The SoapBoxers

Director Roman Polanski was arrested on September 27^th during a trip to the Zurich film festival, where he was to be given a lifetime achievement award for his work.  The United States will attempt to extradite him in relation to the rape of a 13 year old girl in 1977.

The prosecution alleges that Polanski gave the girl champagne and a partial Quaalude after a photo shoot and then had sex with her.  Clearly, this was wrong, and I won’t attempt to convince you otherwise.

However, I do believe that it is time to drop the case against Polanski.

Polanski plead guilty to engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.  After serving 42 days in prison undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, Polanski expected to be sentenced to time served and probation, per the terms of his plea deal.  When the judge told Polanski’s attorneys that he would send Polanski to prison and have him deported – contrary to the plea deal – Polanski fled to France, where he has resided for the last 30 years.

Judges do have the right to overrule plea agreements if they feel that they are not a fair resolution to the case.  Many times, I would be OK with this.  However, in this particular case, the victim of the crime has repeatedly stated her opposition to the judge’s intentions, and has even filed paperwork asking that the case be dropped.  Bear in mind that the victim is no longer a fragile 13 year old girl, but a 45 year old woman.  She has had 32 years to think about this and form an opinion – this is not some off-the-cuff comment.  If she wants the case dropped, perhaps we should listen to her.  I do not believe her statements are financially motivated – she reached a financial settlement with Polanski decades ago.

So, then whose interest is the district attorney representing?  Certainly not the victim’s, since she wants the case dropped.  Perhaps you could make the case that he is representing society, to make sure that Polanksi does not reoffend.  However, this appears a bit unlikely at this stage in Polanski’s life.  I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but I’d be very surprised to see this.

Polanski has lived a life with incredible peaks and valleys.  He grew up in Poland and was sent to the Krakow Ghetto by the Nazis during World War II.  Both of his parents were sent to concentration camps; his mother died in Auschwitz.

In 1969, his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was savagely murdered by members of the notorious Manson Family as part of a slaughter at Polanski’s home (Polanski himself was out of town at the time of the murders).  Tate was stabbed sixteen times as she was held down and begged for her assailants to spare her life and the life of the unborn child.

In the midst of this tragedy, he has woven together a masterful career.  Polanski is the director of Oscar winning films Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, Tess, and The Pianist, as well as many other critically acclaimed movies.

Image via Wikipedia

For fear of talking too much about the University of Nebraska Football team, I have abstained from writing articles about them this college football season … until now.

One of the signs at the Memorial Stadium reads: Through these gates pass the greatest fans in College football.  Not many who have been to Lincoln for a game since 1962 would argue that fact.

A very remarkable event took place in Lincoln, Nebraska this past Saturday.  The Nebraska Cornhuskers hosted their 300th consecutive sell out football game.

To just about everyone outside of Nebraska, this seems like a whole lot to do about nothing.  I mean what the hell is there to do in Nebraska anyway other than on football Saturdays?  It is a boring state to drive through on Interstate 80, not a lot of people live there … they have the only Unicameral legislature in the country … so what is the big deal?

Nebraska Football is one common thread that brings the entire state an identity.  On the National scene, people from all over the U.S. recognize “Nebraska” and “Cornhusker Football” as one and the same entity.  It is truly something that the people of Nebraska take great pride in.

It all started in 1962 … and not at the beginning of the season.  The upstart Cornhuskers under then first year head coach Bob Devaney sold out Memorial Stadium and promptly were beaten by the Missouri Tigers.  But before he was done, Devaney had built a national powerhouse of college football.  A perennial winner.  He won two National titles, and Tom Osborne would later add three in four years.

Next closest on the sell out list … The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, but they are about 15 sold out years behind as their current streak stands at 207 … that helps to put it into context.

The Cornhusker faithful endured some harsh times of late in what the locals call “The Bill Callahan Era”.  The first non-bowl season in a couple generations.  The first losing season since, well … Bob Devaney came to town.

But the people still came … (insert your voiceover of James Earl Jones in Field Of Dreams here …)

People will come Ray, They’ll come to Lincoln for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll come into Memorial Stadium, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They arrive looking for the Huskers, all as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, buy a Fairbury Brand Hot Dog or a Runza you’ll say. It’s only $4 per person. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and Valentino’s pizza they lack … And they’ll walk up to the bleachers and sit in their short sleeves on a perfect fall afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere in the South end zone where they sat when they were students, and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces … People will come, Ray … The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been the Cornhuskers. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers; it has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But the Cornhuskers have marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come …

Congratulations Nebraska on truly a remarkable achievement. Not the victory, but the action; Not the goal, but the game; In the deed, the glory.

On August 12th, an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank sent a spreadsheet with 1300 names, address, and social security numbers to a GMail (Google email) address. Unfortunately, the person sent it to the wrong address. The data was apparently unencrypted (this is a conclusion that I have come to, based solely on RMB’s subsequent actions).

The bank employee sent another email to same address, asking the recipient to contact the bank, and also to delete the file without opening it.

The bank has not heard back from the email recipient, so they asked Google to disclose the GMail account holder’s personal information, so that they could initiate another form of communication with the person.

Not surprisingly, Google denied the request. The bank then went to court to get a court order to get that information, as well as having the account deactivated. Here comes the crazy part – a judge actually agreed!

Let’s do a sanity check here. What crime has this person committed? Um, none. It’s not a crime to be the recipient of unintended email. The person didn’t hack into the bank’s system or anything like that. There is exactly one person at fault here – the person who sent the email. If the same information had been sent through the postal service, would the bank have asked the postal service to suspend mail service?

There is the distinct possibility that the person doesn’t even realize that they have received this email. If they use “whitelists” to restrict their email to pre-approved address, the bank’s email would not have gone into their inbox. Even if the person did see the email, it’s very possible that they suspected a phishing scam and deleted both emails immediately. If the exact same thing happened to me, I would assume a phishing scam. I get a lot of emails that appear to come from banks.

Even if the bank’s request had some sort of merit, I’m not sure exactly what they intend to accomplish by having the GMail account deactivated, other than attempting the punish the recipient. If the bank thinks that the person hasn’t viewed the email yet, I could understand them requesting that Google simply delete that one email from the person’s account. I’m not saying they would be right to do this, but I could understand the logic.

If the person has already viewed the email, then this action will not accomplish anything. If the recipient wanted to take some action with the spreadsheet – such as forwarding to all their friends – then the horse is already gone. Not much point in closing the barn door. If the person already deleted the document, then the action also won’t accomplish anything.

Most disturbing is that this creates the opportunity for abuse of process. What is to prevent companies – or individuals – from “accidentally” sending emails to competitors and then going to court to deactivate the email account of the competitor?

In my opinion, a lot of today’s judges do not have the background to understand some of today’s technology. This is not the first situation where a judge has made a strange decision on a matter related to technology. As technology continues to advance, this is going to become even more of a problem. I would propose the creation of an agency that judges could consult in order to get an accurate and unbiased exlanation of how certain technologies work. This would, of course, have to be at taxpayer expense … but isn’t the cost of miscarried justice even worse?

What did you miss over the weekend?

• Friday feature the lack of fiction in No Fiction Today
• Johnny Goodman made his football picks
• Saturday featured a look inside Kosmo’s brain (pretty scary, huh?)
• Tyson explained his absence on Sunday

So it’s been a while…much too long. I give many thanks and apologies to Kosmo for his understanding and ability to fill the spot in my absence.

The main reason for my absence was the combination of a brutal migraine/sinus infection which kept me on the sidelines from pretty much everything for about three weeks. Migraines have run in the family a long time, back at least three generations. I remember the losing battles my mom had with them, often spending days laying in darkness and trying not to throw up. Well, this was my first official taste of a migraine and I really hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.

I do have to give some props though, props to our health care system. Hospital overcrowding is an issue just about everywhere, and many bad things have occurred as a result of patients waiting too long. Well on the Friday morning I decided that I needed to head to the Concordia hospital, the main reason I was not looking forward to the trip was because of the anticipated wait time. It’s bad enough my head felt like it was caving in, thinking about then having to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room for a few hours made it even worse. So one can imagine my surprise when I arrived at the hospital to find an EMPTY waiting room! I really thought I was in bad shape and that I must be hallucinating. So I gave my information, went through triage, and went right in to my own room. Within half an hour I had a consult with a doctor, blood work drawn, and plans to get a CT scan done. When that came back clear, we discussed and then executed a lumbar puncture. Meds were brought promptly, I had regular visits from nurses, you name it. Percocet was a highlight of the day. All in all, it was pretty unbelievable, especially considering a friend of mine went to the Grace hospital within the next week and waited over six hours to see an MD.

I really consider myself fortunate for the quick and effective treatment I got, and it really makes me sad that hospitals get slammed so badly when obviously most of the people there are trying their best to give patients proper and prompt care. I am also fortunate this is only the second time I’ve needed to go to the hospital for care in my life. And I am most fortunate for the fact that after this whole experience, I am not thousands of dollars in debt. I’ll talk more about that next week though!

I’m seriously trying to avoid making this blog “all Kosmo, all the time”. Nonetheless, I have been focusing so much on writing the end-of-quarter short story that this makes a natural topic for today.

I’m about 5000 words into the story. The story will likely be between 10000 and 12000 words when I’m done, meaning that I have about 1/3 of it written. Why the funny math? Because some of the words that have already written will surely fall to my editing scythe before I am done.

Writing a story of this length is really a fairly big undertaking. While I can sometimes crank out 1500 words in an hour, I probably average 500-1000 polished words per hour – meaning that this story will take between 12 and 24 hours of work. I really should put a stopwatch to it. Maybe next time.

What exactly is going on with the story at this point? Well, I don’t give away plot details, but I’ll share some insight into the process.

• Proofreading – When I get 3500+ words written, I start convincing myself that this would be a good time to read through the initial draft and correct some errors. Sure, a lot of the story still needs to be written, and errors will pop in the later work. Nonetheless, I try to make this an iterative process to avoid too much proofreading at one time, since the task kind of sucks. On the bright side, I get more of a feeling of accomplishment once the story has been printed – it feels more “real”.
• The plot – When I first beginning writing a story, I just start writing various bits and pieces, with just a basic high level plot. When I get to 3000 – 4000 words, I can start shaping the plot a lot more. I divide the story into “scenes” that each have a somewhat independent plot. I also begin to look more closely at the timeline. Are certain events in the correct location, or would they make more sense in a different spot? I also look for gaps in the plot and starting thinking of ways to fill those gaps.
• Character lifestyles – A basic foundation for fiction is that readers must suspend belief and allow themselves to be carried away by the story. However, I try to blend at least a bit of realism into my stories. Right now, I’m taking a look at the residences of some of my characters and comparing them to the income they would likely earn from their jobs. Are their inconsistencies? Is a character living in a place that would obviously be unaffordable? If so, something must change – either the type of apartment/house, or the occupation.
• Brainstorm – A substantial amount of the story has been written at this point, but I want to make sure to keep myself open to new ideas. I’ll agree that it is difficult to force brainstorming to occur, but I do try. Essentially, I try to take a step back from the actual work at time, and let things stew on the back burner. I turn the car radio off when I’m driving, to force my brain to go into an unstructured thought process. I’ll jot down some very brief ideas for the plot – or question about how certain situations will be resolved – and go to bed without making and effort to answer them. I’ll let the ideas kick around the next day, and waiting until some new ideas pop up.

Last Week:
Straight Up – 13-7 ATS: 10-10

For the Year:
Straight Up – 39-13 ATS: 25-27

 A decent week for Johnny G last weekend, I need the worm to turn on the ATS picks.  Thanks to Kosmo for filling in with a sports article on Monday as I had to head out of town for work …. to parts unknown to wireless internet providers …

 Here we go for this week

 College

Thursday

Ole Miss (-4.5) @ South Carolina – Nutt or Spurrier … it is that easy.  SC – 24- Ole Miss 21

Saturday

North Carolina @ Georgia Tech (-2.5) – The Wreck needs a “W” – GT – 24- NC 21

Michigan State @ Wisconsin (-2.5)- We don’t need no stinking badges … Mich St – 27- Wisc 21

California (-7.5) @ Oregon – Oregon is just really not good at all – California 35- OR 21

Miami (FL) (-1.5) @ Virginia Tech – Ouch … still hurting from the Huskers loss last week.  I predict a beatdown this week.  The only team more overrated in the top 15 than Va Tech is Ole Miss – Miami 35- Va Tech 14

Louisiana-Lafayette @ Nebraska (-26.5) – Huskers get healthy this week in the 300^th consecutive sell out in Memorial stadium.  Neb- 42- LFAY – 14

Army @ Iowa State (-10.5) – I have a bad feeling for Cyclonoe fans this week.  Army – 24- Ia St 21

Iowa @ Penn State (-10.5) Too Big of a spread here.  Iowa looks great at times and bad at others but … Penn St 35- Iowa 27

Notre Dame (-8.5) @ Purdue – Purdue is not good, thank goodness for that Irish Fans, as the golden domers continue to pad the schedule with easy wins over overrated bigger name weak big 10 teams … wait … wasn’t that also Michigan … nevermind … ND- 35- Purdue 17

Texas Tech @ Houston (-1.5)  I take the overs … dang … I have to pick someone …. ok … Houston 52- Texas Tech 49

NFL

Cleveland @ Baltimore (-14) –  Cleveland is just plain bad….no way around it.  Baltimore 28 – Browns 14

Tennessee (-2.5)@ NY Jets – The Jets crash this week in a close one.  Tennessee – 21 Jets 17

Green Bay (-8.5) @ St. Louis – The Packers lose a tough one last week…St Louis is not a tough one this week.  GB- 30- STL – 17

Atlanta @ New England (-4) –   New England finds a way to get Brady on track this week..and big.  NE – 31- ATL – 24

San Francisco @ Minnesota (-6) – The vikes have not been tested..Gore won’t go for 200+ this week.  MN 28-  SF 17

New Orleans (-6) @ Buffalo – The Saints are the best team in the league through two weeks.  NO 42- Buff 20

Pittsburgh (-4) @ Cincinnati – Pittsburgh is due for a rebound after a tough loss against the Bears last week – Pitt 21-Cin 17

Miami @ San Diego (-6) – San Diego is the better team in my opinion, and Miami is still smarting for letting one get away last week.  SD- 280 Miami – 20

SUNDAY NIGHT–
Indianapolis @ Arizona (pick em)– What an great matchup of quarterbacks.  Arizona has more weapons at receiver right now than the Colts do….AZ- 24- IND 23

MONDAY NIGHT–
Carolina @ Dallas (-9) – Dallas had four turnovers last week and still almost won.  Cowboys get er done this week.  Dal 27- Carolina 21.

There will not be a new fiction story today.  Oh, no.  Why not?  Is Kosmo running out of ideas?

Nope, nothing that bad.  I have begun work on the capstone story for volume 2 of “The Fiction of Kosmo” and want to focus all my fiction energy into that at this point.  The new story is intended to be a bit disturbing, in sharp contrast to the capstone story of volume 1, Key Relationships.  The tentative title is The Cell Window.   It wouldn’t be a surprise if a short fiction story popped up on Monday, though.  If you really must have some fiction, I would recommend one of my older stories, The Tale of the Wolf.  This was written was readership was much lower, so you might now be aware of it.  I consider this story to be one of my better works.  Note that it is a two part story (clickable table of contents is at the top)

So, what other topics of interest can we discuss?

Well, for me, of course, there is the Rockies chase toward the playoffs.  Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki hammered another homer last night – that’s 30 on the season.  Quite impressive considering how much he struggled in the first two months.  The Rockies face off against the Cardinals this weekend protecting a 3 1/2 game lead in the wild card race.  I’m hoping that the Cardinals will sit some of the better players to avoid allowing the Rockies a fresh look at them (in case we face off in the playoffs).

And switching gears completely, one of the hospitals in my area now posts emergency room wait times on their web site.  I think this is a great idea.  The next step would be to allow reservations, so that you could simply show up at a particular time and have a minimal wait.  Some trips to the ER can be serious, but non-life threatening.  

I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to be in the ER twice in the last two years – the only two ER trips in my life.  The first was a combination of dehydration and a stomach bug that happened to hit me on a Sunday.  Did I need to be seen on Sunday?  Yes – I needed fluids via IV and some anti-nausea medication.  But it would have been great to bide my time waiting at home laying on the couch rather than sitting in an uncomfortable chair in the ER.

The second trip was due to an adverse reaction to Demerol that was administered during a medical procedure.  The on-call doctor definitely wanted me to come in that night (not only to prescribe anti-nausea meds, but also to make sure that it was simply a drug reaction rather than a result of them having punctured my innards during the procedure).  Again, waiting at home would have been preferable.

There are some problems with this plan, of course.  Obviously, exceptions would be needed for people with life threatening conditions.  A gun with a gunshot wound is going to get in ahead of me, whether or not he has a reservation.  There is also the issue that the system would discriminate against people who don’t have an access to a phone.  I don’t have a perfect solution, but it would be nice to see some discussion in this area.

Make a note of this event – it is very rare that I am going to defend a player on a rival team.  All stats are prior to Wednesday’s game.

Mark Reynolds of the Diamondbacks is having a great season in an otherwise forgettable year for the Snakes (although he has been struggling quite a bit this month).  He has hit 43 homers, driven in 100 runs, and has a .919 OPS.  He has also struck out 206 times.  Reynolds is the only player in Major League history to strike out 200 times in a season – and this is the second year he has done it.

Reynolds gets some criticism from people who think that the strikeouts are hurting the team, because strikeouts are inherently worse than “productive” outs.  But are they?

Let’s delve into this a bit.  Let’s keep all of Reynolds’ stats the same, except that we’ll turn 100 of his strikeouts into other types of outs.  I’m not including bunts in the mix, because it isn’t likely that the manager would ask Reynolds to bunt.

First, let’s take care of a few basic questions:

• Why aren’t we turning some of the strikeouts into hits?  Because that would affect his batting average.  I’m not trying to ask the question of whether or not Reynolds would contribute more with a .300+ average and 100 strikeouts vs. his current .266 average and 206 strikeouts – clearly he would.  Hits are always better than outs – any sort of outs.  Instead, I am looking at the relative value of a Reynolds with .266 and 106 strikeouts vs. .266 and 206 strikeouts – determining the negative impact of the strikeout itself.
• Why aren’t we taking into account the fact that Reynolds could reach on an error?  Because  this is not statistically significant.  Against a .980 fielding team, this would mean Reynolds reaches on an error an extra two times.  This is easily offset by the extra occurences of double plays and runners being thrown out trying to advance

First, we must realize that not every non-strikeout out is a productive out.

• In 320 of Reynolds’ 621 plate appearances (51.5%) the bases have been empty.  In this situation, it is impossible to advance the runner, since there is no runner.
• In 220 of  Reynolds’ plate appearances (35.4%), there were two outs in the inning.  Regardless of whether you strike out or hit a lazy fly ball to center field, the inning is going to come to an end.

We can’t simply subtract these percentages from 100%, of course.  They double count the situation of 2 outs and the bases empty.  I don’t have the number of plate appearance for this situation (although I am able to derive a boundary of the estimate based on other data).  We’ll estimate the intersection of these two points by multiplying.  This results in an estimate of 18.2% of plate appearances with 2 outs and these bases empty.  I stress that this is an estimate, although it should be fairly close (and, if anything, is slightly higher* than the true result, meaning that productive outs are actually less prevalent that my calculations indicate).

Now we add 51.5 and 35.4 and deduct the intersection of  18.2.  This results in 68.7% of plate appearances where it is impossible for a productive out to exist.  This leaves 31.3% of plate appearances where it is actually possible for an out to advance a baserunner.  In our example of 100 strikeouts that we magically turned into other outs, this would mean 32 opportunities for productive outs.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Reynolds would actually have 32 more productive outs.  Even though the situation makes is possible, he would still need to execute.  An infield fly isn’t going to advance the runner.  Nor will a shallow fly ball.  Only a deep fly ball will advance a baserunner from first to second – because of the short throw to second base.  Runners will also have difficulty advancing from second to third on a fly to left field.  Many ground balls will result in the batter reaching first and the lead runner being retired.  Let’s estimate that Reynolds would be able to make a productive out 40% of the time.  (If you don’t think this is fair, watch a few games and pay attention to how many times a batter is able to advance the runner).  That’s 13 times advancing the runner.

Of course, not all of those runners are going to score.  If the guy batting next makes the third out of the inning, it really doesn’t matter if Reynolds struck out or if he advanced the runner with a fly ball – the runner is still going to be stranded (unless the runner was on third base, of course).  If the next guy hits a homer (or a rally ensues), it’s also academic, as the runner would have scored regardless of whether or not Reynolds advanced him.  Out of those 13 times advancing the runner, perhaps half the time (we’ll round up again to 7) the productive out makes a difference in whether or not a run scores.

So, do the extra strikeouts have a negative impact on the Diamondbacks?  Sure – perhaps 7 runs over the course of the season.  But are they really that much worse than other types of outs?  No, not really.  Not enough to make a productive hitter make a fundamental change to his approach.

*  Math alert – here’s more background at how we arrived at the intersection of the two outs scenario and the bases empty scenario. 

While I don’t have the statistics for the number of plate appearances with two outs and bases empty, we can chip away at this a bit by coming from the opposite direction of plate appearances with runners on base.  We know that Reynold had 95 plate appearances with two outs and runners in scoring position (second and/or third base).  We also know that Reynolds had some number of plate appearances with runners on first (but not second or third) and two outs.  We’ll assign this X.  With our estimate of the two outs, bases empty of 18.2%, we get this equation (35.4% is the percentage of plate appearances with two outs – we subtract the situations where there are base runners in order to determine the percentage of the time when there are not baserunners):

18.2% = 35.4% – (X + 15.3%)

18.2% = 35.4% – 15.3% – X

X = 35.4% – 15.3% – 18.2%

X = 1.9%

Thus, our estimate allows just 1.9% of plate appearance (12 PAs) to be two outs with single runner on first base.  This is almost certainly too low.  If we adjust this upward, it also pushes the 18.2% downward … meaning that the intersection of the two outs occurence and the bases empty occurence is smaller that we have calculated, and that those two numbers (51.5% and 35.4%) are double counting fewer plate apperances than originally thought – meaning that we can carve away more than bats than the 68.7%, resulting in even fewer plate appearances where productive outs are possible.  If this isn’t clear, play around with the math a bit and see what happens when you adjust X upward.

Over the years, St. Louis has become a favorite destination for my wife and me.  Many times in the past, trips to St. Louis have included a trip to the Edward Jones Dome to catch my wife’s favorite team, the St. Louis Rams.  Our most recent trip, however, did not include a Rams game.

My wife was the navigator for the trip.  She had programmed destinations into our Nextar GPS navigator, and also had printed information from Mapquest.  We have learned from past experience that the Nextar can be a bit quirky, although it generally does a pretty good job.

The first stop was at the Galleria Mall.  I’m not much of a shopper, so I made a beeline for the Apple Store.  The Apple Store is a great place to catch up on email and browse the web.  I have used Apple Stores for this purpose in 3 different malls (Mall of America in Minnesota and the Jordan Creek Mall in Des Moines).  In general, if you don’t make a nuisance of yourself or hang out for hours on end, the employees will leave you alone.  There are probably a couple of reasons for this.  First, Apple believes that their computers sell themselves – so that casual users in the Apple Store will eventually turn into buyers.  Second, it’s never a bad idea when there are a lot of people in a store – it makes the product look more popular.

After the Galleria, we checked into our hotel.  We like to stay at the Drury Inn by the Gateway Arch.  The location is great – walking distance to the Edward Jones Dome, Busch Stadium, the Arch, and lots of restaurants.  We hopped on the metro to Union Station.

We wanted to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe.  We were told that the wait was 15-20 minutes.  We patiently waited, and were eventually told that our table was ready.  The waitress began to lead us outside, and we politely mentioned that we preferred an indoor table (we hadn’t been asked for a preference when we checked in initially).  She told us that it would be “a few more minutes.”  Fine, we sat down to wait a few more minutes.  Ten minutes later, I asked if they knew how much longer the table would be.  About 15 minutes.  This seemed to be longer than the “few more minutes” we had been quoted.  It seemed like we were being jerked around a bit, so we left and ate elsewhere.

The next day, we went to Grant’s Farm.  The Busch family donated the property and Anheuser-Busch provides a lot of financing.  Admission is free, although parking is $11.  I don’t quite understand the logic of this, but it’s still a great bargain, so I’m not complaining.  The first part of the trip is a tram ride where you can see a lot of wild animals.  I had the digital camera handy and got a lot of shots – particularly of the bison and zebras.

The tram stops at a central area within the facility where you can see more of the animals up close.  There is a variety of animals from farm animals (you can feed the goats) to African elephants.  My wife loves elephants, so we rushed to the elephant area to catch the elephant show.  The first show didn’t actually have a large enough audience, so the trainers just had the elephants do some training exercises.  This was pretty cool.  After that, we took a look at the other animals, and caught most of the bird show (pretty neat) before going back to the elephant area for the next show.  This time, the audience was large enough.  Robbie (trainer) and Mickey (elephant – short for Michelob) put on a show.  The show was educational and entertaining (Mickey raced a couple of kids in a balloon blowing contest – she gave them a huge head start, and beat them easily with just one breath).  We did the VIP tour ($5 each) afterward.  We got to tour the bull barn – a massive building where Bud (male elephant) lives.  Then we got to meet Bud.  We fed him carrots and got pictures taken with him.

In the afternoon, I made a trip across the street from the hotel to visit the Gateway Arch.  This is, of course, the icon of St. Louis.  The Arch soars 630 feet in the air.  You ride to the top in a little tram car that has five seats.  I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to cram five normal sized people into one of the cars.  The cars have a bit of Ferris Wheel movement to them, since the trip to the top is not completely vertical (since it must travel along the curve of the arch).  I rode to the top with a guy from Pennsylvania and a happy young couple.  The woman had a very nice camera.  I coveted the lens, and told her 🙂

The top of the arch is a fabulous place for taking photos, and I took several dozen photos.  I took a quite a few pictures of Busch Stadium.  The game was over, but they were letting kids run around the bases.  Even though I’m a Rockies fan, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take photos of a ball park.  I also took quite a few pictures of the mighty Mississippi River.

As I have mentioned eleventy billion times previously, I am an aspiring novelist.  By “aspiring”, I mean that I have yet to produce anything long enough to be classified as a novel (although the story Key Relationships was a step in the right direction in terms of length).

Writing fiction for The Soap Boxers has kick-started my fiction writing, and the creative process in general).  Never in my life have I written such a volume of fiction is such a short time (roughly thirty thousand words since the advent of Fiction Friday back in March) – while also writing a significant amount of non-fiction pieces and balancing other life constraints (work, family, baseball).  I think there are a few reasons for this revival.

• First, this blog allow my work to immediately reach an audience.  Even when I don’t get feedback in the form of comments, there is an extra jolt of adrenaline that comes with knowing that anyone in the world could stumble across one of my stories.  It’s even better when someone actually leave a comment.
• I’m beginning to realize that I’m an aberration from most writers.  I’m really not a big fan of taking a pen and physically writing on paper.  I prefer to do my writing almost entirely behind a computer.  Not only do I prefer the physical aspects of typing to those of writing, but I appreciate the ability to make correction and restructure the story on the fly.  If I did my writing with pen and paper, my notebook would be a mess.  I do use paper to write ideas and very short segments (preferring a composition book rather than a spiral bound notebook), but I rarely write an entire story with pen and paper.
• Blog readers, in general, like to read relatively short blog posts.  This pushed me in the direction of writing pretty short stories, since I really couldn’t drop a ten thousand word story into a blog post (although I can serialize the lengthy stories at The Fiction Writers).  Writing a new short story every week forced my the write about things I hadn’t previously written about – there are a pretty strange variety of stories within Fiction Friday).  This has allow me to branch off into new direction and also refine a lot of my techniques – in particular, dialogue.

Onto another tangent … another way to I express my creativity is through “Instant Message Bombs”.  One particular friend seems to drift away from the keyboard and leave AIM up and running (I’m fairly certain that he’s not simply avoiding me).  Whenever I determine that he’s unresponsive, I leave him a few random comments, such as:

“Then there was this explosion.  Grapes and Cheerios everywhere.  It took hours for them to clean up the mess.”

“A horse.  Can you imagine that?  Why on earth would they pick a horse for that job.  A gerbil would be a much better candidate.”

I’m really not sure if these non sequitur comments serve any purpose in the creative process, but the reaction can be fun to watch 🙂