for updates & short takes

Reading this tsunami relief blog can feel overwhelming, but if you're like me and feel powerless about making a difference at times like this, it helps a little to see how all these efforts add up. (And there's always the Red Cross, too.)
pounded out by Wendy at 10:13 AM

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Memo from the Spirit of Christmas Past

Notes to self regarding important things I'd never otherwise remember by next Christmas:

1.) It really doesn't take all that long to put up the lights in the living room. Don't put this off "until you have time," because it only takes half an hour, you lazy little shit.

2.) Those Advent Calendar things are tacky and you never keep up with opening the little stupid doors. Please resist the urge to buy another one this next year.

3.) You don't need any more holiday postage stamps. You already had some from the year before. Don't buy more this next year thinking that they'll motivate you to get back into the habit of sending Christmas cards, because they won't, dumbass.

4.) Since now you'll need to get new Christmas cards to use up the stamps, for the love of God just buy the first good set you see. DON'T decide you'll get them later after you've looked at cards in other stores. That's what screwed you up in 1998. Remember? You never do.

5.) Those swags of holiday greenery you get in the Trader Joe's flower section dry out in about three days and the holly berries give off a funky smell.

6.) Just because you have the time to bake Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve doesn't mean you should. It's not like Santa is going to come up and smack you.

7.) If you do make cookies, they're way better when you seal them in an airtight container right after cooling them. A container just like the red plastic tub you threw out last year for some damn reason.

8.) It will do you well to remember how much it rocks to go grocery shopping at 11pm on the 23rd, when it's about two thousand times less crowded than on the 24th.

9.) Really, don't even leave the house on the 24th unless it's to go drink somewhere.
pounded out by Wendy at 11:44 PM

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Alternate places to pre-order INTNM

Last week I started seeing posts from lit bloggers about the book retailer information at Buyblue.org that shows most of Amazon's political donations went to Republicans. Now some folks are rethinking their use of Amazon links and are switching to other online bookstores.

It's true that I'm a lot more used to linking to Amazon, and while I don't know if I'll drop the practice entirely, the least I can do is make it easier for the rest of you to choose other places. Plus I love supporting independent booksellers. Thus:

I'm Not the New Me at Powell's.

I'm Not the New Me at Booksense. (You enter your zip code and it takes you right to the site of an independent bookstore in your area.)

This might totally blow my Amazon sales ranking, but then, more than one kind author person has told me lately that if I pay too much attention to those numbers I could go blind and/or insane and maybe even get hairy palms.
pounded out by Wendy at 11:04 AM

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Do you hear what I hear?

I pay more attention to Christmas lyrics than any normal person ought to. I think this is because one afternoon, when I was six years old, my grandpa read A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka "Twas The Night Before Christmas") aloud to me, and though I'd probably heard the poem dozens of times by then, I hadn't realized that the narrator--maybe Clement C. Moore himself--vomits right in the middle of the story. It happens not too long after that part with the sugar plums dancing in the heads and so on, right after out on the lawn there arose such a clatter.

" 'I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter!' " my grandfather read. I loved his voice. " 'Away to the window I flew like a flash,' " he continued. " 'Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.' "

He stopped for a second. "Uh-oh," he said. "He threw up."

"Really?" I said. I could definitely understand why someone might throw up on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I worried that I would.

"Poor fella," my grandpa said. It was good to know that a little puke didn't necessarily ruin a Christmas, but all the same, I don't think I ever asked anyone to read me the story again.

Anyway, that might explain why I am the way I am now. Here is a list of holiday song lyrics that bother me:

Lyric: "It doesn't show signs of stopping,/ And I brought some corn for popping." Reason: It's POPCORN. Who calls it "corn for popping," the Pennsylvania Dutch? And who brings pantry items on a date? What else does she have in her purse--Cocoa for Heating? Cake of Fruiting? The protagonist of this song is a crazy food-hoarder with convoluted syntax, and I hate having to think of Ella Fitzgerald that way when she sings this.

Lyric: "And so I'm offering this simple phrase/ To kids from one to ninety-two." Reason: Excuse me, Nat King Cole, but I think "Merry Christmas to You" has long been in the public domain, so to offer it, especially with some arbitrary bullshit age limit, seems awfully cheap. Actually, I hate this song in general, since it's called "The Christmas Song" in a very knowing, meta way, and has no story or point other than to be a purely fetishistic inventory of Christmas imagery, with that crass "offer" of commodified goodwill in the last verse. This song is all about Jack Frost nipping at your SOUL, for God's sake. Pass the crack pipe, Natalie.

Lyric: "You will get a sentimental/ feeling when you hear /Voices singing let's be jolly,/deck the halls with boughs of holly." Reason: "You will get a sentimental feeling" sounds unsettlingly like a hypnotic suggestion. Also, "let's be jolly" is not anywhere in "Deck the Halls," duh, so the only time you'll ever hear voices sing, specifically, "let's be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly," is in this song, which means this song is referring to ITSELF and the sentimental feeling you'll supposedly get next time you hear it, and the next time after that, and on and on into infinity this song will tell you how to feel.

Lyric: "Here comes Santa Claus! Here comes Santa Claus! Riding down Santa Claus Lane!" Reason: Gene Autry had to have pulled these lines out of his butt. Sorry, but he did.

Lyric: "In the meadow we can build a snowman, /And pretend that he's a circus clown. We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman,/ Until the other kiddies knock him down." Reason: Okay--building a snowman in order to pretend it's a circus clown is just fucking demented. It's like building a robot and pretending it's Dracula. Or putting a sock on your hand and pretending it's the Incredible Hulk. It makes no imaginative sense whatsoever. Anyway, the people in this song already built a clergyman snowman and pretended to discuss their marriage plans with it, which is admittedly bizarre, but you can at least sort of see the point, and then presumably these are consenting adults here, since they are talking about love and marriage and facing their future and they use the word "conspire" in the fourth verse and everything--so why do they suddenly regress in the very next verse and build a retarded snow-clown and blather about "the other kiddies?" Wonderland or not, we need continuity here, guys. On the other hand, I did come across a really interesting alternate version of this verse that involves ALLIGATORS--no really, read it: they talk about having fun with Mister Snowman until the alligators knock him down--and, well, that changes everything and makes the whole premise completely surreal in a way that I fully support.
pounded out by Wendy at 11:24 PM

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More holiday dorkiness

More on Christmas Music

I have no good explanation for why Marlene Dietrich's rendition of The Little Drummer Boy is my favorite Christmas song ever. I mean I suppose I have the story of how it was the first song on a reel-to-reel tape of Christmas music my mother taped off the WFMT Midnight Special a really fucking long time ago, and how we played that tape every year while we got out the decorations and set up the tree (and put blocks under the stand to balance out the way it had gone crooked from lying on its side all year in the attic), and I'm sure all this had an effect on my auditory consciousness. Still, none of the other, friendlier songs on the reel had this effect on me, so I wonder what it is about me that made me susceptible to this song.

For years I had no idea who sang it; I wasn't even sure if the singer was male or female, just that the voice was a slurring, bittersweet confection of Bavarian darkness. The song is otherworldly and bizarre and it sounds for all the world like Charlie Brown's Christmas pageant gone freakishly wrong and suddenly transported to a smoky German cabaret. It's the best song ever, I tell you.
pounded out by Wendy at 1:57 PM

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"Bloggers" "write" "books"

As far as I can tell, the purpose of this New York Times article on bloggers with books is so people I know who read the Times but who don't read blogs can clip it and and show it to me so I can tell them yes, that thing I do on the internet is a "blog," and yes, I'll explain what a blog is again, and yes, I can also vouch for the explanation in the Times, and yes, it's a lot like the way I explained blogs to them the last time they asked me to explain what a blog was, yes, and no, I'm not in the article, but yes, it's still true that I have a book coming out, and my blog, whatever it is, has something to do with it.

Just as an aside, I'm getting a little sick of the slightly backhanded compliment articles like these give, which is, in essence: Bloggers can actually write books, just as long as they don't write about ew, blogging.
pounded out by Wendy at 11:34 AM

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Well, now that you're all here...

I need to tell you that the finale of America's Next Top Model made me cry and cry. In a good way.

That is all.
pounded out by Wendy at 10:25 PM

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Say what?

Yes, there is a COMMENTS link below each post now. I think I'm doing this just for a little while, just in the last couple of weeks before poundy.com gets rebuilt. This way I'll have the option to simply ditch them along with the old design instead of just shutting them off in a huff. Back when I started writing online, the "post a comment" feature wasn't as common as it is now, and I still feel that only certain kinds of weblogs are suited for comments and reader discussion--and most of the time, mine isn't one of them. But I wanted to at least try them, just for fun: I'm done with the book, the year is almost over, and I would love to hear from you guys.

And let me say right now that I am a BIG PETULANT BABY and if you post anything that hurts my pretty feelings or gets on my raw little nerves, I'll probably just delete it. Life is too short.

Anyway: hello!
pounded out by Wendy at 1:20 PM

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Here I come, uh... wassailing

Sit tight. I’ve had an awful lot of emails to write and answer lately, and a lot of it has been book stuff, and while it's all been good I don't want my whole life to be just Book Stuff, because Gwen is totally right about how stunted and strange it makes you. I swear I have other things to tell you. Like I joined that gym I said I was thinking of joining! Uh-huh! I totally did! I'd tell you more except I didn't go for like a month! Ha ha! Bet you can guess why! It starts with a "B"! Yeah. I really ought to develop that subplot of my life.

Speaking of single-mindedness one of the radio stations here in Chicago has been on an All Holiday Music All The Time format for weeks now already, which has felt a little weird to me, since I’m pretty sure the radio stations didn’t used to kick into A.H.M.A.T.T. mode until a week before Christmas. And I live for that shit, because there is nothing like the way a constant stream of Christmas music with all its jinglies and ringlies and mincemeat assortment of fa la ho ho ho rum pum pum syllables can turn whatever activity you happen to be doing just before Christmas into a cherished holiday memory, such as totally slacking off work because it’s almost Christmas! and getting your oil changed and finding the Jiffy Lube waiting room to be remarkably festive! So I worry about too much holiday music too soon, because what if I get too used to it and simply tune it out and my mid-to-late-December waking life loses the capacity to be lightly frosted with Christmasy goodness? So I’ve been saving my ears until now. And now I can talk about Christmas songs. In fact, I just might the rest of this week. Keep posted.
pounded out by Wendy at 10:28 PM

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A message from the author

Dear trade paperback sales representatives, editorial and marketing staff at Riverhead Books and Penguin Putnam, booksellers, wholesalers, library buyers, book club people, members of the media, and maybe even Ira Glass, as well as various friends and family members of all of the aformentioned, and anyone else who happens to have a bound galley of my book:

Hello! And thank you for agreeing to read an advance copy of I'm Not the New Me! Or, if you didn't explicitly agree to reading the book, for continuing to do whatever extremely sexy you do for a living that requires you to read galleys night after night. At any rate, I hope all of you enjoy reading your galley of I'm Not the New Me, my first book.

Please note this advance edition is FOR LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOT FOR SALE, as indicated in the block letters on the bright red banner on the front cover, and in the two red banners on the back cover. You may also be aware that this is an UNCORRECTED MANUSCRIPT. While I understand that those of you who read galleys are well accustomed to seeing numerous print and even factual mistakes at this stage of the pre-publication process, and that really, you don't mind if you can see where I drooled random punctuation and half-assed grammar all over the keyboard and where nobody bothered to clean it up for God's sake, I am more than a tad mortified. And I know that reading the galley for a book is a lot like watching a dress rehearsal for a play, but all the same you’d hope the lead actress shaved her legs that day. Therefore I have begun to compile a list of all the typos and factual errors appearing in the galley edition of I'm Not the New Me in the hopes doing so will make your reading experience as pleasant as possible. Thank you. --WM

p. 3: We will fix that bad break at the top of the page. I mean, Jesus.

p. 41: There really should be commas after "thought" in Line 10 and "office" in Line 11.

p. 50: On the very last line on that page, the use of punctuation outside the word in quotation marks is wrong, unless you happen to be British. Then again, if you are British, the quotation marks are the wrong kind anyway. So I think the correct punctuation for the word in question, depending on who you are, can be " 'shitty,' " or ' "shitty",' or maybe even 'shitty', but definitely not " "shitty",."

pp. 65-67, 69 Not sure if we can legally use the word "Slurpee" in this context. They're checking.

p. 81: Lines 1, 2 and 4 should be in italics.

p 115: In Paragraph 2, the part that says "driving west towards the sun" is incorrect. Because I'm driving from Chicago to Pennsylvania in this chapter and going, you know, EAST. The corrected passage should say "driving east towards the sun," and the scene in question should take place in the morning, even though technically it didn't, because The Chicago Manual of Style does not advise reversing the earth's rotation unless absolutely necessary.

p. 124, Line 1: I said "Louisville" but I meant "Knoxville." You may have noticed that Louisville is not in Tennessee. Sorry. Knoxville. God.

p. 114: Typo in the first line, as I did not intend to actually say "anyβ."

p. 177: Line 12 isn't supposed to be indented like that. I'm sure you didn't even notice, but still, it's the principle of the thing.

p. 201: There's a really bad break in Line 9. Oh, you'll see.

p. 216-217: This part, starting with Paragraph 3, is really going to be a lot funnier in the published book.

p. 218: If you think the third sentence in the fourth paragraph ought to be in quotes, I have to agree.

p. 225, last line: You'd think I was retarded.

p. 226, Line 7: Or blind.

p. 227: Pretend Nathanael West's first name is spelled correctly here. Thanks.

p. 242: There's a word in Line 12 that looks as if I typed it with a goddamn stick held in my teeth.

p. 243: I know that "uncharacteristically" in that second paragraph is spelled correctly, but I swear to God, the more I stare at it, the weirder it looks. It really doesn't sound like it should have as many letters as it does. I don't know about you, but it's starting to bother me.

p. 246: There should be a capital "L" in "Dom DeLuise."

p. 246: Yes, Dom DeLuise. He's in my book. Shut up.

p. 279: Line 3 should be "Sometimes," not "Sø metimes," but I bet you knew that.

p. 291: Please substitute "Cumberland Avenue" for "Golf Road," even though in real life they are nowhere near each other and not in the least bit interchangeable.

p. 301: I may cut the word "fucking" in Line 3, so any offense taken here is provisional and must be checked against the bound book.
pounded out by Wendy at 11:19 PM

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What I did this week

No, I didn't put my book galley between my legs; I did that already. But I watched TV; I mean I even watched the commercials even though I could have fast-forwarded through them; I started reading a book, one of those really long hardcover books that's a little too big to take with you on an trip when you already have to lug a laptop in your bag, the kind of book where there are dozens of characters and narrow margins and smallish type and therefore the kind of book that you can't really read in ten-minute increments here and there when you've got ten minutes; you need to have the whole night ahead of you, and for the first time in months I have that. I don't have a deadline and I don't have to get on a plane somewhere, not unless I really want to. I drank wine this week, and I wasn't doing it to get myself to sleep at 2 a.m. on a weeknight after drinking too many Diet Cokes while trying to eke out dialogue all night long. I still got sleepy and then I couldn't read my long complex book BUT THAT WAS OKAY. Because nothing was at stake from my falling asleep.

Beyond that, I don't have much to report. The site is being rebuilt and tidied up; I have yet to figure out when it'll be ready. I know that when it happens, the links to my archived pieces will change, though there will be a search feature. This current design is two years old now and it's time for a change.

Oh, and I keep hearing that there is this big thing at the end of the month where people have parties buy each other presents and there are even special songs about it. I really ought to look into it, right?
pounded out by Wendy at 11:44 PM

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