The Blog That Came Back From The Grave

(ann_stringer) challenged me to make a list of 10 things I like that begin w/ the letter T. She did this almost a month ago. Had she give ne the letter P, I would have started this with the word Procrastination ...



1 Tea – I'm a tea drinker. Every morning I fight through the corporate zombies waiting, cups in hand, for the precious pot of coffee to dispense its’ percolated goodness. I squeeze by, steal some hot water from the little spicket attached to the coffee machine, drop in a little Splendra and my tea bag of choice and, in a few minutes, the work day is a little more bearable.

Today's tea was Vanilla Pear.

2 Twilight Zone – Love the show. Watched a classic episode last night.

3 Tomatoes – Spaghetti Sauce. Chili. Sandwiches. Pizza. It's a vegetable that thinks it's a fruit, or vice versa. Anyway, it's sort of a transvestite plant.

4 Shaun of the Dead – I've seen it so many times, my friends have referred to it as 'The Movie' so that counts.

5 The Works of Thomas Ligotti – One of my favorite writers. Thomas begins w/ T. Am I reaching here?

6 Treats – Who doesn’t love a treat now and then?

7 Tennessee – I love living here. Well, I love Nashville.

8 Toots – When she was a kid, my mother’s nickname was Toots.

9 Terrible films. I enjoy a bad film now and them. Don't you have when people look at your CD or book or movie collection and ask if you have anything good? When my movies, I can honestly say 'No, they all suck' and at least be partially right.

10 Temptation – Temptation is, for me, usually delicious.

I am on the panels I thought I was on. Just a scheduling screwup and I let it get to me. I was an ass. My apologies to Derek. And thanks again for promising not to punch me when you see me.

Thank goodness it wasnt over something important. Someone could have been mortally sporked.

A few days of a) not thinking about work b) talking about books and movies all weekend and c) shopping for strange things I dont really need should ptu me in a much better mood.

My wife better have all the fun she can at D*C this year, because next year we plan to go to Worldcon in Montreal instead.

I saw the schedule on the web site today and it looks like I'm just a big fat liar.

I've been taken off three of the DragonCon panels. One could be a misprint. No way THREE of them is. I'm still moderatin' the Humor panel on Friday and the Zombie panel on Saturday. At least I am so far.

If you have suggestions of what else I should do for fun this weekend, let me know.

I know it's silly, but I was looking forward to doing these panels. It's a crappy way to find out I won't be needed on them.

FRED’S SCHEDULE AT DRAGON*CON
(M)=Moderator (P)=Panelist

Friday

5:30PM Cairo (M) Funny As Hell Humor in horror
8:00PM Montreal (P) Lights! Camera! Cthulhu! Lovecraft films

Saturday

11:30AM Cairo (P) That 70s Horror Show Kolchak, Night Gallery, etc.
10:00 PM (M) Mondo Zombie Zombies in Fiction

Sunday

2:30PM Cairo (M) Amicus: Scream and Scream Again
Philip Nutman’s presentation on Amicus Studios

I have come to the conclusion that, barring some extreme examples, all non-Macish laptops are the same. I am probably buying an HP DV9825NR. This is not to be confused with the DV9815NR which has more of this but less of that and that and that.

This may be the most boring post I have ever made, but I submit that this is still more interesting than a picture of a cat.

I'm considering buying a new laptop computer. You can help me decide which one to get.

1. Tell me about your laptop - the good, the bad and the ugly. Let me know whart kind you have, any specs I may need to know, how long you had it, how it has worked for you and how service has been.

2. Please post on your blog that I'm comparison shopping and point others to me so they can tell me thier laptop stories.

C'mon! It'll be fun!

I'll mainly be using it for email, writing and dialing into work. I wont be playing a lot of games and will probably get rid of Solitaire as soon as I get it. I may be working w/ Access on it and doing a few publishing jobs as well (flyers, signs, etc.). I'll also play music on it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Fred

Fred posted twice in one day! It is the End of Days!!!!


We're thinking about signing up for the Clearwire internet service. Have any of you used it? Do you know anyone who uses it? How was it?

Look! It's Fred's bi-annual post?

Does Bi-annual mean twice a year or once every two years? I think it can mean both, which is why it is either a very clever or very confused word.

Anyway, here's the trouble I caused. Some people can't take a joke, or they didnt read the whole post. I think it was the latter....

http://www.aletheakontis.com/blog.htm

The rumors of my demise was merely wishful thinking. I havent had anything to say. Until today.


This may not mean anything to most of you but it means a lot to me.

The short story collection QUEEN OF THE COUNTRY by dgk goldberg is now available from Prime Books.

http://www.primebooks.net/books/book_detail.asp?isbn=978-0-8095-5636-6

I’ll be panelizing or moderationalizing at Dragoncon this year. Here’s my schedule.

Saturday
10:00-11:30 Zombies 101 Panelist*
1:00-2:30 Universal Monsters Panelist
5:30-7:00 Zombie Movies Panelist*

Sunday
1:00-2:30 Horror Comics Moderator

Monday
1:00-2:30 Short Stories Moderator

The asterisk (*) indicates the panel is part of the Apocalypse Rising track. Otherwise I’ll be in the Gothic Shadows track.

I’ll be watching the door at a couple of others, but who wants to see me do that? I’ll post a complete Gothic Shadows schedule soon.

Track me down and say hello!!

This is an update on Nurse Linda Ruttlen, the triage nurse on duty when Edit Rodriguez died in an emergency room floor.

The update? There isn't any. I looked on the web and found no news regarding this woman. I checked her records on the site for the California Board of Registred Nursing.

http://www2.dca.ca.gov/pls/wllpub/WLLQRYNA$LCEV2.QueryView?P_LICENSE_NUMBER=389152&P_LTE_ID=828

Last updated 7/05/07. License still active. No disciplinary actions listed.

( Please oh please, in the name of all that is Holy, stop sending me your iPhones! )

The new iPhone is out with much hoopla in the press, which will hopefully take away from any Paris Hilton nonsense. Someone tried to blow something up in Europe. Someone tried to blow something up in the Middle East and succeeded. Someone in Wikipedia posted that Chris Benoit’s wife was dead 14 hours before the police found the body, which means their accuracy quotient just went up immensely and soon Wikipedia will Predict The Future.

I can already predict the future. Here’s three:

The ‘NSync reunion tour will be a failure.
There will eventually be a George W. Bush Presidential Library. The irony of this will be missed by most people.
After the nuclear Holocaust of WWIII, the only survivors will be sixty billion roaches and Keith Richards.

I might not be online tomorrow, so I wanted to give an early Birthday Shout Out (have you ever noticed we don’t blog the way we talk sometimes? I would never say this) to PGTREMBLAY (yep, still to lazy to link this) who doesn’t know who the hell I am, but I came across his LJ and liked what I read enough to be a semi-frequent reader. He gives good blog, especially concerning speculative fiction writing. Also, he doesn’t blog about something every day, which I like because that means he takes a day or two off between entries to have a real life so he’ll have something to write about.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!! Go out tomorrow and buy yourself a toy.

Tonight the wifey is visiting friends and I am going to try to Clean The Apartment. This isn’t so much a hygienic procedure as an archaeological expedition. Not only do we have the stacks and boxes of stuff in the way that we haven’t sorted in years, but we have clothes thrown everywhere and we have the piles and boxes from the emptied storage unit and more stuff left over from Hypericon. It is a massive, eclectic and perilously teetering pile of stuff. I think I need a sign for the yard that says “Beware Of Stuff”.

I am considering various plans of attack.
Plan Alpha: I go to the computer room, drink diet soda and look at porn and hope the problem goes away. This didn’t work the last twenty-eight times so I’ll probably rule this one out.

Plan Beta: Burn the mother down and start over. I don’t know where the matches are. I also can’t find my phone charger, the last two movies I purchased or my red t-shirt. I would like to use/see/wear these things and although the Cleansing Flames of Housecleaning would get rid of a lot of my issues, it would prevent me from utilizing these items and the dozens of other usable/watchable/wearable stuff. Plus, men in trucks will spray water at me. Again. Color this plan scratched.

Plan … uh…. Three (is it Gamma? I think it’s Gamma.): I take a lot of stuff out of the living room and dump into another room. I clear the couches and chairs and the coffee table. Then, I start by going through the stuff, dividing clothes by how they should be washed. I also pile books into 5 stacks: Keep (largest), Get Rid Of (smallest), Decide Later (or else I wont get anything done), Belongs To The Wifey and Where The Hell Did This Come From?!?.
When the first pile of clothes reaches Washing Machine Load size, I put it into the Washing Machine. Then I cackle madly while putting in the detergent, shut the door, start that sucker up and yell “It’s Alive! It’s Alive!”
I also have a couple of empty boxes nearby so I can put in items that can be classified as OTHER but don’t have an obvious place to be stored. Thinks like drinking glasses and shampoo. Then I can decide what room these go in later.

(Laundry Tip: If you wash your underwear with the dark socks, they turn grey. Afterwards, you can wash your grey underwear with dark socks, but now it’s ok.)

Plan Delta: Take a nap, then go with Plan Alpha. This is procrastination at its worst. Seriously. Why put off till tomorrow what you can accomplish today. That porn’s not gonna watch itself, right? However, it will have the same results that plan A did the last 28 times, with the added bonus of it now being dark outside.

Plan 5 (I forgot the letter here. I think it’s either Epsilon or Spoon): Clean the Kitchen. We don’t have a dishwasher (unless you count me as the dishwasher) so I can stack the many many many plates and bowls waiting to be washed and start soaking them a few at a time while I clean up the mess of books, papers and debris on, under and around the dining/gaming table. I take out some trash, I clean off the stove, I restack the disaster that is on our shelves.

Plan Zeta: I stack the dishes, put some in the sink, let them soak, go into Plan Gamma with occasional breaks into the kitchen to do more dishes. If I can clear two chairs and a couch, do two loads of dishes and at least one load of laundry I will feel like I’ve accomplished something. Later I will treat myself to a movie. Hopefully one of the two I lost in the living room.

Wish me luck.

PS – If you didn’t read my last post please do so. Did I go to far? Did I cross a line here? Lemme know.

Ranting at 5AM often gets me into trouble. This will be one of those times.

( Edith Rodriguez and the nurse who didn't treat her )

Wifey and I wish a Happy Birthday Experience to both PERSONA_OBSCURA and TODDLYLES. I can't remember how to link to their LJ and don't feel like looking it up.

Also Happy Birthday to my friend BERFLE over on MySpace. We haven't spoken in a couple of years but I talked to him last night. I've known him for a loooooonnngggg time. You know you have a good friend when you don't keep in touch for a couple of years, then after the 5 minute catchup it's suddenly like you never stopped talking. I reached both him and METHRATTLE from MySpace (the only person from high school I ever gave a damn about keeping in touch with) this week and that's what it was like. I won't let two years go by like that again.

Oh, and I think it's PKTHEATER's birthday also.

Books I have read in 2007

JANUARY
The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce
Monster Nation by David Wellington
Three Days To Never by Tim Powers
The Town That Forgot How To Breathe by Kenneth J. Harvey
Deliberate Intent: A Lawyer Tells The True Story Of Murder By The Book by Rod Smolla
Mr. Monk Goes To The Firehouse by Lee Goldberg

FEBRUARY
Gateway by Frederik Pohl
Biology For Beginners by Wilson McCord Jr.
The Ruins by Scott Smith
The Legacy Of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
BloodAngel by Justine Musk
Mankind - Have A Nice Day by Mick Foley
Case And The Dreamer And Other Stories by Theodore Sturgeon
The Anxiety Of Everyday Objects by Aurelie Sheehan
Footsteps of Thunder by James F. David
The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
The Beast House by Richard Laymon

MARCH
Knees Up Mother Earth by Robert Rankin
Ghoul by Brian Keene
Carved In Blood by Jefferson Bass
Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Ticktock by Dean Koontz (in progress)
....and I gave up logging these books at this point. So, I'm moving this list so it wont be the first thing you see any more. We'll get them next year.

However, I will tell you that I am currently ejoying The Brightonomicon by Robert Rankin.

I decided, once again, to blow the dust off my blog and try to use it again. I also started logging into Trillian again to say Howdy to people and have even tried to spruce up my MySpace account that I may have logged onto a total of 6 times ever.

I’m doing this with the expectation of growing bored w/ the whole online community fantasy and forgetting about it all in six months. Maybe less.

Part of the reason I stayed out of here was the daunting task of reading all the friends posts. I had far too many friends added on. Many of them weren’t even people I liked to read about. I couldn’t remember why I ever friended many of them. (Is friended a word? I mean outside of ‘The Interweb’.) So, there has been a massive Friends Purge so I don’t get scared away every time I look at my profile. I may cut away some more. I doubt any of the people that didn’t make the cut even noticed. I doubt any of the ones that are still on the list notice either.

This new Cyber-Activity doesn’t mean I have anything particularly interesting to say, and it doesn’t mean I’ll be posting or reading every day. But I will post from time to time.

This is my old LJ bio:

Current location – I have lived in Nashville, TN since September 2002.

Past locations – I was born in WV, but lived in Charlotte, NC for several years and also spent a few months in Florida.

Work – I do computer stuff for hospitals. I actually like my job. Not every minute of it, but most of them.

Home – We have a tiny apartment with too much stuff in it. We should move but my only choices are to pay double the rent or drive an hour to work in the morning. I don’t like either option. I have too many books. I have too little space. Solution: Creative stacking.

Marital Status – Happily Married since Halloween 2003 to ebonange. It was a beautiful wedding. Much nicer than many I’ve been to. Some day I’ll tell you about it. Maybe.

Hobbies – Reading and going to or running SF conventions. Movies (especially horror).

I believe that . . .
1. some people in America love their comfortable fantasies (hating gays is more important than stopping the war; you can’t support the troops, hate the war, be disgusted by our President and still be a patriot; attacking the people who didn’t attack us is more important than finding the people who did, I’m a conservative so I’m morally superior) more than they love America.
2. in the wise words of Dennis Miller ‘That which does not kill us makes us funnier.’
3. people should read at least two novels for every self-help book they read because we learn more from parables than stereo instructions.
4. someone who doesn’t read has very little advantage over someone who can’t.
5. the problem with some polygamous people is that they try to love three or four people when they can’t even love one.
6. I have no interest in S&M or the SCA for the same reason: I don’t want to hit anyone with a stick as part of a game. If I grab a stick and hit you with it, it’s because you’ve done something you shouldn’t have. Don’t do it again.
7. the person who can give a two-hour impromptu dissertation on the value of Anime deserves less respect tht the person who can hold their head up high and say “Yes I like Japanese cartoons!” (btw – I like some Japanese cartoons).
7b. same thing for Graphic Novels vs. Comic Books.
8. my significant other is , in some way, cooler than yours.
9. Hawaian shirts make me look dashing (why , yes, I DO live in my own little fantasy world. Why do you ask?)
10. a pink flamingo in front of your house is tacky, and two flamingos looks silly, but 25 of them suddenly becomes Cool.

* * * * * * *

This was going to be my newer bio:

Current location – I have lived in Nashville, TN since September 2002. I have lived all but the first six months in the same little apartment near downtown. The place is too small for us, but the rent is cheap and we are near everything. Having to choose which Chinese restaurant will deliver your dinner to you is heaven to some people.

I have been slowly purging the place of possessions. I need to get rid of some books. This is a sign of a major shift in my personal priorities. I am older now and I judge a bare space as a good place to sit as often as I do a shelf to stack books.

Past locations – Born and raised in West Virginia but they caught me reading and made me leave. It seems that Book Learnin’ is Of The Devil.

Work – I do computer stuff for hospitals. My job is fine if I ignore screaming customers with screwed up priorities, nepotism, being treated like a child and having no chance for advancement. I was recently given a special project but warned not to have any ‘pride of ownership’. No worries. I haven’t had any pride in what I do here in years.

Marital Status – Happily Married since Halloween 2003 to ebonange. It was a beautiful wedding. I don’t know why she’s still here. I expected her to upgrade to a better husband two years ago.

* * * * *

However, I decided to take the whole bio-thingy a new direction entirely.

To make things more interesting (or perhaps less so) I created a community called booksreadin2007.
This way we can look at all the lists at the same time.

I'm going to keep track of what I read in 2007. I saw someone else do this in thier blog (cannot remember who at the moment) and thought it was brilliant.

I created a post dated 12/31/07 23:59 and started the list. As you go to my blog for the rest of the year you'll see this post first. I'll add each book throughout the year and we'll get a glimpse of my reading tastes. If you decide to do the same, let me know and we can watch each other's lists. Feel free to ask about anything I've read or make recommendations.

Fred

Addendum: You have to select DATE OUT OF ORDER on your December list or it will cause errors on any current posts.