{"id":110,"date":"2004-10-24T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-24T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookblog.salticid.com\/?p=110"},"modified":"2004-10-24T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-24T16:00:00","slug":"things-my-girlfriend-and-i-have-argued-about-mil-millington-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2004\/10\/things-my-girlfriend-and-i-have-argued-about-mil-millington-2002\/","title":{"rendered":"Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About – Mil Millington, 2002."},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago (it may have been due to the wonderful NTK Now<\/a>) I stumbled across the Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About website<\/a> and spent at least a few hours there, laughing at the hysterical essays and enthralled by the story<\/a> about the Mail on Sunday stealing Millington’s stuff. So when I heard that TMGAIHAA was being turned into a book, my ears perked up. Not just a book of essays–a novel. Hmmmm….that didn’t sound good, but I saw some positive reviews and I ordered it for the library. And it’s fantastic! It’s got the comedy of the website wrapped around a great plot–it holds together brilliantly, and in that way reminds me of Big Trouble<\/i>, Dave Barry’s first novel (which was astonishingly good, way better than anyone could have expected).<\/p>\n

Clearly the basics are the same as the (suppposed) non-fiction Millington writes for the website; Mil has become Pel, his German girlfriend Margret has become Ursula but preserved her insanely quarrelsome nature, they have two kids, and a lot of the humor revolves around Mil\/Pel’s bemused reactions to the nuts surrounding him. But he also steps up to the level of satire, particularly about workplace issues and academics (Pel works in a university library’s computer center, although alas there wasn’t enough library detail for me). One of the highlights is when Pel has to lead an all-day retreat for dozens of co-workers, having completely forgotten about it until that morning.
\n<\/p>\n

[officious manager Bernard]: “…because we’re going on it today. Now.”
\n
“Oh shit.”
\n
“You do<\/i> have it all organized, don’t you? I have asked a couple of times before and you’ve said…”
\n
“No, it’s all sorted.”
\n
“You’re sure?”
\n
“Yes, what’s the…Oh, I see–the ‘Oh shit’ thing. Internet slang; it means ‘Oh, shit.'” Unable to repeat the words with anything but the same inflection of sagging hopelessness, I did add two thumbs-up signs as I said it this time. “You know, like ‘Let’s go.'” I did the thumbs-up signs again. Bernard nodded. I could see he wanted to find this convincing, he really wanted<\/i> to. “Oh shit,” I said with thumbs one more time.
\n
“I’ve never heard that before,” said Bernard.
\n
“It’s a recent thing.”
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The job problems and trouble he gets into with Ursula are just as nail-biting as the main plot, which involves a boss who’s disappeared (Pel has to take over his position, which is where the retreat assignment came from), Chinese gangsters, illegal construction, and missing money. Well-written, well-paced, brilliant dialogue, and laughs on every page–this is an amazing first novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago (it may have been due to the wonderful NTK Now) I stumbled across the Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About website and spent at least a few hours there, laughing at the hysterical essays and enthralled by the story about the Mail on Sunday stealing Millington’s stuff. So when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}