Sensawunder

 I'm doing a National Novel Revision Month this time -- have draft novel, needs a serious revision. Parts need to be rewritten, expanded, cut out entirely. The one nice thing is that revision is far easier than creation, at least in my view. I do a lot of revision after writing a section -- I tend to revise each section before moving on to the next when I write so I never have a full first draft. Today, I hope to do about 3500 words or so. If I can keep up that pace, I should get the whole novel revised by the end of the month. One can hope.

In other news, writer's procrastination excuse # 431 -- I can't seem to adapt to the new wordprocessing software on my MacBook. Yes, I made the switch to Apple on my birthday when I bought a MacBook. Thing is, I use a PC at work and use MSWord 2003 at work. At home, I have Pages on my MacBook and I don't know where all the neato editing icons are, etc. It's taking me a while to adapt. It hasn't stopped me from writing, but I feel as if the actual writing is more of an effort than on a PC. I will persevere.

What else is new -- I have been suffering from bouts of indigestion, nausea, and miscellaneous intestinal complaint now for a few months on and off. I take a med for GERD (gastro esophegeal reflux disorder) and seem to have way too much indigestion now. I was also given a diagnosis of fibromyalgia which often has irritable bowel syndrome as an associated disorder, so that may be it. I dunno -- I find it quite debilitating at times. Have to go see doc again and get it checked out. It runs in my family -- both the GERD and Fibromyalgia -- so if that is what ails me, I am just keeping with the family tradition of stomach upset and body aches. Doc has ruled out MS and Lupus so far which is a relief. Hope it's nothing more sinister.

Am waiting for my H1N1 vaccination -- as someone in the high risk group (well controlled asthma now, but I do get very sick from flu and have to double or triple asthma meds when afflicted) I won't take the risk. Both my kids seem to have had H1N1 -- both had fevers, body aches, sore throat and dry coughs -- my daughter in July and my son in September (first week of school) and I seem to have missed it. Don't want to risk it though. I don't like the idea of vaccination -- I am one of those people who tend to get a very sore arm and once, I had oculo-respiratory syndrome (delayed) after the 2002 seasonal influenza vaccination. Haven't had a flu shot since. A pandemic variety that hits adults with asthma harder seems a good reason to get a shot. Can you tell I work in the acute hospital sector???

I am currently working half days this week and next week so I can work on the NANO and so I can get my 17 year old asperger's child into a good rhythm -- home schooled now through a local cyber school as she can't stand being around other students -- very brilliant (98% average in everything) but socially, very very awkward and ill at ease.  Dropped out of high school in grade 11 -- hopes to go back next year to a private school where academics rather than sports is the focus. 

Recent reads -- The Road, by Cormac McCarthy -- whew. Devastating.  Ashes.  Other recent reads -- Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem -- BITEMEBAILEY! Loved it. Woof.

Recent purchases: Ted Bell Tsar, The Terminal Spy by Alan Cowell and Big Boy Rules:America's Mercenaries Fighting In Iraq by Steve Fainarl.  The Russian Mafia, spies and mercenaries all play a central role in my novel set in the near future.

Nothing else of a personal nature to report. I gave up my subscription to Publisher's Weekly and Marketplace in a downsizing move. But I did learn a great deal just from reading it for the past few months and analysing sales, agents, etc. Hope it helps me when the time comes for me to find an agent.

 

Science Fiction is my one true love.  Oh, I guess Science qua Science is really my one true love, but SF comes a very close second -- so close, it's almost identical but the love of science came first.  Probably outside in my backyard when I was ten and my parents gave me a telescope for my birthday. Through my father's influence, I watched Star Trek and saw 2001 as a kid, which permanently warped my brain.  Later, I watched ST:NG and everything SFnal I could find, read the classics, such as Heinlein, Asimov, Clark, Bradbury, Le Guin, and so many others as I was growing up and now dip my beak in current SF.  It is still the only genre that gets me excited. 

I subscribed to Publisher's Weekly and Publisher's Marketplace as part of my research into getting published and have been reviewing the recent deals. It upsets me to see the SF/Fantasy market made up of mostly young adult and chicklity vampire romances. Yeah, I read Twilight and the first Sookie Stackhouse novel Dead Until Dark just to see what the hype was all about, but I couldn't read on.  

I really do understand the appeal of the vampire as boyfriend trope and all, but seriously, it's fluff. It's wish fulfillment.  It's like a diet of ice cream and chocolate sauce with nothing of substance to keep you healthy. I see good SF as the real thing, the main course, with lots of great nutrients and calories to keep you more than just alive, but fit. I love the ideas in SF and the stories and the characters and the vision of the future and how SF allows us to understand the present by looking forward.

I really do understand escapism, and recognize that the popularity of books like Twilight and Dead Until Dark and all the other vampire fantasy romances fill a hole in their readers, but ... sorry. Ick. Don't mean to offend anyone. I enjoyed Strain more overall. 

There must be a real crisis in femininity / womanhood today.

Whither women's equality? All this work for decades and what do we find?  Women reading vampire romance wish fulfillment fantasies in droves.  When I read books like Twilight and Dead Until Dark, I see a lot of old fashioned notions of romance and gender and sex.  Even if the female protags are kick ass in some way, there is just nothing there in a larger sense of theme.  There are no ideas that push the status quo. It's candy floss.

/rant

Saw it last weekend -- enjoyed it overall. I had a bit of a problem with the aliens at first.  Might be my grand aversion to insects that look even passingly like grasshoppers or cockroaches, and the fact that they were quite humanoid, which always makes me suspicious. But by the end, I was really into the film and was glad I went. It had a great aha! moment, which I won't reveal for those who haven't seen it yet.  I enjoy aha! moments and appreciate it when writers give them to me. 

As to an update from me, I am chugging along. I have writer's ADD - I move from one project to another and despair of ever finishing anything. Oh, I have a finished manuscript, but it is a zero draft and needs much polishing. Plus, I've rethought the opening several times. I feel as if I'm trapped in a hamster wheel, going nowhere fast.

Damn. A novel is such a huge undertaking. It feels endless. How do you finish and sell the dadblamed thing???

Went to see Terminator: Salvation on the weekend with the spousal unit and kiddies (they're both over age 12). Was good, but once again someone steals the film from Christian Bale.

 

A year ago it was Heath Ledger's Joker who stole the film The Dark Knight from its protagonist, Batman, alias Christian Bale. I found Bale's Batman to be flat and uncompelling in TDK, while Ledger's Joker was an adrenaline rush slap across the face that had me watching and smiling through the film a total of five times before buying the DVD.

 

Gotta love a great villain. 

 

*SPOILER ALERT*

 

In T:S, I found Sam Worthington's Marcus Wright to be the most interesting character. His discovery that he is the fusion of human and machine was the best part of T:S beside the general dark and post-apocalyptic feel to it – right up my alley.

 

Three themes recur in my SF interests and my own writing: war, human/machine interface, and immortality through technology. I like works that explore (and I like to explore in my writing) how they affect humans and humanity.  So, any character – especially a warrior with machine in him -- interests me. I really want to write a female warrior / cyborg and have a story line in mind, but have too many other projects on the go to do any work on it. In SF, we have a lot of male characters with some kind of enhancements but relatively few females. I like the transgressive nature to it.

I'm thinking of writing an article on gender/sex and technology in SF, with a focus on Morgan's Kovacs trilogy.  I've already talked to Richard Morgan a bit about his vision of gender in the series and how sleeving works and might see if I can interview him more formally for the article.

 

Will have to see if I can find some time.

 

Yeah, sure.

 

I digress. Bale's Connor just didn't do it for me. Sure, he was dark and brooding, but yawn, been there, seen that. Has he become too typecast? I don’t know, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing Worthington again in other films.

 

Another Aussie stealing the show from Bale. I bet he’ll have some clause in future contracts to ensure no more Aussies star next to him. If he's smart. 

 

What is it about those Aussie actors?  Is it something in Australia's air or is it in the genes?  I've always thought the mutt was the healthiest. Australia being a former colony populated by criminals and miscreants might be why they create such great actors.

 

Onto the "metal" part of the subject line. I enjoyed the post-apocalyptic tone of T:S and the music by Elfman plus the bit of Nine Inch Nails "The Day the World Went Away" and Alice in Chains "Rooster" really captivated me, creating just the right mood for the piece. I spent the weekend after watching T:S browsing music on iTunes, searching for more Alice in Chains and discovered a whole lot that I like, including "Would" and "Nutshell" plus a few others.

 

I've never been a genre snob. I like what I like. Music is emotional to me. End of story. Listening to it or playing it (I play piano), I don't tend to analyze it beyond what's necessary to play it properly, although I have taken a few music theory courses and read music criticism from time to time. Maybe it's the feminine side of me (note I didn't say "female" as I do believe there are many women who are analytical about music so it is not a "female trait"--it's a gender vs. sex thing). Music is emotion to me. It's physical.  It's about how it makes me feel physically and emotionally.  If it brings about a strong emotional or physical response, or puts me in a certain mind space, I tend to like it whatever the genre. I find reading about music, reading music criticism, is enlightening but not necessary for a rewarding music experience.

 

The SU (spousal unit) is from a family of musicians, and is a philosopher of music, a musician and a music critic whose dissertation topic was on a critical theory of music. Music is totally an intellectual thing to him. It is also a physical thing (he plays bass and drums) and he gets off on the whole performance part of music. He is the least emotional man I know and if he is anything, he is analytical about everything. Probably because he feels emotions deeply and so, being a typical masculine male, needs to control that emotional response through analysis, or so my pet theory goes….

 

We are polar opposites in this, as I love feeling emotions of all types.  Which can lead to misunderstandings, as you might imagine. For both of us, music is central to our self-identity so we get along on that level at least.

 

I did a quick check of my library on iTunes (amazing how central that has become to me) and found that throughout my life, metal of one sort or another has been a central preference. My first album as a young girl was Cream, Disraeli Gears (age 10, I believe – music was a big part of our family life and although Cream was my dad's era, I loved it the first time I heard it played on a reel-to-reel with five-foot tall speakers and so asked for the album for my birthday), part of the early British Rock era, bluesy, with a heavy metal bass and guitar feel to it at times, heavy distortion, demanding drumming. From Cream I moved on to The Who, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Iron Butterfly, Kiss, Queen, Rush, Steppenwolf, Uriah Heep, hell, even Rammstein, Iron Maiden, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica.  I'd heard Rooster by Alice in Chains before but never explored their music. 

 

I owe thanks to T:S for introducing me to another band. Grunge Metal.  Who'da thought? 

So, earworms.  An earworm is that pesky riff or melody you play over and over again, infecting your mind with its incessant demands.  I've been playing Would by Alice in Chains over and over again all week. Now I've got a nasty earworm that kept me up late and woke me up early, eating into my brain and keeping me from a good night's sleep.  That'll teach me.

 

Not.

 

 

 

 

Seriously.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Cambone: No, no -- you said that they were turned over for torture and mistreatment. We have returned, for example, individuals to the U.K. There may be three or four of them that have been returned from Gitmo.

Kennedy: Have you turned over, to your knowledge, any suspects to Saudi Arabia, Jordan. Morocco, or Syria to gether information?

Cambone: From those people in D.O.D. [Department of Defense] custody, not that I'm aware of sir . . . if there are, I will come back to you and tell you. As best I know, there are not any persons under our custory taht have been transfered.

From Chain of Command, by Seymour Hersh.

I'm so happy!

Writer's block seems squashed. Have written 3500+ words in the last few days on my novel. Have revised another 4000 words of the first few chapters. Almost ready to post to OWW for crits.

Momentum!

John Scalzi sums it up better than I could:

My short take on this is that the editor in question said something stupid and bigoted, was surprised to have that stupid and bigoted comment aired to the world, and has since gone out of his way to be obnoxious to the folks who have commented on his stupid and bigoted action and/or have decided that they didn’t want to be associated with such stupidity and bigotry, and he’s being obnoxious mostly out of the principle of the thing. My only real reaction to that is say, well, some people just have to piss up a rope, and this fellow in my experience of him seems to be one of them, and pretty much leave it at that. I feel sorry for the other folks who work on Helix that they’re getting caught in the middle of this, since I know a few of them and in general Helix publishes good stuff (it’s nominated for a Hugo this year in the semiprozine category).

You can read the rest at Whatever.

I don't know much about Sanders, have never heard much about him (I'm that much on the outside of things) and so I don't know if this is de rigeur for him or if he just isn't big enough to fess up that he made a bigoted comment, apologize and move on to live another day.

The sad thing is that this confirms there are editors out there with less than pristine views on things like women, minorities, religious tolerance, etc. Did he let his views affect his edtorial choices? I may pass by and review Helix to see what kind of proportions of women he published just for information purposes.

But at first glance, it's sad that there were a lot of good writers published there and this can't help the rep of the 'zine.

42 dead creatures on the secondary highway between the main highway and my home. I counted the corpses as I drove back this morning from the local big-box book store, which is my usual haunt on Sunday morning. 36 dead gophers and 6 dead grackles, who bit the dust trying to eat the dead gophers.

It was unnerving and got to me thinking how we advanced humans wipe out so many other mammals just in the course of our everyday actions. This is not even taking into consideration the factory farmed animals we fertilize, gestate, fatten, slaugher, process and then eat.

What if there was a much-advaced alien species that came to Earth -- as far advanced over us as we are over say, cows, and failed to recognize us as advanced intelligent beings and mowed us down in the course of their everyday business?

It's amazing how your perspective changes when you look at it from the perspecive of the future and perhaps even an alien perspective. Would we go to another planet, for example, and upon finding these large fleshy cow-like creatures with bovine level intelligence, pick up our forks and say "LUNCH!"? Or do you think we'd be in awe of finding another intelligent species and do our best not to accidentally kill them by our actions? If so, would we look at cows back home differently?

I'm not a vegetarian, but I tell you, after watching "Our Daily Bread" last week, I've been thinking about becoming one.

That you tube video?  It shows a large machine vacuuming up chickens in a chicken barn to be boxed and sent to the processing plant.  

This one shows them processing cows.  I had a bit of trouble choking down my sirloin burger at dinner tonight. If it wasn't that free range organic beef cost $&^%$ $27 dollars a pound, I'd only eat it instead of factory farmed meat.  In fact, if a vegetarian diet wasn't so difficult, I'd convert.  

I realize this is a strange post.  Apologies, but it was bugging me.  

At (of all places) the "Festival of Words" in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada!

It's just a short drive from where I live. I'm taking my daughter to see her. Should be great!

New to my bookshelf (and bedside table) although not necessarily new to the reading world:

Fiction -- Novels

Blindsight by Peter Watts
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Crystal Rain by Tobias S Buckell
Black Man by Richard Morgan
Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

Fiction -- Short Stories

Second Variety by Phillip K Dick (anthology)
June Magazine of Fantsy and Science Fiction
July Asimov's Science Fiction
June Realms of Fantasy
July/August Analog

Non-Fiction

Collapse by Jared Diamond
Extinction by Douglas H. Erwin

I'll try to post some thoughts on some of these when I read them.  I've started Spin and am hooked.  I've read Blindsight and want to re-read it because I loved it.

Playlist:

Reverie by Claude Debussy
Arabesque by Claude Debussy
Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy
1st Gnossienne by Erik Satie (off the Revolver album by Nathaniel Mechaly on iTunes)
1st Gymnopedie by Erik Satie
Sonata in D Major, K 576 Adagio by Mozart
Keyboard Concerto No 5 in F Major by Bach, BWV 1056, II Largo
Aria, Goldberg Variations by Bach, BWV 988, played by Glenn Gould.  The most recent recording (1981).

I loved Gymnopedie when I heard it on CBC Radio 2 -- I think it is a theme song for one of their radio shows.  Just the other day I was searching for it and came across 1st Gnossienne -- weird but haunting. I downloaded the sheet music and learned to play it.  Stil a bit rusty for I haven't taken lessons, oh, since I was 10 years old, but I can usually play by ear and figure out the rest from the sheet music.  I'm also learning the Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations. It's quite simple, but as usual with Bach, it's the execution that counts.  I have the music for Reverie, but have only mastered the first bar.

People Mourned:

Uncle Ken -- Died  week ago yesterday to Stage 3b non-small cell lung cancer, 7 months after diagnosis, at age 76.  

Others lost to cancer:

Online Friend Suzanne -- Died a year ago of metastatic breast cancer, one year after diagnosis, at age 41.
Mother-in-law Maxine -- Died 10 years ago of metastatic breast cancer, 9 years after diagnosis, at age 74.
Friend Michelle -- Died 12 years ago of metastatic breast cancer, 5 years after diagnosis, at age 28.

People living with cancer:

Aunt-in-Law Glenys, earliest stage breast cancer found on mammogram, 8 years survival so far.  
Best Man Craig, testicular cancer, 4 years survival so far.
Aunt Betty, colon cancer, 10+ years survival so far.
Aunt Dorothy, breast cancer, 10+ years survival so far.

Of all the deaths, I think of Suzanne the most -- too often, perhaps.  Closest in age to me now, and in interests, her death struck me hard.  A gifted writer of smutty fan-fiction, a brilliant academic who loved Chaucer and Nabokov, and who attracted a huge internet audience for her fan fiction and musings on the young Man of Steel, Suzanne and I shared first and middle names (albiet with different spellings) and a love of "style monkey" prose.  I am dedicating my first novel to her as she helped edit the first few chapters and taught me, more than anyone else, how to write, and how truly bad my first draft was .  A blisteringly honest crit with her eye for writerisms, she helped me to see something of what was wrong and right with my story and writing.  Now, she's ashes.  

How fleeting is life and how much time we waste.  Hug your loved ones.  Tell them you love them - often.



 

An couple of interesting quotes from this article with thanks to jaylake

The point is that SF is, in fact, the necessary literary companion to science. How could fiction avoid considering possible futures in a world of perpetual innovation? And how could science begin to believe in itself as wisdom, rather than just truth, without writers scouting out the territory ahead? Which is why this widely despised genre should be read now more than ever. Unfortunately, as Aldiss and Brake agree, this does not seem to be a great time for the production, never mind the reception, of SF.

But if new hard, logical, shingly-beach SF is now a rarity, at least there’s a lot of old stuff to read. The literary snobs will say it’s badly written, which most of it is. So is most “literary” fiction. Badly written literary fiction is, however, wholly unnecessary. There’s a lot of badly written SF that is driven by an urgent journalistic desire to communicate. That is necessary. So, watch Blade Runner for the seventh time, or curl up with Aldiss’s Omnibus. And remember, it’s all happening now.

The point being, IIUC, that while badly written literary fiction has no merit, at least badly written SF has ideas that are worth considering.

I cut my SF teeth on Heinlein juvies in grade school. I fell in love with SF because of the fantastical notion of humans living on Mars and meeting Martians. Later, I kept reading SF because of that sense of wonder that infected it, even if the SF was dark. The future -- something I would never be around to see -- seemed an important object of thought. I still read SF for that sense of wonder, that "Wow, wouldn't it be great to be alive to see that!"  Even if SF is dark, it still makes me think beyond the everyday, mundane, taken-for-granted -- to lift up my gaze from the present to what might be possible. That has to be a good thing because imagination is so necessary when considering any problem. Does it divert from attenton to what is important here and now? I don't know -- perhaps, but perhaps it also puts today into some kind of context and makes it appear less insurmountable. 

Haiku2 for sensawunder
send a check to the clinton campaign i am not american
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Created by Grahame

I was wondering why I stopped reading Analog . . .

Just because I'm a bandwagon jumper:

Not marble, nor the gilded sensawunder
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

This just in -- I wrote a total of 1,324 words on my new story between yesterday and this morning.

1,324 words -- count 'em!

Last night, I fell to sleep as I imagined the next scene in my mind's eye.

*sniff*

I was just thinking the other day that I haven't been ill since February . . .

In other news, after days of plotting and planning, I finally started to write my new story. I have 813 words total. Yayyy!

Wrote the first scene and part of the second. Just very rough now, not thinking too hard about it, just letting it flow. Will try to write 750 - 1,000 words every day until its done.

In yet other news, the conservative party won the election last night and the social democratic party lost. What that means for me as a person remains to be seen. I moved to this place and took the job I took because I truly believed in the value of working for a good government as a civil servant, but I really don't feel that I can work for this government, well, not if they do anything I really disagree with. Will have to wait and see if they start running roughshod over things.

In yet other news, have been reading the discussions on the future of short fiction mags. I am one of those people who actually like reading online, or at least, don't mind it. I wish it was easier to subscribe to magazines and get them online. I also like print, of course, but I am increasingly enjoying the online reading experience I have with e-zines. I would like to see a $0.99 per story format like iTunes has for music. Pay your dollar and read your story. But maybe that's just me.

That is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of rejection or in trunking, end them . . .

Damn. I have three short stories that have received a couple of rejections each. Should I keep on 'truckin and send them out to a few more markets? There are a couple of e-sub markets, print and webzine, that I could send them out to. I just don't know if it's worth it or if I should trunk them now and move on.

Also, that dadblamed novel of mine . . . I plot and plan and muse and just can't seem to write a single new word on it. I have to write three new chapters to finish it but that little naysayer-writer-devil on my left shoulder tells me "It stinks -- don't bother -- it's a waste of your time."

In other news, we have a provincial election where I live and damn, but the conservative party is likely to get elected and that means trouble with a capital T. Trouble as in me possibly losing my boss and if they decide to cut the civil service, my job, at least as it stands today. I have some seniority and would likely bump a number of people below me first, but I wouldn't necessarily be working where I am now.

Politics. Faugh.

So, I know I said I thought I was finished with short fiction, but once it gets you, the short fiction bug keeps on biting.

I see images and read about certain science ideas and the stories emerge unbidden. I am damned if I can ignore them. This particular short story came about after I read a science article in New Scientist or some other venue (I read a lot of science journals so I can't remember which one off the top of my head) about natural wormholes. This then led to an idea for a story. I also do a lot of reading in geology and anthropology, which are just about my favorite sciences after astronomy. Really, since I was a kid and read about evolution, I have been fascinated with human pre-history. Louis Leakey, the genetic Eve, the Great Rift Valley - these play a part in my new story. Wormholes and the Great Rift Valley in Tanzania -- coming soon to a magazine near you! (I hope!)

So, I've done some plotting, have my Lead, Objective, Confrontation and Knock-Out end a la Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell.

I've written it in my mind, at least the opening, this morning as I lay awake in bed. Now, I have to remember and write it down. Finish it. Submit it to OWW. Revise, submit and wait.

Will keep posting on this story, which is provisionally titled "The Key to Heaven", as I make progress on it.

In response to david_de_beer, here's a list of the short fiction mags I read on a regular or semi-regular basis:

First -- I found I had far too much unread short fiction lying around so I took a breather from it and did not renew a few subscriptions. I'm one of those statistics that are being discussed on the blogosphere. I will probably resubscribe to a few when I recover from my reading overload.

F&SF - had a subscription but let it lapse, buying it at the bookstore when I can find it. Frankly, I was sick of getting it a month late. Now, with the increase in cost of postage, I may see about buying it at the bookstore only, but the last few months I haven't been able to find a copy.
Asimov's - at the bookstore. Never had a subscription.
Analog - ditto.
Realms -- once a subscriber, but not lately. I buy it when I can find a copy at the bookstore.
Fantasy - had a subscription but let it lapse.
JBU - had a subscription but let it lapse.
Strange Horizon
Clarkesworld
Chizine
Ideomancer
Alien Skin (they published my first story!)

I have also bought individual issues of On Spec.

Edited to add:

I also buy Gardner Dozois' yearly anthology - Year's Best Science Fiction, and when I can find it, Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. I have also purchased a number of science fiction and fantasy and horror anthologies.

I'm up to my ears in short fiction. I love it! I think I truly have given up writing it. I don't think I'm sympatico with any editors or just plain not good enough at it.

C'est le Guerre.

Gacked from snurri

1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top umpty results:


My top 20 results:  (i'm actually a public policy analyst IRL but I have been a political aide and I studied anthropology and political science, was a technical writer of sorts, and a professor for a number of years).  Go figure.

1.	Anthropologist
2.	Multimedia Developer
3.	Historian
4.	Public Policy Analyst
5.	Computer Engineer
6.	Political Aide
7.	Archivist
8.	Technical Writer
9.	Communications Specialist
10.	Webmaster
11.	Video Game Developer
12.	Computer Programmer
13.	Professor
14.	Business Systems Analyst
15.	Web Developer
16.	Database Developer
17.	Criminologist
18.	Market Research Analyst
19.	Conservator
20.	Lobbyist