SilverJacket

Books for Poors

Recently a friend asked me what I thought the tanking economy was going to do to the book industry. I said those Chicken Soup for the Soul books would probably get a sales boost, but everyone else is fucked. Well, except for me, because I'm publishing a new line of books modeled on the X for Dummies series. It's called X for Poors. Here's my first one: Wine for Poors.

Now taking suggestions. (Feng Shui for Poors? Like, which way should the entrance of your carboard box face?)

Blogging about Bullshit

I've written some recent posts about bullshit for Brainstorm.

The first one defines bullshit and describes Hunter S. Thompson's use of it on the campaign trail in 1972. And mentions a bullshit lecture on statistics I saw that was actually titled "Not Always Bullshit: A Simple Explanation of Statistics."

The second one relays what Harry Frankfurt, author of On Bullshit, had to tell me about the use of bullshit by Hillary and others on the campaign trail in 2008.

The third describes a bullshit music review in Maxim magazine, asks whether I committed the same sin in Psychology Today, and ties in material from the book How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read.

The Copycat Unconscious

Considering how lazy many e-daters are, and how clever many other e-daters are, it should come as no surprise that plagiarism runs rampant in the online dating world. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported on copycat personal profiles, mentioning that in one survey 9% of respondents admitted to lifting material from someone else, and that lines from some sources appear on dozens of people's profile pages. In some cases people cop to lack of imagination, but I suspect in others people subconsciously appropriate the sentiments behind the words so as to justify their claims of authorship.

Read the full post at Brainstorm.

Just Say Maybe

Focus on Hallucinogens: This is a little gem I've held onto since my friends Ken and Glen mailed it to me as part of a care package when I was working in Alaska after high school. It's from 1991 and out of print but still in near-perfect condition. I wrote children's science books for two years but never wrote one as fun or useful as this. It explains to 9-year-olds everything from neurons to shamans. Rad!

New York is Fun. You Should Come.

I'm not really one to get starstruck. I'm of the "they're just human; do they have anything interesting to say to me" variety. But there's still something enervating about close encounters with celebs in the wild, like watching a comic book character (say, Mystique) come to life and shake your hand. I think there's some evolutionary psychology behind that.

Two nights ago I went to a book party hosted by a dealer of rare tomes. Not typically a breeding ground for action figures, but follow along. At one point I introduced myself to a woman with funky glasses who looked interesting to talk to. Her eccentricity didn't end with her accessories, which I soon noticed also included analogs of raver beaded bracelets clogging up her  sleeves—they had little trinkets on them, at least one of which was a unicorn. She noted that she bought the same designer glasses for her husband, but in green, and kept talking to me, and the woman I'd been talking with earlier, about Montauk, noting that she had never worked a summer in her life. When she asked where we went in the summers (though thankfully without using summer as a verb) we were like, uh, we live in the city. We work. At this point I thought I had her pegged. A wealthy artist or designer. Then she drops it like it's hot and reveals she's a retired school teacher. Recalculate.

She goes on to ask how long my chat buddy and I have known each other. Since about 8pm we say. She does not believe us, noting our casualness. We're casual people, we say. For the next 30 minutes Jessica and I try to convince her that we are not married. I think she still believes we're pranksters.

At this point I'm thinking I would love for her to be my crazy old aunt, so I could have lunch with her once a month. And then the full reveal. Jerry O'Connell (Stand By Me, Jerry Maguire), who'd been standing by me, introduces himself and thanks us, as if in apology, for talking to his mom. Jessica thinks this is weird, as she does not know who he is. I think that is weird.

Then his fiancée introduces herself. I'll give you a hint. Her first name starts with "Rebecca," and her last name starts with "Romijn" (but does NOT end in "-Stamos," mind you.) Celeb introductions always seem weird to me. It's slightly tempting to play dumb and respond with, "I'm sorry, what's your name again?" just to see if it elicits any kind of interesting microexpression before they dutifully repeat themselves. (An actual tantrum would be hilarious.)

I think when I'm a household name I will crib a line from a Fabolous [sic] jam: "Hello, my name is/ Fuck that, I'm famous." You know, just as a psychology experiment.

In a eugenic world...

This would not be a book.

Hapless Self-Help

In the book review section of Psychology Today we have a page called Road Test. A writer takes a self-help book out for a test drive and reports the results. Last month a man named Sheraton G. Munford sent us his book, Confirming Theories. The brief intro ends with: "please read with an open mind and give serious thought to the theories of Sheraton G. Munford." The book's not quite right for PT, so I decided to road test it for SJ!

Confirming Theories is a list of 35 theories, each about a page long, and each followed by a page with blank lines for answering three questions: "How was the research on the theory completed?" "What were the results of the research?" "Please explain why you do or do not support the theory." Munford lays out his theories and we get to test them for him! Awesome! Let's get to work.

No, You Choose.

What's that noise? A siren? Do y'all hear the Language Police about to bring the beatdown?

Okay, so, what's the deal with giving two titles to things and placing "or" in between them? Example: A photo labeled "Second attempt to clone mental disorder or How one philosophizes with a hammer." Now, I did write a whole post about how great that photo caption is, but it's great because what comes before "or" and what comes after work together. I have to translate "or" into "and" or a simple colon; otherwise, the synergy dissipates.

Read "or" literally and it's like, well what's the fucking title of your piece? Is it A or B? Let's look at the inverse scenario. You wouldn't pick a single title and then put two separate paintings on the wall and say "Um, 'Dancing Daisies' is this one or that one." You wouldn't publish two novels in the same volume with a big page that says "or" in between and a single title slapped on the cover.

So take a look at this article headline: "The End of Originality Or, why Michael Bay's The Island failed at the box office." Oh, I get to pick what the article is titled? Wheee!

It's like these titles are fucking choose your own adventures. So, yeah, screw the simple "or"; here are selected excerpts from the title of my next abstract expressionist painting: "...Skip To Title 34 for a More Wry Interpretation of This Piece... If You Are Currently Feeling Incensed by Life's Great Injustices You Might Like Something in a... Otherwise Jump to... Not Feeling Any of These Titles Yet? Try... Oh Screw It, Buy the Fucking Thing and Name It What the Hell You Want."

God, why do creative types have to ruin everything?

On the Money

A review of the new biography of Timothy Leary appearing in the Times today includes the following paragraph:

In a twist that could have occurred only in 1970, a consortium of drug dealers paid the Weather Underground to spring Leary from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo — he pulled himself along a telephone cable over the fence, then was picked up by a car — and transport him to Algeria. He duly issued a press statement written in the voice of the Weathermen, the money line of which was: "To shoot a genocidal robot policeman in the defense of life is a sacred act." [emphasis mine]

The last time I recall seeing someone use that terminology in reference to a piece of writing's spunkiest moment was in my own hand, aimed at an article I wrote in 2003 for a national physics lab's magazine. Sending the link to a fellow writer, I wrote, "Be sure to read the final graf for the money shot."

What was it?

[LA Times science journalist K.C.] Cole proudly told me what Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, said of her once. "'K.C. Cole is our ambassador to the realms of the exceedingly strange.'" Couldn't one say the same of 60's psychonaut Timothy Leary, the Harvard scientist who explored the far reaches of experience with psychotropic drugs in search of insight? Cole laughed. "But my exceedingly strange realm is the universe," she said. "It's the real stuff. That's what's so amazing about it. The universe itself is much more amazing than anything Timothy Leary ever saw. I don't care what he was on."

And personally, I think the money shot in the Times piece was its title: "The Nutty Professor." Ahem.

Frozen Dinner

Last night PBS broadcast an episode of NOVA titled "Deadly Ascent." The NOVA crew climbed Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska with a team of researchers and mountaineers to figure out why our bodies break down at high altitudes and low temperatures.

The team carried lots of extra food in their packs, because a storm could pin them down for days. To make matters more volatile, the team included one Dr. Howard Donner. I could see it in their eyes: no one wanted to run out of munchies in the wilderness with a Donner.

Of course, their fears may have been unfounded. Last week a pair of archeologists revealed that they could find no evidence of cannibalism among the Donner Party. Using electron microscopes and DNA tests, they analyzed thousands of bone fragments at the Alder Creek campsite where the Donners spend 4 winter months in 1846-1847, but, alas, none of the bones belonged to people. The undramatic findings do not bode well for the archeologists' negotiations with CBS regarding the upcoming series CSI:Alder Creek.

Even without people eating people, the NOVA episode contains some level of adventure. But my favorite Denali account remains Art Davidson's autobiographical tale of the peak's first winter ascent. Even the book's title gives me the chills: Minus 148 Degrees. (That's with windchill, but still...)

[I feel somewhat odd categorizing a post about the Donner Party under "Travel" and "Food and Drink," but what's done is done.]