Month: February 2010

>Struggling with Computers

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

>Technology doesn’t like me. Back at Cornell, I once managed to destroy both of our departmental copiers. And I did it twice. And it all happened in the space of an hour. So I was not very surprised to discover that over the winter holidays the hard drive of my work computer had “melted” (according to our IT specialist) for no apparent reason. I requested a new computer (which I am owed as per the conditions of my employment). The IT person reformatted the part of the hard drive that hadn’t melted, instead. Needless to say, it took the computer less than a week to stop functioning.

After I reported this disaster, it took the IT person until the day before yesterday to walk to my office with a new computer. Everybody knows that IT people have a tendency to get distracted very easily. Still, he did install a new, out-of-the-box computer on Wednesday. The next day (which ws yesterday) I came to work 2 hours early in order to prepare my classes for next week. My goal was to get all the work out of the way and have an uninterrupted 4-day-long weekend. When I came to work, however, I discovered that my “new” computer was dead.

Not only was I annoyed, I was also very bored. There is really nothing to do on campus at 7:30 in the morning if you have no computer.

When the IT person finally showed up, he started reinstalling (or whatever, I’m not good with the terminology) the computer. When I came to my office after teaching all my classes, I discovered that the computer was, indeed, working. The only problem was that something happened to the screen resolution and after five minutes of working on the computer I was on the verge of going insane. It turns out that the IT person connected a wrong monitor to this computer. How he thought I would be able to work on it is beyond me. We all know, however, that IT people have very weird ways of thinking about things.

Now he tells me that when I come back to work on Tuesday the computer will be in a working condition. Yeah, right. I’m so not going to work without bringing my own computer.

P.S. My home laptop also started acting up. But I think I managed to repair it. I won’t go into the endless story of how long and painful the process was but it kind of seems like it worked. I feel very proud of myself. Maybe now I should take the job of installing my office computer into my own hands.

>Living Oprah by Robyn Okrant: A Review

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

>A review from an anonymous guest blogger:

I must admit I was excited when I downloaded Living Oprah on Kindle. I was anticipating one of two things: either a very easy unpretentious read with humorous anecdotes (along the lines of Confessions of a Shopaholic) or more of an investigative account analyzing the Oprah phenomenon from a critical standpoint (along the lines of Selling Sickness).

Well, a few pages in I realized that the book was neither. It was just a big yawn of predictable jokes and the author failing to explain what the point of her project actually was. Is she a crazy Oprah fan? Apparently not (at least she says she isn’t, despite her countless recounts of how admirable, wonderful and inspiring Oprah is). Is she a critic ready to discuss openly the negative impact an Oprah-type show can have on its audience? Once again, hardly. Rather, the author positions herself as an intellectual who is above dressing up (sports bras and granny panties being her underwear of choice), an avid feminist (despite feeling a sense of trepidation before asking her husband’s permission to embark on the project and going as far as doubting that her marriage will last through the endeavor. Umm, dramatic much?) and certainly not a fame seeker (after an extremely long explanation of why she wanted to remain anonymous, the author concedes to revealing her name for the sake of being interviewed). I was confused! But worst of all, certainly not entertained.

I will give you a couple of examples. Even though I could go on and on, I do not want you to experience the same sense of boredom to which I subjected myself.

The author makes fun of Oprah’s suggestion that she purchase a pair of leopard-print flats. By making fun of it, all I mean to say is that she tells us she laughed at the suggestion hysterically. Ok, funny. Yet, further on in the book she falls in love with the shoes. Umm, I kept wondering: what was the point of that story?

The author makes fun of Oprah’s fans who nearly worship her and go into a frenzy at her shows. She attends one of the tapings and stresses and underlines endlessly how different she is from all those other fans. Yet, she describes the overwhelming feeling of excitement she, too, succumbed to at the show. Ok, what was the point of this story?

She seems to criticize Oprah’s suggestions to renovate, remodel and engage in other home-improvement projects. Yet, when she follows all these suggestions, she seems happy with the result.

She seems to criticize Oprah’s constant dieting projects. Yet is really excited to have lost weight and shares several pictures of herself in a bikini to prove the point.

The author tries to show that watching every single episode of Oprah alienated her from her friends and loved ones. In order to prove the point, she tells us about her family’s Thanksgiving dinner where she had to go upstairs to watch a taped episode of Oprah while her family was downstairs laughing and enjoying the holiday. Ok, again I am confused. What was the rush of watching the episode at that particular time? It was taped anyway. Well no, I do get it. It was a far-fetched attempt at creating drama and showing how hard the project was.

I forced myself to read the book to the end. I was curious to read the author’s conclusion. After all, she spent 365 days following Oprah’s every word of advice. So, is Oprah’s show a god-send or an evil creation? Is following Oprah’s suggestions detrimental or a great idea? But no, the conclusion is not about that. Actually, it’s not about anything. It goes on and on to tell us how happy the author is living her own life and not following someone else’s advice (again, despite the author’s countless examples of her million-and-one insecurities listed throughout the book). I have one word to summarize my impression of Living Oprah: blah.

From Clarissa:

I have to confess that I was the one to recommend this book to the reviewer (without having read it.) I’m interested in this type of books (although not enough to read them myself :-)) because they represent a curious social phenomenon. One of the prime examples of this phenomenon is Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. A blogger decided to follow Julia Child’s recipes within a year and blogged about it. The experiment was so successful that it turned into an inane book and an equally inane film based on it. Robyn Okrant decided to do something even easier and simply attached herself to the image of wildly popular Oprah Winfrey.

Many people decided to do something similar and start some kind of project that would later morph into a book over even a movie. This is the book equivalent of reality TV shows. For the most part, even when the original idea is not bad (like in Living Oprah), the authors lack even the most basic sense of humor and intelligence that are needed to make the project a success.

Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts.

People readily turn away from the unhospitable reality, where achieving fame and fortune requires hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, and plunge themsmelves into the world of make-believe, where they are entitled to everything just because. As a result, the publishing market will keep saturated with insipi books like Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk.