(no subject)

I am really not sure I can finish the book I'm reading, Patricia Cornwell's "Portrait" of Jack the Ripper, in which she purports to solve the case and points the finger at a killer. I'm halfway through it and I've lost any respect I had for her ability to coherently support a thesis (which, okay, was none since I've never read her work before, but still).

I mean, I want to finish it so that I can do a really thorough review, and because she has some Theories that she hasn't yet trotted out, but I'm halfway through the book and tired of reading fallacy after fallacy. I mean, I hung in there with her half-baked suppositions and incredibly long-odds circumstancial evidence because (so she said in chapter one) she had DNA proof that Walter Sickert is Jack the Ripper. Okay, I said, I can accept the rest of your theories if you have DNA to back it up.

But, um, her DNA proof....well, isn't. If anything, the DNA evidence she has proves that Whistler -- yes, that Whistler -- is Jack the Ripper. Of course, she buries the actual evidentiary discussion in the middle of a chapter, about 160 pages into the book.

It is often said that every journalist has one good novel in them, and it should stay there. I think the reverse is also true -- novelists, by and large, should not write nonfiction unless they've done a lot of it. You can assert a thesis by writing a story, but you can't prove a thesis the same way you write a story -- or at any rate, you can't prove it to me.

Bad Patricia Cornwell. No biscuit.

(no subject)

Well, that's settled :D Tomorrow I offically begin moonlighting as a secretary Site Aide.

Thank you all for your helpful comments, they really did give me some more perspective on the problem. I ended up calling back and asking if I could 1. Start tomorrow rather than, say, today and 2. Have at least three weekdays off starting on the seventeenth. She replied that there was no problem -- she's only hiring me until either training starts or she finds a permanent site aide, whichever comes first, and that having those days off would still give her two weeks to look for such a creature.

Now, I may yet not go down to see Mama Tickey, but either way the time off will be nice. It's all very up in the air still, and as mum pointed out she has two perfectly able-bodied sons living within half an hour of her, whereas Lucky (and by extension, of course, myself) lives three hours away. They're not very reliable, however, so we shall see. If nothing else, five days with Mama Tickey is enough material for at least half a novel, even without Aunt Lilly. :D

Anyway, starting tomorrow, I will be predictably absent from at least 4, possibly 3 o'clock central until nine pm central on weekdays. There are disadvantages, of course, such as not seeing a good portion of my family for a good deal of the time and having to learn how to work the DVR timer doodah to tape House and CSI (I may just resort to videotaping them on my dinky no-cable bedroom TV which hasn't been turned on in six months). Still, if I'm paid as much as I would have been to score tests -- and perhaps I'll be paid more, which would be nice and not totally outrageous to expect -- then that's about $250 a week I'll be pulling in, which would mean paying off the last of my Christmas credit card in the next week and being able to buy enough business-casual clothing to keep me decent when I do start on the full-time position.

We shall see, as always. If nothing else, it will be an adventure.