Cleveland Bear Scare

An Open Letter to Writers of Non-fiction

Dear Non-fiction Writers, who I've sometimes secretly and sometimes openly mocked over the years as having an easier writing life than us Tortured Fiction Writers:

Writing an essay is more difficult than I thought. I'm working on a piece to send in to the Real Simple contest because, well, it's a $3,000 prize with no entry fee and I know I'm a better writer than this, which was last year's winner. The problem is the blurred line between an essay being moving and an essay being sentimental. The Real Simple editors clearly want moving. Well, they might even want sentimental, but as a general rule, I try not to go there. So what's a girl to do?

Good Non-fiction Writers, you've gained (at least my momentary) respect and admiration for your ability to clarify this blurry line. Alas, now my quest must continue.

Your new friend,

Rachel

Apparently I know nothing about Medieval literature. I just failed the entire category on Jeopardy. I've had people ask me what the most embarrassing gap in my reading is--could it be that I've found it? But is this actually embarrassing? Probably not. You know what is though? I just had to look up how to spell embarrassing. And it still doesn't look right. And my daily observation is drivel.

Roller Skating

Need a Lift? Watch Someone Roller Skating.

I just realized that watching people roller skate is really, really unreasonably funny. The circumstances don't matter too much, although if there's a mullet, sequined leotard, or synchronization with other skaters involved, all the better. And as I'm writing this, I'm beginning to suspect that roller blading would work just as well.

Go ahead, search it on youtube. Try to keep a straight face.

The Nostalgia-Induced Dresser Racket

Looks like my strike must end--for now, at least--since Tim contributed a whopping two posts in one day. Sending a big old 'atta boy your way.

Today I'm alarmed by the prices that people feel they're entitled to for their used dressers on craigslist. Off the top of my head, I bet I could build a dresser for, oh, fifty bucks. Would it be a beautiful antique dresser with curved legs and inlaid wood? Nah. But, then again, I could be sure it had never held a stranger's dirty clothes, drug stashes, adult toys, or other unmentionables. I'm not, in principle, opposed to a dresser that has held said unmentionables--but I'm also not going to pay three figures for it. Who knows what could be hiding in those particle board pores?

So, faithful craigslisters, I implore you: before you hit that "publish" button, rethink your asking price. Subtract whatever dollars you have added due to unreasonable nostalgic attachment. Then subtract five more as punishment for having that attachment--to drawers. Then publish so that I can laugh at your lack of necessary information/photography skills/grammar knowledge--and then purchase your dresser. Because I am not going to pay eighty dollars for a camouflage dresser--no matter how secretly impressed I am by the paint job.

Victory at 7/11

The cashier always wants to give me a receipt and a bag when I buy my Vitamin Water. She tries to force the receipt and the bag on me, holding my Vitamin Water over the receipt printer as the receipt prints, her index and middle fingers gathering up the receipt as it unrolls from the printer, her other hand ripping a bag out from under the counter. But today, when the receipt started printing, I strategically asked her if I could hold my Vitamin Water. She let me hold it. And then when she reached down for the bag, diverting her attention ever so briefly to ripping the bag out from under the counter, I walked outside. I made it outside before the receipt finished printing.

How the Courts Killed Baseball Cards

http://www.slate.com/id/2224864/pagenum/all/

Today's daily observation: no one is posting blogs except for me. I realize I probably have the most time on my hands of the three of us, but still.

Julie

Are you guys seriously on board with this? Pete, you're bored at work, right?

So apparently we're bloggers. On Friday night, I went to see Julie and Julia with two girlfriends, a movie about a 2002 New Yorker (Julie--who is also a failed writer--no surprise there) who decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it. I loved the movie. Until this morning, when I read its review in my Time magazine, which I'm easily and shamelessly swayed by each and every week.

The Time critic points out that, while charming and graced with Meryl Streep who has all but become Julia Child, the movie lacks balance between Julie's story and Julia's. The audience is supposed to see a parallel between the women coming into their own, finding themselves, creating a niche, or a string of other applicable cliches: a mid-life coming-of-age story, as Tim has (accurately) categorized the genre. Except that Julia is lovable and resilient and hardworking and easy to root for, while Julie is, well, less--of all of those. Mostly, it seems, she wants to be a writer so that she can be famous.

Earlier today, after the Time critic had so astutely pointed out to me this disparity in the characters, and after I'd had some time to consider, I began to fear that I am much more like Julie and much less like Julia. And then my boyfriend sent me an invitation to join his blog. And here I am. Am I really self-important enough to be a blogger? Guess so.