Close to home, so to speak.

Sitting in my cafe (admit it it's a bagel place) (but I don't eat bagels) (it's called "NY Bagel & Cafe". It's a cafe! They serve coffee!) (but I don't drink coffee) on Van Nuys Blvd, reading A Year in Van Nuys by Sandra Tsing Loh. I can't get my bluetooth keyboard (hand-me-down) to connect to my fancy Treo (hand-me-down), so I take out my notebook to write in, as usual. I read the following line (p198):

"I am not even packing a (crutch of the literati/crack cocaine of the chronically self-involved) Writing Journal."

Wow. Ouch. Wow.
And this:

"How about your friend Jolene?" Ben shoots back. "The Blocked Novelist/actress/lyricist/playwright/whatever. Maybe she should move to New York."
"Actually," I say, "Jolene originally came from New York--or perhaps the word is fled."
"And now she lives in Santa Monica. Practically rent-free."
"Exactly. A musical based on Los Angeles bohemian life would be called not Rent but Rent Control."

Wait a minute. I originally came from New York. My apartment is under rent control. Wow. Ouch.

Oh God, now this. Page 215. I actually clasp my hand over my mouth when I read this, here in the cafe bagel place on Van Nuys. She rants on and on about the life of a writer and how it is drudgery and not romantic and absolutely soul-sucking and ends with:

"Do you guys hear me? I've had purer 'highs' off paying my bills with Quicken!"
"'Quicken!' they murmur. Apparently they like Quicken too."

WOW. OUCH. RDB, this is your life. A quick look at statistics from the past six months or so of my journal, in which I write nightly (see "chronically self-involved", above) -

Number of instances of the word sex: 2

Number of instances of the word Quicken: 19