On My Migraines Are Making Me Root For Michele Bachmann
This is a perfect description of the type of migraines I get. Thank you for that -- I'm not alone! We're not alone! Yay!
That being said I have no sympathy for Michelle Bachmann. Every human being suffers from something or other. Doesn't mean you have to turn in to Jude Law in Contagion.
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On Some Advice For Young Grads
@hapax From personal experience and observation I still disagree; I think if a person is 46 with 20 years experience in publishing or whatever they should be able to procure themselves something better than an entry-level job just from the fact that they have 20 years experience.
What I'm talking about are the "creative careers" -- so not violinists or rock stars or writers, but working in a theatrical production office or the record label or the publishing house. Those are generally underpaid at first but eventually you can make a living doing that type of thing. So I don't think the tearing tickets to become a violinist example applies.
Real artists? Rock stars/violinists/writers? No idea how you do that.
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On Some Advice For Young Grads
I would also add: If you know where you want to end up, in one of those competitive "creative" jobs that humanities majors crave, just take any shitty low-paying job in that industry. You will be broke, but whatever. You will do that job for a year or two and then you'll look up and *you'll be in the industry you want to be in* and the next step after that will be in the right direction and you'll never have to do that shitty job again. I promise: A year or two at most doing the grunt work, as long as it's in the general industry of interest. Just don't take some other job because it actually pays or anything, b/c as Mike says, it will suck no matter what. If you're lucky enough to know what you want, use those two years!
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On 111 Male Characters Of British Literature, In Order Of Bangability
This is fabulous, but I wonder what's the rationale for Algernon being so much higher on the list than Worthing? They were always sort of interchangeable to me. I guess Worthing's a little more high-strung?
Loved the I Capture the Castle inclusions.
What about Graham from Villette?
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On When Alan Met Ayn: "Atlas Shrugged" And Our Tanked Economy
@but You say: "There are characters in the book that Ayn shows were heirs of vast fortunes, but she shows that the ones that were unworthy of their inheritance (not really worth what they had received) would ultimately lose it all (I think we can see this in people who win the lotto and go bankrupt)."
So the poor deserve to be poor and the rich deserve to be rich? That's exactly the core self-serving philosophy that Maria accurately points out in her article. It's appealing to the guilty consciences of the already rich.
I don't see how your comment refutes anything in the article, except for a very minor difference in terminology.
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On Sympathy for the Bullies: Our New Villains
My elementary school bully also became a cop. Strange coincidence.
He made me absolutely miserable for 2-3 years. But he was one of 11 children, in hindsight obviously neglected, and even though I felt like a victim and cried all the time I can distinctly remember times I made fun of him for being stupid, perhaps even the first day I met him. So today I do have a lot of sympathy for him, even though I'd prefer never to have met him.
Those junior high bitches, though? Unforgivable.
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On Understudies! How 'Rent' Taught Us All To Be Different
I'm pretty sure she's not talking about the movie at all. And besides, this isn't about the quality of the show, but about what it represented for one person in an important part of her life.
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On Oklahoma! at 67: It's Retirement Time
I agree that "Poor Jud is Daid" is the most interesting part of the show, mostly because it really shows what an unrepentant asshole Curly is. Cheerfully telling this guy to kill himself! What a hero! I think the characters' unexplained cruelty to Jud is the most hateful part of the musical. And then the rest of it's just boring.
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On Understudies! The Technicolor Grace of 'Godspell'
It can be so easy to look back on my embarrassing theater nerd past and dismiss it all as ridiculous and melodramatic. How wonderful to be reminded that it served its purpose and had value for me and lots of us who did it -- that it wasn't a waste of time -- that it may have been embarrassing but shouldn't be regretted. Thank you, Richard.
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On Neal Stephenson E-Book Yanked from Amazon!
There are people who know how to convert books into kindle format, and there are copyeditors, but those are never the same people and the digital people are so new and so overworked and there's no budget for them to hire copyeditors. Those in charge think "Why would we need to copyedit it again in a new format? It's been copyedited and proofread a bunch of times for the book!" Because I imagine what's happening is that this line:
Ebooks are compli-
cated.
Has been converted and reflowed to
Ebooks are compli-cated.