public transportation survey question

If it's open, do you take the seat next to the cute guy/girl?

wilful abandonment

Latest thing for an unoccupied mind to obsess over (besides roaches ... omg they are EVERYWHERE): abandoning a book.

Actually not even as interesting as that. I have no issue abandoning a book I feel I can no longer read. Here's my pathetically uninteresting dilemma: if I've abandoned a book, how much of it must I have read in order to justify saying "I read that, but couldn't finish," versus "I only started it"?

Typing this out makes me feel even more pathetic. What's even worse is that my reason for wondering is my little books page, where I list what I've been reading. I don't even list it for other people to read. I put it there entirely for my own purposes. And why does my "books" page make me wonder about this abandonment thing? -- oh, I am feeling more ashamed with each passing word -- because I am agonizing over whether the Ethical Book Gods allow me to put "Sabbath's Theater" on my list.

I did a lot of internal wrestling over whether to give up on "Sabbath's Theater." In fact, I started wrestling around page 100, and if I hadn't wrestled so long, if I hadn't agonized over the decision, I wouldn't have read twice that many.

But I couldn't bear the thought of giving up on book number two of my "familiarize myself with Roth" summer reading list (or three, out of Roth overall). Especially since I'd spotted Sabbath on some "best" lists recently -- though I can't say why.

ARGH except I can't say "I can't say why," because I didn't finish. I haven't earned the right. How EXASPERATING.

I ultimately did abandon the book (a little over halfway through) because I couldn't see it going anywhere, I found no meaning in it for me, and though I could almost feel it mocking me with its "there is no meaning, that's the point!," I decided, F it.

The near-constant pornographic sex didn't put me off. It reminded me of the time there was a last-month's Penthouse Letters sitting behind the counter of the bookstore I worked in, intended (but for its cover) for the trash; reading it was how we killed time that day. I was pleased that Mickey Sabbath sex wasn't really any more academic-sounding than that (Roth subjected us to that later, with Coleman Silk and Faunia Farley).

Nevertheless, when I quit around page 250, with 150 still to go, I couldn't see the point. There had to be some reason for writing all that sex in. There has to be a reason for something being a part of the text; it wasn't an accident; and yet, why? I wasn't shocked, I wasn't offended, but why? (And if you haven't read "Sabbath's Theater," this isn't a trivial question; the vast majority of words depict sex acts.)

It didn't seem to me that the book was about sex, so maybe a better question would be, instead of "why all the sex," "why so little of anything else?" He gets laid a TON, but is still depressed: so what. He has known and slept with all sorts of women: so what. He has had many types of relationships: I don't care. He is Jewish and was raised in Jersey: big surprise, Philip. He is a former puppeteer: what the hell? In all honesty, I couldn't figure out what the book was about, and by the time I stopped reading it I had long ceased caring.

When I was updating my books page, I guess I decided that I had too many opinions about "Sabbath's Theater" not to put it on, and I found cheap reasoning in having read more than half. The only other abandoned book I ever put on the list was "On the Road" ... after a hundred or so pages, I felt completely justified calling it an insufferable bore. So there they are. I couldn't tell you how either of them ends, but ultimately I just don't want to forget having read (some of) them.

anonymomynomous

Over the long holiday weekend, which I spent visiting my mother in Cincinnati, her boss and his wife took us (my mom, my younger sister, my boyfriend and me) to dinner. He, my mom's boss, the dean of her church, was an interesting and kind conversationalist, and made sure to learn from each of us newcomers where we were from, and what we did for a living.

Upon hearing that I work in HR, he brought up a recent awkward conversation he had with an applicant for an interim position at my mom's place of work. The applicant had made a misstatement on his resume which the dean verified to be inaccurate and then carefully confronted him about.

After this story, my mother or sister, I forget who, mentioned that some employers google their applicants, and read their websites, or blogs, or MySpace pages, and use what they find to influence their hiring decisions.

Although of course this isn't surprising in the least, I had never thought about it before, and I am again relieved for having kept my last name clearly out of the way of anything I've got online. Er, particularly that post about how I lied to get out of a horrible job.

Still, this bothers me, for two reasons. One, there are companies that perform background checks to verify statements on resumes and check past employment, education, criminal record, etc. -- and using Google is just dodging cost. I'll grant that for small firms who truly use it for fact-checking, but not for large firms, and not for searching out personal information.

Which brings me to Two, personal information should be off-limits. There's a reason for employment application forms, and that's to make the applicant divulge all information relevant to employment. Generally speaking, if it's not on the application, it's probably not relevant, and it's none of the employer's business. There's also a reason my resume is on Monster, not MySpace, and that's that my professional and personal lives are, by and large, separate.

The idea just grates.

PS: If there is a real person out there named Kate Kinks, I'm really sorry; no one is ever going to hire you because they will all think you once told a boss you were pregnant and had to quit so you could go back to your parents' home and get an abortion. Whoops.