1.30.2001

The 15 Essential Elements of Quality Mobile Home Design
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1.29.2001

Jonathan Lethem in a McSweeney's-published conversation between him and Dave Eggers (about halfway down the page):

Okay, so I'm just suddenly hit with this insight, that the reason we're so upset is that we're trying to turn ourselves into beings of pure love and it isn't working perfectly, we're meeting resistance from without, sure — but also from within. I know that's a leap, but I want to try to get there. It's like this: the critical, energy-snuffing, sneering portions of our brains are these vibrant, throbbing potential selves. We feel them in there, ready to come out. We've even let them come out — you and I both — in negative reviews we now regret writing, and in casual moments of ungenerosity and weakness. And we've realized that everything good that's come out of us — every humane response, every generous, creative act, has involved some sort of end-run around these grinch-ly selves, these inner critics. We've learned to turn them off in order to let those corny but precious giving-and-receiving possibities of conversation and art and sex wash in and out of us.

This may explain why I feel so guilty about the e-mail I sent, see below.

The conversation started here, then here.
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1.28.2001

I read a lot of letters pages, Feed Loop, discussion group kinds of things. I suppose I like them because they seem to create an almost instant community. I suppose that I like two things: the instant community and the fact that the in-depth information required to understand these discussions makes you feel like an instant expert after you’ve read the discussion thread.

There’s one thing about these pages that I really do not like: when people are assholes. Now, I know there are assholes in the world. I’m not so naïve as to think everyone will always be on his or her best behavior. I just hate running into these people.

After spending a couple of afternoons being pissed off at the treatment a couple people had received on a specific letters page, I decided to take matters into my own hands. One particular person (whom I thought had been a little less than nice) had left his e-mail address and I decided I’d write back with the express intention of pissing him off. It would be, at best, a small moral victory, a minor inconvenience.

I decided I'd write this person a letter refuting his argument while being as condescending as possible AND making no sense whatsoever. My idea here was that nobody likes condescension from an idiot; this was almost certain to make the correspondent even angrier.

The letters page was a famous media news site letters page and the conversation thread was concerning the Rodney Rothman “My Fake Job” blowup from a couple of weeks ago (if you’re not familiar with the story, I’ll give a recap. Rothman wrote an article in The New Yorker where he claimed that he’d managed to convince a dot-com that he was working there. He found a desk, started having meetings with friends in conference rooms, got a massage, etc. It ultimately turned out that Rothman lied about a couple of things: he never received the massage and his mother had worked at the company.)

So I sent off the following e-mail:

Dear X,

The Rothman piece WAS better than you seem to think. In the [well-known]
letters page, there was a lot of talk about McSweeneyan irony and the like,
and it seemed to stop just short of making an important point. If you read
the piece over again, you will see that Rothman was free and loose with the
facts for a reason: the piece is at once a critique of an internet company
and a jab at the New Yorker.

How else can you describe the factual inconsistencies - they add, as
everyone has been so quick to point out, very little to the story. People
seem to be forgetting that Rothman was the head writer at the David
Letterman show, the very epicenter of the chic "attack journalistic
integrity" movement. I'm sure Rothman is at home laughing about all of
this.

And shame on you for the ad hominem attack on Q [person I thought
he was being mean to].

Sincerely,

My Pseudonym (a female sounding name)

The response I received was swift. A couple of hours later, I got the following e-mail back:

Dear Female-Sounding Pseudonym,

Nobody "forgot" that Rothman used to write for
Letterman - and since you're big on story points
- that is NOT the point. I don't give a flying
shit if he used to write for the Pope. He wrote
a story that he purported to be TRUE. It was
NOT. That's it. End of discussion. I don't
know what piece of crap you write for, report for
or edit for but I hope they find out fast that
you also don't care whether a story is completely
factual.

And to say that because it was a "jab" at the
New Yorker he's allowed leeway with the truth...
well isn't that the song of the truly desperate
and untalented. Whether or not he was critiquing
the Internet, the New Yorker or the Brooklyn
Bridge, whether or not the piece is sarcastic,
straight, funny or sad, if you are writing a true
story it must be factually true. That's why the
New Yorker has it's made-up stories run with a
little word called "Fiction". Do you understand
now?

And aren't you just as impressed as hell with
your little college girl slight: "ad hominem
attack on Q". How do you figure? I
said the SF Chronicle listed his magazine as a
likely casualty of the e-mag shakeout? That is
absolutely accurate. I said any editor with a
modicom of integrity would think twice about
hiring someone who thinks it's OK to make up
parts of a story to make it more interesting.
That is also true. How does that constitute a
prejudiced, unqualified attack? I stated the
facts, not my opinions. I worked in journalism a
long time from TV to magazines and the thing that
makes the media look like assholes are the guys
who haven't got enough talent to report decently
without resorting to lies and exaggeration. Your
incredibly concise, detailed and thoughtful
letter so full of examples of where I made MY
factual errors simply offers Rothman more
excuses.

And what the hell do you mean "why else would he
put in the factual inconsistencies since they add
little to the story?" Do you mean you actually
believe he put them in as a clue??? Since they
didn't add anything to the story, we were
supposed to figure out they were put in there to
give us a hint he was lying?? He put them in
there because HE THOUGHT IT WOULD MAKE THE STORY
FUNNY. Shockingly, bad writers hardly ever know
they are bad. And while he may be sitting at
home laughing his ass off now, the general public
reading his piece are not (yawn, yawn). Now why
don't you go work on some brilliant piece of
fiction - like how George Bush is the real
President - and leave me alone.

X

The odd part about this exchange is this: I feel really bad about it. Specifically, I feel bad that I got yelled at (even though this was my intention).
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1.27.2001

There's an article in this month's Atlantic Monthly (the first in the new, redesigned era) on acquiring nobility by buying a title. The author found that he could buy the title "Marquis of Removille" for about $115,000. He eventually decided against it.

If you're interested in getting a title yourself, there's a company that'll track one down for you.
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1.26.2001

There used to be a lot of talk about how the web was going to change the publishing world, that we were going to move away from a print model. It seems, though, that this conversation was ignoring one thing: people really like to read stuff in print. Inside put out a print magazine, for heaven's sake. Salon may still be alive, but they're shedding staff like crazy and they still don't have a sustainable business plan. What do you think are the chances that they announce plans for a print magazine by the middle of the year? Heck, the content is great, and it already exists...
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There's an interesting myth regarding Nero, 1st century AD Roman emperor (he ruled from 54-68). When Nero died, there was apparently a rumor that circulated saying that he was going to come back from the dead at the head of a Parthian army (Parthia is, geographically speaking, about where modern-day Turkey is). What makes this especially weird is that it was both a religious myth (cf. Revelation -- 666 number of the beast, etc.; Sibylline Oracles) and a secular myth (cf. Suetonius, 2nd century Roman "historian"). It's difficult now to know the extent to which people believed this, but it certainly must have had some cultural currency to be so widely reported.

If you're interested, here's a couple of links about this I found. Note there's nothing great, apparently, about this on the internet. Here and here.

Do people expect Nixon to come back from the dead? or Stalin? or Pol Pot?
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1.25.2001

When I was on vacation -- driving to Montana -- I stayed in a lot of hotel rooms. I'm not a big fan of hotel rooms. I mostly don't like trying to sleep in foreign beds. What I'm really saying is that I'm a creature of habit. I like getting to see first run movies while I'm falling asleep, but that's the only real appeal (while we were on the trip we saw: "Dr. T and the Women," which was awful; "Nurse Betty," which, I think, would have been pretty good if I'd been able to keep my eyes open -- followed a 13-hour driving day; "Almost Famous," which is just so unbearably good; and "Wonder Boys," which I'd already seen three times, but had just gotten through reading the book...)

If you're looking for an interesting way to spend an afternoon, check out Wonder Boys' author Michael Chabon's site. I especially like his essay about his father and baseball cards.

While I was in one of the hotel rooms, I apparently scrawled something on the little note pad next to the bed. Let me rephrase that, I know I wrote something on the note pad, I just don't remember doing it. When I woke up, I read the note I'd left to myself and it read: "Do you find yourself pushing people away, but only because it takes to much energy to slap them?" That can't be good.
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This is pretty funny. Anyone asking a bunch of teenage girls (and, probably, thirty-something, hirsute men) in a Britney Spears chat room if they "want to talk about George W. Bush" is OK by me.
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1.23.2001

I bought the lomo action camera. It consists of four different lenses that have a rotating wheel inside acting as a shutter. There's a hole in the wheel, so it opens each lens separately (exposing all four areas of the film in about a second). I thought it would be interesting, but the pictures it takes suck. It looks like a crappy little camera, and guess what! It's a crappy little camera. It's a good idea, though.
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1.12.2001

I think this is the funniest thing on the mcsweeney's website.
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1.11.2001

I do love this site. I especially like Thomas Beller's story of how he lost his car. It's called "Manhattan Ate My Car."
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I'm starting to feel sick. Not good. I'm leaving in a day and a half for a road-trip to Bozeman, Montana to help a friend move. She is not going to be happy if I'm all influenza-ey. Seven days of germ warfare.

Everyone is asking me if I ski. I don't, but apparently you're some kind of an idiot if you're driving to Bozeman, Montana in the winter and you don't ski.
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I went to a This American Life taping in early December - "Birthdays, Anniversaries and Milestones" - and it was great. Sarah Vowell read about her family visiting her for Thanksgiving; David Rakoff had a story in three parts about working in the belly of the publishing beast; Ian Brown had a story about his kid's birthday party. The Sarah Vowell piece was really funny, the others were merely so-so. I was out of town the weekend it aired, so I just listened to it and there's no mention of the fact that David Rakoff and Ian Brown were even there. I think this is a little odd. I wonder if they re-tooled after our show -- so the New York, Chicago and LA show were different.
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1.10.2001

A book my grandfather wrote, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, is apparently mentioned in Martin Gardner's (of Scientific American fame) new book. Here's the link.

The paragraph in question: "The book [Anderson’s The Legend of the Wandering Jew] may tell you more than you care to know about this sad attempt of Christians to avoid admitting that the Galilean carpenter turned preacher did indeed believe he would soon return to earth in glory, but was mistaken."

Weird. What are the odds of running across something like that? The book's been out-of-print for years.

I did a google search for my grandfather's name and that book and came up with a lot of odd stuff: a wandering jew faq page, an amazon.de german search error page, etc. How many questions have you been frequently asking about the legend of the wandering jew?
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This is why I don't live in Texas.
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mark@markand.com
aim: mdanderson45