I have read exactly one of this year’s New York Times 100 Notable Books. (In case you’re curious, it was Generosity: An Enhancement, which: meh. Lesser Richard Powers.)
One for me, too…but I worked on three of them! (just one of the many indications I’m not cut out for this business.)
[This isn’t interesting to anyone else, I’m just listing them here in an attempt to publicly shame myself should I not follow through]
I don’t know how clear my (excellent) photography is, but that is NOT Arrested Development, and it is NOT new.
My poor, poor heart.
… the National Geographic [2002 Global Geographic Literacy] Survey is even more unsettling. It turns out, for instance, that Americans are not merely ignorant about the world; they’re also staggeringly ignorant about the United States … Only 51 percent could point to New York on a U.S. map (and only 39 percent of the 25-34 group could do so); 30 percent managed to find New Jersey. Eleven percent of Americans could not find the US at all—though we can take cold comfort in the fact that in the last survey, in 1988, that figure was eighteen percent.
Two other things have happened since 1988: the number of Americans who think that reading maps is “absolutely necessary” has declined from 74 to 43 percent, and—although the National Geographic survey does not take stock of this—the number of global positioning systems available to ordinary Americans has increased by approximately infinity percent, from zero in 1988 to many, many now. [
CT]
Let’s leave spatial reasoning to the robots.
I fear that the only reasons I’m fairly confident I could find NY/NJ on a map is because they’re two of the three states I’ve ever lived in.
Also: A test in which we needed to label all the states on a blank map of the US was the first test I failed in high school.
In conclusion, I am part of the problem.
(we had a gift certificate! what was a girl to do?)
Anyway. I will almost certainly be making a pie this weekend, so!
a) what kind should I make, and
b) who will be around to eat it?
My homework for Spanish class tomorrow is to write a short poem about anything and a paragraph about my greatest desire. When you throw in my limited vocabulary (translates to: shallow metaphors, short declarative sentences), I come across as painfully emo.
Sigh. this is what we feared. Why must the tramps ruin perfectly good stamp locations for the rest of us?
More importantly: where else can discreet, non-trashy tattoos be located (we’re operating under the assumption that such a thing exists. we’re very classy ladies!)?
(namely, mine and MsMandrake’s) want to know: is it possible to get a tattoo in one’s general lower back region without it automatically being a tramp stamp?
WHAT JANIE FOUND
Caroline B. Cooney
Delacorte Press
Fiction
ISBN: 0385326114
181 pagesJanie and her two families are back in WHAT JANIE FOUND, the fourth and last book in Caroline B. Cooney’s Janie series. Each of the characters is looking for closure of the kidnapping nightmare. Will they be able to find their way home?
Stephen Spring, Janie’s older brother, is a student at a college in Boulder, Colorado. He’s not sure what he wants to do with his life, but he knows he wants to be as far away from his family as possible. He wants to forget his whole life, which has been lived in the shadow of Janie’s disappearance.
Reeve, Janie’s boyfriend, isn’t sure he wants to stay in college. He loves Janie, but after he told her story to his radio audience, he doubts she will ever love him again. Brian, Janie’s younger brother, is getting used to living separately from his twin, Brendon. Janie’s sister Jodie will start college in the fall. Everything seems to be going well for all of them.
Janie’s life also seems to be moving along smoothly as she adjusts to her two sets of parents and learns to love her brothers and sister. Then her Connecticut father suffers a stroke, and Janie must handle the family finances. While going through files in her father’s desk, she makes a startling discovery. This discovery takes her, Reeve, and Brian to Boulder to try to find the reason why Hannah Javensen took Janie away from her family so many years ago.
Finding Hannah could mean betrayal and hurt for both of her families. Is it better to forget revenge and leave the past buried, or to try to locate Hannah? The decision she makes will affect both of her family’s lives forever. Can they handle any more? Moreover, can Janie handle dredging up the past, or is it time to forgive?
Cooney has written a thrilling and thoroughly satisfying conclusion to her Janie series, consisting of THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JANIE?, and THE VOICE ON THE RADIO. Though each book stands alone as a complete story, I recommend reading them in the order they were published, so you will get the most enjoyment out of each of them.
I know it came out in 2000, which is both too long ago and too soon for me to have read it (or do I mean for me to have not read it?). Guys, The Face on the Milk Carton is as book-important as Clueless is movie-important.
UMMMM…I think we just found our next Book Club book, you guys.
while i wouldn’t want to profit off of doom, i wouldn’t mind being a prophet of doom.
you guys it’s like i write for videogum or something! they’re Professors I Only Have Four Jokes over there! AMIRITE?!! (i know both +J and El Sam do NOT think i am right at all and would drink gabe’s bathwater because they don’t understand germs and disease). but this isn’t about my love/hate/punch with videogabe. this is about BREAKING NEWS (it broke yesterday but continues to be broken today): in the upcoming ”Rex Is Not Your Lawyer” Jeffrey Tambor is your psychiatrist (he’s very good)! but—and i’m just wondering aloud now—what is nbc’s strategy here? they kinda already know that going for the arrested development/30 rock/20-something who-believe-themselves to-be-clever demographic doesn’t pay (at least not in moneys. it pays in emmys but emmys don’t keep food on the craft services table or six-figured salaries in the bank accounts of our beloved actors who we pretend are humble and good but are actually just rich famous people who have been very well cast in very good shows)…
WHATEVER, I’M VERY EXCITED FOR THIS SHOW :-) :-(
From The New Yorker:
Only seventeen per cent of New York women rate themselves “highly satisfied” with their sex lives, compared with twenty per cent nationally and twenty-five per cent globally. On the other hand, New York women have more friends than anyone else on the planet: the average New Yorker would invite at least sixty-five friends to her wedding, compared with a national average of fifty-nine. Called upon to explain this phenomenon, [Michael Silverstein, author of Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World’s Largest, Fastest-Growing Market] remembered a recent visit to a New York Bikram-yoga studio. “I have been to Bikram yoga all over the country, and this was the friendliest, most conversational, most open yoga class I have ever been to—like, in a different category,” he said. “I have been there twice, and the instructor knows me by name. I have been to the studio in Chicago forty times, and the instructor doesn’t know me.”
With regards to the second part of the above paragraph, I agree wholeheartedly. I was lucky enough to arrive in this city with a posse of my college besties and it’s been up, up, UP from there. And given the popularity of my current mate, I think we’d have to have multiple weddings across at least three continents to accommodate everyone with whom we’d like to celebrate.
As for the first part, what a pity! No wonder they’re so obsessed with shoes.
I dorkily just counted: I am inviting 41 friends to my wedding and there at least ten more I very much want to invite, but probably can’t because our venue is too small for me to invited anyone I became friends with after I got engaged. New York, in my own experience at least, is extraordinarily friendly, much more so than Boston or London (the only other cities I’ve lived in).
i’m going to have to disagree with leila about her own hometown. boston is incredibly friendly! new york is a great place to be social but this whole city is BYOF (where F is friends). you only make friends through friends and the more friend capital you have the more it can grow, for sure. but you can’t just come to nyc and not know anyone unless you’re trying to experience a whole new level of loneliness in preparation for a role you’re playing or a book you’re writing or something. but in boston, you could definitely start out with zero friend capital and be just fine. i’ve met people in kind of random small town ways (at the market! at the park! at a street fair!) and they’re people my age who are interesting and nice. i mean, i’m not judging new york harshly: it’s circumstantial. it’s too many people crammed into too small a space for you to feel safe and welcome if you’re treading public grounds alone (if i’m walking through a park alone or even a “safer” place like a library, i’m too scared to approach or be approached). i feel like the only reason strangers in nyc are nice are because (a) they’ve been paid to (nyc waiters are the nicest! because it’s a part of their job!), (b) this person chatting you up is homeless and about to ask you for change after you finish giving him directions, or (c) someone is trying to sell you some Jehovah or Ralph Nader (although i have to admit, who can compete with the Harvard Sq LaRouche people? no one. those people are relentless.) anyway, i’ve found boston to be way friendlier than nyc, but neither compares in friendliness to my home region of northern california. i swear, if california weren’t constantly battling bad governors, crazy debt and wildfires, then i’d be homeward bound.
Did I really just see a Kodak commercial that said “now the whole world can watch what you’re doing—whether you want them to or not” ???
Has it really come to this?
For the record, Mr. +J literally kicked a puppy today. #Ivemadeahugemistake
Don’t forget that — truly minutes later! — S+N basically punched a baby in the face. Serious questions arise re: my social associations.
I DID NOT PUNCH A BABY. i ALMOST ran into a baby. and it was mostly the baby’s daddy’s fault! you can’t walk at a city pace when you have a baby strapped to your chest. #defendingmyhonor #blamewhereblameisdue
For the record, Mr. +J literally kicked a puppy today. #Ivemadeahugemistake
to wonder whether stupid people can experience love?
today i wondered whether stupid people get sick. because those fuckers seem to survive EVERYTHING.
Thank you so much to everyone who came out to This Is About Smith tonight!!!!!!
i went to leila’s comedy show. afterward, we all grabbed burgers at this place. i give this evening ‘many’ out of ‘many’ stars. i’m still laughing at the ani acapella. video plz thanks!
“Set up by a mutual friend, Agassi and actress Brooke Shields exchange faxes before their first date in Los Angeles shortly after Christmas 1993.”
—
People magazine 9 Nov 09, excerpted from Agassi’s autobiography Open
exchange faxes? Is that a thing that happened in the Past? I guess the terror of a phone call was just as strong back then?
Speaking of…I just got spam via fax…I don’t understand this Past version of the Future :(
so new hotel on the moon, you’ve probably heard. The Galactic Suite Space Resort. whatever, right? sure. the moon has everything now (soon). anyway, the best quotes:
During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes. They would wear velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.
and also, space hotel will put space camp to SHAME:
“It’s very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space,” he told Reuters Television.
also, you really will be alone on a rock in space with hopefully enough fuel to get home maybe??
“When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for 3 days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn’t been abandoned. After 3 days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth,” he said.
also, lastly:
an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast has granted $3 billion to finance the project.
how many billionaires are there in the world? are there so many that you can be an anonymous space enthusiast with $3B to spare?
