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| Bill Bryson - you rock! |
| Monday, May 07, 2007 |
Bill Bryson is now really my favorite author. He has earned it. Thanks a ton to Altoid for sending me one of his books, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, I have been guffawing out loud, looking like a fool, at the gym. He has hilariously brought out the quirks of this sophisticated country which leads the world in almost everything. Some things are laughable because I have been through them, and of course thought of them as US Culture, the high class one. I am compelled to post some of my favorite quotes of his here. But of course one has to read the book to enjoy it to the fullest.
There is a Chapter on Design Flaws where he writes about how certain things are designed in this country to the minutest of detail, whereas other things are left with a big gaping hole.
Bill talks about a computer keyboard with very many useless and pointless keys, not to mention pointless dialogue boxes.
"Never mind that many of the keys duplicate the functions if other keys, while others apparently do nothing at all (my favorite in this respect is one marked "Pause", which when pressed does absolutely nothing, raising the metaphysical question of whether it is therefore doing its job), or that several keys are arrayed in slightly imbecilic places. The delete key for instance is right beside theoverprint key so that often I discover, with a trill of gay laughter, that my most recent thoughts have been devouring, Pac-man like, everything I had previously written. Quite often, I somehow hit a combination of keys thats summons a box that says, in effect, " This is a Pointless Box. Do you want it?" which is followed by another one that says," Are you Sure you dont want the Pointless Box?" Never mind all that. I have known for some time that computer is not my friend."
In another chapter The Cupholder Revolution, he talks about how there are 17 cupholders in a car seating 7.
"Why, you may reasonably wonder, would each passenger in a vehicle need 2.43 cupholders? Good question.
The reason Americans want a lot of comfort in their cars is because they live in them. Almost 94 percent of all American trips from home involve the use of a car. People in America dont just use their cars to get to the shops but also to get between shops. Most businesses in America have their own parking lots, so someone running six errands will generally move the car six times on a single outing, even to get between two places on oppsite sides of the same street."
In another Chapter called Number Please, I was so totally able to concur with the recorded messages now in almost every office/govt line.
"There I was all poised to have a recorded voice tell me "All our agents are busy, so please hold while we play you some irritating music interrupted at fifteen- second intervals by a recorded voice telling you all our agents are busy so please hold while we play you some irritating music" and so on until suppertime."
Then he goes to comment about the all prevailing friendliness shown by addressing on a first name basis.
" There are certain times when the informality and the familiarity of American life strains my patience - when a waiter tells me his nameis Bob and that he'll be my server this evening, I stil have to resist an impulse to say," I just want a cheesecake, Bob. I'm not looking for a relationship""
This is something funny he has to say about worriers and non worriers.
" What this means in practice is that if you are not a born worrier you have nothing to worry about ( though of course you wont be worrying anyway ), whereas if you are a worrier by nature, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, so you may as well stop worrying, except of course you cant."
This is a reallly funny.
Last paragraph of a chapter,
" From this I believe we can draw four important conclusions, namely: (1) Even though your genes dont do much, they can let you down in a lot of embarrassing ways (2) Always mail your letters first, then buy the tobacco (3) never promise a list of four things if you cannot remember the fourth one (4) ."
I am not even half way through the book. I hope it gets better.
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This video from my boss in the morning sure blew away my Monday blues. Always nice to start the week with some laughs. |
posted by SK @ 8:58 PM  |
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| 2 Comments: |
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Yeah I read this one :-) - I think this was my first BB book :-))! He's so much fun! Oh I also read that other book about Europe travels (which u had mentioned in an earlier post) this time when I went to India!
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Hey Arch,
Cool! Did you like it? I know it got repetitive at the end.
I enjoyed the first half of the book. :--)
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Yeah I read this one :-) - I think this was my first BB book :-))! He's so much fun! Oh I also read that other book about Europe travels (which u had mentioned in an earlier post) this time when I went to India!