Quodlibets

You should probably not attempt to talk to me right now

Because I am a RAVING bitch. 

Seriously, the "bite your arm off if you offer me a hand" kind of bitch. 

I am in such a fucking bad mood right now.  For no reason, other than that people are idiots.  And the world is full of people.

Dear Oprah,

Fuck you.  Not everyone is fat because they think they don't deserve love, and any man who can only love his wife if she's stick-thin is an asshole.

Just because you have a personal chef, a trainer and enough money to keep weight off doesn't mean everyone can/does.

Manogirl

Shanker, Pt. II

Well, I finished the book.  I thought it was good, mostly, besides the objections I mentioned in the last post.  On the whole, a lot of what Shanker is saying applies no matter what.  It's not too much to ask that your friends and family treat you with respect.  And clothes?  Yes, please.  I also thought that her chapter on dating was timely and well-written.  On the whole, the book was well-written.

But at the end, I was left with the vague sense that she was somehow contradicting herself.  And in some parts, she acknowledged the contradiction--the section about foundation garments, for instance.  She's vehementy against girdles and full-body slimming suits and so on, until later in the book, where she talks about going to the Oscars and how wonderful full-armor foundation garments are.  Um.  Right.

It left me unsatisfied, I guess, which left me sadder than I can tell you.  To me, it wasn't a fat-acceptence manifesto so much as a "Wendy Shanker acceptance manifesto."  Like, love me! worship me! I'm cute! I'm great! *pause* And Other Fat Girls are great too!  All I know is that Shanker uses all kinds of studies and anecdotal evidence to point out that maybe fat isn't so bad, and I still felt like it was forced.  Maybe I'm reading it wrong.  I'm not sure.

Nonetheless, it was a very disappointing read.

Not for me

I'm trying really, really hard to love The Fat Girl's Guide to Life, by Wendy Shanker.  I've wanted to read it since I saw Shanker on the Jane Pauley show a few months ago, so when I went downtown to my feminist bookstore, I decided to buy it.  As soon as I finished the Evanovich paperbacks (ah, freedom), I picked up Shanker and started to read. 

Right now, I'm about half-way through, and I just don't like it.  It makes me uneasy.  First of all, so much of what Shanker says is dead on.  There are too many processed, chemical-laden foods.  There's no doubt that those things aren't healthy, and that we would be better off eating less processed food.  You've got me there, Wendy.  And furthermore, the "Diet Industry" is bad.  No doubt about it.  Offering diets and plans that don't work--or are unhealthy--and profiting off of what is a very, very emotional thing for some people.  Well, it's not a good thing.  And, I do think that it is better to be fit than anything else.  It is.  Fat, thin, whatever.  Fit/healthy is better, and it's possible.  So we agree, Wendy, on these things.

But when you talk about being fat, you talk about "secret" binges, and eating whole bags of candy in one sitting.  Or even a whole bag of Veggie Booty in one sitting.  And you can absolutely choose to do that, and if you do that, and you're fat, that's fine.  I think you're a stunningly attractive woman, and I think your message is great.  But come on.  That's not healthy.  Bingeing is not being "fit and fat."  You talk one second about eating right and still being fat, and the next about not being able to sleep because you know there's cookies in your kitchen.  I'm not saying it's bad to eat those cookies, but I am saying that you can't have it both ways.  You can't eat all the cookies and in the next breath tell everyone that it's okay, because you're one of the healthy fat people.  It just doesn't work that way.

The truth is, many people will be what is considered overweight no matter what they eat.  Healthy diet, exercise, and they'll still carry more weight than other people.  But there is a population of people that would lose weight if they would get active and eat healthier.  It's not healthy to eat out every night.  It's not healthy to eat a dozen cookies a night, whether it be from a bakery and organic or from a bag with the words Chips! Ahoy! on it.  I'm finding that no matter what I thought at the time, I was eating too much.  I wasn't bingeing, or eating secretly.  Never have, in fact.  I've never dieted before this WW thing, so it's not a combination of yo-yo dieting and eating.  I just point blank ate too much at every single meal. 

Why is it so bad for me to say that?  Because I get the feeling that Shanker would have a problem with that.  Yes, I was eating what I wanted, and yes, it's very hard to discipline yourself to eat less.  I WANT to eat more every day.  But this isn't about eating what I want, it's about eating what is right for my body.  And I feel better.  I can't deny it.  I had a very indulgent week last week.  I ate a lot of good food.  I at 2/3 of a frozen pizza one night for dinner.  I felt really bad, because I'd been so indulgent, but you know what?  I lost weight.  I lost weight because indulgent now is so different from indulgent then.  And as far as I'm concerned, that's a damn good thing.  No matter how much I bitch, I still eat a lot of good food, by my standards.  I'm just allowed to eat less of it.  Is that bad?

I hope that when the book continues, Shanker pulls through with the chapters on Hollywood, Dating and Style.  Because there is nothing wrong with loving yourself, no matter what.  But to misrepresent yourself?  I don't know, it makes me uneasy. 

Library Politics

It's come to my attention that no matter where you work, some sort of politics is involved.  And I don't mean national, state or local politics--though these things can matter to libraries.  I'm talking about the internal politics of the library, or as I see it, the traditionalists vs. the progressives.

Traditionalists are the angry "shush" types.  They want you to be quiet, keep the books in perfect working order, feel that privacy is a privilege and not a right, and don't want to give people the credit and respect that they're due.  They're the old guard, the people who think that the system is working now and will work forever if we just stick to it, dammit!

Progressives think that paradigms need shifting, that laughter in a library is a good thing, that what you online is none of my business, and that people, if you let them, will be good.  They're creative thinkers, and they embrace technology and change.

Which do you think I am?  (And frankly, like any other sort of north pole/south pole dichotomy, there is a vast spectrum of belief.  No one encompasses all of either viewpoint.) 

I hope it's obvious!  I'm coming at this as a non-library user.  When I stopped working at a library, I stopped using them as well.  I still have to MAKE myself use libraries, at least in person.  (I use library web resources ALL the time.)  But I believe that libraries can be relevant and important again, if we understand that they HAVE TO CHANGE.  Instead of viewing the Internet as an extra service, it needs to be a basic library service.  It is becoming the basic source of much of the information out there, and without embracing it in ALL of its facets, we're losing the race.  You'd be surprised to find that some librarians don't feel this way. 

We're definitely losing the race, right now!  Kelly, over at Library Diva, posed the question of blogs and libraries, and in a greater sense, the Internet in libraries.  Are libraries still the BEST place to get information on what to read, when so many wonderful websites exist to help you with that?  And my answer is yes, but.  Only if we, as library staff, understand that to be the best place to get information and help, we need to position ourselves that way.  Most of the women in my class don't (or didn't, before me) know what a blog is.  But I'm guessing that blogs could be very, very important to libraries, if WE LET THEM.  It might be as simple as having your reader advisory staff keep a blog, and link to other relevant blog.  It might be as complicated as keeping up with many of the literary blogs out there.  But resisting the technology isn't going to help anyone, at all.  And even underestimating the importance of the technology could be harmful. 

But I'm scary, see, because my viewpoint asks people to step outside their comfort zone.  It asks older people to get over their fears of change and start to embrace it.  And I'm really asking people to stop worshipping books more than they worship the patron, something that's really, really hard for some people.  Yes, the library is nothing without the books.  But even more, the library is nothing without the patrons.  I think you'll find that a lack of patrons hobbles a library as much as or more than the shortage of materials.  And what libraries are doing now--it's not exactly attracting new patrons at the speed we might like it to.  We may not be repelling patrons, but we're not blazing trails, either.  (I say that, even as I know that somewhere in this country, there is a library blazing trails.  I want to work there!  Hire me, progressive library directors!)

So--am I more dangerous to a library, or is the traditionalist?  It's not a simple question, and I bet that every single person you ask will give a different answer.  From where I'm sitting, it's not me.

Whole Foods, again

How does this happen?  I went into Whole Foods to get Arthur-O's and hamburger buns for chicken patties, and I walked out befuddled and less $50.  Some things were clearly beneficial purchases, like the fresh green beans for dinner (thanks, C!) and the small container of mixed fruit.  Others, like the two chocolate chip cookies for S, and the twice-baked potatoes (don't ask) were completely unecessary.  We have plenty of lovely frozen potato product we could have eaten with the chicken patties, and if you really want to know how many boxes of Girl Scout Cookies S has, I'll go count.  But my ballpark guess is no less than 10.  And he has hardly been eating them, what with the chocolate bars, Ben and Jerry's and now the cookies I've bought.  Maybe I should begin a GSC force-feeding program. 

Anyhow, I spent my day feeling productive.  I got my confirmation for my (unpaid) internship this summer, I paid my health insurance, sent a movie back to Netflix (35 Up), balanced my checkbook, went to Borders to pick up two books, walked for 10 minutes more than normal, and of course, ran to Whole Foods.  And I did a load of towels.  The unfortunate side affect of all this productivity is that now, at four in the afternoon, I feel like doing a whole lotta nothing.  And I have homework I really should be doing.  (Although, on the plus side, I'm way ahead of where I normally am by this point in the week.  It's kind of sick, and it worries me.  I'm probably forgetting something.)  In fact, all I really want to do is finish the Stephanie Plum series--but not really, because I then have to wait, like everyone else, for number eleven.  To come out in paperback.  There's really no way in hell I'm buying it in hardcover, so I've got a year and three months left in that wait. 

As for Stephanie Plum, I'd just like to say, for all you readers of Evanovich, do you not think she needs to end up with Morelli?  Yeah, yeah, Ranger's hot and mysterious, but Morelli is hot and comfortable, which is so, so much better.  In fact, I will have a personal vendetta with Evanovich if she doesn't have Plum end up with Morelli.  VENDETTA!  I will be angry.  Of course, Evanovich has simply set herself up for a fall, because I suspect that about half of her readers feel like me, and want Stephanie and Joe to ride off into the sunset.  And I bet the other half will be spitting fire if she doesn't end up bunking down for life with Ranger.  So either way, Evanovich can't win.  But I'm just saying, for her good, that it better be Morelli.  Why do I get myself involved in series?  It's torture.  (Although, at least with romance series, you know that two people will end up happily in lust and love by the end of the book.  With mystery, it's a crapshoot.)

And my plant is dying.  The black thumb strikes again!

What I was going to write about and now I'm not

I love being friends with Tim, because he makes me think long and hard about the things I think.  If you didn't see his comment on the last post, do, because he's smarter than me.  I'm serious.

Something I've been struggling with, though, is the relative importance of literary ficiton in the long run.  I'm struggling with how to express this, but basically, this is my thought process:  in 100 years, which books will be classics?  Stephen King or Safran Foer?  Grisham?  Jennifer Weiner?  Niffenegger?  Piccoult?  For that matter, which books that are classics now were "popular fiction" and which were the literary fiction of the time?  I'm pretty sure that if you're classifying, things like Austen and Dickens were popular fiction.  Dickens was serialized--but does that mean he's not literary fiction?  Hemingway--what was he?  At the time?  And what about Nick Hornby?  I'm very confused.   

And as for my anti-populism as manifested in my fear of video games, I would like to say that I'm no stranger to playing video games.  My sister and I (and I'm not ashamed to say this, though it's pretty ridiculous) got addicted to both Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon for a time.  In fact, my infatuation with Animal Crossing lasted a good nine months.  I don't necessarily think that it's the video games that I dislike and fear.  It's the idea that certain online components of video games may inhibit normal social activity.  Again, I do love my games; I play computer games as well.  (And can I stress that S's video game playing far from inhibits our social life?  His playing is not interfering with the normal process of our lives.  So what I fear is not necessarily happening to him/us.)

And as for what I was going to talk about, I think I'm done with that.  I was going to talk about my trip to my only semi-local feminist bookstore this morning, but the moment has passed.  And now I don't remember what I was going to say, because it flew out of my brain.

How do you write the sound of a raspberry? Pbbththtbtththt?

Last night, while checking on my regular blogs, I found this letter at The Library Diva.  She's also written a fantastic post about the letter, which I really encourage you read.  The basic point of the letter is bullshit, which is Kelly's point in her post.  (If you don't go read it, the gist of it is that a certain group of authors are begging Oprah to restart her book club with contemporary books, because literary fiction is in a slump.)  Again, Kelly's post is wonderful, and she addresses, I think, most of the main points that need to be made about the letter.  So I'm not really going to talk about how insulting it is, and I'm not going to talk about my ambivalence towards Oprah's book club.  I'd like to address literary fiction.

First of all, let me say that I don't consider literary fiction a "genre", per se.  Literary fiction is what is left when you take the genres out of fiction.  I don't believe, therefore, that it is appropriate to read literary fiction during a reader's advisory class.  In fact, I can't imagine how we can possibly begin to identify the appeal factors of literary fiction when you can classify The Time Traveler's Wife and Everything Is Illuminated in the same genre.  They're not similar, I don't think.  And then add in a book like The Little Friend, and try to make sense of it.  It's basically impossible, I think.  In fact, the thing that unites literary fiction is that its authors take themselves far more seriously than they maybe should.  At least in my view.  (I'm sorry, but I have nothing nice to say about authors who look down their noses at authors in the romance genre, for instance.)

The truth is, literary fiction is losing readers because it's not always very fun to read.  I usually think of literary fiction as the kinds of books that I read about half-way through and then put down, never to be picked up again.  (Evidence:  The Little Friend, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Everything is Illuminated, The Russian Debutante's Handbook and various other books that now lay unread upon my shelves.)  I think that people who read literary fiction tend also to look down on people who read genre fiction--as if we're not "serious" readers.  As if we don't know how to recognize good books.  But I wonder if we aren't overlooking popular genre fiction.  We're so damn good at dismissing its value, and dismissing the authors who write it.  (In fact, Jennifer Weiner has pointed out much the same point in various posts on her blog.)  We're so caught up in the idea that the "real" word artists are the authors who write literary fiction, but I can barely ever read that sort of fiction.  Hardly ever.  It's pretentious crap, a lot of the time.  It assumes that you must be intelligent to read it, and I hate that.  What happened to simply writing good books?  Oh wait, that's happening in other segments of fiction right now.

Maybe that's why people aren't reading literary fiction.  You're not writing good novels, idiots.  It's like lamenting the state of the music business, and the idea that nobody is buying music.  Well, yeah, you idiots, because you're not putting out good records.  Maybe try doing that and see what happens.  Honestly, I can't remember the last book of literary fiction that I bought.  Oh wait, yes I can.  Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Copeland.  But that's one author that I read compulsively. But in general, I don't buy literary fiction.  I buy romance and mystery, non-fiction and chicklit.  Literary fiction  isn't worth the price I have to pay for it.  (And really, I didn't buy the Copeland book.  It was a gift, because I couldn't justify the purchase to myself.  Not that I'm not happy to have it; I am.) 

Anyone want a collection of half-finished literary fiction?

Give Judy my notice

Oh man, I'm getting really sick of hearing S yell into the Xbox live headset.  He gets so into it, and actually starts yelling things like, "Help help help" or "Back me up!" or "Hi bitch" (which is what he just said.  He wasn't really yelling.)  It just gets old, fast.  It's not that I'd rather he spend time with me, because we've done that today and I'm blogging anyway.  It's just that he gets so heated and angry, and in turn, I get stressed out because he is.  And it's a video game.

Sometimes I can't believe that I'm dating (and love madly) a boy who plays video games at the age of 25.  Is it a sign of immaturity?  I really always thought that men left behind video games when they, you know, grew up.  And honestly, I thought I would go straight for the (that's a really, really bad pun if you think about it) the intellectual man; the guy who knew when I quoted Voltaire and who I would joyfully discuss books with over a bottle of red wine.  I thought that we could argue, intellectually, about philosophy and the meaning of life, and instead, I'm sitting here watching video game men kill other video game men, and having this discussion:

M:  Oh, they're going to South Africa. [the wannabe-models of ANTM]
S:  I'm coming in through the bottom.  NO, THROUGH THE BOTTOM.  I need some help.  I NEED HELP. shit shit shit shit.
M: 
S:  Did you say something?  Shit no, shit NO.
M:  Never mind. *sigh*

It's okay that S doesn't read; it doesn't bother me except when he won't let me read to him, which is always.  I know that my passion for books is met by his passion for photography, and I think that we work because of that equality.  He may not be an intellectual about books, but damn if he isn't about photography.  Of course, I'm a snivelling idiot when it comes to photos, so we're even, in a way.

Do I want to discuss literary things over bottles of wine?  Maybe, yes.  But not with S, and that's 100% okay with me.  He's an amazing man, and he's taught me so much.  (Blech, right?)  But the damn video game thing scares me.  Is he going to be doing this when he's 40?  That's a really, really scary thought.  I don't understand video games much, and the idea of gaming--that your entire community might be online--scares the everloving beejeezus out of me.  I don't want video games to be a substitute for friendships and going out.   I don't mind when he plays sporadically.  It's these two and three hour sessions that get to me.

I always ask him if he thinks that the other guys playing Halo 2 have girlfriends sitting next to them on the couch.  If they have girlfriends at all.  I wonder how many of these guys play all day--just sit in front of their TV and live their life through a video game.  He jokes around that these guys might be losers who live for the game, but how serious is it?  I'm not suggesting that I'm losing him to a video game, but could I?  Is that a reality?  I'm really doubt it, as far as S is concerned.  But I'm sure that there are people who take it too far.  I'm sure of it. 

I'm operating under the assumption that he loves it, and as his lover, I have to accept it and sort of ignore it.  Maybe I do things that he finds uncomprehensibly idiotic.  Maybe.  What's the line, though?  When does it stop being something I accept, and a problem? 

I suppose, that like pornography, I'll know it when I see it. 

(The title to this post is from the new Ben Folds album.)

*Growl*

Have you heard that Lollapalooza 2005 is going to be a one-time thing?  In Chicago?  At Grant fucking Park?  And that Arcade Fire, Weezer, the Killers and Death Cab for Cutie are among the SEVENTY bands performing at the two-day festival?  And that a two-day pass is only $35?  Oh, and did you know it's on the EXACT same weekend that the Dave Matthews Band is playing Alpine Valley?  Motherfucking shit.

***Edited to add:  Okay, maybe two day passes won't be $35 dollars.  That was the pre-sale.  Phew.  That makes me feel slightly better.