Dearth of Public Interest in Swimming

The other day I was in my local Barnes & Noble bookstore, browsing through the magazine area. I tend to gravitate toward the athletic section, which contains magazines about all sorts of activities, chief among them running. I also see stuff about bicycling, skateboarding, golf, ...even surfing. But I NEVER see a magazine devoted to swimming. Which made me wonder...

When I attended physical education classes in junior and senior high school from 1968 through 1971, as a bloc my class always seemed overjoyed at the prospect of being able to swim in the school's pool while collectively groaning at the prospect of doing any kind of running. I myself didn't learn how to swim until the seventh grade, and afterward for the next couple of years my classmates would always leave me struggling far behind them when we swam laps (quite the opposite of my running experiences then). Although swimming in phys-ed usually began with a lap or two, the students were then allowed "free time" in the pool for most of the class session. I tended to practice my swimming, not enjoying it at all and feeling totally clumsy and stupid. Many, if not most of the other boys (maybe the girls did it differently in their classes) would play a game in which they would pair off in the pool with one riding the other's shoulders...and then try to topple each other in the water. To them, that was what made "swimming" fun, but I wanted no part of it then (and now, either). Oh, and there were also a few brave souls who were into diving. But even with pure swimming, minus the diving and horseplay, the consensus when I was this age was that it was cool and fun, the polar opposite of running.

Fast forward to now: running is an ardent passion for many while swimming is relatively rare among adults. I see magazine after magazine devoted to running; where are the swimming magazines? The only type of publication that at least indirectly addresses swimming is the triathlon magazine, and usually one has to search high and low in the pages to find articles in them relating to swimming, while the running and cycling sections predominate.

I find all of this very baffling. One would think, with the cardiovascular benefits that swimming brings without the shock to the body that running's pounding inflicts, that people would be flocking to pools in droves and insisting that more be built. There should be weekly public pool race events for different age groups to compete among themselves, just as there are all those public running events. But I search the Internet and find nothing of the sort. And here I am in hot, water-abundant, swim-friendly Florida!

And how often do you drive past hotels or homes with swimming pools that actually have people using them? With me, the answer is almost never. Some people seem to place great store in having their very own private swimming pools, but then don't use them, at least not for swimming.

I think one reason folks don't like to go swimming out in public is the modesty factor. Swimmers tend to be more exposed and a lot of people feel embarrassed about this and consequently avoid the activity. My own YMCA has a peculiar setup: their workout room directly faces the pool, with the treadmills, bicycle trainers, and elliptical machines all positioned to look out at the pool. From the vantage point of the pool, a swimmer looks up at the long glass window and sees rows of machines and their users facing them. Maybe that could be a little threatening for some who would otherwise like to occasionally go swimming in the pool. For me, I don't like this arrangement but I've overcome any modesty issues. I have even used this to my advantage by observing swimmers from the workout room and getting pointers about elements of form used in various swimming strokes.

If I am fortunate to live with my wits intact for a few more decades, I would also like to have a healthy, active body to experience this with. Swimming fits the bill (along with walking) as a suitable physical activity that is sustainable over the years. Running is fun for ME, but it isn't for everyone. Swimming should be promoted and more public-access pools built, with more reasonable swimming hours offered than what is currently available here in Gainesville.

A "Circular" Argument

I have never been much of a supporter of the concept of small group discussions, be it at school, church, work, or in any other context. The way I have experienced it, whoever is responsible for organizing the group almost always has an agenda in mind that those sitting around in the group are expected to further, with little room for critical deviation. I can understand the need to "brainstorm" from time to time and get some positive input from others. But I think there are better ways to do this then cooping people up together in a room and expecting them to play a particular role that may be completely out of character for them. And then there is the circular seating arrangement...

Sitting people around in a circle facing each other is one of the more annoying aspects of many small groups, in my opinion. It creates a totalitarian atmosphere in which no one has any privacy from the glares of the others. Each participant in the group is totally exposed, with simple facial expressions and body language affecting the discussion in subtle ways that don't really contribute to an effective resolution of the topic. I have come to the conclusion over years of sitting in circle after circle of small groups that the one(s) responsible for this type of seating arrangement are, deep down inside, manipulators and seekers of power. Now, whenever I find myself in such a setting I zone out on whatever is going on and simply enter another mental reality, one where I review lists of things I've learned or simply drift off in thought about other subjects. I refuse to get caught up in the psychology of small groups, period.

Maybe this is unreasonable of me, but that's the way I am. The way I see it, if anyone wants my opinion they know where to find me and are welcome to engage in a reasonable and respectful discussion as long as they are truly serious about the stated topic instead of playing games with controlling people.

I'm not necessarily against the idea of having informational meetings, which are very common in the workplace. Policies there can be efficiently communicated to the appropriate people without having to go through the tedious process of conferring with each one. Pertinent questions can be posed here, questions that can add to everyone's understanding. But those group meetings that involve people sitting around shooting the bull are pointless, in my opinion. What often happens is that people attending them tend to say things that they later regret having said. When I hear someone speaking in this way during a meeting, I inwardly cringe and curse those responsible for making me attend it.

Back to Hilly Trail on 10.5 Mile Run

Today the weather was cooler and dryer than usual, and I took advantage of it by running 10.5 miles, my longest since being sidelined from running due to a leg injury in January. My time reflected my usual pace: 1:40:59. The temperature went from 68 to 72 during my run while the humidity was pleasant as well, lowering from 57% to 41%.

Not only did I successfully accomplish this run, but I also ran down the (pictured) relatively hilly (for Florida) trail along NW 53rd Avenue for the first time since my injury. I had been concerned that the hills might aggravate my injury, but everything seems to be O.K. so far. I believe, though, that while running I am sensing potential problems in my right leg that may not exist, i.e. phantom sensations. I remember long ago in 1973, after I had suffered a hernia and had surgery to repair it, I also had this type of phantom sensation, concluding then that I had experienced another hernia. That fear turned out to be unfounded, and hopefully so will my current concerns. After all, it's now been more than 11 hours since my run and my leg feels fine.

The End of the World

I have picked up on the news story floating around that Family Radio, a splinter Christian group (well, they are actually ALL splinter groups from each other) is putting out notices that Jesus is coming back on May 21. And yes, that means the end of the world, at least as we know it. Giving me pause to try to come up with something sensible from this lunacy...

I have always wondered why so many are "enraptured" with the notion of the end of the world. Especially when each of us already has, built into our individual bodies through our biology and interaction with the environment, our own personal "end of the world". We all die, plain and simple. After that fact happens, the rest of the world HAS ended, as far as the one who dies is concerned.

Those who are so caught up with events around us that seem to them apocalyptic in nature tend to be believers, not only in an afterlife, but also that they are "taken care of" by their spiritual savior (in Christianity it's Jesus). So if anything they should be unconcerned about what's happening in the world instead of obsessing about it. The reason they're not is kind of like those "time is running out" ploys on QVC or Home Shopping Network: if you want that "eternal life" deal and haven't bought into it yet, you'd better hurry up, because Jesus is coming...this version of the narrative has it happening on May 21. So ultimately this prediction about Jesus coming soon is a device to recruit more believers to the faith. Before it's too late, you see. After all, I suppose that Family Radio must have concluded that some people don't see themselves as ever dying, at least not in the foreseeable future, so this "Jesus coming back on May 21" could be used as something to expedite their conversions...

Better Swimming Experience on Thursday

This past Thursday I had a better swimming experience than usual. First of all, I decided to swim on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of M-W-F, giving those days to my running and making weekends a kind of wild card in terms of exercising (or maybe resting from exercise). Then I got to the pool earlier in the morning, around 9:30. The water aerobics "bouncers" were all out in the shallow part doing their class session, but to my delight all of the 25-meter lanes were open. I took the one on the end and proceeded to swim 50 consecutive minutes for a total distance of 1,050 meters. I employed my strategy of alternating between freestyle and my modified backstroke, switching from one to the other halfway through each crossing. It worked perfectly, giving me a lot of confidence and making me feel on a par with the other lap-swimmers I've seen there. I did have a problem with the sun's glare while on my back. Later in the day I purchased some swimmer's goggles that should help with this on future swims.

Also, I developed what I think is a pretty cool way to keep track of the number of laps I'm swimming. I mentally run down the alphabet with each lap, starting with "A". While doing the "A" lap, I think of any words or names beginning with that letter and make any associations that come to mind. Next lap is "B", then "C", and so on. I got through "U", i.e. the 21st 50-meter lap. Not only does this method help me keep track of my ongoing lap total, but it also is fun, distracts me from the rigors of the exercise, and even gives me some insight about my mental state as I tire toward the end (my "S", "T", and "U" laps didn't evoke the same quality of associations as the earlier letters did). In the future, when I swim my 27th lap, I'll just reset the alphabet back to "A" and add 26 to the total.

My strategy in swimming is to continue with what I'm doing until I can swim 30 consecutive 50-meter laps, which at 1,500 meters I believe represents triathlon distance. Then I will gradually increase the freestyle portion of each crossing, always leaving a little room at the end for some backstroke swimming. And at some future date I'll insert some breaststroke into the routine.

Where is My Last Entry?

It's almost 1 PM and I have to go to work soon. Blogger went down for maintenance last night and finally just came back up. But they lost my last entry, ironically titled Crappy Products for Sale. Hopefully, it will be restored later today. Otherwise, my faith in Blogger as a reliable site will be seriously shaken.

I intend to hold up on any more postings on this blog until this matter is satisfactorily resolved.

********

Later... Well, they finally reposted my "crappy" article, so as far as I'm concerned, the blog is once again full speed ahead! But I'm still miffed...

Crappy Products for Sale

There are little things in the world that peeve me, things that shouldn't but do. Not because I need to toughen up and take things in stride better, but rather because those responsible for them should and could do better. For example:

--Whenever I buy a pack of those cheap Bic ball point pens, I am satisfied. I take any pen out of the pack, uncap it, and from the start the ink flows out of the pen onto the paper. But any other brand, including the vaunted PaperMate (which all of the stores around me stock up on instead of Bic) has lousy pens that won't produce ink. This is a simple quality-control situation that the company should have taken care of during production. It's not a matter of me preferring their product less than Bic: I simply can't use their product at all, period!

--The same goes for clear adhesive tape. Scotch is the only brand that "gets it". For every other brand I've tried, the tape won't tear off cleanly, stretching instead of breaking. Or, the tape will begin to tear in such a way that it becomes fragmented around the roll, thus making the entire roll completely useless.

--Or how about those spiral notebooks that have their pages perforated for "easy" removal? After writing several pages of material in one such notebook recently, I tried to remove them so that I could reorganize them in another notebook. But about halfway down the pages, the perforation briefly ended, causing the paper to tear. How frustrating, and ultimately unnecessary!

No, I don't get it. In each of the above examples, I am not talking about products that are cheaper because they have less frills than a more expensive variety. Instead, these products are manufactured to be crappy and then sold as something that does not live up to its purported function. And sometimes they aren't even the "bargain" brands! But just the same, just because a product may be relatively inexpensive, that shouldn't grant its producer the license to sell something that in very basic ways simply doesn't work.

No wonder that many folks are edgy about purchasing generic prescription medicine. And what about the privatization of our space program? Sure hope we don't end up with any off-brand rockets...

KA-BOOM!

The Pride of Humility: A Paradox?

There are many good lines in Max Ehrmann's poetic piece of counsel titled Desiderata, but a few really stand out to me as having significance for my life. One of these is If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. This speaks of the need to develop a sense of proper perspective and balance when engaging in personal endeavors that are open for public evaluation and comparison with others. It's true: usually I am pretty good at whatever I set my mind to do, but there are always going to be those who are better than me in whatever area I am working at.

I have discovered, while engaging in an activity like swimming or learning to speak a foreign language, that I often feel pretty incompetent and foolish. But I also recognize that only by refusing to feel intimidated by the fear of looking (or sounding) bad will I be able to stick with a project until I ultimate attain a satisfactory level of ability. I am learning, at this late age in my life, to punch through this often embarrassing period in learning new things by embracing the humility of spirit that it imposes on me. And then refusing to allow that humility to turn into humiliation, but instead cultivate a sense of pride that I have the guts to try new things regardless how poorly I may do them at first.

Humility is a virtue, and if you can practice it (without putting yourself down) then you should be proud! A sense of humor about one's own folly can contribute to humility and make it more enjoyable. When I am striving to learn to do something that others do better than me, I respect and accept with humility their superiority in that particular area and am proud that I want to improve myself, possibly to their level or even higher. But most likely there will still remain some with better abilities, and I'd like to be proud enough to say that this is O.K.!

Union Meeting Attendance Strategy Revisited

Back on 11/21/08 I wrote an article titled The "What If" Fallacy, examining the attendance strategy of my union local. To increase attendance, they have a drawing each meeting, the winner receiving a hefty sum of money. If the one whose name is drawn isn't present, they don't win anything and their name is shown at work on the union bulletin board (I suppose to publicly humiliate them). The amount to win in the attendance drawing is increased with each meeting if not claimed. Once someone succeeds in winning a drawing, the total offered in the next meeting reverts back to a nominal $50. To be eligible for the drawing, all one has to do is be a (local) union member. I examined the flaws in the argument for this attendance strategy in the previous article (hit the link to read it). Now I have some new information on the drawing that, in my opinion, makes it even more flawed.

Union officers and stewards are expected to attend these union meetings. Photos from my local's newsletter reflects this: the attendees are heavily weighted with officers and stewards (and they tend to be the ones winning the drawing), with a few (very few) rank and file members sprinkled in [correction: executive board officers don't take part in the drawing--thanks, Brian]. This is probably just as well, since there really isn't very much room at the meeting site to accommodate more than a handful of people anyway. But to spur greater attendance, anyone attending a meeting gets an extra entry in the drawing for each meeting they attend. So if I, say, attended 5 meetings, then I would have my name in the drawing "pot" on 6 pieces of paper, greatly increasing my odds of winning, a clear incentive to attend. On the other hand, if I attend the meetings and want to win the drawing, then the last thing I would want is for others to start attending since their names would also be multiplied in the pot, thereby reducing my own chances of winning. So what we end up with is a few people faithfully attending meetings while not exactly wholeheartedly encouraging others to join them. I don't think that's what the creators of this scheme had in mind...

Maybe I'm sounding a little cynical about all this. After all, shouldn't we just show our "union spirit" and attend meetings for their own sake? But it wasn't me who concocted and implemented this attendance drawing strategy. And I probably would never had commented on it were it not for the continuing deplorable practice of publicizing the drawings' "losers".

Swimming Pool Blues

Recently, I have become a bit bummed out about the swimming pools that are supposed to be available for me to use. One of these, Westside Pool, for which I as a Gainesville citizen share in its funding through my property taxes, waited until the very late date of May 6 to finally open to the public. Then it limited its hours to 3-7 PM weekdays and noon-5 on weekends. On top of that, I would have to pay $3.65 each time I used it. Not that I would, seeing that they apparently don't think that anyone but school children use the pool since they don't ever open unless school's out. Then there's my local YMCA's pool.

I pay out a reasonable sum of money monthly for membership in the YMCA. Having access to their pool is a big thing for me. But on Saturday and Sunday, they host a large scuba diving class, effectively clogging up two thirds of the pool. Aggravating the situation further, they reduce the available swimming lanes on these days from five to three. So it's often impossible to find a time there on the weekend when there is enough space in the pool for me to practice my swimming.

This morning I went to the pool around 11 AM, knowing that the water aerobics class, which also effectively monopolizes half the pool, had already ended. These days I often find the 25-meter swimming lanes full, and today was no exception. Still, I had most of the shallow part of the pool to myself and made good use of it, swimming for 43 consecutive minutes. Part of my swim involves a slow backstroke. I was performing this when I swam right into an old dude who was wading over into the shallow end from one of the lanes. Apparently, he felt that he was so important that he didn't feel the need to show basic courtesy and time himself to avoid me. A-a-a-g-h!

I remember experiencing frustration in the past about being able to find suitable places to run, finally deciding on my own home neighborhood streets as a stable, convenient, and consistently available setting. Perhaps I should follow this example and start showing up in my neighbors' swimming pools!

One unexplored option is the large number of natural springs in the Gainesville vicinity. I think I should start looking into this, keeping in mind of course the travel expenses involved as well as admission fees.

Getting my own swimming pool built is not an option for me due to the expense. I have seen ads on TV for something called an "endless pool", which is a small pool analogous to a treadmill that allows a swimmer to "swim in place" against a generated current. Unfortunately, this also seems awfully pricey. Also, the less expensive above-ground portable pools are not large enough to do me any good with my swimming.

So swimming is just going to have to be an activity that has its own limitations for me. But recognizing this doesn't reduce my frustration.

Bynum, Odom Goats, Kobe Shows Class in Loss

In the NBA West semifinals, the Dallas Mavericks completed their surprising four-game sweep of the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers with a resounding 122-86 win. Laker star Kobe Bryant was magnanimous in defeat, congratulating the winners and giving them full credit for playing so well against his Lakers. It's too bad that he has some teammates who are clueless when it comes to displaying good sportsmanship.

In the fourth quarter, when the game's outcome was no longer in question, Lakers Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum each committed egregious flagrant fouls within the span of a minute, causing both to be ejected. Bynum's was by far the worse as he elbowed a Maverick player sharply in the ribs as he was in mid-air driving to the basket. To make matters even worse, after the referee signalled his ejection, Bynum then took off his shirt in front of the Dallas crowd as he walked off the court.

I saw both flagrant fouls and thought that Odom's was forgivable, but not Bynum's. Kobe Bryant was clearly saddened and ashamed of his teammates' violent and immature behavior. The man does have class, I must say. But still, I will never again root for any team of which Andrew Bynum is a member, even if it's with Kobe Bryant.

New Late Hour Haunt

I don't know how long this has been going on, but I just found a Starbucks that stays open until midnight, not far from my workplace. Seeing how I usually get off from work at 11 PM, this may be the start of something big. You see, when it comes to studying or writing I hit a mental energy "zone of darkness" when I get home. It's been this way my whole life. If I had known as a kid how utterly opposite I am from this when out in a public place like a coffee shop, I might have been a little more rebellious and pressed my parents for some time "out" to do my homework. Still, that was then and now is when I have the opportunity to affect my life the way I want to.

So as long as this place will accommodate me by staying open late, I plan to do business with them. And I have a long, long list of projects that can occupy my time here (I'm at this Starbucks right now).

But more than just studying out late at night, this is a convenient location for me to relax and wind down from my often stressful job. Not that I'm complaining: my job is good for me in many ways. But it is also good to have a brief transitional time between work and home.

Ten Mile Uncomfortable Run

Yesterday, I ran 10 miles (time 1:35:24). The temperatures stayed in the 70's throughout and the humidity was low. Still, I felt uncomfortable during the run, sensing aches in my legs and imagining that my injury was about to return. But at the end, nothing of the kind happened. Still, today I felt out of sorts and skipped my planned swim. We'll see what the weekend brings. Maybe I just need to take a day or two off from my workouts.

Swimming Progresses to Continuous Level

Yesterday I swam constantly for about 27 minutes at my YMCA's pool. Before this I used to take short "breather" breaks between laps. I swam in the shallow section, doing freestyle in one direction and then immediately a modified backstroke in the other. I discovered that I could go on indefinitely like this, but decided to cut it off at 27 minutes because I instinctively wanted to increase my time in a more gradual manner. Next swim is tomorrow: today is a running day!

My previous conclusion about what curtails my swimming distance seems to be correct: breathing is the limiting factor. Once I get habituated to a good breathing pattern that keeps me from building up an oxygen debt, I should swim on the same endurance level as I run.

My swimming strategy is now laid out. I will alternate freestyle with backstroke at about every 12 meters or so. As my breathing during freestyle becomes more efficient, I will increase my distance in that stroke relative to the backstroke. And it matters not where I'm swimming, either: I just need to count my strokes to determine the appropriate "flipping" moment. So tomorrow I plan to take this continuous swimming strategy and apply it to the longer 25-meter lanes at the pool. And try to swim longer than yesterday.

Somewhere along the line I also intend to integrate breaststroke and, later, the butterfly into my routine. Seems now that I should just be able to practice breaststroke as short segments of my continuous workout.

Balanced Breathing in Swimming and Running

I was recently discussing with a friend my ongoing project of improving my breathing while swimming, to the point where I stop building up an oxygen debt and feel comfortable swimming for appreciably longer distances. She mentioned to me that she had previously had the same problem regarding running longer distances: she had to learn to achieve a balance with her breathing while running. I initially thought it unusual that someone might have trouble breathing while running. And then I took a walk down memory lane, back to my own childhood and my approach then to running.

When I was a kid, I ran at one speed: as fast as I could! There was no such thing as pacing myself. So when I ran, I ran all-out and soon would find myself gasping for air, having naturally incurred a great oxygen debt. It wasn't until I began to practice running longer distances in my mid-teens that I began to pace myself and establish a sort of peace between my running and my breathing. After this happened, I could run as long as I had the physical energy, barring any injury. I had figured out how to breathe while running so long ago (early 1970's) that I had at first missed the significance of my friend's remarks.

And this is the significance: even being a land creature with almost constant access to the open air, it took me several years to learn how to breathe in a sustaining way without building up oxygen debt. By contrast, I have been in water much, much less, having spent very little time or effort to balance out my "swimming" breathing. So I should feel encouraged with my progress so far, even though at times it seems like I'm just "treading water"!

Smoky Haze Looms

Being a runner, and one who doesn't confine this activity to an indoor treadmill, I have become a little concerned over the last couple of days about the explosion of brush fires, both in the Gainesville area and in northern Florida and southern Georgia in general. Not that I feel at all threatened by any fire: it is the smoky haze from them that ruins the air, making physical activity something that necessitates going indoors into air conditioning.

On my local TV news, it was reported that Gainesville and vicinity had experienced 30 such fires over the past week. Furthermore, with winds shifting to a northerly direction, those fires north of us are due to be sending their stinking haze in our direction. I experienced a few minutes of this yesterday morning, but the wind fortunately shifted again and it disappeared.

This morning I was apprehensive, wondering whether I would need to go to my YMCA and work out on the treadmill instead of my much-preferred road running through the neighborhood. But at about 10:45, I stepped outside and the air smelled clean. I ran my 7.18 mile course with ease, only limited by time restrictions. Let's see how it is on Thursday, when I'll be setting out on another run, possibly a long one (10 miles plus).

Tomorrow I have scheduled myself to swim, so I'm still going to be outside. Hopefully, my string of luck will continue and we'll avoid the haze in Gainesville. But more than anything, we need a lot of rain around here. That may sound incredible, considering the horrendous storms and flooding the southeastern U.S. has been experiencing lately.

Forget Unity from the Right Over Bin Laden

With the news about the killing of international mass-murderer Osama Bin Laden only hours old, I tuned in to my local extreme right-wing talk show radio station expecting to hear some short-term moments of national unity. You know, unity behind our president Barack Obama, who is strongly responsible for this outcome. It was the morning show with local Rush Limbaugh-wannabe Bob Rose. He was in the middle of taking calls. The first I heard was some dude angrily claiming that if it were Bush who had done this, then the "lefties" would be all over themselves criticizing him. "Rush" Rose said nothing for or against this comment. The next call-in was someone espousing the view that, a-ha, NOW he knows why Obama just went to the trouble to release his birth certificate. To which Rose should have replied, "WTF are you talking about, you irrational, crazy moron?" But he let that caller also go without any correction. These folks, after all, represent Rose's listening base of frightened, liberal-hating ideologues and he knows where his paycheck comes from. Finally, the esteemed local host took a minute away from the phones to make a statement to the effect that some of the previous callers should realize that this is a time of unity for the country as a whole and they don't need to be overcritical. Then he immediately pondered about GITMO, how information leading to the location of Bin Laden's hangout may have been obtained there from detainees, and oh by the way, didn't Obama and his liberal buddies want to close it down? All this almost in one breath.

So I see little hope for anything resembling the national unity expressed for President Bush immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, I have a prediction: in the ensuing days, a conspiracy theory will develop, probably viewable on YouTube and passed around on "hate" radio and FoxHateNews: it was all faked, Obama knew he needed to "get" Bin Laden to be reelected and made a deal with him to "disappear" in exchange for his faked killing. After all, he had been living right there all along among the Pakistani military, our allies. And didn't they get rid of that body pretty conveniently fast? I further predict that at least one of the GOP presidential hopefuls will embrace this nutty fabrication and actually gain traction over it with the party's "base".

You should be able to see this coming: too many people utterly despise our president and will never credit him with doing anything good...

******

... I see tonight's Colbert Report ripped off my short-but-sweet article from yesterday. Now where's my lawyer....

After Ten Years...

Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead.

Finally.

Too Many Books Adhering to Murder Formula

I was walking through my local Books-a-Million the other day, wondering how all of these successful general-fiction writers come up with successful story plot lines. I entered one of the aisles, looked around to make sure that there wasn't anyone I might accidentally bump into or trip over (many B-a-M customers like to sit on the floor), and closed my eyes. And then reached over to my right and pulled out the first book I touched. It was about a serial killer. Placing it back on the shelf, I then walked down a couple of steps and repeated myself. So did the book I picked: another serial killer story.

I stopped the experiment and began to examine book after book. No, I wasn't in the mystery section, but most of the books had as their premise a murderer on the loose. And then it hit me: books are marketed nowadays according to formulae similar to how popular music is marketed and played on broadcast radio. And instead of the diversity of stories that should be available, we end up getting a relatively sparse number of very successful authors churning out minor variations of their own (and each other's) works, much like the annoying homogeneity of crap being passed as music on broadcast radio. Yuck...

So I wonder how many aspiring writers have eschewed the overworked serial murderer story line and tried writing material of a more offbeat nature, resulting in their stories either never being published or suffering poor promotion leading to their lack of exposure in major book outlets.

Maybe I should write a parody of these tedious and ultimately boring serial killer books, but try to sell it as a serious work and see what happens. A kind of literary Spinal Tap, if you will...

Boda Real is Real Bull

Let's be clear about this: I am an American. And if there's one thing that is clearly positive about my heritage as an American, it is that my country was founded as a republic, divorced from the curse of royalty. Places with kings, queens, princes, princesses, czars, sultans, emperors,... however you may designate them, are plagued with essentially worthless people who inherit shameless amounts of wealth and have completely unmerited power to influence events in their countries. It is true that in today's world, most royalty is chiefly ceremonial and symbolic. But a lot of the reason for this change has been bloody revolts and wars against autocratic royal despots in the past. And to think that people are getting all excited and teary-eyed about a prince marrying his girlfriend in England? Unbelievable!

What makes things even worse are two buried news stories occurring at the same general time as this ludicrous event. Three hundred people, i.e. American people, have violently perished at the hands of an historic storm system that unleashed hundreds of tornadoes on heavily populated areas, chiefly in northern Alabama. And another historic event, the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavor, with its very important cargo for studying the basic nature of the universe, was slated for Friday (but postponed for at least two days due to last-minute technical problems). But no, let's push these stories to the background, dress our journalists and announcers in ridiculous costumes, and fly them overseas for non-stop coverage of this non-event!

What I think is also funny (or sad, depending on how you look at it) is how even much more engrossed in the British "boda real" my Spanish-language television station Univision has been, apparently in response to its viewing audience. This floors me, especially considering that for most of the Latin American countries, their struggle for independence from hegemonistic European royalty was even more traumatic than was the Americans' struggle against the British during the Revolutionary War.

But I suppose that part of this fascination with today's wedding stems from our childhood memories of so many stories revolving around royalty. So instead of being realistic about how parasitic on society the REAL royalty is, we impose our fantasy visions on these basically common, ordinary people and elevate them to an undeserving status.