Life is hard. Here is someone.

Sorry I guess this is kind of NSFW. Sorry, mom! Sorry, catholic cousins!

But I would be remiss not to mention that this amazing photo project ends today. This woman, Barbara Nitke, was a still photographer on porn sets in the 80s. There’s all this funny behind-the-scenes stuff of like, Nina Hartley talking to the director all serious-like while some guy has his head between her legs, or girls hanging out taking naps surrounded by dildos. ET CETERA. But the work is SO GREAT. The kind of thing where you force your boyfriend to watch the project video when he gets home from work and then he yells enthusiastically about how great it is great. And you’re like, yess, I am not crazy! There is just something about this that is so good!

The only question that remains where the hell you put a bunch of prints like this in your home. Think I’m about to find out.

1:14 pm • 24 February 2012 • 92 notes

melissa:

Coming & Crying

(Which you can go get here, now…)
(I know!)

Hey, remember this old thing? If you missed out, or just want the book on your e-reader thing, it now exists. Hooray! Thanks to MGG for doing ALL OF IT, TOTEBAGS* AND ALL.

*Is there a better totebag slogan than, “I like books and have feelings”? Besides, “I prefer not to,” obviously. There is also, for the boldly human, “I like sex and have feelings,” which all this time later only makes me slightly embarrassed. In a good way.

12:30 pm • 21 February 2012 • 69 notes

Tonight on my way home from work I got into this car on the F train and I was the only person in it. It has been awhile since that happened. I walked from one end to the other, not knowing what else I could do to celebrate. Then I took a bunch of pictures with my phone and sat snuggled into the little two-person seat at one end. Those seats are my favorite.

I like that instagram only exists on your phone, really. Commitment to a bit. But this also means that to put this photo on my blog, I copy the URL to it onto my phone’s “clipboard” (as it were), paste it into a Note, then squint at it on my phone as I type it out, character by character, into my browser. This is like the grandma version of doing the internet, I know. There is probably a better way. But I don’t like “sharing” it from the app, when they stick in that little accusatory “(sent via instagram)” or whatever it is they do. DAMN THE MAN!

9:46 pm • 16 February 2012 • 86 notes

So we found out that Sugar is Cheryl Strayed, and as Erica recounts, I knew this in an instant awhile back when I read one of her (incredible, I might add) Cheryl Strayed essays, sitting in a cafe reading on my phone a bit that Erica had excerpted on her blog, assuming as I read, before I got to the attribution part of the Tumblr quote post, that I was reading a Sugar column. Then I saw the name: “Cheryl Strayed.” Then I fiercely googled. Then I emailed Erica. Then I DMed Stephen Elliott and he told me, “Sshhh.” Then I started doing little weekly dances in the kitchen asking Dustin if they had the galley of her book in at McNally yet and finally they did and I read it over Thanksgiving and fell so in love with it. I got to the great good reader place I haven’t been back to since. You know it when you find it. I wrote this in Tumblr back around Thanksgiving then decided it would be weird to publish before her book was out but now it will be out so soon and we can all get excited! So here is my little burst of enthusiasm that has been sitting in my drafts for months:

—-

I finally got this book in my hands Tuesday night — the night before my mom and sister got here to stay with us for Thanksgiving. Two days before we made dinner for my family and his family and my sister’s funny little dog.

The first night I read it I cried. “But you cry over everything,” maybe you’re saying. No. I mean CRIED. Audible crying! Dustin apologized for getting me this book, this book I begged for him to get me a copy of the galley of for weeks (Cheryl Strayed tweeted about the galleys being out so they are probably out can you get one do you have any etc etc).

Every night since Tuesday I stayed up after my family went to bed in the other “room” (semi-subdivided area of our railroad apartment), exhausted, but reading any of this I could and telling my mom all about it in the morning.

My family left at 5 this morning. We saw them off then went back to sleep, woke up at 11, and I stayed in bed until 3 in the afternoon and finished it.

This will be big! I think you aren’t supposed to blog about books or review them or what have you until they’re out. This makes sense. What use is my recommendation now? If I said something bad, the book is not out there to defend itself. But I am not saying anything bad! I am not a bookseller or a book reviewer! I am the girlfriend of the bookseller. Do not tell the sales rep who left a little note on the cover: “Give this to Sam or Dustin.”

Sorry Sam! Sorry everyone! I got the ARC and I am powerless. I did not deserve it. I am not going to review this book. That is not my job and also I love it too much to do anything but cheer for it. I will just say, over and over, IT IS SO GOOD AND I BASICALLY READ IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH. It is a book you read and want to push onto other people. I read a lot of books and I think that is the best feeling, of spending the rest of the day swimming in it and trying to choose just one person to heave it onto next, to place in their arms and hope they hug it to their chest.

I think I will give it to my mom for Christmas. I have a growing list of people I will demand to read it next.

You can pre-order it now.

11:27 am • 15 February 2012 • 86 notes