The moral of the story

Last night as we were falling asleep, I asked Rob to tell me a story. Daylight saving time is screwing with my head, so I wasn’t tired enough to fall right asleep. I was thinking it might be something about his day or maybe a time when he was little and he lit something on fire, I don’t know. He began “Once upon a time there was an attorney general…”

So yeah, everyone here is talking about Eliot Spitzer. And people aren’t saying the same things: I heard one publisher in my office yesterday yelling into the phone “Prostitution is NOT corruption!” He seemed to think everyone was making too big a deal out of this. I think that’s the attitude of someone who doesn’t expect much from our politicians and isn’t surprised by situations like this. Other people are shocked, horrified, amused, or sympathetic (but mostly just towards Spitzer’s wife and three daughters.)

It’s not that I’m surprised that yet another politician has landed in the center of a controversy. But I don’t think people are making too big a deal out of it when they say that Spitzer’s a hypocrite who has in the past taken the moral high ground when it comes to his peers, and is now looking pretty foolish. It would be preferable to have leaders we can respect, and who believe that they are not above the law.

I imagine that he will resign over this, though no decision has been made. This would give New York its first Black governor (and the third in our country since Reconstruction), David Paterson. So for now we can just wait and see what the end of this story is. In Rob’s version, he just sort of trailed off, mumbling something about seven high-end prostitute dwarves.

Vatican Adds Sins

In a clear attempt to be relevant in the 21st century, the Vatican has added seven more sins to their original deadly list. It’s great that there are all sorts of new ways that you can find yourself burning in hell. Here they are:

Abortion
Pedophelia
Being excessively wealthy
Carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments
Participating in genetic manipulation
Ruining the environment
Doing or dealing drugs

No word yet on whether Brad Pitt will be back for the sequel to Se7en, which is reportedly being called You Know What You Did Last Summer.

A financial update

My money is back in my checking account after the fraud fiasco! It seems my credit is fine, as well. Citibank, aside from tormenting me when I was sick, actually handled this very well.

Rules is Rules

Although it looks like the DNC will hold to their rejection of the initial Michigan and Florida primary votes, I have to say it’s disappointing that Hillary Clinton is trying to get those votes to count. Not surprising, perhaps, but…I think the technical term I’m looking for is “lame.”

Obviously, she would not be doing this if she hadn’t won the primaries and it’s especially unfair in Michigan considering her name was the only one on the ballot. I understand the race is tight and both sides are doing what they feel they must. But it’s really beneath her and the whole convention to go back on rules that everyone agreed to at the beginning of the process.

Republican strategists are positively giddy about the state of affairs at the DNC. All they need to do now is sit back and watch as Clinton and Obama turn up the heat on each other, doing their work for them.

Perhaps a nice poncho won't let me down

Our apartment is the place where umbrellas go to die. I swear this is true, though I can't figure out why. We buy umbrellas all the time. Yet whenever I go into the closet to grab one, I inevitably come out with something that looks like Edward Scissorhands was playing with it all night.

So this morning, I was pleased to find that the only problem with the one (how did we end up with ONE?) umbrella we had was that its handle wouldn't go all the way in. It hadn't started raining yet, so I walked to work with it stuffed into my bag, and it was a fairly effective weapon, poking out and slamming into people on the sidewalk. I apologized and tried to protect everyone from it, which made me look like I was trying to smuggle a metal stick across town.

In the afternoon, it rained. So walking back from grabbing lunch, I had to open the umbrella. Huge mistake. I got back to the office and the stupid thing wouldn't close. I stood outside the revolving doors, knowing I would never get through them, and tried to jam it closed. I pushed it into a stone wall. Nothing. I looked at the rather disheveled man next to me and explained "It's broken." He didn't care. Then I tried to manually pull each tiny umbrella wire towards the others, willing them to close. No. I gauged my odds of getting through the door with it and not killing or embarrassing myself. Not good. I tried reasoning with the umbrella while I pulled at its wiry tentacles. This went on for at least 5 minutes until I finally walked down the street and placed it into a garbage can. Of course it filled the entire can and made the whole thing look like a mushroom, blocking anyone else from being able to put trash into it. I felt bad and I walked back down the street in the rain, not without profanity.

I'm not saying it's the greatest story ever, but I believe it proves my point.

Probably not loving the consequences

I just read in the New York Times that yet another memoir has turned out to be a fake. A 33-year-old woman from a good neighborhood in LA pitched a story to publishing houses about her upbringing as a half-White, half-Native American gang-banger in South Central LA. After reading an interview about the book (titled Love and Consequences), the author's sister called the publisher to inform them that their off-the-streets star was all-White and all full of crap.

I can't believe it took them that long to realize this story wasn't true. After all the steps publishers took to protect themselves after James Frey's lies blew up in his face, you would think they could take the time to do the minimal research and find out where this woman came from.

It's fascinating how many people a) want to write memoirs and b) think their lives are actually interesting enough to merit a read by others. Memoir is one of the fastest growing categories in publishing and it has a lot to do with people believing that true-life dramas are better than anything a novelist could create, because after all, they really happened. Except when they didn't.

Would it be as satisfying to read a book like The Glass Castle if it was a novel? I mean, anybody could make that stuff up, right? If Eat, Pray, Love were a novel, the way Liz Gilbert's life falls so meaningfully into place after such a traumatic beginning would just seem like an author's gimmick to achieve the happy ending.

But if your life simply isn't interesting enough to write a mesmerizing and moving memoir, do the reading public and your publisher a favor. Pitch them fiction. It may not sell as well as nonfiction, but at least you can save yourself the embarrassment of being added to the list of authors who faked their own lives.

Learning every day

Rob was flipping channels on TV tonight and came across The Wild Bunch, an old western from 1969. We were only watching for about 30 seconds when there was a shoot-out scene in a bedroom, involving a topless woman.

Me: Whoa. Boobs.

Rob: What?

Me: Boobs. See? (I'm still sick, this is my excuse for talking like a 10-year-old boy)

Rob: So?

Me: I'm just surprised. It's an old movie.

Rob: They had boobs back then, too.