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This morning, as I sometimes do, I woke up a bit early and decided to check my email before getting up to prepare for the day. Usually my email from Groupon is already there, telling me about all the wonderful coupons they have for businesses in the Chicago area.

I used to really like Groupon, but they've gone from this kind of hip urban company to a spa service for suburbanites. Not that I have anything against the suburbs in themselves, but since I usually can't get to them, Groupon is now rather useless to me. I get why their targeting shifted; broke urbanites like me tend to use the Groupon once and never go back, whereas people living in Chicago's bedroom communities have the money to provide repeat business. Still, it stings that I helped build up their name recognition and now they want to sell me coupons for dentists in Lombard.

Anyway, I went to look at all the deals, because I'm a creature of habit, and I was struck vividly by the first line of offers:



Those are two vaguely terrifying women followed by an apparently unconscious one. (Mostly when people are in the photos it's women, I don't know why.) But I had a sort of A Softer World moment.

( A Cheaper World: A Sam Starbuck Presentation. )

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I knew this would happen, I knew it, and I think I even said it to some of you. Or if not to you guys, to my mum. Sometimes I forget what went where. Except for the porn, that's always you guys. Feel special!

I knew as soon as the writing job was delayed that everything job-related would come together on the same day. Today is that day, clearly, because I've been contacted by three jobs to set up an interview, one job to say the job no longer exists (writing job -- argh), and randomly a colleague came up to me earlier and was all, "Sam, you're a dramaturg, right? My theatre company needs one." (Don't get excited, it's a part-time volunteer gig.)

So tomorrow I have a lunch interview with Overboss, I'm waiting on scheduling for two administrative positions, and I'm being put in contact with an artistic director about bringing my 'turg.

And it's not that I'm upset about any of this, it's just a lot to cope with in the space of three hours on a Thursday.

Thursdays. I think they actively work to prevent their hang being got of.

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OOOOOOOOOOOOO...rigami...

So, yesterday's origami calendar fold was a Scotty Dog. I made two, because aw. Scotty dogs.

Incidentally if Scotty Dogs came in green, I would already own one.

( But wait, there's more! )

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So, in the middle of reading this nonfiction book Newjack (so far interesting, if slow) I took a break to read Rules Of Attraction, another Bret Easton Ellis novel, loaned to me by Coworker Crush, who smiles at me every time she catches me reading it at the desk.

I know, okay? I never claimed to be deep.

Anyway, a lot of people have said that essentially, if you've read one Ellis book you've read them all. And in some ways I'm finding that true of the film I've seen and two books I've read -- they're all about wealthy, alienated young people crushed by the terrible society they find themselves in (it's hard to tell, but I'm saying this very sarcastically in my head). But I also found Rules Of Attraction very different from American Psycho: less compelling, more vague, and thematically different as well.

( Rules Of Attraction, by Bret Easton Ellis )

Final Verdict: I think this book is more interesting as part of a larger body of work than it is on its own, and possibly only interesting if you're digging into the canon of Ellis in a way most people probably don't feel inclined to do. I'm genuinely interested in Ellis's progression as a novelist and what he has to say, but that's just my personal interest, like I'm interested in coyotes and origami.

And I'd be lying if I said a little bit of it wasn't the fact that someone I'm attracted to is loaning me the books in her own personally curated order for my reading pleasure. (The level of messed-up inherent in this is a blog post for another time.)

I am pretty excited about the fact that most of the characters in these books pop up in other books, because I'd like to see what happens to the kids from this book (and, honestly, to Patrick, this marvelous fanfic coda to the book notwithstanding).