Sarah Jane Elliott is given to wondering why so many writers’ work histories, in her words, “read like some sort of employment sampler”. I’d put in my two cents, but her take is pretty much mine. When you ask me what I do, I’ll reply with whatever job I’m holding down at the moment. But I’ll never answer that way if you ask what I am.

Of course, I’d never admit as much to a prospective employer, but then, I’m so committed to writing that I’m generally unwilling to put myself on their career tracks anyway. This can be a problem in today’s “touchie-feelie” management world, when they’re always talking about “values” and “developing people” and all that crap, when I’d just as soon be left alone and go home at the end of the day. And none of this matters right now anyway, since I’m not working.

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Another Blogger Test. Move along.

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China’s first manned space mission blasted off yesterday, and the name “Yang Liwei” joined that of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard as their nations’ first men to fly into space. I should probably find this scary, for some political reason, but in reality I find it exciting as hell. I confess to being troubled by the seemingly-growing attitude of “Screw space exploration, let’s work on jacking the human brain up to a computer instead”. Personally, I don’t see why we can’t have both.

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I wonder if Cubs manager Dusty Baker is having flashbacks to last year’s World Series, after the Cubs’ spectacular failure to nail down the pennant last night. Consider: in both the 2002 WS and this year’s NLCS, Baker’s team (the Giants and the Cubs) entered Game Six with a three-games-to-two lead, only needing one more win to take the series. In both Game Sixes, Baker’s team took a lead into the eighth inning. And in both Game Sixes, Baker’s team coughed up the lead and lost the game, allowing a decisive Game Seven.

Tonight we’ll find out if the scenario holds, because last year Baker’s team ended up losing Game Seven. So, we could end up with a situation in which Baker’s team is six outs away from winning the series…and ends up losing.

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If this turns out to be true, and it really did happen, then…well, I don’t know how to complete that counterfactual.

I hope it’s not true, though. I hope we’re better than this. I pray that we’re better than this.

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Filching links from Paul Riddell is always fun, so….

:: Remember that episode of Friends when Ross is about to marry Emily, his English girlfriend, but at the altar, he gets the name wrong and says “I, Ross, take thee Rachel…”? Well, apparently someone in the Bush Administration has seen that episode too. (via)

:: Heavens, this guy is striking a blow for Creationism by riding his horse! Sign me up! (via)

:: I have now seen the worst retail product in human history. Interestingly, the product description says that this thing is a “conversation starter”. Quite frankly, for me this would be a conversation stopper. I don’t want to talk to anyone who would willingly don this item. (via)

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Has anyone else noticed that Comments on Movable Type blogs are really slow right now? Is this because of that plug-in all the MT bloggers are using to beat that spam attack from the weekend? (I’m on dial-up, though.)

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Unsurprisingly, SDB thinks that the Democrats are highly likely to suffer a defeat for the ages in 2004.

Equally unsurprisingly, I don’t agree.

Not that I don’t think that President Bush is likely to be a formidable opponent; and not that I don’t think that there is possibility for a landslide if the economy finally starts to create some jobs and the foreign policy stuff starts to get better. It bugs me that to a great extent we’ve made Presidential elections into quadrennial referenda on the thickness of the American wallet, but that’s where we are now. I doubt you’ll find a single Democrat in the country that doesn’t think that 2004 is likely to be a very stiff battle.

I don’t want to respond to everything SDB says, but one thing that does strike me as odd is his apparent belief that the Republicans have moved toward the center while the Democrats have not. I think, in many ways, this is a question of decoration rather than a question of actual movement of the party. Last week Kevin Drum made a pretty convincing case that the Republicans have not moved toward the center at all. SDB is right that you don’t see much of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other former figures of renown on the Religious Right paraded about anymore as the public face of the Republican Party, but you do see their policy ideas maintaining a stranglehold on the Republicans. It’s all window-dressing, really. It seems to me that the Republicans have done a mildly better job in the last couple of years of repackaging their wares, but it’s really the same bunch of policies.

And I’m far from convinced that recent elections really spell the doom of Democrats as SDB thinks. 2002 was not a landslide; we went from a pretty closely divided Congress to a still pretty closely divided Congress, and we still have Republicans feeling nervous enough about it that they feel the need to gerrymander themselves into power in Texas and Colorado through mid-decade redistricting. Likewise, I’m not sure how the California recall, in itself, represents a significant rejection of Democratic ideas.

One thing I do think that the Democrats need to figure out is if they want to try recapturing the center, or if they want to try moving the center back toward the left. That’s a pretty tough one, and I don’t pretend to even know what I think on that score.

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For today’s dose of laughter at those getting what they deserve, check this out. Heh. Indeed.

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As long as I’m citing Morat, I’ll point out his list of good modern fantasy. Here he’s not looking for epic series so much as good stand-alones (I think) that may or may not take place in mythic, “Middle Earth”-type realms.

On the list Morat offers in his post, I’ve only read Gaiman’s American Gods, which I loved immensely. It’s funny, scary, and poignant. I did think that it went on a bit too long, though. I haven’t read Neverwhere, but Gaiman’s Stardust and Coraline are both excellent (although Stardust is kind of “rough around the edges”).

I’m not sure if Morat was around for my spate of Christopher Moore related posts a few months back, but his books are just great. He’s not actually writing fantasy, but rather “humor in a supernatural vein”. For a list of all of Moore’s books, check out Nefarious Neddie‘s post on the subject. I also tend to like a lot of “peripheral fantasy”, meaning, fiction that’s not classified as fantasy but is of definite interest to fantasists. Michael Chabon’s work falls in this category; see The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

In children’s lit, one finds a lot of good fantasy writing going on — Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, for example. Lloyd Alexander still turns out good stories, and of course, there’s Harry Potter.

I’ve never read Terry Pratchett, so I suppose I should one of these days. Anyhow, Morat is still looking for more recommendations.

Finally, there’s my obligatory mention of Guy Gavriel Kay. If you’re not reading Kay, well then, you’re just not living.

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