how it adds up
-- by Hemant Mohapatra
what they don't tell you
is how it all ends. sure it was
spring:
volcanoes exploding
in the opposite hemisphere. moon
was igneous and adrift
while they cheered
your airship dreams of love
and you felt soft
and scared like a child
lowered into a well or some balloon
returning to a vast ocean.
you are in the kitchen
peeling garlic when it sneaks up
while the pots
stutter
boil
burn
you hate it. you hate how it comes
from all directions
like breathless rhinos
chasing clouds you are already old
pushing this perpetual engine
of grief waiting at the window
for that letter to arrive three years
late so you
could write back "come home
my love, see how your departure
has unhinged this air"
but it is now summer and no one writes
to you anyway
so you
just keep on waiting.
-- from Eclectica Vol. 13, No. 3
I've worked in the restaurant industry for too long. I think I'm ready for a "real" job (You know, the 9 to 5... not working till 4 in the morning kind of deal). I went to school for business administration but am very interested in marketing. I've been doing tons of research, but I know most position openings aren't advertised out there so I'm hoping you guys have heard of a few? Or can direct me to any websites or HR departments?
I'm looking for an entry-level marketing position preferably in a fashion/beauty or lifestyle brand. Location of the job doesn't really matter right now, because I will get my ass there no matter what, if it's the right job. If it makes a difference, I live in Mississuga - walking distance to a Go station.
Again, I know this is a long shot, but I'd really appreciate any help you guys can give me. Thank you in advance.
Ontario's provincial government plans to invest more than a quarter of a billion dollars in a new video game studio run by international publisher Ubisoft SA in Toronto's downtown core.
Premier Dalton McGuinty made the announcement at an afternoon press conference celebrating the launch of the new studio, dubbed Ubisoft Toronto.
The province will invest $263-million in the new studio over the next 10 years, while Paris-based Ubisoft will contribute more than $500-million. The new studio is expected to create upwards of 800 new jobs.
The Toronto location will be the fourth Ubisoft studio in Canada, joining facilities in Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver. Ubisoft said the new studio will begin operations later this year.
As a fan of the Ubisoft game franchises Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Raving Rabbids and Assassin's Creed, I'm happy to see they're looking to establish a presence here in Toronto. Their official website is already asking that those in the biz with an interest in working for the new studio apply to work.in.TO@ubisoft.com.
Looks like I failed to post a submission report for May. Sorry about that. Here's a combined report for May and June.
In May, the Strange Horizons fiction department received only 328 valid submissions, tied for 23rd-highest-volume month ever. The reason volume was so (relatively) low is that we closed to subs for nine days at the end of the month. We averaged nearly 15 stories a day on the days we were open.
In June, we received 571 valid submissions, an average of 19 stories a day; the second-highest-volume month we've ever had. Volume started out very high when we reopened: 50 stories on the first day back, the second-highest-volume day we've ever had; then 37 stories the second day; then 30 the third day. It eased off a bit after that, but the first week of June was nonetheless the highest-volume week we've ever had (176 stories), and volume continued unusually high throughout the month—about 16 and a half stories a day for the last two weeks of the month.
Unfortunately, this means that the one-week closure didn't work as well as I'd hoped. It did give us a much-needed break from submissions, which was great. But I had been hoping that since we were closed for only nine days, there wouldn't be a huge flood afterward.
Across all the days we were open in May and June combined, we averaged over 17 stories a day, which is still quite high for us.
Dividing the total number stories in May and June combined by the total number of days, including days when we were closed, yields 14.7 stories a day, about as many as we received in April. So one way of looking at this is that we got the same number of stories we would have gotten if we hadn't closed.
Which I suspect means that almost everyone who showed up to submit during the closure looked at the dates and said "Oh, they'll be reopening in n days (n < 10), so I'll just wait and submit then." Whereas when we're closed for longer, presumably some percentage of people say "I'm not gonna wait two weeks/two months to submit this story, I'm gonna go submit it somewhere else."
Anyway, I was hoping that (in addition to the main effect of giving us a little breathing room) this might be a way to reduce the total number of submissions, but clearly not.
Both the term GAS ("Geek Answer Syndrome") and MAS ("Male Answer Syndrome") refer to the same thing: The act of providing advice and solutions, especially detailed advice and solutions, in situations in which the person was just venting and/or really just wanted commiseration / sympathy / etc. The latter term, "MAS," drive me absolutely nuts, because it includes a pointless gender component into a situation where there was a perfectly good ungendered version. Many people argue that this is not a problem because most of the people who do this are male. I'm not sure if that's true or not, although it hasn't been my experience (in fact, when I think of people who do this regularly, most of the examples that come to mind are women, but the plural of anecdote are not data and I *know* more women than men in general, so my data is certainly skewed).
However, one of the things about it that has always bugged me that I've been thinking about more lately is that I feel like it creates an equivalency not only between being male and being emotionally insensitive (something which a lot of people who use the term think is an intended and positive effect of it, which kind of boggles me) but also because I think it creates an equivalency between being male and being thorough, informed, informative, logical, etc., one which reinforces the stereotype of women as emotional and irrational. This particularly sticks in my craw in two circumstances, both of which I've seen quite a lot lately: 1) where the person has been appropriately emotionally sensitive and had thereafter specifically asked, "Would you like MAS?", which entirely removes the "emotionally insensitive" reading and just creates a plain equivalency between maleness and problem solving, and; 2) where a woman giving detailed solutions and advice to a problem is described by others as having MAS, whether she's being insensitive or not, which again implies that by trying to solve the problem the person is being fundamentally non-female.
I'm not sure how to read either of these increasingly frequent (in my observation) uses of the term MAS as anything other than really problematic in the ways described, and since I've never really got the appeal of coming up with a gendered term to replace the non-gendered one anyway, it's really starting to bug me.
Congratulations to the folks in Kalamazoo, MI, whose City Commission unanimously voted on June 29 to expand legal protections for gays, lesbians and transgender citizens in the Zoo. According to the Kalamazoo Gazette, the new law is set to take effect July 9. It would make it a city infraction punishable by up to a $500 fine to discriminate against people because of their sexual preferences or gender identification in housing, employment or access to public accommodations.
Now comes the hard part. Defending the law you just got passed from the Forces of Intolerance. The haters are already organizing to kill the nascent law.
A group calling itself the Kalamazoo Citizens Voting No to Special Rights Discrimination announced they would begin circulating petitions seeking a November referendum on the City Commission's second attempt to outlaw employment, housing and public-accommodation discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Under the Kalamazoo City Charter, petitions challenging a commission decision must be filed within 20 days of the law's effective date to either force the commission to rescind its decision or send the issue to a general-election ballot.
The haters must gather 1,274 signatures on petitions opposing the new ordinance or the new law will take effect July 9.
July 29 is the deadline for filing petitions to challenge the ordinance.
If they are successful in doing so and the signatures are verified as valid by City Clerk Scott Borling, the unanimous vote and implementation of the new ordinance would be suspended. The commission at its next meeting would either have to rescind the ordinance or call a ballot question.
August 25 is the deadline for submitting issues to appear on the November ballot.
A similar measure originally proposed by the Kalamazoo Alliance for Equality, was adopted in December 2008 after little public opposition.
The critics, aided by the American Family Association of Michigan, gathered more than 1,400 signatures in the 20 days after the measure's adoption which forced the commission to revisit the issue in January.
The commission decided to rescind the original ordinance but named a three-member committee to gather public responses and craft a compromise measure to bring back to the commission.The new measure was preceded by two hours of commentary from both sides of the issues before the unanimous vote.
The haters are already test driving new weasel words and Orwellian language in anticipation of a November referendum.
Charles Ybema, a spokesman for Kalamazoo Citizens Voting No to Special Rights Discrimination, said the ordinance lays the groundwork for "reverse discrimination" and "suppressing information.""Job openings or available housing are not going to be advertised," Ybema said. "This entrenches the 'Who do you know?' phenomena. There are concerns about the rights of freedom of speech and religion. ... There are still public-restroom issues."
American Civil Liberties Union activist and Kalamazoo attorney James Rodbard said added protections for gays and lesbians are "good for business" and show the city is a place where employees are "supported and protected."
"If this does get put to a (referendum) vote, I can assure you this community will have your back and will vote to support it," Rodbard said
What bodes well if this comes down to a vote is that the city is home to Western Michigan University. If the pro-rights forces can get the student population along with the fair minded population organized and motivated to vote, the Forces of Intolerance will lose like they did in Gainesville, FL.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
toronto!I'm new to my area (Bayview and Eglinton) and besides that have no idea where to start looking. The last time I got my passport photo taken, it was in a tiny hole in the wall in a Scarborough strip mall, which is gone now. Does anyone know of places that will do passport photos? Preferably on the Yonge line or on Bayview?
Thanks and have a great week everyone!
:)
In the meantime, Michael is running down the possibility of hiring a temporary sitter to look after Colin until we hire someone permanent, which should take some of the pressure of the search. We'd keep Alex at school full-time in the interim, because she's a lot more likely to be bothered by changes in caregivers than Colin is.
Colin is at work with me today. Right now he is taking a nap on my desk. I've got his changing pad underneath him, and he's tightly swaddled, and between those two things he is perfectly happy napping surrounded by binders and folders and my tape dispenser. I wish I had a camera.
Usually my house is quiet. Now that the home population quadrupled, the sounds are different. This morning, Marley was playing acoustic guitar, upon her sister's request. The sounds of strumming filled the house, and it gave me a warm cozy feeling.
- Location:US, New York, Erie, Buffalo
As usual, I didn't spend a huge amount of time at the con. Since I'm local, I kind cheat. I drive in late morning/early afternoon (depending on my first panel) and usually skip out early, although this Friday I stayed wandering the halls/pool parties until well after midnight.
My very first panel was probably my best. It was "Tricks of the Trade: How to Publish and Not Perish" with Catherine Lundoff, Mark McLaughlin, me, and Pat Rothfuss. Ironically, Pat had just been complaining about how many of these writing panels involve a lot of people agreeing with him.
We didn't.
Almost all of us had some point of contention with everything Pat said. His first point was that all you needed to do was "write a good book," I jumped in right away with, "Actually, I disagree." Because, you know what? I wrote a good book. I wrote a book good enough to be published by Penguin USA. I wrote an national award-winning book. Where's that book now? Out of print. So, no, writing a good book does not mean that you will *not* perish.
But to his credit, Pat rolled with all the enthusiastic yelling and visual aids (it involved Mark's fingers, but not in the way you're probably thinking) very well. In fact, it was very much what I hope for on a panel. Everyone listened to each other pretty well. Everyone had something they were passionate about. We asked some tough questions, like, why do crappy books (you know the ones *cough*TWILIGHT*cough*) become run away bestsellers? We didn't really have a lot of concrete answers to those questions, but I do think we imparted a bit of wisdom about the publishing industry in amongst all the good-natured bickering.
Pat and I and Dave Hoffman-Dachelet and his wife Rachel and various other random folks ended up hanging out and just chatting in the hotel's bar until we finally wore Pat out some time around 11:30 pm. I was still wound up and ended up wandering the halls until I bumped into Robert Subiaga and ended up at Kruschenko's with Captain Kirk.
Speaking of which, dream come true or what? The first moment I stepped into CONvergence, who did I spy just hanging out in the hallway??? That's right: CAPTAIN AMERICA. I had to interrupt him to tell him that I so proud that he was defending America, I was a big fan, and, oh, congratulations on no longer being dead.
That was Friday.
Although earlier during the day, Mason ran away from home. He'd had enough, apparently, when Mama told him he could not have a cookie before diner (our rule is: "growing food first," which we got from our friends the Jacksons.) Anyway, for some reason this ticked off enough he decided to leave forever. He stormed out (well, of course, first he had to pull over the stool to unlatch the top "kitty airlock"), and then he took a piece of sidewalk chalk and wrote: "Good-bye" (exactly so without the quotation marks, but with the hyphen and the "e") at the top of the stairs and then...
... because he's not allowed to cross the street alone, he paced back and forth angrily on the sidewalk.
I'm sorry, Mason, but it was _so_ cute.
Eventually, he came back for diner. So it all worked out. (I love that kid.)
I showed his picture to pretty everyone at CONvergence, too. I'd been hoping to bring him to the con on Sunday because I know he would have FLIPPED to see all the superheroes he knows, the Jedi, Stormtroopers, Star Trek officers, etc. It would have made his day. But, there's always next year.
Saturday at the con was good, but nothing outstanding happened. I had the "Meet the Wyrdsmiths" panel, "Writer's Groups: The Secret to Success?", and the BroadUniverse Rapid Fire Reading. I ended up borrowing one of the New Wyrd chapbooks because I wanted to read from "Jawbone of the Ass" which is going to be coming out this year in SHE NAILED A STAKE THROUGH HIS HEAD edited by Tim Lieder, whom I got to meet on Friday (also making it extra especially cool.)
I had to skeedaddle early on Saturday because Shawn and Mason and I had plans to grill out and do all the traditional 4th of July stuff. We didn't want to go to the Taste of Minnesota and fight the crowds, so we had this brilliant idea to go to Mounds View Park across the river from Harriet Island to watch the show... with about a millon other people who all had the same brilliant idea. We didn't end up beating any crowds, but we did have an awesome view of the fireworks and Mason got to stay up very, very late which, for him, is almost better than pretty much anything.
In fact, he was all wound up after the fireworks that he asked if he could stay up "all night" reading. We said, "sure," thinking he'd pass out quickly... which is what we did. Somewhere around 3:00 am, I got up to go pee and I was like, "Mason?" He was still up reading. He'd finished reading the STAR WARS novelization and was nearly done with EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. I would have let him continue to stay up (I mean, what the hey?), but I thought he would be way too cranky in the morning... turns out we all over slept until almost noon. Which is something Shawn and I haven't done since we were sans enfant.
So Sunday was kind of a wash, except I did make a full chicken dinner with all the fixin's for dinner as well as a fine egg salad with dill for lunch... topped with some very expensive cheese from the new-to-our-neighborhood THE CHEESE SHOP. We got petite basque (a sheep's milk cheese, don't tell Shawn,) which was divine. And a lot of fun to get since I just walked in and told the women behind the counter what flavors I wanted it to go with and they let me taste a bunch of cheeses. I felt so French (in a good way.)
Okay, enough of this. I must off to writing.
I have a thing or two to share. I’ll never
be the river in full spate, the raging fire,
but, look, I have my moments too:
fish-leap, a flash of juggled silver
barely seen before the splash,
a fleeting shadow shooting through
the water to some secret place;
the sudden kudu in the underbrush,
etched by your headlights, leaping clear.
And you paused at the wheel, aware:
at first just awed by muscled grace,
but then, the mind’s eye’s shattered glass,
the heart’s revealing race, the taste of fear.
-Isobel Dixon
- Mood:
amused
It's not always worth explaining concepts to people with fragile egos: they may come to understand, but they will most often, in some sense, resent you for it.
Are any of your favorite photos of you publicly viewable online?
If so, and if you feel like it, post a link to one of them as a comment on this entry. Optionally, include a note about what you like about it.
If you're not comfortable linking to a photo of yourself, you can link to a favorite photo of someone else.
Or, for that matter, a favorite photo in general. But I'm most interested in pictures of you.
(This isn't for a project or anything; I'm just interested in seeing pictures of people, especially ones they like.)
(Wrote this back in February, somehow neglected to post it.)
(Worksheet taken from ADHD News.)
( Problem Solving Worksheet )
I think I may need to grab another worksheet and start over. Please help.
( Another Worksheet )
This whole "solving" thing is difficult.
I'm writing this from a sunny terrace beside a very pleasant house in the south of France. The pool, on a slightly lower terrace, looks placid and inviting. Beyond it the hill drops off sharply, opening up a view of forested hills and fertile countryside. The wind brings me the mixed scents of chlorine and lavender.
We drove down over the weekend. I'm still a little weirded out by the fact that I can drive to France. You know, just get in the car, point its snout south, and end up here (via Belgium and Luxembourg). Both my American and my British sides find it strange1.
A few things we noticed on the way down:
- A good 2/3 of the motor homes/motor home trailers2 we passed in France had Dutch plates; if the motor home had bikes on it, the chance that it was Dutch increased to about 75%. The Dutch have the highest rate of motor home ownership in Europe, and we were traveling on the first weekend after the first set of Dutch schools let out for the summer, but the proportions were still notable.
- Well over half of the Dutch cars, both those towing motor home trailers and not, had roof boxes. No other nation's cars had so many.
- Whereas the clouds in the Netherlands look like something out of an Old Master painting, and therefore require fields full of peasants with long rakes, the clouds in France are structured to frame a holy figure.3
I also encountered, for the first time in person, the Grifter Look. We were filling up the car, and the man in the (Dutch) car using the other side of the pump fell into conversation with Martin. I was talking to the kids and didn't listen, but I did glance over to their car. The woman in the passenger seat was giving me the coldest, most appraising look I've received outside of Customs and Immigration. Then the man went to pay, and they drove off as Martin was going into the shop.
He came out a few minutes later, shaking his head. Apparently, the man had asked him what kind of gas we were getting (Euro 95; we're cheapskates at the pump). Then, when he went in to pay, he claimed that he was from our car and paid our gas. So when Martin went to pay, the attendant tried to charge him for their more expensive tank. He has enough French to clarify the situation, and we paid for our own fuel. I guess the station chain will write the difference off. The attendant will probably add it to a fund of anecdotes about the Dutch; as a driver of a car with Dutch plates, this does not thrill me.
But looking back, I know what that woman was thinking. Mark, the look said. To a grifter, the whole world is a mark, and that includes you.
- Next thing you know, someone is gonna point out that I could head east and end up in Russia or something. And that's just silly.
- Including, for these purposes, trailers with inflatable tents as well as hard-shelled mobile homes.
- Except for the Art Nouveau ones, which look like the illustrations from the Oz books I had as a kid.
Cultural Strumpet
by Kevin A. González
You never really broke-up
with your high school girlfriend,
the hot nationalist—
her legs smooth as the flag,
her neck like the inside of a coconut.
Freshman year, you pressed sorostitutes
against the stained wallpaper of the frat,
& they all lugged beneath their skirts
the same grief vending-machine.
It was Pittsburgh, a kingdom
where sunlight is taxed, & you were still
a Poli-Sci major. You wore T-shirts
with portraits of patriots on the front
& told girls how Ché Guevara, baby,
was buried beneath the Fountain of Youth,
how the golden bullets planted in his beard
were buds waiting for Spring! Spring! Spring!
The Puerto Rican girl wanted
to marry you. The black girl
wanted to kill the Puerto Rican girl.
The white punk girl stomped on your heart
like a wah-wah pedal. You were always drunk,
stumbling up some stairwell into anybody’s room.
The Puerto Rican girl said, You’re so militant
the black girl said, You’re so white
the white girl said, You’re so white
& there was no arguing in Pittsburgh:
the last two letters of the city’s name
slumped down your throat
like an anchor. What were you doing there,
I keep seeing new writers in search of an agent get hung up on the fact that many agents don’t have much of an online presence.
Newsflash: an agent’s website is irrelevant to how good an agent they are. Some of the top agents in the business barely have an online presence at all.
Think about it for just a second: what is an agent’s website for exactly? It’s not for editors, i.e. the people agents sell to. Good agents already have relationships with editors at all the big houses and many of the little ones too. Editors don’t need to look up agents’ websites. The people who most frequently visit an agent’s site are writers looking for representation. And the good agents do not need to advertise for clients. Thus they do not need a good website.
My agent, Jill Grinberg, doesn’t blog and has a website that’s been under construction since 2006. Yet somehow she manages to be an extraordinarily good agent. I am very very happy and grateful to be with her. Trust me, Jill does not lack for clients.
Time and time again I see newbies comment about how if an agent doesn’t have an uptodate website they must be a crap agent who’s clearly still using messenger pigeons to communicate. So not true. The vast majority of my communication with Jill is done via email. I send her all my manuscripts as attachments. She is entirely in the 21st century. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t communicate with their agent in the same way.
When I see newbies saying they’re not going to submit to Jill because of her luddite ways I have to laugh. The only person they’re punishing is themselves.
I think what many many new writers searching for an agent don’t get is that new clients are not the majority of agents’ priority. Newbies are so focussed on the searching part that they sometimes don’t think about how what they want from agents will change when they actually get one.
When you have an agent you don’t care about their website or how clear their submission guidelines are or whether they take electronic submissions. You care about how fast they get back to you about your problems and how good the deals they make for you are. The stuff that was hugely important when you were looking for an agent disappears from view. You don’t think about it again.
The top priority of an agent is looking after their existing clients. When a new writer finds the perfect agent they’re going to be very grateful for that. They won’t be giving much thought to the state of their agent’s website.
Update: I am not saying agents should not have websites. Or that agents with websites are bad agents. Merely that the fact of having or not having a website is irrelevant to how good an agent they are.
I am also saying that what seems important when you’re looking for an agent won’t be once you have one.
Page Summary
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
macrumorsdotcom : U.S. Department of Justice Reviewing Wireless Carrier Exclusivity Agreements [+0] - greatpoets ::
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
mineralwater82 : "how it adds up" // Hemant Mohapatra [+1] - toronto :: appleinacastle : Yet another "job" post. [+0]
- toronto :: sully2001ca : Ubisoft opening new development studio in Toronto! [+1]
- jedediah : May and June submissions [+0]
- epi_lj : MAS/GAS [+18]
- toronto :: sgenis : 2br apartment for rent, *Location: Royal York Rd and Queensway [+2]
- transgriotfeed : Kalamazoo, MI Unanimously Passes GLBT Rights Law [+0]
- toronto :: holdenm_krotch : Passport Photo Locations? [+7]
- rivka : Nanny search. [+6]
- puddlediving : The sounds of a home [+1]
- lyda222 : CONvergence... Dude! [+5]
- lcohen : as an aside [+5]
- greatpoets :: childecleon : Startling Point [+1]
- sola : (no subject) [+3]
- jedediah : Your favorite photo of you? [+0]
- merovingian : I have a problem. [+20]
- makinglight : There's a place in France... [+0]
- greatpoets :: aimlesswanderer : Cultural Strumpet - Kevin A. González [+7]
- larbalestier : Agent Websites are Irrelevant (updated) [+4]