Monthly Archives: September 2011

Bawk-bawk-baaaaawk!

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Last night I was hanging out at a bar with a buddy of mine, and of course where alcohol is served there is also sports on television. Even when it’s only preseason football (not really sports at all), I’m unable to keep my eyes from wandering to the box with moving pictures. Also, it seems I’m unable to avoid commenting on it.

Last night the Dallas Cowboys were playing… um… someone else. Doesn’t really matter. I did see one play that made me realize something about the team that calls itself “America’s Team”: they are timid, poorly coached, and they are not going to do well this year.

For a little context, lets review why there are preseason games at all. Teams use these four games as super-practices, and to see how their players do in game situations. The final game of the preseason is traditionally played mostly by players on the bubble – based on their performance in that game players are cut from the team while others are retained.

The actual score of the game makes no difference whatsoever. It’s all about how players perform in given situations. As a coach, I think I would actually try to get my players into tough spots to see how they respond. Situations like, say, fourth and goal at the five yard line, with your team behind and the game on the line. Let’s see who can step up.

Or, if you’re the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, you can execute a routine play for a meaningless three points so you lose the game by fewer points. The coach is already practicing tactics designed to make him look less bad in the score sheets after a loss. He’s also telling his people that he’s a wimp and that he has no faith in his team.

It took only one preseason play to show me all I need to know about the Dallas Cowboys. They have a coach who will squander an opportunity to see his guys in a telling situation, just so he doesn’t look as bad in the papers the next day – after a meaningless game. I don’t like their chances this year.

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Who Writes Short Shorts?

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Esquire magazine is celebrating it’s 78th anniversary with a writing contest. The twist: every entry must be exactly 78 words. I’m pretty excited about the contest; back in the day I used to write 3-sentence bits when I was stuck, tiny snippets that were intended to capture a character, a setting, and a conflict in three sentences. Most of them sucked, of course.

I didn’t realize that most of those snippets are in an alpha version of Jer’s Novel Writer so old that the latest version won’t open them. I used to have an old version that I could use to rescue ancient files, so I’m not worried. For tonight, however, I contented myself with more modern efforts.

I think I can make a 78-word-something that doesn’t suck too bad, but there’s a catch. On the contest page they give an example. They seem to think it’s good. I don’t. At all. So I’m not sure the judges and I see things the same way. I’m going to enter anyway, and so should you! I mean, why not?

Meanwhile, here are drafts of my two candidates (until I bother going back and opening my most-ancient files). One is a condensation of a 600-word scrap I dug up. The challenge is to get a little atmosphere in there and get the buildup of the longer piece in fewer words. I think the payload need to be more condensed in this version – it has to be two sharp smacks of a hammer, bam! bam!. Not there yet. The other starts with a phrase my third-favorite-of-all-time bartender once said (the phrase, in fact, that earned her that stature), in Louisville Kentucky. It’s autobiographical up to a point.

Me on my stool, Ray on his. The game ended. “Every eighteen minutes…” the tv said before falling silent.

“Every eighteen minutes,” Ray said. Took a long drink. Wet rings on the bartop. “Every eighteen minutes a new star is formed.”

“You’re making that up.”

He shrugged. “Every eighteen minutes a girl leaves her family for the promise of an easy life and free drugs.” He put down his empty bottle. “Every eighteen minutes I have another beer.”

“I may be smilin’, but it’s fake.” Heather looked at me almost apologetically as she brought us our beers. She paused. The bar was full of people fresh from the Derby, drunk as lords and money losers on top of that. An angry bar. Funny Cide? Who the hell would pick Funny Cide? Beside me and Art.

“That’s all right, darlin’.” Ever the gentleman, Art. “If someone troubles you I’ll kill him.”

Heather laughed, a little. I didn’t.

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A Comfy Star

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Recently ‘they’ found a brown dwarf nearby. A brown dwarf is a star that never quite made the grade; when all the other stars in the dust cloud were snatching up fuel these hapless wanna-bes were left just shy of the mass (and therefore gravitational pressure) to squish hydrogen atoms together into helium, and as a side effect shooting off heat. They’re barely stars at all.

You can see a thoroughly uninteresting photo of one over at Astronomy Picture of the Day. It’s pretty close to us — on a cosmic scale at least — a mere 40 light-years away. What made this one interesting (to me at least) is the surface temperature. It’s about the same temperature as the room I’m sitting in right now.

So let’s say, for the sake of Science Fiction, that one can travel faster than light. Only slightly more impossible would be dealing with the high gravity. Once those two minor things are taken care of, you could build your house on this star. Well, there probably isn’t a real surface per se, and there’s likely to be some pretty wicked radiation and magnetic what-not. And epic storms, like on Jupiter.

BUT – if you solved those things, you could build your house on a star. That would be cool.

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