This made me laugh. And I like to laugh.

I found this over at Rachelle Gardner’s blog, which has lots of good writerly information. Her blog I found over at Writtenwrydd’s blog. This Internet just never bloody ends, does it?

My kiddo snapped this picture at his school's Cowboy Round-Up.

“I saw the bobcat by the shed. I think it’s here because of the rabbits,” my dad said the other day. “There aren’t as many rabbits around now.”

“Do you remember when I tried to hide rabbits in my closet, Dad?” We have never talked about those rabbits.

“Sure,” he said. “That bobcat is big. I didn’t know bobcat’s got that big. And it’s skinny and tall.”

“Gee, I didn’t know they were very big either, Dad.” We didn’t talk about the rabbits in the closet.

I don’t know what I wanted my dad to say about those rabbits.

I don’t know what I want people to say about my writing either. Being a writer is a hell of a way to live–you might get compliments you can’t believe, you get criticism you don’t want to hear, or you get nothing at all. Did you read my story? Sure. What do you think about bobcats?

In graduate school I met a guy whose job in the Gulf War was to pick corpses up from the roads. He fidgeted in class. The writing life is not that life. It is a luxury. And still I can whine about how much I put into it and I don’t hear what I want to hear.

But when I was a kid, I didn’t hide those rabbits so that my dad and me could have a magical conversation decades later. I’m not writing so that I can hear that magical compliment. I’m writing because I’ve avoided thousands of other jobs.

Are you able to say exactly what you want from others when you write? Money? How much? A compliment? What would that compliment be? Approval? From whom? Revolution? From what?

And when your writing insecurities get out of hand (if you’re the sort of person that happens to), what helps you put things back in perspective?

Why couldn’t I have a wallet like Bill Gates? wouldn’t even need 50 billion, a few million would do just fine, yep nothing to do except kickback in your favorite chair, and collect dust all day long if you want.

2009's first write-in at Genuine Joe's

I hated Brownies, Girl Scouts, and Girls’ Club. After-school clubs, organizations, or whatever you were supposed to join to add sparkle to your college application–no. And sororities? They scared the hell out of me. Anything that comes with a cheer is instant soul-sucking death. I might have shortened my life expectancy by going to a Mary Kay meeting once. And the facebook groups I have joined and even created make me feel like I’ve gone down a wrong path.

I am not a joiner.

But I love NaNoWriMo. It is the first group thing I’ve participated in that is filled with people I could’ve been friends with in high school. It is temporary. One month and you’re done. I now know people I see once a year–and that’s the way it should be. It is free.

Where else do you get a group of people together with a similar goal/interest/passion, and yet each person goes about it in his or her own unique/quirky/absurd way? Reach 50k or don’t. Nobody cares as long as you’re writing. I know participants who never intend to write fifty thousand words. There is no rule about what to do next. Edit and try to be published. Publish yourself. Hide it away. Delete the whole thing. One fellow finishes his novel and come December first, he deletes the file. He doesn’t write again until November the next year.

The first novel I wrote took years. It was like slogging through a swamp of words in a dense fog. That NaNoWriMo goal, 50k in 30 days, is sunshine on a path. There is no edit and create at the same time. The goal isn’t write a great novel in 30 days. I couldn’t do that. I might never do that no matter how many days I’m given. I’m rewarded and approved of for quantity! That I can do.

The rest of the year is for quality. Hours spent picking over sentences and cutting out scenes and wondering what the point of it all is. Maybe I could say that 11 months of the year is like being a soldier getting ready for inspection and November is shore leave.

What goals do you need to help you write? When was the last time your imagination ran around loose on the page?

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

Author Unknown

But thank you, Kevin, for this gem of a poem.

Wishful thinking

Turns a goat into

A fabulous creature.

One of the biggest early themes of this off season has been the status of Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols.  Both are franchise players a year away from the end of their current contracts.  Commentators seem to enjoy asking whether Minnesota or St. Louis can afford to keep these iconic players.  Will they be able to match the deals Mauer or Pujols could receive as free agents?

Well, wait.  Don’t Joe and Albert get a say in this?

Much writing, wailing, and gnashing of teeth has accompanied discussion of baseball players’ astronomical salaries.  I don’t mean to add another decible to that cacophany.  But there is a prevailing attitude to the coverage of players like Mauer and Pujols which profoundly bothers me.

*Ahem.*

sigh...

Growing up a Seattle Mariner fan in the 1990s, I watched Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez leave town, each motivated to varying degrees by a bigger paycheck elsewhere.  It was heartbreaking.  Learning as a boy how the game’s greatest players were linked to specific teams (Stan Musial and the Cardinals, Roberto Clemente and the Pirates, all the Yankee greats), I longed for Seattle to have greats of its own.

Baseball’s history with respect to money and labor negotiations is long and complicated.  I understand this.  Stan Musial could not have left for Boston if he disliked St. Louis.  Free agency gives players an important lever in dealing with their employers.  But to read commentators and the last ten years of free agency, it seems as if star players have fallen into the opposite situation.  They are not able to stay with their teams even if they want to.

I have never heard anything about this, but I suspect there is enormous pressure within the Player’s Association on big stars to go for big money.  If CC Sabathia really wanted to play for Cleveland, I’m pretty confident Cleveland would have found the money to welcome him back for $10 million a year.  But such a contract would depress the signings of all the lesser pitchers.  Negotiating with Randy Wolf, an owner could say, “No way are you worth eight million a year if Sabathia is only worth ten!”  So the top free agents seek the most money in order to help out the rest of the union.

That is understandable.  But how often has a star player wanted to play for a team, but felt unable to do so because money elsewhere was so much higher?  Has that really never happened?  Do the highest salaries always come from the preferred team?  Surely not always.

The perception that your team’s best players are almost required to take the largest contract offered them in free agency undermines the important emotional connection between team and fan base.  Young boys (and girls!) dream of playing ball for their favorite teams.  Has baseball constructed a system where those who make it to the majors learn that it just isn’t that simple, kid?  It is already difficult to overlook the absurd piles of money players earn for playing my favorite childhood game (after Calvinball).  It is too much to consider that baseball has commercialized itself into a hollow machine which sucks the romanticism out of its players and teaches them to follow the dollar for the good of the league.

This is more of a problem for fans of younger, less successful teams.  Yankee and Red Sox fans can root for the franchise as a lasting entity with characteristics independent from its players.  As a Mariner fan, I cannot root for a winning tradition, or even a losing tradition made appealing by sheer length (see: Cubs, Phillies).  I’m a Mariner fan because of specific teams made up of specific players.

The danger here threatens baseball’s bottom line.  Baseball has a reputation, which it tries desperately to maintain, of being a transcendental team game.  A sport of beautiful simplicity and generation-binding nostalgia.  It brags of a history where players were synonymous with the cities they played in.  Baseball does not carry itself with the glossy, militaristic swagger of the made-for-TV NFL.  If baseball wants to keep this aura, I strongly believe it needs to do a better job of juggling its finances and the un-capitalistic, impractical, romantic tendencies of its fan base.

I do not begrudge a player his millions, since the league and its owners are making many millions off of his play.  And a city’s love for a player does not necessitate the player’s love for a city or team.  But it is this perception, almost absurd when stated aloud, that baseball needs to combat: a superstar taking a discount to play for his hometown team is a heroic and noble act.  When I think about this, and realizes that this heroic act involves taking $60 million dollars instead of $90 million dollars, I feel foolish for caring so much.

Both great and adored

I hope, someday soon, that a player will take a significant pay cut in order to play for his favorite team.  Perhaps the team he grew up rooting for, perhaps the team that gave him his shot at the Big Time.  For a city’s emotional attachment to individual players is part of what makes sports special, and what gives those players the ability to make enormous salaries in the first place.  And the transient loyalties in free agency, even if motivated by a union-vs-management mindset, undermines these emotional attachments and makes those contracts all the less attached to reality.

So, as my two cents, here are some players I hope remain with their current teams for the rest of their careers.  Because they are great players in a position to be forever enshrined in the baseball heart of their cities:

• Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, Yankees
• Albert Pujols, Cardinals
• Joe Mauer, Twins
• Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, Phillies
• David Wright, Mets
• Chipper Jones, Braves
• Roy Halladay, Blue Jays (not gonna happen)
• Ichiro, Mariners
• Ryan Zimmerman, Nationals
• Todd Helton, Rockies

Just great

It is these feelings which put Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripkin Jr. ahead of Ricky Henderson and Reggie Jackson in my baseball pantheon.  Perhaps a “franchise player” rule, like in the NFL, could help make one-team careers more common.  There may be fans in Minnesota who want Joe Mauer to go to the Yankees, make $23 million a year, and make good.  But I bet most of them want him to remain in Minnesota, let the city name a street after him, and let the fans include him in future conversations about the best players to ever grace the Twin Cities.

lena’s post today reminded me that i am always, constantly dreaming of an airier, cleaner, greener and more colorful life. not that i don’t enjoy the one i have (though perhaps i could spend a bit more mental energy on the present) but it’s oh so nice to dream of new places and spaces. tamera is particularly good at collecting images of places that make my heart twinge longingly. she’s also busy crafting one such place of her own. ah. someday.

in the meantime, happy thanksgiving everyone!
i’m closing up shop for the holidays. i have a tiny sewing project going on and though it’s so small and ordinarily would take me no time at all, sewing is a challenge lately! and i need to keep my focus on bunny beansprout at the moment, what with him being all wee and sweet and growing so quickly.

if you’re in nyc and would like undies (they make a great gift!) they will be available at lena’s holiday sale on december 12th in her studio in fort greene. info: here.

If this is an advert for Aero why is he skateboarding through a bowl of Maltesers?

Oh, and they stole the idea from this video.

For better or worse, I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo once again. And so… here is an excerpt of The Memory Kiss.

Writing has always been a joy to me. This is the main reason why I started this blog. I’ve been blogging for the longest time but it was just now that I realized that I wanted to share my works to other people. Please do take note, though, that I’m not a pro. I’ve always wanted to be one and I still want to be one but I’m taking things slowly. Yeah, this is step one two. The first step actually was when I bought Mike, my notebook. One of the reasons why I bought it was for me to be able to blog more.

I’m still thinking about what topics should I put here in this blog. I don’t think fashion would come in as I’ve always considered myself as plain. Seldom do I really go out there and dress up so that idea is out. Food might be a possibility as well as flowers. I just love the macro setting in my camera. People might also be a topic here, specifically kids and anything that has to do with laughter and friendship. Oh, travel would also be mentioned here but before you start thinking that I’m well-traveled, I am now telling you that I am not. I’m just starting to do that locally. Please do send me a message should you have any suggestions.

Dream big.

"The Proverbs;"

as the bell clinks, so the fool thinks or as the fool thinks, so the bell clinks

A foolish person believes what he desires. The tale says that when Dick Whittington ran away from his master, and had got as far as Highgate Hill, he was hungry, tired and wished to return. The bells of St Mary-le-Bow began to ring, and Whittington fancied they said: ‘Turn again, Whittington, lord mayor of London.’ The bells clinked in response to the boy’s thoughts.

ty BREWERS’ HIDDEN LONDON

foto – bell from jack-a-dandy ulmarra. 2009

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked me.

He was at least 45. I was 22. He wore a suit and gold watch. I was wearing what my friends called the pocket dress–because you could fold it up and put it in your pocket.

I was also wearing a hot pink jacket and hot pink shoes. He and his friends at the table behind him looked like men with money. “Oh, thanks,” I said and looked down at the floor. “But that’s okay. My friends are waiting for me.”

He said something else, but I didn’t hear it because I was already walking away.

The clingy white dress said things that were not true. I just didn’t realize it until I was stopped by the man with perfect businessman hair and a near empty glass of whiskey.

Sometimes a person compliments my work, and I can’t get away from the feeling that my art is no way to see me at all. At IF+D when the owner introduces me to people as an artist and writer I want to shake my head and leave. You are seeing this, but this is a mistake.

Of course, it is and it isn’t. Like the dress.

Do you feel your work represents you? Does the label writer or artist feel right? Does it make you want to step up or run away?

I have the day off and I’ve spent it going back and forward between doing nothing and sketching,I love these days off but sometimes I really don’t know what to do with myself. Being broke has prohibited my from making a Michael’s run. Lately i’ve been in creative overload but I’m to a.d.d to ever finish a piece. Tomorrow hopefully I’ll have finished a few things so I can share, but  today I’ve been admiring these cute things at Red Velvet Art and hoping someone would read this and buy them all for me I’ve got my fingers crossed.

1. A red velvet girl that looks like me.

2. A cute calendar for the new year.

3. This adorable apron.

4. Especially this, two things I love feathers and buttons oh and its green!

5. The perfect craft journal

6. This gorgeous headband

“It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.” – Francis Bacon

Curses are another form of wishful or magical thinking, and though there are positive curses, most of the time they are thought of in a negative sense, in an attempt to bring harm to someone else or another organization. While most people use curses as a way to relieve pent up feelings of anger, maybe helping to prove wishful thinking’s health benefits, others will utilize curses believing that they will bring benefit to themselves while harming others. Since there seems to be a built-in tendency on the part of the human brain towards wishful thinking, and that human thought can alter events and even objects, it is no wonder that so many people actually believe in magical or wishful thinking and its power to affect events.

Appearing February 6th in the New York Times is a story about a small research lab at Princeton University. “Over almost three decades, a small laboratory at Princeton University managed to embarrass university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice the support of philanthropists and make headlines around the world with its efforts to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events… The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university’s engineering building since 1979…. But at the end of the month, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but because, its founder says, it is time.” The history of wishful and magical thinking is long and is enticing to many of our fellows on this planet, especially in places where the basic tenets of science are not well established.

The very best curses (if there can be such a thing) in my opinion are those that make you stop and think about what they really mean. Three curses that fit that description and are linked together (their origin is a bit unclear) and in order of increasing severity are: May you live in interesting times, May you come to the attention of those in authority and May you find what you are looking for. Some curses are related to sporting events: The curse of the bambino is very well know, but recently annulled. There are many other curses perceived to be related to sports or to those participating in sports. One is that athletes appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated are likely to suffer setbacks in their careers or to become injured.

“Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one’s beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one’s beliefs. For example, if you believe that during a full moon there is an increase in admissions to the emergency room where you work, you will take notice of admissions during a full moon, but be inattentive to the moon when admissions occur during other nights of the month. A tendency to do this over time unjustifiably strengthens your belief in the relationship between the full moon and accidents and other lunar effects.” (Skeptics Dictionary)

“Curses seem to have been a regular part of ancient cultures and may have been a way to frighten enemies and explain the apparent injustices of the world. There is no evidence that anyone has successfully invoked occult powers to do harm to others, but there is evidence that those who believe they have been cursed can be made miserable by exploiting that belief. Fear and the human tendency to confirmation bias and selective thinking can sometimes lead the believer to fulfill the curse.” (Wikipedia)

The power of the mind, while of dubious efficacy on external events has been demonstrated to have power over internal body processes – partly due to the power of positive thinking. The US Food and Drug Administration states that “Research has confirmed that a fake treatment, made from an inactive substance like sugar, distilled water, or saline solution, can have a “placebo effect”–that is, the sham medication can sometimes improve a patient’s condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. For a given medical condition, it’s not unusual for one-third of patients to feel better in response to treatment with placebo.” “Expectation is a powerful thing,” says Robert DeLap, M.D., head of one of the Food and Drug Administration’s Offices of Drug Evaluation. “The more you believe you’re going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that you will experience a benefit.” What about the power of positive expectations in organizational life? Are there benefits from that as well? From my experiences with various organizations I would have to respond affirmatively, though I can’t point to any definitive work proving that.

For someone who has a strong belief, a curse is in essence a negative Placebo effect. They expect something bad to happen and will begin looking for it. When something unfortunate happens, as it is likely to do in life, a ready explanation is available.  From an organizational standpoint and an interpersonal standpoint, I don’t think many of us would have to think very hard before we came across someone who we have crossed paths with or an organization, upon which we could lay a well deserved curse, the telephone company or the cable company somehow spring to mind. But in general organizations and most people are indifferent to such things.

The thing is, if you have organizations filled with people, and people have these natural tendencies, it becomes a very interesting thought experiment regarding how to maximize performance of the organization. Superstitious beliefs and the belief in wishful or magical thinking while not hard to find in places like the USA is even more predominant in the 3^rd world, where large portions of the population may not be exposed to the common scientific rationales as to why things happen. I remember one organization in China I was working with that had to bring in an expatriate human resources manager, because the previous Chinese one, had died during a business meeting and this was viewed by potential replacements as an ominous sign and not one of them would take the position. 

Managements of organizations can have a tendency to assume that organizations are filled with logical rational beings and that their customers make decisions that way as well. However, some recent work seems to point in some other interesting directions. “The best decisions do not always derive from analytical reasoning, says Dr. Matthias Rosenberger, research associate at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Chemnitz University of Technology. The fact that emotional and subconscious principles, that is, the gut feeling, significantly influence our decisions is verified by latest research findings in psychology. Intuitive decisions are more reliable and make us feel more comfortable.” But what are these gut feel decisions based upon?

Without mystery there is no freedom to choose. 

I’m glad The New York Times is devoting more coverage to comics and graphic novels, I really am. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that their reportage consisted of recycled, rah-rah press releases from Marvel and DC. Now we get a weekly graphic book best seller list (which, say what you will, is no more opaque or arcane in its methodology than most of the other ones) and a fair number of meaty pieces from George Gene Gustines.

What we don’t get, at least not yet, is much qualitative discussion of comics from Japan. When you walk into the average bookstore and see at least half of the graphic-novel shelf space devoted to these comics, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect at least some coverage of the category beyond sales figures supplemented by sometimes carelessly written plot summaries (which are better than no content descriptions at all, obviously, but only just). At the same time, I don’t really want to force anyone to write about something that doesn’t interest them, because the outcome from that sort of thing never serves anyone very well.

But I must admit to a certain degree of irritation when I saw this Gift Guide of 2009 Graphic Novels and didn’t see a single comic from Japan. After venting on Twitter, Erica Friedman (@Yuricon) sagely suggested that manga bloggers just do it themselves. I’ll be posting mine on Thanksgiving Day (just in time for Black Friday), and I would be happy to link to anyone else’s suggestions or host yours if you don’t have a blog of your own. Just drop me a line at davidpwelsh at yahoo dot com if you’d like to throw out some recommended manga for the nerds (or non-nerds) in all of our lives.

please give it to me. please lord.

The night of our first date, I watched for him out my bedroom window. He parked on the street which was silvery with earlier rain. A couple house down, he crossed the street at an angle, his long coat making him look far more romantic and heroic than he could ever possibly be. The coat may have been what doomed me to stay with him longer than anyone with sense would have. As if I kept thinking I would find that man somewhere in the relationship if I just tried harder.

I wonder if a detail, a scene, in my writing enchants me so much that I have no perspective on its true potential. I have several manuscripts and can’t give up on any of them–but they can’t really all be worth the time.

What projects do you stick with no matter what? What lost causes do you hold onto?