One of the biggest perks of working for the Univeristy is having access to their resources. I don’t think you fully appreciate it as a student. Memorial Library on UW’s campus is a shrine of knowledge. I’ve been up to the Special Collections room more times in the last two years as a non-student than I ever did as a student.

I mentioned earlier how libraries around the world will scan and email you an article from their collection, which is awesome. Just yesterday I put a ton of books on reserve (collections by Theodore Sturgeon, Karen Joy Fowler, Lucius Shepard, and Harlan Ellison) that will be shipped to the med school library for me to pick up — awesome. Last week, I used the library’s access to the ProQuest database system to look up all of Charles Coleman Finlay’s stories he published in F&SF and, when I found them, downloaded them into my handheld to read over lunch — awesome. And I also wanted to find out the circulation data for both F&SF and Cicada magazines but didn’t know the easiest way. So I called a librarian who pointed me to Ulrichsweb.com and found the answer (35,000 and 14,000 respectively) — totally awesome. [and I could spend hours reviewing that site -- there are soooo many interesting-sounding magazines that come up under sci-fi/fantasy]

Absolutely nothing else new. I could say something about the MLS-Select team getting pummeled by Real Madrid but Frank Dell’Apa says everything that’s necessary in this excellent article. Over on Fox Soccer, Jamie Trecker continues a fine streak of articles on MLS/US Soccer that completely miss the point. I won’t link the page because it’s too irritating to read. There’s finally some decent soccer commentary coming out of American journalists but stay far, far away from Mr. Trecker — his articles are loaded with half-truths and misinformation.

It’s been this way for years and he thankfully went underground for awhile but recently (tragically?) resurfaced at Fox Soccer. He sucks — his “solutions” always involve millions upon millions of dollars that, frankly, the league doesn’t have. They can’t even find owners for all twelve teams, how in the hell are they going to afford to pay “quality” players million-dollar salaries? I agree, it would be great if MLS could attract more quality players but the simple fact (and this is what I can’t stand about the man — he knows this) is that the MLS cannot afford them. At least not right now. If you sign even a dozen outstanding big-salaried players — that’s just one per team mind you — and the level of play rises (which is a suspect conclusion) there is no way in hell the stadiums will fill up any more quickly, that the television money will come in, or there will be anything more than casual interest in the sport. Then you’ve got the same @#$%!ing problems and you’ve lost millions on players rather than something permanent like, oh, I don’t know, stadiums — which Mr. Trecker thinks is just more window-dressing for a shoddy product.

The guy is such an idiot it’s giving me a migraine…