Monday, April 9, 2012

BECOMING RICHER AND DEEPER



So, I'm doing that thing again where I go to the Midwest and gawp at things for a bit. It's a bit like academic orienteering, or, well, Challenge Anneka. I'm here to dig through the archives of publishers Calder and Boyars, and, you know, seek inner peace in near-total monastic isolation, probably/most likely polish off the 70,000 remaining words of my PhD thesis, concoct half-baked cultural generalisations, complain about the food and the rest. Items in my "America is So Weird" dossier thus far include Deepak Chopra on the Fox News breakfast programme, advising viewers that the best defence against the global financial crisis is to ask oneself: "What makes me a unique human being?". Yesterday morning I was roused gently from my slumber by a television infomercial for the Brazilian Butt Lift fitness DVD, comprising the "Bum Bum" and the special bonus disc of the "Bum Bum Rapido". You can imagine the effect the tagline Higher! Tighter! Rounder! Perkier! had on my delicate hypnagogic state.

Spent Easter Sunday like a crochety toddler in flip flops, chewing my editor's red pen and squirming in my seat. Making a yah-boo-sucks face at Microsoft Word, letting the Chicago Manual of Style "have a rest" in the microwave (I'm a really excellent editor, though. Honestly. Employ me!). Wondering, idly, will this ever end-slash-will this ever start. And, as usual, now it's past eleven and I'm macro-photographing my extremely picturesque (if, like me, you're an incorrigible perv for a well-lit staircase) towel rail and thinking, yes, I could probably-definitely re-read the entire oeuvre of Jim Crace before bed. More as it comes in...

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