This post is for writers…and readers!  Let me start by saying that men suck at reading.  Statistically, women beat us hands down.  This is a modern phenomenon.  You’ve all seen those movies and TV shows that are period pieces about the 1700s and 1800s, even early 20^th century.  The rich old boys had their impressive libraries filled with leather-bound classics and even recent “popular works,” all in good order in exquisitely carved cases and shielded with sliding glass doors to keep them from the servants.  I don’t know how much those rich old boys actually read—the real reading might have been done by the wives and children or—heaven forbid!—those sneaky servants.

I’d guess that not much real reading was done back then.  They say Jefferson read every book in his extensive library (donated after the War of 1812 to help replace the Library of Congress’ decimated collection), but he most certainly was an exception.  But you never know—maybe Davy Crockett was reading Gargantua and Pantugrel as he waited for the Mexican army to attack the Alamo.  I think the Boomer years probably saw more male readers percentage-wise than now because women still didn’t have that much free time back in the fifties and early sixties—only rich women with servants and nannies found real time to read, if they weren’t playing tennis and croquet at the country club.  Women have a bit more time now for leisure activities, even working women and even some single mothers, and they’re doing more reading than men because men now spend their leisure time elsewhere .

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(Quantum Zoo, D. J. Gelner and J. M. Ney-Grimm, eds., Orion Comet, 2014, ASIN B00L0MZFVQ)

This is an anthology of similar-themed stories.  The theme can be summarized by one word—zoo.  Add to that the genre speculative fiction and you have the logic of the title, although quantum mechanics doesn’t play any role here except for making a catchy title.  Note that I said “zoo” is the theme.  Theme lurks behind plot and other writing elements in these stories as varied as the people who wrote them.  I assume the editors said, “That’s the theme—take it and run!”

Some people love anthologies.  Essays, memoir pieces, and, above all, short stories are often collected.  An anthology might have just one author; or, it can have a group of writers, solicited by editors or otherwise.  In either case, if it’s a short story anthology, the reader has the chance to read an author’s story in a minimalist context, one often emphasizing only a few aspects of the writing craft—plot, dialog, characterization, and setting, for example.  I prefer plot above all, but the point is that the reader discovers an author in a stress-free and minimalist environment.  Note that, in all this trade lingo, I haven’t mentioned that readers might like short v. long, i.e. short story over novel.  I think that’s less important—a casual reader can just as well read a chapter of a novel as a short story.

That said, I found the stories in this collection entertaining, some more than others, as is expected in any collection.  The plots are creative with enough twists and misdirects to hold my interest.  Characterization is a bit lacking at times, but that’s expected in a short story—the writer has to shorten things up somewhere.  Dialog varies from OK to A+, and some of the settings are just fantastic, in multiple senses of that word.

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I’ve watched it unfold in the World Cup.  I’ve seen it in most pro sports—football, basketball, and hockey.  I’ve seen it in most collegiate sports.  The referee’s conundrum in an intense game or match is deciding how close to call the fouls and how much to let the players play.  While I don’t usually do sports op-eds in this blog because players, coaches, fans, and even referees can become very emotional in the “fog of war,” a recent incident in the Brazil-Colombia World Cup match merits a comment.

Some people are up in arms against the Colombian who, by accident, broke the vertebrae of a Brazilian player, the star striker.  I saw the event, knew it was an accident, and also knew that in most games the Colombian would receive a yellow card, even if it was an accident.  That would be calling the fouls close.  I won’t side with Brazilian fans who want the Colombian player banned.  Their own players were guilty of egregious fouls that weren’t called up to that point too.  The referee let that game get out of control.

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No, this isn’t an essay on parenting.  This post is mostly about competing technological standards that seem often to reduce to X v. Y.  Remember eight-tracks v. cassettes?  Betamax v. VHS?  Blue Ray v. regular DVDs?  UNIX v. DOS?  MacOS v. Windows?  Android v. iPhone?  All clashes between terrible twos, some still going on.  Consider Betamax v. VHS.  The first system was clearly better, but the U.S. basically forced the rest of the world to adopt the inferior VHS.  In the UNIX v. DOS battle, morphed now into MacOS v. Windows, for those not up-to-date, DOS and Windows always seemed inferior but simpler than UNIX, but maybe Apple + UNIX tilts the scale in the UNIX direction.  (I personally liked VAX VMS, but some of you might know what happened to that great OS.)  My take: UNIX always seemed a shrine to cutesy nerdiness, and DOS a monument to Microsoft stupidity.  That’s just me.  You might have a different take, if you bother to care at all.

I won’t touch on the other cases where I’m more an infrequent user and/or never cared enough to go into the pros and cons.  I will state my criterion for one member of a techy terrible two winning out over another: it has to be complex enough that any nerd (I once counted myself occasionally in that category) can get down in the weeds and invent clever stuff while the casual user (I’m spending more time in that category with each passing year) can stay in the trees, reaching for the sky, without having to get down into the weeds.  With that criterion, no member of any of the terrible twos I listed achieves a passing grade.

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Jersey Boys.  I always have mixed feelings about making a movie out of a Broadway play, or vice versa.  It’s strange I no longer develop that same inquietude about making a movie from a book.  Maybe the former is because I’m not capable of separating the two media well, whereas the latter is a case where the media is so different that I’m willing to put on a different hat (and maybe realize that Hollywood is going to ruin the original story anyway).  In any case, I can say that something is always lost in the translation.

This is a (fictionalized, I’m sure) history of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  Drippy nostalgia for old Baby Boomers like me?  (This old Baby Boomer prefers to look to the future, however uncertain it might be).  Many people who’ve forgotten the songs will remember them when hearing them again in the play or the movie.  I understand that the lead role in the movie was played by the same actor who had the role on Broadway.  I didn’t pay that much attention.

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Happy Fourth of July!  Please celebrate well but take care with drinking, driving, and fireworks….

To the rest of the world, especially those in the British Commonwealth: pardon us while we take a few days to celebrate.  I know you’ll understand….

Item: Politics and futbol….  I use the Spanish spelling here because the U.S. is the only country in the world where football doesn’t mean soccer.  We have American and Canadian football, NCAA and pro football, tackle and touch football, and arena football, all variations of a game unrelated to soccer (it’s more related to rugby).  Futbol’s World Cup, like the Olympics, is an international festival of sport where patriotism can be displayed, flags waved, and bragging rights gained without much violence, except for the wee bit of physical violence that occurs on the field (fewer concussions than in the NFL, I’m sure, but no slush fund to cover them) and among the fans.  All in all, it’s a healthy emotional outlet.  Even if your team is eliminated, one can still watch the games and admire the skill and strategy of players and coaches.  I mean, c’mon, that German goal against the U.S. was a beautiful set piece once you’re past the dismay of having it scored against our team.

All that said, what’s with Ann Coulter’s soccer rant?  An ultra-conservative whatever-she-is blessed with a big mouth because she so often puts her foot in it (“it” can stand for many things here, of course),  she calls soccer “a sign of the nation’s moral decay.”  Huh?  My two granddaughters play soccer, love it, and don’t seem to be suffering from moral decay, and probably never will from soccer.  It’s a wonderful game to teach team spirit, cooperation, and good sportsmanship.  Like other team sports, individual prowess shines best when the star makes his or her team members look good.  Maybe that’s why she says “individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer”?  But soccer stars are big names in the sports world—they might be revered more outside the U.S., but many names are recognized here in the States too, and that’s becoming more common with this tournament.

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(Beverly Garside, I and You, 2013, CreateSpace, 978-1492187424)

How delicious satire is when it’s well done!  Irish have it in their DNA—just look at Shaw, Wilde, Swift, and others who have skewered the British elites—so I love satire even though I can’t write it well.  Political satire, of course, is generally hated by the satirized and loved by those who agree with it.  In this book, you’ll find political satire that is hilarious in its best moments and at least enjoyable in its worst, unless you’re a Libertarian.  If you fall into that cult that worships in Ayn Rand’s church, this book is probably not for you.

I’ve never reviewed a graphic novel before, but this one was so intriguing I couldn’t resist.  I came to the conclusion I might be doing something like this now if I’d had any success making my own comic books as I learned to read and not to draw between ages three and four.  My art was bad and what I put in those balloons was probably only slightly better.  Fine satire is always embedded in an interesting story, and Ms. Garside puts many entertaining things in those balloons and figure captions to make one.  Duimstra, the artist, has drawn well too, although I can only judge it with an amateur’s eyes.  I like what I read and see.

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Much U.S. foreign policy follows this dogma.  Now Obama wants $500 million—that’s point five billion, in American’s crazy accounting—to help out the Syrian rebels.  Not only is this a 180-degree turn in policy with respect to the civil war there, it’s a bad mistake.  Clearly, Obama is trying to appease hawks in Congress who accuse him of dropping the ball in Iraq—oh yes, the old neocon contingent is piping up there too—and maybe trying to do something in a situation where there is no easy solution.  And Kerry, the ketchup lover of Foggy Bottom, is telling Maliki to hold the country together or else.  Or else, what?

First, the $500 million is too little, too late.  The Syrian civil war has led to radicalization of many rebels so bloodthirsty and murderous that even old al Qaeda wise men denounce them.  Shi’ites are slaughtered.  Civilians—men, women, and children—are slaughtered.  If you want a glimpse of want a Sunni-Muslim caliphate would be like, just look to ISIS.  It would be a bloody theocracy that makes Iran’s Islamic Revolution seem tame.  Throwing a few dollars at the “tame rebels” in Syria will accomplish nothing.

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John Stuart pointed it out.  Ignoring all the crude jokes and spiffy graphics, he talked about four ex-EPA leaders serving four different Republican presidents (all the way back to Reagan) stating before Congress that global warming is a problem we MUST solve.  Those weren’t the exact words, but that’s the idea.  It was amusing to hear this, of course, coming from Republican mouths that usually “speak with a forked tongue” (maybe all the good old white boys that stole land from Native Americans were Republican?).  More amusing perhaps was the global warming denial espoused by the GOP idiots, aka honorable congress people, who were questioning these ex-EPA officials.  What’s with this denial of global warming?

Some of it, of course, is due to this frightening current running through America, a prehistoric, Neanderthal anti-science current, if not an all-out hatred of science.  This covers the gamut of people distrusting science (didn’t it cause all the world’s problems?) to religious fanatics who find science far too secular.  Our nation now has millennials to old geezers covering that whole spectrum who are technical savages, addicted to their technology and enjoying the internet’s social media, iTunes, NetFlix, iPhones, and other technological marvels, but know less about where this all comes from than an aborigine in Australia (who, in fact, probably understands practical weather-related science more than these millenials—or those GOP idiots).  Our nation also has religious fanatics, again from all ages, who love that museum in Kentucky that shows modern human beings coexisting with dinosaurs (all those fossils are just consequences of Noah’s flood, don’t you know?).  And, above all, our nation has unscrupulous business people, mostly wealthy old farts, who deny global warming simply because they want to continue their polluting, toxic chemical leaching, and natural-gas-fracking ways.  The latter are those represented by those GOP congressional lackeys, of course.

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