the New York Times will be publishing one of my Sunday crossword puzzles.

it's kinda making my head spin. i've only been trying to sell them one for two years.

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I know, because it's mine.

My crossword. In the newspaper. Finally.

I'd like to thank my wife, my team of assistant-editors, and Nancy Salomon.

whew.

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i wrote this article last year that was too long to pitch to most magazines and too depreciating for most travel outlets. it's about ethiopia and how miserable it is there.

so i entered it for a Solas Award. Traveler's Tales Publishers gives out some cash awards and publishes a "best of book" each year. it costs $20 to submit an article, which was sort of depressing -- to pay to have someone read your stuff.

well, i "won".

my article Vampires from Venus was selected as one of the three "funniest" stories of the competition. so i get a free copy of their Best of 2007 book (i'm guessing retail value of about $19.99) and a certificate. i didn't win one of the three "best of show" awards which are $1,000 to $500. it doesn't look like my article is getting printed in the 2007 best of book either.

so, uh, for $20 i get a certificate and free postage of a book a don't particularly want. except since the competition is only really open to US residents it's getting mailed to my folks in SF.

i'm trying to be happy that this editor liked my story, but it's not really happening. i mean, basically i paid him to have free rein to publish my article whenever he wants. or not. if it does get printed, i get a $100 "honorarium." so basically i bought a book and gave away my article.

i do think it's a really good piece. so that's something. if anyone wants to read it, just let me know and i'll send you a copy. it's one of the three funniest travel articles written this year!

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(xz on Apr 9, 2008 12:51 PM) the article is posted here.

to celebrate, i took the lappy out to the front patio and pretended to work.

i would like to tell you what i saw.

next door to us, on the right, we have the Odd People. on the left we have dorje and john and, yes, they're pretty odd too, but in a good way. on the right side, though, we have some sort or garbage mutants.

they have the most disheveled house on the block by a wide margin. their fence has more holes than posts. their yard looks like arkansas. once or twice i've seen into their place when they've left the front door ajar. i shit you not it was nothing but plastic bags stacked on every flat surface, including the floor, as if they had just come back from the grocery and bought enough food for pakistan and hadn't yet gotten around to putting it away. all down the hall and into the kitchen, plastic bags.

except it was probably not food. i can guess this because of the piles of crap on their porch. games that are missing 48% of their pieces. half a bicycle. furniture that is no longer sure if it's chair or bureau. a stack of empty tins.

once, a few months back, a couple of women from some local society came around to help the woman of the house try and get things into shape. they dragged endless crap out of the house, filled up a few dumpsters worth, and then gave up. as far as i can tell, there nothing changed. it must have been like shining a beacon into a black hole to try and liven the place up. when it was "big trash night" a bit ago, it was very tempting to just drag everything on their porch (and the porch itself) out onto the footpath so the nice men could cart it all away.

i didn't. idiot.

the woman talks endlessly once she gets your attention, so we pretend to receive mobile phone calls when we see her. the husband looks like a pair of curtains that have been hanging in a pub since the sixties and which have not been cleaned. the son...

the son, today, was also outside. i could tell from the noise. at first i thought it was a possum or something. it was this "skrtich-skritch-skritch" noise that wouldn't stop. i put down my lappy and took a peek. he was sitting on the edge of the porch doing something odd with one of his mother's precious empty tin cans. he had his phone bud in his ear and was presumably listening to the rock music. he also presumed to not notice me, which was okay fine.

skritch-skritch-skritch.

it was a big can. the kind Milo comes in. like a family-sized tin of cocoa, if you will.

skritch-skritch-skritch. ignore-ignore-ignore.

then, in a dramatic upgrading of entertainment possibilities, he walks out onto the footpath and surveys the land. he sets his be-skritched can down and rolls it. he walks backwards ahead of it, as if it is some toddler learning to walk or something. it rolls straight for a bit and then veers off to the left. he harrumphs. he tries it again in the street. i stand up, wondering what the fuck he's doing. he does not see me. he only has eyes for can.

skritch-skritch-skritch.

he tries it again, this time directly in front of our place (which, by the way, does not look like a near-condemned disaster area). this time the can rolls bit to the right. i give him the head-nod that means "hey, how ya goin'?" but he is distracted by something that is not quite exactly where i am so doesn't notice.

i wonder what he was up to. i wonder what the hell it must be like to live in a house where you can't see the floor because it's covered in bags full of crap. i wonder what it's like to have parents who must be the most embarrassing people on the face of the Earth when you're a sort of pudgy, disheveled, grey kid. i feel a bit bad for him in a Patricia Hearst sort of way.

if i woke up one day and the entire house next door had collapsed in on itself, i would not be surprised at all.

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we had such a great time i'm too tired to write anything coherent. we cruised town, hit the zoo, went horseback riding for two days, ate fine food, went to the coast for a long weekend, drank ourselves silly, and had many a fudge parade.

you don't know what a fudge parade is? you're missing out.

there are photos on my picture page if you're curious. these represent just a wee fraction of the great photos matt took.

now, i do believe i need a nap.

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in case, as is likely, you have no idea how the hell one plays cricket, i'll try to explain. it's taken me about a year to reach a point where i can say that i know what the hell is going on in the sport. i'm sure i'll get some of my terminology wrong, but this is close enough.

cricket is similar to a baseball except there are always two batters up, every base is home plate, and you "bowl" instead of pitch. is that clear?

first off, go outside now with a tennis ball and try to hit something large, like say a car, by swinging your arm backwards up and around over your head while running and releasing the ball so it hits your target on the bounce. that's bowling. the pros do it at 150 km/hr.

you've got a big oval field. towards the center there are two wickets facing each other, each behind a line. the wickets are three sticks stuck in the ground with a small piece resting over the top of them. if this piece gets knocked off by the bowler, or by anyone when you're not behind the line, you're stumped. which means you're out. unlike baseball, you never get up again once you're out. each team gets ten outs and then you're done. you can also get out by having a ball you hit get caught on the fly, or by only saving the wicket from getting knocked by the bowler by putting your leg in the way.

each side gets their turn (or turns, if it's a 5-day test) to bat, called "innings". the fielding side has their guys spread about the oval playing "slips" and "square leg" and "other weird positions" plus they have one dude bowling. they can swap bowlers in and out more or less however they damn well please. the batting side always has two batters up, one protecting each wicket. the bowler will bowl six balls towards one wicket in each "over" and then they'll swap and bowl towards the other wicket. the batter who's being bowled to is trying simultaneously to protect the wicket and to score runs. runs are scored by running back and forth between the two wickets while the fielders are off chasing a ball you've hit. frequently, balls will be hit weakly and no one will run at all. sort of like hitting a foul ball in baseball. you can hit weak balls all day and never score a run and never go out.

still with me?

the batters will hit and run, sometimes swapping ends (if they score an odd number of runs) and sometimes ending up back where they started. if you hit a ball all the way to the "boundary" (the lip marking the edge of the oval), you automatically score 4. if you hit a ball over the boundary in the air, that's worth 6.

and that's cricket. the batting team will bat until they've lost all ten wickets (got out ten times) or, if it's a limited-over test like the one i went to, until the predetermined number of overs have been bowled, which ever comes first. in this case, it was 50 overs. then the teams switch and the other side gets to bat. in the long tests, each side gets two "innings"; meaning each side gets to bat twice and the cumulative score decides the "test."

because it's played this way, you never know who's winning. it's either unclear or it's over. in the game i saw, Australia batted like crap. they were up first and a mess of their batsman went out with meager scores. the captain, Ricky Ponting, scored 0. he didn't score a single run before he lost his wicket. the Aussies didn't last the full 50 overs, instead going 10/159. that means 10 wickets lost, 159 runs scored. the Indians, up second, could play it safe as they only need to score 160 before they'd be declared winner and the match would end. to put that in perspective, in 50 overs there are 300 bowls, so the Indians only needed to score about 3 runs an over. which they did so they won. in test cricket, when there's no limit to the number of overs in an innings, it's frequently a draw. if both sides don't go out twice, too bad. draw. five days for nothing.

there are other rules to cricket which i'm picking up. for instance, if you catch the ball while fielding, you must immediately throw it up in the air, whoop joyously, and let your teammates crowd around you for some man-love. if you get out, you must immediately walk off the pitch without any emotion or you will be ponce. if you wait for the umpire to tell you you're out, you look like a petulant brat. if you scull an entire beer while the bogans scream "scull", particularly if you're large, have your face painted with the orange, white, and green stripes of the Indian flag, and are actually wearing an Indian flag, then they will reward you by chanting "you are a legend!" if you do this twice in a row because you have bought two beers, then your wife will get up and lead you out to be scolded. you are still a legend, don't worry. if you let the cops grab the very dangerous beach ball you were about to knock about, so they can pop it, then you are not a legend. you are wanker. this will be chanted until you are suitably humiliated. starting the "mexican wave" is grounds for dismissal and fines. as the crowd knows, however, "you cannot stop the wave." you can, if you are a policeman, drag bogans out by the neck, however.

and that's cricket. it makes a hell of a lot more sense then Aussie Rules Footy. you're on your own with that one.

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Simon & Schuster will be including one of my 21x21 puzzles in their next book of crosswords, Mega Crosswords 4, currently being edited. not sure when it will hit stores.

after over 18 months of trying, i am now officially deserving of the title of cruciverbalist.

hoo-ray for me!

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the night ere last, through the muddling dark, in wait he lay (watching episodes of Band of Brothers). he was armed, but the heft of his weapons (two old phone bills) provided no comfort. a confrontation with terror of the blackest kind loomed nigh.

for time unmeasured there had been peace. then the foul creatures came from their places of hiding, deep within the womb of the grasping earth. they left their sullying mark upon the once peaceful fields of the kingdom (our living room carpet) and by these marks it was known; the unspeakable beasts had broken their banishment. they were arisen anew. their evil undiluted by the passage of ages or the wards and signs proffered by the priests for protection.

each evening the peasants had retired to their serene slumbers but in the morning, they awoke to horror, their fields covered in ichor. mysterious beasts from the maw of ancient times had used the velvet sweep of night to drag their vile husks across the sweeping land, violating and sullying the terrain.

here, there be dragons.

one by one, the peasants fled (madhavi went diving for a week). only one stalwart lad, a stranger to the land, left behind. his bravery tempered by the knowledge that he had no respite or retreat for which to hie. were his fields to fall fallow, he would share in their fate.

at night they came, so at night his vigil kept. past the hour of sleeping, when the moon shone its weary eye, squinted and sore, he waited. his guarding rewarded, in horror and joy, with the slithery form of the fierce serpents.

measuring from horns to tail, the creatures were at least an inch and a half long. along the edge of the barrier cliff, the largest dragon uh... yeah.

so i picked up the slugs with the phone bills and chucked 'em over the fence into the laneway. the next night, another was back. this time i killed the fucker. not a pleasant procedure. but for the past two mornings, there have been no super-icky slime trails across our carpet. i was going to leave out some sort of beer trap, as recommended by the internets, but then i figured that i was probably faster than a slug and i could just catch them.

i was right.

why they're coming into our house when our garden is chocko with overripe peaches fallen from the neighbour's tree... who knows? slugs are not known for being extra clever.

let's just hope they stay gone. we've got company coming.

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wait. i'm supposed to care about these people?

do i?

do i care that hillary has welled with tears in what is obviously some sort of proof that her eyes have been hacked by republicans? do i care that barak has slightly less government experience than tipper gore? do i know who mike gravel is?

wasn't he fred flintstone's boss in the quarry in bedrock? dude. i'm voting for him. free dinosaur rides! yabba-dabba-do!

it's just a strange feeling. i mean, somewhere in my feeble brain i knew a ballot would be coming, but actually having it here is shocking. i am still american. whether or not i live there. now, i get to help decide which of these creeps will be president.

not that i feel all that australian. i just feel ex-pat. yabba-dabba-dope.

will we ever live in the states again? gentlemen, place your bets.

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i heard back from the NYT on two of my puzzles. one was rejected, but the other was "not quite rejected."

meaning that will shortz says if i change one of my theme answers, he'd like to see it again. of course changing a theme answer means ripping out the fill and redoing that, then re-cluing -- not to mention finding a suitable replacement for the offending answer... not so easy!

so i'm working on that. thought i'd solicit some help from those of you who do puzzles.

if you're hoping to do my puzzle when it hits the Times, don't read any further. the next bit will give away they puzzle.

Continue reading one more thing...

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(jason on Dec 13, 2007 5:50 PM) Well, I don't have the time to come up with phrases that meet your requirements, but I like the theme. Here are some more words that you probably already thought of, but perhaps not. Maybe something in here will stir your interest. bedlam (ps) chi (ps) dot com (ps) gram (ps) hi (ps) as in "please say hips for me" (damn ... 18 letters!) pro (ps) ram (ps) swam (ps) tar (ps)

my job editing medical content continues. this past week has been especially fun since we were asked to review all the material we'd worked on for the past two months, update it to new and ultra-complex specifications, and process it all by tuesday. my joy is compounded by the fact that since i am the group editor, i have to review everyone's conditions -- that's all the work everyone has done in two months across my desk in a week.

so not only have i been reworking all my own material, but i've also be taking a refresher course in the pleasures of intestinal disease, hernias, and dementia.

today i got an email that said:

"thanks -- won't make the same mistake with hemorrhoids"

i cannot even tell you how many times i've had the same thought.

so yeah, been working pretty hard these past few. looking forward to meeting this next deadline and easing off a bit. just, you know, dabbling in epilepsy for a few hours here and there.

i bought a used bike, and that's pretty awesome. i need to tune it up a bit, but since it got hot here, it's great to be able to just buzz on down to fitzroy or carlton without thinking about trams or the horror of driving on the left. it's a nice hybrid bike, made by trek. it's kinda garish, but hey, the wheels go round.

life is pretty regular these days. plotting to have some new friends around to drink rum and listen to the rolling stones. waiting patiently to hear back on my crossword puzzles. watching the ginormous bruise on my wife's leg turn various shades.

she walked into the bed.

now she says it's not to be trusted and we need to buy a new bed frame. one that's house trained.

when good furniture attacks. it could be a show on Fox.

i'm also still pretty damn happy about john howard being such a big old loser. kind of sad since i can't take any credit, being a non-voter here.

we also went to the drive-in to see beowulf. it was dreadful (sorry heather -- we did see your credit, tho, woot!). i suppose it probably would have been better on a better screen, but no amount of dazzle would have made up for the fact that the story was about as fascinating as those typing exercises you had to do in high school.

aaaa aaaa bbbb bbbb
abab abab abab abab

then you saw animated golden boobs. it was awesome.

luckily, you can drink beer at the drive-in.

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(bartlebee on Dec 4, 2007 7:49 AM) Just coz the bed doesn't attack you doesn't mean it didn't attack me. I tell you, that sucker moves.

i just thought, you know, with an american election in the works (and reworks, and deworks, and waterworks), you might want to take a look at what we're doing down here in australia.

namely, showing the evil dwarf who has slimed this place for the past age the door.

sure, the australian elections aren't as full-combat as the american ones in some ways. first off, they only really last for a month and some. none of this two year ramp up to a final year of spit-balling and televised whinging. and secondly, in these elections, the winner is clearly the winner.

in case you didn't hear; the winner this time is clearly not john howard and his "liberal" coalition. now, they is losers. big losers. as in, don't let the door hit you on the way out losers.

and there was much rejoicing.

not that the winner, kevin rudd, seems like australia's answer to vaclav havel or anything, but he is not-howard, and he is signing the (too late) kyoto accord, and he is something new.

why am i writing about this? because it's a relief. after surviving two elections that, winner or not, installed gwb as president of the usa, i was honestly worried that howard would somehow squeak through yet again.

he didn't. it even appears that he has lost his own seat in government, so not only is he not prime minister, but soon he will be somewhat less important then they guy who used to check his security badge. i'm only sorry i can't see him in person to point and snicker.

there is something else the americans might learn from australian elections. here, when the votes are being tallied, they do this great thing. they get the candidates on camera and ask them questions like:

Interviewer: Bruce, it sure seems like you're going to lose this race and be a losing loser. Do you think you're a losing loser?

Bruce: Gosh, Ned. It's early yet and there's the possibility that an entire race of lost subterranean dwellers will have mailed in votes all naming me lord chancellor of gumdrop-land, so I'll just hold on to that hope for the next twelve minutes in a frenzied delusion while you continue to taunt me.

Interviewer: Ha ha. Good one, loser.

it's good tv.

we had a little party over at our neighbours to watch the returns, drink cheap beer, and make snide comments at the television. it was very pleasant.

summer is here. i bought a bike. we've been playing lawn bowls (i suck). ed and heather sent us canned pumpkin pie filling. we bought tickets to see sufjan stevens in january. rachel and matt are coming out to visit in february.

and (ding dong) the witch is dead.

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this is only a test.

yesterday, the master of the scruff, the compy ninja, the rock god lederer, helped me transfer my languishing web site from my crappy old provider (powweb, not recommended) to my shiny new provider (dreamhost, so far, so good).

it looks like everything has transfered pretty smoothly. if you find something that don't work, would you let me know, please?

in other news, the thing that i find most fascinating about today is not that it is a state-wide holiday for a horse race, but that in pakistan, when musharfaf went all coup-coup (is it a coup when you take over from yourself? maybe not.), who was it that stood up and rattled the cages?

the students?
the opposition parties?
the clerics?

no. it was the fucking lawyers.

what i want to know is: can we get some of them lawyers over here? thems the kind of lawyers we want.

whatever else you want to say about pakistan, i think you gotta admit they must be doing something right.

happy cup day.

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i'm editing up this massive amount of medical information for Kaiser Permanente and i've been assigned diabetic retinopathy. i've already overcome sinusitis. both were pretty painful, but i think having the retinopathy has been worse. i'll be glad when i can recover and catch some all new and different condition.

i do realize that i haven't blogged in ages and ages. it's mostly because i really haven't felt like i had anything interesting to say. that hasn't changed to a major degree, but the sox just did win another world series and i did just buy tickets for my wife and i to fly to Tasmania for a week for $42.80.

that's right. $42.80 for two round-trip tickets from Melbourne to Hobart. as madhavi's lab-mate points out, the flight's cheaper than the bus to the airport.

saw this special deal. jumped on it rill quick. i think we'll be able to use the tickets, but if not, it's $42.80. the tickets were literally under $10 each leg, plus a buck in taxes. fo shizzle.

hopefully the weather will still be decent in late may. maybe we'll rent a camper van or somesuch for a trundle along the coast. or stay in youth hostels and drink cheap wine. whatever. we wanted to go to Tassie and this was a damn good opportunity. score one for Internet junkies with quick reflexes.

in other news... uh. watching baseball alone is not that fun. especially when you have to watch it on your computer. it was the sox, tho, and i stuck with it for the tribe.

also, if you are not currently pregnant and you are physically alive: BE VERY CAREFUL. it appears there is some sort of zombie-womb monster thing happening in which everyone with a womb wakes up to find theirs is filled with baby. and then sends me an email about it at the same time. every time i check my email i find six baby pictures and four birth announcements and twelve offers to improve my sex life through the wonders of viagra. i'm just saying: watch out. these are fertile times.

not that i don't like babies. they're cute. especially yours.

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(e on Oct 30, 2007 2:52 AM) don't forget the part where they eat your brains and you walk around like a zombie for months.

(si on Nov 9, 2007 12:15 PM) don't forget to.. uhh.. take a map.. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=map%20of%20tassie ps. your comment url-eating-and-yet-allowing-them-to-be-just-stuck-in thing is kinda naff.

we saw this lil' feller and a dozen of his mates a couple weeks back on our 2nd anniversary trip down the Great Ocean Road. you can see lots more pictures taken with bartlebee's fancy new camera on her Flickr page.

yesterday, we also celebrated our first anniversary of living in Australia by bbqing up a mess of kabobs and corn for the in-laws.

i'm getting better with my manly grilling skills thanks to a book gifted us from bartlebee's pop.

i mailed in two more crosswords to the times; feeling confident one of them will get picked up. should have some work starting up soon, too.

and here endeth the dullest blog post of all time.

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