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Dear Webmasters of Book Related Websites,

Friday, August 22, 2008

In the course of my extensive list making for my vaguely publishing-related job, I have come across a few issues I think you all should work on. For your convenience, I have summarized them here in a handy list format:

  1. I don’t care how high, mighty and un-findable you and your masters want to be–the contact page should be a major section of any professional website. No, it’s not OK to squirrel it away in the “About” section. I want “CONTACT” in large letters, either right up at the top of your page or somewhere in your footer, and I want it to lead to a clean, well organized, and thoroughly labeled page of its own. On this page, you should have at least one email address and preferably a phone number and mailing address in largeish, legible font. If I need to zoom in to read it (thanks, Firefox 3!), it’s TOO SMALL. Now, I know this makes you feel exposed and like at any moment someone might ask you an actual question, or, heaven forbid, SEND YOU A LETTER, but come on. It’s the Internet, not the Freemasons. Help me help you.
  2. That “Contact” section should actually be TITLED “Contact.” I know that they taught you to be clever at design school, but enough is enough. I want your contact info, not to spent half an hour on your site trying to interpret such section titles as “toss us a doughnut” and “holler atcher boy.” CONTACT. NOT EXACTLY ADVANCED VOCABULARY.
  3. While we’re on the subject, when I say email address I mean EMAIL ADDRESS, not one of those totally annoying email forms (which, incidentally, are SO last millennium). I want an address I can put in a list, file away in Excel, and import with a long list of other addresses, all at once. Your stupid form takes me like 5 x as long to use, and that makes me cranky. And when you make the intern volunteer cranky, she doesn’t put you on the list and you miss out on all sorts of wonderful.
  4. Ideally, that address should be in a mailto link, but if you fear the spam-bots, a simple address [at] domain.com is fine. I don’t need you to explain to me that I should “type address, followed by the @ symbol, followed by the domain, a period, and the letters C O M.” I have been using the Internet for at least as long as you have. I know about email. So, for that matter, do my grandparents, parents, contemporaries, and very small relations. The only people who need that explanation haven’t found your cleverly hidden contact info, so you can just save me the extra words. I am Very Important and Unpaid, and I have a lot of lists to make. My patience, it is short and vindictive.
  5. Harper Collins: I hate you. Really, I haaaate you. You have a million different imprints, in an effort to make it look like you’re actually a bunch of cute, little, independent presses, but really you’re a controlling conglomerated gigantor, and your website shows it. The sheer fact that your Contact link leads directly to your Help page instead of to contact information makes me want to SCREAM. Also, hey, while we’re at it, if you REALLY want to look like a collection of independent presses, why not give each imprint its own website, rather than a corporate clone section of your one unmanageable and uninformative cyber-behemoth? I have so much more to say to you, but I’m now so ANGRY that I can’t even TELL you. No, YOU SHUT UP, HARPER COLLINS. NEVER AGAIN.
  6. If you name your company something really generic, not even black belt GoogleNinjas will be able to find you on the internet. “Absinthe,” wherever you are, whatever you’re actually called in your full name, I’m (not) looking at you. Maybe this is the fault of the list I’m working from, but I cannot for the life of me find anything even half likely to be the “Absinthe” I’m looking for, which I assume is a small press. Maybe, perhaps, kind of. Who knows. Life is full of mysteries.
  7. And finally, if your website has been under construction so long that that is what shows up in the blurb under your google entry, then your website has been under construction for TOO LONG.
SEE? THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!

SEE? THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!


Thanks for playing, come again soon.

Tootles,
Mary–Frustrated GoogleNinja and Publishing Intern Volunteer Extraordinaire

Filed in Summer 2008, in which I complain about something | | Comments (1)

Things…

Monday, August 11, 2008

This post will not stick together, but at least it will be a post.

Things that have almost (but not quite) made the blog:

  1. Today I saw a blind man standing at a street corner, playing his cane like a guitar and singing.
  2. When I stepped out of a building onto the sidewalk, the black woman walking behind me announced loudly to her companion that “WOW, that girl ain’t seen no sun!”
  3. I saw a whooole bunch of shooting stars last night.
  4. Jello Pudding now comes with mint-flavored chips.
  5. While it may seem disturbing to have green chunks in your pudding, I can officially tell you that it is, in fact, DELICIOUS.
  6. I made a run on Target for plastic organize-ey boxes and drawers and things, to make this most recent move less torturous.

So…yeah, this is mostly just to get back into the habit of posting regularly. Also, I think the airplane layout is not long for this world, so don’t get too attached. :-)

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I know, I know…

Thursday, July 31, 2008

I’ve been gone forever! I’m really busy (and also sleepy at the moment), so you’ll have to make do with just a poem. Not mine, but Marie Howe’s, from her 1998 book, What the Living Do, which is very good, but also made me cry. Twice.

What the Living Do

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neeeed sleeeeep

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Dear Frat House Next Door/Across the Street/Down the Road,

I get it. Really, I do. I mean, of course you throw parties. You’re frat houses. That is like, your primary function–to bring the party to the block, to rock out college-style, to pump your pimpin’ tunes, to assault the neighborhood with the soul of DANCE. It’s what you do, and I respect that.

I also know that it’s summer, and you may not have to be at work or even awake during daylight hours, so it must really be tempting to, how you say…party all night till the break of dawn?

But please, for the love of all that is holy, do you have to do it EVERY night? I mean, you partied Monday, you partied Tuesday, you (shockingly) took a night off on Wednesday, but then back to Special Party Time for Thursday, Friday, Saturday–come ON. You have got to be tired, or at the very least, still hungover from the last one by the time the party bus rolls on in.

I applaud your endurance, your mad mad party skillz, but I ask, for my sake, that I be allowed, bleary eyed and exhausted, to go to sleep at 2am. I was willing to overlook the max volume (this one goes to ELEVEN) rendition of Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” at midnight, and even the equally ear-blasting Soulja Boy at one, but this is just too much. 2 am is quiet time for Mary, ok? Sometimes mommy needs a NAP.

So can we make a deal? You don’t keep me up past, say, 2 o’clock with your wild par-TAY, and I won’t wake you up the next day at 7 am with blaring opera.

Oh, and for tomorrow? Would you like Mozart or Wagner?

See? I can be flexible!

Love and Kisses,

Your Kindly Neighbor

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Lessons in Raspberry Lemonade

Friday, June 20, 2008

Recommended: Trying Crystal Light.

Not Recommended: Drinking a lot of caffeinated Crystal Light. (Did you know they put caffeine in that shit? THIS is why my grandma always loved it.)

Recommended: Trying it dry, like a super-tangy Pixi Stick.

Not Recommended: Inhaling mid-pixi.

Recommended: Lots of coughing.

Not Recommended: Breathing in sharply between coughs, thereby inhaling MORE powder, which only makes the whole citric acid in the lungs issue MORE apparent, which then creates more coughing, which quickly spirals downward in a whirling dervish of BAD TIMES.

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Two Lessons

Friday, June 20, 2008

One should learn two things from this.

1. ALWAYS PROOFREAD.

2. Coffee has secrets. They are SHOCKING.

Thank you, Questionable Content advertisers. I owe you everything.

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In Like Flynn

Sunday, June 15, 2008

I’m moved in! It was hard and exhausting and involved lifting a lot of heavy things, and made me realize that I have way too many personal possessions. But I’m here! And I’m cleaning up the room, so now it almost looks neat. I’ve put up some pictures, and set up my light, and read almost three books already. It’s pretty much awesome here.

I have apples in the fridge that are of a variety I have never had before, and I’ve also figured out how to turn ON the fridge, which is a special skill. A skill I have that my landlord sublord the girl who sublet me the apartment did not have. Big knobs with numbers are notoriously hard to pinpoint as on/off devices, I guess. Also large red buttons. And in combination–well, nearly impossible.

I live next door to and across the street from frat houses. There are competing dance music playlists on quite a lot of the time, and some of them feature a near constant loop of Soulja Boy. As you might guess, I fit right in. Any day now I’ll start watching football and drinking large volumes of beer. You just wait.

Berkeley is cool, and rife with cleverly named shops that sell exotic parrots, strange flavors of ice cream, or very large neon sunglasses. Many of the citizens of this fair city own items in all three categories and may be seen walking the street with them. It’s a place with its own sense of humor.

Since the internet has now been connected, my transition to this land across the bay is now complete. Yay! And now I am out of sentences. Sorry.

Filed in Summer 2008, in which I go somewhere | | Comments (2)

housewarming

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

So, welcome to the new location! Come on in, take a look around, pull up a chair, I’m here to stay. I’m probably still tweaking this theme (layout, etc), but I’ve really moved in for real now, since the main page is up and oh so newly pretty.

I’m really very proud of it, so take a moment and roll over my dots, admire my photoshop work. Let me know if anything isn’t working, or if you’ve got ideas for things that should change or move or become new! and! exciting! I’m in a redesign kind of mood, so you never know what might happen.

If you’ve never visited The Garden before, welcome here too! Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email (mary[at]cupcakenation).

And now, I will end this generic welcome/new things are happening message, because I can’t think of anything else to say, except oh HOLY CRAP I have a lot of packing to do before I move out of this room. It is going to be a looooong couple of days.

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turtles

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

I am writing a poem in which the word turtle appears 12 times so far. I am quite proud of this fact. Of course, it’s also 1:55 am, so pretty much everything feels like a good idea right now. You could probably convince me that I should write a poem about rocks. Actually, this kind of is a poem about rocks.

Man, this is a great poem.

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an important conversation about pants

Sunday, June 1, 2008

I had this conversation with myself this morning:

Self, your pants are on inside out.
No they’re not, they’re perfect, I love them like this.
Yes they are. Look at the waist band.
But it folds over! It’s fine!
But where is the drawstring? Where, I ask you??
It’s here, where it’s supposed to be. Oh, no wait, that’s not where it’s supposed to be. Shit, you’re right. They’re inside out.
Oh, no wait! Look at the little orange thing! That’s supposed to be on the outside, and it is! You’re totally set. Pants right side out.
Oh, my god what a relief.

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