The Little Words Mean the Most

Crit surfing

"Crit surfing" is a sport that writers and other creative types engage in. It does not build any muscles (unless a clenched neck is a desirable physical attribute). It builds maneuvering ability, though, and a taste for intellectual dominance.

I'm working with a college. They need a case written for their $150-or-so million campaign.

The college president more or less approved the case I wrote (with edits) and is hanging semi-tough. The academic who feels most ignored by the process is complaining. The development officer who rooted for me as some kind of magical national expert is embarrassed. I responsed to her extended apology in an email:

Yet more affirmation. For you. Great job; you're handling the politics like Cirque du Soleil.

This is going exactly as I'd hoped and planned, [insert name here]. Not in the puppet-master sense. In the cattle-drover sense.

Academic environments are predictable, as are their behaviors; in the same way that dating is predictable, kindergartens are predictable, and cattle. (I think that about covers the emotional range.)

We have run out of...

...space inside for art. Now we're using the outside clapboards. The states are baby rattles. The stripes are submachine guns, attack helicopters, grenades, and RPGs. You want to survive and maybe even win, a book on Korean War combat tells me, you want A LOT of grenades, you want A LOT of ammunition for those submachine guns, you want helicopter gunships overhead, and you want on your shoulder RPGs, the bazooka of the post-MTV battlefield.

 

And luv my office

Micro-novels

I'd love to be the kind of disciplined person who could write one of these every day, year round. But I'm not. I wrote three instead.

Simone's solution

Simone was always a books VERSUS exercise girl up 'til last year, when she became an exercise fiend (and now can wear the same embroidered jeans she flaunted in college). Her solution? Books AND exercise. Here, doing leg pulls on the Bowflex, absorbed in a romance hardcover.

When globalization becomes personal

I had four new sign-ups this morning for my how-to e-newsletter: one from New Delhi, one from London, one from Australia, and one from British Columbia. Welcome aboard, from eight ball in the corner pocket: Rhode Island, Youessay.

R u 1 of these parents?

This is the real answering message at a very frustrated public school Down Under. The students, you should note, approved this message. It will play when you click. Please enjoy. Do I know where it originated? No; sorry. Somebody sent it; don't recall who exactly, though I have my suspicions.