The SoapBoxers

I have a guest article on Life, Laughs, and Lemmings. Hop over and read the article (about my growth as a fiction writer) and take a look at the rest of Sami’s site while you’re there.

This marks the 300th article in the history of The Soap Boxers!  We’re actually a bit above 300, as a small handful of articles were removed for  various (but very good) reasons.  By our formal counting, we’re at 300, though.

I was hoping that article #300 would be a splashy, fantastic article.  However, my productivity has really taken a hit over the course of the last week.  Some sinus issues have been causing some headaches and some other issues with my eyes.  Nothing serious, but enough to limit the amount of time I want to spend in front of a monitor and the headaches also make it a bit difficult to concentrate for a long period of time.  So I’ll just ramble for a bit today.  These issues are also hampering my work on the “long” story for this quarter, and that really sucks.  I’m on some steroid drops for my eyes, so if I start lashing out angrily at people, blame the ‘roids.  My left eyelid isn’t drooping involuntarily any more, which I see as a good thing.  Hopefully I’ll return to my usual verbose self quite soon.

Politics

Very soon, we will be adding a brand new feature to The Soap Boxers.  I have christened the feature The Political Observers.  Each week, a different political columnist will write an article on the topic of their choice.  The goal is to have two conservative writers and two liberal writers and alternate viewpoints.  I am still looking for an additional liberal writer.  We’ve had some delays getting this off the ground, but it WILL happen before long.  The columns will appear on Thursdays.

Although I strive to have balance within the political feature, I am not trying to pretend that the content of The Soap Boxers is neutral.  If you perceive a slant toward one particular direction, your perception is probably correct.  (If you’re not perceiving the slant, I won’t go out of my way to point it out).  For the rest of the articles on the site, I have made an effort to line up the best possible writers, with little regard to their political leanings.

The Lost Symbol

Yikes – I can’t believe that I don’t have this book done yet – but I simply haven’t had the time.  I’ve had a bit more time the last few days (due to being forced to limit computer time) and am creeping up on the halfway point in the book.  I really hope to finish the book up in the next week.  When I was younger, I could read a 500 page book in the course of a day … but I also had exponentially more spare time back then.

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.

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.

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 🙂

Story Time

The third quarter of the year is winding down.  With it comes the deadline for finishing up the work for volume 2 of “The Fiction of Kosmo”.  Consolidating the short stories into the document isn’t difficult – but writing the longer, capstone story is quite a bit of work.  I strive for a story of at least 10,000 words for this story.  The capstone story for volume one (Key Relationships) took more than a week of work (in various small pieces of spare time) to complete.  Hopefully I can finish the new story in a similar amount of time.  Currently, I have fewer than a thousand words written (just the ending), so I need to buckle down and finish the story.  This might result in me skipping a few article in the course of the next two weeks.  I’ll try to make the story worth the wait.

Rockies Update

Friday night, the Rockies had their wild card lead cut just 2 1/2 games.  With wins on Saturday and Sunday, couple with Dodgers wins over the Giants, the Rockies now stand 4 1/2 games clear of their nearest pursuers.  With just 12 games remaining in the season, this is a solid lead, but not insurmountable, especially with series left against the first place Cardinals and Dodgers.  It feels weird to be a fan of the team that is being chased.  In 2007, the Rockies were behind until the tail end of the season.  The other times my teams have made the playoffs (1984 and 1989 Cubs, 1995 Rockies) are too far in the distant past to remember the race with any clarity.

Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki deserves some MVP consideration.  After a dreadful start to the season, Tulo turned around his season at nearly exactly the same time that the Rockies turned around the season.  It is doubtful that this is a coincidence.  Tulo now stands just one homer short of reaching 30 for the season.

Annie Le

The authorities seem to be keeping a pretty good lid on the information in this case, but theories are being bandied about.  Apparently, suspect Raymond Clark had warned Annie Le that the cages that housed her mice were too dirty.  While I agree that cleanliness is a good thing, is it really possible that Annie Le was killed because there were too much mouse poop in the cages?

The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol, the latest book by Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, hit the shelves on Thursday.  My daughter loves the book.  She wanted me to read from the book.  I complied, and read the dust jacket and a few other short snippets.

Why didn’t I read more of the book to her?  Well, she’s only two, and the material might be a bit too mature for her.  Honestly, I think she likes the cover.

Lazy Man vs MonaVie

Lazy Man of Lazy Man and Money is a friend of The Soap Boxers.  A benefactor, actually, as he is providing free hosting and invaluable technical support and advice.  Lazy has been critical of the MonaVie corporation, questioning whether or not the product actually provides the benefits that the company and MonaVie distributors claim.

Lazy has been sent not one, but two, cease and desist letters.  When The Consumerist questioned MonaVie, they agreed that the first letter was incorrect.  They subsequently sent a second cease and desist later.  The complaint?  That Lazy Man and Money was using the trademarked term (MonaVie) in the meta keywords for Lazy’s article on the company.  Considering how meta keywords are using by search engines (to create the blurb you see listed in the search results, but typically not used to determine the page’s ranking) it seems perfectly natural to use the company name in the meta keywords.  In fact, it would be a bit strange to NOT use it.

Lazy has written about MonaVie on several occasions (see the complete list here).  The original article has attracted a pretty incredible 3300+ comments in the course of the last 18 months (note the comment at the bottom about archived comments).  By comparison, The Soap Boxers sometimes gets 5 comments on an article …

Spam Comments

Lots of porno-spam in the comments lately (all of which have been caught by my spam filter).  I guess I should be proud of the fact that the blog is successful enough to attract spammers?

I have been kicking around this idea for a while now.  To delve into politics, or not?  Recent developments have resulted in a bit of extra space in the schedule, so I think it’s time to give it a whirl.

And with that, I throw my hat into the ring for the 2012 presidential election.

Oh, sorry.  Wrong announcement.  Pretend that you didn’t hear that one yet.

I will be looking to compile a staff of 3-5 liberals and 3-5 conservative to write about politics.  Each week, I will choose a topic and have one writer from each camp write about the issue (500-1000 words).  The two articles will be published on The Soap Boxers on the same day (Thursday, most likely).  I will alternate which party gets the top spot.

I have put out some feelers, but am still looking for more writers.  What am I looking for, you ask?

• I am looking for someone with their own opinions on the issues, and not people who simply rehash what the talking heads are saying.  Experience working within a political organization or writing about politics is a plus.
• The columnist must be thick skinned.  They should expect to see comments from readers who disagree with them.  The columnists should not engage in verbal attacks with commenters, or with columnists from the opposite viewpoint.  Debating the merits of an issue is one thing; hurling insults and baseless accusations is yet another.
• Writer must be willing and able to write one article each month on an assigned topic.  Since the two opposing views will be published on the same day, it is critical that deadlines are met.
• There will be no up front pay for this work.  There is the potential for profit sharing if/when The Soap Boxers turns a profit.  For those who are interested, I can share more details.

Due to the sheer number of people necessary to get this off the ground, I don’t expect to have The Political Observers operational until at least the end of the month.

While I intend to make every attempt to make The Political Observers a balanced forum, this does not mean that the entirety of the content of The Soap Boxers will be balanced.

Although we will be focusing on politics once a week, The Soap Boxers will not become a political blog and will continue to focus on a broad variety of topics.

Want to learn more about this opportunity?  Send me an email at kosmo@ObservingCasually.com

What did you miss over the weekend?

• Kosmo’s track and field short story, On Track
• Johnny Goodman’s football picks
• Kosmo’s switch from cable internet to DSL

When I was a senior in college, I applied for a lot of jobs.

The College of Business at Iowa State would publish a list of companies that would be interviewing on campus each week, along with a job description. There was a set of numbered bins (or perhaps they were boxes) that corresponded to each job. If you were interested in a job, you left a resume and cover letter in the bin. The company would sift through the applicants and decide whom they wanted to interview on campus. If that interview went well, the company would have you interview at their site.

Every week, I diligently dropped off resumes. I had some interviews, but not job offers.

One week, I printed off my resumes in a computer lab at the far end of campus (where I worked) and trudged through rain to the other end of campus to submit them. I began dropping resumes into bins and noticed that I was missing one resume.

I had a dilemma on my hands. It was Friday afternoon, it was raining, and I was very close to my apartment. The only current copy of my resume was in the computer lab on the other side of campus. I could just say “good enough”, since I had applied for several other positions that week. Or I could trudge back across campus, print the resume, and then retrace my steps in order to apply for the one additional job. This would delay my weekend and result in me getting even more wet.

I decided to give the extra effort. I got soaked in the rain and I was late getting home, but I slept easier that night.

I received a total of one job offer that year.

Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking. I crossed campus twice in the rain to make sure that I applied for that one extra job – and that’s the job I’ve landed. I’ve worked for the company for twelve years now.

Remember this story the next time you’re tempted to cut a few corners.

What did you miss over the weekend?

• Peter Rabbit gave a recap of the Six Day War on Friday.
• Also on Friday, Johnny Goodman makes his NCAA football picks for week 1.
• On Saturday, Cheri Nobel reviewed World Wide Open, the new debut CD of the group Love and Theft.

If there is one group of people I despise more than the telemarketers who try to sell me a car warranty over the phone, it’s the mall kiosk people who stalk me to the edge of the mall walkways. I’m typically a pretty polite person – but being harassed by mall pests trying to sell me overpriced crap makes me feel a bit rude.

As an aid to those of you who are also annoyed by the kiosk stalkers, I have created this convenient list of ways to fight back. Most of these tactics are geared toward having the kiosklings avoid you in the future. [Note: some of these tactics are of questionable legality. We assume no liability for their use.]

1. Ask embarrassing questions. If they are selling lotion, you might ask “Isn’t this the lotion that gave Aunt Mary that nasty rash?” or “Didn’t the FDA recall this stuff last week?” “Wasn’t your CEO involved in that Ponzi scheme?” is a good fit for a variety of business. Not only will these questions annoy the kioskamarketer, they might scare away a few actual customers.
2. Trapped. As you see the kioskers attempt to stalk you, give the secret signal and have a group of your friends surround the kioskers in a tight formation, allowing minimal personal space.
3. The enemy of my enemy. If the kiosk has a phone number, sign up for a bunch of giveaways (Win a Free Cruise!) and use the kiosk’s phone numbers. You’ve essentially added them to the “do call” list.  Failing that, sign them up for a bunch of junk mail.
4. Too many customers. You have hundreds of friends on Facebook, right? Have all of them show up at the kiosk at the same time. Browse the merchandise, ask questions, even form a blockade around the kiosk. Make every attempt to keep the kioskers occupied in order to protect the general public.
5. Turn ‘em in. Aggressive behavior is often a violation of the kiosk’s lease with the mall. Threaten to contact the mall office, and follow through.
6. Why doesn’t … Ask the probing question – “Have you ever wondered why [name of high end store] doesn’t stalk their customers? Probably because they don’t sell crap.”
7. Competitor. Walk up to the kiosk with a notebook in one hand and a tape measure in the other. Start taking notes about all of the products, and take measurements of the kiosk. When the employees ask what you are doing, tell them that you are planning to launch a competing business twenty feet away.
8. Turn the tables. Instead of having them zoom in their sites on you and track you down, sneak up on THEM and turn the hunter into the hunted. Try to sell them your time share property or get them involved in a multi-level marketing scheme.
9. Go “double maverick” on them. Spread fake vomit around the kiosk’s area. Put up “crime scene” tape. Bring your garbage bags from home and leave them in the kiosk area. Organize a marbles tournament on the floor. Talk about alien abductions. Put up signs that say “Danger! Land Mines!” In general, make them think you’re a little nutty.
10. Chemical warfare. Store up a nice dose of body odor. Spend a lot of time at the kiosk, sharing your aroma with the employees.

Back On April 15, we launched a Stock Market contest (click link to see insights from the participants) in which a team of Goliaths (personal finance bloggers) were matched up against a team of Davids (people who were not personal finance bloggers). At the end of July, the Dow stood at 9171.61 and had gained average 11.59 points during the course of the contest, making the Davids the favorites.

The market had its strongest August since 2000, and ended the month at 9496.28, up 324.67 for the month.

At the end of the day on April 14th (the 104th day of the year), the Dow was at 7920.18.

At the end of the day on August 31 (the 243rd day of the year), the Dow was at 9496.28.

This is a gain of 1576.10, or 11.34 points per day. If we assume that the market will contain to gain at exactly the same rate throughout the rest of the year (yes, a ridiculous assumption), the Dow will be at 10879.92 at the end of the year (+ 2959.74 from April 14).

How do our contestants stack up?

I also invited visitors to play along at home. Let’s see how they are doing.

Team David remains firmly in the lead at this point.  There are still four months remaining in the years, but Team Goliath would need a signficant downturn in the market in order to emerge victorious.