Street Harassment Happens to Everyone [Bossypants]

Tina Fey in Bossypants, page 15:

When I was writing the movie Mean Girls - which hopefully is playing on TBS right now! - I went to a workshop by  Rosalind Wiseman as part of my research. Rosalind wrote the nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes that Mean Girls was based on, and she conducted a lot of self-esteem and bullying workshops  with women and girls around the country. She did this particular exercise in a hotel ballroom in Washington, DC, with about two hundred grown women, asking them to write down the moment when they first "knew they were a woman." Meaning, "When did you first feel like a grown woman and not a little girl?" We wrote down our answers and shared them, first in pairs, then in larger groups. The group of women was racially and economically diverse, but the answers had a very similar theme. Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. "I was walking home from ballet and a guy in a car yelled, 'Lick me!'" "I was babysitting my younger cousins when a guy drove by and yelled, 'Nice ass.'" There were pretty much zero examples like "I first knew I was a woman when my mother and father took me out to dinner to celebrate my success on the debate team." It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know when they've crossed into puberty? If so, it's working.

This is it, America. I wonder when men first know they are men. Is it the moment that they feel a compulsion to lean out the window of a car, and yell out to a woman, "Suck my dick!" and by the time they realize they had that compulsion, they've already finished yelling it?

And yes, yes, Tina Fey also has a street harassment story. What woman doesn't?

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Okkervil River cd cover in Planet Records at Harvard Square

Sorry It Took Me So Long To Get You A Copy Of My Birth Certificate

From DailyKos:

Red Line Grafitti Project [Everyday Art]

The Red Line D.C. Project - Trailer from citylovedc on Vimeo.

From DC Centric. My favorite grafitti along the red line is when you are approaching the Silver Spring Station, there is a tiny bubble that reads, "Cool like the other side of the pillow."

The documentarian is interested in who Ju is, but lately I've wanted to know what he deal with 'Crotch Rot USA' is.

13 Little Blue Envelopes [Headless midriffs]

So I got the notice from Bookshelves of Doom this morning that the e-reader version 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson was available for free. (No telling how long it will continue to be free! Jump on it now!)

I've been meaning to read this book and have been putting it off for ages. I think it had something to do with the cover:

I know, I know. You can never judge a book by its cover, but headless midriffs just don't appeal to me. Also, its similarity in title to Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher also really bothered me. I really didn't like Thirteen Reasons Why and didn't really want to read another frustrating book. So I'm really glad I turned out to be wrong.

I really, really enjoyed it. Its the second book that I've read on the iPad. Its so super easy to read everything on the iPad, really, and I finished the book in one sitting. I definitely recommend it.

Its a little sly that this particular book is available for free right now. The Last Little Blue Envelope (which is the sequel) comes out April 26th. I'm pretty excited to read the sequel now, whereas it probably would have been months/years before I picked up either book if it hadn't been available for free.Whoever had the idea of offering the first one for free weeks before the release of the sequel was a genius.

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Meeting Reading and Book Goals [150 Book Challenge]

So I'm reading 150 books this year. I've been doing pretty well so far, reading an average of 13 books per month so far.

Obviously, having a a huge goal like this is daunting. And reading goals are pretty common for people. (See Goodreads group) Having a plan can work wonders. Like in my original blog post, I had broken down how many books in a month I needed to read (12.5) or in how many days I need to finish a book (approximately 2.4).

Still, sometimes I get tripped up. Last year, it took me three weeks to read Stephen King's IT. I had just gotten into a rut, never wanting to pick it up on the way to work....instead vegging out to the iPod.

1. Be prepared to mess up


I messed up with IT. I really enjoyed it, but got tripped up because it was so long. So I just wouldn't make any progress on it, because I was so frustrated with never making progress on it.

Yeah, I know how that sounds, but it happens in other areas too. On a diet? Give up because you blew it? Or, in the habit of exercising a certain amount, and give up when you get sick and can't go, or get busy and can't go, or get lazy and can't go?

It happens. Forgive yourself and move on.

But how can you prevent stuff like that from happening?

2. Set an easy goal to accomplish


I was having trouble earlier this year with George R. R. Martin's books. They are so long, and I was getting close to be stuck just like I had been stuck on IT. During A Storm of Swords, I became resolved: read at least 100 pages a day.

Will that make me finish the book in 2.4 days? No, because the book was about 1000 pages long. But it made sure that I kept reading, kept at it. Of course, that can be different for everyone. Finish three chapters, finish at least twenty pages...et cetera. Its like having a saving goal: I will try to save X amount over the course of a year, but in order to achieve that, I need to save $2 a day, or $10 a week.

It might not seem like a lot at first, but it all builds up.

3. Define your goal


I want to read 150 books this year. But what does that mean? Can I just go to the local library, read 150 books for 8 year olds, and be done with it?

Well, no. I'm not trying to dupe myself: I mean 150 books that I would read normally in a year. This means a mix of sci fi, fiction and literature, YA novels, and fantasy. I don't want to waste a year just reading easy books: I want to read like I normally would. I've also done a pretty good job this year incorporating non-fiction; I've read four so far this year and last year I only read six total.

I'm also incorporating books that I re-read, but I don't want my re-read books to reach higher than 10% of the total books I've read. Thus far, the books I have re-read account for 7.5% of the total books read.

4. Don't be afraid to give up on a book


Right now, I have a book about settler's first impressions of Illinois in my To Be Read stack. I probably won't read more than a little bit of it. I'll never want to read all of it, and I don't want to spend time forcing myself to do something I don't want to. If I don't like reading it, I won't want to read it, and I'll stall out on my goals. Giving up a book is no big deal.

Sometimes, you just aren't in the mood for a particular book. I read the first few pages of Life of Pi and set it right back down.

A few year later, I picked it up and read it in one sitting.



Want to take a look at the book spreadsheet? Updated every time I finish a book.

Stephen Glass on This American Life [Delivery]

I've been listening to This American Life archives online, each episode, in order of when they aired. Today, I came across the episode "Delivery," tales about delivery people in five acts.

I was enjoying the episode while doing some data entry when the fifth act, "Faith Shattered" came on. Its about a guy who is simultaneously offended by two companies while trying to get a laptop computer delivered to him. Toward the end of the story, when the guy telling the story and Ira Glass are bantering, I realize....the guy telling the story? He's Stephen Glass. Of Shattered Glass fame. Of exaggerating stories for The New Republic fame.

Chuck Lane told 60 Minutes this about Stephen Glass:

“If it was sunny outside and Steve and I were both standing outside in the sun and Steve came to me and said, ‘It's a sunny day,’ I would immediately go check with two other people to make sure it was a sunny day,” says Lane.

This, of course, casts the entire This American Life story into doubt. How much of it is true? How much is exaggerated? The story is presented much like this:

1. Stephen Glass is a big believer in the free market. He claimed to have advocated the postal service privatized because of how great Fed Ex was prior to the incidents that follow.
2. He purchased a Gateway computer and it was late being delivered. He called several times (I think he says 10 times), checking on the status of the shipment.
3. On one such call, the customer service rep used a Jewish slur to refer to him as she was hanging up on him. He immediately faxed a complaint to their corporate office.
4. A higher up in the company eventually apologizes, and offers to donate 10 computers to the Anti-Defamation League. Stephen Glass declines: he hates the Anti-Defamation League because he claims to love the first amendment and free speech rights so much.
5. The computer was delivered to his parents home in Chicago. He's in DC at the time, and has it sent Federal Express.
6. The package is lost or stolen.
7. Stephen Glass claims that an employee of Fed Ex, named Edward Maxwell, tells him that it has been stolen and that he should have sent the computer UPS instead.
8. Edward Maxwell is fired and later goes to work at UPS.
9. Eventually, Stephen Glass gets a refund. They Fed Ex a check to him overnight. He claims that he asked them to UPS it instead.

I did some googling, but there's nothing around the internet about this. Many of Stephen Glass's previous subjects have countered the articles written about them, but googling Stephen Glass with the companies mentioned brings no results. Stephen Glass plus the Anti-Defamation League has no real results. There's no fact check on the This American Life website. Edward Maxwell plus UPS doesn't come up with anything. 

The episode is from before Stephen Glass was outed as an exaggerator, liar, and fantastical storyteller. It looks as though all three of his This American Life appearances were prior to his downfall. 

The question remains: how much of this story can be verified? Did Gateway Computers really offer to donate ten computers to the Anti-Defamation League? Did a man named Edward Maxwell get fired from Fed Ex because he told the truth (that packages with computers are often stolen at Fed Ex) and get a job at UPS? Does Stephen Glass really believe in the free market or free speech?

Or is this just the story of being lost in customer service hell, but because everyone has a customer service hell story Stephen Glass exaggerated it until it was a story worthy of This American Life?

[Just a small note: I love This American Life and don't mean them any harm. I especially love the type of journalism they've been doing, especially the investigation into a Drug Court in Georgia. I donated to them this year.]

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