Perhaps I’m just feeling extra cantankerous this morning, but I have a few things that are bugging me more than usual. In no particular order, here they are, the Three Things I Could Live Without This Week:
1. Articles with the title, “His Sad Final Days.” Whenever there is a drug-related celebrity death, you can bet on one of the tabloids blaring “His Sad Final Days” at you while you’re trying to pick up a last-minute carton of milk. This week it’s about Philip Seymour Hoffman. I know magazines feel the need to keep up the “drugs are bad” storyline instead of looking at issues with more insight and tact (and he was a talented actor whose loss is tragic). But the callousness just galls me. These people do understand that he was a father of three, right? I’ll bet that at least one person who loved him had to go to a grocery store or a pharmacy this week. As if it’s not bad enough that their dad is gone, now they have to be told that his final days were sad. Ugh. Stop it.
2. Weather pity. More often than I care to count, an acquaintance from someplace warm sends me condolences about a snow storm that’s been forecast for my area (the northeast). It usually goes something like this, “Oh, yeah, so I heard you guys are about to get hammered again this weekend. Man, that’s rough. I’m so sorry. It’s 80 degrees here.”
So here’s the thing about that: I’ve been living in the northeast for decades. It never catches me unawares when our winter is, you know, wintry. I am an adult with a pretty good ability to steer my life in a direction that pleases me, and that includes living where I live by choice. I know it’s crazy, but I like snow. Sure, we’ve had a lot this season and I am running out of places to put it. But, you know, personal choices and all. If I wanted to live somewhere where it’s 80 degrees all the time, I would. But the idea slightly horrifies me.
3. People who have no contact information on their websites. Okay, this is definitely just me being cranky and is reflective of what’s going on in my life right now. I have been doing a lot of outreach setting up book events for the rest of this year. It’s a numbers game, since not everyone you contact is just falling over themselves to review your book or book you as a speaker. But you would be surprised at how many sites of book festivals, bloggers and bookstores make how to contact them a high-level secret. Just hunting down an email address often takes information-gathering skills worthy of the NSA. (Man, did I just get myself put on a watch-list?). Here’s a suggestion: if you’re in the Witness Protection Program… don’t have a website! But if you do have a website that somehow serves the public… you know, maybe clue the public on how to reach out to you. Just a thought.
Okay, cranky moment over. Hope you’re ready for all this weather! (See what I did there?).
Happy news later. Promise!
