"Jatt Cool. You look super interesting and artsy."
This was my sister's opinion of my new blog layout. And I said, "Pretentious, moi?" Not really, but that was the punchline of a joke in a Fawlty Towers episode. I couldn't find a clip of the fellow saying it, but this is from the same episode (The Psychiatrist): Mr. Fawlty and Manuel always have wonderful interactions.
**
"We put out on Mondays." This is written on the back of one of Christophe's Current (the college newspaper he worked for) shirts. Nobody in my family had really commented on it, but my grandma saw it this summer and read it aloud. He grinned and told her that was the day the paper came out.
"Double entendre?" she asked. He flashed another smile. Called out by my grandmother. "Oh yeah, I wasn't there when we voted on that. But we have another shirt that says 'We have issues,'" he said distractingly.
"That's more tolerable," she said. I agree.
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Today's Article: Is a New York Times psych piece. (surprise). I read/skimmed most of it and ended up with an excessive amount of knowledge about the author. Her writing choices/style gave away almost as much information as her story.
I think one of the reasons I enjoyed journalism was that it gave me an excuse to talk to random people and ask them questions about themselves. It created a context where this was normal and reasonable.
Naturally this context didn't always occur with the greatest baggage: people generally don't like reporters (like lawyers, except we aren't well paid) – they have inevitably been misquoted or have discovered the reality about cable news networks.
On the other hand, local news (campus and town) is often not taken seriously enough to be antagonistic towards the reporter, and interviews for these stories often involve subjects who are very excited to be talking about themselves/their cause or event. Sometimes they just seemed to like having someone to talk to.
It was this line, the one I invariably blurred over and over again, which probably indicates that I will never be cut out for hard news or investigative reporting. I always treated interviews like conversations, and my personal conversational style tends to be very friendly: I find most things amusing which means I am constantly giggling and cracking jokes. This personable style makes it very hard for me to write a piece that might cast anyone I interview in a negative light because it would feel like betraying a friend.
It's like Hasting's article which got General McChrystal fired. Hastings has been criticized for being decptively buddy-buddy and printing things which were off-the-record.
If I could figure out a less manipulative approach, I still don't think I would enjoy that sort of reporting. I'd like to think of this as the positive side to my people pleasing tendencies: they are mostly the result of an (occasionally) misguided attempt to treat people with love and respect.
And yes, I am all for investigative reporting and hard news stories which bring evil to light and pursue justice. I just don't personally have that sort of constitution and feel no call to develop it.
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My youngest sister, Alexis, is currently reading Alice in Wonderland aloud to herself in a British accent. She is the performer of the family, and constantly wears bright eyeshadows, rouged cheeks, and curled hair with blue bows and ribbons. She has taken to curtsying to new acquaintances, instead of shaking hands. When we lived in Egypt, she would walk around pouting that "nobody can discover me here."
Currently she is obsessed with preserving youth/childhood, which naturally means an obsession with Peter Pan. She is on the hunt for a 19th century white nightgown like the one Wendy wore. Last night at 3:00 am, she shot up in bed and whispered "Peter? Peter?" staring out the window. This was immediately after Llama had slept talked. Christophe has been writing existential noir scripts and plans to do a Freemason musical. Willikins is in Morroco, Ammadaus is in Cyprus.
I think these circumstances are God telling me that my grip on reality is perfectly fine and that I am actually very, very normal.
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Facebook Find: Is a link to an article about Reality LA a church some of my friends attend.
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