Part 3 (2/2)

But the other reason is even simpler, and that is because I firmly believe that the Cubs, when pressed, will always find a way to lose in the clutch. It is their destiny and heavy responsibility to be the sport's designated losers-a destiny they previously shared with the Red Sox, but which they now carry alone, which of course makes it an even heavier responsibility. As I've noted before, if the Cubs were to win, what would they gain? A sports champions.h.i.+p, to be sure, but how special can a World Series win actually be if even the Florida Marlins have won it? Twice?

But the Cubbies' reign of futility-well, see. What other team could replace them? Among teams who have ever won a World Series, the next longest drought is held by the Cleveland Indians, at an insignificant 60 years. Among those who have never won the World Series, the Texas Rangers are mere pups at 47 years of age. No offense to Indians and Rangers fans, but the futility of these teams is pedestrian and ba.n.a.l compared to the futility of the Cubs. They are the H0-scale version of existential dread. The Cubbies are the full-sized runaway train, hurtling headlong toward the burned-out bridge over a yawning, bottomless chasm. And the train is filled with adorable kittens.

You don't just throw that sort of distinction away on something so obvious and common as a World Series champions.h.i.+p. They give one of those out every year. The Cubs' streak, on the other hand, is a century in the making. There is nothing else like it in the history of North American professional sports, and it's made even more poignant by the fact that the Cubbies are so often good, as they were this year. They could have gone all the way. You could even argue that they should have gone all they way. But they didn't. And now they won't. And this is as it should be.

And so when the Cubs were swept in three games by the Los Angeles Dodgers (whose own streak of World Series futility is a mere 20 years long-a pup, as these things go), I was not surprised, and for the sake of Cubs fans, I was somewhat relieved. 'Twere best it was done quickly, and all that; no point dragging those poor men and women through one or two more series just to compound the heartbreak. I understand that Cubs fans may feel differently, of course, but I think they may be too close to the subject.

The fact that I was born and raised in Southern California and am a nominal Dodgers fan has nothing to do with this, either. It could have been any team that stood in the Cubbies' way. And if the Dodgers go all the way, what of it? What's another World Series win to a team that already has six? They have their moment in the sun, and then it's back to the relentless, cyclical grind. Meanwhile, the Cubs, and their streak, continue-a testament to persistence, to futility as Sisyphusian high art: Yea, a statement about the very condition of man. Perhaps a statement best read at a distance, as Cubs' fans might agree. But even so.

I for one admire the Cubs' position in sports and in history, which is why in Old Man's War I see their streak continuing well into a third century. World Series wins come and go, but the Cubbies' streak-well. That endures, my friends. That endures.

Dateiversary Jun

16.

2010.

As constant-nay, fanatical-readers of this site, you'll recall how yesterday was the 16th anniversary of me proposing marriage to Krissy. Well, today is the 17th anniversary of the two of us having our first date, which for the record, happened at El Presidente restaurant in Visalia, California, followed by dancing at the Marco Polo bar, which is where we had met three weeks previously (that doesn't count as an official date because she was kind of there with a different date entirely, who she largely abandoned to dance with me, BWA HA HA HAH loser date of Krissy's).

This means, as those of you with exceptional math skills have already deduced, that I proposed marriage one day short of a year from our first official date. I chose that date because it was a Wednesday, which meant my newspaper was running my weekly column, and my proposal was the subject of the column. However, I had known for some time that I wanted to marry her. In fact, I had known roughly nine months earlier, because after three months of dating Krissy it was clear that a) there was no way in which she was not awesome, b) there was no way I would ever do any better, mate-wise, than I was doing right that very second, so my task for the next 60 or so years would be not to screw up this relations.h.i.+p.

As any guy who has even the slightest semblance of impulse control will tell you, three months is a pretty quick time for a man to determine that he wants to spend the rest of his life with someone, so about seven years into our marriage, I noted to Krissy with some pride how soon it was that I was convinced that she was the person I wanted to marry.

”Uh-huh,” she said, less impressed than I had imagined she would be.

”Well, when did you decide that you wanted to marry me?” I asked.

”Our first date,” she said.

”AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEGH,” I said, running terrified from the house-or would have had, in fact, I had not been already married to her for seven years at this point and had been almost appallingly happy the whole time. Because you know who knows they want to marry someone after the first date? Crazy, crazy people, that's who. And also, apparently, in a data set completely unattached to ”crazy, crazy people,” my wife.

What I actually did say was, ”I'm really glad you didn't tell me that at the time.”

To which Krissy said, ”Of course I didn't tell you. Do you think I'm crazy?”

That statement, or more accurately the strategic intelligence behind it, is part of why we're still married today.

Lest anyone think that Krissy was overstating her position on the matter, my mother-in-law confirmed that when her daughter came through the door after our first date, more or less the first words out of her mouth were ”I've met the man I'm going to marry.” Which surprised my future mother-in-law, as previous to this her daughter's general opinion of men was, shall we say, not nearly high enough to have marriage be part of it. So I have no reason to doubt that, in fact, Krissy had made the decision that night.

In retrospect, it's a little weird to think that my entire future was falling into place as I obliviously tucked into the El Presidente chimichanga platter, but of course, that's life for you-the most important days of your existence don't always announce themselves in obvious ways. At the time, all I knew was that somehow I had managed to get a date with the single most gorgeous woman I had ever met in my entire life, and I focused on not talking with my mouth full, because I wanted to get to date number two. Well, and I did. And got happily ever after in the bargain.

Which means it was a good first date, seventeen years ago today.

Dear Writer: I'm Sorry, I Don't Have Time to CRUSH YOU Mar

4.

2011.

Holly Black-who is awesome-has a post on her LiveJournal concerning a recent s.h.i.+bboleth floating about regarding a cabal of young adult authors (”the YA Mafia”) who some writers in the field apparently believe will go out of their way to crush under their Doc Martens those writers who would do anything untoward to a member of the YA Mafia, like, say, write something negative about one of their books.

Holly for her part denies the existence of a YA Mafia-but then she would, wouldn't she-and also points out that even if such a cabal of writers did exist, sn.i.g.g.e.ring nefariously in the shadows, the chance of them actually being able to crush someone else's career is nil, because, honestly, that's not how it works in the real world-not in the least because, as Holly notes: ”writers are basically lazy and impractical people. We live in our heads a lot and we can barely get it together to do anything. Seriously, it took me until after 3pm yesterday to get myself a sandwich.”

First, I want to agree with her wholeheartedly on the lazy thing, because for the last week I've been subsisting on Nature Valley Fruit and Nut Bars, not because I'm in love with their sticky, graintastic goodness but because at this point, the thought of having to shove something into the microwave to cook it fills me with such a sense of ennui even just typing those words makes me tired.

Second, this wave of anxiety is part of a recurring theme in the writeosphere, in which it is posited that those people with some measure of success actively and jealously guard their perks and privileges against the smudgy others mewling on the other side of the gate, and collude to maintain the status quo, and so on and so forth, back, back you mangy animals! Right now this fear is erupting in YA circles, but it's been everywhere else, too. It's not new, and it's not news.

So in the interest of explaining why it's unlikely that any group of successful writers is colluding to keep you down, let me offer up an example of just the sort obnoxious b.a.s.t.a.r.d writer who would want to keep the rabble at bay, namely me.

So, hi, I'm your basic reasonably successful author type, and despite being lazy enough to grumble how how awful it is that I have to unwrap my granola bar before I can eat it, my daily schedule is not unpacked. On a daily basis I write a couple thousand words on whatever novel I'm writing, crank out two or three blog posts, check in with SFWA in my capacity as the organization's president and take care of what needs to be addressed that day, do other paid copy not related to novels, take the dog out on at least two walks, answer e-mail and other correspondence, make business-related phone calls to agents, editors and such, spend time with wife, child and pets, occasionally leave the house for errands, read the entire Internet, maybe also some portion of a book, update LiveJournal and Twitter, kill me some zombies, eat, ablute and sleep. That's not on days when I'm traveling, mind you, during which I often do many of these things and also hurl myself across the country at several hundred miles an hour.

That being my schedule, let me ask you: Where do you propose I slide in f.u.c.king with your career?

Because, I gotta tell you, after everything else I do on a daily basis, I don't have a lot of time left over to take your dreams, lovingly cradle them in my arms and then just when they feel safe fling them into a pit filled with gasoline and napalm and laugh boisterously while they shrivel and burn. I mean, sure, I suppose I could cut back on reading the Internet or headshooting the undead and pencil you in there, but you know, I really do love reading Gizmodo, and those pesky zombies won't kill themselves (again). If I have to choose, I'm going with tech blog reading and Left 4 Dead.

It's nothing personal. It's not like I'm saying that thwarting your career isn't important. Indeed, that's just the thing: If I have decided that what I really need to do is to block your every entryway into the world of publis.h.i.+ng, you better believe I'm gonna focus. It's going to be my new hobby to make every single day of your life a miserable cesspool of unremitting woe. And that's not something you can just do in five minutes a day, or whatever. No, that s.h.i.+t's hand-crafted and detailed-oriented, and that takes time. Lots and lots and lots of time. Nor am I going to farm it out to a posse of lackeys; no, when I come for you and your career, you're going to see me coming from a long way off, and you're going to have lots of time to think about just what I'm going to do to you before I stand in front of you. Giving you lots of time to think about what I'm going to do to you is what makes it fun.

But I have to say: unless I've decided to give you that level of personal, absolutely terrifyingly psychotic attention, eh, I'm just not going to bother messing with your career. Because, again: who has the time? I don't. No one does, except for people who are, in fact, absolutely and terrifyingly psychotic, and very few of them are successful enough at publis.h.i.+ng that they are the people these other folks are paranoid about. Even if they were, they wouldn't start a cabal. Terrifying psychotics get along with each other about as well as cats in a bag. It's well-nigh part of the definition of ”terrifying psychotics.”

Yes: There is the occasional writer who gets their undies all bunched up about a review and then goes on a pa.s.sive-aggressive public rampage about it. Authors are often neurotic. This should not be news. But what can they really do to you or your career? Short of doing something will get them rightfully thrown into jail, pretty much not a d.a.m.n thing. Because you know what? It's not the way it works in the real world.

Let's go back a couple of paragraphs to where I got all steroid-y about the level of woe I would rain down upon you if I decided to make you my personal project. Sure, I talk a good game up there-I've got a way with words, you know-but in the real world, how would that play out? Let's whip up scenarios, here: STEROID SCALZI MEETS WITH HIS EDITOR:.

Me: There's this writer who I hate with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Never ever publish her. I am Scalzi. You must heed my words.

Editor: Well, I will take that under consideration (makes mental note that I have finally crossed the line from ”reasonable human” to ”text-extruding a.s.shole who must be managed”).

STEROID SCALZI MEETS WITH OTHER WRITERS:.

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