Now, let me address some of your LOVE QUESTIONS.

KenzieAudacious asks: What is the best literary pick up line?

Here are five that I have hand-selected for you. You can choose which one works best in your situation.

From Frankenstein: “I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me . . . . my companion must be of the same species and have the same defects . . .” (give knowing look)

From A Christmas Carol: “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!” (rip off tearaway pants)

From Notes from the Underground: “I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased. Are you free on Friday?” (final sentence mine, to close deal)

From The DaVinci Code: “I am going to Vatican City. One does not go to Vatican City with one’s ass hanging out. Do I make myself clear?” (give knowing look)

From The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks: “I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.” (emphasis mine, knowing look implied)

lifesus4 asks: I asked out a girl, and she said yes, but I’m not sure she knows I meant a date, not just hanging out. How should I proceed?

Ah. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

YOU: Hey, wanna go out?
OTHER PERSON: Sure. I have nothing else going on.

It’s confusing, for sure. Because now you are walking that tightrope—do you do romantic things or not romantic things? What is a romantic thing, anyway? Is dinner inherently romantic, or is it just consuming foodstuffs for the purpose of processing nutrients? Are candles there to enflame the heart, or are they just pinpoints of flame to briefly illuminate said pile of foodstuffs about to be consumed and processed? Is Red Lobster more romantic than Ruby Tuesdays? Should you be hand-weaving a picnic basket for a lovely riverside meal, or will you have Burger King in the dark of an alleyway? Do you get dressed up or dress down? Because you don’t want to assume it IS a date and dress up too much . . . but then if SHE thinks it is a date and has made a huge effort and you are wearing a sack and a rope belt and shoes made of lesser shoes, then won’t YOU feel foolish!

I don’t mean to add to your current level of concern—I merely say these things to indicate that I understand the seriousness of your predicament. Which is obviously quite serious.

Of course, you can always take the Middle Way and just go and see where life takes you. This is what most people would advise. But you didn’t come to me seeking the advice of “most people.” I say you find out if this is a date by asking. And here again, most people might suggest that you do this in a reasonable and mature way, but I have other ideas.

My first suggestion is that you weave a confusing pattern of expectations, constantly leading the other person off your scent. The conversation should go something like this:

YOU wander up to OTHER PERSON.

YOU: Let’s get married.
OTHER PERSON: What?
YOU: Just kidding.
OTHER PERSON: Oh.

Other Person laughs a bit.

YOU: But not really.

Fall to your knees.

OTHER PERSON: What?
YOU: Just kidding.

Tie your shoelace.

OTHER PERSON: Oh.

Other Person laughs, but the sound is more hollow this time.

YOU: (still on knees) Yeah. I’m never settling down.
OTHER PERSON: Okay . . . .?
YOU: Are we dating?
OTHER PERSON: What?
YOU: What time is it?
OTHER PERSON: What?
YOU: Because I’m not ready to make a commitment.
OTHER PERSON: I have no idea what’s happening.
YOU: Tell me about it. Anyway, it’s only our first date. People are so weird about this stuff.

Leap up abruptly and run off, shouting unintelligible noises that are supposed to be words. Make the only audible word “date.”

Use confusion to your advantage, but do so CONFIDENTLY.

The other thing you can do is combine the word date with a display of your finest qualities. This has the advantage of making the person WANT to date you, even if they did at first not INTEND to date you. This scenario works like this:

YOU: Hey, do you know we are going out on a date . . . oh my God! A FIRE!

Before this entire exchange, you have set a small fire, ideally in an orphanage or puppy sanctuary. You run toward the fire to extinguish it with the fire extinguisher, which you have hidden down your pants.

crestofwaves asks: What do you do if you are in your 20s and have never been on a date?

Along with saddling us with things like Valentine’s Day, the SYSTEM seems intent on convincing us that there’s some kind of timeline that LOVE should follow–mostly, because the SYSTEM likes to laugh. Which is why we have to go to prom. Which is a whole different and tangled subject. It doesn’t matter WHEN these things happen.

If you are in your 20s and have never been on a date, then you are simply in for another Life Experience. The advantage now, of course, is that you probably have more money and don’t live with your parents. Or you have some money and your parents are not entirely the boss of you. Or you have seen a dollar once in a movie and are tunneling your way out of the basement. You’re probably in college or have a job. Whatever the case, you are out of high school, and that can only be in your favor. Not that high school is bad–it’s just that being OUT of it is almost always better. If you are in your 20s and still in high school, then I am not the person to help you.

But okay. We’ve established that you are not in high school, have between zero and some dollars, and may or may not live with your parents. Excellent! Also, you can legally drink (if you are 21 in the US, and anyone anywhere else).

Now my question is: do you WANT to date? Because you don’t have to. You can do other things. It’s not the law. Life is not a sitcom. YOU HAVE OTHER OPTIONS. But I’m guessing you asked because you want to? Maybe?

Because if you do, then what is stopping you? Dismiss any concerns about not having dated yet, because you have been doing OTHER THINGS. You can talk about these OTHER THINGS on your date! Like not being in high school!

Do YOU need love advice? Maybe I’ll do this again. Leave your questions BELOW.

Here, in a nutshell, is what happened. A few years ago, James Frey (author of “A Million Little Pieces,” the book that was claimed to be a memoir, was picked by Oprah, then turned out to be fictional, ending with an appalling session on Oprah’s couch) decided to put together a company in order to grind out YA books. The writers who sign up to this company sign mind-boggling contracts that essentially pay them more or less nothing and offer them zero protection. They might be legal, but they certainly aren’t moral. This story was busted wide open this week. You can read the full expose here, and you can read the actual contract here.

I think that for a lot of people, the initial reaction will be horror at the idea of this “fiction factory.” These sorts of things already exist, and they’re not ALL bad. I speak from experience here. This contract is completely beyond the pale.

Aside from being a huge sloppy mess, this contract is quite specifically designed to hose the writer. The only people who would sign this contract would be people who a). have no knowledge of contracts, or lack the appropriate representation to prevent them from signing such a contract, or b). are simply so desperate or desirous of signing ANYTHING that will get them published that they’d willingly hang themselves out to dry.

How bad is this hosening? Let’s look.

The contract says that the company can give you credit or not give you credit, as it desires. They can force you to write another book, or they can drop you like a hot potato, for no reason.

The contract has no audit provision. What does that mean? It means that they can pay you ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY and you just have to accept that the percentage you’re getting is the percentage you are due, and that you are getting an accurate reporting of the number of books sold. And let me tell you, even on good and honest contracts, human error is common. Companies make mistakes on their reports all the time. It’s not necessarily malicious—things just get messed up. So in James Frey world, his company could provide you with statements saying the book sold one thousand copies and that the advance was fifteen dollars, and you might know that the book has sold many thousands of copies and the advance was a hundred thousand dollars, but there would be nothing you could do about it. You will literally never be able to verify the advance the book sold for, the foreign rights deals, or the sales.

There’s a weird clause about expenses. If James Frey and Co. want to charge you $25 for every staple they use on your documents, they can do it!

I’m not a contract specialist. A contract specialist would probably go on ten times as long. I’m just giving you a few highlights.

I was asked on Twitter: “FatBaldFrank Why do u take offense at Frey’s contract? It’s one-sided, but nobody is forced to work for him, right? Just say no.”

I know where you’re coming from, Frank. I understand that no one is being forced to sign this contract at gunpoint. However, I do take offense at someone who is blatantly and knowing taking advantage of his own people—writers. People whose desire to work in publishing might blind them to the risks involved in signing on the dotted line. Or they might not understand the consequences.

There’s no point in just hand waving about how awful James Frey is, because I seriously doubt he cares. But we can draw some lessons.

The first is for aspiring writers. Don’t sign things you don’t understand. There are plenty of organizations that can help you, such as the Author’s Guild. For people who know the risks but are tempted to sign anyway . . . I’ve been in your position. I know it’s a hard call. But agents can help protect your from predators. There were times, back when I was getting started, when I was offered arrangements that were clearly awful, but they paid, and they offered “a shot.” The person who would later be my agent encouraged me to turn them down, and I did. It was hard at the time, but I have never once regretted those decisions. I celebrate them. Seek good counsel and listen to that counsel. Things that look too good to be true usually are, and uncredited projects with shady paperwork . . . well, those things don’t generally end well. Read this article and take notes.

The second thing is directed at those who run MFA writing programs.

MFA students have probably been hosed already. I’ve written about this topic before. I went to Columbia, where he pulled many of his writers, including the writer of “I am Number Four.” I know how much it costs. I know the sacrifices people make to go there. I still pay Columbia about $800 every month in student loans. I’m one of the few people I know paying off my MFA by working in the profession for which I was trained. If you’re in an MFA program, you’re probably already on the hook for a lot of dough, so if you see a job opportunity in writing, you’ll take it.

I’m going to go one step further and call Columbia and all writing MFA programs on the carpet here—if you don’t offer your students a class or seminar in the business of writing, you should be ashamed. They didn’t offer them when I was there, and I don’t think that’s changed. (If it has, please correct me at once. I’d love to be wrong about this point.)

Look, MFA programs, stop being so snobbish. You’re not making your students better artists by sending them out into their fields with NO KNOWLEDGE of the business side of things. You’re leaving them vulnerable to bad deals, and putting them into a position where they can be taken advantage of. You set up the conditions in which your artists end up slaving away because they didn’t know any better than to sign on the dotted line. You make this James Frey situation possible. Devote a few weeks to teaching your students some survival skills. After all the money you’ve taken from them, they’re going to need to know how to make some more.

In the article, James is quoted as saying, “Andy Warhol’s Factory is an example of that way of working. That’s what I’m doing with literature.”

You’re no Andy Warhol, James. He liked his money as much as you do, and he would probably have had a good and appreciative laugh over the comparison, but you haven’t got his style or his wit. Andy Warhol said cool stuff like, “I like boring things” and “It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor’s finger.” He got why it was funny to make paintings of money and then sell them off. The old shyster had class. You got yelled at by Oprah.

He also said, “I’ve decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.” And when you find a Nico or a Lou Reed or a Candy Darling or a Billy Name or even a Valerie Solanas, then we can revisit the issue.

I realize that a lot of people will say, “But look at all the money he is making! Surely, he must have talent!” Talentless people make money ALL THE TIME. Do you know who’s writing a book now? Snooki. Money is no measurement of talent—it’s a measurement of money. This system isn’t James Frey’s fault. He’s not that important. And unlike Andy, he’s not going to develop the new Velvet Underground—more like Milli Vanilli.

But because he set out to deceive and abuse, on behalf of the YA community, I’d like to politely invite him to blow it out his ear.

I haven’t blogged much is that I’ve been busy writing. That’s the whole explanation.* It turns out there’s only so much I can write before I start shooting off bolts of electricity and laughing like a maniac.** So sometimes I have to make EXECUTIVE DECISIONS in order to stay in optimum running condition. I have no idea if I’m going to blog again tomorrow or two months from now, but I am certainly going to MAKE AN EFFORT to come here more often, because I obviously have THINGS TO TELL YOU. And I’ve missed you. I mean, I’m on Twitter all day long, but still. I can’t really get my ramble on there.

Today, I am going to show you a picture.

This picture is one of the very first—if not the first—picture of me and my (then future) agent, Daphne Unfeasbile.*** It was a long journey from roommate to agent. It took many years. That journey began at a table at a place called “The Scrounge.” That was the actual name of the fast food dining option/meeting place in the student center of our university. I was in the theater group, as were J. Krimble and Daphne, and we spent many, many hours at The Scrounge. Shortly before graduating, Daphne and I happened to be sitting together. I mentioned that I planned on getting a student work permit and going to England as soon as I graduated. Daphne said that she planned on doing the same thing. We decided there and then, in about five minutes, that we might as well live there together.

That was it. That ONE conversation in The Scrounge changed everything. Several months later, we were in London, where we took this picture. It was connected to a letter we were jointly writing to our friend J. Krimble, explaining what we were up to.**** The words “Exhibit D” are written on the back in Daphne’s writing, so we made some mention of it in the letter and I guess. This was sort of pre-social networking, pre-wireless internet, pre-affordable laptops, so we had no computers with us. ***** We also didn’t have cell phones, and our apartment didn’t have cable, so we had a TV with four or five channels. Basically, our contact with others was limited to ACTUAL HUMAN CONTACT. Which mostly meant each other.

THE EXPLANATION

TIME: Approximately eight weeks after leaving college mid-1990s.

SETTING: The kitchen of our apartment in Kilburn, London. We shared a room in the front of the house. The owner of the apartment had the middle bedroom, and some mysterious and kind of hot tattooed guy lived in the back. I remember talking to him exactly once, when he was borrowing some mustard.

SPECIFICS: Daphne is wielding what is obviously a knife. I am wielding either an electric can opener or an electric knife sharpener. I really don’t think that kitchen had a knife sharpener. I think we only had that one knife . . . which does, when you think about it, actually make a case for the knife sharpener, because you’d have to keep it sharp if that was the only one. But still, I am going to go for can opener.

CIRCUMSTANCES: I genuinely cannot remember what SPECIFICALLY caused us to take this photo, but I definitely remember taking it. I can tell you that we were REALLY, REALLY broke. Our major activities, as I remember them, were mooching for free food and looking for spare change, so this really could have been any night at home for us. Also, this apartment was either the most or least safe of any I have ever lived in. The door had this series of three locks that were more or less impossible to open. We tried for weeks to figure out the system and never quite worked it out, so we discovered that the easiest way to get into our room was to crawl over the trash cans and into the front window. That’s usually what we did. So I guess that we decided to do a kind of tribute to the window-crawling thing, except in the kitchen. Or we might have been drunk. Honestly, I have no idea.

EVEN MORE CIRCUMSTANCES: I should also explain our jobs. I had two. During the day, I was a waitress in the financial district, and at night, I was a bartender in Piccadilly. Daphne got a fancy office job as a receptionist in a theater. In fact, it was the theater where Riverdance was playing. Do you know Riverdance? It’s the Irish step dance show where people hop in place for seventeen hours. This was the summer when Riverdance was THE HOTTEST TICKET IN LONDON. Seriously. Riverdance was in the news EVERY FRICKIN DAY.

We used our two jobs as a way of getting by. From my day job, we got the occasional bag of free food. Daphne would come into the pub on nights I was working, because there was really nothing else to do. On nights when I wasn’t working and we couldn’t take any more television, we’d go stand in the tech booth and watch Riverdance. We saw Riverdance A LOT that summer. We had unlimited tickets to the hottest show in town. And let me tell you, once you have seen Riverdance five or seven times, you have REALLY SEEN RIVERDANCE. Riverdance will start pounding in your head like a thousand tiny hammers.

There was also the night of the Riverdance closing party, where we showed up early to try to eat and drink as much as possible before the cast arrived. Daphne and I have jointly sworn not to ever discuss the details of what went on that night, but I can tell you that we were extremely successful in our mission. At one point, I know I was hiding under a set of stairs from one of the Riverdance drummers, who decided he wanted to move in with us for two weeks, and we might have said some inappropriate things to Michael Flatley***** about his hair . . . and then there was the cab ride home, which inspired the dedication of 13 Little Blue Envelopes. But I’ve already said too much.

ANYWAY, what I am trying to say is here is a photo of the two of us at the very start. We couldn’t have told you at the time where EXACTLY we were going to end up, but we knew we were going somewhere. After we moved back to America, we got an apartment together in New York. Daphne got a job at one of the biggest literary agencies in the city, and I started grad school at Columbia. Daphne climbed her way up, I wrote and wrote . . . it would take over ten years from the time that this photo was taken to get us to where we are today.

What’s the point of all of this? Well, first, I would like to give you some hope. Maybe you are in high school or in college, maybe you think to yourself, “Look at me. I am doomed.” Well, look at this picture. Does this look like a photo of a agent and an author? Does it? It does? Well, whatever. The path is often weird, that’s all I’m saying. Look at us and know you’ll be fine.

The second is that the old saying is true . . . your friends really are the most important thing you have. There are a hundred different instances I could name where Daphne has kept me going, or times that we’ve worked together to figure out the way home, or to find a window for a quick exit.

Plus, I think this photo is in many ways a HINT OF THINGS TO COME! There I am lunging for the camera with some unknown object, and there Daphne is, right with me, backing me up with a KNIFE! Which is what she is like as my AGENT! In fact, I think she should really post this on her official site. I think I should campaign her to do so, with the caption “I WILL CUT A %&*#@ FOR MY CLIENTS” written under it. I encourage you to drop her a line and make this suggestion.

So mainly what I am saying is KEEP THE PHOTOS. They may be useful someday.

* My last blog was republished on io9.com, and one commenter described me thusly: “YA girl-adventures author, posting on her monthly professional blog.” This has had me chuckling for weeks. I think “YA girl-adventures author” is supposed to be an insult, because, you know. Young adults. Girls. Who takes either of THOSE groups seriously? And then the idea that I do this monthly by DESIGN? Like, it’s a marketing plan? It brings a smile to my face every time.
** more than normal
*** Daphne is always referred to as such on this blog, but many of you already know that her name is Kate Schafer Testerman. But she is so used to being called Daphne that she will answer to it and even calls her blog “Ask Daphne”.
**** J. Krimble has displayed this photo on his fridge ever since receiving it. You’ll be hearing more about J. Krimble in the next few weeks, as I am PERFORMING HIS WEDDING CEREMONY on August 14th.
***** I know this will make this seem like this must have been taken in YE OLDE DINOSAUR TYMES, but all of those things have really come about—I mean in full, proper use—in the last ten years. And some might say we are STILL waiting for them to come about I full and proper use.
****** Michael Flatley would go on to create a show called FEET OF FLAMES, which should tell you all you need to know. And honestly, his hair is the ninth wonder of the world. If you met Michael Flatley after five glasses of free wine, you’d start talking about it too.

Jo07 asks: what do you do when someone gets you a gift unexpectedly you’ve gotten them nothing?

When I was just a tiny mj, I was pretty good with my homework, generally. But I had a terrible memory for Kindergarten show and tell day. I would always find out about show and tell when we gathered in line to go into school and I would go into a SILENT INNER PANIC about the fact that I hadn’t brought anything. The first time I remember this happening, I yoinked a stick off one of the trees outside—a little bent one. When show and tell came around, I told everyone it was a snake stick. It was what baby snakes used to learn how to crawl. And another time, I found out when show and tell started so I just had to roll with it and show my ARM, like that was what I meant to bring all along. I showed it all around the room and told everyone what I did with it. Pretty slick, right?

This presence of mind is pretty remarkable because, as I was just remembering today, I was a pretty clueless kid. Weird stuff was always happening to me and it’s ONLY NOW that I realize how strange it was. Take, for instance, the bus driver I had when I was in first grade who was this seventy-year old playboy who used to stop the bus and take us into McDonald’s every single morning because he was hitting on the manager, a saucy wench of seventy herself. We were late pretty much every day because of this. I had no idea this was weird!

Or what about the creepy bus driver we had when I was in second grade (once they fired the other guy because he used to take us into McDonald’s every morning without permission and make us late for school), the one who used to have me come and stand BETWEEN THE SAFETY BAR AND HER SEAT to MASSAGE HER SHOULDERS as she drove. I did this! Why? Because some adult told me to. Did I like it? No. But she would always say, “Maureen, come rub my shoulders,” and I would sigh and put down my book and when we reached a red light I was squeeze my tiny body into that space and do her bidding. How did this unspeakably creepy behavior come to an end? That would be when THE BUS CRASHED. Yes, we LOST OUR BRAKES* as we were going down an incline and took out two other cars and there I was squeezed into what was more or less the most dangerous spot possible on the bus. I was still there when the police came on to the bus, and they were like, “What the hell are you doing there?” Let me tell you the one answer a police officer loves to hear from a child: “I was massaging the bus driver.”

Or, when I was in high school, and we had this 23 year-old bus driver who I used to talk to as we were driving around. And then he started asking me out. Every. Single. Day. He was all, “You could tell your parents you’re going somewhere else and I’ll meet you down the street and we’ll go to dinner.” At first, I tried to laugh it off. Then I tried to explain that I was busy, forever. That my parents locked me in the basement. That was allergic to being outside. Anything. This guy would just not stop. So I was telling my friend Betty Vox about it one day in her homeroom and her teacher overheard and she reported the guy. He was so furious at me that he screamed at me for five minutes and then HE RIPPED OUT MY SEAT.

Now, that may sound like a completely irrelevant bunch of anecdotes about my very bad luck with school bus drivers and not an answer to the question of all, but it is, in fact, my way of LEADING you to the answer. What I’m saying is . . . don’t massage the bus driver. Maybe just don’t massage, because 9 times out of 10, that is a creepy offer. Like, if your co-worker in accounting gives you a scented holiday candle, don’t just grab a post-it note and write “GOOD FOR ONE FREE MASSAGE BY ME!” on it and hand it over while making squishy-squishy motions with your hands. Likewise, if someone in your class gives you a gift certificate you weren’t expecting, don’t then ask them out every single day for the rest of the year and then if they complain physically tear their homeroom desk from its moorings and turn it on its side in the back of the room. Or if your friend’s grandmother gives you some homemade cookies, don’t forcibly take her to McDonald’s every single morning at seven thirty and then hit on the staff as she sits there, looking at her hashbrown in confusion. Some people will say these points are self-evident, but not all. Not all. And if I can reach just one person, this blog has done its job.

The stick and arm tricks work pretty well, though. Try those.***

OR! You can give them a FREE SUITE SCARLETT! Always have this link ready.

*vampires?
** This really happened. All of these really happened. In the case of the massaged bus driver . . . it just came up because my mom, who is a school nurse, was telling me about a bus crash at her school today. Luckily, it wasn’t serious and no one was hurt, but she had to deal with it. And I said, “Remember that time my bus crashed?” And she said yes, and how she was so mad because the school or district didn’t TELL her that the bus crashed—they said the bus stalled (which our buses did ALL OF THE TIME). So I got home and told her all about this crash, and she was furious that no one told her and she called the school and complained. And literally the only other time my mom called my grade school and complained was in eight grade when she found out that I knew absolutely nothing about the sea battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack. She’s convinced this is pretty much the most important thing that has happened, ever. Well, I can tell you that I have graduated from college and grad school and I have fancy degrees and I still don’t know %^$# about the Monitor and the Merrimack. So I don’t know what that says about me, or naval history, but anyway, I said, “Yeah, and I was standing between the safety bar and the driver’s seat because she used to make her massage her shoulders . . .” And it was only AS I WAS SPEAKING that it occurred to me just how extraordinarily creepy it is.
*** On second thought, giving parts of your body as gifts might also be creepy. And “snake stick” doesn’t sound much better. Don’t do either of these things.

I am glad you have come to me with this one, James. Perhaps you may think of me as a dashing author-about-town,* but I was not always gainfully employed as a writer. Like many scribblers, I have had many, many jobs, and I am pretty much an expert on how to get them. I have been, in rough chronological order: a Burger King employee, a snack bar attendant, a telemarketer, a nanny, a sandwich-maker, a writing center consultant, a barista, a school secretary, a ball-pen and climbing net supervisor, a caterer, an administrative assistant, a literary manager of a theater company, a bartender, a waitress, a waitress in a haunted house themed restaurant (which is different from just being a waitress, trust me), a fake employee, a rehearsal room and costume attendant, a PowerPoint presentation expert, a speaker’s aide, an in-house dramaturg, a research assistant, a freelance writer, a freelance editor, a layout editor, a writing instructor, an editorial assistant, an “education specialist,” and an editor.

I think I’m missing a few, but that’s about the size of it. I have had a lot of jobs, some good, some bad. Hey, I worked here. And remember the time I told you about this?

Clearly, I know how to get a job. And now, I will pass some of my wisdom on to you. This is a tough economic climate, and I want to make sure that YOU are gainfully employed. Because if YOU are not gainfully employed, YOU cannot buy my books, and I have to go back to one of those other places. And trust me, I am not going back here, even though I still have my nametag.

Now, everything I am about to say only applies if you are trying to get a job where you have to wear a nametag (or a nametag equivalent, such as a themed t-shirt or hat). If you are applying to become, say, the head of cardiothoracic surgery at Boston General, the rules may be different.

I am going to tell you something very, very important—something most people will not tell you. This lesson will save you a lot of time and will help you score the job you are after.

There are only two kinds of bosses.

Type one (kind of rare, but not so rare that you won’t encounter them): people so into the job that they are just hiring because upper management has told them that hiring people is part of their job so they will do it with GUSTO!

Type two (most bosses): people who want someone who will do their job for them. (When I was a boss, this was my type.)

You may think that there are other kinds of bosses, but you would be wrong. There are only two. There are certainly a lot of subcategories like:

- clinically insane boss
- chemically dependent boss
- accidentally promoted boss
- son/daughter of the boss boss
- distracted by personal drama boss
- terrified that people are about to discover his/her incompetence boss
- applying for another job as we speak boss
- involved in an illicit relationship with someone at the company boss
- on the wrong medication boss
- unaware of his/her own ineptitude boss
- thinks you two will be great friends and so keeps telling you things you don’t want to know boss
- suspicious of everyone boss
- sarcastic for no reason boss
- does over of everything you do boss
- actual spawn of Satan boss

Oh, and sure, the occasional good boss.

These are all very popular kinds of bosses, but trust me . . . they are either type one or type two, and everything else is just FLAVOR. You need to figure this out early in the interview. Everything depends on it. I have complied the following list of conversational clues that will help you determine which you are dealing with.

SIGNS OF A TYPE ONE BOSS:

In the interview, this kind of boss will tell you a lot about him or herself and his or her management style and background. You will not have asked, and it will not be relevant. In fact, it will be incredibly awkward.

Let’s say you are applying for a job at a coffee place. A conversation with a type one boss might go something like this.

TYPE 1 BOSS: So, you want to work at my branch of Snarlbluck’s? Well, let me tell you a little bit about what kind of store I run. I’m a really hands on manager. I’m really good friends with all of my employees.

*pause*

YOU: Oh . . . uh . . . great! I like . . . friends.

TYPE 1: (not listening) And I know how to run every single piece of equipment behind that counter. I can do every job. I’ve been with the company since . . . oh, let’s see, since 2006 . . . and I can make every variation of every drink.

*pause*

YOU: Oh, uh . . .

TYPE 1: I’m the kind of manager who expects people to tell me how things are going, and . . .

SIGNS OF A TYPE TWO BOSS

TYPE 2: So you want to work at Snarlbluck’s. Why?

See the difference? The Type 1 boss is off to the races with the personal resume, and the Type 2 boss wants to know, correctly, why in God’s name you would apply to work in this place. And all they want is . . . someone who will do their job for them.

You have about one minute, maybe two, to figure this out.

If the boss in question is a Type 1, getting the job is actually really easy. All you have to do is pretend to listen VERY, VERY INTENTLY to what they are saying. This interview is not about you—its about them. Don’t treat the interview like a job interview—treat the meeting as though you were meeting a foreign dignitary at an embassy . . . someone charming and wonderful. This isn’t about anything so crass as getting a job. No. This is about meeting someone worth meeting. Your application? Let’s not even waste time discussing it. Let’s get back to what’s important. YOUR NEW BOSS.

If you must speak, make sure to pepper your conversation with references to them. Say things like, “You seem like a great person to work for.” “Do you REALLY know how to make every kind of Coffeecino?” Even better . . . quote them once or twice. Ask for clarification on something that they said. “So what did you do when you ran out of large mugs?” you ask. And make your expression mirror theirs. Smile and nod when they talk about their huge success getting corporate to send three extra boxes of promotional hats. Look grave when they tell you the story about the time the credit card swipe on the cash register broke during Christmas season.

But if your boss is Type 2, you are going to have to prove yourself. And what you need to prove is that you are both ready, willing, and able to do their job for them. Because anyone with a grain of sense would rather spend the day talking to friends, reading, or watching cat videos online. They have done their time in the trenches.

It’s a fickle business, this part. Let’s get right to what your new boss is after.

ARE YOU AN IDIOT?

This is question #1. Your application probably doesn’t have much information on it aside from your name, your address, and your school. They are looking at it just to see if you have filled in the right words in the right places, and not, say, drawn pictures of unicorns or pineapples or pineacorns or uniapples. You should get through this part just fine.

DO YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE?

With very few exceptions, experience is completely irrelevant in most nametag jobs. This is awesome news for you! Don’t work yourself into a teeth-grinding frenzy worrying whether or not those three months you spent working in the copy center will be enough for the high-flyers at Snarlbluck’s. It all goes back to the all-important “Are you an idiot?” question. If anything, they will ask just to make sure you weren’t fired for being an idiot. If you did get fired because you made some goofy mistake which you now regret, you sweep in with a “I had to quit because of schoolwork” or somesuch. This will show that while you have been an idiot in the past, you have fixed it now, and you know to make smooth cover statements.

Now, I am not saying YOU should do this, but I got at least six of those jobs on my list above by . . . well, lying is such a harsh word, and as I have told you many times, I do not know how to lie. I do, however, know how to spin a compelling narrative.

I mean . . . here’s a for instance. When I moved here, I was told that it was VERY HARD to become a waitress in New York City and that to get hired you had to have New York City waiting experience. “But how,” I asked myself, “do you get New York City waiting experience unless someone hires you?” It was like that time my mom told me I couldn’t get my learner’s driving permit until I had more practice. The system was against me!

Obviously, I realized, what they were looking for were people who could creatively think themselves around this problem—this minimum wage Schrödinger’s cat scenario. Obviously, what they wanted me to do was construct a resume of experience that was LOOSELY BASED on reality, full of references in another country that I knew they would be too cheap and/or lazy to check. Had I worked as a waitress before? Not in New York, but in London (true!). How long? Oh . . . a while. You know, like how long Edward has been seventeen. Where? I had prepared a well-organized paper full of places and addresses and phone numbers. Preparation! I was not an idiot. Did I actually work at those places? Were they even real? Come now. Let’s not get ourselves all wound up over nothing.

And was a good waitress? Yes! Did I return a large roll of cash I found on the floor, completely as I found it? Yes! Did I steal them blind like everyone else was doing? No! Did I scrupulously check every check to make sure it was accurate? Yes! Did ever rip off a customer, even for a single dollar? A single penny? No!

I was one of the only honest people in the building. All I had to do was convince them to hire me. These are the kinds of paradoxes you have to wrap your head around in order to achieve JOB SUCCESS!

And in several other jobs, when asked if I could do the things I was being asked to do . . . well, in some of those cases, I didn’t even know what those things were and had to Google them as soon as I left. But my answer was always, “OF COURSE I CAN.” And I said it like I meant it. Does this mean that I once almost blew up an entire magazine because the only working copy was kept on the server and could be changed by anyone, at any time (who would do this?) and I did a “change all” and basically blew up the typeface and made the layout explode? Perhaps. Perhaps I did. But I provided ADDED VALUE in many other ways, I assure you.

So, what I am saying? I am saying you must be confident when you are asked what you are capable of!

There’s usually some question in an interview that goes something like, “Why do you want to work at ________.” Unless you are crazy, or deep undercover, or are stalking another employee, the only reason you would want to work at _________ is because you would like to earn some money to buy books and feed your hamsters. And while you’ve considered selling your own organs, a job seemed like the best way of getting that money.

This is why I suggest that you shouldn’t seem CREEPILY EAGER for the job. You should seem practically eager. You should radiate: “I am a normal, non-idiot who wants this job for all the reasons you might expect. I will do it well. But I am not a freak.”

You don’t want to convey, for instance, the impression that you are just someone who really likes to fold sweaters and is just thrilled that there is a place where you can actually get paid to do it, because you have been going to all your friends’ houses and folding their sweaters for years even though they have asked you to stop! And maybe you can just fix that collar? Because your collar is just sticking up a little on the left and it is kind of freaking you out—ha ha!—and you won’t be able to concentrate until the collar is fixed so can we just stop and fix the collar before this goes any further?

This kind of thing puts the interviewer on edge.

I hope this has been helpful! Now get out there and GET A JOB! Feel free to use me as a reference. I am a wonderful reference. Employers love to talk to me!

And remember to buy my books, because a lot of people are counting on you to keep me from coming back to their places of employment. Don’t let them down.

* Though other descriptions might spring to mind.

THE LIFE

Today, friends, I want to pause and reflect on something. This is the 24th day of Blog Every Day in April—an event that kicked off when I causally mentioned on Twitter that I thought it might be good to blog every day in April. I was just sort of talking . . . and by the end of that day, not only was I committed to blogging every day in April, but a few hundred OTHER people were committed to blogging every day in April.

It simply sprouted—this whole community. And now, three weeks in, I have gotten to know several of you. (I may be following you and YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT!)
And hopefully, through BEDA buddies and other means, you have gotten to know each other.

Now, as we go into the LAST SEVEN DAYS of BEDA, I want to hit the reset button. You often have to do this in life—in projects long and short, and in relationships. You take a moment when you’re well into the madness to stop and say, “Let’s go back to the beginning and remember what this is all about.”

So during this last week . . . why not make renew your effort? I’m going to redouble my efforts to read as many blogs as I can. And if you have had trouble blogging every day for the month, why not blog every day for the last week? Why not read and comment on a few extra blogs? It’s only a week . . . and you never know what might come out of it. I didn’t know I would be making so many new friends, or that I would be taking a . . .

Well, let’s get to that, shall we?

THE DEATH

Maybe a week ago, I casually made the bet that if the Suite Scarlett paperback made the New York Times bestseller list, I would take a trapeze lesson at the New York Trapeze School. I said this TO ILLUSTRATE A POINT! That by building in a negative consequence to a positive thing, you feel great if it doesn’t happen! I was TRYING TO PERFORM A PUBLIC SERVICE.

Which was bad enough. And then I went to Las Vegas for the week to speak, and clearly the spirit of the place infected me. I don’t gamble on GAMES OF CHANCE, but I am never opposed to a SPORTING CHALLENGE. Which is why I put out my one day BONUS ROUND, in which I promised to go to trapeze school if you managed to get Scarlett into the top 1,000 on Amazon. Vegas makes you crazy. It makes you spontatnous. It makes you “use” “quotation” marks in “weird” ways.*

The concept of authors staring at the Amazon rank is one that has already been deftly examined by Scott Westerfeld in Extras.** I’ve even discussed it myself here and here.*** But again, I was under the sway of Vegas, the glittering lights and the shiny numbers and everything going BING BING BING all the time. I was also operating under the assumption that not many people knew the book had snuck out a week early, and that this was a fair and pretty safe thing to put out there.

“Oh, who will even notice!” I chuckled to myself. “The book is not supposed to be out until May 1st! It is a sporting lark!”

Honestly, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Oh, sure, I was laughing when it was touching 1,400. “It will get close and back off,” I thought, as I rode home in the taxi from the airport. “Won’t that be funny!”

And then, it updated. And was #673. And then 500 something and 400 something and someone told me it was 300 something while I was sleeping. It hardly matters WHAT it got to, the point is it went under 1,000 which means I LOST.

I mean, certainly I won in the sense that many of you went out and bought Scarlett, and I do love her very much. But I lost in the sense that I CHALLENGED you and YOU WON and now I am going to have to go trapezeing, something I can honestly say was never in my Life Plan. I notice that one of the replies I got from my BEDA-friend Tobias was: “Now I understand why the Romans liked coliseums.” Yes, Tobias, CIRCUSES AND DEATH.

I know that the next big question is going to be: WHEN are you going to die/take this trapeze lesson? It’s important to schedule your own death correctly, so I’m looking over dates now. The most likely time at this second is late May . . . because my agent and several other people are coming to town and they all want to BE THERE to watch me DIE. Even my EDITOR wants to go. So I have to make sure I get the right moment so that everyone can watch the END OF ME.

I also know that people want to see proof. Naturally, this will be provided via video. Possibly several videos. And we’ll have plenty of time for me to build up and have a PROPER nervous breakdown, because it’s no good doing something like this without adequate time to think about your own stupidity, now IS THERE?

God only knows what I’ll do to myself next on Twitter.

But . . . let us go back to the LIFE point. We have a week left to blog every day. And I have just received the first box of Suite Scarlett paperbacks.**** So I am going to give one out to a RANDOM COMMENTER (one on blogger, and one on the Ning). Enter to win by leaving a comment, preferably with an ASK MJ question. Winners announced tomorrow!

* Like you are writing a query letter.

** Many things are examined in Extras, but Scott told me himself that one of the ideas he was riffing off of was a behavior he knew well—authors obsessively checking the Amazon rank. The point is, you should always listen when Scott Westerfeld is talking, because you just might learn something. He should have his own theme music. Like this, but with more hoverboards.

*** It must seem obnoxious to REFERENCE MYSELF. That’s not what I am attempting to do—it’s more that I am trying to avoid repeating myself. With all the blogging this month, I try to keep track of things I have already communicated to you. I want to make sure that I bring you only the FRESHEST information. Also, I am lazy, and linking to myself is easy.

**** At least, I think that’s what’s in the box. I haven’t opened it. Well, whatever it is, two people will win some of its contents.

I’m about to board a plane to leave Las Vegas, but before I leave the city of sin, I make a bet with YOU, dear readers.

A few days ago, I made a stupid pledge to go to the New York Trapeze School if the Suite Scarlett paperback made the New York Times Bestseller list.

Well! The book is now OUT. It arrived a few days early. And since I am in a SPORTING MOOD, I issue a challenge. (Borrowed from my friend Kaleb Nation.) If Suite Scarlett breaks the top 1000 on Amazon today, I accept the trapeze penalty.

This is a ONE DAY BONUS ROUND, purely in honor of the early release and my new VEGAS ways!

What makes it even MORE sporting is that I will be on an airplane for the rest of the day and WON’T KNOW what the outcome is until I land, but I am COUNTING ON YOU not to let me down. I am BANKING on the fact that I am not going to trapeze school.

So, please, whatever you do . . . buy something else. Surely you need another Paper Towns, or Kaleb’s book, or Robin Wasserman’s Skinned, or How to Be Bad, or How to Ditch Your Fairy, or one of Cassie Clare’s books . . . or one of MANY OTHER FINE BOOKS.

Come on, people! SHOW ME YOUR SLACK! Don’t spend any money!

It’s a bet.

Ill be back later with the final chapter of THE TIGER DIARIES, and the OUTCOME of this challenge!

From my window, I can see a fake Manhattan skyline, real desert mountains, the Eiffel Tower, and a pirate ship that periodically explodes. I think I’ve misjudged Vegas . . . this is MY KIND OF A PLACE.

And now, part three of the hastily written TIGER DIARIES . . .

DAY THREE

The morning of day three began with the Secret Service locking us in rooms and generally hassling us left and right while we tried to work. [The former President] was speaking to a group of the executives and signing autographs and rubbing their shiny bald heads or something. This is when I heard the exchange about the tigers over my walkie talkie.

I was tired and hungry. I’d just had the cold coffee with the curdled milk. I was working on three hours of sleep. I noticed that my personality had deteriorated sharply.

The conference itself was starting that day, which meant that long with my hours of prepping the presentations, I had backstage work to do, starting at 10 AM. Which is why I needed to DUDES with the GUNS to let me out of the CLOSET.

The biggest conference room had been transformed overnight. An eight-hundred square foot stage had been assembled there, with an twenty-foot proscenium, three rear-projection screens . . . Once the tech platform with its tables of light and sound control panels and its monitors is up . . . once the room is rigged floor to ceiling with cable, the microphones and amplifiers are in, the lights are hung, the spotlight has been wheeled in . . . once two banquet tables filled with computer equipment are set up behind the stage, and the screens are flashing with test patterns and music is pumping to test the speakers . . . then, it’s not just a conference room. It’s a theater.

Behind the screen, in a pitch-black tangle of wires, platforms, and computer equiptment, there was a table. MY table. On the table was a small red light. I soon got to know the red light intimately, as from that afternoon onward I spent most of my time looking at it. Whenever there was a presentation going on (which was about ten hours each day), I was there. When they needed to change a slide, they were to click their clicker. The clicker was connected to the small box that sat in front of me. When they clicked, a little light on my box turned red. When the light turned red, I clicked the mouse and the slide advanced.

Red light. Push button.
Red light. Push button.
Red light. Push button.

That was my job.

My table looked very fancy. It was heaped with computer equipment, most of which I neither touched nor knew what it was. I worked on two laptops simultaneously, running the presentation on one, and looking at it in outline form on another. On one, I managed the feed to the screen with the red light/push button method. Should that computer have gone down, I was to ask for a screen freeze, which would hold the last image. Then we would disconnect my computer from the feed line, reconnect my second computer to the live line, switch it to presentation mode, and resume the show with no one in the audience any the wiser. (This is pretty much the same technique used in suspense movies, when a photo is taped to the videocamera, or some videotaped footage of the vault is fed in, and the person watching the monitor has no idea the robbery is actually going on.)

So, on day three, I did that for about eight hours, on top of the five I’d put in that morning. The open secret of the evening’s proceedings was that the sales awards would be reveled. Not the recipients—that was coming the next night. Just the awards would be seen. The reps were buzzing with anticipation over this. Every salesperson in the winning region, along with top salespeople from every region would get one of these mysterious prizes. Attendance was going to be good at this evening’s presentation.

I knew what the awards were because I’d seen them coming in through the loading dock. They were arranged neatly in the room next to ours, which had been rented just for this purpose. The party planner, [name redacted], was responsible for arranging the presentation—my boss had only to give the cue to pull back the accordion divider that separated the two rooms, and all would be revealed. We’d heard that the party planner wanted to add to the mystery of the presentation by veiling the prize room with smoke. This meant that the smoke machine had to pump for an hour or more before the reveal. We were getting strong wafts of it backstage, and we were starting to sneeze and cough.

After making the reps sit through the boring technical presentations, the signal was given to reveal the surprise. The wall was opened. Set free, the pent-up smoke overtook the room. If you could see through it, you would have noticed the entire room of new Jaguars. Not live Jaguars, like the live tigers, but cars. About fifty of them.

The smoke kept coming in heavy waves. It filled the room, so the crew opened the doors. Then it snaked along the halls, and began to creep upstairs to the casino. It entered the room where the tigers were still resting and caused a panic. It set off the smoke detectors.

Over the headset I heard my boss say to the party planner, “You told the fire department about this, right? You know you have to clear smoke machines with the fire department, right? So that they know the building’s not on fire, right?”

The answer to all of those questions was no.

So we sat and watched the firemen come and everyone being evacuated. We stayed behind, hidden in the smoke and the wires. We heard the coughing and the mayhem and people yelling things about tigers. Then we watched the party planner get fired. And then we saw ourselves being hired to take over all the entertainment . . .

. . . which may not SOUND like a big deal, but realize that something like a million bucks had been budgeted, and everything was already booked, and we had no real idea WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN at the big show on the next night because the party planner stormed out of the building and refused to tell anyone what he had set up. We only knew we were running it, whatever it was.

Two other facts were soon brought to our attention.

Originally, [a famous comedian] had been hired to perform at the close of the conference the next night. But when [the famous comedian] sat down with the president of the pharmaceutical company that afternoon, his material had been found objectionable. He refused to change a word. By the terms of his contract, he was to be paid no matter what. So his services was deemed unnecessary, and he received his [extremely large sum of money, in the six digits]. This left a huge hole in the schedule. The final act was missing. We had to find a new famous person, probably someone in Los Angeles, to come to Las Vegas THE NEXT NIGHT. This on top of everything else we had to do.

We also learned that the theme of the closing night was circus. A team of chefs and designers were had long been at work. Cirque du Soliel had already been booked, and they would be performing throughout the evening. We had absolutely no idea when they were coming, what acts they were doing, how long they were staying, or what we needed to secure. We got a hint of something about “many explosions,” and then we were left to figure it all out.

Around one in the morning, as I sat working in the now-empty room, I watched a team of handlers pushing the tigers back down the halls. They were followed by another team driving a steady stream of Jaguars down the hallway, out through the service doors, taking the last of the smoke with them. My boss was on the phone to someone in LA and was more or less have a nervous collapse in front of me. I was already feeling the effects of no sleep, but I knew that tonight, there would be none at all. I would be doing the 48 hours straight, and they were probably going to be the most unlikely of my life.

I began to feel extremely underpaid.

DAY ONE AND TWO

The hotel was a tall, golden tower surrounded by pools and gardens. Everywhere there was the smell of fresh flowers, even in the casino, where the smoke was heavy. There were parrots in the lobby. When I bought my Altoids in the gift shop, they removed the plastic wrap for me with a razor, then opened the box and folded back the paper to present the mints to me for inspection and consumption. “Are these to your liking?” they seemed to be asking (the staff, not the mints), and my expression replied, “They are mints, weirdo.”

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from my room. Not much, I guess. The reality of my Vegas hotel room was a shock. It was larger than my entire apartment back in New York. It had a king-sized bed that barely made a dent in the available space. It had an entire wall of tinted glass that looked down on the (obviously) man made eleven acre beach, the lazy river ride and the wave pool, some thirty stories below. There was a stand-alone shower that could be set to an exact temperature and had a phone inside. There was a separate marble whirlpool tub with ANOTHER phone, so you could presumably call from the shower and talk to someone in the tub, if you really didn’t feel like opening the door and projecting across the five-foot gap.

When I first saw all of this, I completely forgot I was there as the hired help. What I didn’t know is that I would never really see this room again. I would never be in that tub. I would never make phone calls from the shower. I would never find out what all those remote controls did. Because soon after I arrived, I got the call to Come Downstairs—and that was that. The die was cast.

Our convention took up a large chunk of rooms on the ground floor of the hotel—big conference rooms that could be expanded or cut off as you needed. We set up our office in a tight, windowless room—actually a storage area for conference supplies.
This was not a conference designed to sell the product. This was a party the sales division was throwing for itself to promote two drugs and to give out awards. My company was one of four that had been hired to put this whole thing together. A conference planner handled all of the transportation and accommodations. A staging company set up two massive rooms of stages and screens. We handled the presentations, the speakers, and the short films. A party planner handled entertainment and dining. So there were dozens of people running this event. The five hundred or so attendees would be flown in, housed, entertained and fed for four days. The guy running all the entertainment, I was told, was a famous incompetent. That fact would become very relevant later. It would rule my life.

But the two first days went more or less according to plan . . . they were just a little bit longer and more intense than I’d been told when I took the job. I would usually arrive in the war room around 5:45 in the morning, crossing through the casino as thousands of Japanese tourists who were wide awake, still on Tokyo time, filled the Kung Pao poker tables. Usually, I walked past several people who were Still Awake and Still Drunk—girls in leather dresses who kept trying to find the ladies’ room, attempting to walk a steady, straight stride on little tiny heels. There were elderly women who rose frighteningly early to play on slot machines.

The early mornings were best, as they tended to be quiet. But by nine or ten, the place would be jammed. A steady stream of doctors and presenters and assistants were beginning to fly in from around the country and around the world. Some had sent their slides in advance so that we could begin cleaning them up for the show, but many had not. It didn’t matter. Even those who had usually arrived with whole new sets to render obsolete the slides we’d been working on for hours. They added graphics which crashed the computers, or changed data, or decided they didn’t like the color.

Many of the doctors that were presenting had groupies—young, beautiful suits who trailed behind them. I saw doctors parading along with up to twelve of these people in tow. The suits laughed at their jokes, sympathized with their delayed flights, screaming with indignation for them when the computer mouse wasn’t to their liking. They would crowd our tiny war room, making it difficult to move or hear do get anything done. I hated them first individually, and then as a group.
We’d work right through lunch and dinner. If we finished work at midnight or one, and we were planning on reopening the war room at five-thirty. That meant—at best—four hours of sleep for me.

More pressing was the food situation.

We were supposed to have catering brought in, but they always forgot our room. We only had coffee and (if we were very lucky) protein bars. However, the caterers were fantastically good at feeding empty rooms. All of those little conference rooms had been booked in case the famous doctors or the people who ran the company wanted to use them, which they pretty much never did. So in the morning, the empty rooms would be fed large breakfasts of danishes and fruit and tarts and cereal, coffee, fresh juices, muffins . . . These would sit until lunch, when they would be removed in favor of trays of sandwiches, chips, and salads. When these went soggy after a few hours, new ones would come.

We were never allowed to touch it. It wasn’t there for us. It was there for He or She Who Had Yet to Come. It was unthinkable that any of the suits ever walk into a room and not have a full selection of untouched platters to choose from.
I accept this for day one and two, and frankly, I was too busy to eat anyway. I sometimes got fifteen minutes to a half an hour as a break, which wasn’t enough time to get back to my room. The walk to the elevators alone took ten minutes. Instead, I would walk along the nearby outdoor path, just outside of the war room, where music dribbled out of fake rocks.

This was Vegas living, I figured. A little short on sleep. A little short on food. Rubber rocks that played U2 and Elvis. The conference was scheduled to start the next morning, and I figured things might loosen up a little then.

I figured very, very wrong.

* The essay was ridiculously long, so I have chopped it into smaller, more digestible pieces. Should you ever want to hear the entire thing, just come over to my house with some cake and I will read it to you.

** Also, I will fully admit that I am doing this kind of QUICKLY today, since it is 10:15 pm and I am not in ANY WAY packed or prepared for the plane I have to catch at the crack of dawn tomorrow. So please BE KIND to this blog. Also, part three gets better.

*** OH MY GOD I AM SO NOT PACKED. WHY AM I GOING BACK TO VEGAS????? *fear*

“Hey,” she said, “guess what I just found out?”

This conversation could have gone a lot of ways.

“If someone rips off your thumb,” she said, “or, you know, it comes off . . .” She waited for me to nod. “ . . . it turns out, they use your big toe. Weird, huh? Well, happy holiday!”

Now, as it happens, I had heard of this, because my mom is a school nurse and she occasionally has to deal with a lost digit or two. “So I had to run down the hall with my flashlight when I already had an office full of kids,” she’ll say. “Those boys in that shop? They think they’re so big and tough. But as soon as someone gets a middle finger ripped off in a motor, you should see their faces. It was hard just to get one of them to hold my flashlight while I fished it out.” The implication being: They act like they’ve never seen a severed finger before.

Still, it seemed an odd thing to just say to someone standing around on a train on Easter morning.

Friends, I have to admit something. While I am generally very pro-holiday, I have never been able to get behind Easter. I have my reasons. Here they are.

1. It moves around too much

I realize Easter is not the only shifty holiday. Thanksgiving, for example, is on different dates each year—but always on the third Thursday in November. Easter is DEVIOUS. It flickers between March or in April. That can be a whole different SEASON here. It could be a winter snowstorm. It could be a blazing hot spring day. It has no seasonal identity.

2. I don’t eat ham, or lamb, or any of those rhyming meats

In fact, I don’t eat any meat at all. I have been meatless for many years now. And don’t get me wrong! I am all about making awesome vegetarian food for the holidays. But when you are vegetarian on Easter, people often make you . . .

3. EGGS

Eggs . . . are my kryptonite. And Easter is a holiday built all around them. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THEM. You decorate them. You eat other forms of candy in the shape of them. (Robin Wasserman was scandalized to find out that I cannot even take Cadbury crème eggs, because it’s just sick and bizarre in my mind to eat something that has been designed to look that much like an egg. Why not just make candy that looks like a war wound? Who had this terrible idea?)

The only activity that’s ever really planned is an EGG HUNT. The last thing I want to hunt for in the entire world . . . is an egg. I thoroughly approve of taking eggs out of your house and hiding them, never to be found again. But to go looking for them! MADNESS!

And yes, when you finally get to dinner—often the most awesome part of any holiday—there is invariably some egg dish that a well-meaning person has prepared for the non-meat types. And I go green in the face. And I die.

“But the CANDY!” you say, not unreasonably. “What about the CANDY???”

I hear you on the candy. I do. But the fact that you get some candy doesn’t really make up for the rest of the day. I mean, you get candy on Halloween too . . . but Halloween would STILL be awesome without it. The fact that you also get candy just gold-plates it.

And, honestly? Easter is when the crap candy comes out. The aforementioned crème eggs. Peeps. Jellybeans. Crusty, colored sugar lumps all. The truly superior candy (by this, I of course mean tiny chocolate bars) is generally the providence of Halloween. I don’t know why this is. I don’t make the rules. That’s just usually the way it goes.

I know these are strong views. I know that Peeps devotes are reading this in shock. But I think, Peep friends, that you must admit that Peeps are just old marshmallows covered in even more sugar. And how can you trust any candy that can be stored for ALL OF TIME and taste essentially the same, maybe just a little crispier?

Easter is also the only holiday I’ve spent in the hospital. (The time I ended up in the emergency room after sticking paper up my nose doesn’t count, as that was on Christmas Eve, not Christmas.) When I was six, my cousin hit me between the eyes with my Barbie sportscar (by accident) and I woke up the next day unable to see correctly. I can’t even remember what was wrong with me, but I do remember that it rained all day . . . WHICH IT OFTEN DOES ON EASTER.

I hate to be down on any holiday. You know I love them. I get behind my festivities! But Easter is just not as good as the others, and it’s best to be honest. And it does have good things, like flowers and rabbits. But really, flowers are a spring thing, and I already control all the rabbits.

Speaking of, my rabbit is out. You know it’s my rabbit because it looks like this:

The rabbit is a relative of the stocking that also belongs to me:

I’ll be back tomorrow with MORE BLOG, and perhaps you will join me for the LIVE BLOG TV SHOW at 6pm New York Time. Last time, I got pranked, climbed out of a window, and did some matchmaking. Who KNOWS what will happen tomorrow! See you at 6!