Steven M. Finkelstein

I’d like an opportunity in this week’s post to directly address a few issues that have been bothering me for some time in regards to literary magazines and their policies in accepting, or not accepting, short stories from authors. Now, as a writer, those familiar with me and the site know that as of yet, I’ve been published only in literary magazines, on websites, and in collections of various kinds. Since I haven’t been able to find a publisher for any of my novels yet, this is the best way to get my name out there, so I’ve become quite used to the whole process of submitting short stories and essays to publications. As such, I’ve developed some pet peeves, and here are the biggest ones. First off: sometimes, my work is rejected, and I get a form rejection email. It’s seldom personalized. No problem with that. I understand that some of these lit mags get hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions, and not all of them are going to be publishable. What bothers me is when an editor, or whoever it is from the submission department, says in the rejection letter something to the effect of “we’re sorry, but we’re unable to accept this story,” or “we’re unable to use your story at this time.” It’s the wording that bothers me. Okay, so you don’t want to use the piece. Maybe you don’t think the quality of the writing is sufficient, or maybe the content is a bad fit, or maybe there’s too much profanity, or it’s too long, or too short. As long as it’s a legitimate reason for not wanting to publish the story, I have no beef with you. But don’t, under any circumstances, say “we can’t use the story.” Sure you can. Of course you can. You’re just not willing to. It’s much better (and honest) if you say instead, something like “we don’t think this would be a good fit,” or even “we don’t want to publish this story.” You don’t even need to give a reason. It’s fine; I’m a big boy, I can take it. I’ll submit the thing somewhere else. But don’t say “we’re not able to publish the story,” because that’s an insult to me. That makes it sound like you’ve never in your life wanted to do anything as much as publish my story, but someone’s holding a gun to your head and forbidding it from happening. If you don’t want to publish it, be honest. Because every time I see some variation of that fairly common sentence in a rejection letter, it infuriates me.

Then there’s the issue of reading fees. I used to occasionally see fit to pay them, but no more. I’m not a wealthy man, and that’s me being a bit delicate. I have a tough enough time, with my day job, at my salary, paying for rent, groceries, and utilities. I’m writing to make money, not spend it. To suggest that I should pay a “reading fee” or whatever euphemism you want to use, is the same thing as when Ticketmaster charges a “convenience fee” for buying a ticket through them online. Again, it’s an insult. I don’t care if I’m submitting to The New Yorker, or The Atlantic or any of the most prestigious and well known of lit mags, that have been in existence for a hundred years, or two hundred. I don’t care if I’m sending a hand-written letter to God himself. No more reading fees, or processing fees, or whatever else you want to call them, to consider one of my stories. If you demand money at the onset, you won’t be seeing any of my work. And finally:

I also will no longer send stories to any lit mag, or publication of any kind, that doesn’t have an email submission system. Whether you want a story sent directly to the editor, to the submission department, as an attachment or in the body of the email, fine. I can play ball with any of those. But don’t tell me you only accept snail mail. This is 2012. It isn’t 1850. This is the age of technology, and even though I dislike it, I accept it for what it is. This is the time of the Nook, and the Kindle. Books themselves will doubtless become obsolete before too long. So don’t insist that I print out a manuscript, however long it is, along with a title page, author bio, synopsis, or whatever else it is that you’re looking for, and then tell me to swallow the cost of not only paper and ink, but also postage. I won’t do it. Again, if you’re still not accepting electronic submissions, you’re living in a different century, and I won’t have anything to do with you. Let’s get with the program, people.

If I sound a little hostile, I apologize. I really am okay with getting a story turned down a hundred times for every one I get accepted. It’s just part of the game, and I’m willing to play it. But let’s do it right. Let’s do it effectively. Let’s do it efficiently. Writers and the people who publish writers are two sides of the same coin. One can’t exist without the other. Just treat me with respect, and I’ll keep cranking out the words. I’ll do my job. Please keep doing yours, and please, I beg you, I entreat you, do it the right way. Have a little respect for the creative minds that fill the pages of your magazines, and give your websites their content.

When I started this site, I listed as influences my five top authors, five names whose work I admired and who I couldn’t get enough of: Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Cormack McCarthy, John Irving, and Ernest Hemingway. Today I’d like to talk about a new top five, whose work I’ve been enjoying in recent years. First up is:

Edgar Allan Poe. For someone like me, who enjoys Gothic horror, there’s none better to go to than the master. Poe was an innovator both in poetry and prose, leaving a permanent mark on both the horror and the mystery story. I’ve spoken before about how Conan Doyle’s beloved creation Sherlock Holmes owes a debt to Poe’s writings, and to spend an evening with my massive tome of the works of the great master is time that could hardly be better spent…though afterward, sleep does not come easily. The best writers are the most disturbed, and Poe certainly qualifies. My only regret, when it comes to this dark yet brilliant oddball, is that he never wrote any novels. Still, if you’re interested in the disquieting, this is your man. His work withstands the test of time. Which brings me to the next up,

H.P. Lovecraft. I dedicated a post to him a few months ago, and I’ve been reading everything of his I can get my hands on. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was influenced by Poe, and, similarly, he wrote only short stories. His longest are novellas like At The Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. But where Poe went to disquieting places, Lovecraft goes even further…here was a man whose phobias so consumed him, that they colored all of his works, and the depths of the authors’ own recurrent fears are what make his writings so captivating. Terrified of women, the ocean (and all water in general), and anything “alien,” meaning not only beings extraterrestrial in nature but also the strange and the unfamiliar, Lovecraft found it hard to function in society and made little money through his writing. Ironic that, like so many others, his work would only come to be fully appreciated after his death, where it has influenced so many authors and other artists. Movies, comic books, and a slew of other art forms are streaked with the shades of Lovecraft and his works. Much of it is just genuinely uncomfortable stuff. Next up is

Elmore Leonard. Known as a master of crime fiction, and Westerns, also, earlier in his career, Leonard’s work has reached the big screen a number of times, as with Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, and Be Cool; also on television right now with the excellent series Justified, with Timothy Oyphant. It’s a good thing this guy has been writing for more than fifty years, because I can’t get enough of his stuff, and I’m always on the lookout for more of it. His dialogue is just top notch: snappy, whip sharp, back and forth. Any writer who wants great examples of dialogue that advance the plot, a rogue’s gallery of unsavory characters, and believable, stylistic violence, look no further. It was a good day when I discovered this guy, and I won’t rest until I’ve read everything he’s ever published. Then there’s

Neil Gaiman. A true chameleon, the English Gaiman first became known to me as the author of the Sandman comic book series in the 90′s. His is a truly creative mind, and his novels, short stories, and comic books all contain rich, complex, well developed characters. The movies Coraline and Stardust are based on his creations, and he even appeared on an episode of The Simpsons recently. I highly recommend his novels American Gods and Good Omens, that he wrote along with Terry Pratchet. He is, in my mind, just about the best fantasy writer working today. Last up is

Robert B. Parker. Parker, who passed away recently, was best known for his Spenser novels, about a private detective from Boston with a smart mouth and the muscle and smarts to back it up. Parker is not exactly Shakespeare, and his characters tend to be rather broad. His dialogue isn’t the most realistic, at times. But I admire him most for his pacing; as a writer myself, and someone who reads not just for enjoyment but also to study craft, there’s a lot that you can take from his prose. Like Elmore Leonard, his stuff is pop culture driven to the point that it seems like it would be really easy to write…but it isn’t. Trust me, I’ve tried. And for all his flaws, I pay Robert Parker the biggest complement one author can to another: I keep going out of my way to try and find more of his stuff. So while he’s probably not going to win the Pen/Faulkner award posthumously, he must have been doing something right.

That’s all for now, folks. That’s a new top five for you, and some of whom I’ve been reading lately…though there are more. There’s always more. Suffice to say that for now, that’s who I’m recommending, though I’m sure there will be additional “top five” lists to come. Always more great authors out there to be discovered. Keep your heads buried in those books, kids.

We all have our parents to thank for our existence on this earth. Once they procreated, we came into being. But we entered this world alone, and we’ll leave it the same way. It’s a trip we must make by ourselves. In the meantime, there’s all kinds of people here in this world that we can surround ourselves with…if we choose to. Think about it. There are going to be people we meet during our lives that we’re going to love. There are some we’re going to loath. And then there are all the rest of them, the ones who pass fleetingly by, most of whom we’ll never exchange a word or a glance with. But over the course of a normal human life, there’s going to be a wide range of relationships that we cultivate, through work, through school, through chance meetings. It’s been on my mind a bit lately because Megan and I joke about how we’re becoming more isolated, how we’ve lost touch with friends, and how we don’t seem to have made any close new ones in the time that we’ve been here in New York. Does that bother me? No. It really doesn’t. And that leads to another question: should I be bothered by the fact that I’m not bothered? I’m a solitary person. I crave that solitude; I need my alone time. I think we all do. But how much is the optimal amount? How much is healthy? Before I was married, I remember thinking sometimes how happy I would be if I could just go off by myself, live somewhere isolated where I’d seldom or never see anyone else. Live the natural existence, like Thoreau. I’ve talked about it here on the site before. Now I’m married, and I’m very gratified and fulfilled because of it. It works for me. But I still do have that urge, that need sometimes, to just get away, from everything, from everybody. How many good friends, or even decent friends, does a person need? It’s been established that children, when they’re in the developmental stage, need and crave human contact, if not from their parents, then from anybody at all. If they don’t get the attention, the physical contact, it effects them badly. They’re malnourished, and they become antisocial. Since the world has rejected them, they draw further into themselves. But does this mean they’re worse off? They may not get along so well with other people anymore, but you know what? They don’t need to, because they’ve become self reliant. They’ve learned to survive on their own, and the reason for that is because if we don’t get help from other people to survive, we get it from ourselves, from an internal source. Either that, or we perish.

I don’t know that I advocate one way, that is, being very sociable, being well liked, having lots of friends and family to talk to and interact with all the time, versus the other way, that being to cut yourself off from contact for extended periods of time, either intentionally or through circumstance. I don’t think it’s fair to say that one way is right and one is wrong, because different things work for different people. One person’s lifestyle might be completely different from another, but that doesn’t mean one is superior or inferior. That is why, if in my life I have few friends, and it doesn’t seem to be bothering me, then I won’t let myself be bothered by it. The fact that, although I live in the biggest city in the country, and enjoy it, but I still sometimes crave that solitude, escape, and anonymity, may seem like I paradox, but I don’t think it actually is. Because to be surrounded by people, but not know any of them, and to not want to know any of them, well, that’s a way of being alone, isn’t it? I’ve said before, I’ve seldom felt more alone than when I’m in the biggest crowds. And while there are some people who might balk at the idea of living with few good friends, I’m not one of them. As long as it continues to work for me, I like having a sparse, streamlined social life. Because let’s be honest, even the people who profess to have so many “close friends,” how many of them do you think these people are really close with, and how many do you think they just tolerate, either because of the convenience factor, or because of a shared past that no longer has any bearing on the present? If to crave solitude is to be misanthropic, then I think I can live with that just fine. Because there’s times that I don’t like my own company, as is true of all of us. But there’s precious few people I’ve found in this world whose presence I can tolerate, let alone actually enjoy, for very long at all, and I just don’t see that ever changing.

Ever hear of this guy, Rick Santorum? Well, if you haven’t, he’s a Republican, and a former senator from Pennsylvania, serving from 1995 to 2007. He’s a social and political conservative, and at the moment, he’s a candidate for President of the United States, scrabbling for position against Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul, who seem to be the most serious (if that’s an applicable term here) of the remaining possibilities for the nomination. One other thing, though, that you should know about Rick Santorum. He’s just about, hands down, the biggest outright asshole piece of shit you could ever hope to meet. The kind of scum that you wipe off the bottom of your shoe but can’t get rid of the stench of, this guy is.

Santorum has another meaning, at least among those in the know. You see, the former senator is really, really stringently anti-gay. He’s said that if he gets elected, he’ll dissolve all gay marriages that have already taken place in this country, and he’ll reinstitute Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He’s the guy who said, and I’m quoting here, “Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman…. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality”. Of course, he later claimed that he hadn’t been trying to equate gay sex with pedophilia and  bestiality, but Dan Savage, of “Savage Love,” ran a contest to determine a new meaning for “santorum,” one befitting the closed minded former senator’s viewpoint. Thus, santorum came to mean “the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” Sounds about right to me! Santorum is also, and this should come as no surprise, in favor of teaching intelligent design in school, and he’s against abortion in just about any scenario, even when pregnancy was the result of incest or rape. The man himself has seven children, so it’s safe to say he’s against birth control also.

Here’s where it gets interesting. In the Iowa caucus that just took place, Mitt Romney finished ahead by a nose, but it was Santorum who came in a surprising second, after surging in the polls over a period of days. He’s still in the running, especially with South Carolina coming up. South Carolina, and I should know this from having lived there for a year, is extremely conservative. Many of the citizens there might not feel that Romney is conservative enough, being too centrist. That could mean that Santorum would be given a real shot in the arm, and could be a legitimate threat to Romney. I don’t really see it happening, if for no other reason than in some of the other states, there will be Republicans who think Santorum is too conservative, and that Romney, being more moderate, is the way to go. It would really suck if Romney got elected, but it would be infinitely worse if somehow, some way, Santorum got into the White House. There’s not a whole lot that would make me expatriate, but that would probably do it. The man is the most hateful piece of garbage you can imagine. Whatever else his values might be (I’ll choose not to even get started on teaching kids creationism, because if I do I’ll be going all night), the fact that he is so opposed to gay marriage alone should disqualify him from being fit to lead. I just can’t understand why anyone could have that viewpoint. It’s nothing but bigotry, pure and simple. Here are two men, or two women, who presumably love each other and want to be with each other, and they want their love to be recognized. And here comes somebody like Santorum, in a position of power, a public figure whom people listen to, who says that they shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Why? What’s the logic? It’s not like the people who are trying to get married are intruding on Santorum’s life in any way. But he’s intruding on theirs; he’s trying to deny them what should be a basic freedom, and he’ll make it a priority to do so if he’s elected. Same thing with abortions. Here’s a woman who has something going on with her body, and you’ve got a politician like Santorum who’s trying to tell her that she doesn’t have a choice in the matter because life begins at conception. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t even really care if life begins at conception or not. Until such time as the child can no longer be safely aborted, it should remain the mother’s decision, if for no other reason than because overpopulation is a serious problem. I think there’s a lot more wrong with a guy like Santorum, frankly, with his seven children! What the hell do you need that many kids for? Are you trying to start a private army? Although with this guy, that’s probably not all that farfetched. Moving on…

Look, if you’ve been reading my posts for the past four years, you know that I’m an unapologetic liberal. I don’t disagree with everything that every Republican presidential candidate says. I have grave misgivings about some of Obama’s policies, particularly his out of control entitlement spending and seeming inability to slash the budget. But it goes without saying that I’d prefer the current Commander in Chief over any of the wolves climbing the hill, and that goes triple for Santorum. He’s not just unlikeable, he’s dangerous. He doesn’t need to be in politics at all, much less aspiring toward the highest post in our government. So anyone reading this, even if you don’t vote for Obama, have some common sense. If somehow Santorum edges Romney, put a stop to this. Better to not vote at all than to put a scumbag like this in the position where he can implement some of his crazy, wrongheaded policies.

It looks like Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s are all upon us, so it must be time for my annual year in review post. 2011 has been eventful on a national and international level, and certainly there’s lots to talk about in my personal life as well. The biggest story for this country has continued to be the lousy economy. As the 2012 election nears and the GOP squabbles to select a front runner that appeals to die-hard Republicans and also Tea Party fruitcakes, Obama’s popularity has sunk to record lows. For the life of me, though, I can’t see why. For me, two of the biggest stories of the year were directly influenced by Obama, and they’re both positive: we killed Osama bin Laden, getting some much needed payback and closure for 9/11, and the war in Iraq effectively ended, with combat operations ceasing and the last troops being pulled out this month. How damaging the war was for our country and theirs in the long term only history will show, but, as I mentioned recently here on the site, the fact that Obama promised to end the war and did it should not be overlooked. It needed to be done. The very fact that we’re no longer spending money on what for years seemed liked a genuinely ceaseless conflict is unquestionably going to help the economy. And I believe that the economy will  pick up…but we need to give it time. That’s why railing at Obama doesn’t really make any sense, although it is partially his fault for setting the bar impossibly high. He talked about hope and change, but there wasn’t a reliable time frame for that, and people wanted an instant fix. It just wasn’t going to happen. Too many mistakes had been made in the economic sector. Still, though, I feel like he made some huge strides as commander in chief in 2011, and there’s no doubt I’m voting for him again next year. Whoever the Republicans come up with, it’s guaranteed not to be a better choice.

The Arab Spring was a big story in 2011, what with Egypt overthrowing Hosni Mubarak and Libya ousting and executing Moammar Gadhafi. These are positive strides, although I greatly fear that anything approaching representative democracy is a long way off in both of those countries, what with the tribal warfare and long-standing religious tensions that have been part of life in the Middle East for what seems like time immemorial. Here in the US, the Occupy Wall Street movement got a lot of attention, and while I sympathized with the demonstrators at first, I was quick to lose faith in what they were doing because they seemed not to have any coherent message, and because they very quickly became guilty of hypocrisy. The movement still exists, and surely will, as long as economic imbalance exists in this country (and that’s not changing any time soon, believe me). I’ll be curious to see what happens with the dissidents in 2012, and whether they can manage anything productive through the dissatisfaction that they successfully brought to the nation’s attention.

In my personal life, I can now say that I’ve been living in New York for just about two and a half years. Time flies, doesn’t it? I moved from Borough Park to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in January with Megan, and I’m happy to report that the two of us have been very content here, not only in the neighborhood, but in our current apartment. It’s not as big as we’d like to one day have, but it meets our needs for now, so much so, in fact, that we recently signed on for another two years here. 2012 and 2013, it looks like you’ll know where to find us, and I must say, it feels kind of nice to have that stability. Speaking of stability, now that 2011 is drawing to a close, I can also say that I’ve been at the same job, with the same security company, for almost two years now. That’s the longest, by far, that I’ve ever kept the same position. I won’t say that it’s what I want to be doing for my whole life, but I’m not going to badmouth it at all. It enables me to pay rent and bills, if not to have too much left over after, and gives Megan and I health care, even if our coverage isn’t the best in the world either. As far as personal health, I had a couple of scares this year. I had part of a tooth knocked out at a wrestling show, which led to hours of expensive and painful dental work, in a life where, unfortunately, that’s been a recurring theme. I hope to God I don’t lose any more teeth, because I feel like I have precious few left at this point. I also found out that I have a heart condition called Wolff Parkinson White syndrome, or WPW. I talked about it here on the site earlier, but suffice to say that it’s an extra, abnormal electrical pathway in the heart that can sometimes lead to rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, or even, in extreme cases, cardiac arrest. The option was given to me to have an ablation, that being a kind of heart surgery where the extra pathway is destroyed through use of a mild electric shock. However, as of this time, I decided not to go through with the procedure. After doing some research, it’s my understanding that most often people with this condition remain asymptomatic, and as long as that’s the case with me, the surgery doesn’t seem necessary. I will continue to monitor my overall health, of course, and if there are any changes I’m sure I’ll be writing about it here on the site.

I did some traveling, with a trip to Cincinnati this past summer to catch up with family and friends, and most notably to Atlanta back in April for Wrestlemania 27, the second Wrestlemania I’ve attended and a fun and thoroughly entertaining time. I saw several other good wrestling events this year, including TNA’s Bound for Glory in Philadelphia in October and WWE’s Survivor Series at Madison Square Garden in November. Being a wrestling fan on the East Coast provides you with a lot of opportunities, and I’ve liked taking advantage. In other sports news, the Reds failed to win their division, and indeed failed to even finish with a winning record. Maybe next year will be better. The Yankees were a disappointment too, for although they won the American League East, they were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs, in five games, by the Tigers. Again, next year I can only hope for an improvement. In football, the Bengals have enjoyed a resurgence, with Andy Dalton replacing Carson Palmer at QB. As of this writing they are 8-6, and still have a chance to make the postseason as a wild card. Even if they don’t do it this year, they seem to have the young talent base to be formidable in the near future.

On the writing front, all I can really say is that I kept plugging away at it. For the first half of the year, I spent a good deal of time trying to generate interest in the memoir I wrote in 2010. I got some books about how to find an agent, wrote a synopsis of the manuscript and a proposal, and inquired to several agents and editors who specialize in nonfiction. Few of them responded, and none of them favorably. It’s frustrating. What I keep running into, though, is that if you don’t actually know somebody in the industry first, it’s nearly impossible to get an agent to so much as glance at your manuscript. My skill has always been in the writing itself, and not in the self promotional aspect. Eventually I gave up trying to get someone to look at the memoir, and for now, it’s gone the same place the first three books did, namely nowhere. For most of the year I’ve been working on my fifth book, genre fiction this time, a crime novel in the same vein as Elmore Leonard or Robert B. Parker. I made the conscious decision before I started that I was going to make it as commercial as possible, so this time, when it’s done, maybe it will be the project that finally, finally, gets my foot in the door. It’s approaching the 200 page mark, progressing nicely, and I hope to have the rough draft finished sometime in 2012. I did manage to get some stuff published this year. 2011 saw my work landing in seven different publications, Scrawl, The Stone Hobo, 40 Ounce Bachelors, Mouse Tales Press, Dr. Hurley’s Snake Oil Cure, Scissors and Spackle, and Oysters and Chocolate. Six of the seven were online or print lit mags in which my work had never before appeared. I was paid next to nothing for pretty much all of them, which has been another recurring theme in my life these past few years, being published often but seldom paid. I can, however, say that after 2011, my work has now appeared in nineteen different publications both in the U.S. and abroad, both online and in print, and I’ve amassed a total of twenty-four publishing credits. It’s comforting to know that at least a few people agree that I have some discernible talent. It goes without saying that I’ll be working hard toward my goal of eventually getting a book out there throughout the year 2012. Maybe this will be the year it actually happens.

As far as 2012 goes, I can’t predict very much as far as my professional life, either as it relates to the writing or my day job in the security industry. There’s no reason to think that there will be a dramatic change in either, though you never can tell about such things. Obviously I’ll keep you all informed here on the site concerning any fresh publication news as it occurs. I know that my mom has been talking about getting Megan and myself, along with my sister Ann, to vacation with her and her husband Russel in Vancouver this coming summer, so we’ll see if that actually materializes. I know that my father has talked about getting us to Cincinnati for a big family Thanksgiving, but that’s eleven months away, so there’s really no telling if that’s going to happen either. I do try and make it a point to visit Cinci at least once a year, so do expect to see me show up there at some point. The presidential election is going to be big news eleven months from now as well, and I imagine I’ll be writing about it quite a bit as it draws near. Who the country elects will play a big part in where we’re heading both as a nation and on the global stage. Of course, the Mayan calender ends toward the end of 2012, and some believe that means the Earth as we know it will also end. I can’t tell you the truth of that either, but it goes without saying I”ll be watching it unfold, and if I’m alive to tell the tale, rest assured I’ll be commenting on it. I’d like to thank all the regular visitors to the site, always assuming that there are any, besides my family and closer friends. I’ve spoken before about how blogging in some ways feels to me like writing letters and shooting them off into space, since my blog, at least, doesn’t seem to generate a whole lot of active conversation. But even if nobody reads these posts, I have come to enjoy writing them, if only to use them as a kind of live journal of my thoughts. It’s nice to have a forum where I can spout off about anything that comes to mind, and there isn’t really anyone that can stop me. POWER! UNLIMITED POWER! HA HA HA HA, ahem, excuse me, sorry. Got carried away there. Hope everyone enjoys the holiday season. See you in 2012, when it all ends…or does it?

The Miracle Worker?

Yesterday, the Denver Broncos, down 10-0 to the Chicago Bears with about five minutes to go, orchestrated an unlikely comeback. Tim Tebow, the rookie phenom for the Broncos who seems to always turn it on in the fourth quarter, threw a touchdown pass that brought Denver within a field goal of tying it up and sending it to overtime. Then, inexplicably, Marion Barber, the running back for the Bears, didn’t run out of bounds, therefore not stopping the clock and allowing the Broncos to get the ball back as time ticked down. Denver got it far enough down field to kick a fifty-nine yard field goal, the longest in franchise history. The game went into overtime tied at ten. The Bears got the ball and were driving, and then Marion Barber, who seemed determined to play the role of goat in this one, fumbled the ball and Denver recovered. This time, after Tebow successfully drove down field to allow the kicker a reasonable attempt, it was a fifty-one yarder that put the game on ice. The Broncos went to 8-5 on the season, and 7-1 with Tim Tebow as quarterback. They now lead the AFC West. This was their third overtime win with Tebow under center. I said phenom, and I meant it. I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening with this team. After the game, the sideline reporter for Fox interviewed Tebow. What came out of his mouth, when he’d caught his breath? “Well, first off I’d like to say thank you to my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.” He then blathered on for a while before signing off with a “thank you, and God bless,” aimed at the reporter, before jogging off the field, flashing his pearly whites.

In case you didn’t know, Tim Tebow is a Christian, and I mean a hardcore Christian. Whenever he throws a touchdown he goes into his signature pose, kneeling down, a hand to his forehead like Rodin’s “The Thinker.” And whenever he can possibly get a word in on TV, he’s running off at the mouth about his faith. Bob Costas did a report on it before the Sunday night game yesterday. He spoke about how much of a polarizing figure Tebow is. The Detroit Lions, when they played the Broncos and handed them their only loss with Tebow as QB, mocked his kneel-down pose and caught some flack for it. They’re part of a group that want Tebow to knock off all the God stuff. But there are plenty of others, Christians and those who are all for the open displaying and discussion of ones’ faith, who think this guy is, pardon me for saying, the Second Coming. He’s a good looking kid, a fine athlete, the definitive all American football poster boy. So there’s a segment of the population he’s going to appeal to, and there are the ones that he isn’t. What Costas said during his report was that regardless of how you felt about Tebow, you had to admire his athletic ability, his confidence, and his resolve. Those things all had to be a big part of a success. And as far as the “miracles” he keeps pulling off? Well, we can all draw our own conclusions about that, can’t we?

Here’s where I come in on the whole thing. I do, in fact, appreciate Tebow’s confidence. He has an unorthodox throwing method, so it seemed unlikely he was going to do much in the NFL. He’s made it work so far, but whether he’ll have long term success remains to be seen. I think he’s been extraordinarily lucky. The Broncos have been playing better lately, particularly on defense, so that’s a big part of what’s going on. But the Bears had them beat, dead to rights, yesterday, and it was not one, but two supremely awful plays by Marion Barber that were the difference in that one. As long as the Broncos keep finding ways to win, more power to them, I suppose. I don’t think it’s miraculous, but I do think it’s been a fun and entertaining story, and I look forward to watching this team for the remainder of the season. As far as the Jesus stuff goes, though, that’s where I draw the line. You can be religious, as long as your beliefs don’t adversely affect anybody else; the problem is, so many of them do. So many organized religions incorporate sexism and gender biases, and so many of them have been responsible for inflicting so much death and misery throughout the centuries. I’ve railed enough here on the site about religion before, so I’m not going to do it now, but suffice to say I’m happiest when your beliefs, whatever they are, are taking place as far away from me as possible. I don’t want to hear you talking about them, I don’t want you trying to convert me, and I don’t want you using television as a national forum to draw attention to your faith. Just as education and religion should be kept separate, I believe the same thing about sports and religion. There’s nothing to stop Tebow from saying and doing whatever he wants. It’s a free country. But I’m not going to be a fan of the guy, no matter how good he is, if I’m hearing the Jesus song and dance whenever he gets close to a microphone. I find it distasteful, and I know I’m not alone in this. This is not a “Christian nation,” no matter how much Rick Perry says it is. I just hope that the next time a sideline reporter gets a “God bless you” from Tebow, he or she responds by telling him they’re an atheist. Not that I expect someone like Tebow to even know what that is.

Almost nine years ago, I was still in college, in Pittsburgh. I remember piling into my friend Tiffany’s car, along with several others, and making a trip to Washington, D.C., to take part in an anti-war rally. We were protesting the war in Iraq, because we, and a growing percentage of the population, didn’t agree with America’s involvement there. George W. Bush, dimwit that he is, was just a couple of months away from declaring “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, not knowing that while the so-called “conventional phase” of the war had ended, there would still be nearly a decade of guerrilla warfare ahead, and the cost of many, many more American and Iraqi lives. At that time, since I was in college and not supporting myself yet, the real end to the war, that is to say, full and unconditional withdrawal of  troops, was a pretty big concern to me. The general public belief, in our going over there, was that Iraq was somehow connected to 9/11. That wasn’t the case. Then there was the misinformation we’d been fed about weapons of mass destruction, that turned out to be fiction. Now, we can debate whether George W. and his advisers were being deliberately deceptive, but that’s not the issue I want to discuss. The point is that I felt, as did my friends and many others, that our government wasn’t standing up for our best interest, and our leadership was going against our wishes for reasons that were murky at best and dishonest at worst. Everybody was talking about the war. It was the biggest hot button issue out there.

But a lot has changed since then, in my own life, and in this country. Contrary to Bush’s claim that the mission had been accomplished, the war dragged on. And on. And on. Bush was reelected and combat operations continued in Iraq throughout his entire second term. He left office with the war still raging, letting Obama make the best of it that he could. Obama said he’d end the war, and that was one of the reasons that I, and others, elected him. But there were other concerns now, the economy, joblessness, and high unemployment being the biggest ones. I don’t want to seem callous and unappreciative of those who were fighting overseas, but when you don’t have a job, and you can’t find one, what’s happening in other countries like Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t seem so important. You’re more concerned with how you’re going to feed your family and pay your bills. The war became less of a hot button issue, partly because of the economic situation we were in, and also because, frankly, when you talk about something for so long and the issue just never seems to go away, people get tired of it. They want to talk about and think about something else. That, I believe, is part of what happened with the Iraq war. Even though it was still going, and even though lives were still being lost, people just got tired of thinking and talking about it. Because there were more pressing concerns, and also because it really seemed like the fucking thing just would never end.

But it is ending. We, (and by we, I mean Obama) are withdrawing, over the coming months, the majority of U.S. troops from Iraq. Regardless of out motivations in going over, we overthrew Saddam Hussein, dug him out of his hole, and saw him executed. Now, a token U.S. presence will remain, but almost all of the troops are coming home, and major combat operations in this country that has seen a decade of turmoil are ending. What does this mean? Well, one thing it means is that Obama got something right. He did one of the things he said he was going to do when he was elected, and that wins him some major points in my book, during what has been, admittedly, an up-and-down first term. Many conservatives, and those on the right, are clamoring that our withdrawal will cause the region to destabilize again, and that this will give Iran a chance to grow bolder, and possibly even invade Iraq. Admittedly, that’s a risk. But here’s the thing. That region is always going to be unstable. The tribal conflicts and the religious ones go back thousands of years. Sunni and Shiite and Kurdish tensions never end, because these hatreds are bred into each new generation and the cycle has proven virtually impossible to break. But we simply can’t afford this war anymore. With the state the country is in, we couldn’t have afforded it in the first place! The right is so concerned about government spending, but this war has gone on for so long and they’ve conveniently ignored how much money it’s costing us. It’s been one of our biggest financial drains, and ending it couldn’t have come at a better time. When, in their minds, could it be ended, if not now? When the “war is won?” The war isn’t winnable! This isn’t a game of capture the flag, where there’s a definitive goal, and, once it’s achieved, we can all go home. This is a quagmire that could last another ten years, or twenty, or fifty, if someone doesn’t say “enough.” Well, someone has said enough, and that’s Obama and his administration, and to them I say, kudos. The Democrats didn’t start this war, but they’re sure as hell finishing it. It’s not as big of a news story as it could have been, because, in the decade since this debacle started, the economy has gone into the toilet and we’re worried now about defaulting on loans from China and failed super-committees. But I still take heart that what I protested against almost nine years ago is finally grinding to a halt, because honestly, there really were times that I thought this war would never end. And Obama’s approval ratings may be the lowest since Jimmy Carter, and Iraq may drift back toward what it was before we toppled Saddam, and the right may accuse the president of doing this strictly for political reasons, but none of that matters to me. This is important; this needed to happen. Ask the many veterans that are now returning home, and they’ll tell you the same. Based on the polling of these soldiers, the majority agree with me, not the conservatives who would have left them to fight and die indefinitely. For all this, Obama, you have more than my approval, you have my gratitude, you have my praise. You did what you said you were going to do, and I, and every other rational person in this country, can’t thank you enough.

Thanksgiving, the holiday that just passed, may owe its roots to the breaking of bread, supposedly, between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. This, of course, as everyone knows, would be before the Pilgrims and those that came to colonize the “New World” after them began a systematic persecution of those same Native Americans that eventually led to their being nearly wiped out. Be that as it may, part of today’s version of the holiday involves, yes, the giving of thanks, the counting of ones blessings, and so forth. I think that’s a pretty good thing to do, because the assessment and taking stock of the good and the bad in my life is somewhat of a hobby for me, one, you could say, that borders on obsession. It’s good to keep track of the things in your life that give you joy, especially if you’re someone who’s prone to bouts of depression, black moods, and other euphemisms for being down in the dumps. Everyone gets down sometimes, but some more often than others, and, I would go so far as to say, there are some that tend to sink further when it happens. For these people, if you’re not in therapy or on medication, it’s especially important to remember the things that you like to do that you’re capable of doing, and then to do them. That’s the best way not only to help yourself, but also the people around you, the family and friends that are impacted by your change of mood.

For me, there’s plenty to be thankful for. I’m not a wealthy man, and I’ve spoken on the site about how most of my problems, when you really take a good look at them, stem from the deficiency of ready cash in my life to one extent or another. If I had more money there would be more available to me, in terms of material goods, things that I could do, and places that I could go. This is not to mention that if I also had more money, I could do fewer of the things that make me unhappy but that I have to do because I’m obliged to, which amounts to pretty much the same thing in the end. But be that as it may, when I think about my life and talk about being “poor,” when I wake up with the aches and pains that are a part of my daily existence, and on the days when it seems especially hard, I really do try, at this point in my life, to try to look on the bright side. No, I’m never going to be one of those people to whom positivity comes naturally. I’m not a “glass half full” person by nature, I’m more of a “glass half empty and I’m so pissed off undeserving people have full glasses that I’m liable to spit on them in the street” sort of person. It really does seem that the distribution of wealth in this world is somewhat arbitrary, which is why you see the most deplorable sorts of people with everything they ever wanted…or is it only that they became deplorable because they had everything handed to them from the very beginning? Mine is not to question why, I suppose, but the point I’m trying to make is that even though I don’t consider myself wealthy, it’s all relative. I can still pay my rent and bills, I’m not going hungry, and while I work a day job I’m not in love with, and while I wake up with aches and pains, there have been people throughout recorded history, and this very day, that have had it worse off than me. There are, and were, people who were tortured for their religious beliefs, because they were born a certain way, a certain gender, a certain race, born without limbs, born with terrible diseases, born into situations were poverty means something much, much different than the way I commonly perceive it. That is what I try to be mindful of, not only on a day like Thanksgiving when we’re supposed to appreciate what we have, but on other days as well, when the physical pain is especially burdensome, or when the malaise is such that I’m really starting to go down a self-pitying path, that it’s not so bad. The God-types always want to say things like “we should praise the Lord for this glorious day,” and while I don’t believe in the particulars of what they’re saying,  I honestly do believe in the message they’re trying to convey. To say that the world is precious, and that life is precious, is something that I believe, even if I don’t know the meaning of it all, or what came before, or what comes after. Cynical as I am, I do see and appreciate the beauty in the world, and I accept that struggle and hardship, on any scale, however you judge such things, are a part of that world. I’m okay with it. Frankly, if I had all the money and things and even all of the friends and good relationships that I wanted, I’d probably be pretty bored. So you might hear me grouse and complain about things on the site here sometimes (what else are blogs for, right?) but when I do, I hope you’re a little forgiving of me at least, because I want you to know, I am trying to be positive. And if you’re reading and I do seem to be getting too down, it’s okay for you to comment on it and try to remind me to count my blessings. That’s if anybody actually reads this thing, of course, and sends any real responses other than spam. Wait a minute, here I go getting all cynical again…