let this poster (below) remind you of what's really important in life - staying under the radar.



Need a Secret Santa gift for the office Christmas party? Might I suggest this elegant framed desk topper (below)?



It's especially apropos for Christmas, with the beautiful winter landscape, complete with evergreen tree, and is sure to make the recipient's holiday season that much merrier and brighter (It's quite alright, no need to thank me).

Demotivators are available in a variety of products, including posters, notecards, calendars, mugs, screensavers, and desktoppers. Because everyone needs a little demotivation.

10 Things I Should Be Doing Instead of Blogging

1. Look for a job
2. Read a book
3. Take a walk in the fresh air and sunshine
4. Get together with friends I haven't seen in a while
5. Take a pottery/yoga/swing dancing class
6. Finish that sweater I've been knitting since January
7. Get some sleep
8. See a movie
9. Go to the beach and eat fried seafood
10. Find a boyfriend

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Okie Dokie Pig in a Pokie



If you've ever seen The League of Gentlemen, a twisted but really rather funny British sketch comedy show from a few years back, you'll understand the title of this post. If you haven't, allow me to explain.

One of the recurring sketches in TLOG takes place at the "New Deal Job Seekers Club," an unemployment program in the fictional and very bizarre town in which all of the characters of the show reside. Pauline, the Restart Officer (above), starts class every time with a cheery "Okie dokie pig in a pokie" before proceeding to insult and undermine the "dole scum" she is supposed to be helping. It's funnier than I'm making it sound, believe me. The reason why I mention this is that presently I find myself in the same situation as the Job Seekers (though I'd hardly call myself "scum"!). And today, I've just received an email rejection letter for a job that I applied for but didn't really want. And they never even called me in for an interview.

It's particularly galling to be rejected for a job that one was merely "settling" for.

Beachcombing



The New England town in which I live has a rich maritime history. Two hundred years ago, ships departed the harbor for The Orient (as Asia was then called), and returned with spices, teas, and porcelain. The Chinese invented the process of making porcelain and rather selfishly wouldn't share the recipe with anyone. They did, however, do a brisk trade in it with Europe and America. Porcelain brought back from China was called "Chinese export porcelain." It was expensive and highly coveted, a status symbol among the wealthy in Europe. It took Europeans about a couple of hundred years to finally figure out how to duplicate it, though in the meantime they came up with a reasonable alternative, one that was softer than the Chinese stuff and was called "soft-paste" porcelain (as opposed to the Chinese "hard-paste"). Blue and white hand-painted porcelain was ubiquitous in China, and was the most prevalent type of Chinese export porcelain in the 18th century.

Some people like to collect shells when they go to the beach, others beach glass. When I go beachcombing, I like to collect pottery shards. The beach along the harbor in town is a great source for them, especially at low tide. Although the wharves are long gone, I can imagine ships docking at them on their return from Asia and Europe, the crews unloading crates of imported goods and storing them at the Customs House across the street. The two shards above were both recovered from the harbor in my town. They're in the style of Chinese export porcelain but are probably European. I know the second one is definitely English because the back of the shard partially reveals the manufacturer's name on it, and the word "Ltd." which indicates it was a British manufacturer. It's a great example of transferware, a process of decoration not dissimilar to those rub-off transfers used to decorate Easter eggs. Although transferware was invented in the mid-18th century, the increased sophistication and fine detail of this design dates it to the 19th century. Before transferware, 18th century porcelain was hand-painted, with broad brushstrokes and not as much detail. How do I know all this? I used to work for a British woman who was a European pottery and porcelain curator at a museum. She was as mad as a March hare, walking around the office looking for her glasses when all the time they were perched on her forehead. But by God, she knew her porcelain! She could look at a teapot and tell you it was late-18th century English Staffordshire lustreware, and that the coat of arms on it were of King George IV of England while he was still Prince of Wales.

Pottery shards leave so much to the imagination. Who had them last, when they were intact dishes or teacups? How did they get into the sea? Were they thrown overboard because they had broken during the voyage back to America? Were they from a shipwreck? Did they take 200 years to wash up onto the shore? Are my hands the first to touch them in centuries? These pottery shards are a connection to the past. I keep them on my dresser in a pottery dish with a mermaid on it, new pottery holding old pottery. As though things have come full circle.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Bloggertisements

Being new to the wonderful world of blogging, I have been happily navigating my way throught the various blogs out there on the "Interweb," I believe you blogging pros call it. I was delighted to discover blogs from all over the world by people who want to share their hobbies and interests with others, or who want to share their writings with the world, or from those who just want to voice their innermost thoughts to a large and anonymous cybercommunity, more willing to do so, perhaps, in the knowledge that the anonymity this Interweb thingy provides works both ways. So I was astonished to discover during my online exploits a movement so dark, so insidious, that I fear the very mention of it in this blog will reap upon me heaps of scorn and ridicule, or at the very least, hateful words in the COMMENTS section of this post.

It seems that the marketing industry has yet again intruded upon a medium originally intended as a means of communication. First they took advantage of the U.S. Postal Service by inventing junk mail. And I'm sure Alexander Graham Bell would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that his invention of the telephone over a century ago would someday give rise to the telemarketing industry, complete with autodialers and caller ID blocks. And marketers were quick to capitalize on the invention of email, inundating as many mailboxes as they could with unsolicited messages (I bet the manufacturers of SPAM never thought the name of their product would one day make people shudder with revulsion - oh wait, people had been doing that long before email was invented). So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see the latest method media-savvy marketers have devised to make more money for themselves. Yes, people, I'm talking about Bloggertisements - blogs disguised as personal websites but whose messages are all devoted to selling their latest product or method to make more money online. Each post starts off innocuously enough with a personal anecdote about going to the zoo, or getting stuck in traffic. Then it steadily segues to the marketing pitch that is in some way related to the anecdote. "Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do." -- just don't trick me into visiting your blog to do it!

There are many creative, amusing, interesting, and just plain weird blogs out there. But that's what blogs are for. Blogs allow people to express themselves on a more intimate and personal level than ordinary websites can. I guess it was inevitable that blogs would become the latest means of marketing. And sure, those that maintain bloggertisements will argue that they have a right to do so. And, I grudgingly concede, I guess they do. But even though they fly in the face of the independent and irreverent nature of blogging, they will never defeat it.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Chick Lit

Presently I'm trying my hand at my first novel, after writing but having no success selling three screenplays, and a non-fiction manuscript about a famous fashion designer (who read my manuscript, then decided she would write her own book -- which she still hasn't done, by the way).

I'm on the fence about chick lit. On the positive side, this new genre of literature by women for women is enabling more and more women to get published and become successful writers. Their success in turn inspires other women who thought it would be an exercise in futility to write a novel to actually sit down in front of their computer and tap into their creative juices (me being one of them). On the negative side, however, chick lit has been derided by many as being nothing more than shallow drivel about shoes and bad relationships. Many novels written by women today are automatically pigeonholed into the "chick lit" category if they even mention boyfriends or designer handbags. It's a double-edged sword. As a woman writing a lighthearted novel, as opposed to, say, a spy novel, or a depressing tale about illness or death, I know in order to have a better chance of getting it published, it might be to my advantage to categorize it as chick lit. The trouble is, I haven't liked any of the chick lit novels that I've read so far. To be fair, I haven't yet read the "classics" like Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones' Diary" (the book that is credited with starting the whole Chick Lit Revolution), or "The Devil Wears Prada" by Lauren Weisberger. All the chick lit novels I've read so far have been written by second-rate authors using the same contrivances they seem to think are expected of a chick lit book, like a spunky heroine who drops the F Bomb all the time and trades barbs with the romantic hero of the book but then ultimately ends up in bed with him. These contrivances seem to me like an attempt to make the heroine of the story seem modern and independent, to distinguish her from the weak-willed damsels in distress of Barbara Cartland romance novels. But all they do is make the heroine seem obnoxious, bratty, immature, or mean-spirited. It makes me NOT like them, and that's the exact opposite of what an author is supposed to do. And the sex scenes are so embarrassingly awful, they make me feel like I'm reading a Harlequin Romance Novel disguised as a chick lit book (because the heroine drops the F Bomb and has a fabulous job).

The bottom line is that there are good books and bad books in any genre of literature. And by reading bad chick lit, I have a better idea of what not to write. I think I'll stick with classic novels about romantic relationships with spunky but ladylike heroines, the precursors of chick lit, like "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith, or anything by Jane Austen. As for the book I'm working on, I like to think of it as a romantic comedy rather than a chick lit novel. Better yet, it's an anti-chick lit novel -- no sex, no F Bombs. This could be the start of a new movement!

Sunday, May 20, 2007

It's Just a Blog



First posts are always awkward, aren't they? How to begin.... Well, I suppose I'll start by saying that I'm starting this blog for the same reason everyone else blogs - to record stuff that happens in my life and post it for the world to see. But I could possibly also be blogging as a cheap form of therapy, one-sided of course. If I can vent my frustrations to the world online, and get them off my chest, I'll feel much better. Feel free to leave comments if you'd like to make this therapy two-sided, like a proper session. And this blog also gives me something to do with my free time, of which I now have more than I would like, having been laid off from my job a few months back. Aah, my first online venting - I feel better already.

I chose the title of my blog, Nowhere Girl, from a favorite song of mine. It was a single by B Movie, from 1982, probably their only hit. I bought it as an import single as a teenager growing up on Long Island, New York, as it wasn't released in America. When B-Movie finally released their one and only album in 1985 (in America as well as the U.K.), they re-recorded Nowhere Girl for inclusion on it. But by 1985 "New Wave" was changing, becoming more commercial and pop-oriented (Curiosity Killed the Cat? Give me a break!). The new version of "Nowhere Girl" replaced the swirling, moody synthesizers of the original with a much brighter, upbeat piano, and it ruined the song. The moodiness of the synthesizers was evocative of the solitude that I imagined Nowhere Girl to be living in. At least the original version of the song made it onto the soundtrack of the 1999 film "200 Cigarettes," so it proves someone else remembered it. But B-Movie did what many other bands in the mid-80s did: re-record their early 80s hits to make them more successful. Of course, the new versions sucked. "Pretty in Pink" by the Psychedelic Furs immediately comes to mind. The irony of the re-recorded version is that the Molly Ringwald film of the same name was named after the original version because it was Ringwald's favorite song at the time. Yet the film used (and possibly commissioned, I don't know offhand) the newer version, with saxophones (gasp!), instead of the original version which had inspired it, because it was more commercial. The original in my opinion remains one of the all-time classics of 80s New Wave music. Another example of a crappy mid-80s remake of a great early 80s song is "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police. I was particularly disappointed some years ago when I purchased the Police's Greatest Hits CD to find that the record company substituted the original version of the song with "Don't Stand So Close to Me '87." WTF? Why do record companies do that?!

I've rambled on long enough, but I'll leave you with the opening lines of the B Movie song. When I first heard them as a teenager in what was arguably the happiest time of my life, they were just lyrics from a really cool song. Whenever I hear it today, as part of my 9-hour Best of the 80s playlist on my iPod, I still get a chill up my spine because it takes me back to the time when the New Wave movement was at its height, and at its best, and it was exciting. But today these lines strike a chord with me because I feel they relate to the person that I am now, twenty-five years later. Not that I'm depressed, like one of those disaffected Goth teens posting their innermost thoughts on MySpace as a subconscious cry for help, mind you. I just feel like I've become more solitary in nature over the years. Not in a bad way, really, but perhaps more solitary than I ought to be. But there you are.

Nowhere Girl, you're living in a dream.
Nowhere Girl, you stay behind the scenes.
Nowhere Girl, you never go outside.
Nowhere Girl, 'cause you prefer to hide.