If a cow ever got the chance...

At work. I am scheduled to leave at 4, but Cyril must work until 5:30 and we're supposed to see this Frida Kahlo/Diego Rivera exhibit tonight; therefore I must wait out this inconvenient chunk of time. Suppose I could go shopping, but there is absolutely nothing I need. Also it's like nine degrees outside. All in all, I'd rather stay here with my beloved Internet.

Every day this week I've talked to one particular author, and every day he says he's sending me the photos for his big dumb book (he doesn't use that phrasing to describe it): "Oh, yeah, they're sitting right here in a pile, I'm going to FedEx them to you today and you'll have them tomorrow morning!" This is the third day he's said that. I am becoming slightly dubious. The book itself is the suckiest bunch of suck that ever sucked (to paraphrase Homer Simpson)... I can't divulge any identifying details, but my company is definitely trying to cash in on the post-9/11 wave of patriotism--about a year too late.

I have trouble talking to authors when I don't like their book, which unfortunately is most of the time. (I don't have a choice of what I work on--it's all assigned more or less arbitrarily.) It's not so bad when it's just another revised entry in some series destined for the offices of high school guidance counselors everywhere... but some of our books really are labors of love. When you know that something was done to the best of someone's ability, and it still comes out like a sixth-grade book report copied from the Encyclopedia Britannica with minimal comprehension on the part of the transcriber, it becomes difficult to look that person in the (figurative) eye. And they inevitably want to know how you liked the manuscript. As a result, my conversations with authors are frequently filled with long, embarrassed silences. I need to work on a good line of patter, or at least think of some convincing all-purpose adjectives like informative or gripping.

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