my tragic right hip

He’s number 20 out of 20 — but come on — that’s still totally awesome.

So here’s a list of the things I’ve been doing this week. It’s so not exciting:

1. Attending a conference for work. It was three days long and even though you don’t do anything, you literally just sit there hearing about all the fun stuff that’s coming down the pipes, you are brain dead and exhausted at the end of it.

2. Going to school, watching television (hello Jack Bauer), listening to Metro Morning, going to work, eating dinner and sleeping.

3. Oh, and I barfed, again. Also not fun.

4. Reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and loving every single word.

5. Discovering that it’s actually easier on me to walk from Dundas down to King Street vs. trying to navigate the stairs of the subway station. That’s how pathetic I am at the moment from the disease. Talk about a weakened state.

6. Trying not to take too much Gravol but then giving in because it’s better to be sleepy that to be throwing up. Can I get a witness?

7. Missing my friends because I couldn’t really carry on any email conversations while I’m sitting in a conference.

8. Wanting to sleep like Rip Van Winkle because I’m so tired.

9. Waiting for a hug. Really from anyone.

10. Wishing I could stay home all the time and watch Ellen.

And that about sums me up this week? What’s up with y’all?

My RRHB was clearing out one of the rooms he’s going to demolish on the main floor of our house when I got in from brunch. One of the boxes he pulled out was from my old work, after they ‘let me go’ I wasn’t allowed to pack up my office—they just wanted me gone. I couldn’t look at the stuff before now, I guess, because the box has been sitting in our storage room for months.

A lot of it is garbage. A funny poem from McSweeney’s. A picture of the young beat generation writers, Kerouac, Burroughs. A funny newspaper clipping of Johnny Rotten holding a press pass with an awesome look on his face. Essentially, a pile of stuff that I used to personalize my office while I had one.

But in a copy of Girl With A Pearl Earring, I found a $50.00 bill. Now, that’s way above and beyond finding money in your pants or your winter coat. Usually, you’re lucky if you find $5.00 or $10.00. But $50.00? Man, that’s my spending money for the week. See, it paid for me to ignore the residual effects of being forced out of that job—I’m $50.00 richer than I was yesterday.

So, ever since the non-wedding, my stomach has been precious, to say the least. But today it finally went overboard. Not enough sleep combined with some yoghurt for breakfast equals a truly nasty trip to the bathroom where my imaginary friendship with James Frey seems more real than ever. You know when he’s talking about pieces of his stomach coming up, yeah. I’ve been there. It’s not a fun place to be.

Dear Stephen Harper:

With all your tax-cut bullsh*t and your faux ‘evolution’ (I think I just barfed a bit in my mouth, seriously), I have just one question for you. Will you be funding all of us liberal-minded, free-thinking, social-program supporting, non-neo-conservative thinking Canadians who will want to move if you, shudder, are elected to a majority government as the Globe and Mail is reporting?

Thanks,

ragdoll

There’s a great article in today’s Publisher’s Weekly about the whole controversy over James Frey’s memoir. I suppose it’s not shocking that the editorial team moved the book into nonfiction because they hoped it would sell better, anything and everything to get people to read is an honourable thing to do in my mind.

But the people who are crying because not every word is ‘true’, I might have to go all post-modern on their ass and ask them what does truth mean in today’s world? We can’t get a straight story from anyone; news is embellished for ratings; creative nonfiction vilified for turning out a solid narrative; actors are held up on pedestals usually reserved for well, writers, poets, statesmen/women and politicians; and truth becomes so utterly relevant to the person who is speaking it that, again, I don’t see what the big deal is.

With the publication of the creepily in-depth investigative journalism of The Smoking Gun, whose mug shot gallery remains one of the all-time greats in terms of internet pages, James Frey must be shaking in his sober boots about now.

And as I jump onto the blogosphere bandwagon for just a moment, keep in mind that I have read and enjoyed A Million Little Pieces. On the whole, I found the whole premise of The Smoking Gun’s article to be slightly surreal, but I guess when you reach the kind of Oprahfied success of Frey, you’re sort of inviting the detractors, especially if you written the best-selling nonfiction book of, like, all time, the Bible excluded of course.

But what I don’t understand is why people care so much, and I’m finding so many parallels with what’s going on right now in Canadian politics, where smear campaigns, name calling and corrupt finger-pointing seems to take away from the real issue at hand. Did Frey write a great book? Yes, he did. Did Frey take liberties with some of the events for the sake of the narrative? I’m sure he did. What does that man in terms of it being classified ‘nonfiction’? Well, not much considering there’s license with the classification anyway.

So what if he embellished here and there? So what if he made some of the events more intense than they were — it doesn’t make the book any less powerful to know that the author may have changed a few of the details. It’s an accepted fact that it’s hard to write a memoir. That it’s almost impossible to remember exactly what happened to an extent that your life will still make for good reading. In the end, Frey seems to be on the end of a long line of people wanting to attack him simply because of his success.

A Million Little Pieces is a really good book. It’s got a great message and its author seems genuine in his quest to be a better person, to live a good life, so what if memoir is more fiction than non, does it make it any less persuasive or any less of a read? I don’t think that it does.

Funny how Frey’s own advice will come back to haunt him. I’m guessing that the simple idea of “Holding on” might be coming in handy right about now.

Nick Hornby’s delicious novel is meant to be devoured in one sitting like a Toblerone bar. Out of the two books I’ve read so far this year, it’s definitely the best, but that’s not saying much as the comparison novel is The Da Vinci Code.

On New Year’s Eve, four people, as disparate as four people could honestly be, end up atop of Toppers’ House, and infamous high rise where Londoners go to kill themselves. As luck would have it, the four sort of talk each other down, which begins and odd and strangely unique friendship between them.

The sadness of each of their lives remains entirely empathetic; it doesn’t make the move into parody, but remains real and honest and good. The characters aren’t necessarily likeable, but I’ve learned from Hustle & Flow that you can even sympathize with a pimp, if he’s human enough.

All in all it’s a book I truly couldn’t put down. I read in one giant gulp, half awaiting the brain freeze I was sure was to follow. It never came. And I feel oddly satisfied, in a strange Sunday kind of way.

Now, I know I can’t compare my semi-charmed life to that of the main character in Hustle & Flow, but that movie has been in my head all night. Especially when DJay says, “I’m squeezing a dollar out of a dime when I ain’t even got a penny.”

It’s like a metaphor man, one that ain’t even all mixed up, but so pure that I could rest my head on it and dream big, because everyone has got to have a dream.

How ironic is it that I’m reading this article about newspapers surviving in their long forms online? Just when the author touts the success of Gutenberg and dead trees. Heh.