The big blow it -- the Colts' lost season

Three minutes left in the Super Bowl and what I predicted is coming true: after chosing to throw away a (strong) chance at an undefeated season with six quarters of football left in the regular season and now they will lose the Big One. The agony will be so much worse for not having the undefeated season or the ring. At least the undefeated season would have given them something redemptive if they'd continued to where they are now and lost.

Meanwhile, congratulations to New Orleans and the Saints! No city deserves the pride and lift more.

The Writer's Landscape

This article in the LA Times succinctly summarizes the attitudes of both publishers and writers today.

Dani Shapiro writes of how the "writer's apprenticeship -- or perhaps, the writer's lot -- is this miserable trifecta: uncertainty, rejection, disappointment" has changed today, so that "Today's young writers don't peruse the dusty shelves of previous generations. Instead, they are besotted with the latest success stories: The 18-year-old who receives a million dollars for his first novel; the blogger who stumbles into a book deal; the graduate student who sets out to write a bestselling thriller -- and did." Writers today, she says, "do not include insecurity, rejection and disappointment in their plans. I see it in their faces: the almost evangelical belief in the possibility of the instant score."