So when did so many Americans start saying (or, more precisely, writing) the bemused/alarmed exclamation “Gah!”? Was it Bridget Jones and her Alsatians who started this? Because I would have noticed if my entire nation was saying/writing “Gah!” this much before. I like to think I’m attuned to Britishy words, and usually I’m happier the more there are around, but this one puzzles me a bit. How is it pronounced in our various national accents? Does anyone you know say it aloud? Or is it safely confined to blogdom here? I would like to know this.

as a blogger: That’s me, so I’ll indulge myself with a rare Poysonal Reflection. Per my best friend, Jennifer Hadley, the creator of the comely logo above that you look at daily, and which, Explorer users, is properly centered in every other browser: “Don’t worry, 34 is another year of being a young, blithering idiot, I assure you.” I suspect she’s right, since she usually is.

I’d also like to say, at the end of a computer fiasco I’ll be delighted to forget as soon as possible: To everyone at Mikey’s Hook-Up, Tekserve, the Apple Genius Bar (when can I get a Men of Apple SoHo calendar, I wonder?), David Pogue (whose own data fiasco inspired him to post this essential guide to backing up), DriveSavers, and especially my kind friends and fantastic family, you are all dear, generous, and beloved people.

My goodwill birthday message to all you good readers, and in particular all writers of every description: Back up constantly, because it can be a very ouchy experience otherwise. You will thank me, but you don’t have to. Just knowing you’re backed up will satisfy.

Pictured: Toast-O-Lator.

I always wanted to be an auteur. From Montreal’s La Presse, some DVD archive and Emdashes fun from Sylvie St-Jacques to put your language skills back in action. I swear I’ll go in and change the diacritics if they aren’t readable, so please let me know if they’re all wonky. Don’t you love those angley quotation marks?

Le 20 septembre, le prestigieux magazine New Yorker lancera sur le marché une collection de huit DVD répertoriant, tenez-vous bien, tous les numéros parus depuis la naissance du magazine, le 21 février 1925. Chaque article-fleuve, chaque bédé, chaque nouvelle littéraire, chaque critique de cinéma publiés depuis 80 ans… Un lancement qui se fera sans flafla ni confetti.

«Puisque j’ai grandi entourée de piles de New Yorker, ce magazine m’a toujours inspiré quelque chose de rassurant, me rappelant que j’étais dans une famille qui valorisait les mots. Comme mes parents étaient divorcés et qu’ils avaient la garde partagée, je déménageais souvent. J’imagine que les copies du New Yorker incarnaient une sorte de stabilité», relate Emily Gordon, une auteur new-yorkaise de 33 ans qui depuis la fin de décembre 2004, tient un blogue (emdashes.blogspot.com) qui se consacre à disséquer la réputée snob publication, dans ses moindres détails.

Emily Gordon s’est initiée au New Yorker par les bédés, avant de «graduer» aux critiques de film de Pauline Kael. L’humoriste James Thurber, l’illustrateur Saul Steinberg, l’essayiste Donald Antrim et le journaliste Seymour Hersh comptent aussi parmi ses monstres sacrés.

Pendant ses années à l’Université, un texte de Susan Sheehan qui faisait le portrait d’une mère new-yorkaise vivant de l’aide sociale a contribué à sa décision de devenir elle-même auteure. «Tout le monde veut écrire pour le New Yorker», admet celle qui chérit ce rêve depuis les années où elle dévorait des vieux numéros du magazine, chez ses grands-parents québécois.

Textes longs et pertinents

Marc Laurendeau, journaliste à Radio-Canada et professeur à l’Université de Montréal, affirme que le New Yorker est une fréquentation hebdomadaire incontournable.

«Si on ne le lit pas, on risque de manquer quelque chose d’important.» C’est pourquoi le journaliste ne manque pas de jeter un coup d’oeil à la dernière édition, dès qu’elle débarque en kiosques. «Ils sont vraiment à la fine pointe de l’actualité», tranche celui qui depuis 1997, est en charge de la revue de presse à l’émission C’est bien meilleur le matin.

«En journalisme écrit, on conseille toujours de faire des textes courts de quelques feuillets. En revanche, le New Yorker ne craint pas les bons dossiers étoffés mais bien resserrés», ajoute-t-il. Certains de ses reportages ont fait école et sont montrés en exemple aux étudiants, comme celui de Seymour Hersh à propos du massacre de My Lai pendant la guerre du Vietnam. Encore récemment, ce magazine a secoué le monde entier en publiant les photos d’Abu Ghraïb.

Avec ses articles d’enquête fouillés, ses critiques de spectacles, de livres, de restos et de films et ses bédés, ses poèmes, ce magazine est l’essence même de la sophistication new-yorkaise. «Même s’il s’est modernisé et contient plus de photos, il n’a pas cédé aux modes et tendances des «glossy mags». Il est aux antipodes de Vanity Fair et de Paris Match», dit Marc Laurendeau.

Et inutile de préciser que la blogueuse Emily Gordon a déjà placé la sienne.

Comme tous les inconditionnels du New Yorker, qui se délectent des longs articles fleuves, des cérébrales critiques de cinéma et bien sûr des inimitables bandes-dessinées qui ont fait la renommée du magazine, elle est impatiente de plonger tête première dans les vieux numéros parus pendant la seconde guerre mondiale ou dans les années 1920. Et ce, même si l’écran ne remplacera jamais les piles de New Yorker de son enfance.

«Je sais que je vais adorer le moteur de recherche. Je suis résolument une heureuse participante de l’âge digitale», dit la New Yorkaise.

Quatre-vingt ans de New Yorker dans un boîtier

> Plusieurs grosses pointures littéraires et intellectuelles telles que Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro et Truman Capote, ont signé pour le New Yorker.

> Les huit disques qui contiennent les 4109 numéros (500 000 pages au total), seront accompagnés d’un livre commémorant l’histoire du New Yorker, précédé d’un mot d’introduction par David Remnick, l’éditeur actuel du magazine.

> Des libraires en ligne comme Amazon.ca et Barnes & Nobles acceptent déjà les commandes pour The Complete New Yorker, vendu au prix de 100 $ US. [On Amazon, $63.]

Makes you want to go right out and rent some Eric Rohmer movies, doesn’t it? Or at least read a little Tintin at the Ice Hotel. Your French has tired blood, you say? Not enough red wine? Here’s Google’s translation. (Hélas! Le link est mort.) “I am resolutely happy participating of the age digital,” as I often say, after a Pernod or three.

You know the world is finally starting to make some sense when your father starts blogging—here, about the John Roberts nomination. From TPM Cafe’s Supreme Court Watch:

In the Roberts memos, the most frequent criticism of federal policies to protect the vulnerable is that court enforcement of them is “intrusive.” Of course without such protection, employers fire people for being the wrong race or sex, voting officials turn people at the polls, drawers of urban boundaries isolate blacks in the inner city, officials can arrest and hold people indefinitely on suspicion of being terrorists, etc. and these acts would seem pretty intrusive as well. As Lincoln put it:

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep is a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty.

I’m not saying conservatives got all this wrong. The Warren Court and other pioneers of the federal rights revolution overreached in many ways and made plenty of mistakes. Some of their structural remedies, like busing to integrate schools, turned into huge messes in cities determined to resist them. Others, like decisions protecting drug dealers in public housing from eviction, did positive harm. Others unduly and clumsily interfered with efficient government and benefits administration and flexible employer discretion, just as conservatives said they did.
 
More Bob, please!

John Roberts: Oppose His Confirmation [Alliance for Justice’s Supreme Court Watch]

Is it schadenfreude when something bad that’s happened to you happens to someone else, and you’re not glad exactly but comforted? In his Circuits email column this week, David Pogue tells the sad tale of a Dell gone bad and DriveSavers’ amazing methods for data recovery. Whether DriveSavers can rescue either Pogue’s or my files remains to be seen, but we’re hopeful. It’s the only way to be at times like this, really.

I’ll be gone for a week or so and posting sporadically; in the meantime, how excited am I for the New Yorker Festival? Unlike files, words rarely fail me, but—oh boy.

Guest computer smarty and movie-hound Jasmin Chua writes:

I’ve been following your backup woes on your blog. Here’s a tip for your readers: Try Mimeo 1.5 (www.tanagra.com). It’s a program that monitors and backs up any folders and file types you specify. It can also save multiple versions of the same file to different devices—a hard drive, USB device, FTP server, or a Memeo Internet disk (remote storage space you can “rent”.) It’s free to try, but the full version costs $24.95.

Thanks, Jasmin! I wish I’d asked your advice earlier, for instance last week.

So I’ve taken to calling Apple for no particular reason. I always have a question, of course (like “Wh-what happened??”), but it’s gratuitous. The conversations end up sounding a little like Minor Tweaks’ yearning but fruitless courtship of Anna, the superficially caring, ultimately cold Ikea-bot. Am I confessing? Venting? Seeking solace? Just wanting to talk tech support, as though I still had a working iBook, the hardware equivalent of a phantom limb? Hard to say.

Today’s remarkably kind (especially considering my semi-homicidal tone) Apple guy said that he’s learned as a technician that every time you do anything at all, like a system update, any transfer of files, or new installation of any kind, you back up. Makes sense. Hubris. All the hubris is staggering. Hubris tends to do that, once you realize how false and loaded it was. False and loaded—I dated a guy like that once. He had a very flashy car. But back to the matter at hand: Won’t you please, won’t you please, please won’t you do a backup? Thank you. It restores the order.

So you say you know all this? Old hand? Nothing new? I’ve been getting a lot of that. “Oh, gosh, I back up every day.” “I have a fabulous external hard drive.” “I have a supercomputer dating from the 1957 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Desk Set that does it all for me while I catnap and will eventually replace me and my silly files altogether.” Well, if all of you to the last reader backed up every day, Apple (and IBM, let’s not forget IBM, and Dell, and all those other brands I’ve never bothered to think about—I lived in Palo Alto in 1982 and I’m brand-loyal) wouldn’t have a help line, would they? Y’all remind me of me in third grade, whose pre-TV-literacy conversations often went like this:

Kid: Hey, didja see Welcome Back Kotter last night?
Me: Oh, yeah.
Kid: Really? What was your favorite part?
Me: Um…what was yours?
Kid: The part where [insert Kotter-era detail here].
Me: Oh yeah, me too!

I’ll buy that you back up every day, but only if you buy that I learned how to do the “nanu-nanu” fingers from TV and not from you five seconds ago.

As Pogo might say. Tonight, a starry, starry reading you’ll always be happy you went to and will boast about having witnessed someday: Sean “Oh the Glory of It All” Wilsey, Todd “The Clumsiest People in Europe” Pruzan, and John “The Areas of My Expertise” Hodgman at McNally Robinson Booksellers, 50 Prince St., 7:00 p.m. If you haven’t been to McNally Robinson yet, it’s a book-slurper’s Wonka Industries. If you haven’t heard Pruzan or Wilsey read (this will be my first Hodgman experience), it’s time to put that right. If you really need any more incentive, they’re all McSweeney’s guys, and you know how much you love that stuff. Oh the glory of the expert Mrs. Mortimer!

So it’s high time I mentioned it again: Back up, back up, back up! Here’s a handy article from WorldStart Computer Tips about how to do that:

Just about everybody has important data on their hard drive, from digital pictures to important documents, emails, earmarked websites the list goes on and on. In my experience people are pretty lax about backing up their PCs, and I think this really is an area that deserves attention. With a good back up set you can bounce back from a fatal hard drive crash and be up and running with all the your pictures, documents, downloads, email and favorites before you know it. Having important files stored on removable media is also a good safety precaution in case you get a virus or trojan horse.

There are a couple of different ways to back up important data, from the casual copy and paste to running complicated scheduled backups. There is no wrong way, as long you have a copy of everything you need.

You can save the data on a couple of different types of media (floppy, ZIP, CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, Flash memory, even dat drives) but for home use I really recommend…

You can’t afford not to keep reading. Think this is kid stuff, RAMypants? Then why haven’t you backed up this week? If you love The New Yorker, emdashes, words, sounds, pictures, ideas, and/or yourself, do it now.

Hence, a slight hiccup in our usual communion. So I’ll say plainly: If anyone knows what’s happening to my little greyish-white clicky friend, which groans not unlike E.T. in his plastic-wrapped sick ward, gasping for breath, for Elliott, for Coors, for Reese’s Pieces, for Drew Barrymore, please phone home. As usual, Canadians are helpful, but I’m worried. My pal, my dear Flat Stanley, is ailing, and I need to take action. Save the Emdashes Terminal! For now, all I can do is say, “Coke. You see, we drink it. It’s a, it’s a drink. You know, food. These are toys, these are little men. This is Greedo, and then this is Hammerhead, see, this is Walrus Man, and this is Snaggle Tooth and this is Lando Calrissian, see…and look, they can even have wars. Look at this. Th-th-th-th-th-th. Uuuuuuuugh. Look, fish. The fish eat the fish food, and the shark eats the fish, and nobody eats the shark. See, this is Pez, candy. See, you eat it. You put the candy in here and then when you lift up the head, the candy comes out and you can eat it. You want some? This is a peanut. You eat it, but you can’t eat this one, ’cause this is fake. This is money. You see. You put the money in the peanut. You see? It’s a bank. See? And then, this is a car. This is what we get around in. You see? Car…hey, hey wait a second. No. You don’t eat ’em. Are you hungry? I’m hungry. Stay. Stay. I’ll be right here. OK? I’ll be right here.”

From a Christian Science Monitor story about how flying is safer than ever (at least in terms of surviving airline crashes):

Indeed, one pilot makes sure that her passengers know that the flight attendants are not “cocktail waitresses.”

“Their primary job is to be a first responder, and they will be the ones to save your lives if there’s a problem,” says the pilot, who’s not authorized to speak to the press.

There are female pilots? Have you ever seen one? I’m delighted, of course, but newly amazed every time I step into an airport what a funny time machine it is. Despite the obvious and sensible improvements in hiring practices for flight attendants, many of them still cupcakes of one gender or another, the airport hierarchy is as strict as a kingdom’s: suave, handsome, overwhelmingly white pilots who are such untouchable gods they’ll give you the company smile in the plane but startle like pigeons if you make eye contact in the palace halls; the stewardesses (the word hasn’t quite slipped away) with great legs and white or light skin their looks counterparts, knowing bait, and confident, dutiful attendants; the uniformed cleaners, plane-stockers, and security with varying degrees of proprietary authority; and, of course, us, the sweatpanted schlubs. Anyway, I’m sure I could read no end of reports about advances in racial and gender equality in the industry, but still, it’s all kinds of trips to feel like you’re half in the Mall of America and half in Catch Me If You Can whenever you fly. Cinnabon, meet Steinem!