About 530,000 were subject to mass layoffs in the last year, growth of nearly 5 percent, but a lower rate than five and 10 years ago.
The median weekly earnings for American workers have not grown in real terms over the last eight years.
At $6.55, the federal minimum wage is worth 40 cents less per hour, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a decade ago.
While employer-assisted childcare and employee wellness programs have grown quickly over the last decade, they still cover less than one quarter of American workers.
Roughly 4 percent of the workforce wants to work full-time, but is working part time because they can't find full-time work.
Anyway, as something like a freelancer, I'll be relaxing and revising today, in addition to celebrating Labor Day for an entirely selfish reason: The tourists are going home! This being the official last day of the summer tourist season, the roads and beaches will become remarkably less crowded starting today. I noticed this last year, when riding my bike by the Catamaran resort on Mission Bay, as the chaise longues thingies with the umbrellas thinned out a little more every day until there were as few as half a dozen die-hards stretched out beneath the fog. The tourists bring in a lot of revenue to San Diego, so I know they're a good thing, but I promise to step up my patronage of the local coffee joints by way of compensation.
When I was a bookstore clerk in Tempe, Arizona, John McCain and I once made eye contact from about ten feet away. I figure I should at least get an ambassadorship out of that. I choose France.
( more behind the cut )
- I have a new desk chair, just a $69 jobby from IKEA, but it's a great improvement over what I was sitting on before, which was a $19 dining room chair from IKEA that I had to reassemble every four hours as the simple act of sitting in it loosened the hex screws and the little wooden studs that go into the little wooden holes. My new chair is even an improvement over the desk chair I sat in for about four years, all told, at Arizona State University, which was doing me neural damage, even causing my mouth to go numb.
- My story, "Far As You Can Go", is newly available in audio format via Mini-Masterpieces of Science Fiction, a 3-disc audio set including stories by Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Carol Emshwiller, Molly Gloss, Joe Haldeman, Bruce McAllister, Paul J. McAuley, and Bud Sparhawk.
- I have absolutely zero desire to read prose right now.
- Having been at Worldcon and on the road last week, I caught very little Olympics action, but I've made up for it this weekend by planting myself on the sofa and watching people exert themselves in spectacular fashion while I ate pizza and burritos and ice cream and fried chicken. Not all at once, mind you, but still. I think I'm most impressed by Dara Torres, not just by her athletic achievements, but also her poise and grace and sportsmanship and, yes, maturity. Very inspiring as I prepare to drag my sorry ass back to kung fu and try to convince my stiff muscles and creaky knees to master jumping kicks and the like.
- I'm expecting my editorial letter for Norse Code this week. I haven't even looked at the book in about six months, which is hopefully enough time to get a fresh perspective on it and reconcile my fresh perspective with my insightful editor's perspective.
- Dudes, check out this sweet comic book I picked up at Worldcon! I must have read this thing a buttjillion times when I was a kid, certainly enough times that it disinigegrated like a vampire in the sun. My new copy only cost me eight bucks, and Mordru is still a scary-ass giant evil wizard dude.
Here's an 11-year-old girl supremely rocking "YYZ" on organ:
And here's some behind-the-scenes Colbert Report footage in which Rush fails Rock Band:
Directed by and starring none other than Karate Kid's Billy "Johnny Lawrence" Zabka, and featuring cameos by Ralph Macchio and Martin "Cobra Kai Sensei John Kreese" Cove, it's a tribute to perhaps the most gloriously dorky martial arts movie of all time.
When my kung fu instructor back in Phoenix revealed that Karate Kid was the movie that first inspired him to learn martial arts, I knew I'd found a school to call home.
More people die from coconuts falling on their heads than get killed by sharks, so it's not like I'm worried about getting eaten by a shark. Still kinda freaky, though.
And today I got my contributor's copies of Spin, a Finnish science fiction/fantasy magazine, containing "Kirjailijatalo," a translation of my story "Authorwerx."
The podcast of "Authorwerx" was in Escape Pod last year.
Now I need to get "The Osteomancer's Son" translated into Finnish ...
***
We in the USA are now assaulting teens with ultrasonic noise weapons. Because if there's one thing teenagers can't do, it's retaliate by making noise of their own. And it's always a good idea to antagonize those who will be responsible for our care in a few decades, isn't it? Our nursing homes will be pits dug in the ground. At least we'll be able to gum our earthworms.
I'm an old man with the knees of Geezer McCreakster, but I have the hearing of a young adult. I'm immune to these assaults, but not by much. I did have the Lakers game on when I took the test, though, so for all I know these emitters will melt my geriatric brains.
You are about 20 years old |
The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz |
| Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear! |
If I'd been there, I would have so totally been that guy.
(Geddy and Alex come on at the two-minute mark.)
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sarah_prineas, author of the soon-to-be-blockbuster-not-to-mention-ut***
Today's San Diego Tribune runs a feature on "writing coach" Midge Raymond, who holds workshops that include an opportunity for writers to shred their rejection letters.
They sat on couches and chairs in an airy East Village loft, sipping Starbucks. It could have been a writers' meeting anywhere, or maybe a book club, except for the unusual guest in the middle of the room.
A paper shredder.
The machine was there Monday night as a weapon, a way for the writers to fight back against one of the literary world's fiercest demons: rejection.
“We all learn about dialogue, about characterization, but nobody talks about rejection, about how to deal with it,” said Midge Raymond, a local author and writing coach who hosted the session.
Craziness. I have a big file drawer stuffed with rejection letters. I wouldn't think of shredding them. They are among my most valued possessions.
***
mythusmage kindly pointed me to this very thorough review of Paper Cities: an Anthology of Urban Fantasy in Fantasy Book Critic, which not only says nice things about my story, but also gives my book some pre-pre-pre-publicity:
At only four pages “Ghost Market” gives new meaning to the term ‘short story’, but it’s an intriguing concept where inhaling ghosts is a form of drug dealing, and I think it would make a pretty interesting series. We’ll have to wait on that though because Greg’s first novel “Norse Code” (Bantam Dell) is “a mythic fantasy set in contemporary Los Angeles in which a minor Norse god, a modern valkyrie, and a Viking thug are pitted against the Norse pantheon in an attempt to stop Ragnarok, the long-ago foreseen destruction of the entire universe.”
jamiam pointed me to this t-shirt.It's arrival will be one of the happiest days of my life.
And since I'm on the topic (yes, again), the squid below is not a model. It's an actual giant squid that's been plastinated, like those dead people in those exhibits of dead people that are the latest craze sweeping the nation. The plastination process caused it to shrink about seven feet, leaving it only around 2/3 of its size while alive.
(Via from National Geographic. More here.)
Um.
Here's some Mad Max footage set to Motörhead. Because I am metal, totally.
***
Today I had a lobster burrito and a Negra Modelo with an ocean view, plus other pleasures. I lived like I was livin' in paradise.
***
The JLA Satellite blog finally got around to reviewing Justice League of America #124, the very first comic book I remember buying. It was on sale at the little grocery store at Lopez Lake, a regular destination for our family vacations, and maybe it was the spooky cover, but I was drawn to it like Batman to a mugger, and though I've drifted away and come back to comics many times in the intervening years, I've loved them ever since.
People in the comments to the blog post are dissing the co-writer of that issue, Elliot S! Maggin, but he wrote Last Son of Krypton, which remains one of my all-time favorite novels, and I will always love him for it.
I should get a new copy. Mine would fall apart if I touched it.
***
She really was an alto angel, though, Karen Carpenter.
Profile
- gregvaneekhout
- Greg van Eekhout
- Writing and Snacks
Syndicate
