Gaze Upon My Beautiful Roof!

Sorry, that’s not a euphemism.

In Which I Complain about Books

So, for work I’m supposed to be reading Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, which is written in this tone that can best be described as “I am really happy to be writing this book for idiots.”  Maybe that’s not fair, but I kind of feel like I’m being talked down to a little bit. I’m also not sure how much more I can learn from the book than I did in the introduction.

But we shall see.

I just think you should write like you would explain something important to your friends. I feel like Anderson is lecturing to a class of freshmen.

I find that tone a little off-putting.

Edited to Add: It’s been a long time since I’ve though so much about writing, though, and that makes me very happy.

In My Dreams, I Need a Ferry

So, I dreamed that the dog and I had to go grocery shopping and we were trying to get some food for us and then some food for the folks who were working on our roof.  But we were at Walmart, so we had to go by all these aisles of clothes and other junk and I never could see if we’d found all the food we might need, though, happily, at the last minute, I did find some macaroni.

Then we had to get on a round pontoon boat with the groceries, and float across the Cumberland to the other side. And, if we didn’t make it directly across, we wouldn’t get to a ramp, we’d have to somehow get up the bluff.

Well, you know, we’re in a pontoon boat, on the Cumberland of my dreams, so of course we couldn’t get upstream far enough to arch back down to the boat ramp. We had to go over to this rope like contraption that we had to figure out how to hook the boat up to so that a series of pullies and wenches could lift us up the bluff, boat and dog and girl and groceries.

And I never could figure out how to get things hooked up right.

And then I woke up.

p.s. I know it was a dream because, through out the whole boatride, the dog was asleep.