But why is the rum gone?
Apocalyptic story of the day: I have a cubicle. Also, the Hellmouth extorted $500 from me.
As some of you may know, I'm doing an internship at one of the Toronto weeklies. Rest assured, I haven't gone hardcore... although I must be getting good at this pretending-to-be-a-journalist thing if a magazine actually hired me. Hahaha. I thought my interview was disastrous, but my boss tapped my cover letter and said, "You seem very sprightly." Huh? What? This is worse than that time I was "personable." It's like... no. I'm not. Really.
Anyway, I share my little patch of office real estate with another intern, but we're not in on the same days, and no, she's not a cute boy with whom I can exchange whimsical Post-It notes by leaving them stuck to the computer screen. My next-door neighbour is also an intern, but she's been there for like six months already, and she, too, is not a cute boy. Aside from that disappointment, I'm terrified that everyone just expects me to know what to do. I don't even know how to turn on a Mac, okay? lol. So please, just tell me what to do. I don't have any story pitches. I have no news sense. Have mercy.
They don't actually trust me to write stories yet; thus far, it's all phone calls and info fetching and interview transcriptions. (I had to call a lawyer for a statement of claim. That made me queasy.) The senior editor was all like, "Don't worry. It all takes time." Only she said "timmmmmmeee" with a meditative ommm at the end. It did not make me feel better.
Here's a feature about cubicles, from Fortune.
Some guy wrote in to Neil Gaiman's blog and was all like, "Help! I'm 23 and a crap writer!" And Neil's response was so inspiring. He said, "That was pretty much how I felt when I was 22-23, too. ...I wanted to be a writer more than most people want to breathe, but I didn't have a lot to say and I knew that I wasn't very good yet - and also that I had ideas that were better than I was. What I did was work as a journalist. ...It forced me to get better than I was, very fast." He sure knows what to say to warm the heart of a disillusioned J-Skool girl. What I need right now is a time machine, so I can go back and lay claim to the 23-year-old Neil, before he had a wife and kids. Where are the modern-day Neils? I WANT ONE, DAMMIT.
So let me tell you about my financial misfortunes. I don't remember talking about grades when they were released last month, but the thing is, I clearly remember being able to check my grades. (Due to my inability to care about essays and shit, I dropped 0.13 from last semester, but my cumulative GPA went down only 0.03. I actually scraped an A- in Critical Issues, fyi.) Now all of a sudden there's a hold on my record. I go to school to inquire why I owe the Hellmouth a debt of almost $500 that's festering and breeding interest. We all pay our tithes to hell, but seriously, WHAT THE FUCK. Apparently, the tuition I paid way back in the first week of September did not cover all of my winter term courses. Is it you, Critical Issues in Journalism? Am I gonna have to cut a bitch?
After that, feeling painfully broke, I decided to call Dimple in her lonely white lab, and it was like we were spiritually attuned because she was literally 10 feet away from me. Haha, my fortunes swung back from their ebb, and when I got home I found out that I'd won free books from this contest I'd entered. (Caitlin Sweet books, Dimple.)
On books: I really liked Katrina Onstad's How Happy To Be. Some critics called it depressing and found it hard to sympathize with Maxime, but of course I totally identified with her. Which is probably not a good thing, because talk about a window into a very depressing future. Essentially, it's chick lit, but I could just picture myself as Maxime, a burned-out journalist who's cynical from pop culture saturation and lonely from lack of human connection. At some points her flashbacks did get too heavy, though, and when she meets that tragic lady on the bus it was just like, "Enough woe already!" And the whole thing with the baby was just too much drama and, as a plot device to get Maxime to achieve self-actualization or whatever, lazy. But I am glad that she got together with Theo. He was sweet. Although I don't think I could date a physicist.
There were some great passages, like where Maxime wonders why she can read Us and yet not understand a single word of The Economist, when both are written in the same alphabet. And when she and the ex are in the park, and they just stand there wondering if they should hug and whether they'd ever see each other again: "He does it first, just bends a little, and I know where to go. I put my face in his neck to smell him. Through the frozen wool of his scarf, I do." Good stuff. I also really liked the scene where she interviews Ethan Hawke.
On Ethan Hawke: I wasn't sure whether I'd like Before Sunrise or spend the whole movie wishing Uma would show up to kick his ass. I didn't actually feel like I would've gotten off the train with Jesse until his reincarnation monologue, where he talks about how our souls are only a fraction of the original souls that existed in this world, because I have totally thought that before, and I like his theory: "You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking… I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?" And you know that scene in the CD store where Jesse and Celine never look at each other at the same time? I wonder how long it took to shoot that.
And finally, just thought I'd mention the Jack Sparrow posters all over the TTC. I WANT ME ONE OF THOSE TOO, DAMMIT. Also saw one with KK, looking lovely, but no Orlando. For some reason I don't really care about Orlando at this point. Haha. Oh, and Claire's Accessories is selling lots of PotC merchandise, including a wallet that says "I Love Jack." I do, I really do.
In the 1000th issue of Rolling Stone, they talk about cover stories and Johnny Depp is one of them. Here's an excerpt:
"For the story, Hedegaard [the writer] was supposed to meet Depp at the Dorchester Hotel in London. 'I'm standing around,' Hedegaard says. 'No Depp. Finally, his assistant swings in the door to tell me that Depp had heard that the Dorchester was crawling with paparazzi today and would I join him elsewhere? Fifteen minutes later, I walked into the bar at Claridge's, and there he was... looking infinitely relaxed, with his hand curved around a bottle of red wine. 'I took the liberty of ordering this for us,' he said."
I've forgotten how much I love Johnny Depp. Holy SHIT, I can't wait for Dead Man's Chest.
As some of you may know, I'm doing an internship at one of the Toronto weeklies. Rest assured, I haven't gone hardcore... although I must be getting good at this pretending-to-be-a-journalist thing if a magazine actually hired me. Hahaha. I thought my interview was disastrous, but my boss tapped my cover letter and said, "You seem very sprightly." Huh? What? This is worse than that time I was "personable." It's like... no. I'm not. Really.
Anyway, I share my little patch of office real estate with another intern, but we're not in on the same days, and no, she's not a cute boy with whom I can exchange whimsical Post-It notes by leaving them stuck to the computer screen. My next-door neighbour is also an intern, but she's been there for like six months already, and she, too, is not a cute boy. Aside from that disappointment, I'm terrified that everyone just expects me to know what to do. I don't even know how to turn on a Mac, okay? lol. So please, just tell me what to do. I don't have any story pitches. I have no news sense. Have mercy.
They don't actually trust me to write stories yet; thus far, it's all phone calls and info fetching and interview transcriptions. (I had to call a lawyer for a statement of claim. That made me queasy.) The senior editor was all like, "Don't worry. It all takes time." Only she said "timmmmmmeee" with a meditative ommm at the end. It did not make me feel better.
Here's a feature about cubicles, from Fortune.
Some guy wrote in to Neil Gaiman's blog and was all like, "Help! I'm 23 and a crap writer!" And Neil's response was so inspiring. He said, "That was pretty much how I felt when I was 22-23, too. ...I wanted to be a writer more than most people want to breathe, but I didn't have a lot to say and I knew that I wasn't very good yet - and also that I had ideas that were better than I was. What I did was work as a journalist. ...It forced me to get better than I was, very fast." He sure knows what to say to warm the heart of a disillusioned J-Skool girl. What I need right now is a time machine, so I can go back and lay claim to the 23-year-old Neil, before he had a wife and kids. Where are the modern-day Neils? I WANT ONE, DAMMIT.
So let me tell you about my financial misfortunes. I don't remember talking about grades when they were released last month, but the thing is, I clearly remember being able to check my grades. (Due to my inability to care about essays and shit, I dropped 0.13 from last semester, but my cumulative GPA went down only 0.03. I actually scraped an A- in Critical Issues, fyi.) Now all of a sudden there's a hold on my record. I go to school to inquire why I owe the Hellmouth a debt of almost $500 that's festering and breeding interest. We all pay our tithes to hell, but seriously, WHAT THE FUCK. Apparently, the tuition I paid way back in the first week of September did not cover all of my winter term courses. Is it you, Critical Issues in Journalism? Am I gonna have to cut a bitch?
After that, feeling painfully broke, I decided to call Dimple in her lonely white lab, and it was like we were spiritually attuned because she was literally 10 feet away from me. Haha, my fortunes swung back from their ebb, and when I got home I found out that I'd won free books from this contest I'd entered. (Caitlin Sweet books, Dimple.)
On books: I really liked Katrina Onstad's How Happy To Be. Some critics called it depressing and found it hard to sympathize with Maxime, but of course I totally identified with her. Which is probably not a good thing, because talk about a window into a very depressing future. Essentially, it's chick lit, but I could just picture myself as Maxime, a burned-out journalist who's cynical from pop culture saturation and lonely from lack of human connection. At some points her flashbacks did get too heavy, though, and when she meets that tragic lady on the bus it was just like, "Enough woe already!" And the whole thing with the baby was just too much drama and, as a plot device to get Maxime to achieve self-actualization or whatever, lazy. But I am glad that she got together with Theo. He was sweet. Although I don't think I could date a physicist.
There were some great passages, like where Maxime wonders why she can read Us and yet not understand a single word of The Economist, when both are written in the same alphabet. And when she and the ex are in the park, and they just stand there wondering if they should hug and whether they'd ever see each other again: "He does it first, just bends a little, and I know where to go. I put my face in his neck to smell him. Through the frozen wool of his scarf, I do." Good stuff. I also really liked the scene where she interviews Ethan Hawke.
On Ethan Hawke: I wasn't sure whether I'd like Before Sunrise or spend the whole movie wishing Uma would show up to kick his ass. I didn't actually feel like I would've gotten off the train with Jesse until his reincarnation monologue, where he talks about how our souls are only a fraction of the original souls that existed in this world, because I have totally thought that before, and I like his theory: "You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking… I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?" And you know that scene in the CD store where Jesse and Celine never look at each other at the same time? I wonder how long it took to shoot that.
And finally, just thought I'd mention the Jack Sparrow posters all over the TTC. I WANT ME ONE OF THOSE TOO, DAMMIT. Also saw one with KK, looking lovely, but no Orlando. For some reason I don't really care about Orlando at this point. Haha. Oh, and Claire's Accessories is selling lots of PotC merchandise, including a wallet that says "I Love Jack." I do, I really do.
In the 1000th issue of Rolling Stone, they talk about cover stories and Johnny Depp is one of them. Here's an excerpt:
"For the story, Hedegaard [the writer] was supposed to meet Depp at the Dorchester Hotel in London. 'I'm standing around,' Hedegaard says. 'No Depp. Finally, his assistant swings in the door to tell me that Depp had heard that the Dorchester was crawling with paparazzi today and would I join him elsewhere? Fifteen minutes later, I walked into the bar at Claridge's, and there he was... looking infinitely relaxed, with his hand curved around a bottle of red wine. 'I took the liberty of ordering this for us,' he said."
I've forgotten how much I love Johnny Depp. Holy SHIT, I can't wait for Dead Man's Chest.