Month: March 2003

I started planning my freelance copywriting business late last summer, and I finally decided to take the plunge in late August, writing my initial draft of a sales letter and ordering business cards, imprinted with my name and contact information. Within days of getting the cards in the mail, my wife was offered a promotion and transfer to Syracuse, which rendered a box of 250 business cards useless.

So, after living here for a little while, I finally decided to get going on my freelance copywriting business again. I rewrote my sales letter, crafted a brochure and reply cards for my informational packet, and began combing the Central New York Business Journal and the Central New York Book of Lists for contacts. I even sent out my first mailing — sixty letters, ten days ago. All well and good…

…except a few weeks ago I went ahead and replaced the now-useless business cards I had printed in Buffalo, this time with my Syracuse contact information.

Yesterday, my wife’s Area Director calls her at home.

(Do I need to finish this story?)

Anyway, it’s looking very probable that we’re moving back to the Buffalo area sometime in the next two weeks. So, at some point — I’ll announce it when it happens — Byzantium’s Shores will go on hiatus for a short while. (Last time it was about ten days or so.)

I don’t think I’ll miss Syracuse very much — it’s simply not as big a town as we want to inhabit, and my love of winter has been really tested here. I will miss the big shopping mall here, which is bigger than the biggest of Buffalo’s malls; and I grew to really love our suburb’s public library.The weird thing is that the apartment complex to which we are most likely moving is about five minutes from the one we left back in September…so six months and two moves later, we will have functionally moved the total distance of about five miles.

Life’s just weird.

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Remember that mind-blowing educational film Powers of Ten? Well, there’s a Flash version of it online. And it’s still mindblowing. Watching it always makes me want to say in my best Keanu voice, “Whoa….”

(Courtesy of Aaron, who’s entirely too smart to not have a blog of his own.)

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Each year, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday does a three-part series in which they profile the year’s Oscar-nominated film scores. Part One was yesterday. I haven’t heard all of the scores this year — in fact, I’ve heard only two (Road to Perdition and Catch Me If You Can) — but I’m rooting for Elmer Bernstein and his score for Far From Heaven. Bernstein is the current dean of film music composers. (I do think that James Newton Howard’s score to Signs should have been nominated, probably in place of Catch Me If You Can, which I don’t even think was John Williams’s best score of last year.)

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Shamelessly filched from MeFi is this very impressive gallery of big ships encountering bigger waves. It’s always worthwhile to remind ourselves of Mother Nature’s ability to give us puny humans a bit of a bitch-slap.

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ATTACK OF THE PRESIDENTS, part III. (in which I ratchet up the “weirdness”)

INTERIOR: The Great Throne Room, Rigel IX.

Enter the Emperor HSUB EROG and his Councilor, WEHTTAM SENOJ. EROG is holding a long, thin object in his hand and studying it.

EROG: I’m not sure I understand what this is.

SENOJ: It is a cigar, sir. I don’t think you should have accepted it.

EROG: Oh, rubbish. She’s just an intern. How much harm can she be?

SENOJ: Well, none, I suppose. You’re right.

EROG: So, tell me about the next United States President.

SENOJ: Ah, yes. President Andrew Shepherd was elected after President Marshall was forced to withdraw from the race. Shepherd was elected on a very slim majority, but after three years in office he had built up enough good will that a poll of his people gave him approval ratings of 63 percent.

EROG: By the Seven Gods, they still take polls on Earth?

SENOJ: Yes, sire. They have never succumbed to the need to expel all pollsters from the planet surface and into undersea caves.

EROG: Reckless Earthers!

SENOJ: Tell me about it.

EROG: Back to Shepherd.

SENOJ: Yes. He decided to focus his administration’s energies on a massive crime bill for which there was lukewarm support in the legislature. At the same time, a sweeping environmental bill also came up for consideration, which was lobbied by a very beautiful woman named Sydney.

EROG: Isn’t that one of their cities?

SENOJ: Yes, sire. Australian enclave. It was also a common person’s name.

EROG: Sydney. Hmmmm….so the President squared off against this lobbyist? I hope he killed her and left her head on the gates as a warning to future lobbyists.

SENOJ: Ummm…they don’t do that on Earth, sire.

EROG: Who do they behead?

SENOJ: No one. Well, not since the people in the French enclave did so on a regular basis. But the Earthers have come to view the people of the French enclave with some suspicion.

EROG: Oh, yes! They’re the ones who built that extensive line of fortresses but pointed them all the same direction, yes? So the invading force from…Germany, I think…could simply go around?

SENOJ: Yes, precisely. That, and their abnormally high level of cheese consumption, which some conspiracy-minded Earthers think is behind their refusal to go along with certain political actions.

EROG: No, no – let’s not talk about that. It gives me a headache.

SENOJ: So that’s why you’ve been ignoring all of the reports that the commander of our Earth-based monitors has been filing on a daily basis?

EROG: Who can read all that? What we need are reliable summaries.

SENOJ: We tried that, Sire, but I’m afraid his head exploded.

EROG: Strange…but back to President Shepherd. How did he deal with this impudent lobbyist?

SENOJ: He invited her to be his companion at a grand celebration – for the President of the French enclave, I might mention – and then, in a series of encounters, fell in love with her.

EROG: (slapping forehead) Oh, no….

SENOJ: Yes. His polling numbers began falling almost immediately, and his likely rival for the upcoming election began scoring blows in a series of personal attacks.

EROG: I suppose Shepherd didn’t have this man executed, either?

SENOJ: Earthers tend to be selective in their executions. Well, except for the Texas enclave.

EROG: You said that last time.

SENOJ: Oh. In any event, Shepherd appeared to flounder. His legislative agenda nearly collapsed, and he offered no response to the character attacks. Finally he was convinced to salvage his crime bill by scuttling his lover’s environmental legislation.

EROG: (clapping his tentacles) Yes! Now there’s a President!

SENOJ: Not so fast. After a brief but nasty argument with the woman – in which she trounced him, basically – he spent the night in his office. We have video surveillance of the whole thing via one of our probes that has never been detected. I’ve distilled the basics down to the material on this vid-disk, along with some appropriate musical accompaniment for the sad parts.

(He hands EROG a disk.)

EROG: I’ll watch it later, I suppose. So what happened?

SENOJ: Shepherd interrupted a standard briefing of the planetary news organizations the next day to deliver a rather caustic speech which invigorated the President’s political base and terrified his opposition. His newly-crafted legislative agenda passed the legislative body, and his polling numbers reached near unanimity as he headed for re-election.

EROG: And–?

SENOJ: Strangely, Shepherd decided not to run again at the last moment.

EROG: (slaps forehead again) What is it with these Earthers? Don’t they know that power is to be held onto until one’s dying gasp? Why would he do such a thing?

SENOJ: Publicly, he said that it was because he wanted to marry the lobbyist and form a life outside of the political world. Privately, he was quoted as saying, “Hey, I got this great looking redhead. Who needs to be President?”

EROG: He quit for a woman.

SENOJ: Yes.

EROG: He quit for a woman?!

SENOJ: Well, your father quit for a woman.

EROG: Shut up.

SENOJ: Come to think of it, your father gave up power voluntarily—

EROG: Quiet!

SENOJ: And now he lives on a farm—

EROG: I can’t hear you! LA-LA-LA-LA

SENOJ: Oh, well….

EROG: So what happened after Shepherd? Was his opponent elected?

SENOJ: No, actually. It was another close election, but the new President was the former Governor of the New Hampshire enclave. Strangely, he bore a striking resemblance to President Shepard’s Chief-of-Staff.

EROG: That is odd.

SENOJ: And polls taken after the election revealed that the American citizenry simply didn’t want as President someone who looked suspiciously like Roy Neary.

EROG: Neary? Oh. Well, I can hear more about the next President tomorrow.

SENOJ: Yes, sire.

EROG: Oh, by the way, whatever did become of Roy Neary? Did he like the tour of the Universe we gave him?

SENOJ: He gave it high marks, sire, although he’s been requesting to be taken back to Earth.

EROG: The answer’s no.

SENOJ: Understood, sire.

EROG: Remember what happened last time we tried sending someone back after we took him away….

SENOJ: I told you that he was a bad choice for abduction, sire. Just a few months ago he dangled his child from a balcony….

EROG: You mean, Earth babies don’t bounce the way Rigellian ones do?

To Be Continued….

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Well, no sooner did I comment on the basketball fiasco at St. Bonaventure University than the inevitable rolling of the heads began, starting with the resignation of SBU’s president and the placement of the athletic director and men’s head coach on “administrative leave” (which we all know is a bureaucratic euphemism for, “Get your resumes updated, fellas, ’cause you’re done”).

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I lied.

Attack of the Presidents will resume tomorrow.

And I’ll take the deafening silence as an indicator that no one cares….sniff-sniff….

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St. Bonaventure University is world-renowned for, among other things, its stunning mathmatics department. (This is chiefly because of my father’s presence on the faculty of that department, ahem.)

SBU’s “jewel-in-the-crown” has been its Division I men’s basketball program, although frankly it’s been mainly mediocre with occasional flashes of talent most of the years since Bob Lanier played there. Every few years or so they get good enough to make the NIT, and even more rarely they actually get into the NCAA tournament, to an invariable first-round exit. SBU is located in rural Western New York state, tucked immediately between the towns of Olean and Allegany. It’s not a big school — roughly 2,200 students — but it’s a pretty good one, although over the last decade it’s become something of a party school. The lack of size coupled with the school’s rural location has pretty much put it in semi-permanent “also-ran” status when it comes to the all-important recruiting of basketball talent. It’s simply very hard to get top-flight talent, coming usually from urban landscapes, to come to a rural program that’s a 90-minute drive from the nearest large city and play for a program that’s been in the doldrums for years. Nevertheless, SBU continues to spend large amounts of money on its basketball program, mainly to keep the alumni happy.

Now, I wonder if that might be in jeopardy, after the current train-wreck winds its course.

Basically, a player who was ineligible according to NCAA rules was allowed to play, after the head coach somehow strong-armed the kid through the admissions process. The NCAA found out and required the Bonnies to forfeit six of the games they’ve already played this year, the effect of which is to basically ruin the season. That’s bad enough, but it got even worse when the players themselves — absent any leadership or discipline from anyone in a faculty position at all — decided that they were simply not going to show up for their last two games of the year, either. That’s right: the players, in a fit of pique, threw in the towel on the season. I envision them saying, en masse and in their bast Cartman-from-South Park voices, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

And the SBU administration’s response to all this? Variants of “Huh-whuh?”, “Not me!”, “Duh…” and, most endearing of all, “No comment because I’m in California on ‘University Business’.” Now the Atlantic-Ten conference is justifyably angry; Bonnies ticket holders are justifyably angry; the teams who were supposed to play the Bonnies in those games are justifyably angry. The whole business may well cost the SBU president, athletic director, and basketball head coach their jobs.

Good.

(Frank admission: I don’t really care much about NCAA basketball in general or March Madness in particular — it’s my least favorite of the year’s major sporting events. But this whole business is disgraceful.)

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The Buffalo Bills have been pretty aggressive so far this offseason, even since my last update on them, two days ago. Now they’ve signed Cincinnati Bengals free-agent linebacker Takeo Spikes, who is apparently one of those really good players who has had the misfortune of playing his first four years in the NFL on one of the worst teams, so nobody’s heard of him yet. I remember listening to the Bills game last season against the Bengals on the radio — it was the last game of the year, the Bills were already out of the playoffs, and it was against the Bengals, so it didn’t come anywhere near a sell-out for TV — and the Bills’ radio announcers were gushing about this Spikes guy. The Bengals have made him their “transition” player, which means they can match any contract offered to him and he has to stay put; but the Bengals have already signed his apparent replacement, so it looks very much like they’re letting him go.

Also, the Bengals’ most recent head coach, Dick LeBeau, has joined the Bills as assistant head coach. Even considering the Bengals’ woefulness the last few years, I can’t think this is anything but good. LeBeau’s resume is very impressive, as a defensive mind, and he should be a big help to Bills head coach Gregg Williams.

And lastly, the Bills apparently are close to signing Tennessee free agent receiver Kevin Dyson, to be their third wide-out after the former number three, Josh Reed, moves up to Number Two following the Peerless Price trade.

I still have questions about Gregg Williams as a head coach — even on a rebuilding team he’s been outcoached and embarrassed too many times for my tastes — but the Bills’ current braintrust is, to my mind, putting on a clinic over the last few years of how to rebuild a team quickly.

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I finally updated the links to the books I’m selling on Ebay, so they’ll no longer link to ended auctions that have been relisted. Or something like that. The current batch of books isn’t moving as well as previous ones I’ve offered….hint, hint….

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