Ugh, I never know what to title these entries, anymore. It was easier when I was unhappy and writing entries about that, because there's no shortage of songs to capture that. But nobody writes good happy songs. Is that a thing?

Elvis Costello, for one, has probably never written a happy song in his life.

Like they say about the un-complex good-versus-evil stories: good is boring.

I feel like I am becoming one of those boring people who loves her job and doesn't have much to talk about. To be fair, part of the reason is that a large portion of my work is protected information, so I can't talk about it: datasets, project issues and resolution ideas, early findings results, all of that is confidential until reports are published. But even then, what can I say? Yes, I love my job. It's exciting every day, with a big variety of things to do. The work is interesting, and I feel like I am doing something really worthwhile. But it means I have nothing to complain about, and complaining about work is such a big part of conversations about work, right? Let me try:

Everyone is great, except my new officemate, who is unfriendly and has BO, both things because he is Turkish, but I don't ever interact with him except when going in and out of our shared office. He just started on Monday. He is the worst thing about this job, which is kind of petty: it's almost nothing, just a little bit of awkwardness and odor from time to time. But I don't like him, and I am not thrilled that we are sharing an office, and probably will be for a while.

(Did it work? I can't really muster up too much hate for this guy. He's smelly and weird, but it could be way worse, and everything else is so great that I can't really complain too much.)

Yesterday, it was snowy and cold, and I was exhausted, so I didn't do anything but grocery shop. (And make linguine with clam sauce for dinner. Yum.) But today I feel so much perkier, it's ridiculous. I popped out of bed, made a big breakfast (I had eggs and tea and strawberries; A--- had leftover cannoli), and immediately started thinking about what I could get done today. Clean up the boxes in the entryway, scrub the bathroom, vacuum everything, take out the trash and recycling, change the bed sheets, make muffins, plan a Valentine's dinner for Tuesday, maybe even run down to the basement and do a load of laundry. Don't you love those (extremely rare) days when you actually want to get stuff done? I have to take advantage of this.

At 23 degrees, it's too cold to go outside, anyway. Might as well make the inside of the apartment sparkle!

Monday is book club. We're reading {i]The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin. It should be so interesting, but I just can't get into it. I'm like 2/3 done, and I have felt like I am only slogging through it for the book club since about 50 pages in. It should be so interesting. It's not even terribly written. It's just... distant. Inaccessible. Uninteresting.

Hopefully everyone else thought so, too. Guess we'll find out Monday.
 

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/the_making_of_gay_marriages_top_foe/singleton/

This profile of Maggie Gallagher, probably the most vocal opponent of same-sex marriage around, reads like a supervillain backstory. Seriously! Personal trauma leads to vicious vendetta against the world.

Get the lady a cape so she can crusade properly. And then be sucked into a jet engine, a la The Incredibles.
 

http://www.themillions.com/2012/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2012-book-preview....

God, 2012 looks like a fucking wasteland.

This does not make me happy, since everything I've read lately has been middling at best:

The Revisionists
Thirteen Reasons Why
The Beginners
Pigeon English
Zazen

Actually, I kind of liked Zazen, but I suspect anyone who didn't attend a college full of pretentious hipsters wouldn't like it at all. Which begs the question of who Vanessa Veselka is, because if she was trying to do anything other than satirize and criticize pretentious hipsters, she failed. Funny, though, really funny.

I should have stopped reading this list when I got to this:

Sick again last night. I woke out of a deep sleep at 2:30 burping, which is bizarre, because I rarely burp (or need to). The burping was a sign. Sick again, same as a week ago exactly, but for about an hour instead of all night.

So I guess it is neither food poisoning nor a stomach virus?

Barf. Literally. This blows. I do not have the time or energy for this bullshit. I spent three hours napping today and I still feel exhausted. Dehydrated, too. Ick.
 

Mostly better, but I still get such a bad stomach ache every time I eat. That's not normal, right? Maybe I got a tapeworm or something.

Ickkkkkk.
 

Food poisoning. Me. Miserable.

I would never have gone to the place on my own, which somehow makes it worse: when I saw that its health department score was a B and not an A, it should have been a sign. But I was there with seven coworkers who raved about the place, so it's not like I could say, "Whoa, guys, did you see that B?"

Indian-vegetarian-kosher buffer. Never eating there again. Possibly never eating Indian food again. Possibly never eating any food again. Even water sends needles through my stomach.

I am sick enough that I'm pretty sure I just watched a rerun of The Bachelor. I slept through a lot of it, but still. Too sick to get the remote a foot away? That's sick, even when the, ahem, disgusting symptoms of food poisoning are over.
 

Since I am working in a new area of Manhattan now, I've been taking walks at lunch to some new places. It's pretty exciting to see new things, which sounds cliched, but I am still in awe of living in such a vibrant city. Maybe I always will be.

I only let myself buy lunch once a week — I pack a lunch every other day. Eating out is so expensive! Not to mention that when I bring my own, I know exactly what I'm getting and eat healthily. Anyway. Today was the day, so I picked very, very carefully. There are so many intriguing options (I made a list of bookmarks in my browser at work) that I want to eat them all!

Today, I picked a Vietnamese sandwich place and tried the signature Vietnamese sandwich, the banh mi. It was SO good. I can't even really describe it -- there's not another sandwich like it. It has some salty, spicy bacon-y tasting meat and some other stuff I couldn't tell what it was (it looked like cheese but it wasn't, but it was kind of creamy?), then thin sticks of pickled veggies (carrots, daikon, cucumber), and finally fresh cilantro and jalapenos on top. SO delicious. I was kind of blown away. I have never eaten anything like it before, but wow, it was delicious.

The place was kind of a hike from work, maybe 15 minutes each way walking, but I really like getting out for a walk over my lunch hour, so I was happy to do it. (Usually, I eat my bagged lunch at my desk and then walk around over my lunch hour. I used to eat in the park, but now it's too cold for that.) They have a honey mustard catfish sandwich on their menu that also looked amazing, and I will have to get that some time soon, too. The call of the banh mi is strong.

The restaurant is this tiny storefront in the middle of a block in Curry Hill, the nickname for a predominantly Indian neighborhood in Manhattan. (Most of the restaurants are Indian-vegetarian-kosher. Got to appeal to all the people working in Midtown.) I've walked through there many times before — there's this fantastic grocery store, Kalustyan's, that has more types of spices than I've ever seen. I've bought some spice mixes there before, and even when I'm not buying, I love wandering through it. I was pretty surprised to see that the Vietnamese sandwich place was nearby, but whatever works! I'll be back.
 

I've just finished reading Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which was why I picked it up. Critics of this year's list were right: it didn't deserve to be there. It wasn't that good.

It wasn't terrible. The voice was interesting and engaging, and I guess the rich, white British people who pick the shortlist would consider it to be singularly unique. But the problem that I had was that the entire time, I could tell the author was white.

For background, the narrator of Pigeon English is a eleven-year-old boy who recently immigrated from Ghana to a poor neighborhood of London. He experiences the new world he's living in through unique eyes, and it leads to a novel that is all about voice. The voice is generally pretty good; it's consistent and engaging, with some funny things going on. But the problem is that there was never a time I found it totally authentic. Halfway through the book, I actually looked the author up online, because I was so certain that he was a white, non-immigrant.

I was correct.

I am absolutely not one of those people who thinks that authors can't write characters outside of their class, their race, their sex, their personal point of view. I certainly don't do that myself! But when you are doing that, you have an especial burden to make it seem real. You have to have a real and sympathetic understanding of how your character will sound, how he or she will react, how he or she builds a view of the world from his or her past — not yours.

There are lots of writers who do this well. Why is Booker lauding an author who doesn't?

Honestly, I probably need to just stop reading Booker nominees and winners. I didn't care for Atonement. I didn't at all like {i]The Gathering. I hated The Accidental. I couldn't get through On Beauty (although I also couldn't get through White Teeth, because it was just. so. long., so maybe I am just not a Zadie Smith person).

I did really like Never Let Me Go and Notes on a Scandal, so I guess that's something. And Remains of the Day, although that came out like a million years ago.

L--- used to notice me talking about books say, "Don't you ever worry that people will think you're pretentious for talking about all the books you liked and didn't, like you are an expert?"

No.

I am an expert.

I know zero people who have read as widely as I. I didn't like Pigeon English for a concrete and verifiable reason. I expect more from Booker nominees. So there.
 

A--- and I are watching last night's Republican debate, and there is something that I just cannot get over.

Santorum and Gingrich are spending a lot of time criticizing Romney for being a "vulture capitalist" who pays an unnaturally low tax rate and takes advantage of working- and middle-class labor.

But they also think we need fewer regulations, lower capital gains taxes, and no labor protection laws.

Those things produce more Romneys. They produce more Bains.

It's economics, right? People respond to incentives in a direct causal relationship. If you get rid of regulations, lower capital gains rates, prevent the enforcement of antitrust laws — all things on the Republicans' platform — you get more Romneys.

If you really believe in capitalism, Republicans, then Romney should be your hero. He created a company that does nothing. (Consulting. It's nothing. Seriously, I have friends from Brown who work at Bain now, and it's all bullshit.) He charges companies out the nose for nothing. He rearranges and dismantles other companies with no regard for any consequence except the monetary bottom line. He should be your hero! He does what you think everyone should be doing — caring about nothing but money!

If you really believe in capitalism, Republicans, you have to stop with this faux-populism about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. The United States lost its comparative advantage in manufacturing decades ago. That won't change. And why should it? It isn't fiscally responsible. It's capitalism. Capitalism doesn't care if there are middle class jobs for the stupid but physically fit. It doesn't care about labor, period. Just like Romney.

If you really believe in capitalism, Republicans, you have to accept that capitalism means businesses fail, that people lose their jobs, that the economy fluctuates, that the rich get richer without necessitating the poor getting any richer themselves. That's what Romney did. Why aren't you cheering him?

If you really believe in capitalism, nothing else can matter. You shouldn't criticize Romney for doing what you think people should do in capitalism. He should be your hero! He should be your Dagny Taggart!

(Minus the railroad part, because we all know that railroads blow. Right, Republicans?)
 

There is a Korean bakery near my new work. Today, I dropped in to pick up a mochi donut for A--- and I to try. (We love mochi!) When I saw a red bean donut, I had to get that, too. And take a bite immediately. And gobble the rest of it down immediately. And start considering a second trip in one afternoon immediately.

It was so good. It was like the long-lost Korean cousin of those delicious sesame balls with red bean paste inside you get at dim sum places. Oh man. So delicious. I do think I prefer the Chinese ones, with those yummy sesame seeds on the outside, but this was delicious in its own right.

The problem: the bakery is too close. Just a couple blocks, right in the middle of Koreatown. It is not far away enough for me to say to myself, "No, that's too far to walk for a donut." It is not far away enough to burn off the million billion calories in that donut when I inevitably walk there. It is way too close for me to keep being a size seven when there is red bean paste to be had in a sticky fried donut.

Ohhhhhhh red bean donuts.