freak magnet

I'm going on a bit of a hiatus for now (hey, at least I'm finally owning up to it).

Terrifying (?) Brookeville Angel

I have the Roadside Attraction app on my iPod because, well, I love weirdo roadside attractions and will happily drive miles out of my way to see hoodoo markers, giant muffler men, and offbeat museums. The Internet happily makes my obsession very easy and the iPod app just takes the cake. Last Saturday I decided to take a drive out to see what the app describes as "a life-size polychrome angel with bug eyes and a psycho-crazed face. An unintentionally alarming view of the Christian afterlife."

Since the Rapture's been postponed until October, I figured I might as well get a peek at what I'm in for.

 
Okay, it is big. Terrifying? Not so much. It's supposed to be the archangel Gabriel.

 
All right. The Roadside reviewer has a point about the eyes. I'll give them that.

 

Brookeville is a cute little town in Montgomery County--I think it might be somewhere near Olney. Lots of what had obviously previously been farmland converted to lots for sprawling McMansions on the drive out there. According to some sign I read on the way to the angel, Brookeville was the nation's capital for a day in the early 1800s after President Madison sought refuge there after the Battle of Bladensburg. Huh. I didn't even know there was a Battle of Bladensburg. When I think of Bladensburg, I think of strip malls not "the greatest defeat to American arms."

See? My interest in all things weird leads to intellectual enrichment!

RIP Leonora Carrington

The last of the original Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington,  died Wednesday night at the age of 94.  I had only recently realized that she was still alive.  She really had a remarkable life.

Apparently she appears in a documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky, the filmmaker who did the wonderfully alienating movie Santa Sangre. (I showed that movie to my freshman comp class when I taught at the University of Maryland. When the film ended, the anger at me in the room was palpable. Ha!). So I'll have to hunt that doc down.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

So I took off last Thursday and Friday to drive over to Easton, Md., to catch Doug Benson at the Avalon Theatre. I stayed at the Tidewater, which seemed to be rather fancy.  I felt a little grubby in my jeans and t-shirt but, hey, my money is just as good as anyone else's! Though maybe my GPS was trying to tell me something because it kept insisting that the East End Liquor Store was the Tidewater. I finally turned it off and drove around aimlessly until I found the historical district, then I found the theater, and right across the street was the hotel. Stupid GPS.

Of course, by the time I got there it was hovering around 5 so all the little shoppes were closing. But I walked around for a bit, got some takeout Chinese, went back to the hotel to chill for a little bit. 

 
The Tidewater

 

 
The view from my hotel room overlooking the Avalon theatre. (it's a little grainy because I left my nice camera at the office and resorted to taking pics with my iPod).

I had a great seat--about 5 feet from the stage. Benson brought two other comics who opened for him (Nikki Glaser and Graham Elwood--Elwood has a podcast called Comedy Film Nerds). They were all hilarious.
 
There was one young dumb drunk chick directly in front of me who kept heckling Doug. After about 10 times of mocking her and getting everyone to laugh at her, he finally flipped out and yelled at her for about 5 minutes to shut up (or it felt like 5 minutes). I don't know why some idiots think standup comedy has a call-and-response aspect to it. I didn't buy a ticket to hear your dumbass comments...I bought a ticket to hear Doug's dumbass comments. Grrrrr.
 

 
Graham Elwood and Doug Benson, embarking on the Leonard Maltin game.

The next morning, I thought about exploring Easton a little more but I had no need for twee knicknacks or expensive soap. Besides, I've been in enough small, charming towns on the Eastern Shore to last me a lifetime. I visited St. Michaels before it became a mecca for DC lobbyists and beltway insiders! I've eaten at the Fin, Fur, and Feather in Rock Hall (their green beans were delicious)! I watched the (the oldest privately operated in the US) ferry rescue our boat from being dashed against the rocks in Oxford during a storm! What more could Easton possibly offer me?

So I packed up and got the hell out of town. Now I just have to wait until August when Benson swings by Baltimore for a taping of his podcast. Yay!

 

A Cursed Manuscript

Remember back in April when I was freaking out about a copy editor who sent back a manuscript virtually unedited??? Well, I did what I could, realized I couldn't send it back to the authors in the shape it was in, and asked someone I've known for 15 years, who I am FRIENDS with (and who has done work for us in the past), to go behind me and tighten up the editing. I sent it to her in the first week of May. Yesterday, she calls to fess up that because of other things going on in her life, she hasn't started the manuscript. WTF??? There's no way she can finish it by my deadline of June 1. She says she thinks she can get through 5-6 chapters by then. Again WHAT THE FUCK???? That is of no fucking help to me. What is wrong with people??? I mean, I know she took it on in an effort to help me but THIS IS NOT HELPING ME. If she had gotten back in touch with me a week after she took it on and said, "Look, I'm realizing I just don't have time for this," I could've taken it back and found someone else. But a week before the deadline??? Really?  I'm going to have to start saying to all the freelancers, if you haven't started a manuscript within the first week of my sending it to you, SEND IT BACK TO ME AND I'LL FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS THE TIME TO WORK ON IT AND WON'T  FUCK WITH MY DEADLINES! Jesus.

So now I'm scrambling to find two other freelancers to divide 10 chapters between them so that maybe, just maybe, I can make the deadline and won't look like a total bumbling asshole to the authors.

 

Take That, Authors!

Good lord, what a shitty day. Thankfully my policy of never deleting any work-related email and keeping every iteration of the manuscripts/proofs allowed me to triumph over those who would keep me down. Twice today.

And the familial trip in August up to Rhode Island to spread my father's ashes is shaping up to be a bit of a source of stress. Let's just say that in terms of selecting a house to rent, one of my brothers has champagne tastes, whereas the other brother and I are perfectly content swilling Natty Boh. Of course, if I had all the money in the world, I would insist on strapping the nephews and nieces into life jackets and renting this place: Clingstone. How cool is that?

I had been considering going down to New Orleans for my birthday in June--I found a really good deal on accommodations in the French Quarter and had researched a couple of tours I wanted to take but I just don't think I can swing it financially with the August trip.  Damn it!

 

 

Why I Wear Headphones at Work

Download Memo

 It almost makes me hope that that wackjob from South Carolina is right and the Rapture will arrive on May 21. I figure she'll be gone and I, godless heathen that I am, will still be here. Sure, there will be earthquakes and the dead rising from their graves but, at the office at least, I'll have sweet, sweet silence.

Nine Down, Six to Go

I'm stopping now because my brain is fried and if I read one more screwed up interpretation of some other language, I'm going  to scream. It may well be that the German word for a high school graduate is "leaver" but that doesn't work in English. It's like someone just shoved  some of these chapters through Babelfish. (Some, however, are perfectly fine. The chapter on special education in Israel was a really interesting read actually).

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHH!!

I shouldn't even be taking the time to write this right now but I am so FUCKING pissed. A few months ago, I hired what I thought was a very reliable, very thorough, deadline-driven freelance copy editor. She's done a few books for us--she always met my deadlines, she had intelligent queries, she seemed to adapt to our weird idiosyncrasies (hard of hearing is NEVER hyphenated in our world, not even when used as an adjective because, apparently some HoH people find the hyphenation offensive. I'm HoH and I don't but whatevs). She was a little weak on the key marking and did a few other (minor) weird things but everyone does something wrong and you just have to point them out and hope they'll improve.

So when I had this project come along with a very set-in-stone schedule, I gave it to her. I told her up front that the deadline couldn't be extended (which was today).

Last Wednesday, one of the volume editors (it's a collection of chapters by different authors, many of whom are nonnative speakers) emailed me the final introduction. It was short so I forwarded it to her rather than editing it in-house. She emails back and tells me she needs until May 2 to finish the book.

Uh...what? You wait until two days before the deadline to tell me you need more time? WHAT THE FUCK?

Okay, so that's disappointing but I figure she must be relatively close to finishing. At least half way, right? She's had it for 4.5 weeks. I tell her it's not a big deal, just send me back what she's done, invoice me for that, and I'll finish it up. So she sends it back to me this morning.

SHE'S DONE FUCK ALL. Okay. Not entirely true. She says she did all the references and checked all the in-text cites. And did some global changes to chapter 1. Of course, Word's track changes function date- and time-stamps all the changes. So I can see that she made  the bulk of these changes THIS FUCKING MORNING. Great. I'm sure she did a real thorough job. If she has the fucking audacity to try and invoice me for this crap, I will fly out to her house in California and punch her in the throat.

What the HELL is wrong with people?? She just lost herself a good, steady gig. We pay well (for a university press) and we get the checks out very quickly, which, unfortunately, in scholarly publishing is unusual.

Oh god, I just feel like sobbing. And screaming and breaking things. Because this means that this weekend, a weekend for which I have a considerable amount of plans, I will have to cancel all of them (well, maybe I'll go to Easter dinner at my SIL's for a bit) and fucking work on this manuscript. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

Rude people

When we moved to this office space last year, we gained the entire fourth floor of the administration building but we lost our conference room. Instead, we decided to put a table at the end of one of the hallways. Unfortunately, it's just outside of my office. We have yet to use it for a meeting but it seems to attract random strangers who have no connection to the Press.  I've seen two students hanging out at the table (what college student hangs out in the administration building?!), a woman eating her lunch, a loud woman on her cell phone trying to make arrangements for her wedding reception, and now some random chick with a LOUD toddler who is using our microwave to heat up their lunches to eat at our table. WTF???? Who comes into a quiet random office to use their kitchen and eat lunch? And just now when I was heating up my lunch she came in, opened the microwave door and seemed AFFRONTED that I had the audacity to have food in there (she's deaf--she couldn't hear that the microwave was working). Again, WTF??? She did tell me to "go ahead." Yeah, thanks. I'll do that.

People! I am trying to get work done! Work that generally requires relative quiet! Is it not enough that I have to listen to a co-worker singing along (very badly) to her tunes? I've managed to deal with that but I don't need any additional noise! Stay away or at least get some goddamn manners and be quiet about it!

After the chick with the cell phone incident, I did take all the chairs and put them in my office for awhile. That seemed to work at discouraging lollygaggers. That may have to happen again.

 I realized the other day that it's been more than a year since I've gone anywhere for vacation. How effing depressing is that? Yeah, sure, I did go down to the Outer Banks over the winter break but that was more of a family thing. And I've been going down there since I was 5. Not a lot of excitement to be had with that.

(We did scatter some of my dad's ashes down there on this past trip. It was sort of amusing to watch my brother wade out into the frigid Atlantic, struggling a bit to get it open [because we, of course, chose a non-traditional urn] with my mother yelling "A little bit more! A little bit more!" after he finally began scattering them.  I stood on the beach thinking "Really? We're just doing this? Aren't there laws about it?" I like to think my father would've been amused by the whole scene. We're also scattering some on the starting line of a Round Bay Sailing Association race [which, I predict, will also be amusing] and then the big trip up to Rhode Island in August to scatter some more where some river meets the Atlantic.)

I do have a mini-vacation coming up, which I'm excited about. I'm spending 2 days next month in Easton on the Eastern Shore of Maryland! Sure, it doesn't seem on the surface like a fabulous destination. I even dated a guy who was deeply ashamed of being from there and who had worked to eliminate his accent (only somewhat successfully). But! Comic genius (that might be a bit strong) Doug Benson will be appearing at the Avalon Theatre on May 19.  Yeah, I know. You've probably never heard of him but I'm a faithful follower of  his podcast and think he's hilarious. I decided to take that Thursday and Friday off, get a room in Easton, and just make it a long weekend. It should at least be pretty over there and if I get totally bored, I can always drive down to Georgetown East (i.e., St. Michael's) to see how much its changed since I was a kid (we used to stop there frequently on our marathon summer sailing cruises of the Eastern Shore). Now, apparently, its real estate is mostly owned by rich DC insiders for their weekend homes.

He's back in August in Charm City AND he'll be taping a podcast episode there! Yay!