for updates & short takes

Heh. Sharyn showed me how to view the Jemima J Amazon customer reviews starting with the lowest rating. That's fun.

I've been getting emails all day. Good God, a lot of you hate this book.
pounded out by Wendy at 4:37 PM

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Jemima J Sucks Week: More about Jemima J!

So the book Jemima J is about Jemima Jones, who, at 5'7" and 217 pounds (p. 136), is the fattest woman in Kilburn, England, and maybe the rest of London, too. Possibly also the only fat woman there. Apparently.

Her massive fat is a result of hiding candy bars in her desk (p. 3), making poor choices at the salad bar (p. 17), and an insufferably generic childhood pathology (pp. 2, 112). Her considerable girth makes it difficult for her to sit in ordinary chairs (p. 5), completely rules out wearing bootcut jeans (p, 57), has been known to increase at a rate of two to three pounds overnight (p. 64), and has pretty much prevented any kind of sexual enjoyment whatsoever in her life (p. 18). As a result of her immense size, her leisure activties are usually limited to sitting in her room and cutting out pictures of supermodels from magazines (p. 2), and wallowing in self-pity (pp. 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14-17, 19, 21, 22, 31, 38, 40-47, 51, 58-62, et. al).

Yeah, not only does her weight keep her from telling jokes (p. 23), applying flattering makeup (p. 15), or, really, ever experiencing more than a split second of unadulterated happiness (pp. 1-371), it also pretty much keeps anything remotely interesting from happening in the first third of the book, where pretty much every twenty pages or so, an opportunity for a meet-cute encounter with her dull love interest, Ben, totally fails to happen because old fat-ass Jemima keeps having to stop somewhere to stuff her face. Poor Jemima!

Oh, and then it gets worse.
pounded out by Wendy at 11:12 AM

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Suck-Ass Book Club

If you know me at all you probably know I love to hate the book Jemima J by Jane Green. This book is ass. Have you read it? It's ass. It's puke. The fact that this sputum is "chick lit" is really no excuse whatsoever for the rectangular 7.96" x 5.26" stain it leaves on the world. It is not good. Not at all.

I highly recommend hating this book. If you've ever been overweight for a significant portion of your life, you can hate this book. Anyone who's ever tried to lose more than ten pounds can hate this book. Women who liked Bridget Jones's Diary enough to tolerate the whole irritating discourse about Renee Zellwegger's fat can hate this book. Guys who get mildly turned on by the zaftig and sexily offered-up legs and ass on the cover can hate this book. You're all perfectly welcome to hate this book just because I said so, but you can also hate it for yourself by obtaining and reading a used copy, presumably from scores of other people who also hate Jemima J. Or, if you only have time for half-assed hate, you can read and hate just the back cover and the opening chapters for free. Go on, take a look.

Today Rob talks about how he hates the movie Simon Birch so much that he feels like it was made especially to upset him, even though, he says, the filmmakers could have just called him on the phone and fucked with him for free. I feel the same way about Jemima J. Jane Green ought to have just come over to my house and bugged the shit out of me. She could've poked me and said, "It's a shame, dove, you have such a lovely face," and she'd tell me not to eat so many bacon sandwiches. And then sat on my couch and in between continually tsk-tsking about how bloody miserable my life must be, dropping unsolicited diet hints, and laying it on thick with the cloying Britishisms like "Phwooargh," blathered on and on for hours about some people she knows, in pointless anecdotes filled with insipid details about their outfits and accessories and peppered with countless stupid asides about their personal habits as if I gave even half a dessicated crap about these morons or her inane gossipy dildoheaded opinion of them.

Instead, she wrote Jemima fucking J. I hated it when I first read it; I hate it today, and I plan to hate it tomorrow through Friday. It's the Poundyblog theme for this week!
pounded out by Wendy at 5:08 PM

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The deleted-email crisis I mentioned here has been resolved, so I guess I'll use this post for shout outs from the past week or so: Shiman! Rebecky! I'm glad I met you both in person finally. And !!! I am glad I saw you play at Empty Bottle, and boy, were you guys ever sweaty.
pounded out by Wendy at 8:37 PM

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Meta relapse! Googlesmacking!

M. Giant at Velcrometer is holding a search phrase contest. He got the idea from a reader who said he and his friends were deliberately trying to get to Velcrometer via Google by way of a search phrase bizarre enough for M. Giant to notice it in his referral logs and mention it on his site. Lots of people take note of the weird search words in their site stats. But I think the big secret here is that apparently a lot of us like to create strange search phrases and try to aim them towards specific targets like little guided missiles of freaky garble. We send them out as secret messages or as the sort of insult you say between coughs. And by "we" I actually mean "me" and "some people I know." And we call it "Googlesmacking." Because, see, you're using Google to smack someone.

So how does one Googlesmack? Let's say, for instance, that one day you find yourself estranged from your better judgment long enough to read a really inane weblog post, perhaps one as vapid as the fictional excerpt below:

saw cappucino boy again. he is kinda boring but he is cute & i know that's stupid & i think to my self 'misty why are you so chicken? dump him' but i am a very complicated person. hmm. also today i got email from some nasty guy who saw my body piercing pics.yuk. he has no life. thats it for now i am tired from doing stairmaster for 90 minutes but my thighs look awesome.

Maybe this week I'll write about the city,

seeing as how I linked to that Chicago stuff on Monday.

I don't ride the El much now but I've been riding it for as long as I can remember. I can recall one train ride that sticks in my head as being a definitive First Time memory, but it couldn't have been my first ride; it's probably a composite of all the times my grandmother took me shopping on State Street. We took the Congress line in, the line that runs along the expressway; we'd go on a bridge and through a turnstile and down a long, long ramp. Standing on the platform in the middle of the expressway was like standing on the deck of a huge ship; there was wind and a quiet that seemed to flap open and shut with the surges of traffic.

When a train would come it never looked like the concept of train I was taught: no engine, no caboose. There was nothing that indicated which direction it would go in. I had to trust my grandma knew the hell what she was doing. She did.

I would sit near the window. One time I rested my head against it and pressed my face to the glass. "Don't do that," my grandma said. "You don't know what someone's done on that window. Someone could have spat on it.... someone could have thrown up on it." This really made no sense to me. It was a window. I spent the rest of the ride staring at the glass and trying to figure out how you could look at it without looking through.
pounded out by Wendy at 12:37 PM

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How to stalk me

Look for me on either this fancy new blogger map or this one. And then add your own site so I can stalk you back. BECAUSE YOU'RE PRETTY.
pounded out by Wendy at 12:39 PM

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Dear Dairy, my bestest friend Michael is in town and we are going to the wedding of Third Grade Diary Amy tomorrow! Signend, Wendy.

p.s. We're doing tumbling in gym.
pounded out by Wendy at 6:59 PM

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Meta Friday: Oops

I forgot to post something for Friday of Meta Week. But I guess I still can, because Blogger now has this "Change Time & Date" feature for posts, and just my talking about it makes it totally meta, right? So there you go. Now it looks like I couldn't wait to start my day to tell you this.

And also, I needed to say this, too: nobody thinks you're as thin as your Weather Pixie.

pounded out by Wendy at 6:01 AM

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Meta Thursday: actually I have one more piece of advice for the aspiring blogger or online diarist

When you find yourself writing something like, "Look, you people think you know me or something but you don't! Okay?! You don't fucking know me AT ALL!!" it's a pretty good indication that something has gone spectacularly wrong with your online endeavor.
pounded out by Wendy at 2:08 PM

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Meta Wednesday: my one piece of advice

for anyone who has ever wanted to start an online journal but has little nagging questions about what kind of stuff is appropriate to write. Are you worried you're going to write something online that you'll regret later? Or, worse, that you'll post some "deliciously naughty" little anecdote about your own perky tits only to discover that oh my God some creep did a majorly pervo Google search and is reading your site eeeeeuuuwwwwww. That really is unfortunate. So when you're struck with the impulse to tell everyone about your new vibrator, try this test:

Imagine you are riding public transportation. Let's say it's a bus. It's near rush hour and the bus is crowded but not packed. You have several stops to go before you get off. At the next stop a crazy person gets on. He or she may be carrying an old vacuum cleaner hose or a plastic bag full of crumpled phone book pages or a filthy doll wrapped in toilet paper to clearly indicate his or her crazy status. Everyone tries to ignore the crazy person as he or she stomps up and down the aisle, muttering to him or herself. Suddenly, Crazy Person stops and screams, "YOU!" Everyone looks up. The crazy is pointing directly at you. Everyone is turned around in their seats and staring. They can see the crazy person is looking you right in the eye. It's as if Crazy can suddenly see into your soul. Crazy squares his or her shoulders and takes a deep breath and is about to shout; Crazy has something to say to everyone, and it's the very thing you were just thinking about putting online.

So do you really want it to be about what you did with your Kegel muscles the other night? Are you okay with that? Are you? Good.
pounded out by Wendy at 1:38 PM

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Meta Tuesday: Random thinky-think thingies

I'm really glad that someone's noticed the really alarming overuse of terms like random in weblog descriptions and that at least one other person has pointed out what a weird convention it is. Really, if words could stalk each other on Google there'd need to be a restraining order to keep "random" the fuck away from "blog."

I suppose there was a time when online writing was such an unfamiliar concept that every site came with a standard kit of helpful title words to keep handy in case the wacky non-continuous first-person narrative made readers confused and dizzy and short of breath. But we're kind of past that now, right? It's like how the title pages of eighteenth-century novels needed all kinds of explanatory crap like Being An Account of The Youth & Schooling of Elias Suttcluffle & His Sundry Adventures Thereafter. Except not even as charming as that.

And while I think people ought to lay off the random just a little, I really think it's high time the we purged the following words from blog titles, subtitles, tag lines and slogans: "musings," "rantings," "blatherings," "meanderings," "ponderings," "thoughts" (when "random"), "snippets," and, for Christ's sake, "tidbits."
pounded out by Wendy at 10:20 PM

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It's Meta Week on Poundyblog!

By God, for once--and I hope this will be the only time--I actually have something to say about finding weird shit in my referral logs. It seems that there are an awful lot of people trying to look up the "Light as a feather, stiff as a board" incantation. I mean at least once a day I get this search (because the phrase is the page title of this entry) and my stats show it's the most popular search string after "Weight Watchers Recipe Cards".

What's with this urgent need to practice hypnotic two-finger-lifting? Are there really that many slumber parties? And doesn't looking this shit up on the internet kind of defeat the whole point of exploring the unknown? Seriously: this is occult wisdom that can only be passed down from the cousin of your friend Nicole's sister who tried the spell on this one girl from Lyons Township who was so totally hypnotized everyone thought she was in a coma and Nicole swears to God she is not making this up. To learn it any other way is fucking blasphemy, I tell you.
pounded out by Wendy at 8:57 PM

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Find Don!

Sarah at Tomato Nation has been looking for a man who was her "disaster buddy" in the aftermath of the WTC attacks two years ago. She first wrote about him in her account of that day and now she's stepping up her efforts to locate and thank him. So I'm spreading the word.
pounded out by Wendy at 8:25 PM

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Points, PCP, whatever

So I started doing Weight Watchers online again, keeping track of the stuff I put in my mouth by using their snazzy eTools. One day I felt a sudden need to go to that site and log my daily POINTS®; something about clicking on all these little form fields and buttons seemed deeply compelling. And a few times a day now I get the impulse to go back and watch the numbers change and calculate what I'll do for dinner or even the next day, and I've been surprised by my own instinct to do this and how it's taken the form of a sweet little itch for simple computation and order.

Then I realized where it all comes from: I've been playing Virtual Drug Dealer almost daily for the past two weeks.

I'm serious. That fucking game has given me a case of the interactive click-clickies. And I am pretty sure that figuring out how much mozzarella I can have without blowing the eight points I have left for the day is essentially the same kind of brain activity that helps me decide how much meth I should unload if I want enough cash to snag some weak DesignerZ.

So for those of you who are reading this for advice: too much white rice can really screw you over sometimes. Same thing with crank.
pounded out by Wendy at 10:31 PM

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Uh, help me find a gym

Or something.

You may have noticed while reading the very infrequent (but lengthy!) journal entries that I have not gone to a gym since about May, when crazy-ass apartment moving activities and expenditures made additional exercise unnecessary and furthermore rendered gym too expensive and also somehow more of a pain in the ass to get to than before. So I quit and decided to rely on my trusty not-getting-fat-during-summertime tendencies for the time being. I guess it's worked, but I know from experience that I can't trust my ass past August. So now I'm looking for either a new gym or some kind of fitness class here in Chicago. Any ideas? These are my specs:

In general: Must be pretty much in this part of the city and not downtown. Gym: Needs to be cheap and have decent parking. Class: Anything in the evenings where I can jump the hell around but isn't a step aerobic class; prefer kickboxing. Am considering: Well, Bally's, I guess, if I can't find anything better, though I know they'll constantly try and sell me crap; a park district class, although there's nothing close to home. Am ruling out: my recent former gym for aforementioned reasons; any Curves location because I already figured out it's a boring and stupid place with lousy hours; my old old gym, because my lengthy research has proven that the place is totally ghetto. Vaguely considering: That yoga/pilates shit, but don't try to sell me on it. I like to kick.

Write me if you know of anything good. Thanks.
pounded out by Wendy at 12:06 AM

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Sometimes you lead a busy life where you have to stay home and write one night and celebrate your city's German-American heritage the next, even though you yourself are not really very German at all, and when you can't get your writing and German-beer-drinking schedules coordinated with those of your friends, the next best thing is getting to read their pretty freaking hilarious review of the aforementioned German-beer-drinking shenanigans.
pounded out by Wendy at 3:36 PM

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Weblog post in which I pimp my friend Michael's weblog and decide to really run with the whole offensive "pimp" analogy

and pretend he is a lazy ho since he hasn't updated enough either:

Bitch, this the best motherfucking corner. Now work it.
pounded out by Wendy at 10:40 AM

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There needs to be a name for the dissociative and slightly bugfucked state of mind that makes you habitually click over to your own blog to see if you've updated even though you know you haven't.

But since there isn't one, and since I'm pretty sure I'm going to continue to do this, I'm going to put a link to Pamie's new blog so I can go there instead, because apparently the Blog Fairy visits her site and updates.
pounded out by Wendy at 10:03 AM

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What I did on my summer vacation

I mean, besides party. Well, among other things, I became strangely obsessed with finding out all I could about a circus train wreck memorial in a cemetery near where I grew up, and after I finally went to visit it I wrote a short piece about it for my friends at Gaper's Block.

Speaking of stuff I've written elsewhere: the new issue of BUST is out now, and my first Pop Tart column is in there (as well as an article by this lady). I'm working on the next issue's column now, so it'll be quiet around here for just a little longer.

But when I come back I think I'll have a few things to say about where I'm at now with this journal, about what it means to tell a fat girl story, and about how the story I'm trying to tell keeps changing on me like a crazy fourteen-year-old kid. Like a chubby, crazy fourteen year-old kid who decided to dress up punk rock on the last day of seventh grade. I feel I had a summer that started like that--not like I'd know how it feels to go around in the middle of June being weirdly exhilarated even though your hair's full of that nasty black hairspray you get at Walgreen's; oh no, not me.
pounded out by Wendy at 9:44 AM

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