UPS update.

So I finally got around to calling UPS customer service today, told the guy my whole long story (I was polite), and he told me that they would be able to refund the shipping charge. However, since I originally paid the shipping payment to Wal-Mart, they would have to refund the money to Wal-Mart, then Wal-Mart would pass the money along to me. I was tempted to ask the guy why I couldn't just give him my payment information and have them credit my debit card with the cost of the shipping, but I know he would not have gone for this. They have a protocol in place, and they have to follow it. So he told me to contact Wal-Mart to get them up to date on the situation, and then it will progress from there. I just sent an email to the Wal-Mart customer service department, and that's where things stand for now. I'll let you know if and when I get my money back.

The joys of apartment living.

As many of you know, I lived in an apartment for three years while at USC. But it was owned by the university, so all my neighbors were fellow USC students. So it was a pretty homogeneous group, you know, in terms of age and education level and shared experience, etc. Obviously there was racial diversity, since USC has a very diverse campus. Anyway, the point is you knew what to expect from fellow college students. Chances are nothing too crazy was gonna happen. I mean, you didn't expect things that were much more extreme than someone dropping a computer monitor off a third floor balcony (as my roommate did freshman year), or setting up a fog machine in the apartment and filling an entire wing of the building with dense fog (as a different roommate did junior year), or simply getting hammered and wandering around asking people to punch him in the face (as I did senior year, shortly after reading Fight Club).

When you live in a regular apartment building, with people who might be 20 or 30 years older than you, or who have completely different backgrounds and life experience, you're more apt to run into surprising things. Which brings me to the story of last night.

For the record, I have no idea who the woman in this story is, which apartment she lives in, or what she looks like. I keep to myself, don't interact with my neighbors much, and it seems like pretty much everybody in the building takes that approach.

Last night I went to bed between midnight and 12:30, same as I usually do, but I set my alarm for earlier in the morning. I wanted some time to read the paper and do some work before going to class, so I decided to get up at 5 (that's not as painfully early to me as it probably sounds to you; I'm accustomed to getting up at 6 or a bit earlier). So I knew I was going to be in for a long day, running on less than 5 hours of sleep. I sprawled out on the futon and probably nodded off around 12:30.

At about 1:20 a.m. I wake up. At first I'm not sure why. Then I hear a woman (about my age, judging by the sound of her voice, but that can be deceiving) start screaming. She sounded very angry, and what she was saying didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. I apologize, but I can't remember what it was that she was yelling. Keep in mind it was late at night and I had just woken from a fairly deep sleep. At first I assumed two or more people were involved in an argument, but as I listened I realized there was only one voice. This crazy lady was yelling to nobody in particular. But she was really pissed. To give you an idea of the content of her diatribe, I kept hearing references to a child (hers or someone else's I'm not sure), and she yelled "Fuck you!" repeatedly-- even though I'm pretty sure there was no one there. I think it was like when my dog used to go outside and bark at the moon. Or the bats. Or the parked cars. Or whatever the hell it is that prompts dogs to bark when they're outside at night.

Later on, the content of her ranting changed. She started screaming about Barack Obama at some point, although I could not discern if she was pro-Barack or anti-Barack. Around the same time, she used the phrase "back alley abortion" repeatedly, but I'm not sure if that was related to Senator Obama or not. For the record, Senator Obama supports a woman's right to choose.

It is interesting to note that the woman was not passive or sedentary during this period of screaming. It's not like she was sitting in her apartment and yelling out the window, or standing in the hallway. Sometimes I heard her running up and down the hall, and I heard doors slam. I'm not sure, but I think she would run outside the building, scream some stuff, run back inside, scream some more stuff, and repeat.

Oh, another phrase she used a lot-- "Go ahead! Call the police! Fuck you!"

I probably should have taken this advice. But I felt like I shouldn't just call the cops without trying to resolve the situation myself. After all, the Syracuse PD has enough to keep it busy. There is a surprising amount of violent crime in this town, considering the fairly low population.

So I considered going out into the hall and talking to the woman. But the more I thought about it, the more this seemed like a bad idea. I mean, she was clearly out of her fucking mind, and what if I walk out there and she's got a gun? I didn't think that was likely, but I wasn't ruling it out. Plus, here's what I actually thought would happen-- this chick was screaming at the top of her lungs to no audience whatsoever. And she kept requesting that whoever might be listening call the police. I really think she just wanted some attention, she probably wanted somebody to listen to her problems. And she was completely psychotic. I know from experience that, for some reason, crazy people like to talk to me about their problems. I think they somehow get the impression that I'm sympathetic, when in reality I'm thinking about the quickest possible way to escape from this situation.

So I was afraid that if I went out there and confronted her and asked her to keep it down, I would wind up listening to her sob story for the rest of the night. So I opted to ignore her and do my best to go to sleep. Unfortunately, this lady was not one to give up quickly, and she had one mighty set of vocal cords on her. There was no way to go to sleep with that shrieking going on. So I didn't get to sleep until she finally tired herself out around 4 a.m. When my alarm went off at 5, I felt like the running of the bulls was going on inside my skull. It's now almost 6 p.m., I haven't taken a nap at all (I almost never nap, it throws off my entire day and makes me very confused), and I feel surprisingly good. But that's probably because of the massive amounts of caffeine in my system. I don't have class until late afternoon tomorrow, so I am looking forward to sleeping in late. Just gonna put the cell phone on silent and have myself a rest. And if that lady starts screaming again, no hesitation tonight-- this is a job for the police department.

Got my computer, classes start tomorrow.

So the UPS situation resolved itself nicely today. I drove out to the pickup center first thing this morning and they had the package ready for me. I was in and out in about five minutes. So far I'm digging the new computer. I mean, it's going to take a while to get used to using a PC again after doing the Mac thing for so long, but it will be all right. There are a few things that are going to be a pain in the ass. The biggest one will probably be transferring all my music files, which I'm in the middle of doing right now. See, I wanted to just use my iPod for that. But it turns out that if you have an iPod set up to work with a Mac and you want to use it on a PC, you have to reformat it. And that erases everything on it. So now I'm using a USB drive to transfer the files from one computer to the other, which is a pain because it only holds like 2 gigs at a time.

Classes officially started today, but I don't have anything scheduled for Mondays this semester, so I start tomorrow. I don't feel like I accomplished everything I wanted to during my vacation (most glaringly, I still don't have a job), but I did get a lot done. And I don't have to spend that much time in class, so I should still have time to job hunt and work on some other things I've been meaning to do. Of course, time will tell how demanding my fall classes are. Maybe it will turn out that I'll be working all day every day, as I was during the summer. Either way, I'll make it work. Don't have much choice in the matter, after all. So I would say at this point I'm somewhat apprehensive about the start of the semester, but still excited and determined. I'll check back later this week to let you know how it's going.

Why I'm Doing This.

For some time now, I’ve been meaning to put down in writing the reasons for my somewhat abrupt and surprising decision to attend graduate school for journalism. The trouble was that I didn’t really know how to explain it at first. This is not to say the decision was impulsive or that I hadn’t thought it through beforehand. In fact, I put a great deal of thought into it-- agonized over it, really-- and I knew I had good reasons for doing it. I also had a vague sense or a general idea of what those reasons were, but articulating them in a way that would make sense to other people proved challenging. So I will do my best to make this whole thing coherent, but I can make no guarantees.

I first started thinking about going back to school to get a graduate degree in journalism sometime last fall (2007), while I was working for a collection agency called West Asset Management. Even though I had only been there since July, and I would wind up working there until the end of January ‘08, I already knew the job wasn’t for me, so I had started thinking about what my next job move would be. In this time period, I started writing a story/novel in which the main character was a sports reporter. I didn’t get very far into the story before abandoning it (although I may return to it at some point; it had some promise). An unintended side effect of working on this story was that, by putting myself in the main character’s shoes, I realized that being a reporter was something I would probably enjoy. Even though journalism is not creative, at least not to the same extent as writing fiction or screenplays, it would still be writing, and as far as day jobs go, it would beat the hell out of trying to convince ignorant deadbeats to pay their student loan debts.

So I started doing some research online about graduate programs in journalism, casually at first, and then more seriously as the idea really took hold in my mind. It turned out that there are not a large number of schools that offer master’s degrees in journalism, at least not in New York State, or in the Northeast in general. Considering I had just recently moved back to New York after four years in LA, I was not eager to do the long-distance thing again, and wanted to stay relatively close to home. I discovered that Syracuse University, which is only about a two-hour drive from where I grew up, offered the kind of program I was looking for (print journalism), and their entire communications school is held in high regard. I considered a couple of other schools-- Columbia in NYC and Emerson in Boston are the two that immediately come to mind-- but in the end I decided it was going to be Syracuse or nothing. I only applied to one school.

The application process took quite a while, especially since I had not taken the GRE. So I registered for that, took the exam in December (and crushed it), and started contacting former professors for letters of recommendation in the meantime. I also visited the SU campus for an open house at the communications school (Newhouse) in November, and liked what I saw.

While all this was going on, I warmed to the idea of going back to school, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of working as a journalist. Still, I took a wait-and-see attitude. I might not even get into the program, and even if I did, I would want to know what kind of financial aid package they were offering before I decided to accept or decline. And, of course, if some other full-time job came along that would pay well and wouldn’t kill me with boredom, I could always toss the idea of going to grad school and just start a career.

I found out that I had been accepted in the middle of March, but I wouldn’t find out about financial aid for another month or so, and I didn’t need to make a decision until the end of April or the beginning of May-- I forget exactly when the deadline was. So I put off the decision for a while, though I continued to turn it over in my mind. By this time I had left the collection agency and was working as a substitute teacher. This was a much more pleasant occupation than the previous one, but the pay was terrible, and it wasn’t something I was in love with. It did help me figure out that teaching would not be the right profession for me, not long-term.

In April the school offered me a scholarship. It was a pretty good chunk of change, but still only covered about 25% of the tuition, and then I would obviously need to come up with living expenses on top of that, so I was still looking at a very substantial bill. In other words, the scholarship was something that pushed me in the direction of going back to school, but it wasn’t the kind of offer that made it a no-brainer.

Still undecided, and with the deadline drawing ever closer, things got more complicated.

I had taken some civil service tests to qualify for several state jobs in October, and was now receiving a lot of canvass letters about job openings. These weren’t offers, exactly, but the letters were to notify me that there were openings, to find out whether or not I was interested, and to set up interviews if I did have interest. My test scores put me at or near the top of the list of potential applicants, so I thought it was a virtual certainty that if I started interviewing for these positions, I would get offered a job sooner or later-- probably sooner.

At some point in April, as I was running out of time to make my decision, I got a call from my friend Cory’s father, who is a pretty high-ranking official with Citibank (or, actually, I think Citigroup is the name of the corporation. I’ll just call them Citi to simplify). They had an opening in their Buffalo office that he thought I would be good for, and he encouraged me to apply. It wasn’t anything big, just an entry level job, but from everything I’ve heard, Citi takes good care of their employees, and with my work ethic and abilities I was confident I would be able to advance there (or anywhere else, really).

So it was decision time-- the lady or the tiger. Do I start interviewing and applying for these jobs and take the best one I can get, and embark on a stable but mundane career, or do I roll the dice with grad school, which would sort of set my whole life back a year or two and put me much further into debt, but would also potentially lead to a career I would find more interesting and rewarding?

Well, I thought long and hard about it and decided-- obviously-- to go for the master’s in journalism.

Okay, so that was the easy part. That was the chronology of what happened. Now comes the hard part, as I try to explain why and how I made this decision. And it’s probably more complex than you’re thinking.

I should start by saying that I actually did the opposite of what I wanted to do. Why the hell would I do that? Yeah, good question. Deep down, I really wanted to take the path of least resistance, the safer path, the road more traveled. I would field my job offers, take the one that was the most lucrative, finally move out of my parents’ house and get my own place, start working a real job, and be completely out of debt and building up savings within a few years (I had some student loan debt from my undergraduate years, but not a lot. My parents helped me out a ton with paying for college, plus I had a half tuition scholarship and some other scholarships, as well). Sure, I wasn’t really interested in any of these jobs I was thinking about, but I could live with that. I could deal with doing something mundane and dull, so long as it wasn’t terribly unpleasant. I had never really cared about getting a sense of enjoyment or fulfillment from my job. To me, a job was a paycheck and that’s all it was. The way I saw it, you shouldn’t be drawing your happiness or satisfaction in life from what you do for a living, but from what you do when you’re on your own time-- your relationships with your friends and family, your hobbies and interests, and so on.

When I was a kid, I always thought I was destined for something great, or at least something unusual. I couldn’t imagine ever being happy with a “normal” life, and I sort of pitied all those people who work regular, everyday jobs that aren’t weird or exciting (99% of the population, in other words). I could never see myself being happy with that.

Yet, after being out of college for a year, a normal life and a normal job were exactly what I wanted. I just wanted to work 40 hours a week, make a decent salary, have my own apartment, maybe a dog, and spend my free time hanging out with my friends and family, reading interesting books, and maybe writing a few books of my own if I worked up the ambition. It didn’t sound thrilling, but it sounded... good, you know?

But there was still something going on deep down, something in the recesses of my brain that I couldn’t quite shut up. It was this sense that I would be taking the coward’s way out, waving the white flag, turning my back on the wider world. And, for some reason, I felt like I couldn’t let myself do that. No matter how much I wanted to.

This next part is probably going to sound arrogant and weird and possibly ridiculous, but I admit that I have a narcissistic streak in me, and I’ve come to terms with that.

I think it’s safe to say that I’ve always had a lot of potential. And for that reason, it’s always been my perception that people expect me to do great things, and I had started to expect the same. As any pop culture junkie could tell you, Spider-Man 2 taught us that, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Well, I sort of think the same thing goes for potential. I didn’t ask for whatever abilities I have, but I have them, and I think I’m supposed to use them for something.

It’s strange, but I feel as though I have aged in reverse over the past five years or so. I’ve actually become less jaded and more idealistic as I’ve gotten older. When I was in my teens, I didn’t really believe in anything. When I looked at political issues, it always seemed to me like there was no right answer and no wrong answer. No matter what we decided to do about a certain problem, a lot of people were going to be pissed off, a lot of people were going to get screwed over, and a lot of politicians were going to make a lot of money. Why bother thinking about politics, I reasoned, when all of the options were really the same. That sort of thinking is why, to this day, I have never cast a vote in any election other than a school budget vote. But that is about to change. I’m registered to vote in Onondaga County (where Syracuse is located) and I’ll be heading out to the polls on election day 2008. Of course, I’m still of the opinion that my vote in the presidential election does not matter at all since it is a foregone conclusion that Obama will win New York State, but I have learned to embrace the symbolic value in casting a vote in a presidential election. For the record, it still bothers me that, unless you live in a swing/battleground state, casting a vote for president only has symbolic value. The electoral college really needs to go away.

Okay, I need to rein myself in and not go off on tangents. This isn’t about politics. The point I was trying to make is that I believe in things now. Some things, anyway. I don’t know what brought about this change, but I’m glad it happened. I’m not idealistic or foolish enough to think I can single-handedly save the world with my words or anything like that, but I believe that through my work I will be able to leave a mark, I will be able to change some things for the better. That’s why I’m going to work so hard at it, why I’m going to dedicate myself to it so fully.

Even though I’m only six weeks into my master’s program, I already feel like I’m more committed to this, that I’m more engaged with it, than I’ve ever been about anything. I haven’t done much this summer besides write and work and try to become more informed about the wider world. And the weird thing is I don’t really mind. I feel like I could keep going like this indefinitely, doing nothing but work, and I would be happy.

I realize that’s a complete departure from my earlier reasoning that your satisfaction in life should come from everything you do outside work, and that your job is just the thing you do so you can afford to live your life. I am unable to explain what brought on this reversal. Maybe it was just a natural part of getting older, or maybe it’s that I found a career path that really interests me. For most of my young life (all of high school and college, at least) I suffered from chronic boredom. I think this was actually the main cause of the problems I had with depression and anxiety a few years ago. I just didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. Now I’ve found... well, something I’m interested in. I almost wrote “I’ve found my calling,” but I don’t like that phrase. For one thing, it’s an overused cliché. But it also suggests that everyone has one true calling, which is a notion I reject as easily as the idea that everyone has one true soul mate.

I mean, maybe I would have lived an exciting, happy, and profitable life as a crab fisherman off the Alaskan coast (I’ve never watched that “Deadliest Catch” show, but the promos make it look bad-ass), or maybe if I had decided to go into comedy/acting I would have wound up being Conan O’Brien’s sidekick on the Tonight Show when he takes over in 2009, and I would have been known as the 21st century Ed McMahon (minus the foreclosure). But we’ll never know because I never tried to do those things. I am trying to do this, and I think it was a good decision.

So, you might be asking yourself, what is it that I hope to accomplish in my career, and where do I see myself in the future? Well, that’s another thing that’s changed recently, even since I first came to Syracuse. I originally saw myself working in a branch of journalism that would not be all that consequential. I thought I might like to be a sports writer. Covering the Bills and/or the Sabres for the Buffalo News (or the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, or whatever) would be sort of a dream job for me. And if I excelled there, maybe I could end up covering sports for something bigger, like a national magazine or ESPN.com or something like that. I would also be interested in doing film criticism. And one of my biggest inspirations when I decided to become a journalist was Chuck Klosterman. I would love to do what he does, and comment on various facets of pop culture (or, at this point it might be more accurate to say Klosterman writes about “culture.” His more recent articles have had more of a serious bent, particularly his latest column for Esquire, which I believe was one of the most sober pieces I have ever read by CK).

Don’t get me wrong, I may very well wind up doing one of those things, or perhaps all of them at different points in my career, and I think I would still enjoy writing about all those subjects. But I’ve also started giving thought to writing about things that are considered more serious-- politics, international affairs, social issues. Now, when I think about whose career I most want mine to resemble, I don’t think about Klosterman or sports writers like Bill Simmons, Peter King, or Vic Carucci (although I admire all those people a great deal. Well, maybe not Simmons). I think about Tom Wolfe. Wolfe first came to prominence as an extraordinarily creative and influential journalist, and wrote a number of nonfiction books that made a lasting impact-- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, et al. Later in his career he started publishing fiction, and wrote what I consider one of the truly Great American Novels, The Bonfire of the Vanities (A Man in Full and I Am Charlotte Simmons aren’t half bad, either, but Bonfire is in a class all by itself). Just because I’m now becoming a journalist does not mean that I am walking away from creative writing (in fact, as I write this essay, I am preparing to launch a new creative writing project. I’m not giving out details just yet, but this will be happening soon, so just sit tight). Maybe I can do what Wolfe has done, and succeed at both. That would be the best case scenario.

It has occurred to me that maybe I could have accomplished these things without going to grad school. I know people who got their undergraduate degrees in English, just as I did, and wound up working for newspapers without getting a master’s in journalism. I also understand that you don’t need to have an official job as a journalist to research and write articles, to try to expose a truth that most people are not aware of. With the advent of citizen journalism, largely due to the internet and the popularity of blogging, everyone has a voice. Everyone is a journalist if they want to be. But being a professional gives you a certain credibility-- and a built-in audience-- that you don’t have if you’re trying to do it all independently. I could produce the best journalism in the world on this blog, but how are people going to find it? It would be inaccurate to say that being a professional journalist will give me a voice-- everybody already has a voice. But it might give me a very large megaphone.

When I started my classes this summer, I didn’t really know what to expect from myself. I knew I could write, but I didn’t know if I could report. I’m not shy, but I’m also not the most outgoing person in the world, and one of my biggest questions was whether or not I would be able to interview people effectively. I still consider my interviewing style something I need to improve, but I was able to do it well enough to produce some good articles for my summer writing class. Some very good articles, if I may be permitted to pat myself on the back. Obviously, as this year goes on I’m only going to get better and better, and I’d like to think I’m not bad to begin with.

For most of my life, people have had more confidence in me than I’ve had in myself. I’m the biggest critic of my own writing (despite the self-congratulatory statements made in the last paragraph), and when I was struggling with the uncertainty of life post-college, I found it difficult to believe people’s assurances that I would eventually figure out what I wanted to do and that everything would work out. I didn’t know if I would figure out what I wanted to do. There were times when I wondered if there was anything I really wanted to do. Maybe it was just in my personality to be an underachieving lazy bum for the rest of my life. I started to hate myself a little.

Fortunately, those worries are all behind me now. I am now certain that I can do this, that I want to do this, and that I will do this. Going to grad school was absolutely the right decision. I finally got one of the big decisions right, and that feels good. I still have a long way to go, but I am growing more and more certain that I am going to be extraordinarily good at this, and that I am going to rise far, and that I am going to rise fast (because of my high yeast content. What? Where the hell did that joke come from? I think I’m getting tired. Ah, what the hell, I’m gonna leave the yeast joke. This paragraph needed some levity). If I continue writing this blog for a long time (years, we’re talking), and I see no reason why I wouldn’t, I think it’s going to turn into a chronicle of my rise to the top of my profession. So stay tuned. I think the next decade or so is going to be a profoundly awesome experience.

Well, there you have it. In a rambling, circumlocutious way, I think this should have answered a lot of your questions about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask. I obviously am not opposed to writing about myself (there’s that pesky narcissism again).

Lastly, I want to thank all my family and friends-- anyone reading this, really-- for being so supportive. There were some days (months) when I thought my future looked rather bleak. I might not have gotten through that time, or had the courage to take the plunge and go to grad school, without the support of all the wonderful people in my life. If I ever accomplish anything great, much of the credit will be yours. Unless you’re just some random person who stumbled onto my blog. In that case, I don’t owe you anything. But thanks for reading, man.

Let's get ready to fumble

I'm watching the preseason game between the Vikings and Steelers right now. Because there's not much else on. I think the only Olympic events on tonight are track & field and... diving? Is it diving? I can't remember, I just know that it wasn't interesting. Anyway, Steelers rookie running back Rashard Mendenhall just lost a fumble. Get used to this, Steelers fans. The first time I watched a full game of Mendenhall's was the last game of his college career-- the Rose Bowl against USC, last January. When I watched him play, I immediately noticed he was a very talented guy, but he did not take care of the ball at all while he was running with it. He carries the ball like a loaf of bread, as my junior high football coach was wont to say (I don't understand it, either). Everybody's been going nuts over this guy in the preseason, saying he's going to leach carries from Willie Parker and he could take over Pittsburgh's starting tailback job, and on and on. First of all, this is ridiculous, because Parker is awesome. Like, one of the league's top 5 backs when healthy. Why would any rookie get a chance at taking his job? Unless it were 2007 and the rookie were Adrian Peterson. Anyway, back to Mendenhall. I'm sure the Steelers coaches are working with him on the way he carries the football, but it will take time to break these deeply ingrained habits. Expect fumbling to be a constant concern for Mendenhall in at least his first couple years in the league, and it could be a problem that dogs him his entire career. Bottom line: Do not overvalue Mendenhall-- or undervalue Parker-- in your fantasy drafts. If you really want to take a rookie running back, I would definitely take Darren McFadden over Mendenhall, and I would probably take Jonathan Stewart and Steve Slaton over him, as well. But not Felix Jones. Felix is a good back, but Marion Barber is gonna be a beast this year. Just you watch. Okay, enough football talk. I'm out.

Brown is the color of shit.

In my last post I talked about how I ordered a new laptop. It was supposed to be delivered via UPS. And, according to Wal-Mart's web site, it would be delivered today. I am writing this blog post on my ancient Apple iBook. Read this letter to find out why. The letter will be updated before I actually send it to UPS, so I can include any information about what happens when I go back to the UPS store on Monday.

To Whom It May Concern:

I usually do not make a point of complaining when I receive below average service from a company. In fact, I believe this is the first time I have ever written a letter of complaint. What moved me to write this letter was my experience with your company today, which was by far the worst customer service I have ever received from any company or organization, bar none.

A few days ago, I ordered a laptop computer online via www.walmart.com. Since I needed the computer right away, I elected to pay extra for next day delivery, which cost $22.97. The computer did not ship for a couple of days, which is not the fault of UPS (or of Wal-Mart, for that matter). It took a couple of days for my payment to clear, and I expected that. I received notification that the package had shipped on Thursday, August 21 and it would be delivered Friday, August 22.

I am currently on vacation, so I was home all day. I live in an apartment building, and I was concerned the driver might have trouble getting my package directly to my door, so I went out into the hallway and the entranceway several times that morning to see if the package had been left there. Around 11:30 a.m. I found a note attached to the doorway saying that the driver had been there to deliver the package but no one was home and so it was returned to the warehouse, and another delivery attempt would be made on Monday.

Obviously, I did not see the driver while he was here, but it seems to me he couldn’t have made much of an attempt to get inside the building. People often go in and out, and if he had knocked on the front door, there’s a good chance someone in an apartment on that side of the building would have heard. Also, I never received a phone call. When I placed the order on Wal-Mart’s web site, I supplied my cell phone number. I do not know if UPS normally attempts to contact people by phone when they’re not home to receive their package, but doesn’t that seem like the kind of thing you should do? You’re in the business of delivering things to people, so it would probably be beneficial to contact your customers to find out the best way to complete the transaction.

I did not want to wait until Monday to get the computer, so I called UPS to arrange to pick up the package later in the day. The representative told me that I could go to the UPS Store at 6975 Northern Boulevard in East Syracuse between 7:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. that evening to receive the package. I told her I would so.

So I took the time out from my Friday night to make a special trip to the UPS Store. I arrived there around 7:15 p.m. There were two customers ahead of me in line. The first was a young woman who was expecting several packages to be delivered to her residence, but she experienced a problem similar to mine. The driver apparently could not get into the building, so he just left a note on the door (I heard the young woman say she lived in a sorority house). The customer and the UPS employees were having a disagreement because the customer claimed only one attempt to deliver her packages had been made, and the UPS staff claimed three attempts had already been made. I, of course, do not know all the details of this situation and cannot make any judgments regarding who was in the right and who was in the wrong, but the point is that the customer was very unhappy with the service she had received, and the staff at the customer service center did not seem friendly, helpful, or sympathetic to her situation in any way. She eventually left with the situation unresolved.

The next person in line was a young man who had been to the UPS store the night before to pick up a package. He got the package, took it home, and opened the box. He was expecting to find stereo speakers. He found a shotgun instead. This really happened. I can only assume that accidentally giving firearms to people without any sort of background check is not something your company would like to make a habit of. I will concede that the customer is partly at fault in this situation, since stereo speakers and shotguns do not have remotely similar shapes, and he probably should have sensed something was awry when they gave him a box shaped... like a shotgun.

The young man eventually received the correct package and left. Now it was my turn. I had my driver’s license ready to prove who I was. I had the note the driver had left attached to my door earlier in the day. I had my tracking number and all the details of my order. The man working at the counter got my last name and the name of my street, then went to find my package, and I waited for him to return. And waited. And waited. He returned about 15 minutes later. With no package. He informed me that my package had been misplaced when it was brought back to the warehouse. It was supposed to be set aside for pickup, but apparently just went with all the other packages. The man claimed there was no way for them to locate the package that night, so I would need to pick it up at a later date. At no point did he apologize, and the entire time he acted as though he were the one who had been inconvenienced. I should have asked this man’s name, but I was so frustrated at the time that I forgot about it. I suppose you could just look at the records and see who was working the customer service desk at that location between 7:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Friday, August 22. I can only hope they are better at keeping their records than they are at providing customer service or delivering packages.

Since I did not see any other options available, I agreed to come back to the UPS Store on Monday, August 25 and pick up the package then. So now I will make a second trip to this location (when I should not have needed to make any) and I will receive the package four days after Wal-Mart shipped it. And I remind you that I paid to have it delivered the next day. Also, it’s not as if I passively sat at home and waited for the situation to resolve itself, or waited for the package to come to me. I made an active, conscious effort to retrieve my package, and was thwarted at every turn.

Since I did not receive the service I paid for (next-day delivery), and because this was caused by the staggering incompetence of the UPS staff in Syracuse, I fully expect to be reimbursed the $22.97 I paid for shipping. I could also ask to be compensated for the miles I drove on my two trips to the UPS store, and for all the time I unnecessarily spent on this situation, but I would settle for the shipping cost.

I am a reasonable person, and I understand that I should not hold a grudge against an entire company because of one bad experience with a few specific employees. The truth is I have received a number of items from UPS in the past, and have not had any problems until now. Therefore, I will continue to do business with you if I receive what I consider to be a satisfactory response to this complaint. If not, I will simply take my business to FedEx or the Postal Service. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Sincerely,

Nicholas C. Roberts

Job hunting, buying stuff, etc.

Wow, I didn't realize several days had already gone by since the last time I posted. I've been really busy for a dude who is ostensibly on vacation. My student loans for the semester just came in earlier this week, so I've been taking advantage of this by buying certain things I've been needing for a while. The most notable is a new computer. I have purchased a Toshiba laptop, which should be delivered to my place either tomorrow, Saturday, or Monday. Yes, it's true, after being a dedicated "Mac guy" for over 5 years, I'm making the switch back to PC. If it's any consolation, I'm not happy about it. It was strictly a matter of economics. I could get a decent PC laptop for $500. A good Mac laptop would have cost more than twice that much. So I will temporarily be dealing with the hell that is using Windows, but I'll go straight back to Mac as soon as I can afford to, and I'm going to keep the old computer, both because I think it would have virtually no resale value, and because there are certain things I use it for that I expect will be either a pain in the ass or impossible on the PC. Plus, I can always just break out the Mac and type an article on it strictly for nostalgia's sake. I love this thing. I used it for my entire undergraduate career. I wrote my novel on it. This thing is never leaving my side. When it becomes incapable of doing anything at all, maybe I'll have it bronzed or something.

So it turns out I borrowed a little bit more money than I really needed for the semester. It's hard to say exactly how much, since I have trouble predicting how much I'm going to spend on things like food and gasoline, but I should have a pretty good chunk of change left over. With that in mind, I've started looking for short-term investments. Might as well make that money work for me while I have it. Today single-game tickets went on sale for the Bills. Since I am a member of the Bills Backers, I got a crack at them four hours earlier than the general public. So I bought a total of 4 tickets to 3 different games (one for the Jets, one for the Chargers, two for the Monday night game against Cleveland), and I am going to scalp the hell out of them. Hopefully I'll make a tidy profit on the deal. I figure, worst-case scenario, I sell them for face value and break even on the deal. Or, for some reason, I become unable to sell them at all and I just wind up attending these games myself. As far as worst-case scenarios go, that's not a bad one to have.

While I think ticket dealing could be a lucrative part-time business for me, I am still looking for "real" employment. I still haven't heard back on one of the TA positions I applied for, and I was told today that they would be making their decision either tomorrow or Monday. Which is good, because the semester starts Monday.

If I don't get the TA job-- and at this point I'm not expecting to, although I would still put it firmly within the realm of possibility-- I've got some other things working. I applied to teach test prep for Kaplan. There's a Kaplan center right on the SU campus, so it would be convenient. I hear they pay pretty well, and they have flexible scheduling and don't require a ton of hours, so that would be a great job for me. I'm also probably going to place an ad on Craigslist, and possibly ads in the Syracuse Post-Standard or the SU Daily Orange, letting people know that I'm available for private tutoring, coaching people on their writing, etc. Not sure how much interest there will be in that, but it's worth looking into. And I'm scouring Craigslist and the newspaper classifieds to see if there are any jobs that really appeal to me. So I'll find some sort of employment, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

I've also been spending a lot of time looking for the cheapest place to buy my books for the semester, which has been surprisingly time-consuming. I'm going to wind up saving quite a bit of money by buying stuff on eBay, or by buying used books from Amazon or other web sites, but I'm seriously questioning whether or not the money I save is going to be worth the time and effort I'm putting into it. Not to mention that eBay orders and used books web sites frequently take a long time to process orders and ship them out, so I might get behind on my reading assignments while I wait for the books to arrive.

Last night Cousin Eric stopped in Syracuse on his way across the state, going home to WNY from his current job in New Hampshire. We hung out for a bit, grabbed dinner at this very good Chinese place on campus, it was a cool time, and fun to see somebody from home down here in the 'Cuse. And it won't be long before I repeat the experience. My parents are probably going to stop in either Saturday or Sunday, when they're driving back from Saratoga, because they plan on attending the Travers Stakes on Saturday. Also, Eric will be driving back to New Hampshire on Sunday and he may stop again. Good times.

Anybody out there who used to read Rage Pirates knows that I've done a lot of writing about the NFL in the past, including a big season preview article the past couple of years, as well as weekly columns once the season actually starts. I've been dying to write stuff about the NFL lately, but just haven't had the time. I highly doubt I will be able to write a weekly football column while attending grad school this fall, but maybe I can sporadically write about the NFL a few times over the course of the season. And I will try to write a season preview, since it was always a fairly popular and well-received item on Rage Pirates, but I can't make any promises. I'm juggling a lot of things right now.

Okay, this is a pretty long entry and my eyes are getting tired. Long day. Time to have a cigarette, maybe watch a little Letterman, and be asleep within an hour, hour and a half. Sounds like a solid plan. See ya next time.

-Nick

Where the hell have I been?

I've been in Attica for the past 5 or 6 days, chilling with the family. Saw a lot of relatives, went to Erie County Fair, it was a good time. I'm back in Syracuse now, and so will be getting back to the blogging on a more regular basis. Lots of stuff I'm interested in writing about on here, but we'll see how much time I have. Unfortunately, I am still unemployed, so I need to spend this next week that I have off before the fall semester starts trying to nail down gainful employment.

Got some other things I'm working on tonight, so I won't write any more now; just wanted to let y'all know that I didn't drop off the face of the earth or decide to quit blogging or anything like that. There should be some cool things coming here soon, so stay tuned.

Instant classic in progress...

After taking that 10-0 first inning lead (see previous post), the Red sox now trail the Rangers 15-14 midway through the sixth. Through 5 1/2 innings, the teams have combined for 29 runs and 31 hits. Good times.

Barkley: Always entertaining.

Man, I wish I had been more aware of what was going on in the world of sports in 1992. In my defense, when the '92 summer Olympics were played, I was 7, so I hadn't quite reached the level of expert in my sports fandom. Anyway, the point is some stuff happened in 1992 that must have been ridiculously awesome and hilarious to see live. I was reading an ESPN article about today's basketball game between the USA and Angola when I came across this golden nugget of a paragraph:

"The United States improved to 4-0 against Angola, starting with the Dream Team's Olympic debut in 1992. That romp is best remembered for Charles Barkley's elbow to an unsuspecting Angolan player in a 116-48 victory."

The phrase "Charles Barkley's elbow to an unsuspecting Angolan" was enough to make me start laughing, then when I got to the end of the sentence and found out it happened in a 68-point blowout, I lost control of myself for a few minutes. And this man may someday be the governor of Alabama.

By the way, there's something pretty amazing happening in Boston right now. David Ortiz had two home runs and 6 RBI IN THE FIRST INNING of Boston's game with the Rangers tonight. It's currently 12-6 Boston in the 5th. And a 6-run lead is pretty good, but considering they had a 10-run lead, and we had to go to the bullpen (after starting a guy making his major league debut tonight, some guy named Zink.... I'm gonna call him "Centrum Silver"), I'm deathly afraid we're going to blow this somehow. That's the way things have been going for the Sox lately. 12-7 now. Sweet Jesus.

Negator, Skeletor.

Didn't get it. Bollocks. Think I might drink now.

Still waiting

So five o'clock has come and gone, and I haven't heard anything about the job. I had expected to hear from them by 5, because that's usually considered the end of the work day. I don't necessarily think this means I didn't get the job. Since they only interviewed 4 people, I'm pretty sure they would have contacted the 3 people who didn't get it, as well as the 1 who did, if they had made a decision. So they must still be working on it. Which, actually, is not that big of a surprise. When I interviewed Friday morning, they asked me for a few more references, which I emailed to them later that day. If they did the same with the other applicants, I would imagine they were still trying to get ahold of a lot of people today, since it can be hard to reach people on the weekend. The references I gave them might have been particularly troublesome, because a couple of them are based in Los Angeles, so then you've got the time zone thing to take into account. Not much I could do about that-- I lived in California for four years.

Also, it's still possible I could hear something tonight. When I first talked to the one professor running the program to schedule an interview, I think we had that conversation around 7PM. So I know he's open to the idea of doing business in the evening.

Anyway, still waiting. I'll let you know as soon as I have some news. I realize that maybe I'm just being delusional here, maybe they made their choice and then decided, "Eh, screw those other guys, they'll figure out they didn't get the job when we don't call them back," but after meeting with these professors, I really don't think they're the kind of guys who would do that. So, keep those fingers crossed.

-Nick

A (relatively) stress-free weekend

OK, so I survived the last day of classes without incident. My graphics project even turned out to not be as sucky as I feared it would be. And I thought my interview for the research assistant job went very well. I should be hearing from them regarding whether or not I got the job some time tomorrow (Monday). So keep your fingers crossed for me. If I don't get it, I'm going to try to not be disappointed or down about it. I've got some other ideas about ways to make money this fall, not sure how viable some of them are, but I'll figure something out.

It's been a very good weekend, and fairly relaxing, even though I've stayed busy. Yesterday I did some grocery shopping, cleaned up my apartment a little bit, then spent a few hours in the afternoon writing a long, long email to some of my buddies from college, with whom I had done a piss-poor job of keeping in touch. I'd been meaning to send a mass email out to them and let them know how I've been spending my life post-graduation, but I just hadn't gotten around to it, due to being lazy and busy and forgetful, at different times.

Last night I relaxed by watching the Bills-Redskins preseason game on TV. Ah, that good old feeling of watching the Bills and being disappointed by the result... how I've missed you. The universe is still in balance, it would seem.

Telling you what I did today is probably going to sound boring and unpleasant, but I actually found it very relaxing. I read the news. Pretty much all day long. See, during my last week of classes I had stopped reading the paper, but I get it delivered, so these newspapers were just piling up on my coffee table, a constant reminder of how I've been ignoring my journalistic responsibility to know what the hell is going on in the world. And my inbox was full of news updates from the New York Times that remained unread. So today I got all caught up on the news and it was actually a really nice morning/afternoon. I figure if you don't like reading the news and finding out about what's going on in your community/state/country/world, you probably shouldn't be in the journalism business.

I also watched the USA/China basketball game, which wasn't very entertaining (101-70 in favor of democracy) but it was decent background noise while I was reading the papers.

Tonight I'm thinking I'm gonna head out and finally see the X-Files movie, which I still haven't done (I actually haven't been to the movies since Hancock, which was over a month ago now. Just been really busy. And kind of cheap). It's a stormy night in Syracuse, seems like a good time to get my paranormal investigation on. Plus it'll be a 10 o'clock show on a Sunday at a mall that no one seems to go to, of a movie that has been out for several weeks and didn't do that well to begin with. I estimate there will be no more than 8 people in that theater, myself including. So the mostly empty theater should enhance whatever creepiness factor the movie has. Also plan on seeing Pineapple Express in the near future, and I'd still like to see Step Brothers, and I think there's some good stuff coming out soon (I'm hearing Downey is awesome in Tropic Thunder) so maybe I'll spend a lot of time in theaters during my vacation.

Okay, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll have a job by the next time I post. But if not, it won't be the end of the world. Peace.

-Nick

The Last Day

So tomorrow is the last day of boot camp, and it's going to be intense. First of all, I start off the day with the interview for that research job I think I wrote about last week. That's at 9:30, and the professor told me it wouldn't take very long, but I'm still expecting to get to class a little late (I'm supposed to be there at 10).

Then, the day is going to be stressful because I have to finish my final graphics project by 5 (or, more accurately, by 4:15 or 4:30 at the latest, because after you finish the design, then you need to do a quick write-up about it, print everything out, organize your materials so you're ready to hand it in, etc.) I'm having more trouble with this project than I have with any other (and that's saying something-- at one point or another, every project has caused me to start spewing profanity), and I'm somewhat concerned. I'm not worried about my grade-- I've done well on everything so far, so I can afford to get a lower grade on this one without even really hurting myself. What worries me is that I'm seriously doubting my ability to even finish the thing on time. I should have stayed late in the computer lab tonight to work on it, but by the time 5 rolled around, I was so fucking sick of being there and I was getting really hungry and I just decided to bail. In my defense, I did quite a bit of work on it from home tonight. I can't actually work on the design, since I don't have the necessary software on my computer, but I did a lot of research, planning, sketching, etc. Anyway, tomorrow is going to suck, but I'll find a way to do it-- I always do-- and then the summer classes will be over. That's the thing that matters. In less than 18 hours, it will be over, for better or worse.

Okay, that's all for now. I'll write more tomorrow night, when I will presumably be very relieved and happy about having all this behind me. Unless I'm out partying and am therefore unavailable to write anything, which is a possibility. Although I actually think I'll probably be so tired that I'll just want to come back to the apartment and chill out, and save any partying for Saturday. Anyway, I'll be back with more posts over the weekend at some point. Wish me luck.

-Nick

The Coville Story

Hey gang,

Had my last day of news writing today, and turned in the Bruce Coville article. Now all I have to do is finish my final graphics project in the next two days, and boot camp is over. I need to get to work on that, so can't write much now. Oh, one thing related to my last blog post-- Kevin Smith won his appeal with the MPAA, and "Zack and Miri" is officially rated R, and he didn't need to make any further cuts. Good news.

All right, here's the article, if you're interested:

All in a Day’s Plork
By Nick Roberts

Bruce Coville, the Syracuse-based children’s author, has now published over 90 books. His career began in the 1970s, when he and his wife, Katherine, started making picture books; he wrote and she illustrated. His newest novel is “Dark Whispers,” the eagerly anticipated third installment in his popular “Unicorn Chronicles” series, which was published August 1.

Coville, 58, is a man of great energy. Speaking at his Clarke Street office, he often taps the surface of the desk in front of him for emphasis, jerks his eyebrows up and down, or jumps out of his seat to grab something from the cluttered bookshelf or the adjoining room. It is the energy of a man who gets to make his living doing what he loves most.

“I always had an affinity for being with kids, for playing with kids, for hanging around with kids,” Coville says. “I also knew I wanted to write.”

One of the reasons he writes for children is because, even now, many of his favorite books are kids’ books. He and Katherine have three children of their own; Orion, 38; Cara, 33; and Adam, 27.

“What I try to do, every time I write a kid’s book, is write a book that I would have wanted to read myself when I was a kid,” he says.

Likewise, Coville specializes in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres because those were the kinds of stories he enjoyed as a child.

“I wanted to be the next Edgar Rice Burroughs,” Coville says. Fantasy also has some advantages over other genres, he points out.

“Writing fantasy lets you talk about big issues, more directly than you can in contemporary fiction, in some ways.”

As an example, he cites his most commercially successful book, 1992’s “My Teacher Flunked the Planet,” the fourth and final book in his wildly popular “My Teacher is an Alien” series, which sold over 1.5 million copies.

“It’s the most profound political and philosophical statement I’ve made, and it’s the best seller of my books, and a lot of people don’t know about it. I take a certain amount of pride in that.... That me and the kids have this thing.”

Despite its commercial success, the book failed to garner much attention among critics and reviewers because it was published as a paperback original and because it was the fourth book in a series.

Michael Stearns, 42, a New York literary agent and former editor who worked on several of Coville’s books in the 1990s, says that Coville would be an even bigger name than he already is, but the kinds of books he writes do not normally receive consideration for the Newbury and other major children’s literature awards. Even so, Stearns is a firm believer in the quality of Coville’s work.

“The ‘Unicorn Chronicles’ and the ‘Magic Shop’ books are some of the best children’s books out there,” Stearns says.

Stearns admires the passion Coville puts into his work. Some writers get into children’s fiction because they think it will be easier to publish there after failing in the adult fiction market, but that is not the case with Coville.

“Bruce writes for kids because he loves writing for kids,” Stearns says.

In addition to loving his work and having fun with it, Coville acknowledges there is a higher purpose to what he does, an educational aspect to children’s literature.

“The greatest tool... that people need for us to survive as a culture is empathy. And the only way to teach empathy is through story,” he says. “There’s no other way. Because in a story you live inside somebody else’s skin. And the more stories and the more compelling the stories, the more you help the child understand the other.”

Most of the time, Coville is happy with what he has accomplished and achieved in his career.

“If you have the blessing to make your living at meaningful work that you love, what more can you ask of success?” he says.

At other times, he lets on that he aspires to even greater things.

“What I really would love is for my work to be remembered 500 years from now,” he says.

Tamora Pierce, 53, is a fellow writer of fantasy and science fiction for young adults, and a close friend of Coville’s. She was in the audience at Boskone, a science fiction convention in Boston, when Coville participated in a discussion on how J.K. Rowling’s blockbuster “Harry Potter” series has impacted the industry. As Pierce recalls, Coville went to the microphone and articulated a thought that must have passed through the mind of every children’s writer.

“Why not me, God? Why not me?” he shouted, prompting laughter and applause.

The two sides of Coville’s personality, the exuberant side that does everything just for the fun of it, and the relentlessly hardworking side that always wants to achieve more, are both evident in his other business venture, Full Cast Audio.

Coville started the company in 2001 with friend and business partner Dan Bostick, 46. Their idea was to produce audio books with a full cast, so that each character would have a different voice. Unlike radio drama, which uses mostly dialogue and sound effects while eliminating narration, the Full Cast Audio recordings are unabridged, often using the book’s real author as the narrator.

“Full Cast Audio is a fusion of literature and theater,” says Bostick, who met Coville in 1989 when they were both acting in a local community theater festival.

The company records about 14 books per year, and will complete its 80th recording in 2009, Bostick says. Despite being so productive, the company has struggled to make money in its first seven years.

“We have hopes of making it a financially successful company,” Coville says.

That was never the main objective, however. Bostick recalls being taken aback when Coville told him, at the start of their partnership, that the primary goal was not profitability. He asked what the purpose was, if not to make money.

“It’s to have fun,” Coville said.

The partners hope that their fun-loving spirit will lead to profits.

“When you’re in the business of having fun, everybody wants to work with you,” Bostick says.

In this case, fun does not mean relaxed. The company strives to produce recordings of the highest quality, that perfectly realize the author’s vision.

“We’re very focused on the details. We’re both very exacting. We both have high standards,” Bostick says.

Others within the company share Coville and Bostick’s vision. Brett Hobin, 30, is the owner of Hobin Studios in Baldwinsville and the sound engineer/editor for Full Cast Audio.

“We all are (perfectionists). There’s no weak link. We’re all pretty good at what we do,” Hobin says. “We’re a bunch of workaholics.”

That might sound like a stressful situation, but Hobin says Coville makes it enjoyable.

“He’s pretty much a master of making comfortable and productive surroundings. We’re just a couple of pals doing work,” Hobin says.

Brett Hobin’s father, Todd, also works with the company. A 59-year-old musician, he records an original musical score for each Full Cast Audio production. Todd says the Full Cast team can work as hard as they do and still have a good time because they are so dedicated to their work.

“Virtually anybody that works with us is passionate about what we do. You don’t have to drive anybody. We’re already driven,” he says, adding that, “Every day is a blast with Bruce.”

Pierce, Coville’s friend and fellow author, is one of the writers who has been most involved with Full Cast Audio. 10 of her books have been recorded by the company, with Pierce serving as the narrator. She even wrote one novel, “Melting Stones,” as an audio book exclusive for Full Cast Audio (the print version will be released later this year). When Pierce approached Coville with the idea of doing a Full Cast exclusive, he was excited.

“First I had to convince him I wasn’t pulling his lariat,” Pierce says.

In addition to working on new books and directing productions for Full Cast Audio, Coville maintains a busy travel schedule. He gives many speeches at schools and appears at conferences and conventions, such as the summer conference for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. This year’s conference took place from August 1-4 in Los Angeles, with Coville giving the keynote speech.

Bostick says Coville makes so many appearances because he knows he owes his success to all the fans, young and old, who love his work.

“He operates constantly within a state of gratitude,” Bostick says. “He truly is grateful to every single person who likes his work.”

Considering his travel schedule, his writing, and his audio book productions, not much time is left over for leisure activities.

“It’s not too much of an issue because I plork,” Coville says. “‘Plork’ is a word I made up for myself. Play and work. Plork. It sounds vaguely dirty, but it’s not.”

He considers most of his activities plorking because, “If I wasn’t doing Full Cast Audio as a business, I’d still love to do that. If I was working full time at some other job, I’d write because I wanted to.”

Next up on the plork schedule is the fourth book in the “Unicorn Chronicles” series. “Dark Whispers” ends in a cliffhanger, and Coville says some fans are already clamoring for the next installment.

“It’s the only thing I dare work on.”

Story is done, some cool pop culture stuff, etc.

The Bruce Coville story is done. Basically. I drafted it yesterday, and I still might tweak it a bit before I turn it in, but no serious alterations will be necessary. I sent it to my professor after I finished it to see if he had any suggestions or problems or things he wanted me to change, but he told me at the beginning of class today that everything looked good and I didn't need to worry about changing anything. So any changes that I make will be purely for my own satisfaction, because it bothers me if something that I wrote does not read as well as it could. I'm also always looking to cut out unnecessary words and sentences, but my prof seemed OK with the length, even though I went over the recommended word count significantly, so I'm not too worried about that, either. As with the cigarette tax story, I will post the Coville article here, but not until after I officially turn it in. So, sometime tomorrow, in other words. It might be fairly late in the evening, since I don't know what time I'll be getting home tomorrow. I have class until 4, then a meeting about one of the classes I'm taking next semester, then I might go to the computer lab and work on this week's graphics project, which is the only thing I have left to do before the end of summer boot camp. Then it will be two weeks of vacation before the fall semester starts up the last week of August. I can't fuckin wait.

In one of my weekend posts, I put up a link to an article from the New York Times about a new drug that scientists have been testing on mice. If you didn't hear about this, they gave the drug to completely sedentary, inactive mice, and it produced in them the sort of physiological effects you would expect to see in animals that were exercising a lot. They got faster, stronger, gained endurance, etc. Now, they're not sure what side effects there could be to using this drug, and they're also not sure it will work in the same way on humans (although it seems reasonable to expect that it would).

But let's imagine for an instant that the pill would work on humans and that there were no significant negative side effects. All you have to do is take this pill, and you will become bigger, faster, stronger, even if you don't do a damn thing (and, obviously, people who do exercise will experience even greater results). They're talking about using the pill to help people who have been weakened by disease recover, and of course that should be the first priority. Give the drug to those who need it most. But wouldn't everybody want access to the drug? I know I would. It's the kind of miracle pill people have been dreaming about for decades. It makes you stronger, presumably more attractive (at least to people who appreciate an athletic figure), and would come in handy if anyone ever tried to mug you in the park. Or when playing on your company's softball team. Or whatever.

The article also mentions that they're already working on developing a test for the drug so that athletes cannot use it to gain an unfair advantage. This appears to make sense, at first. But imagine a scenario similar to the one I described, in which the drug works on humans the same way as on mice, it has no destructive side effects, and now let's add in one other hypothetical-- now the drug is widely available and affordable. I think it's safe to assume a solid 90% of the population would be using it. And, if that were the case, would it still be banned in athletics? Would we enter into a bizarro sports world that would be the exact opposite of the way things are today? Imagine if professional athletes were the only humans NOT using performance-enhancing drugs. Would we still watch the NFL if most of the fans could run faster than Terrell Owens?

That brings up another point about sports. If the drug were declared safe and not banned, and everyone were using it, it would really open up the competition for positions as professional athletes. Obviously, natural talent and ability would still be an important factor, but if the drug continued to provide rewards in proportion to how hard you worked, how often you exercised, etc., that would mean that an average guy with a tremendous work ethic could easily wind up playing center field for the Red Sox... or at least the Orioles.

And, as you've probably considered by now, think about what this could do to/for the population as a whole. A race of superhumans with great athletic prowess, speed, and endurance has been imagined by science fiction writers for decades. Now, with the development of drugs such as this one... it could actually happen. This is some crazy shit, I'm telling you. Of course, chances are it will never happen, or it will be years and years before the drug hits the market. These things take a really long time. First the scientists will need to do more studies and tests, working their way up to human testing, to see if it even works on us. And if it does, then there will be another long process to see if it's safe to use on people, the FDA would have to sign off on it, etc. I mean, best case scenario, we're probably five years or more away. But keep your eye on this. Fascinating stuff.

Okay, now for some pop culture stuff that I'm excited about. I've been pumped about Kevin Smith's new flick, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," since the first time I heard about it. I became even more excited when I found out that Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks were playing Zack and Miri. Well, my anticipation cranked up another notch yesterday when I saw an article about the movie on Rotten Tomatoes (well, it was actually an article on Ain't It Cool News, but Rotten Tomatoes linked to it). A reporter from AICN caught up with Smith at the San Diego Comic-Con, and interviewed him about the movie. The interview was interesting, but it was mostly stuff I've heard Smith say before.

The really interesting part of the article was that the writer described, in detail, a scene from Zack and Miri that Smith showed to an audience at Comic-Con. I will link to the article below, but I'm giving you a spoiler warning now. It doesn't give away any major plot elements or anything, but I know some people never want to read scripts or dialogue in advance, and want to experience everything in the movie for the first time when they walk into the theater. I understand that position, but I've never been particularly troubled by spoilers, so I didn't mind reading the article. The article described what was happening in the scene, but it focused mostly on the dialogue.

By the way, I was reading this article in the writing lab for my news writing class, while I was waiting for some of my classmates to finish up a quiz. So I'm trying to be quiet and not bother anyone, but I was having a really hard time not laughing my ass off. This dialogue is golden. Some of the funniest of Smith's career, I would say. And filthy as all hell.

On the subject of being filthy, Zack and Miri received an NC-17 from the MPAA, and they upheld that ruling when Smith appealed. He's going to make one final appeal to the ratings board to get it down to an R, and he says that if they say no, he'll just have to make some cuts (releasing with an NC-17 would be financial suicide). As far as I've heard, the MPAA's problems are all with visuals, not with dialogue, which is a relief to me. If they have to cut out a half-second shot of full frontal nudity, that would bother me a lot less than if they cut a single line of hilarious, filthy dialogue. But, hopefully, they'll win the appeal and won't have to cut anything at all. Anyway, click here to read the article if you want to disregard the spoiler warning.

Some cool books coming out this fall:

Stephen King is publishing Just After Sunset, a story collection, in November. This will be his first book since the novel Duma Key, which was absolutely amazing. If you haven't read that one yet, do so.

King will also be part of an anthology called The Living Dead, which is a collection of stories about-- you guessed it-- zombies. There are some really big names attached to the project, and I'm gonna be buying this one as soon as it hits shelves. It's out in September.

Also in September, Chuck Klosterman is publishing his first novel, Downtown Owl. I'm a huge, huge fan of Klosterman's work, and can't wait to see what sort of zany stuff he does with a novel. There's apparently an excerpt from it in the new issue of Esquire, which I just bought today but have not read yet.

George R.R. Martin's "A Dance With Dragons" is rumored to be coming out sometime in the fall, possibly as early as September, but I doubt it. He hasn't made any official announcement on his web site, at least not the last time I checked, so he probably hasn't even finished writing the book yet. But he is getting close, so hopefully fans of Martin's brilliant "A Song of Ice and Fire" series won't be waiting much longer.

Okay, that was a long blog entry. I have other stuff I intend to write about, but no point in throwing everything I've got out there all at once. I'll hold some back for tomorrow, or whenever the next time is that I have the time and opportunity to write a substantial blog post. Catch ya next time.

-Nick

Productive weekend, ready for the final push.

It turned out that I didn't have nearly as much free time this weekend as I thought I would, which is why I didn't post more on here. I actually spent pretty much all day yesterday and today working on various things. I had gotten behind on reading the news for a few days, so I was catching up on that, which is quite time-consuming. Try reading a newspaper front to back sometime, not just skimming articles and only reading the ones you're interested in, but really trying to absorb all the information in the paper. It takes a surprisingly long time. Especially with those thick Sunday papers.

Anyway, I was also doing more work on the Bruce Coville story. Thankfully, the two sources that I still needed to complete the article got back to me. I spoke with one of them yesterday, and just finished the interview with the other one a few minutes ago. So now I just need to organize my notes, figure out what material I'm going to use (and I have a TON of material) and then I'll be ready to write. I was planning on writing a first draft of the story tonight (and my first drafts usually bear a striking resemblance to my final ones) but now I'm not sure I'll actually get through the draft. It's already 8:30, I need to look over the notes quite a bit, and I'm distracted by the return of the NFL. Yes, it's the Hall of Fame game, and it's completely meaningless and not even that interesting, and Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison aren't even stepping on the field for the Colts, but still... it's the NFL! Anyway, even if I don't write the draft tonight, the story's not due until Wednesday morning, and they're giving us the afternoon off tomorrow and Tuesday to work on our stories, so I've got oodles of time. And I'm not a man who uses the word "oodles" often or lightly.

There's been a lot of interesting stuff in the news lately. The guy who was probably the anthrax mailer killed himself as the feds were closing in, the presidential campaigns are starting to get down and dirty, the oil companies are reporting record-breaking profits while automakers are reporting devastating losses (wrap your minds around that one), but this was the story that interested me most over the weekend. When I've got some time to write more about it, I will, but for now just read the story and ponder the implications. Okay, that's all for now. Still got some work to do tonight.

-Nick

Magazine project, job possibility

Okay, so here's my magazine project that I did in my graphics class this week. For an explanation of what the assignment was and exactly what I had to do, see previous posts. I think there's also a link to the original Esquire article in the post before this one. These images are JPEGs, so the resolution isn't great and it might be difficult to read some of the smaller print on the second spread. If you want to see it in greater detail, let me know and I can email you a PDF.

The other piece of news I have right now is that I got a call yesterday from a professor about one of the graduate assistant jobs I applied for a couple weeks ago. I knew they had already filled more than half of the jobs, and I hadn't been contacted by anyone, so I just assumed I wasn't getting a job and I was thinking about other options for making money during the school year that I could look into. So this call really took me by surprise, especially since this was one of the jobs I thought I had the least chance of getting when I applied. It's one of the highest-paying jobs that was available, and also one of the more time-consuming ones, but I've sort of learned to get along without free time or much sleep this summer. So I really want to get this job, but it's no sure thing at this point. The professor told me I'm one of four people that they're looking at, and I have an interview for the job next Friday. So I'll just do my best to impress them when I do my interview, and hope for the best from there.

Okay, not going to write any more now, although there are some other things I'd like to comment on (a lot of sports stuff-- the Manny trade, how the Bills are looking so far, the crazy Brett Favre situation, etc.). I'll probably be back to write more later this weekend, maybe even later today.

-Nick