today a small voice in the back of my head said you know it’s possible that you just don’t have time to do everything, right?
i frowned and kept working.
November 9, 2009
for every thing you find intolerable, there is someone who likes it, prefers it, even. no exceptions.
another post about college November 2, 2009
the new slogan for my university is “think beyond the possible”.
all at once this is illogical, is an accurate description of how much work i have to do, and makes me want to cry.
October 22, 2009
my mom told my dad and me over dinner a few days ago that michael vick is getting his own tv show (verify it here) but she said it was more or less “how to dogfight”. my dad laughed really hard and said it was probably a dream she had.
The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing: A (Somewhat Harsh) Review October 13, 2009
I picked up this book at a Salvation Army store and paid three dollars for it. Before that, though, I feel like I’d definitely heard about it and intended to read it. I think my dad even asked me if I’d read it once. So I had somewhat high expectations from Melissa Bank, who happens to be the author of this NY Times bestseller.
I have my own little issues with the NY times (pronounced, in my head, “nigh times”) but I understand that they have relatively little control over what makes it onto their bestseller list. That seems to be pretty fully determined by the public. So, that said, let’s get to the book.
I’m going to refer to Bank’s work as a novel, even though it seems to be a cross between a novel and a collection of short stories. A better way to say it might be “a collection of short stories, all written about the same person, and not necessarily chronological”. The opening story, in which Jane (protagonist) is fourteen, made me think maybe I had accidentally stumbled onto a YA novel. But pretty soon Jane is grown up and dealing with her relationship with a man with ED. So, probably not YA material.
And the book held my interest. There are a lot of beautiful stories, and it seems like it’s really about family more than it is about romance. So I was captivated, I would read a story pretty much every night, I blew through the book. It was beautiful. It made sense.
And then I got to the end. If I had to recommend this book to you, I would recommend that you read up until the last story, the one the book is named after, and stop. You may feel unresolved, you may want to find out what happy ending Janie gets, but resist. Because these last fifty or so pages are a total disappointment.
In retrospect, maybe I should have known that “hunting and fishing” was going to be a metaphor for “getting a man”. The last story in this collection is a drawn out elaboration of the aphorism “just be yourself”. In a predictable fashion, Jane decides that since all her other relationships have gone bad she will approach new relationships following the strict rules in a self help book, as quasi-schizophrenically enforced by “bonnie and faith”, who yell advice at her constantly. And of course these rules which force her to be coy and distant with a guy she really likes turn out to make her unattractive, and the man almost leaves her, but at the last minute she says “wait no this is who I really am!” and they make out in front of her standard poodle.
It is clear to me that one of two things happened here. 1) Ms. Bank faced a looming deadline to finish her book, and wrote the first thing about men and women she could think of. I doubt this, since it is her first published novel. 2) She wrote a short story entitled The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, published it in a women’s magazine, was critically acclaimed (or something) and got a book deal to write the rest of Jane’s life. And instead of throwing out the crappy original that is brass to the gold of the rest of the book, they tacked it on to the end.
The about the author does mention that she’s been published in Cosmo.
Sorry, Ms. Bank. I overestimated you.
October 8, 2009
here is something you may not know about me, and i am curious about whether other people do this too. I absolutely hate to update the programs on my computer. I almost always hit skip or remind me later or whatever, and therefore have to see the little query box every time i open almost every program (the solution to which, of course is to never close my programs). i think it has something to do with not wanting to fix what is not broken, or maybe the fact that once i update adobe flash player and then couldnt get internet to open for like a week, until i uninstalled the player. i am highly suspicious of all these new and improved versions of things.
i also just managed to sound like andy rooney again.
October 4, 2009
today my dad and i ate dinner at a thai restaurant right next to two people who were pretty old and were clearly on a date they had set up on the internet. they kept talking about what happens in a relationship when one person dies and the other person is still alive. then we went to a coffee shop and there was a nice girl working. a couple times someone she was friends with would come in and she would hug them. it wasn’t an annoying, formality hug, it was one of those embraces where you close your eyes and it lasts a while and it seems life-sustaining or something. like when you go without seeing someone you love for a long time.
then the old couple on a date showed up and we left.
but i wish i was friends with that girl, and then she would hug me like that when i came in to get coffee.
