Archive

4/3/03 through 5/29/03

A New Constitutional Era

The Supreme Court has ruled that you don't have 5th Amendment rights if you make the mistake of not actually commiting a crime.

If you have Acrobat Reader you can read the ruling here

Posted by: Max - 05/29/03 - 06:32pm CDT -

Freaky

I want to know what drugs they were doing when they came up with the idea for a live action Garfield movie. An interesting side note, rumor has it Bill Murray has been tapped to voice Garfield himself.

Posted by: Max - 05/28/03 - 03:03pm CDT -

Writ

I can only barely remember a time when I didn't want to be a writer. I must have been eight when the idea first occurred to me. One day I decided that I wanted to see my name on a book. It was purely out ego at the time. It wasn't long after then that I discovered that I enjoy writing. I also learned that I hate writing. And that I fear writing.

For me, the urge to write comes like the urge to eat. I can fight it, but only for so long. Like eating, writing doesn't always just lead to simple relief, it can lead to the release of those wonderful endorphins which my brain's internal pusher uses to keep me in line. And like eating can for a fat man, writing can lead to a lot of regret and self recrimination.

I have never writing a single piece that I personally like. Everything I have written, from school papers to my one novel seem to me like one big pile of excrement. There are a few raw diamonds glinting from that steaming pile, a few good ideas that, developed correctly, could lead to something worthwhile. But I have trouble convincing myself that even those rare, precious raw diamonds are worth diving once again into that pile of shit.

My fundamental problem is a lack of confidence, in myself and in my work. I doubt that my writing is worth the effort of reworking and improving, and even if it is, that I have the ability to do it. So, most of what I have written has sit untouched since I finally gave up on it. Some, I have tired to foist on to others for completion. I can't even count the number of times I have tried to convince Jericho rewrite my novel for me. In the end, I let my self become paralyzed by my doubts. The blank page becomes an insurmountable obstacle and my hunger to write goes unsatisfied.

Posted by: Max - 05/27/03 - 10:55am CDT -

Warning: Whiny Blogger Alert

I have been somewhat depressed and cranky the past few days. It started at work on Monday. I will spare you the long, boring details. Boiled down, I am sick of my manager's ego and his micromanaging. I am sick of not making any money. Most of all, I am sick of spending a third or more of my life doing something I don't find particularly meaningful.

That last part is a particularly troubling one for me. On the one hand, I have this voice in my head that keeps saying that most people spend a third or more of their lives doing meaningless work. What makes me so special that I think I deserve different? But there is another voice that says that I should aspire to more, that the only thing that keeps the world moving is the people who don't want to settle for what others have decided is good enough.

Either way, I want to make my life better. I almost wish I could say I have no idea how. My problem is, I have a ton of ideas that are painfully unworkable. One thing I think I might like to do is to open what amounts to a guitar boutique, specializing in top notch guitars and basses. It give me a chance to deal in great gear that is hard to come by locally. As a bonus, I would not have to worry about competing with the corporate monstrosity that is my current employer, because our stock would have little overlap. Something I have learned over the course of the last six months is that given a choice between dropping almost 2 grand on a work of art like a Rob Allen MB-2, or dropping $150 on a Yamaha RBX-170, most folks will go for the Yamaha. Besides, I don't have, and doubt I could get, the backing to even begin such a futile enterprise.

Another thing I would like to do would be to get into programming and electronics. I have a huge list of ideas for electronic devices that I would love to be able to build and attempt to market. But this would involve going back to school, which would require time and money I don't have.

And of course, there are my musical, literary and cinematic aspirations which remain well out of the realm of the realistic.

I could go on, but it would only bore you and frustrate me. I think I am just going to go back to bed.

Posted by: Max - 05/21/03 - 02:28pm CDT -

Boob Touching on the Boob Tube

Tuesday and Wednesday I was home with my sinuses ready to explode, the weather outside changing by the minute. In an effort to distract myself from my pain, between bouts of fitful sleep, I attempted to watch some television. As I flipped from a dating story to a birth story to a wedding story to a Lifetime movie, I found "Private Parts" on the USA network.

Now, I don't know how you feel about Howard Stern, personally, I could live without his radio/television show. I'll watch it if there is nothing else on and he is torturing an interesting guest, but it gets old pretty fast. However, the book "Private Parts" was pretty good and it inspired me in many ways. Don't get me wrong, I didn't rush out and buy it the moment it hit the stands. I bought it for a buck at a used book store. It now sits proudly and appropriately on the tank of my toilet. Our cats like to sit on the picture of his face, which also seems appropriate. Anyway, I was inspired by the struggle of his early career. He slogged through the mire and rose to the point of being able to do his idea of radio, his way - or at least he and his ghost writer did a good job of painting him in that light.

The movie was a fun romp. I own a copy. It, too, has a similarly inspiring tale to tell, not to mention some great boob shots. In all, it was worth the $5.99 I paid for the used copy. I spent $13.99 on the soundtrack CD, mostly for Ozzy's cover of "Pictures of Matchstick Men". In all, I'm $22 bucks into this venture. But I digress!

So, as I'm watching this movie, a whole lot of interesting things happen. First, I was expecting a whole lot of deleted scenes, then, it occurred to me that if they deleted all the deleteables, they would have twenty five minutes of movie. USA Networks took the high road, instead of deleting, they covered everything with little white boxes and bleeped out the naughty words - okay, they deleted a few things, but you get the point. On top of this, they stopped the movie in spots and had Howard Stern "walk into" the movie and tell you about or make comments on the things not being shown. Some of this was pretty funny.

What wasn't funny was how this movie pointed out the futility of television censorship in this country. You can watch a guy die in slow motion from multiple angles, but gods forbid you see a boob! You can see a woman in a string, thong bikini, but if she removes the butt floss, they have to put a little black box over her ass because NOW it's naked. So, they have a woman have an orgasm in this movie while sitting on a woofer, but the whole time they had a box over her breasts. They show a woman grab for Howard Stern's crotch, but they put a box over that so that you are forced to imagine what Howard's penis looks like (Eww! Bad mental image!) The best was in one scene someone said "asshole" and they bleeped over "hole" - not five minutes later, someone said "ass" and they bleeped "ass" ... this just confused me! It's like when someone says "goddamn" and they bleep "god". When did "god" become a four letter word?

So, you can't show boobs on American TV. (because, we, unlike the Taliban, have freedom) but you can now talk about them and touch them. NBC seems to be leading the pack on the boob front. The first time I noticed this was on Friends. They began making boob references, every couple of shows, another boob reference. Mind you, thinking about Courtney, Lisa and Jennifer's boobs isn't a bad thing. Next, Will & Grace, they break every other rule, so the constant boob jokes seemed appropriate. Then, they began touching each other's boobs. Over the shirt, mind you, for the girls at least. However, I don't think bras are allowed on that set, so there is something more intimate there than if the boob touching had occurred on, say, Murder, She Wrote. Outside of NBC there is of course the whole Diana Ross/Lil' Kim incident on MTV a few years back - 'nuff said.

The last week or so, I've seen more boob touching than usual on TV. Start with What not to Wear. TLC runs this show, it stars a pair of fashion consultants, one obviously gay male and his fag hag, wait, that's Will & Grace again! Anyway, there is a lot of boob discussing and the odd boob touch. Apparently, this is (yet another!) rehash of a BBC show of the same name. This version stars two females, one who is busty and one who is flat - how am I sure of this? They point it out first part of every show, while the opening credits roll the two women roughly touch the other pointing out their negative feelings about the other's rack. This is European TV., so we can expect a little more sex. Seems like the opening dialog of each show also features these girls talking about their own hoots. But, shockingly for this perv from the bible belt, the boobless one on this show seems obsessed with breasts! She is constantly touching her own, grabbing the guests, etc. And, it's rarely a light fondle, it's a real mauling half the time! What's best about this is that they get to say "tits" like anyone on American TV. might say "beer".

So, yesterday, I'm sitting there watching Lifetime, and catching up on the episodes of Mad About You that I missed a decade ago, and here again, we have Paul Reiser's character touching the newly augmented boobs of his sister-in-law with his wife in the room! This show had to have aired years before Will & Grace or even Friends - what a pioneering show. A half hour later some show with Annie Potts comes on and we get two shots of teen age (underage!) boob touching!

These are but mere examples, I won't even get into The Man Show or Girls Behaving Badly. All I can say is - drop the guns, take off the damn shirts, skip the little boxes and show us your televised tits, Hollywood!

Posted by: Jericho - 5/16/03 - 11:55 am -

Lyle and The Laser Pointer

One time I was surfing through some of my favorite web comics when I spied an animated ad on one of them. It said that if I could pin the moustache on the face of the woman moving back and forth across the screen, I would win a laser pointer. So, I pinned the 'tache to her animated mug and six to eight weeks later I had my laser pointer.

At first it just sat unused on my desk. It turns out that I have fewer things I need to point at than I had at one time thought. Finally, the day came. A millipede was crawling up the wall, and I wanted to show my attack spider Lyle where to go. Okay, I'm sure Lyle could have found the millipede without help, but I wanted to use to damn pointer. I took aim and pushed the button. Suddenly, where Lyle's lunch had been, there was a lazer pointer shaped hole that ran straight through my wall. Poor Lyle was so scared, he ran right back into his cage and wouldn't come out for a couple of hours.

I realized that I had in my possession one of the most powerful weapons man has ever created. I found myself have visions of world domination, of world leaders begging to do my bidding rather than being vaporized from space Real Genius style. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like too much work. I was rather upset, because I had really wanted a laser pointer I could use to point things out without destroying them.

I left it sitting on my desk for a few weeks until I caught a repeat of one of the Star Trek shows. I'm not sure which on it was. It was the one where they kept beaming down to planets and the guy no one had ever seem before kept getting killed by some squiggly alien just before the captain got laid. Anyway, I remember that engineers in Star Trek seemed to always fix things by reversing the polarity on it. It was kind of like the space adventurer equivalent of ctrl+alt+del. So, I grabbed the pointer (poor Lyle starting whining), popped it open and switched around some stuff that seemed polarity related.

When I was done, I looked around the room for something I didn't much care about to point at. Finding no good candidates, I opened the window and took aim at them house across the street. I pushed the button and suddenly, the house vanished, replaced by some sort of hole in time and or space.

At that point, I was pretty much fed up. I mailed the laser pointer back with a note explaining everything that had happened and asking if the would just send me a frisbee instead. It's only been four to six weeks since then, so I haven't heard back.

You know, I hope that first laser beam, which I can only assume is still traveling through space, doesn't burn any holes in any planets inhabited by war like aliens. I mean a laser beam is something easily traced back to its source, given that it travels in a straight line. Maybe I should move.

Posted by: Max - 05/14/03 - 11:48am CDT -

Pax Americana

We just want to bring the blessings of American democracy to the world.

Posted by: Max - 05/14/03 - 11:03am CDT -

At Last

A crackdown on society's most dangerous criminals.

Posted by: Max - 05/14/03 - 11:00am CDT -

Big Money

US money just may soon cease to be entirely boring.

Posted by: Max - 05/13/03 - 05:07pm CDT -

The Wonders of Modern Technology

Virtual bubble wrap.

Posted by: Max - 05/08/03 - 06:20am CDT -

X2

It's great movie. Go see it.

On that note, Scott Kurtz has a nifty review , in which among other things, he points out some interesting similarities between X2 and Wrath of Kahn. Don't read it unless you have seen it. There are spoilers a plenty.

Posted by: Max - 05/07/03 - 11:59am CDT -

Japan Has The Best Cults

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Pana Wave Laboratory

Posted by: Max - 05/07/03 - 11:49am CDT -

The House

Okay, you all have been begging for it. Here's the scoop, the whole scoop and nothing but the scoop - well, most of the scoop anyway ...

We did the inspection on the house, it pretty much matched or superceded the inspection that was performed three years ago. Translation: the idiot owner hadn't performed a single repair or any maintenance to the house in three years. The Roof was in terrible shape, it is missing internal supports and had at least one too many layers of roofing tiles. The tiles themselves were not installed correctly in the back, water was seeping under them. The divot in the roof if from the weight of the tiles and the lack of support, I'm sure the wet wasn't helping. All of this was in the inspection from three years previous.

The main breaker box for the house is known to be a problematic brand (the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore) and it was recommended it be replaced. Plus, there was several lovely code violations. Apparently a pair of single breakers was doing the job of a double breaker and when the box should have had three throws to turn off power to the whole house, it had eight. There were other problems as well, all of this documented three years before.

There were other less dangerous electrical problems, these were only violations of common sense. The converted garage had a total of a single outlet. When we walked into the place the first time, there had been a computer, stereo and the pellet stove in this room - all require an outlet. The outlet for the room was behind the stereo - basically you would need to run an extension cord across the room to plug in either a computer or the pellet stove. Plus, that outlet was not grounded - bad for computers. This room had a great deal of remodeling done - yet who ever did the remodel failed to install a decent number of electrical outlets and the only one in the room was never grounded. The people who installed the pellet stove just compounded this issue. Idiots!

This house had no basement, but it did have a crawl space under the house. In the inspection from three years ago, there were remarks that the crawl space had been cluttered with debris. Our inspector could not at first find the entry to the crawl space - he eventually found it, directly under the deck. The deck had been built about eight inches off the ground. In other words, for our inspector to finish the job, a hole would need to be cut in the deck. We never got that far.

We turned around and asked the seller to have the back roof repaired or replaced and have it internally supported. We also asked that the breaker box be replaced and a few other minor electrical issues be taken care of - not even the big stuff, just things like cables outside the house be replaced with cable rated to be used outdoors. We waited to hear back.

Meanwhile, our financing situation took a nose dive. I won't go into details, but even with the fact that our broker kept saying we weren't that great of a risk, we were rejected several times. Finally a loan came through, an 80/20, the interest rates were 9% and 13% respectively and would only be fixed for two years. In case you don't know, this is a crap loan, especially in this market. We passed.

The seller came back with the fact that she would give us a $1k check after closing for the roof and she would have a few minor repairs done. Not even close. This chick and her agent had been squirming all over since we started dealing with them and I was tired of their shit. We made them wait, hoping they would panic and come back with something a lot more reasonable.

Monday, 7:30 PM the selling agent calls up our agent and says something to the effect that if we don't respond by 9 PM we are "stuck" with what they offered. She actually used the word "stuck". First, when you are doing a deal like this, you don't dog the word of the contract unless something has gone wrong. If you want to sell something, you should be nice to the people you are selling to. Not this moron! Second, if she hadn't called, she could have claimed we had accepted the contract by default - she would have "stuck" us with it. So, we gather up and go off to our agent's office. At 8:57 PM we faxed our reply: REJECTED!

We thought they might reconsider. We would have to redo all the paperwork, but if they were wise, they would cuddle back up to the ONLY offer they had.

We were done. We had decided to sign another twelve month lease on our apartment, to put away our down payment and just wait a year. By then, our credit would look that much better and we would have a larger down and we might be able to afford more house for less than 13% interest. Our agent asked us not to be hasty, the house could still come back to us and the finance people were still looking. Patience.

Our finance person called us on Thursday. She found an FHA loan, thirty year fixed at 6.25%. In case you don't know, that's pretty damned good! Before she called us, she called the seller's agent. The agent said that the property had been sold, paid for in cash. Funny, it still shows out of the website as being available. I think the agent is lying and thus committing fraud, but we don't care at this point.

There are some complications with the loan now that the house we wanted is no longer in the picture, but, we qualified for $150k at 6.25%, we had been doing all of our budgeting at 7%, this is so much better. So, we are going to keep looking at least for a while. We are thinking about looking in the above $150k range, just for the more house/better location factor. We'll see where we get from here.

Posted by: Jericho - 5/2/03 - 6:49 pm -

Damn Cannucks!

Curse those Canadians and their excessive love of freedom!

Posted by: Max - 05/02/03 - 12:09pm CDT -

Jer's Back Yard

And how did our intrepid northwest correspondent miss this?

Posted by: Max - 04/28/03 - 1:05pm CDT -

The RV book.

If you haven't seen the comments to the last post, go read them here.

As Steph said, this happens a lot. I get what sounds like a good idea but I can't do anything with it because I have no contacts, no money, no way to make the idea work. Then, some time later, someone else puts the idea to market and it makes a fortune. It's nice to know my ideas are good, it just sucks that my wallet has never gotten any fatter due to one of my brainstorms. And, yes, it's depressing, but I've gotten philosophical as I've gotten older - my lot in life is to be unhappy and unfulfilled - no sense getting upset or anything!

This whole RV idea has been floating in my head for a while, I first had it in college damn near a decade ago. My idea was to pick up, get an RV and hit the road not in some foreign land but right here in the States. My quest: to find not the best places to visit or the best things to eat, but to find the Worst Food in America.

The idea was to start at some greasy spoon, eat and review the food there, take lots of pictures and then start talking to the people, get their stories. All the while we would be asking them where they had had the worst meal of their lives, and we would make a list. We would then drive to the closest bad place and repeat the process until we had covered most of the country or traveled for a year, whichever came first. By that time, we would have a ton of pictures, a great bunch of personal, colorful stories, our own colorful stories of the trip and we would be able to crown some poor restaurant as having the worst food out there. I thought the idea would fly.

I presented the idea to Max, it appealed to him, except he wanted to do a more center of the road approach; less food bashing, more general interest. Not just the worst food, but the best food, too, and everything in between. I liked my more focused approach, but I would go for either. All we would need to do would be to get a publisher to give an advance or let us work off a company credit card. However, considering neither of us had a by-line to our names, we both lost confidence in the idea and let it drop along with hundreds of other ideas.

About six months later, a book hit the shelves. A woman had traveled around the country in an RV looking for the best American Pie. I was furious! Couldn't believe it had happened to me again!

About a year ago, I revisited this idea. With all the reality TV. out there, with the existence of Food TV., with the fact that independent movie makers were changing Hollywood, I thought the idea had value again. The second draft of the idea was this: get an old RV, christen it "The Julia Childs", start roaming the country looking for bad, good, weird, fun, basically American food. Again, this would be focused more on the people, the stories and the travel than the food. Set up a web site, keep a blog of our daily activities, show pictures and video. Basically, we would be running a web cast of our own travel. We could even do "RV Cooking" and other features (let's see if the local Dominos will deliver to a moving RV for a big tip!")

The great thing at this point would be that I could start this trek for darned little cash. I could borrow some cash and use my bonuses as seed money. Except for the RV and the cellular modem, I had most of the needed equipment, I own a digital video camera, digital still camera, laptop, and two Macs for video and web editing. We could even bring along my sweet 35mm camera and scan in the pics as we went along. The website would be cheap to start and could run banners as it got more popular. And, if we got a book deal or a TV. show or both along the way, great! Gravy! Score!

The problem was my dear wife. My idea was to send her off to her folks in Maine. I believe at the time she was out of work, so she wouldn't be losing her job. Her folks had just moved into a new house and had the room. If she could find a job right away she could handle our bills, with maybe a little help from her folks. If the worst situation happened, I would end up in Maine after a year, broke and I would work my fingers to the bone to pay back her folks and our creditors. If some good things happened, an advance on a book deal could help with the bills, revenues from the web site could take care of bills and if the book was popular or we got a TV. show, Bam! It would have all been worth it!

However, Steph isn't a risk taker. I mean, she moved out here to be with me five years ago, but that's about as big of a risk as she is willing to take. This idea smacked of more than average risk, as most of my ideas do. Conclusion: no go, fat boy! Besides, she didn't want to be away from me for a year and didn't want to be on the road with me for a year, either. Second draft of idea was still born. And now, we see this book and again, my idea has been done by someone else and their wallets are fat, not mine. I sit at work, piddling with a voicemail system, dreaming of a better day.

So, here I am, thirty one years old, very tired of my ideas rusting away in my brain. I have two points of proof that this idea is a good one. It looks like the house deal is going south and frankly my job is going no where. Max, what do you think? We write up a formal proposal for the idea. We send the proposal to everyone and see who bites? If we get a bite, we do this damn thing! If no one ever bites, I'll crawl under my desk at work and never come out again. I'll enjoy the irony that I'm a never-was until I blow my head off on my fortieth birthday.

If we can at least get a book deal out of it, we get them to advance enough cash to take care of our needs for a year and our other bills for same. This will give my dear wife the security she requires. This means I'll be away from Steph for a year, you will be away from Laura and we will be shacked up together just long enough to want to kill each other hourly - and being out on the lost highway will give us plenty of opportunities for just that! But, this is the last opportunity I can think of for this idea to work for us. You want to start a family and I'm starting to settle down myself. If not now, then this will never happen.

Well, Max, what do you think? What does everyone else think? Would you visit our web page to see the sites we saw that day? To watch us cook dinner in a broken down RV? To see pictures and read stories from across the country? Would you buy the book? Would you watch a television program? Would you buy t-shirts and mugs? This idea will only work if we can sell shit to the people - are you buying this?

Posted by: Jericho - 4/25/03 - 10:40 am -

Read It

I have been endevouring lately to spend less time in front of the idiot box and more in front of a book or with my bass. In the process, I have come across three top knotch books - two for everybody, one for my fellow bass wankers. The first is First We Quit Our Jobs by Marilyn J. Abraham. This one is a travel narrative, a form I am growing ever more fond of. It follows the author and her husband as they leave their soul sucking corporate jobs, buy an RV and take off to tour the country in search of a better life. The writing is not the best, but the story itself was interesting enough to keep me coming back.

The second is Jennifer Government, by Max Barry. This is one of the best books I have ever read. I tore through it in a matter of a few days. The story is set in a dystopian near future in which corporations have pretty much taken over the world and workers are forced to take their company's name as their surname. The story does have a few weak points and I there were almost too many characters to keep track of. The writing, however, was amazing. Barry drew me in and refused to let go.

Finally, for my fellow bass players, I highly recommend Bass Logic, by Bill Edwards and Steve Hodson. Being too po' to afford a real bass teacher, I have been forced to teach myself from books. Up until now, they have all fallen short, either going too fast or too slow or not covering enough material. Bass Logic has proven to be something all together different. Although not perfect, it manages to cover technique and theory in a concise yet complete manner. The first exercises, use basic scales and arpegios in jsut thre right way to allow one to simultaneously build strength and dexterity while getting familiar and comfortable with the layout of the fretboard. I wish I could have had this book ten years ago. I have only been working at it for a few months and I have grown more as a player than I had in the past few years.

So, feel free to click on any of the billion of so Amazon.com links on IWDC and give any or all of these a try.

Posted by: Max - 04/22/03 - 3:11pm CDT -

The Horror

Bloodthirsty, mutant bass kills an unsuspecting musician.

Posted by: Max - 04/19/03 - 8:44pm CDT -

Wow

This is fairly neato-ish.

Posted by: Max - 04/19/03 - 8:32pm CDT -

Quote of the Day

Courtesy of Bruce Sterling

"Your money stinks of the corpse of the poet you never dared to become."

Posted by: Max - 04/19/03 - 8:22pm CDT -

About Iraq

I've been holding my tongue about Iraq, mainly because I have a low tolerance for futility. But I have a few things to say that I can no longer hold back. First off, I would like to congratulate Shrub, the Joint Chiefs and especially every soldier who fought in and/or provided support for those who fought in this conflict. Getting rid of Saddam is a good thing. History will smile on you for it. Now, having shattered the civil authority in Iraq, it is our duty to provide short term order, while supporting the building of a new and better government. Most of all, it is our duty to see that Iraq's oil wealth goes into the pockets of the Iraqi people, not Shrub, Cheney and their cronies. If we want a friendly Iraq, seeing to it that it's people are well taken care of and are given an ownership stake in their society is essential.

That said, I would like to point out something that seems to have been missed in all the glory of victory. Let me preface these remarks by stating that I in no way wish to make light of the hard work and sacrifice of our soldiers in this war. On a personal level for many of our soldiers, this struggle was as harsh as any. However, on the larger level Iraq pretty much fell right over. This was a nation that threatened the US? This was a nation stocked up mighty weapons that could, nay would, have been used to destroy us? No, this was a starving nation, crushed under the boots of both a cruel dictator and UN sanctions. This was a government, evil as it was, that controled only a third of Iraq. Saddam could barely manage to invade his own country. The world is a better place for his ouster, but I think it is time to admit that Shrub overstated, could hardly have done otherwise, the threat posed to the US by Iraq. And given that lack of a threat, mayhap we could have found a better way to shuffle Saddam loose this mortal coil.

Posted by: Max - 04/16/03 - 2:15pm CDT -

Interview with Bruce Campbell!

Remember a few weeks ago I was saying that I was finishing up an autobio and I said to not ask who it was? Well, I had just gotten the good news that we were going to interview actor, writer and generally great guy Bruce Campbell! I was quickly devouring his great book!

If you don't know who Bruce Campbell is, get off our site and never come back! Okay, you can stay, but go educate yourself!

Posted by: Jericho - 4/14/03 - 6:30 pm -

Random Thought

What the world really needs is an openly gay thrash band named Rectal Breach.

Posted by: Max - 04/11/03 - 12:05pm CDT -

Everyone Reads Danielle Steel

I finished my autobio of Stephen King and I was looking for something to read on the bus. But, I wanted to read something different. I'm a big sci-fi reader. I have mixed in plenty of fantasy (I've managed to never read "The Lord of the Rings" but that's another Rant entirely). With the recent jaunt into autobios, I wanted to get back to fiction, but something different.

Steph is a big romance novel reader. She has shelves and shelves of bodice rippers, mostly Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. So, thinks I, what the hell? I ask Steph which one she likes best. At this point, I should have caught a clue, see if you catch it: Steph says that there is a Danielle Steel novel called "River's End" that I would like. We look through the Steel novels and can't find the book. Steph eventually locates the book, but it's not written by Ms. Steel, instead it's a Nora Robert's novel. Hmm, can't remember which writer wrote what ... doesn't bode well for my future!

Anyway, I grabbed a novel called Irresistible Forces. It had a neat graphic on the cover that appealed to my sci-fi sensibilities and began reading this on the bus that very morning.

Folks, I went into this with an open mind. I wanted to read this to see why she is such a popular writer. I am 90 pages into this novel and I must admit - even with 500 million copies of her novels in print, Danielle Steel is a horrible writer! Oh My God! If this is an example of her best work, I can get published tomorrow! At a quarter the way through this book, she is still establishing three main characters. If you click the link for the book, the description gives two spoilers that I haven't gotten to yet and tells me there is a fourth major character to come! It is the slowest read of my life.

Mind you, I have been in the habit of reading books that center on action and character development. But, this is so dreadfully dull. This first 90 pages could have been told in 10. He and She are career oriented. He and she are very busy, very much in love, and have not had time for a family yet. She is working with a guy that she has not yet looked at as an alternative to her husband - but watch out because he could be! There - I did it in one paragraph!

I can't quite grasp her appeal. The title of this post is taken off the back of her book. Have you read Danielle Steel? If even one of you answers "No!" then that claim is wrong - the claims on the web site are even more outrageous. But, getting away with making those claims comes from the fact that she is very popular. But, if this book is an example, then she is not popular because she writes well. Maybe it's the frequency, or the fact that the writing is at about the level of a soap opera. I can't believe that this many readers are this brain dead!

This woman has 57 novels in print, 14 children's books, one non-fiction and one book of poetry. On top of that she has managed to give birth NINE TIMES! I think if she had written ten books well and only given birth a few times, her writing might be better, she would have had the chance to live a life that would give her novels life in turn. Instead, I would wager she has been either in the maternity ward or on a book tour for the last three decades.

I solemnly vow to finish this book, my hope is that somewhere around page 115 this book takes off and drags me into a great story. I'll let you know what I discover.

Posted by: Jericho - 4/8/03 - 6:00 pm -

The House of Deception

So, yeah, do you remember that house I had spoken of that we were looking at in Kent? Well, if you don't, look here.

Anyway, we have put an offer on the house. Now, before your chins bounce off the floor, let me explain. Yup, the house looks like crap from the outside. Paint peeling, and the window sills look like they have water damage (which indicates poorly insulated windows or even worse problems) the roof looks like it has a big weak spot, etc. But, this was what I got from just driving up and looking at the front.

We went and looked at the place on Saturday, after a long ass bus ride because our car is acting up. We got up to the place and I started pointing out questions to our buyer's agent. This guy, Roland, is really a neat guy. He has been really helpful. He is a real estate agent, but he is acting as our agent. He is doing a bunch of the leg work and giving us a lot of details we wouldn't likely get from the agent selling the house. Anyway, we started looking around and the paint is awful, but it's just old and needs to be scraped and repainted. The sills just have paint problems, they too need to be scraped and redone, no water damage. The first odd thing we noticed was the front door. It is much newer than the rest of the outside of the house looks.

We walk inside and I seriously had a "Wow!" moment. The place just explodes in size and is very open. You walk directly into the living room, hard wood floors, 8+ft ceiling, certainly better than our current apartment. Off to the left is the "bonus room". If you look at the picture, the left most window actually juts off the house, looks like this used to be a garage they converted to more space, Berber carpet, pellet stove, plenty of room for computers, books, etc. If you walk straight from the front door, you reach a cute but nice size dining area an that is backed by French doors leading out to a very nice deck in the much larger than I thought back yard. The kitchen is small but well laid out (we already have some improvement ideas in mind) two bedrooms, one bath - the major draw back of the pace is that we'll have to get used to one bathroom again.

Let me go back to the front door. It is a nice door and fairly new, Roland tells us it's a fiberglass and steel door. The thing is darned secure, insulated and has a pretty glass panel on top - certainly not something installed in 1947! We looked around, all of the windows are fairly new insulated vinyl windows. The pellet stove is fairly new and comes with a pallet of pellets! Plus, there's base board heaters as well. The Berber in the bonus room is very nice and probably installed at about the same time as the stove. Most of the appliances are newish or in good shape. The only oddity is that the dishwasher isn't hooked up to water, you have to move it to the sink and hook it up there - not a deal breaker to say the least.

In all, the place is groovy and we want it. On top of all of this, it's a great location. It is four blocks (a half mile) from a bus stop for a bus that goes into the Seattle bus tunnel, and thus right under the building where I work and a block from Steph's job. We are about six blocks from a major park and ride, and about an equal distance from the Sounder commuter train, great commuting options, all! We are 7/10 of a mile from Safeway and QFC grocery stores (yes, we went back with the car yesterday and measured) and we are a mile from the local Bally's gym! We could walk to the gym, how cool is that? We are about four blocks from the Kent Library. One of our favorite Chinese buffets is near the Safeway and QFC. We also found out last night that my new D&D DM lives about half a mile away from this house. This place just rocks!

So, we dropped off the paperwork last night to our financing person. I'm eagerly awaiting a call from her now. We don't know if we will be able to get financing or what we would get, but we're hopeful. We don't have a down payment, but we're first-time buyers and we have decent (not perfect) credit history and we have steady incomes - we should do okay. It's all a waiting game now - our lease on our apartment is up May 16th, we hope to be out by then, but that's awful soon. We'll see ...

Posted by: Jericho - 4/7/03 - 12:26 pm -

The Little Bit of Everything Post

I'm so distracted these days. I can't keep a straight line of thought on anything. I wonder if it's all the allergy meds I'm on or the time of year or all the crap going on. I just don't know.

So, yeah, my allergies are acting up. As I write this, I can barely see out of my right eye for the tears. I hate this time of year! But, as I've said time and again this week, things could be so much worse. When I was in STL, my allergies were terrible. I was on one of the most powerful allergy meds available by prescription, and I still suffered. Here in Seattle, I suffer a bit, but I can take over the counter remedies and don't suffer the harsh effects of some of the prescription options.

I have taken two days off work in the past two weeks. The headaches got pretty bad and the Benadryl I took just made me drowsy. So, I stayed home and slept it off. Luckily work has been less busy and I'm not wallowing in catch-up mode.

Work has been a series of small projects. Data entry. Minutia. With my new duties as Web Specialist for Systems, I've seen a whole bunch of stupid crap. Just as I'm about to get all the leftovers cleaned up out of the Telecom pages, I now get handed a whole bunch of new clutter. The job is endless. On top of that, there has been a personnel shake up, they released the two contractors who were in our group. This just means more work for the three remaining people. Were are already too small to begin with, now we're down-right tiny. Can't wait to see what brilliant cost cutting idea they have next. I have this strange feeling I may be the next one cut.

I have not gotten beyond assignment 4 in my school work. When I've gotten home in recent weeks, that lack of focus has kicked in and my brain goes elsewhere real fast. I can't concentrate. I was worried that I would finish up too fast and not get enough out of the class. Now, I'm worried I won't finish. The class has been a blast so far, I am getting a lot out of it. Along with doing a class on writing, I have just finished reading On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Between the two of them, my writer's juices are flowing and I'm all atwitter again. I hope I can get over this lack of focus soon, I wanna write!

We're moving! This is becoming a bigger thing. The rates on loans just dropped again so w would e idiots to not take advantage of it here soon. No wonder I'm so distracted, too many balls in the air!

Posted by: Jericho - 4/3/03 - 11:21 am -