Please Note

If you comment on a post and you leave a comment that is really quite articulate but is on an entirely unrelated subject from the post, I am going to assume that you are a new breed of highly articulate spambot and delete. If you are in fact simply a very confused human, please accept my apologies.

one month in

For those who are interested, following is the status of all my resolutions and whatnot, one month in. I’m hoping that by doing a check-in of sorts I’ll keep on track.

1. Read 52 novels.

So far I have read 1 and a half novels. Not a great start, but I have enjoyed/am enjoying both books immensely. (Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan and Trilby by George Du Maurier. Yes, I’m eclectic.) Goal progression: OKAY, NOT GREAT.

2. Write at least six book reviews for Gracetopia.

0 for 6 so far, but I’m not really behind until the end of February. Goal progression: NEITHER POSITIVE NOR NEGATIVE.

3. EITHER finish BY and sub it to agents OR trunk BY.

Sigh. See Addendum Writing Goal below.

4. Finish the first draft of a TOTALLY DIFFERENT book.

Well, I know what books it’s going to be. Goal progression: STEP ONE COMPLETE.

5. Go to the gym twice a week

Sigh. *counts* Okay wait, I only marked 3 times on my calendar this month but I’m sure it’s been at least 5. Goal progression: GET WITH THE PROGRAM, GRACE.

6. Live like the bombshell I really am.

Obviously I am rocking this. Goal progression: ROCKING IT.

7. Bonus secret goal having to do with finances

I’m really proud of myself I am doing SO WELL with this one! Goal progression: ON TRACK.

Addendum January writing goal:

write 600 words/day in BY.

Hm. Well. *checks sidebar* Two days of success, one day of partial success? Fuck that. Fuck THAT, I say.

The writing is on the wall. It’s time for me to accept that this shit is NOT working. So. I’m putting BY aside. I’m going to work on a new project. I’m going to spend maybe an hour a week on BY, trying to finish so that I can say I finished, but it’s going to be my back burner project.

So. Shiny new project ahoy!

I think over all I am doing slightly below average as far as my goals goal. Not a great way to start, but FEBRUARY WILL BE BETTER yeahyuh.

So how are you all doing on your New Year’s Resolutions? (if you made any) Roll call!

I Could Care Less

So the infamous Kidbro was crashing with me recently, and I got corrected three times—three—about my use of the phrase, “I could care less.”

Which, let’s face it, is wrong.

As I’m sure you all know, what I should be saying is: “I couldn’t care less.” This is one of those common mistakes that shows up in lists of common mistakes, along with such gems as “irregardless” and “all of the sudden.”

Now, I know this is wrong. And as a good English major/Grammar Nazi, I should be all up in arms about such a misuse of the English language. But…

I think it sounds better wrong?

I dunno. It just rolls off the tongue better. The words feel more like what they mean. I made up some bullshit for Kidbro about how really “I could care less” IS what I mean, sort of, in a roundabout way: “I could care less, but that would mean caring at all, which I so absolutely don’t.” Or something. But yeah, it was total BS.

So I know it’s wrong, but I do it anyway. Maybe I am actually a descriptivist instead of a prescriptivist. I am so not sure how I feel about this.

What about you? Is there anything you know you do “wrong” but it doesn’t matter? My other big one is “hopefully,” which, yeah. I know but it sounds better.

Just don’t come near me with your “irregardless” or I will end you.

this isn’t as big a deal to me as this post makes it sound

It’s a slow news day in Gracetopia so I would like to discuss one of my PET PEEVES.

Greeting cards.

Every single time I go to buy a card—for a birthday, a coworker leaving, Mother’s Day—I usually either leave the store with 0 cards or extremely disappointed in the 1 card I found with which I was willing to make do. 98% of the time I do buy a card, it’s a Peanuts card because those are the least offensive. 

WHY is buying a card so impossible? Did it used to be this bad or was I just not paying attention?

Basically my complaints fall into 2 categories:

1. Content. From what I can tell, greeting cards are either a) insulting/juvenile, b) flowery/romantic/thanking God or c) Peanuts. Perhaps that is an over-simplification, but really? There has to be a happy middle ground in Mother’s Day cards that isn’t a poop joke or a poem about how mothers are like daffodils in the sunlight. And I refuse to buy birthday cards that are insulting. I am not going to jokingly insult people just because that is the only option Hallmark gives me. (Besides which, if I’m going to jokingly insult people I can do a much better, more personalized job of it than Hallmark.)

2. Addressee. Almost all the cards are addressed “to” someone, so even if I find a message I like, if I want to give it to my brother it is probably addressed To My Favorite Niece (probably for a specific birthday). Frankly, it’s kind of presumptuous of Hallmark et al to think they know all about my relationships and how I might want to “card” them. (Yes, I verbed it.) This morning, for instance, I wanted to buy a birthday card for one of the kids I sponsor through Children International. That cuts out like 95% of cards right there, since they’re addressed to someone specific and the sponsored child niche hasn’t been exploited yet. Cut out another 10% for being pop culturey and another 10% for being annoying and that leaves me with… wait… I did that wrong… anyway you get what I’m trying to say. Don’t presume you know who I want to give a card to, or what my relationship with them is like. America may be going down the tubes, but I’m pretty sure most of us can still write “To My Favorite Niece” on any card we choose. What if my niece likes Batman? I’m pretty much screwed.

So, Hallmark. I want to spend money on your product. I really do. But I refuse to get my mother an insulting mother’s day card, I refuse to get my sponsored child a card addressed to my great-uncle, and I refuse to give an annoying/insulting card just because that’s available. (If you’re wondering, I buy a lot of packs of blank cards and write “Happy Birthday! Love Grace.”)

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone think I’m totally wrong and the greeting card industry has a WONDERFUL selection? Maybe it’s different in different areas?

—-

Postscript to Nisse and anyone else who cares: I apologize for my abuse of statistics in this post.

meet Mr. Tong, professional fucktard

You all know me. I’m not the most controversial human on the planet. I like me some dumb TV shows and some Sharks hockey and some Sandman comics and I whine a lot, but I’m not particularly controversial. I stay away from politics or anything even partway inflammatory. (ie, I’m pretty dull.)

So you know if I’m calling someone a fucktard I’m pretty pissed off.

Mr. Kenneth Tong is a fucktard.

Apparently he was a rich nobody from the UK’s Big Brother, but he rose to Twitter fame (infamy) last week with a series of tweets that were pro-”managed anorexia.” Yep. You read that right. Managed. Anorexia.

The tweets are gone now. The only remnants on his twitter profile are the items he retweeted, other people either telling him he’s an ass or telling him how much he’s helping motivate them. I saw the tweets live, but now I’m trying to find screen captures and failing (if anyone has any/knows of any, let me know).

Celebrities including Gordon Ramsay, Rihanna, and Simon Cowell attacked him (Tong had claimed that Ramsay was on his side, kind of forcing Ramsay to respond). A large portion of the internet attacked him. Which meant he was retweeted and talked about and made into an even bigger deal. There were many campaigns to block him/mark him as spam enough times that Twitter would shut him down. If you follow me on Twitter, you may remember me bitching about him last week but without linking—I didn’t want to give the asshole any more air time than he was already getting.

But some people weren’t attacking him. Some people—I don’t want to say all girls but the only ones I saw were girls—were listening to his message. Some people were following his profile for the inspirational words he was tweeting. Because ANOREXIA IS A DISEASE. And anorexics will listen to someone who is promoting the unhealthy ideal they are unhealthily trying to reach, because to them it is perfectly reasonable. Even though it is absolutely not.

Tong congratulated one girl on being his youngest follower. He promised a “size zero” pill. He encouraged people not to eat meals, so they do not get “fat.” To get thin or die trying. He basically fed the anorexic’s disease.

Part of me was thinking, “Can this be real? This has to be some sort of weird hoax, right? Nobody can be this much of a fucktard, RIGHT?”

And then, yesterday, this tweet:

I think it is time for to come clean. The whole size zero thing is a hoax. It came about after an interesting discussion I had with a friend of mine. The discussion centered round whether it was possible, to go from nowhere to be a globally recognized figure within a week harnessing the power of the internet and specifically Twitter, which I have always maintained is a better medium than national TV. My friend said it wasn’t possible. I said it was. To prove him wrong, I decided as a hoax to promote via Twitter something that was universally appalling, I chose managed anorexia. I would like to make it clear, I chose the subject as a hoax as I knew it’d be appalling to men and women. The campaign has worked; I have been a Trending topic on Twitter for over a week. I am scheduled to appear on TV, the Press and Radio shows, over the course of the next week: Grazia, Telegraph, The Sun, The Sunday Times etc. Now it’s time to come clean and stop the bandwagon. My honest personal opinion on managed anorexia is it is an disgusting and illogical idea. It is a mental illness. It cannot be managed. To all the people I have offended as part of this scientific experiment, I would like to apologize to you and to show my sincerity I will making a sizeable donation to beat: the leading UK charity for people with eating disorders and their families. Furthermore, I have decided to auction my custom Apple iPod Nano watch on Ebay, the proceeds from this will be going to the charity, beat.

… hm.

You’re still a fucktard, Mr. Tong.

You obviously don’t understand the seriousness of an eating disorder if you think it’s a good idea to make a joke out of it, to use it to achieve a personal goal. Yes, you achieved your goal. You manipulated people using something absolutely inflammatory, you got celebrities to namecheck you by forcing them to deny involvement in your “movement.” But you increased your fame by manipulating people’s relationships with a disease. I have no statistics to back this up, but I would guess it is difficult to find someone who is not personally affected by an eating disorder, either their own or that of someone close to them. You preyed on people’s emotions and vulnerabilities to prove a point and win 15 (more) minutes of fame.

You are disgusting.

But wait. Word is that it wasn’t actually a hoax. That you’re just backpedaling.

Johann Hari interviewed Tong before this apology tweet, and claims that Tong’s tone changed dramatically through the course of the interview after being informed of the legal trouble he could get into for his vicious words:

…he passionately defended every word he had said, but when I told him that his arguments could kill young girls and expose him to serious legal liability, he visibly began to panic. [...] After his ‘revelation’, he said “it was dangerous ground we were treading on, I can see that now” and begged me not to publish his comments. So I don’t believe it was a hoax at all — but that he was finally scared off by the legal implications of what he was saying and doing.

The full article is fantastically done but very sobering, and I suggest you read it. Tong really does come across as mentally disturbed.

Which, to get back to the main point of this post, doesn’t excuse him from being a fucktard.

I don’t really care if it was a hoax or not. If it was a hoax it was vile thing to do to people who already have medical and emotional problems. If it wasn’t a hoax… then you’re just a straight up disgusting human being with entitlement issues.

Personally, I’m leaning towards not-a-hoax. Hari’s article is very convincing. And if it was a hoax, Mr. Kenneth Tong, why did you delete all of your tweets? Wouldn’t you have wanted them there for posterity to show how you did it, how you won the internet?

And it is possible to do this sort of thing as a hoax and actually make your point. See the Dutch TV show hoax from a couple of years ago. Purportedly a competition to see who among 3 contestants would receive a liver transplant, it was actually a fakery to highlight the shortage of organ donors in the Netherlands. The outcry was enormous, but it achieved its goal. A much more valid goal than the one you claim.

But like I said, I don’t care. Either way—fucktard. I’d tell you to fuck off and die, Mr. Tong, but unlike some people I don’t promote death on the internet.

one week in and going strong

I love how the day after Gym Day I can still feel my muscles—it’s not that they hurt, particularly, they’re just like ahhhh we got a work out yesterday yeah.

Other things I like about going to the gym:

• My gym has individual TVs, so I get to watch part of an episode of Law and Order (usually) without feeling like a lazy bum sitting on my couch.
• Going to the gym after work gives me a lot of energy at the time of day when I’m usually crashing.
• I get to think about the ice cream I’m having for after dinner without feeling guilty.
• Seeing my weights go up or my cardio time increase gives me that FUCK YEAH I ROCK feeling all over.

And that’s not even counting all the “generally more healthy” side effects.

Posting this as a reminder for when I start whining about the gym next week. :) What about you guys, any inspirational reminders for when our enthusiasm for our New Year’s goals runs out? :)

new favorite website

That’s Why I Dumped You is a brand-spanking new website where people can write in about—wait for it—why they dumped their S.O.s. It’s hilarious, and sometimes painful. The site still in that brand-new stage where a lot of Shiny New Idea websites sometimes still disappear (see my short-lived Glam Book Shots). I am so so hoping this sticks around because omg the lulz.

Following are some of my faves, in no particular order:

Because you didn’t consider it cheating because she was a lesbian.

Because you threw out cold pizza. Because you don’t eat cold pizza. Because, what the hell is the matter with you?

You got mad at me for not watching you sleep. Why would I watch you sleep?

Your inability to invite your sister for three-way disappointed me.

Okay, I’m done. Go explore yourself if you like. Beware some of them are crude/rude. (What? I’m shocked, internet, truly shocked.)

 

 

 

 

writing goal: January

Because ’tis the season for goals n things.

I think—we’ll see if it lasts more than one month—I might try a new writing goal for every month. To keep me focused. And having a short, discrete goal sounds much less hard than “Finish Novel by June.”

So I think for January my goal is: write 600 words/day in BY.

600 is a small enough number that I could actually accomplish it. But it’s enough words that I could perhaps finish the draft by the end of the month, which then leaves me mountains of time to complete the rest of my BY-related goal.

So here we go. New goal. New plan. I can do this. Rawr.

For the newly-initiated, BY is my codename for the manuscript that is eating my soul.