Are they going to smack you on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and say "Bad author! Bad!"?

Don't lie. You really do wish that were a part of your job description, right?

Deadlines get missed all the time. Deadlines move all the time. Shit still gets published and authors still retain their pinkies. Promise.

What she said, absolutely.

by "White Death," I mean "I live in Cincinnati, so the rain changing to snow and accumulating less than 1 inch is going to SHUT THE CITY DOWN," and I am not even kidding. Every year when we get snow, people act like this is the Equator and they've never seen solid precipitation before, much less driven in it. It's ridiculous.

Change "snow" to "rain" and "Cincinnati" to "Tel Aviv/Jerusalem", and that's where we are.

Since I'm off the clock, I can now elaborate on why that law won't pass (at least for the meanwhile), and maybe to shed light about why the Bet Shemesh story exploded the way it did. Again, I speak only for myself.

There's a term in Hebrew called Marit Ayin/Marris Ayin. It literally translates as "the appearance of the eye" and - refraining from a permitted action because Jews might see you and think you're really doing some other (forbidden) action - something you won't do/do if only for the sake of appearance. Now, although the public sphere in Israel is supposedly secular, there are a lot of religious aspects in it.

(Background: the current situation is a political secular-religious status quo which concerns the public sphere: [link] I'd go as far as saying that changing this will be in the lines of changing the U.S. Constitution.)

That's where the part of the Marit Ayin enters the plot. Giving the public sphere a religious Marit Ayin is considered as a violation of the status quo - just as spitting on schoolgirls because they're not "modest enough" is. The tricky part is to remember that even though there is a status quo, it doesn't mean that there is secular-religious equality, just as there isn't equality between men and women or Jews and Arabs here. But the status quo makes one feel as this exists, as a basis of a social contract (which expired looooong ago. But that's another story).

Tackling the Marit Ayin - not just the secular-religious one, but any kind - is tackling the status quo, pure and simple. And this kind of law as Seska brought is doing just this. It doesn't promise tackling the major inequalities that any kind of social understanding or status quo are based upon; it just means it raises questions about the status quo in itself, which can be risky for the social order and scares everyone (I hold myself not to give current political examples at this point). So if only for the sake of appearance, the public sphere won't change much for women this year, for better and for worse.

But it will change, sooner or later. Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox families have 4-8, even 12 children, while secular and orthodox have 1-4. But for now, I believe the status quo and its Marit Ayin will remain as is, without major changes.

For further reading, this is it in a nutshell: [link]

I hope I managed to explain myself on this. It's kind of complicated, and maybe I'm too much "on the inside" to see this as it really is.

Edit: grammar bad, Shir pretty.

Are they going to smack you on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and say "Bad author! Bad!"?

Don't lie. You really do wish that were a part of your job description, right?

Oh my god, yes. But not about deadlines. We don't really care a whole lot when authors miss deadlines, unless it's by 2 weeks or something, because we deliberately build in time for them to miss the stated deadline. We expect it.

But for other ridiculous petty stuff, like arguing with us about fucking GRAMMAR, then yes, we have all desperately wished we could reach through the internets and whack the author on the nose.

Apparently it started snowing here right after I got to work and has been snowing steadily ever since.

I had no idea.

I just got a pretty nifty editrix/dominatrix visual with a snappy cat-of-nine-tails.

That was damned satisfying. I need a cigarette.

I just got a pretty nifty editrix/dominatrix visual with a snappy cat-of-nine-tails.

If I didn't actively avoid interacting with strangers, and if I didn't fear getting arrested for prostitution, I could make a really sweet living as a grammar dominatrix.

Part of me would be so happy to be a pedant dominatrix. *So* happy.

The rest of me runs screaming from the required reality.

The rest of me runs screaming from the required reality.

That right there is why I continue to toil as a vanilla editor. I suppose it would be possible to screen potential clients for any Ick factors, but when it comes to getting all yardstick-to-the-ass, pretty much anyone who isn't my boyfriend already has too high of an Ick factor.

I am right now on the other end of Typo's rant: caught between a difficult author (not that you are, Typo, but this guy can't follow instructions) and the layout team who keeps screwing up. The author is understandably annoyed that it's taking so long, I'm annoyed that he keeps sending me unusable files and that the layout guys keep screwing up, and the layout guys are annoyed that I'm not satisfied yet.