FOUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:
1. Tuxedo Specialist, DuBois Formalwear
2. Boathouse manager, UW Memorial Union
3. Professional Programs Coordinator, US Soccer
4. IT Manager, Washington State Youth Soccer

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
1. Blade Runner
2. Conan the Barbarian
3. Star Wars
4. Fellowship of the Ring

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE LIVED:
1. Green Bay, WI
2. Madison, WI
3. Chicago, IL
4. Seattle, WA

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
1. English Premier League Review Show
2. Deadwood
3. Myth Busters
4. World Extreme Cagefighting

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION:
1. Brazil (Florianopolis, Garopaba, Porto Allegre)
2. Tanzania (Arusha, Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro, Serengeti)
3. Spain (Madrid, Sevilla & Andulucia, Grenada, Costa del Sol, Barcelona)
4. England (Greater London)

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
1. Football365
2. Soccernet
3. Blogs (x 18)[..................]
4. Convoluted Albatross

FOUR OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVOURITE RESTAURANTS:
1. Palisade (Seattle, WA)
2. The Greek Islands (Chicago, IL)
3. Stanley & Seaforts(Tacoma, WA)
4. Nuevo Leon (Chicago, IL)

FOUR SCHOOLS YOU’VE ATTENDED:
1. University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI
2. Southwest High School, Green Bay, WI
3. Vince Lombari Middle School, Green Bay, WI
4. Helen Keller Elementary, Green Bay, WI

FOUR THINGS YOU FIND YOURSELF SAYING A LOT*:
1. Who’s a dog? (a daily Socratic question posed to the dog)
2. Whatever
3. What’s that? (due to either lack of attention or hearing)
4. I don’t know (both versatile and very convenient)
* - non-profane version

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
1. Sushi (variety, but that fatty tuna especially)
2. Pizza (variety, but that Hawaiian especially)
3. General Tso’s Chicken
4. Salmon (but it’s gotta be cooked right)

FOUR PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE:
1. British Museum, London, UK
2. Olympic Peninsula, WA
3. Mount Rainier National Park, WA
4. Nirvana

Current Mood - Killing Time |
Currently Listening To - The White Strips - “De Stijl”

English Premier League Table, Half Way Through

Observations

• The league would be a lot more interesting if Chelski weren’t in it. Anyone with any sense whatsoever knows the title race is over. In order for it not to be over, both Man Utd and Liverpool would more or less need to have a perfect second-half of the season and Chelski would have to suddenly start losing. In 1.5 seasons now, they’ve lost twice. I don’t see them losing even two or three more times this year, and even if they would I can’t see Man Ure or Liverpool being perfect. The race for second place will be good though, as will the fight for third through sixth.
• The death of Manchester United has been greatly exaggerated. If they have the same exact form through the second half of the season they’ll finish 24-10-4 with 82 points, exactly one point less than they got in the 2002-03 season when they won the league. The whole “bombing out of Europe at the first hurdle” thing is a bit disconcerting for Man Ure fans but it’s hard to say the team is collapsing.
• The death of Ars*nal is happily not exaggerated. Well, that’s not quite fair but this team is a shade of what they used to be. Take Henry out of the side and they’re positively average. They sit in sixth at the half-way point and I can’t remember the last time they were so low. :razz: Still, they’ll probably put a good run of form together and get back into the top three before the spring.
• The ascent of Tottenham is sort of flattering. Spurs are getting quite a few games aired on this side of the pond so I’ve seen them play a number of times. They’re doing what they need to do to win but they can’t seem to keep the tempo for more than forty-five minutes. I think they’re a player or two away from having a real quality side that can make a regular push for the top five. The big question is whether they can maintain their position over the next nineteen games and I rather doubt it. Fingers crossed.
• Middlesbrough is proving that has-beens are has-beens for a reason.
• I’m not a huge Man City fan but I love Stuart Pearce as manager. When his team plays like crap, he says so. It’s refreshing to hear him talk about his team’s shortcomings as opposed to the constant whinging from that “other” team in North London.
• I didn’t expect Sunderland to be that bad. And they really are that bad.

Current Mood - Work Should be Abolished|
Currently Listening To - The Clash - “London Calling”

During the holiday season a lot of people spend time reflecting on the year that was but I’m focused on the year to come. I feel like I’ve gotten a number of things squared away in my head and I can move forward with nothing but writing in future months.

2003 was the year I started writing again, and 2004 was the year of Clarion, and much of 2005 was the year of figuring things out. I’m thinking that means 2006 will be the year of sheer, unadulterated writing.

Here’s what I think I’ve figured out:

1. I’ve read a lot of different markets over the past year and figured out which ones I like and why. My favorite stories consistently come from the same markets. There’s a massive difference between saying “I didn’t like it” and “It was a bad story.” I can say that all the stories I’ve read from the pro markets are of a certain quality, content aside. This is the quality I need to be writing at to even be considered for the big markets.
2. Along with #1, I have a general idea of what kinds of stories particular editors favor. Some stories have a strong sf element right up front, others have a very slight sf element. This helps in terms of deciding how to prioritize where to send a story.
3. Along with #2, knowing a market’s inclinations really doesn’t matter all that much. Certain stories press buttons and it’s hard to predict what story may resonate with a certain editor, for good or for ill. The right story pushing the right buttons may run contrary to what I perceive as “typical” for a market.
4. Having two big sales under my belt, I’m confident that I’m passing the bar for professional writing quality. I think having sentence-level stuff pointed out at Clarion helped tremendously. Dissecting stories I really admire helps, too. I can always get better, but this is no longer a major worry for me.
5. The big markets carry big clout. I’d rather have five or six stories published in the big ‘uns than ten or twelve in the next tier down. Of course, having both would be better yet.
6. Don’t get overly excited or upset about long response times or the nature of rejections. If you think a story’s good, send it away and if it really is good, there’s a chance it won’t come back to you. Gushing rejections letters beat form letters but they don’t mean all that much. A rejection is a rejection is a rejection.
7. It’s unlikely that I’ll continue submit things to places I’ve never heard of. You can find hundreds of markets on Ralan’s that will be willing to accept a story but not all are equal. I’ve got a good idea of which non-pro (and non-paying) markets have street cred, and street cred is earned by having a regular publishing history and a reputation for printing good material. It doesn’t do you much good to sell a story to a market that folds after the second issue, or if the rest of the stories aren’t very good. Selling to these markets is a step above self-publishing rather being a step below professional markets. There are quality non-paying markets I’d rather appear in than some newish ones paying pro rates (@ $.05/word) for all of these reasons.
8. I’m not going to try to write stories for certain markets. I write the stories that I want to write and see what happens from there. I’ve got a bunch lined up that may or may not have enough of a speculative element for the genre and I’m going to write them anyway. Stories grow very organically for me and you can’t just “up” the spec fic element in order to make it suit a certain market or it will feel forced. I’m also going to look at “fringe” markets, those that may be open to stories with a spec fic element. This is wholly different than stubbornly writing stories that can never sell, at least in my mind.
9. Without sounding aloof and dismissive, the spec fic genre is a pretty insular group. There are lots of conversations about labeling sci-fi, fantasy and a dozen sub-genres, arguing about the literary value of the spec fic genre, what’s good, what’s bad, what’s new and exciting versus stale and boring. I find most of these conversations rather dull, although I do marvel at the passion people show over the topics. I’m fully ready to admit that my disinterest stems from me not being well-read enough in the genre but I’m fine with that. A lot of folks live and die in the genre and if that means I’m just a tourist by comparison, so be it.
10. The folks I’ve met at WisCon and World Fantasy have been great. The best part about meeting other writers is that I’ve found them all to be highly intelligent people with diverse interests, endowed with keen senses of humor and quick wit. The only other “writers” I’ve ever known have been the black-beret-wearing crowd that’s more interested in playing a part than actually writing. It’s a relief to meet so many people who thoroughly enjoy reading and discussing books and who are actively (and successfully) writing, sans massive ego.

That’s all I can think of for now. It’s funny to scan these “tidbits” and see how many of these I was told at Clarion but I needed a year or so to figure them out for myself.

I’m not setting any goals for selling stories because that’s mostly out of my control. I’m not setting any goals for submissions either because I keep close track of what I’m working on and what I’m sending out, so I just need to be honest with myself when I’m sluffing off.

My general goal is to write more stories I can be proud of, which is of course unquantifiable. The more I’ve learned about the business side of things, the more apparent it is that writing is largely an ego trip. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever become a full-time writer (although not impossible) and it’s even less likely that what I’ve written will be remembered very long after it’s published. So my main goal is to write stories I find interesting and hope that others find them interesting too. I’ve shied away from working on “big” stories–stories that span a long period of time, or have emotional resonance for me, or have a complex structure, etc.–and that has to stop. I’m reasonably satisfied with my level of ability so it’s silly to just write stories I think might sell because what does that get me, really?

The English Premier League hits the half-way point tomorrow. More thoughts on that soon.

I watched “Westway to the World” over the weekend, which is the definitive documentary on the Clash. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it before but, remarkably, never from beginning to end. I highly recommend it.

A lot of people say the band-approved documentary just reinforces the Clash mythos and glazes over things like the band “selling out” to CBS. If you look hard enough, you can actually see that these are the same exact people in “No Direction Home” who said Bob Dylan sold out when he stopped singing protest songs in the 60’s. If you look at the history of both Dylan and the Clash, it’s tough to make a case that the so-called “sell out” music was significantly more marketable than what they were doing to get popular in the first place. And if “Highway 61 Revisited” or “London Calling” is selling out, here’s to hoping more bands sell out this way.

“Westway to the World” provides a great look at the personalities in the group, most notably Strummer as the source of social consciousness. There are great quotes from him here, such as him saying that authority isn’t necessarily right or just, it’s simply a means for control; his admission the Clash had plenty to shout about but no real answers for the world’s ills (which isn’t a shortcoming in my book); the fact that he loves “Sandanista,” warts and all; and then the heart-wrenching turn as the conversation turns towards the band’s break up. You can see the pensiveness on Strummer’s face as he says that they should have just taken a year off to cool down and not made such a big deal out of things like Jonesy’s habitual lateness to rehearsal for, as Strummer says, “sometimes talent is worth waiting for.” The hardest part to watch is Strummer’s final words, as he says that the Clash had an unexplainable chemistry that you just don’t mess with. “Do whatever it takes to move it forward but don’t mess with it. That was the lesson, and we learned it…bitterly.” Then he turns from the camera, his face in anguish.

The soul of a poet on display. You can tell it isn’t play-acting for the camera, he really feels what he’s saying. This spirit infused everything the Clash did and elevates them above bands like the Ramones, and most certainly the one-trick pony that was the Sex Pistols.

Current Mood - Tuesday that Feels Like a Monday |
Currently Listening To - The Clash - “Give ‘Em Enough Rope”

John Graham Mellor
Born: August 21, 1952
Died: December 22, 2002
Better known as Joe Strummer

I’ve got two choices here: either I can write a long, rambling, near-incoherent essay on what Joe Strummer means to me, complemented by link after link to brilliant lyrics; or I can keep it really, really short. I’m going for the latter.

I’m not into celebrity worship but I would say that two artists have profoundly impacted my life. One is Bob Dylan. The other is Joe Strummer. Their music and their lyrics hold the answers but only if you know the questions.

Strummer represents a lot of things for me. Anger. Social and political upheaval. Outrage. Indignation. But never, ever nihilism. To Strummer, the world wasn’t a complete write off — for him things actually mattered. He believed we could make a better world as long as we were willing to fight for it.

He also believed in changing the world through our dreams and art; but we need to be willing to fight on this terrain as well. Resist commercialism. Resist corporatization. Create art that makes people feel alive and, if you can, make them dance.

I’ll close this with the final stanza from “Gangsterville” off Strummer’s first solo effort, “Earthquake Weather.” I could quote lyrics all day long but I’ve been stuck on this song for weeks now. Interpret them as you will, but they mean the world to me:

My kind, we are the worst kind
Got enough shrinks working on us
To defy paralysis, identify analysis
Just wanna hold my carburettor bible
Snapping to attention–eyes on the horizon
Keep your filter clean–wipe the oil from your dreams
Keep our hopes pinned to the Southern Cross
You got to believe in something or you feel a sense of loss

Current Mood -
Currently Listening To - Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros - “Global A Go-Go”

Minutes ago, I just shipped my fourth story of the week — goal met!

That makes it eight floating around right now and there are at least two more that are within a week of being done. Best of all, of these eight stories most of them have either zero or only one rejection which means I can circulate them for awhile. I don’t know if anybody else does this, but I sometimes put together a list of markets (in order of preference) of where I’m planning on sending the story and I just let it tumble down the chain. I think this will allow me to start 2006 with a lot in distribution.

Even better, I’m going to put the tongs to a couple of stories that I’ve been thinking about for (gack) years. It’s crazy that stories I wrote at Clarion are now 18 months old and two of them have never been sent out.

I’m also stuck creatively on ideas with a distinctly northern flavor. I wrote about this a long while back and I’m back on it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the onset of a pretty cold and snowy winter may have something to do with it, but I’ve thought for awhile that there aren’t enough stories representing the Upper Midwest. In fact, a lot of people from other parts of the country lump states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Michigan into a generic “Midwest” category ignoring the fact that there’s a huge distinction between Great Lakes states and Plains states.

Keeping that in mind, here are the stories I’ll be working on in the coming weeks. Some are further along than others, and some of my Clarion crew will see some familiar names:

• The Wendigo Killers - Set in rural Manitoba, 1908
• The Hodag - Set in rural northern Wisconsin (as opposed to cosmopolitan northern Wisconsin,) 1946
• Mostly Cloudy, Chance of Snow - Set in Minneapolis, 2007
• The Learning Tree/Anders’ Saga - Set in rural Minnesota, 1880
• These Hallowed Halls - Set in Green Bay, WI, 2035 (or so)

The first two are tied to local mythologies of the wendigo and the hodag, respectively. The second two are intimately tied to Norse mythology in general and specifically are me futzing with this whole idea of a “personal Ragnarok” that I can’t seem to shake. The last one is about the mythology of the Green Bay Packers and our idolization of sports figures.

Snow and cold feature prominently in all of them. :razz:

Current Mood - Dogging It |
Currently Listening To - Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - “Rock Art & The X-Ray Style”

Still listening to “Wolves of the Calla” by Stephen King. My patience is growing thin but I think I’m through the longest digression from the main plot.

Here’s a snippet of a 3-star review by Eileen Rieback (a Top 500 reviewer!) off Amazon:

Where the story line falls short, and earns the book only 3 stars, is the middle half of the novel, where there is a lot of travel to the New York of 1977 and many side narratives about the pasts of several of the protagonists. The travel, sometimes performed involuntarily through a mystical “todash” and sometimes voluntarily through another magical doorway, leads to efforts to protect the rose of previous episodes from harm. Not only is all this back-and-forth action distracting, but the ka-tet’s dealings with the owner of the lot upon which the rose grows, and with the hoodlums who threaten him, is tedious. Also in this middle half is an excessive amount of tale telling about the pasts of several of the characters. Pere Callahan’s tale is essentially a sequel to Salem’s Lot, and has no place here.

Amen, sister! I’m now about half-way done with the book and I have a strong suspicion that Callahan’s story only loosely ties in to the larger story arc. This tangent takes up way, way too much space in the story. Having never read “Salem’s Lot” (and I probably never will) I don’t have a keen interest in Callahan as a character. It’s pretty clear that the whole “same universe, many worlds” thing King is working towards means he’s going to thread all of his created worlds together and probably link them with ours, too. I’m half-expecting Roland and company to come to the Dark Tower and find Stephen King happily typing away in the penthouse. I will be sorely disappointed if the last three books in this series only appeal to readers who know the entire King library in and out, because I don’t.

I think I’ve said this before in this space but I’m going to say it again just because I tend to have a one-track mind: epic stories are so much better if they’re somewhat planned out ahead of time.

As a writer, I fully understand the appeal of creating characters and situations and seeing where that takes you. The whole mystery behind the “creative process” is half the fun. (I’ve used the word “half” five times in this post now.) BUT, that’s not the same thing as being drawn inexorably through an epic story that must be told. When I think epic, I think Tolkien. I’m not so silly to suggest that Tolkien knew everything about his story when it started (in fact it’s quite clear from his letters that he did not) but the important thing is that he figured it out before it hit the shelves. And it was put together well enough that “The Silmarillion” meshes perfectly with “Lord of the Rings.” “The Hobbit,” which was published before either, has a few inconsistencies and trying to make it jive perfectly with the other two is sort of like fitting a square peg into a round hole. However, “The Hobbit” is also more or less disposable in the sense that you don’t need to know a thing about it in order for the other two to make beautiful, harmonious sense.

In King’s case, the arc is pretty well laid out in “The Gunslinger,” which is the series’ first installment. “The Drawing of the Three” follows naturally enough but things start to feel forced in “The Waste Lands,” as though there’s some treading of water going on. “Wizard and Glass,” the fourth installment, I found to be surprisingly touching and I think it’s fair to say the story of Roland’s true love will be relevant before the final chapter of the final book even if it was overly long. In “Wolves of the Calla” I again get that distinct feeling that King’s killing time, or perhaps more accurately filling time in order to make his epic feel weighty.

This is annoying. Since I don’t have a paper copy of “Wolves” I have no idea how many pages are devoted to Callahan’s story, but I do know this: I don’t care about him as a character. I think King’s banking on the fact that many of his readers will remember Callahan from “Salem’s Lot” and therefore they will already know a bit about him and will want to know the rest of his story. Count me out. I primarily want to know Roland’s story as he’s the series’ protagonist. I don’t really care about any of the other characters, and so the digressions into the sub-plots feel tired to me.

Furthermore, another bomb dropped out of a clear blue sky (is that mixing metaphors) in the story: Roland is finally feeling the effects of a hereditary and debilitating arthritis for which there is no cure. Finally? The only problem is that this is the first we’ve heard of it. Why hasn’t it been mentioned? Chekhov’s arthritis definitely was not hanging on the wall in Act One.

Most likely, King woke up one morning with a twist to the story that required Roland to be even more vulnerable. Boom! Now he has this additional cross to bear. It might serve the story down the road (in fact I think it must) but it feels false. Every time King does this — and he’s done it several times in this series — my suspension of disbelief is shattered and I’m left wondering whether King has any control over his story whatsoever. Unlike with Tolkien, I don’t feel like a masterplan is gradually being revealed; in fact, I feel like King is making it up as he goes along. This is much worse than the digressions. “Wizard and Glass” is in many ways one long digression but I didn’t really mind because, crucially, I believe that somewhere during the genesis of the wider story arc, Roland lost his true love on the way to the Tower. Fine. That satisfies me, even if the whole episode is more over-blown than absolutely necessary. It still easily fits with the larger story and doesn’t feel forced. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the rest does feel forced and that makes an already long story feel even longer.

I’m already committed and I’m going to see the series out, mostly because I think the initial promise of “The Gunslinger” deserves it. But I also fear it’s going to feel like work.

Jesus Christ, Packers, we don’t expect you to win out the season but we at least expect you to play with a little pride.

Current Mood - Positively Neutral |
Currently Listening To - Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - “Rock Art & The X-Ray Style”

Jim MacDonald talks hypothermia over at Making Light.

Discussions of this sort make me realize how little the average Joe knows about survival. As I started reading I thought, “C’mon, this is common sense.” But then I started thinking about it and realized it isn’t. In fact, I only know what I do about keeping warm by having backpacking (mis)adventures.

Erik V. Olson (about 1/3rd down the comments) makes a very important point — it’s nearly impossible to keep warm when you’re wet. The first time I went winter camping I wore too many clothes, sweated up a storm, and woke up with a jacket full of ice. I won’t lie, waking up winter camping isn’t warm but it’s ten times worse if you have to put on an ice-lined coat. I wasn’t in danger because I had dry clothes to change into when we stopped for the night but, once you gain a certain level of competence, backpacking becomes more a battle for comfort than for survival. In short, my first winter camping experience wasn’t very comfortable but it was never dangerous.

My second winter camping experience was much better. I wore little more than a t-shirt while snowshoeing and only threw on heavy layers when we stopped to eat. My high-tech clothes wicked the sweat off my skin and turned to frost on the outside of my shirt which I simply wiped away. These shirts dry extremely fast as well so when we stopped for the night, not a single article of clothing (save socks and undies) was more than a little damp. A quick change out of those layers into perfectly dry ones, followed by covering up with fleece and wind-proof shells (both top and bottom) and I was actually quite warm. Better yet, the slightly damp stuff dried out before it froze which meant it was fine to wear on the way out. I’ve made it a point for years to have “camp clothes” that are only worn when my body temperature is low, and “trail clothes” that I sweat up and then let dry overnight. Believe me, there is a huge difference between a shirt or socks that have *mostly* dried out and those that were never damp to begin with.

These thoughts actually ran through my head yesterday as Athena and I snowshoed. I had on my heavy shell and worked up a light sweat as we went uphill and I thought, “It’s a good thing we’re not planning on staying out here, my shirt’s getting wet.”

The human body is paradoxically both fragile and resilient. A couple ignorant mistakes can kill you (read John Krakauer’s Into the Wild for an example) yet with willpower, enough provisions, and a little luck, the human being can endure quite a lot of adversity (read Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage where the explorer’s ship is pulverized by Antarctic ice yet he and his 27 shipmates miraculously survive a year living on ice floes.) It’s sad that wilderness competency isn’t highly valued in our society. People think buying a GPS and a GoreTex jacket will make everything a-okay.

Those people are wrong.

I want to get four stories out this week. Work has been killing me for the last month but it’s easing up now. I have 50% of my grad school applications finished and once I finish my academic writing sample, the others will be done too. I’m trying to finish them by December 30th even though that’s weeks before either program’s deadline just to get them out of the way.

I’ve got a queue of seven more stories I’d like to get out by mid-January or February at the latest although some require some extensive re-writes. Two are stories I wrote at Clarion (”The X-Ray Style” and “The Learning Tree” [which gets a name-change to "Anders' Saga"] for those of you who know them) and the others are more recent things I’ve put together. If I just make the time I think I can get it done, or at least get half of them done. The ones that require extensive rewrites are longer and need a bit more care and I don’t see the point in rushing something out the door if it’s not ready to go. The point is keeping on task.

My pre-New Year’s resolution was to no longer worry about response times and I’m doing a good job of it. I currently only have four stories out and three of four are now what I consider well over the average response time reported on the Black Hole for those markets. I am now convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that response times indicate nothing. A long response time may mean an editor’s thinking awfully hard about it, or that a story made it past the so-called “first round” of cuts; or it could mean that the editor’s mom died and subs have been stacking up ever since. There is no way to know, nor does it really matter. My only fear is that a long response time can also indicate that a story somehow wasn’t received at all, which has happened to me a couple times.

So my new rule of thumb is to wait the amount of time the market states (i.e. response within 90 days) plus anywhere from 25-50% before querying. The Black Hole can be deceiving too, because it’s an average of all submissions (sometimes going back years) and only includes those submissions that people bothered to report on. A lot can skew the results. A few very long (or very short) response times can give a distorted view; or, in the case of SCIFI.com, there was (allegedly) a 30-day initial hurdle and a 90-day final hurdle, which yielded a false “average” response of 60 days. I wouldn’t know for sure: I only submitted once and got a 90-day rejection.

So I’m successfully not worrying about where any given story is at this exact moment. I’m not checking my email every fifteen seconds (well okay, I am but it’s not because I’m expecting a response to a submission) and I’m not rushing home with bated breath to check the mailbox.

Except the Cicada one has me worried if I stop to think about it. :wink:

Current Mood - Good Enough |
Currently Listening To - The Clash - “Sandinista! (Disc Two)

Athena and I went for a longish snowshoe trip this afternoon. It was sunny and crisp (about 12 degrees) but we didn’t get cold even once. Here are some shots of our day.

Here we are trying to take a timed photo with the digital camera balanced precariously in a tree and a dog who isn’t interested in posing.

The Bean posing nicely now with the wintry countryside as the backdrop.

A study in icy beards. That’s my chin on the left.

We did a little chunk of the Ice Age Trail and then just kind of veered off. Dogs are supposed to be on leash on the trail and we kind of broke that rule. The nice part about snowshoeing is that you can pretty much head wherever you want without worrying about trampling anything since everything is covered by about sixteen inches of snow so we veered off into the woods and looped around a few times. In this little stretch of the trail you’re hemmed in by the dog park, private land, and the highway so there’s not a lot of exploring to do but we made the most of it.

Tomorrow it’s (sigh) back to work.

Current Mood - Dog Tired | (terrible pun, I know)

The other night I watched a documentary on the US Women’s National Team called Dare to Dream and thought it was pretty good. A bit distorted somewhat in my humble opinion, but pretty good nonetheless.

I worked for the United States Soccer Federation from 1997 to 1999 which pretty much marks the three years the US Women’s National Team hit the national scene. The first big step was the 1996 Olympics and the real breaker was the 1999 Women’s World Cup, a wonderful phenomenon that shocked and surprised me.

US Soccer comes off looking pretty bad in this movie but not always for the right reasons. It’s true that US Soccer didn’t want to give the women’s team the same money as the men, but the documentary leaves out one massive detail: the fact that men’s soccer matters to the rest of the planet and women’s soccer is a blip on the ass of the sport. Like it or not, it’s true and it also directly impacts how much players get paid.

Nations earn a big pay day from FIFA when they qualify for the World Cup. Men’s teams at least. It’s sort of like a college football team getting a BCS bid. So it’s unfair to say that US Soccer was paying the men’s team bonuses for goals and games won and paying salaries etc. without mentioning the fact that a good portion of the money was coming from the cash from qualifying. FIFA doesn’t really care much for the women’s game so there’s no massive bonus for qualifying. Now US Soccer did have corporate sponsorship from Nike and they were making cash off the marketing of the players, especially Mia Hamm, but that really came in the wake of 1999. So it’s a bit harsh to say “equal pay for equal play” between the men’s and women’s national teams but yes, US Soccer could have afforded to pay more.

The other major distortion of history is that the women’s gold medal in Atlanta 1996 launched a youth soccer movement. This is a flat out lie. The US men, miraculously, qualified for the World Cup in Italy in 1990 and that put US Soccer back on the map. Because FIFA wanted to promote footie in this country, the US was awarded the 1994 World Cup. There is a huge spike in player numbers after the men’s World Cup, and both Atlanta 1996 and the Women’s World Cup in 1999 rode on that wave of popularity. True, this is more about the last fifteen years of the sport in this country than women in team sports but it presents an unnecessarily skewed picture of what the women’s team accomplished.

The US Women’s National Team, and particularly this crop of players, achieved something incredible and I guess I’m annoyed that the half-truths do them a disservice. More on this later. I’ve got a holiday party to go to.

There’s this thing circulating in the blogosphere where you say 15 things about books. Clarion homies John Schoffstall and Dr. Phil have already compiled theirs, and Phil challenged the rest of us to do the same. Since I’m a lemming, here’s mine.

1. Classics Tend to be Classics for a Reason - Not enough people read, and too many of those that do read think things like The Iliad are beyond them. They’re not. Well, some of classics might but a little tough to read yet highly entertaining anyway. Unfortunately, many unbelievably good (and perfectly accessible) books are elevated to a position of literary prominence by a bunch of self-serving scholars, and too many readers think they’re not qualified or otherwise able to understand something that’s a classic. They’re wrong.
2. I Reread Books. Constantly. - I’ve lost track how many times I’ve read my two favorite books, The Silmarillion and the aforementioned Iliad. I have a hard time looking up passages in either of these works because before I know it I’m starting it over again. To love a book so much is a blessed curse.
3. I Either Put Books on Pedestals or Love Them to Death - This is usually in direct relation to how much they cost and general availability. I only have one copy of The Silmarillion and it’s about to be retired. It would also help to have a version where every other sentence isn’t underlined. I have a “working” copy of The Iliad and a hardcover coffee table version I just like looking at.
4. Lost in Translation - If you’re reading something that was originally written in another language, you owe yourself to compare at least two (preferably three or four) different versions and compare the exact same passages. They all should, more or less, say the same thing but usually one stands out as being the most accessible. Translation seems like hard work because the translator must be true to the source but also get across a sense of the poetry in the native language. It can make a huge difference in whether you get into a book or not.
5. I Dig the Well-Written Foreward - Forewards are essential if I’m planning on reading a book that’s more than 100 years old. A good foreward should be easy reading and should somehow prepare you for the experience of what’s to come. A good foreward sets the table, in other words, and can also heighten your appreciation for the work at hand. Bad forwards are erudite scholars deliberately talking over your head. This is annoying and contributes to problems cited in item #1 above.
6. I Don’t Sell Many Books - A book really has to do something wrong for me to sell it. It must have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. There are lotsa books on my shelf that go untouched for years but I have had the need to reference them a remarkable number of times. I sold my books back after my first English course in college and have regretted ever since, and never again have I made that mistake.
7. I Don’t Borrow Many Books - I love libraries but I don’t use them as much as a lot of folks. If I read a book I want to own it. If I read a book and like it, I must own it because I will probably want to reference it one day.
8. The Book Format Will Never Die - There’s lots of fiction out there that goes something like “all the books will be digitized one day and won’t that be sad” but I don’t believe it. There is something about holding a book in your hands that can’t be replaced by some other mode. A book on tape is not a book, and an e-book is not a book. Maybe this one of those hardee-har-har situations like the fool who said “Computers will never need more than 256MB of memory” but I doubt it. (For the record, I believe the fool who said that was Bill Gates. He wrote a book.)
9. I Love Short Story Collections - You hear time and time again that publishers hate making short story collections because they sell so poorly. As if I need one more thing in life to annoy me. Most of the time, I’d choose a short story collection over a novel. Clearly, I’m in the minority on this one.
10. You Can Never Have Enough Books - This is self-evident but I haven’t seen it on other lists. It could be that I didn’t look very hard.
11. Just Because It’s Popular Doesn’t Mean It’s Good - Do I get points for stating the obvious? Every time someone recommends a popular book I’m underwhelmed to the point of being depressed. I remember when John Grisham ruled the charts a friend told me how mind-blowingly good The Pelican Brief was, and he was so, so wrong. I have yet to read a Harry Potter book because of this reason.
12. I Read Books Pretty Fast - Lots of people read fast, and lots of people read faster than me, but I still think I read faster than most. I polished off Ender’s Game in under twenty-four hours even though I didn’t particularly care for it. I read most of Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass during a long layover on a trip to New York and in line to go to the top of the Empire State Building. More recently, I read 3/4ths of Jeff Ford’s The Physiognomy on a trip to Vegas. I always bring at least three novels on vacation because when I have free time, I blow through books.
13. Longer is Neither Better Nor More Impressive - Anybody can pump the font up and expand the margins to make an average-length work look like a tome (see Harry Potter.) Likewise, some Penguin Classics could use a little more breathing room. I started reading Le Morte d’Arthur Vol. I (The Death of King Arthur) a few years back and between the tiny font and notes it felt positively crammed and weighed twice as much as it should have. Now that book deserved to be much larger and grander, but nobody’s going to buy a 600-page version of that particular story written in that kind of prose (”ye ought not to bear none arms yet if ye wist what ye bear; but I pray you tell me your name”) especially when it’s already in two volumes. I made it about 75% through the first volume and then collapsed through exhaustion. Never finished it, though I look at it sitting next to Volume II often.
14. I Like Books with Illustrations - A lot reissues of Tolkien’s work includes pencil-drawings he did and I think that’s kind of neat. The last book I read, Dominic, also had pencil drawings by the author. More recently, Kelly Link’s Magic For Beginners has nice little drawings before each story. I’m not sure if people think drawings in a book somehow makes it a picture book, and if that’s so whether they somehow think picture books are for some reason inferior, but in either case they’re dead wrong.
15. Good Books Sink Their Hooks Like Nothing Else - I’ve got movies I love, and music that I love, and so on and so forth but books can cut so swiftly and so deeply and so cleanly that you hardly know you’ve been cut. Living is a constant process of skewering your soul and then healing it through something beautiful. Most of the books that stand out for me are full of sorrows interlaced with glimmers of hope and happiness. Books don’t often make me cry but they frequently give me a lump in my throat, something movies rarely do–even the really good ones. Perhaps it’s because books require a certain level of involvement and participation of the imagination to make the world come alive where movies and music allow the consumer to be more passive. I dunno, but a few years back when I was overworked and living an overly hectic life, I went a long time without reading a book. Now that I’m back reading and writing all the time, I know I’m never going to do that again. :wink:

Current Mood - Pooped |
Currently Listening To - The Clash - “London Calling”