Most of you know I’m a freelance writer. I work in a lot of industries, but everything I write for money is very different from the stuff I post here—mostly things like press releases and reference book articles and trade magazine articles and technical manuals. For a year or so now I have been trying to break into the world of consumer magazines so I can publish something interesting that you can actually buy at a newsstand. The way one goes about this is by e-mailing story ideas (pitches) to magazine editors. These pitches take a lot of time to craft, so I don’t have time to put them together all that often. Also, the whole process is sort of depressing because, while I’ve gotten a few nice replies here and there, for the most part these e-mails just disappear without comment into the ether, making the whole endeavor feel like a big waste of time.
So I’ve decided to try something different. I’ve been reworking some of the essays from this blog and sending them to publications that accept personal narratives. The good thing about magazines that accept essays is that they prefer to read the whole thing instead of a pitch because an essay is the kind of thing that’s difficult to summarize in an e-mail. And I think that evaluation process might give me a better shot because my essays are probably more compelling than my professional clips or my credentials.
The first iteration of each of these essays appeared here on the Shallow Brigade. They have since been reworked and expanded and scrubbed of the f-word, and hopefully they’re better for it. I recently decided to take down the original versions—three so far—from the blog to make the new ones more saleable.
This process has been surprisingly painful because I have a lot of affection for this blog even though it's silly and it has a very limited audience. (Seriously, I love it a lot.) I think part of that pain is straight-up vanity because I am removing the posts that I believe to be my best, and eventually when someone new comes across this space all that will remain are the entries where I talk about TV shows or wild turkeys or whatever.
Oh well, that’s life. And eventually, if I find I can’t hawk these things in the real world, I’ll post them here again in all their revised glory. Meanwhile, I know that some of you are very talented writers who are much more prolific and creative than me, so if any of you ever want to trade thoughts on works-in-progress, well, feel free to give me a shout. (Or, if you’re not in the mood to trade but you’re interested in playing editor, that works, too.) I’ve always wanted to join a writers’ group, but the sad truth is I’m way too self-absorbed and shy and lazy. But recently I realized that my dream is to parlay all my worst faults into BIG BUCK$ so I can stop writing all this other shit that’s not about me.
Fingers crossed.
KO
27 March 2011
18 March 2011
my very first time
A semester abroad is a magical time in the life of a college student. Some kids savor the opportunity to study another culture up close, which mostly involves learning about the strange things that foreigners put on their sandwiches. Other kids focus on meeting new people by getting drunk and boffing locals.
Some kids speak with embarrassing fake accents, which makes patriots like me marvel at the mysteriousness of a universe in which someone can be so self-conscious, yet so oblivious to their own ridiculousness, at the same time. With each stilted syllable, they seemed to say: even one-dimensional nightmare people contain multitudes. Believe.
The world becomes wider, and in taking it all in, we learn new things about ourselves.
My own semester abroad was just such a reflective time. It was, for example, the first time it occurred to me that I might be a sociopath.
That autumn in London was my first real taste of urbanity. I was twenty years old and deeply impressed with my own savvy. I took the train to my internship at a film studio’s outpost, where I sat around and watched movies. I shopped in grocery stores with ethnic foods. I smoked Silk Cuts and paid for household goods in an unfamiliar currency, a real international woman of mystery in my own mind.
I also learned about beggars. (In the South, I guess homeless people are too dignified to beg.) I think, before that, I imagined the homeless were like modern-day Dickens characters--dirty and mischievous and charming. And the real ones were dirty, all right, but also really fucking annoying. Homeless people are one thing in the abstract, when they have some kind of story; they’re quite another when you’re stepping over a huge steaming puddle of hobo barf when you’re running late for class.
The thing is, in London, many (if not most) beggars have pet dogs. Sweet sad tired-looking dogs that plead with their eyes from the depressing cardboard nests they share with these unpleasant humans. To me, their canine despair was much more stirring than the human variety. Deeply moved, I would watch these blighted creatures eat debris from the sidewalk and dream about ways I could help them have a better life.
I remember devising a plan to hand out bags of supplies to all these homeless dogs. My college boyfriend, who was more compassionate than I, raised the question of helping their owners. What about the other creature in that cardboard nest?
It’s bad enough that it didn’t even occur to me that handing out special treats to homeless dogs while expecting their human companions to continue to subsist on actual trashcan garbage was sort of fucked up. What’s worse is that even after this oversight had been called to my attention, I really didn’t give a flip. It was very similar to the way I feel about sports--on an intellectual level, I understood it was something that people care about, but in the place where my heart should be, I couldn’t make myself feel it too.
Of course, back then I was in college, so instead of admitting my faults I revised my (totally imaginary, it should be said) Feed the Homeless Dogs of London campaign to include, like, cheese sandwiches for the dogs’ human counterparts. Which didn’t really convince anyone of my humanity, except maybe me.
These days, opportunities to reflect on my own sociopathy arise with alarming frequency. But I have come to believe it’s more of a spectrum than an all-or-nothing affair. (For one thing, I’m pretty sure that True Sociopaths don’t worry about that kind of thing overly much.) Some years ago I realized I might be a little autistic. More recently I have started to accept that I might be a bit of a sociopath. Basically I am a super special nervous cranky snowflake.
It’s hard to say if this is just the autism or the sociopathy talking--or maybe it’s just the old misanthropy flaring up--but I also believe that my place on those spectrums is not only a bad thing.
Also, I stab hobos.
But seriously, part of what has me thinking about all of this has been watching all the footage from the disaster in Japan and finding myself especially moved by this video:
To some degree, I can trace that reaction to a different set of causes; namely, that footage of the tsunami looks so much like CGI that there is a certain unreality to it. Did anyone else feel that way as you watched the wave roll in? Like the fact that the water was on fire made me feel like I was watching a movie. Basically, The Day After Tomorrow has killed my capacity for empathy, and now all the most terrible things in the real world feel like another thing I’m watching on TV.
(That is an exaggeration, obviously. Truly, I am very sad and worried for the people of Japan, and I would very much like to give them all lots of cheese sandwiches.)
The truth is that there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world, and there’s nothing more emotionally exhausting than thinking about them too much. So now, whenever I feel sorry for a dog, I’m going to assume that’s how I actually feel about people somewhere beneath all the static.
Some kids speak with embarrassing fake accents, which makes patriots like me marvel at the mysteriousness of a universe in which someone can be so self-conscious, yet so oblivious to their own ridiculousness, at the same time. With each stilted syllable, they seemed to say: even one-dimensional nightmare people contain multitudes. Believe.
The world becomes wider, and in taking it all in, we learn new things about ourselves.
My own semester abroad was just such a reflective time. It was, for example, the first time it occurred to me that I might be a sociopath.
That autumn in London was my first real taste of urbanity. I was twenty years old and deeply impressed with my own savvy. I took the train to my internship at a film studio’s outpost, where I sat around and watched movies. I shopped in grocery stores with ethnic foods. I smoked Silk Cuts and paid for household goods in an unfamiliar currency, a real international woman of mystery in my own mind.
I also learned about beggars. (In the South, I guess homeless people are too dignified to beg.) I think, before that, I imagined the homeless were like modern-day Dickens characters--dirty and mischievous and charming. And the real ones were dirty, all right, but also really fucking annoying. Homeless people are one thing in the abstract, when they have some kind of story; they’re quite another when you’re stepping over a huge steaming puddle of hobo barf when you’re running late for class.
The thing is, in London, many (if not most) beggars have pet dogs. Sweet sad tired-looking dogs that plead with their eyes from the depressing cardboard nests they share with these unpleasant humans. To me, their canine despair was much more stirring than the human variety. Deeply moved, I would watch these blighted creatures eat debris from the sidewalk and dream about ways I could help them have a better life.
I remember devising a plan to hand out bags of supplies to all these homeless dogs. My college boyfriend, who was more compassionate than I, raised the question of helping their owners. What about the other creature in that cardboard nest?
It’s bad enough that it didn’t even occur to me that handing out special treats to homeless dogs while expecting their human companions to continue to subsist on actual trashcan garbage was sort of fucked up. What’s worse is that even after this oversight had been called to my attention, I really didn’t give a flip. It was very similar to the way I feel about sports--on an intellectual level, I understood it was something that people care about, but in the place where my heart should be, I couldn’t make myself feel it too.
Of course, back then I was in college, so instead of admitting my faults I revised my (totally imaginary, it should be said) Feed the Homeless Dogs of London campaign to include, like, cheese sandwiches for the dogs’ human counterparts. Which didn’t really convince anyone of my humanity, except maybe me.
These days, opportunities to reflect on my own sociopathy arise with alarming frequency. But I have come to believe it’s more of a spectrum than an all-or-nothing affair. (For one thing, I’m pretty sure that True Sociopaths don’t worry about that kind of thing overly much.) Some years ago I realized I might be a little autistic. More recently I have started to accept that I might be a bit of a sociopath. Basically I am a super special nervous cranky snowflake.
It’s hard to say if this is just the autism or the sociopathy talking--or maybe it’s just the old misanthropy flaring up--but I also believe that my place on those spectrums is not only a bad thing.
Also, I stab hobos.
But seriously, part of what has me thinking about all of this has been watching all the footage from the disaster in Japan and finding myself especially moved by this video:
To some degree, I can trace that reaction to a different set of causes; namely, that footage of the tsunami looks so much like CGI that there is a certain unreality to it. Did anyone else feel that way as you watched the wave roll in? Like the fact that the water was on fire made me feel like I was watching a movie. Basically, The Day After Tomorrow has killed my capacity for empathy, and now all the most terrible things in the real world feel like another thing I’m watching on TV.
(That is an exaggeration, obviously. Truly, I am very sad and worried for the people of Japan, and I would very much like to give them all lots of cheese sandwiches.)
The truth is that there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world, and there’s nothing more emotionally exhausting than thinking about them too much. So now, whenever I feel sorry for a dog, I’m going to assume that’s how I actually feel about people somewhere beneath all the static.
06 March 2011
upgrade
It’s hard to know if things are getting better or getting worse. You know, in general. On one hand, as my idol Jacob Clifton wrote somewhere, it is always better to live in the future. My new iphone is better than my old iphone, etc.
On the other hand, we have what I have come to think of as the Charlie Sheen Theory of Devolution, wherein we’re all pretty much thisclose to mopping up prostitute blood just to become an Internet meme.
Given my constitution, very many of my posts are about the Charlie Sheen Theory of Devolution. But occasionally I think about other things. And I have, in fact, started to write posts about some of those things, but I often leave them unfinished for one reason or another.
So what we have here is a round-up of all the things I have discovered in the recent past that are totally awesome.
Ten Totally Awesome Things that Will Improve Your Life
1. Any book by Jennifer Egan
Well, at least some of her books. I’m still working on the new one and I haven’t yet read her short stories, but I’m guessing those are awesome, too. The ones I’ve read--Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and The Keep--are fantastic in very different ways. Look at Me, my favorite, is just beautifully written, filled with the kind of sentences I would write on a piece of paper and post on my bedroom wall, were I still in high school. Jennifer Egan, you're the best.
2. Kindle
I never really seriously considered buying a Kindle until Amazon released the $139 wi-fi version. The price was right, but I still wasn’t sure if e-reading was for me. Also I had this vague notion that e-readers are going to kill my profession, so it seemed sort of traitorous--like a guy at the Ford factory falling in love with the robot who replaced him on the line. But all of those concerns went out the window when I learned that they sell Kindles at Target, where you can return things simply because you don’t like them. That made buying one more like a risk-free trial than a commitment.
And, oh my god, I could fill another post with all the reasons why I love this thing so much. Obviously, it doesn’t work for cookbooks, art books, or anything else with a design element--all of which I read with some frequency. But it works really well for almost everything else. Especially for trashy vampire novels you should be ashamed to read in public.
3. Soda Stream
I suspect there are two types of people in the world: those who think that owning their own seltzer water maker sounds exciting, and everyone else. If you fall into the latter category, it will probably sound sad when I tell you that the Soda Stream is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. But if you like drinking seltzer at all, this thing will change your life.
A friend recently gave me my Soda Stream as a thank-you when she was my houseguest for a week. I haven’t used it to make soda because, you know, barf. Also, if I could make homemade Diet Coke, I doubt I would ever leave my apartment again.
4. mint.com
I started using mint.com a few months ago and, boy, is it awesome. It lets you store all your financial information so you can track your bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc. all in one place. It is also one of the best designed websites I’ve ever used. Oh, and it’s free!
5. Internet Television
Recently I cut my cable and went full Roku. I was very nervous about doing so, mostly because I don’t want to be perceived as one of those people that doesn’t believe in television. (I really like television. A lot.) But with my DVR and HBO subscription, my cable package alone was more than $150/month, and I felt like the only thing I ever watched was, like, the second half of Top Chef--a show I don’t even like anymore.
My new configuration involves the mid-level Roku box, a 3-disc a week Netflix subscription (which includes unlimited Netflix Instant), a Hulu Plus subscription, and the occasional supplement from Amazon Video On Demand.
And lo, not only do I not miss the cable (at all, ever), I actually prefer being off the grid. Now, instead of flipping through the digital listings to find something tolerable, everything I watch is something I’m excited about. My latest television project is FX’s Damages, a show that has become THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS as though it were a drug problem or my firstborn. Seriously, I can’t even believe I’m writing this now instead of watching Damages.
6. Internet Desserts
(image via Smitten Kitchen)
Lately I have been finding some great desserts on the Internet. The first is a recipe for yellow birthday cake from one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen. This is one of the most delicious cake recipes I know, and it’s very, very easy to make. Here’s a link. Please thank me in cake.
Note: I don’t make it with her sour cream frosting because, frankly, WTF. Flavorwise, I’m intrigued by the idea, but I don’t want to make sour cream frosting for the same reason I don’t want to make buttercream frosting: because the thought of slathering my cake with a container of sour cream or four sticks of butter makes me want to yak.
So I use chocolate ganache frosting instead:
Chocolate Ganache Frosting
1 cup heavy cream
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
Boil the cream and pour it over the chocolate in a mixing bowl. Cover with foil and let stand for five minutes. Whisk until smooth. Chill for an hour or so, then beat with a whisk attachment until fluffy.
Also around xmas I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Biebers. Admittedly, they aren't very classy. They are, however, next-level delicious. Basically you make peanut butter cookies in mini muffin tins, then press mini Reese's Cups into their middles. Then you pop them like bonbons while you're watching your stories.
7. Tieks flats (Sorry, fellas, this one is for the ladies.)
Maybe you’re thinking it sounds stupid to pay $135 for plain old flats. But what if I told you they are magical flats from the FUTURE that collapse so they’ll fit into the tiniest of purses? And that they come in all the awesomest colors? And that they are often available at a hot 30% discount? That's, like, way less than $135, and trust me, they're worth it. Tieks flats are the only reason that high heeled shoes haven't crippled me (yet).
8. Turkey Cocktails
I am notoriously bad at mixing drinks. Like, if we were at a party together, and you asked me to make you a drink, I would pour four kinds of liquor in a cup and hand it to you sheepishly. You’d be like, “Are you trying to rape me?” and I’d be like, “Nah, I just make terrible drinks.”
Lately I have been making more of an effort, so I’ve developed a small stable of simple cocktails are actually very good. The best one I’ve found is called the Frisco, but I renamed it thusly because I make them with Wild Turkey (and first served them at Thanksgiving).
Turkey Cocktail
1.5 ounces rye or bourbon
½ ounce Benedictine liqueur
½ ounce lemon juice
Combine and shake over ice.
Be very careful, as more than two of these will get you hospital drunk.
9. Hyperbole and a Half
Probably you know about Hyperbole and a Half because it’s easily the best blog ever. But I myself didn’t know about it until about six months ago, so I decided to mention it just in case there’s anyone left in the world that is as unhip as me. The fact that this weird and wonderful blog has a zillion readers is maybe the best proof I can think of that things are getting better.
This explains why Allie Brosh is my soul twin.
10. Warby Parker glasses
I just ordered my first pair of Warby Parker glasses and the process was a pleasure from beginning to end. The concept: vintage-looking frames with prescription lenses for $95.
That’s right: $95. Well, actually it's $125 if, like me, you have to order the special blind-people lenses. Still, that is maybe a third of what my blind-people lenses ALONE have cost me in the past.
Warby Parker’s website has a nifty tool that lets you upload a picture of yourself so you can “try on” different frames. (I found that this was key, as it eliminates the unpleasant business of feeling like a boob at the eyeglasses store.) Then you choose your five favorites and they send sample frames to your house—for FREE—so you can check them out in real life.
Oh, and for every pair you buy, they donate a second pair to poor people. Winning. Duh.
On the other hand, we have what I have come to think of as the Charlie Sheen Theory of Devolution, wherein we’re all pretty much thisclose to mopping up prostitute blood just to become an Internet meme.
Given my constitution, very many of my posts are about the Charlie Sheen Theory of Devolution. But occasionally I think about other things. And I have, in fact, started to write posts about some of those things, but I often leave them unfinished for one reason or another.
So what we have here is a round-up of all the things I have discovered in the recent past that are totally awesome.
1. Any book by Jennifer Egan
Well, at least some of her books. I’m still working on the new one and I haven’t yet read her short stories, but I’m guessing those are awesome, too. The ones I’ve read--Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and The Keep--are fantastic in very different ways. Look at Me, my favorite, is just beautifully written, filled with the kind of sentences I would write on a piece of paper and post on my bedroom wall, were I still in high school. Jennifer Egan, you're the best.
2. Kindle
I never really seriously considered buying a Kindle until Amazon released the $139 wi-fi version. The price was right, but I still wasn’t sure if e-reading was for me. Also I had this vague notion that e-readers are going to kill my profession, so it seemed sort of traitorous--like a guy at the Ford factory falling in love with the robot who replaced him on the line. But all of those concerns went out the window when I learned that they sell Kindles at Target, where you can return things simply because you don’t like them. That made buying one more like a risk-free trial than a commitment.
And, oh my god, I could fill another post with all the reasons why I love this thing so much. Obviously, it doesn’t work for cookbooks, art books, or anything else with a design element--all of which I read with some frequency. But it works really well for almost everything else. Especially for trashy vampire novels you should be ashamed to read in public.
3. Soda Stream
I suspect there are two types of people in the world: those who think that owning their own seltzer water maker sounds exciting, and everyone else. If you fall into the latter category, it will probably sound sad when I tell you that the Soda Stream is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. But if you like drinking seltzer at all, this thing will change your life.
A friend recently gave me my Soda Stream as a thank-you when she was my houseguest for a week. I haven’t used it to make soda because, you know, barf. Also, if I could make homemade Diet Coke, I doubt I would ever leave my apartment again.
4. mint.com
I started using mint.com a few months ago and, boy, is it awesome. It lets you store all your financial information so you can track your bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc. all in one place. It is also one of the best designed websites I’ve ever used. Oh, and it’s free!
5. Internet Television
Recently I cut my cable and went full Roku. I was very nervous about doing so, mostly because I don’t want to be perceived as one of those people that doesn’t believe in television. (I really like television. A lot.) But with my DVR and HBO subscription, my cable package alone was more than $150/month, and I felt like the only thing I ever watched was, like, the second half of Top Chef--a show I don’t even like anymore.
My new configuration involves the mid-level Roku box, a 3-disc a week Netflix subscription (which includes unlimited Netflix Instant), a Hulu Plus subscription, and the occasional supplement from Amazon Video On Demand.
And lo, not only do I not miss the cable (at all, ever), I actually prefer being off the grid. Now, instead of flipping through the digital listings to find something tolerable, everything I watch is something I’m excited about. My latest television project is FX’s Damages, a show that has become THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS as though it were a drug problem or my firstborn. Seriously, I can’t even believe I’m writing this now instead of watching Damages.
6. Internet Desserts
Lately I have been finding some great desserts on the Internet. The first is a recipe for yellow birthday cake from one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen. This is one of the most delicious cake recipes I know, and it’s very, very easy to make. Here’s a link. Please thank me in cake.
Note: I don’t make it with her sour cream frosting because, frankly, WTF. Flavorwise, I’m intrigued by the idea, but I don’t want to make sour cream frosting for the same reason I don’t want to make buttercream frosting: because the thought of slathering my cake with a container of sour cream or four sticks of butter makes me want to yak.
So I use chocolate ganache frosting instead:
Chocolate Ganache Frosting
1 cup heavy cream
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
Boil the cream and pour it over the chocolate in a mixing bowl. Cover with foil and let stand for five minutes. Whisk until smooth. Chill for an hour or so, then beat with a whisk attachment until fluffy.
Also around xmas I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Biebers. Admittedly, they aren't very classy. They are, however, next-level delicious. Basically you make peanut butter cookies in mini muffin tins, then press mini Reese's Cups into their middles. Then you pop them like bonbons while you're watching your stories.
7. Tieks flats (Sorry, fellas, this one is for the ladies.)
Maybe you’re thinking it sounds stupid to pay $135 for plain old flats. But what if I told you they are magical flats from the FUTURE that collapse so they’ll fit into the tiniest of purses? And that they come in all the awesomest colors? And that they are often available at a hot 30% discount? That's, like, way less than $135, and trust me, they're worth it. Tieks flats are the only reason that high heeled shoes haven't crippled me (yet).
8. Turkey Cocktails
I am notoriously bad at mixing drinks. Like, if we were at a party together, and you asked me to make you a drink, I would pour four kinds of liquor in a cup and hand it to you sheepishly. You’d be like, “Are you trying to rape me?” and I’d be like, “Nah, I just make terrible drinks.”
Lately I have been making more of an effort, so I’ve developed a small stable of simple cocktails are actually very good. The best one I’ve found is called the Frisco, but I renamed it thusly because I make them with Wild Turkey (and first served them at Thanksgiving).
Turkey Cocktail
1.5 ounces rye or bourbon
½ ounce Benedictine liqueur
½ ounce lemon juice
Combine and shake over ice.
Be very careful, as more than two of these will get you hospital drunk.
9. Hyperbole and a Half
Probably you know about Hyperbole and a Half because it’s easily the best blog ever. But I myself didn’t know about it until about six months ago, so I decided to mention it just in case there’s anyone left in the world that is as unhip as me. The fact that this weird and wonderful blog has a zillion readers is maybe the best proof I can think of that things are getting better.
This explains why Allie Brosh is my soul twin.
10. Warby Parker glasses
I just ordered my first pair of Warby Parker glasses and the process was a pleasure from beginning to end. The concept: vintage-looking frames with prescription lenses for $95.
That’s right: $95. Well, actually it's $125 if, like me, you have to order the special blind-people lenses. Still, that is maybe a third of what my blind-people lenses ALONE have cost me in the past.
Warby Parker’s website has a nifty tool that lets you upload a picture of yourself so you can “try on” different frames. (I found that this was key, as it eliminates the unpleasant business of feeling like a boob at the eyeglasses store.) Then you choose your five favorites and they send sample frames to your house—for FREE—so you can check them out in real life.
Oh, and for every pair you buy, they donate a second pair to poor people. Winning. Duh.
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