Blogelstein!

"None of us were real copywriters. I don’t think I got a single piece of copy accepted all the time I..."

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:18:31 +0000

“None of us were real copywriters. I don’t think I got a single piece of copy accepted all the time I worked there. We used to write copy all day, but then our boss would come down from meetings and put on his cardigan, which was a sign that he was going to be creative, and he would rewrite everything we’d done… we couldn’t imagine why we were not being fired.”

- Author Peter Carey on working in advertising. (via nextness)

"For me, finance is intimidating. When the chalkboard starts to look like Einstein’s chalkboard, I’m..."

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:08:38 +0000

“For me, finance is intimidating. When the chalkboard starts to look like Einstein’s chalkboard, I’m like, “whoa!””

- Can we please have a moratorium on beautiful women saying “math is hard”? I simply can’t imagine someone like Ashton Kutcher saying something like this. Never mind the fact that it’s horrible from a role-model perspective, it’s just plain annoying.

What Tyra Banks Learned at Harvard - Businessweek

(via felixsalmon)

Yes.

(Not pretending I’m remotely a supermodel, but Iroquois Middle School Math Queen 1993 is a title I will forever treasure.)

On something that I don't often write about

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:11:00 +0000

Writing in detail about my thoughts on abortion is something that I don’t often do. This may be the legacy of my brief tenure on my university debating team, where I was instructed by the senior debaters that resolutions related to abortion should never be tabled, because the debates are unwinnable. Or maybe it’s because I know that many people who I care about may have different views on the issue from mine, and I don’t want to hurt feelings.

But today, two things inspired me to write about abortion: this thoughtful account of one woman’s experience with abortion. And the latest abortion row in the UK, over women having ‘sex-selection’ terminations, which has led the British health secretary Andrew Lansley to pledge to report clincs and doctors who performed the procedure to police.

I have never had an abortion. I suppose, hypothetically, that I would not have an abortion if at this stage of my life if I found myself pregnant by accident. But the hypothetical bit is the important thing: there might well be a situation in which I would feel differently. I don’t know what it is because it hasn’t happened. And I certainly don’t know the situation in which any particular woman desires or requires an abortion. So how could I or anyone else presume to legislate the circumstances in which it is justified or not justified?

This is, furthermore, what makes me loathe the ‘even in cases of rape or incest’ caveat that is so often appended to people’s views on choice. The idea that a woman must prove that she fits in to a certain kind of category of victim - a victim who’s had agency taken from her - in order to possess agency over her own body, is stupid. The reason that any one woman has an abortion is ultimately no one’s business but her own. She may choose to share the decision with her partner or other family members, or to discuss it with counsellors. But the idea that anyone should be able to arbitrate the final decision but the woman herself is idiotic.

It is my personal opinion that terminating a pregnancy for reasons of gender selection is awful. But while I hold that opinion, I cannot presume to know the precise reason any individual woman wishes to have an abortion because of the sex of her child. Criminalising the practice is not going to make that woman want to carry that pregnancy to term.

Reducing abortion rates is a positive goal. But it is never going to be achieved by blocking pregnant women’s paths to clinics. It’s going to be achieved through behavioural shifts long before conception. In particular, it’s going to be achieved through better initiatives to get people, especially young people, to use birth control, and to use it correctly. I’m looking at you, people trying to deny women access to birth control in the US. And I’m also looking at you, people who are whinging about how condoms are a bit gross and make sex less fun.

And in the case of sex-selection terminations, reduction in the rate of abortions is going to be achieved through shifting attitudes about gender - and the inherent values of men and women, and girls and boys. Not by putting people in prison.

Musings of an Inappropriate Woman: Guest post: Why it pays to write for trade magazines

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:13:41 +0000

Musings of an Inappropriate Woman: Guest post: Why it pays to write for trade magazines:

rachelhills:

There’s more to journalism than the Fairfax newspapers, women’s glossies, unpaid web content and The New Yorker… although you might not know it from the way I write here. Fortunately, freelance journalist Mitchell Jordan is here to fill you in on a whole world of (paid!) publishing…

I loved this post on writing for trade magazines, in part because it reminds me of the heady days of 2008 and 2009, when I freelanced for a conference travel magazine, an experience that inspired this short story, and an array of go-to cocktail party anecdotes. It also facilitated a number of trips to amazing places, and the scariest and stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done.

"Consider this: A couple months ago, Scott, a firefighter and dad from Georgia, opened an email about..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:07:00 +0000

“

Consider this: A couple months ago, Scott, a firefighter and dad from Georgia, opened an email about having dinner with the President. He pitched in a few dollars to support the campaign, figuring “Why not?”

Weeks later, the President was offering him a french fry from across the table.

”

- Amazing campaigning email from Team Obama. There’s something so American about this offering of a fry being included as a key detail.

Also, I can’t help but wonder: did he pick up the fry and hand it to him (unsanitary, eek!)? Gesture towards the dish? Or proffer it, glistening with oil and salt, on the end of a fork?

"Paper Moon Diner raises a chicken-egg question. Which came first? Was it a diner that someone..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:27:30 +0000

“Paper Moon Diner raises a chicken-egg question. Which came first? Was it a diner that someone decided to decorate with decapitated doll’s heads and old Matchbox cars and Pez dispensers and a mannequin painted green and stuck all over with molded-plastic toy soldiers? Or did someone have a collection of decapitated doll’s heads and old Matchbox cars and Pez dispensers and a mannequin painted green and stuck all over with molded-plastic toy soldiers and did that someone think, ‘I need to get a diner to properly showcase this shit’?”

- The London Review of Breakfasts

lifedeathtoptips: This only makes sense once you know “cut...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:02:47 +0000

lifedeathtoptips:

This only makes sense once you know “cut flowers” is Samantha’s pet name for little Mr McWilliams.

Never not hilarious.

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:51:00 +0000

Never not hilarious.

On Scottishness

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:13:00 +0000

At 11 I wanted very much to go to Christian summer camp. My friend Kylah and our friend Kelly were both going, and Kylah gave me the brochure one sunny Saturday afternoon in May when we were riding bikes around the neighbourhood. The kids in the Christian summer camp brochure looked like they were having even more fun than we were on our bikes: they were smiling in groups with their arms around each other, smiling around a campfire, smiling against sylvan backdrops and smiling by a lake.

I read the brochure from cover to cover several times and hid it under my mattress for a little while, unaware that this was a spot normally reserved for pornographic magazines. And after a couple of days of fondling it lovingly, I decided that I was going to chance it: that despite being raised with no faith by mixed-faith parents, they still might send me to Christian summer camp. More specifically, I believed that my powers of rhetoric would be sufficiently agile to persuade my mother that it would be a good idea. I believed this, I really did, until I went down to the kitchen and handed the brochure (now cross hatched with creases from the bedspring) to my mother and realised, from the look on her face, that I might as well be asking for breakfast cereal with marshmallows in it: the answer was going to be no. Even in spite of my trump card line, devised in my bedroom and delivered, in spite of my pained awareness of its futility, after my mother said gently, ‘you can’t go to Christian summer camp, Jean’.

‘I would ignore the religious parts,’ I said.

‘We’re going to Scotland,’ said my mother. I think she kept the brochure.

My mother left Scotland for America when she was a few years older than I am now. Moving to America was not something that she had dreamed of her whole life, in spite of what my history teacher told us about all immigrants. And thus she took us – myself, my brother and sister, and my dad when he was able to take his precious few days of American holiday allowance – back to Scotland whenever possible, for the bulk of most of our growing-up summers. In many respects, these trips served a similar purpose to Christian summer camp (or Jewish summer camp, or soccer camp, even): immersing us in a culturally homogenous setting in order to entrench our sense of identity. Thus while my school friends sang religious songs to guitar accompaniments, canoed with people who shared their beliefs, and acquired boyfriends who went to other schools, we went to museums dedicated to Robert Burns, wore jumpers and dodged cows to play on the beach, and went on walks, not hikes, through the countryside, culminating in packets of prawn-flavoured crisps and cans of Irn Bru (junk food that would never cross our lips in America was mysteriously acceptable in Scotland, and our allowances were much bigger – all adding to the substantial appeal).

The fact was that any envy of my friends and their opportunities to kiss pious boys called Brant behind pine outhouses pretty much dissipated the moment we stepped off the plane at Glasgow Airport and I got the first sniff of damp, hair-kinking Scottish air. As ever, I thought of those summers this weekend, when I went to visit my sister and her partner in Edinburgh.

Our Scottish summers were undoubtedly part of what motivated me to move to the UK nearly a decade ago – but they were also part of the reason that I moved to London, and not to Scotland. As a teenager I’d walk down the high street of my mum’s hometown and note that many of the people looked like each other, and many of them quite a lot like my mother, but they didn’t look like me. For while there wasn’t a summer camp for me to go to in America, I felt quite otherish in Scotland as well.

Every time I head north I get it, a bit, but being there reminds me that I’m not Scottish: I am definitely American, albeit an American who chooses to live in London, and who gets laughed at, invariably (and maybe a bit rightfully), when I say, ‘I’m half Scottish, actually!’ because I sound like one of those people you meet on Boston-Glasgow flights, wearing tartan scarves and seeking to claim the ancestral home they believe someone left behind in 1790. Even though my ancestral home was left in 1980.

I’m an American who feels it make sense to eat porridge with salt, that the best inventions from Scotland, that if things go wrong it’s hard not to suspect that it’s because you kind of deserve it, that drinking tea with sugar in it is a sign of mild moral weakness. And an American who will always feel that a warm coat is the most obvious thing to wear to the beach.

The Erotic Removal of Long Underwear

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:01:47 +0000

The Erotic Removal of Long Underwear:

A new short story, for Kindle, as part of a collection curated by my friend Andy. I hope you enjoy it!

Once upon a time I had a job with a boss who I did not like very...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:21:00 +0000

Once upon a time I had a job with a boss who I did not like very much, mainly because when I negotiated my pay with him he called me a ‘cheeky bitch’, something which he later told me was meant as a joke, but which I did not think was appropriate. You know, under the circumstances of pay negotiation. Or any circumstances, in fact: in fact, I do not think it is ever appropriate for any man to call me a bitch. But that’s another story.

Anyway, after three months of brittle co-working I had my probation review with the boss, in which he told me that I was doing very well and everyone was pleased with my work but that there had been some complaints that I did not make tea enough. I was unimpressed by this remark, because I do not drink tea as a habit, and because of this non-habit I do not really understand the ethos of the tea run: my lack of desire for tea meant that I never knew (nor cared much) about when tea should be made, or who it should be made for, or when it was my turn to make the tea that I never drank. Perhaps this was obtuse of me! Or just, you know, American.

Some weeks after this incident I was out of the office one Friday and I received frantic emails from two of my colleagues: the boss had made a tea chart. On a white board, in the middle of the office, with each of our names and a space by each one to tick off the number of times we made tea. Oh, how I fumed.

This will not stand, I said to my colleagues. I will not stand for this!

When I came in on Monday I saw the tea chart and my determination to overthrow the unreasonable tea chart regime was redoubled. I waited until someone got up to do a tea round.

Would anyone like tea? he said.

No, thank you, I declared. I am going to opt out of the tea round henceforth.

And then I got up and walked over to the tea chart and wiped my name off, with a show-offy flick of the wrist.

Wipe my name off, too! said another brave colleague.

I did. And then I returned to my desk, and smiled a tight smile, and felt like a very victorious, very petty person.

I was reminded of this today when I made this tray of tea for some of my current colleagues. It was a pleasure. It made me feel happy, and British. And all because they are nice people, and there is no tea chart. And there’s a lesson in all this, somewhere, maybe. Probably quite a simple one.

alexanderlight: YEAAAAH!!! I had to watch this about 20 times.

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:20:03 +0000

alexanderlight:

YEAAAAH!!! I had to watch this about 20 times.

joyengel: This is a photo of the “experts” currently testifying...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:08:03 +0000

joyengel:

This is a photo of the “experts” currently testifying to Congress about birth control and women’s health.

What’s missing from this photo?

How. Is. This. Happening?

Sadly I can’t watch this in the UK, but here’s Jon...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:41:56 +0000

Sadly I can’t watch this in the UK, but here’s Jon Stewart making fun of the article about Lauren’s research. FAMOUS.

thedailywhat: Dog of the Day: A 4-year-old Pekingese named...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:18:00 +0000

thedailywhat:

Dog of the Day: A 4-year-old Pekingese named Malachy reigned victorious at the conclusion of this year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, crushing his Dalmatian, German shepherd, Doberman pinscher, Irish setter, and Kerry blue terrier rivals to take home the silver Best in Show bowl.

A few weeks ago I was grumpy for a whole day just because I’m 30 and have not yet managed to acquire a dog. (I prefer mutts, though I’d happily pat this one.)

CRAZILY proud of Lauren who appears in Time this week as an...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

CRAZILY proud of Lauren who appears in Time this week as an expert in the science of animal friendships! ANIMAL FRIENDSHIPS! Is there anything better to be an expert in? And it’s all thanks to worthless shit.

boveycastle: Back in March 2011, Bovey Castle announced that it...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:30:13 +0000

boveycastle:

Back in March 2011, Bovey Castle announced that it had become the only hotel in the UK with an eagle that can be flown by guests…

On when Valentine's Day is good

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:37:00 +0000

My best Valentine’s Day was my first one in London: my then-boyfriend and I had made no particular plans, so we went to a generic and cheap Italian restaurant for dinner, on Lamb’s Conduit Street. No one else was there, at all — a bad sign for a restaurant on any Saturday night, but this was Valentine’s Day AND a Saturday night.

This is a bad sign, I leaned in and whispered to my then-boyfriend as the waiter left to put our order — the only order — in to the kitchen.

This restaurant, I said, must be really struggling if we’re the only people here not just on a Saturday night, but on Valentine’s Day.

It’s a good thing we’re here, he said.

Then we ate some risotto and felt beneficent, and I felt neither more in love nor less in love with him than I usually did. Because Valentine’s Day is only good when you don’t need it at all.

"Valentine’s Day is a perfect time to reject the idea that the ideal man is taller, richer, more..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:53:35 +0000

“Valentine’s Day is a perfect time to reject the idea that the ideal man is taller, richer, more knowledgeable, more renowned or more powerful. The most important predictor of marital happiness for a woman is not how much she looks up to her husband but how sensitive he is to her emotional cues and how willing he is to share the housework and child-care. And those traits are often easier to find in a low-key guy than a powerhouse.”

- Marriage Suits Educated Women - NYTimes.com

Interesting!

Canada is from the GAP A/W 1999 collection; I purchased her when...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:26:00 +0000

Canada is from the GAP A/W 1999 collection; I purchased her when I came to the painful understanding of how severely I had underestimated the power of a Montreal winter and my lack of power to withstand it. Even as I put her on the first time in the shop and an assistant generously lied that she went well with my jeans, I knew that Canada was a horror.

But a necessary one, accompanying me up and down the salty, crusted streets and softening the landing when my university boyfriend hockey-checked me in to snowbanks, which was apparently a Canadian way of showing affection.

This is a picture of Canada being sported by my friend Olivia; when, in the late months of 2010, Olivia learned that she’d won a fellowship to write in rural New Hampshire for the early weeks of 2011, I solemnly handed Canada over to her: a hideous essential, I explained. With Olivia, Canada was hideous all over the United States (here they’re in Washington State, pointing at Actual Canada). ‘I can’t believe I pulled while wearing Canada,’ Olivia remarked on returning her. (But indeed Olivia did.)

I was glad that Canada could be of real service on Olivia’s American adventure. But I was also hopeful that the hiatus would have broken my Canada habit. Having survived the winter without her, I thought that I could finally retire her to a charity shop.

As if! I wore Canada for the first time in over a year yesterday and was immediately reminded of her ugly allure, her imperviousness to the coldest of London days, of why even my most handsome and fashionable flatmate Ben used to borrow her for quick, cold darts to the Co-op or the gym. And the pleasing effect, when I take her off, that I have lost 50 pounds in a zip and shrug. Even as I see my friends’ faces sink in despair as they see me lumbering towards them in her swathes of grey puff, Canada and I, I realise, will never be parted for good.