July 29, 2006 - 10:40 a.m. If you don't have enough fodder for conspiracy theories, you should read these books: - "Misconceptions" by Naomi Wolf (I know this has been on the shelf for a while, but my library branch is tiny, and if you think I'm buying this book, ha, not.) Pregnancy, children and motherhood are minefields, and are in a lot of ways no one else's business, so I don't expect you to come away with the same things I did. However, unless you are a fucking moron or a man or both, you will agree that it's a man's world. Not a light read, even for one who is not pregnant. Having said that, I blocked out what it was about. I have to be able to function. Otherwise I'd protest ... what, males? my sexual organs? Those and the entire medical profession, drug companies, labor laws, next thing you know Ann Coulter would be up my ass about how I was enjoying murdering my baby because I wouldn't submit to an induced caesarian section and vote Republican, or something like that. Way to make cheer me up about being a woman. Way. - "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan (Actually, I'm listening to this because my eyes are rebelling against any more labor, like correcting a reduced scan of highlighted, written corrections and transcribing it into Excel in twelve minutes. Work had better pay for my goddamned LASIK to bring me back up to "visually impaired".) I thought the dilemma would be about how much food Americans have at their disposal, which could either be a perverse foodie analysis, or a grim topic, karmically speaking. Instead, this book is about corn. I may never know, because at disc three, I am weeping and tearing out my hair in fistfuls, I'm not sure if I can bear the other five. I can't believe 71 people have read it and chimed in on Amazon. I wonder what the survival rate is with this book. Corn is evil! Corn poisons the earth, fails farms, increases our reliance on petroleum, reduces biodiversity, fattens livestock and humans, and that's just the beginning. Now more than ever, we need Jebus to return and banish corn back into hell. I'm not articulate enough to explain the evilness of corn in one sentence. Obviously, it can't be done, if this guy did it in one million words, and who knows if he has a fucking sequel up his sleeve ("Soybeans: The Armageddon"). When I am homeless and begging alongside the offramp, or more likely handing out "I'm blind" cards on BART, I'll merely croak "corn" and you will have to extrapolate. - "Everything I Ate" by Tucker Shaw On it's face, it's not a depressing book. It's quirky and hip. It's pictures of each meal he partook in 2004. To steal from Merlin Mann (genius! from 5ives.com), it's �My Underlit Dessert With One Bite Missing� and then some. I am the first person to admit that whenever I see something, I miss the point. For example, every story about a serial killer talks about the victims (the dead people, their relatives, the killer himself). Me, I focus on the fact that all of them are married and have children. WTF with these women? But I digress. The point was to document what he ate. Period. No life lessons, no preaching. But Jebus! The guy goes to bed at 1 am, earliest. He eats out or gets take out almost every day. With friends. How often I eat out with friends? Twice a month, if that. He's an author of young adult novels, and he can live like this? You look at his picture and he won't even give me the satisfaction of being fat. I am clearly in the wrong line of work. So what have we learned? Literacy is bad. We're all doomed. I'm especially fucked. � previous - next