How to Please Everyone All the Time

1. Operate at 110% twenty-eight hours-a-day.
   
2. Read minds. Everyone’s. React accordingly.
   
3. Never ever complain. This is an important one. You must go about your duties cheerfully, because everyone must think that you live to please them. This makes them happy or, if not happy, at least satisfied.
   
4. Don’t boast, either. Don’t tell people what or how much you are doing, because they don’t want to know—they just want to see the results as those results apply to and assist them. (This is true of even the most selfless person, if your end-goal is purely to make them happy.)
   
5. Listen more, talk less. Unless you are particularly witty—but don’t be witty at the expense of the person you are talking to. In that case, it would be good to use your wit against someone they dislike. On the whole, however, it is better to play the role of the interested and sympathetic listener.
   
6. Think ahead. Have it done before they ask.
   
7. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, forget you ever heard of the word “no.”

Snapshot Book Review: Emma

Emma by Jane Austen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a "classic", this book is acceptable. I managed to read it without falling asleep, and some of Emma's capers were rather amusing. However, I believe I enjoyed Austen's Persuasion more than this novel. Plus, I am a bit averse to tidy everyone's-happy endings, and this has nothing if not that. Needless to say, I believe it teachers the proper lessons in a more interesting way than, say, a self-improvement book or a book of Christian morality, and Austen always does a good job making you the reader feel as though you are privy to some of the most highly entertaining English gossip of the 1800s.
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Snapshot Book Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading the first Harry Potter book, I was not compelled to continue with the series. However, after many assertions from various friends that "things get good in the 3rd one!" I decided to give Potter another try. Needless to say, my initial perception of the books did not change much. They are cute, fun, fast reads. They are very imaginative, and clearly in a way that is appreciated by a majority of readers. However, the quality of Rowling's writing is just . . . not good.

As a writer, reader, English major, and pseudo-linguist, I cannot help but criticize several essential aspects of J.K. Rowling's writing style. For one thing, for all the imagination she displays, Rowling does not trust her own readers' imaginations. If she did, she would not need to have two modifiers for every noun and verb she writes. Harry always has to look curiously. Hermione has to ask thoughtfully. Every physical attribute and emotion has to be described in the most elaborate terms, and yet with plain, simple, easily understood language. (Still, to be fair, these books would make fabulous vocabulary builders for gradeschool children.)

My second gripe, beyond Rowling's overuse of modifiers, is the flatness of her characters. Truly, not one of them changes. Perhaps hidden information is revealed about some of them (e.g. Sirus Black), but not one of them undergoes any sort of personal learning or transformative experience. Additionally, all of them are drawn from such stock, cliche character types, I cannot even suspend my disbelief far enough to care about or relate to any of them on a personal level. The closest I may ever come is to Hermione's perfectionism and goody-two-shoes nature, but she is so true to that very stereotype, and the instances when she breaks from her stereotype are so predictable, that I do not even relate to her. It makes for a slightly more boring, much less compelling book.

Oddly enough, I may end up reading the remaining books in the series, merely in order to have a common ground with so many other readers. Also, in part, I may read them for the same reason I read the Twilight series: to see what the hype was all about. But based on my sample size of (now) two books, I stick to my original assertion: in terms of style and quality, these books are no more advanced than Stephanie Myers' creations.

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Tomato Heist!

So first they run over it with their car. Spanish neighbors, black car, small driveway, tomato plant on the back sidewalk--you do the math. It was a gruesome sight: the poor plant was bent completely in half, its stake snapped and half of the soil spilt all over the ground. What's more, the plastic pot was completely cracked.

You'd think that would be enough for them. But no, they're not satisfied until the thing is completely stripped bare. Somehow, despite my blue, pink, and purple thumbs (read: not green), I managed to nurse the thing back to some state of plant-type existence. I lodged what was left of the stake into what little soil I could salvage, tied it up with some spare shoelaces, and put it protectively further behind the garage-shed that sits behind our apartment. Some of its leaves turned yellow and started curling in on themselves. Many of these turned brown and brittle. But this trooper plant prevailed, because although its stem was literally torn to shreds, it bore three or four tiny little yellow flowers--potential tomatoes!

And, in fact, one little flower grew to be a big, red, ripe tomato. Just yesterday, when I checked on my plant, I thought to myself, "I will give that tomato just one or two more days to fully mature. It deserves that, having persevered so long." So I went to bed, happily dreaming of the many ways I would enjoy that first (and perhaps only) tomato.

Today, upon arriving home from work, I decided I would check on the progress of my dreamy tomato. I felt certain that after such a hot day, surely a little water would help to plump the thing up and make the plant happy, so I took my water bottle and trekked out behind the house to see how things stood. Well, I found the plant standing, but something was very obviously missing. My tomato was gone!

Not a shred of foul play remained: not a drop of tomato juice, a sliver of red skin, nothing. The tomato had, without a doubt, been plucked from its vine and whisked away, and is likely now the prisoner of some jealous, evil, tomato-coveting fiend. I am very saddened by this event, but one thing is for sure: next summer, I am planting all my vegetables in the front yard. It'll be a bit more obvious when they have to hop our little front-lawn fence to get at my tomatoes then!

Shoe Shopping

I typically do not go shoe shopping if I can avoid it. With size 11 feet (size 9 in men’s), finding sub-three-inch heels with narrow backs that won’t give me blisters is an exercise I tend to fail at. However, recent circumstances threw me back into the melee that is the shoe world, and I have an observation: at least here in America, the shoe industry has turned itself into a machine. Truly! There are four levels to this industry (all of which I traversed before finally finding an acceptable, hopefully-blister-free pair of sandals):

• DSW. Here, what you see is what you get. If the size isn’t on the shelf, they don’t have it; there is no “checking in the back” and anxious waiting time. However, there is also no human element to this experience (or, on the bright side, human interference, if you prefer not to have some salesman/woman ogling you as you squeeze your feet into pair after pair of shoes and wobble about the store). No one will offer to call another store if they don’t have your size, and no one will recommend you an alternative pair of shoes. Furthermore, I would bet that if you stacked all of the shoes displayed in these warehouse rows onto pretty department store pedestals (see #4), a) a greater variety of shoes would be available, and b) the store would sell more shoes to shoppers’ spontaneous, “Look! How pretty!” reaction.
  

  * Smaller versions of this design include Payless and Foot Locker.
  

• Outlet-boutique hybrids. (e.g. Shoemania) These stores offer cramped rows of single shoes, and when you find the one you want, you alert one of the uniformed attendants walking around in headsets. They are supposed to alert someone in the storeroom, procure your shoes, and you balance precariously in that aisle, dodging other customers as you remove your current pair of dilapidated shoes and try to fit into the new pair—all while maneuvering your bags and the shoebox (or boxes if you are trying on more than one pair of shoes) out of everyone’s way. The pros: more shoes displayed but at warehouse-style prices. The con: these workers do not attend to you personally, as they would in a department store. Thus, if you need a different size or even just to return a pair you don’t want, the amount of time it takes to flag down “your guy” can border on absurd.
  

  
  

• Boutiques. As is implied in their name, these stores are typically smaller and therefore offer a smaller but more tailored selection of shoes. Want a Nine West shoe? Go to a Nine West boutique! Aldo and Bakers have quite successful franchises, as well. These shoes are usually displayed considerably more attractively than in the previous two examples, and an attendant will wait on you when you visit these stores. However, most boutiques do not carry obscure sizes (alas, 11 is included in “obscure”), so extremely large- and small-footed people rarely have success here. Moreover, these shoes at these venues are often the most expensive.
  

  
  

• Department Stores. This to me seems like the “original” shoe store, as it is where I looked for most of my shoes from childhood onward. Here, salespeople attend to you personally, retrieving the shoe you found on a shelf of pedestal around the showroom floor and waiting to either help you pay for your successful find or to remove the unwanted pair once you deem them unfitting. Again, the wait time for retrieval can be lengthy, depending how many salespeople are on the floor and how crowded the department is, but at least here you can recline in a seat and actually sit down to try the shoes on. (This is another perk of the boutique arrangement, as well.) Prices are generally higher than at warehouses, but a good sale can beat any boutique price handily!

During my recent shopping experience, what shocked me the most was how McDonald’s-esque everything has become. Scanning a barcode, keying a shoe number into a touchpad, and wearing headsets to communicate with the stockroom do seem like very efficient means of conducting shoe sales, but in the end, the wait time to retrieve shoes from a back room—whether at a boutique or a department store—does not seem any shorter than what I remember as a child, when everyone still used the old-fashioned “I’ll go look on the shelves in the back” method. And as much as I hate being fussed over by salespeople, it’s almost more frustrating to be forced to pass up a nice shoe just because the store couldn’t afford to add a size 11 to their small stockpile of boxes underneath.

As much as I hate to admit it, my mother may sometimes be right: there is something to the “old” way of doing things.