Amishrobot

I just came back from a one week business trip to Boston. It started off a bit inauspiciously with me dry-heaving the whole way to the airport, followed by my arriving at the self check-in kiosk and getting a message that I was too late to check my bag. Baffled, I looked at my itinerary again and noticed that while I thought my flight left at 9:42, it really left at 9:24, which was much too close to NOW for my tastes. I can’t think of many things that feel worse than thinking you are going to miss your flight. Just then I got an Orbitz Care Alert text message to my phone. Orbitz trip updates are so awesome I can hardly type about them. Seriously, next time you book your flight with Orbitz you should set up Care Alerts. My panic was assuaged when I got a text message like this:

Your departure has been delayed by 1 hour. These delays are being caused by low clouds and fog, which force air traffic control to increase spacing between flights. This does not change your scheduled check in time.

I had plenty of time to sit around and read. I brought a couple books with me and finished them both:

The Polysyllabic Spree

Nick Hornby, the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, keeps track of all the books he buys and which of those he reads and gives reviews of them. Fun book and exposes you to a nice list of books you might also want to read. A quote:

“Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. The Magic Flute v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. The Last Supper v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on point And every now and again you’d get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I’m still backing literature 29 times out of 30.”

The Jungle

I walked past this sitting on a table at Borders and thought, “Man, there is a book that everyone read in high school, and for some reason, I never did. I should read it.” Besides the starting off my trip by being sick and late, this book almost ruined it. I kept wondering, “Why do I feel so depressed?” Duh, this is the most depressing book ever!

The unsanitary food part didn’t really speak to me very much, but the plight of the workers was so horrible I could barely stand it. I have an overdeveloped sense of justice anyway, and this book just heaps injustice upon injustice. Every single character in the book works themselves to the bone, gets deathly ill, is taken advantage of, gets hit by a truck, becomes a prostitute, becomes a drug addict, and then dies in a puddle of mud.

Every. Single. Character.

Also, when Upton Sinclair tries to have a character deliver the most rousing speech ever given, he knows he isn’t up to the task and relies on only writing snippets of the speech and then cutting to listeners who respond by expressing feelings like, “It was like I had never heard before I heard him speak. I was born anew in the spirit of the brotherhood of the workers” (I made those up, the real ones are way worse).

I think you should read it, but I cannot overemphasize what a terribly depressing book this is. It should carry my review/warning on every book jacket:

“Upton Sinclair has written the single most soul-crushing book ever created. You should absolutely read it, but keep in mind that he isn’t that good of a writer, overwrought comes to mind, and when he isn’t trying to make you kill yourself by piling one tragedy upon another over and over page after page after page (and there are a few hundred pages), he is waxing political in a sort of naive and sentimental way.”

Back to my trip. We landed in San Francisco (yeah, I flew from Salt Lake to San Francisco to Boston. Salt Lake to Boston just wasn’t long enough) and the pilot announced the connecting flights, “Honolulu, gate 72. Boston, gate 84.”

My seat was right above the baggage hold and I watched the baggage handlers below me sorting the luggage. The first ten bags went to the Honolulu cart and were gently placed on it by a smiling baggage handler. My bag came down the conveyor belt and I sat just ten feet away while the scowling worker grabbed it and threw it five feet where it slammed into the side of the Boston cart.

Boston was great. I would absolutely love to live there. I always look forward to wandering around cities alone when I go on trips but I almost didn’t go out in Boston because I was so sick. I am glad I went out. I loved the great old buildings. Brownstones I suppose, but how does one know? What makes it a brownstone, or a row home, or a walk-up, or just a tall narrow brick or stone building with a porch and bay window. I am just an ignorant Californian (but I sure know stucco when I see it!)

As long as I am admitting things like that I should also throw out that the Boston accent cracks me up. When someone has a really strong one I have to stop myself from smiling, and then I have to have them repeat themselves because I can only recognize the consonants. The vowels have all gone through some sort of randomizer and nasalizer.

I also walked the entire Freedom Trail one afternoon. I loved it. I love Boston, did I mention that? At Copps Hill Burying Ground, where a lot of very early settlers are buried, I walked past two ladies looking at a headstone that said “Grant” on it and I overheard this conversation:

Lady 1: This is Grant’s Tomb (No, this is Grant’s Tomb)

Lady 2: Grant’s Tomb?

Lady 1: Yeah, you know how you always hear, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb”?

Lady 2: Yeah, who is?

Lady 1: Not Grant. At least that’s what they say.

Also, I guess I haven’t learned my lesson about depressing literature or maybe I am just prepping to lead the wage slaves in revolt but I am now about 100 pages into David Copperfield.

A word of advice for you readers; (and for you non-readers, we really need to have a talk…) don’t buy the $8 paperback editions of anything. They make reading miserable. If you don’t want to pay the money for a decent copy get one from the library. There is just really no point in reading a book where you have to bend it open as far as possible to read the words that were so thoughtfully printed right into the margins.

So in conclusion:

I am sick.

I love Boston.

I spent WAY too much money on books this month.