TJ Dietderich and Her Many Exploits

Have you heard? Working your nine to five is literally killing you dead. Thanks to the Daily Mail for, as always, not blowing things out of proportion.

But the truth is that flacks like us spend 75% of our waking hours sitting in front of our computers, doing our flacky thing. And no matter how you slice it, that can’t be healthy.

For the past year, I’ve been fighting a dull pain in my mouse arm that’s probably the beginnings of carpal tunnel. I’ve found these exercises to be really helpful in lessening the pain if I do them every day:

And if I forget to stand up and stretch (and I will) then I try to take mental breaks. Or coffee breaks. Or LOLcat breaks.

He appears on my doorstep in the most dramatic way possible, soaked from the snow storm and holding a bouquet of my favorite Red Vines.

“I told you it was over, Apple,” I say, grabbing the licorice out of his hand (because they are crazy delicious). “Why must you keep opening these old wounds?”

“But I’ve changed,” he whines. “I’m different! I’m the way of the future.”

“Yeah, I saw. iPad. Way to open those flood gates.”

“Laugh all you want, but you know you’re intrigued,” he says. And he’s right. Damn him, but he’s right.

“We can’t do this!” I cry, turning away in anguish. “We’re too different. It was fun while it lasted, but you believe in DRM and I’m open source.”

“You say that now, but you and I had something real! When you open up that MacBook Pro, you forget all about Linux and XP; I see it in your eyes,” he pleads.

“Your UI is ridiculously intuitive,” I murmur, vacillating in the hallway (which is luckily cushioned).

“Give me a chance,” he says softly. “Give us a chance.”

“But the Nook has sharing capability, and he would treat me right. A-and my netbook, he’s always taken care of me. Apple, I love you! I admit it, I love you desperately!” I fling myself into his arms. “But it would be folly! You would break my heart once more.”

Darkly, Apple says, “And you’d go running back to your Toshiba, I suppose.”

“I know he’s too old for me, but he’s comforting! Plus his file conversion software is far superior to yours, no offense.”

None of that matters when Apple finally kisses me. As we part, he says, “Give in to your desires. Stand in line for 48 hours for me.”

“No,” I say, tears in my eyes, “you’re just too expensive.”

“But my price point is lower than you imagined!”

“Not if I want 3G!” I scream, pushing him away. “And I do, Apple. I do want 3G. I want all 64 GB. I want all of you to myself, or nothing at all. So please. Go.”

“But–”

“Go,” I whisper, gently pushing him out the door and closing it with a click of finality.

I stand there in silence for a moment, and then I hear Android emerge from the bathroom. “TJ? Was someone at the door?” she calls.

“I told them we didn’t want any,” I lie quickly. My heart is pounding in my chest. The Red Vines are still in my hand.

I dispose of them before Android can see, but Apple’s proposition is still ringing in my ears. I could go wait in that line come springtime; Android would never find out. But will I?

Only time will tell.

Photo CC MarketingFacts on Flickr

Yes, it’s all very annoying, I know. I mention Stephen Fry far too often for it to be healthy. I very rarely have an original thought about anything, unless it has to do with Spider-Man. And I certainly am an absolute pillock for linking to this video.

But it’s a brilliant and thoughtful look at why we do what we do online (and throughout history), and you’ll at the very least feel smarter by watching it.

And a slightly messily edited second part.

Those of us in NYC couldn’t help but hear about the scandal involving H&M and trashed unsold clothes. Lots of people were upset, and for good reason. There’s no point in destroying perfectly good clothing when so many people are in need.

But if you’re angry now, then whoa, get prepared to have your head explode. The book industry does the same thing.

I know! It’s crazy for normal people to hear, but the shelf life of a book at your local B&N is much less than that of a sparkly coat at H&M. Typically a new book is in stores for a few months, tops. Then unsold copies are sent back to the publisher for a refund or sold to deep discount stores. If the books are mass market paperbacks and the store wants to send them to the publisher, the store will rip the front cover from the book and send that back as proof that the copy had not been sold. The books are then destroyed.

(That’s why lots of paperback books have a legal warning inside that says you shouldn’t buy it if it’s missing its cover.)

Even mass-market books are often over-printed, resulting in thousands of copies being made into pulp. It’s a horrible waste that drives up the average cost of books everywhere.

Should you be furious about that waste? Sure! But then you’d also have to be angry about hotels that replace the toilet paper rolls even when only half the roll is used; restaurants that serve free ice water sans request; Disney World, which replaces all its lightbulbs when they have 20% life remaining. These are all resources that someone, somewhere, really needs.

We’re a wasteful culture. Giving unsold coats to homeless people is the more obvious connection you can make, but I bet if you think about it you’ll see hundreds of other chances you have to conserve important stuff.

In conclusion: bring on the paperless book. I will now duck all tomatoes thrown by people obsessed with sniffing binding glue (AKA the “but I love the way books smell” argument.)

Photo CC Photos8.com

While I was home for Christmas, my mom, an 8th grade schoolteacher, complained that her kids “didn’t know the names of anything.” They couldn’t identify a cabbage palm from a coconut palm, a mockingbird from a sparrow, was her example. This was part of a larger complaint about her kids not having any natural curiosity, but also for the lack of conversation between adults and children that fosters a question-and-answer type thingy. While knowing the name of a palm tree may not seem like the most important thing in the world, it occurs to me now that it is.

There’s a belief in a lot of cultures that knowing the name of something, of being able to name it, is immensely powerful. OK, I may have actually just seen that Doctor Who episode where they fought witches, but whatever. It sounds like something that’s true. Naming something means you know what it is, and that’s certainly the first step.

The process of assigning words and identities to objects is something my more linguistically minded peeps can speak to; it’s very complicated, you know, how we all started calling a tree a tree. We could have just as easily called a tree a boot, and then where would we be?

I spend an inordinate amount of time in my day combing through words, so maybe I’m more sensitive to the naming process than others, but I think it’s pretty awesome. We’re lucky to have English. We have way more words than we really need, a word for every subtly, every nuance. (See what I did there?)

This is all to say: fight on, natural curiosity. Keep storing those names for me, brain.

Photo CC thesix on Flickr

Sometimes I see something an online friend of mine has tweeted or blogged, something I don’t personally agree with. It could be an innocuous thing like “Man, I really love pickles!” And I think to myself, grrrr, I hate pickles! Why am I friends with this person? Then I find myself on the verge of unfollowing/deleting their RSS feed from my Reader/casting them into the online unknown whence they came only to remember, oh wait, I don’t have to agree with everything my friends say. Pickles are a stupid example; sometimes it’s more important (seemingly) like a business practice or technological prediction.

Before the last presidential election, I had a friend who refused to vote. “There are some things that both candidates say that I don’t like,” he said. Well, hell, I said, there won’t ever be a candidate who believes exactly what you believe. We’re all incredibly complicated; it’s not realistic to expect all your stances to be represented by one candidate. “Then I won’t vote,” he said, “because I won’t compromise my beliefs by choosing the lesser of two evils.”

(Have you ever noticed that people who don’t have sound, logical arguments often fall back on platitudes and cliches? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend;” “fences make good neighbors.” ARGH! Do your own thinking!)

It’s NOT choosing the lesser of two evils, I said. It’s realizing that you can’t be president. You would be an awful president. You also cannot have your clone be president. Those are the rules! Man up.

I tell this long and rambling story because, just like you can’t vote for your clone to be president, you can’t befriend your clones. I mean, you can, but then you’re one of those creepy celebrities who use bottle service at bars. Normal, well-rounded people should surround themselves with lots of dissenting voices and diverse people, right?

So it’s all right, person I’m following on Twitter who likes pickles! Rest easy, blogger who can’t stand British comedy. I started following you for a reason that was much more important than our small differences, and until the scales tip and that reason is no longer enough, I’ll let all these little things go.

Photo CC freeparking on Flickr.

I’m pathetically late in checking in to this blog after the holiday but whattayagonna do? I would say it’s my New Year’s resolution to blog more regularly, but I think we all know what sort of lie that would be: bald-faced and blatant.

So here is my ideas for a little personal project in the coming year!

I’d like to track every purchase I make in a way I’ve never done before. Starting this week, I’m going to be keeping a log of everything I buy and how I first heard about it (if it’s a new-to-me product) or how I decided to purchase it again (if it’s an old-to-me product). The thought came to me as I was googling some winter-weather tights a friend had talked about on Facebook that pretty much everything I buy is a direct influence of online word of mouth. I have no idea if this theory is true and I would like to test it. Boring stuff like food and toilet paper don’t count, though. That’s just too boring even for a data dork.

This project will have two useful outcomes: I’ll be able to see where I am most influenced, and I will hopefully learn to spend more smartly. Mostly, though, I just want to remember why I do the things I do.

Welp! That’s my new thing. What’s yours?

Photo CC DarrenHester on Flickr

I’ve noticed a trend since becoming An Adult. Most of my contemporaries and colleagues have succumbed to an unusual disease: an inability to feed themselves, glance away from their computer monitors every hour or so, and get a good night’s sleep.

Maybe it’s just the PR industry, but I hear the same story from my friends in other sectors: “I just don’t have enough time to grab lunch/stretch my aching muscles/sleep for more than 20 minutes a night. I’m An Adult. I’m very busy!”

Yes, we’re all busy. The recession has meant, frankly, that we have fewer people doing twice the amount of work in most offices. We’re all swamped. But eating and sleeping are two of the most basic life functions. Do you seriously want your flack to be working on an empty stomach and no rest?

Think of it this way: not only will the work of the starving and sleep deprived suffer from these physical ailments, but it demonstrates a real lack of–how to put it?–long term planning. If I were in charge of a large staff of employees, I would want them to have the mental agility to fit the most important necessities of life into their day. Otherwise, they must not be very good at prioritizing, right?

It’s been touted as a very American attitude, this “I’m such a hard worker that I will risk running my body and my mind into the ground to complete my tasks” game plan. Those of you who read Orwell’s Animal Farm in middle school might recall the immortal words of Boxer the horse (”I will work harder!”), who was worked to death and then callously made into glue.

I’m not saying hardworking PR pros are going to be made into glue by their unfeeling corporate masters. (As a race, flacks make very poor binding materials. Our bones are just too fragile, I think.) And I’m not saying that the ethics of hard work and determination should be cast aside; I come from a long line of people who worked themselves to death. I love a bit of elbow grease and obsession, but there should be a limit.

Eat a sandwich when you’re hungry. Go to bed when you’re tired. Our jobs are stressful enough, and it doesn’t help matters to pretend we’re working in a nuclear power plant or an open heart surgery theater.

Photo CC HBart on Flickr.

Those who know me or know of me or have only a passing knowledge of my existence know that my hero is Stephen Fry, British comedian, actor, writer, Twitterer, and all around good egg. He will be signing books on Monday at Idlewild Books in NYC.

I love books, but book signings have always made me uncomfortable. Standing in a line, waiting to get to the author’s table, making weird chit chat, and for what? A book with a signature somewhere inside it? I don’t really need the physical artifact; I’m not a collector.

As a result, the only book signing I’ve ever been to was two years ago in Cambridge, MA. Joss Whedon was signing at a comic book store. I stood in line for nearly 4 hours, happily. I saw the hundreds of people who had piles and piles of merch for Mr. Whedon to sign, and all the questions they had, and all the pictures they took with him. I told myself that when I reached the table, I would politely place my single comic book before him and say, “Hello, thanks so much for coming here. Could you please sign this for Tony with a Y? He’s my best friend, and he loves Buffy so much. It was our favorite show, and I want to thank you for making it.” Then accept the signed comic and quickly step aside, because he’s a busy man.

None of that happened. I got to the table, dropped my comic on the ground, recovered it, was asked to whom he should make it out, and then mumbled nothing English. Which is ridiculous, because I bet it gets really old, to see people act like that in your presence.

So without further ado, here are TJ’s Top 5 Tips on How to Conduct Oneself During a Book Signing.

1. Mention the weather. That’s right, I may be standing in front of someone who can call up the Queen of England just to say what up, but I am so unconcerned. I’m more worried about the possibility of snow.

2. Compliment a tie. Oh, there will be a tie. God, I hope there’s a tie. And it probably will be smashing. That’s pleasant chit chat, right? Should refrain from asking the natural follow-up: “Where did you get it?” That might sound stalkerish.

3. Don’t dawdle. Surely there will be thousands of people standing in line behind me, for I plan on being one of the first in line and I don’t want to be rude to all the losers who wandered in at ten till. I’ll exchange a few pleasantries and then I’ll skeedaddle.

4. Buy lots of things. I already have a copy of Stephen Fry in America; I had it shipped from the UK last year like a true Trufan. But I’d feel weird going to the signing and not buying anything, so that is what I will do. I wonder if it would be awful to also ask him to sign my October 08 issue of Radio Times? Or his novels? Oh, I don’t want to be That Guy with 12 different things that need signing; how tedious. OK, maximum two things that will get signed, yes? One must practice self-restraint.

5. Only ask for a photo if other people are doing it. I’d kick myself if I didn’t get any hard evidence of what might be my best day ever, but I don’t want to pull out a camera if no one else does it. Normally I wouldn’t worry; Mr. Fry is a celebrity and people take pictures with celebrities, right? But I don’t know what the demographic at this book signing will be. He’s more of a British celeb, so will the fans at the bookstore be mostly expats, scholars, and the elderly? Will they even own cameras? We shall see.

I’m so excited to go to Idlewild on Monday. Stuff like this is what makes the city so great! Wish me luck.

Totes Fine Image CC from Wikimedia.

Today is my 8th annual Fake Birthday, my favorite day of the year. Because I was born very near Christmas, I always got shafted on presents and parties. It’s hard to get your friends together when everyone’s out of town for the holidays, you know. Also, all my birthday gifts were wrapped in snowflake paper.

This can all go under the heading of #firstworldproblems, I guess?

Anyway, eight years ago I very proactively noticed that my college had accidentally entered December 2 as my DOB on its paperwork, not December 20. Genius, I thought. This is a MUCH better birth date. And so it’s stuck.

Fake Birthday is different from a Real Birthday, though. One of the tenets of Fake Birthday is that I give gifts to y’all, not the other way around. After all, I’m just lucky enough to get ten people in a room at some date in December without calling a business meeting; I don’t really need pressies.

So go ahead. Ask me for a gift. I’ll do my very best to find it for you! (Note: “it” may be a Google Image of “it”)

Image CC Jessica N. Diamond on Flickr