WORKING

I've started reading Studs Terkel's 1974 book WORKING.  It's very enjoyable.  Terkel went out and interviewed a wide range of working people, catching their perspectives on work and other things.  So far I've encountered flight attendants, newsboys, stonemasons, models, steel workers, actors, switchboard operators, farmers, hookers, miners, garbage collectors, secretaries and press agents.  And that's just in the book's first hundred-odd pages! (It's about 600 pages long.)

The interviews with two people in the advertising business are particularly remarkable.  They definitely bring MAD MEN to mind, and I wonder if the book influenced the show's writers.

Some of these people have incredible stories.  The flight attendant tells how when they were in stewardess school they were taught things like to look into a man's eyes when he lights your cigarette. (That part should interest Kathrine, who's a flight attendent herself.)

Running short again.  I've quit the game Coasterville.  I paid real money for the starter kit because it was a good deal, but when that was exhausted I wasn't motivated enough to buy more.  Dynasty and Megapolis I'm still playing:  they motivate me enough to keep spending a little.