Rod's Alter Ego

I’ve been working on a short story pretty hard lately. Annealing it. I’m going to send this one to a literary journal, see what happens. I expect it will be rejected, and even as I type that word it sounds harsh and defeating. There’s quite a lot of competition to get short fiction published. I’ve been combing through my copy of the Writer’s Market (2011) and see that the top journals receive two to three hundred manuscripts a month, not all fiction, but still. Of those they may accept eight to ten manuscripts for eventual publication, it varies. Most of the journals don’t respond with a formal rejection, and those that do usually don’t comment on the work, but occasionally they do, and that would be helpful, but I understand they don’t have the time and/or money to comment on every manuscript they reject. Most of these journals operate, it appears, on pretty slim budgets.

I said “top” journals, which reveals my assumption that literary journals, like science journals, where I am published, must have impact factors. I haven’t been able to find that they do, but just reading around a lot it seems to me that some lit journals are more prestigious or challenging to get published in than others, which I guess is a tacit indication of their “impact”. Ploughshares, for instance, seems to be pretty highly regarded.

I’d considered sending this story to a national magazine but few of them publication fiction anymore — The New Yorker & The Atlantic (once annually) are two I can think of. For a new (fiction) writer like myself it seems like the chance of getting my first story published in either one of those is roughly equivalent to having the result of my first lab experiment published in Science. Occasionally people knock it out of the park on their first swing, usually not.

I’m new enough to this that I don’t know if sharing a paragraph or two of the story on this blog would jeopardize publication. I doubt it would, but I’ll hold off just in case. I like the story. To my ear anyway it has the language and pace I was trying to achieve. It’s sort of a professional coming of age story with a tragicomic end. A few of the characters are loosely (very loosely) based on people I’ve known. The others are entirely fictional, as are, for the most part, the events in the story.

The Happy Wife is traveling to Phoenix for work soon. I’m putting the manuscript on her Kindle Fire. She’s a good reader, I’ll get good feedback. Turns out, by the way, that formatting the manuscript for the Fire was a snap. I wrote it with Microsoft Word using (mostly) a 12-point Times Roman font with normal indents. I e-mailed the file (as an attachment) to the e-mail account associated with the Fire and Voila!, it was automatically reformatted, perfectly. I also reformatted it myself to a .pdf file, and sent that to the Fire, but it didn’t render nearly as nicely as the MS Word version.

Who reads literary journals? Mostly wannabe writers I think, plus agents looking for new writers, so I’m told. But also people who just enjoy reading short fiction, creative non-fiction (e.g., essay), and poetry. The number of paid subscriptions to these journals varies widely. One I really like is Zyzzyva (ziz-i-vah). They publish work by west coast writers only.

So here I go. Wish me luck, or leave a comment if you have advice for this newbie.

A rough draft of chapter 1 from Lilek‘s forthcoming e-book: Graveyard Special.

I enjoyed it — had the cadence and sentiments of decent short fiction, which I thought it was until the end.

We’ll be writing a check for a large amount payable to the US Treasury next week. We have no say, directly or indirectly, how the federal government will spend this money. A vote is not a proxy for assent (though withholding it may be laudable dissent). Whatever we have to say about how the money ought to be spent our so-called representatives care little, yours even less. This isn’t cynicism. It isn’t sour grapes. It’s a sad fact. Send in the money they say, then move along citizen we’ll take it from here. Failing this we’ll penalize you even more — jail time in the worst case — under the cover of self-serving laws we’ve likely never read, are obsolete, or don’t understand but which you are subject to. What, you don’t want to pay your fair share for our foreign wars? They’re keeping you safe from terrorists you know. Right, and any day now SETI will discover intelligent life — not likely in Washington D.C..

I was not raised to think I could ever get something for nothing. I was raised to think that, in this country anyway, I could choose the vector my life took, make my own mistakes and abide the consequences, choose and pay for what I valued and avoid what I didn’t. Not that I’d be forced to cover the bill for the myriad laws conceived and passed by people I wouldn’t trust as far as I can spit, not to mention didn’t vote for. If that’s what is taught in high school civics I’m pleased I never took the class (or don’t recall if I did).

People who apologize for sprawling government, coercive taxation, and clamor to have the rich to pay more claim that 1) not everyone was as fortunate as I was coming up (My formative years were spent in a tiny house on a busy street with my parents and two sibs; I shared a bedroom with my brother; my father repaired tv sets; my mother worked on and off in the public schools); 2) not everyone is as smart as you are (I was a C student in high school,  somewhat better in college, even struggled at times as a post-grad); 3) there are certain things only a central government can accomplish (You mean, like, education? Besides, it’s not the thing or two they get right that’s at issue, it’s all the things they don’t which we (taxpayers) must pay for whether we value them — would willing fund them — or not); 4) the rich are disproportionate beneficiaries of government, they should pay more (Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage; Sara Blakely invented Spanx in her basement sans husband or inheritance; Oprah was born into poverty to an unwed teenage mother; other examples abound); 5) it’s hypocrisy to object to a system you personally benefit from (I can’t condemn medical malpractice and see my doctor at the same time? Of course there are taxpayer funded programs I personally benefit from — I want access to the police and courts if I need them, I enjoy national parks, my recent academic training was partly paid by taxpayers. But so long as the law compels participation, especially where non-coercive alternatives are possible, this is not hypocrisy. Direct or incidental benefit from a system you’ve been forced to support is not hypocrisy.); 6) like death, taxes are unavoidable (A lament is not an argument).

We’ll send it in next week, what’s the realistic alternative? There’s conscientious objection to fighting in a war but not paying for it, or for that matter any other coercively funded government enterprise many of us no longer value, if we ever did.

Rufus is in a bad way but his condition has improved this past week. When we returned home from Seattle last week Sunday he had a large mass over his chest and left shoulder and was unable to stand without collapsing under his own weight. When we left for Seattle three days earlier he was fine. What it was that could come on so quickly and present so prominently we didn’t know. We still don’t know for sure, in spite of x-rays, duplicate blood work, ultrasound, aspirates, and evaluation by two veterinarians. He continues to defy diagnosis. One hypothesis had it being a mast cell tumor. But if that were the case it was certainly a grade III variety, and you don’t get better with a stage III mast cell tumor, you go downhill, fast. Our vet who we trust implicitly thought it might be a very virulent infection causing massive inflammation and bleeding into the tissue (Rufus’ skin showed severe ecchymosis). Accordingly, he gave Rufus an injection of a long-acting antibiotic. That diagnosis may have been correct given Rufus is, like I said, improving steadily, though slowly. He’s able to walk on his own now, albeit feebly; he’s eating and drinking, and peeing and poohing (outside!); his skin discoloration is less and his spirit has clearly improved — he barks when the doorbell rings and gets up to greet visitors.

…

The bike fitting was a success. I spent nearly three hours with a physical therapist who also happens to be a certified fitter for Serotta. Every nook ‘n cranny of me was measured three times and averaged. Physiology was assessed, riding preferences discussed, and then I spent about 90 minutes on the fit trainer hooked to a software program to measure various power outputs while every dimension (e.g., drop, reach, setback, stack) was dialed in to precision, recorded, and eventually sent to Serotta. Three days later MySerotta appeared on paper. A beautiful thing. Now I must decide on which Grouppo and Wheelset to add, and then in eight weeks or more the beautiful thing will be a reality, in our garage, ready for me to ride.

Happy Wife and me at Trace and the next night at Purple. So much wine and so little time.

Don’t smash your food. Unless it happens to be Sashimi Napolean (aka Hali’imaile).

Enjoyed recently with the Happy Wife at Jens. A delightful restaurant tucked away in what might be regarded as a strip mall in the midtown area of our quirky city. I like it for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is its afternoon coziness that permits, nay invites, guilt-free wine consumption at an early afternoon hour, which, I realize, may raise a puritanical eyebrow or two. It’s adjacent to a Scandinavian design furniture store where Happy Wife wanted to show me a desk, a shopping experience that doubles as an irresistible segue to afternoon wine consumption. Actually, knowing us, WalMart would probably do the trick too.

It’s rare at 3:30 to find the bar full at Jens. On this day it was empty save for one patron who I thought looked a bit like John Goodman, although neither the Happy Wife nor the bartender thought so. I couldn’t let it go so I asked him if anyone had told him he looked like John Goodman. No, he said, but some have said Bill Clinton. Okay, I could see that, the thick rough of silver-gray hair, but his cheek pouch and drawn features said Goodman all the way.

Yesterday the Happy Wife and I mounted our mountain bikes and set out on the snow packed trails that weave through our neighborhood and beyond. It may have been the last time we’ll be able to do that this year. We’re off to Seattle for a few days on Thursday (getting fitted for a new road bike! and Happy Wife (birthday girl) is looking to buy a new Sea Kayak) and given the temperature is expected to be in the forties while we’re gone the snow won’t last too much longer.

On the way to Jens, a minute from our house, looking east at the Chugach mountains.

Forecaster said to expect three to four inches to fall on the hillside today. Maybe a dusting to an inch in town. Uh huh. We live in town, and so far at least four inches of snow have fallen here, for a seasonal total in Anchorage of about eleven feet. Yes feet. Oh, the science of forecasting. Like red blouses on Bonobos be skeptical. Be very very skeptical.

I half expect the roof covering the deck on the house across the street to collapse any time now. Actually, the whole house may go if the roof isn’t shoveled, and I mean soon. It’s an old stick frame ranch with 2×4 construction, which overall appears pretty shabby. One of the walls on the attached carport doesn’t look like its very plumb anymore, like its been forced slightly outward. We built a cantilevered roof over our deck a couple years ago but I bet you could park a 797 Cat on it with no worries. Last week a few miles from here the roof on a large church collapsed. Fortunately nobody was inside. In a news report some people claimed they were just about to go inside. Trying to exaggerate their brush with death I suppose. They say God works in mysterious ways.

Left and right structures used to be connected.

Here.

Occasionally I am asked to contribute to the scientific peer review process. A glance at my cv shows about a dozen times in the past three years. Never in the field of experimental psychology however. End disclaimer.

Still, I considered this: “Men Think Sex After Seeing Red Dress.“

First let me agree with what one commenter to the article said, anything after Men Think Sex, is unnecessary.

But let’s get serious for a minute.

The article refers to a research paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (5-yr impact factor 2.9. So-so). I downloaded the paper and read it.

A social psychologist working in this field had this to say about the paper:

“It suggests to me that humans as they exist today exhibit these somewhat odd evolutionary artifacts that haven’t been applicable for some time.”

Readers who know me well know I am deeply suspicious of these so-called evolutionary “artifacts” said to be guiding human behavior just below the level of conscious detection and supposedly lurking (somewhere) inside our genome.

Nevertheless, let’s grant for the sake of argument that the color red is an ancestral cue that triggers a response in men, effectively increasing a man’s estimate of the female’s “sexual receptivity”, the actual measure used by the authors in this paper, scored on a scale 1-9.

People who buy into this hypothesis say this: That when men see red on a woman it is subconsciously interpreted by way of an ancient biological cue to indicate she is in estrus, and thus ready — even eager — for sex, specifically sex that will lead to reproduction. Indeed, one reason why women have for decades applied pink blush to their cheeks, they say, is to give the impression of being “in heat”. Surely, they further conclude, the countless shades of red lipstick at the cosmetic counter support this hypothesis as well.

But wait, if this is true then it must be that modern women are conscious of this ancestral cue in men, and know how to activate it through the application of makeup. In other words, women are (consciously) in on it too. So an “artifact” no longer applicable? Evidently not. Plus it doesn’t explain why elderly women continue to wear blush long after they have given up trying to attract men to have sex with them in order to have more babies.

And I see another problem, leading me to suggest a control experiment. The hypothesis would predict a woman with Rosacea to rank high on the sexual receptivity index, the measure used in the paper. Instead of (or in addition to) showing twenty five men a picture of an attractive woman wearing a white top or a red top, as was done in this research, create two pictures of the same woman wearing a white top, one with a normal complexion, the other with a mild case of Rosacea. Now we have a more realistic phenotype of estrus (ever see a Bonobo in a red blouse?), the ancestral cue modern men are supposedly still sensitive to. Survey the men and report the result.

My suspicion is the result of this experiment would be roughly opposite of what the authors would expect, and contradict their hypothesis.

A remarkable turnout to see Ron Paul tonight in Anchorage. He was in Fairbanks last night. I estimated twenty-five hundred to three thousand. Standing room only in the Dena’ina convention center downtown. We didn’t expect this many people to come. We arrived late and had to wait in line outside (15 degrees) for over a half hour. Security was wanding everyone. Poor Happy Wife got cold feet — she wore ankle boots and no socks. Once inside she kicked off her boots and I draped my cashmere scarf over her bare feet. I got the Oh That Feels Good look. After the rally we walked to Orso for wine and dinner at the bar.

Monday am update: A local news person who was at the rally last night estimated fifteen hundred present, considerably lower than my estimate, which, thinking back on it, was high because I doubled the number of rows of chairs in my calculation. Fifteen hundred is probably about right.

In the event your current sleep aids are failing you, close your eyes and listen to this. Twenty-seven minutes.

(If you don’t see an audio control with a play button leave a comment and let me know what browser you’re using, plus the version number if you can.)

Yours truly speaking at the Molecular Medicine Tri-Con conference in San Francisco last month.

Either because the audience was overwhelmed by my clarity or anxious for lunch, there were no questions. Quite unusual, based on prior conferences where I presented this material. As I walked back to my chair a couple people congratulated me on a nice presentation. I started toward the lunch table and a woman stops me and asks me if I had tried using the approaches I discussed to identify the role viruses play in gastrointestinal cancers. I politely said I had not, and tried to continue toward the lunch table but she stepped in front of me again and proceeded to give me a lengthy (I’m being polite) explanation of how one might do so.