Oh, This So Sucks!

Damn! The one time I actually wish I lived in L.A. Or, at least in So. Cal. The various Creative Directors of each God of War game together, under one roof, discussing their different visions and how they came about adding to the man, the myth, the legend -- Kratos, the God of War!

Another Awesome Show From HBO -- Damn!

I don't know how they keep churning them out, but god bless 'em!

Premiering in just under a month on September 19th, "Boardwalk Empire" is a show from "The Sopranos" head writer, Terence Winter, set in 1920's Atlantic City during the early days of Prohibition. Steve Buscemi plays Enoch "Nucky" Thomson, the county's treasurer and real man running things behind the scenes. Seeing the "Noble Experiment" as a golden opportunity rather than a hindrance, he quickly gets in bed with several nasty out-of-town gangsters like the notorious Big Jim Colosimo and Arnold Rothstein--as well as relative newcomers to the crime biz, ones Lucky Luciano and Al Capone--to use the 18th Amendment as their personal piggy bank.

Wait, Do I Have Synesthesia? Or Am I Just Looney Tunes?

This is blowing my mind right now. After all these years thinking myself "normal," I've been forced to reevaluate all I thought I knew about my cognitive preconceptions. I was talking to Lisa the other day about how the number 5 was always my favorite number ever since I was little because: one, it was a boy like me; and, two, it was a sensible and well-behaved number. Which is how I wanted to be in school.

Lisa looked at me like I had two heads and said: "Wait, wait, wait . . . back up. The number 5 is a boy?" She couldn't understand what I meant, and I couldn't understand why she couldn't understand.

"Don't you have genders for your numbers?" I asked.

I think she actually turned pale and gave me a funny look. "Uh, like . . . noooooo?"

Suddenly my whole world came crashing down. "So I guess this means letters don't have gender for you, either?"

Her concerned expression only confirmed my sinking feeling. Yes, I was a freak! Luckily, she didn't think I was crazy at all and actually thought it was kind of cute, if not downright hilarious. But it was a shock to me to realize that I had this thing I did that perhaps not many others do.

Highlander On Blu-ray -- Oh HELLS To The YEAH!!!

I don't know how I missed this notice yesterday, but IGN.com is reporting that, on November 2 this year (incidentally, my brother's birthday -- too bad he's not as big of a fan as I am), Lionsgate will finally release a Blu-ray edition of the very first Highlander movie starring Christophe Lambert.

You can read more of the details by clicking on this link.

They're also releasing Highlander 2 on Blu-ray as well, but that's not even worth contemplating right now. Because, as you know, the very first movie that came out in 1986 is DA SHIT!!! I absolutely love this film above all others. It is my be all and end all of my entire 30-odd years of movie watching. I've owned several versions of this film going all the way back to the original crappy VHS copy which I purchased in 1993, and ending with the Anchor Bay "Immortal Edition" DVD from a few years back. The last one, I had thought at the time, was the EPITOME of what this movie should look and sound like. But I was wrong. Oh so wrong.

When The Boss Calls Out Sick

An old college buddy of mine posted up this FedEx commercial on Facebook. I thought it was hilarious enough to share. It's actually two separate commercials tacked on to make one, but the funny is still apparent:

Various and Sundry

Didn't have any specific reason for updating today, so I thought I'd throw together a bunch of various observations about what's going on in my life these days. Didn't feel like throwing all this up on Facebook, since that place is pretentious and crowded lately, and I just need a break from that scene.

So, what's been going on? Well . . .

The Hypocrisy Is Strong In This One

LOL! I love The Daily Show. Jon Stewart and crew should charge us admission to watch them make utter and complete fools on a continual basis out of those ignorant bigots over on FOX News. The show could be about nothing but this and I would happily watch. Check out this clip from the latest episode, and tell me he did not get them but good! Especially watch for that one dumbass, Eric Bolling, with his index cards and yellow highlighted "facts". Yes, "facts" that just happen to have question marks after them:



I've decided not to say anything here on the blog over this ridiculous issue re: the Cultural Center/Mosque *near* Ground Zero. I've said enough on Facebook, for better or worse. So this video will have to suffice as my officially endorsed mouthpiece to the thoughts churning around furiously inside my head this week.

And of course, because this is Jon Stewart, it's full of the funny.

Mary Robinette Kowal Has Big Brass Ones

Bigger than mine, I tell ya! (LOL! Don't mind me, I told her I would use this as my blog title)

Tonight I attended the "Fantastic Fiction" reading series at KGB bar here in NYC, during which the erudite and lovely Mary Robinette Kowal read from her newly published first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey -- a Jane Austen semi-pastiche set in the Victorian age where magic abounds. Her reading of the novel was superb and a true highlight of the night, but made even more impressive by the fact that she affected a British accent in the dramatization of a select passage from the book. When she made the announcement before the reading, I must admit I mentally winced and prepared my ears for an assault most foul. But I have to say, she was quite good. Quite good, indeed! I was thoroughly impressed. I could only stand there in awe as she pulled off this singular feat, knowing full well that--should the day come when I myself may have to stand in front of a crowd and read from my latest work--I could never be quite so bold.

Before the night's readings kicked off, Ms. Kowal went around the room to personally greet each attendee and to hand out these neat Asian-inspired handheld fans as a free token of her appreciation. Wow, talk about Class with a capital "C"! In addition to taking a quick photo with myself and Tarrell, she also autographed a copy of her novel to my wife and I when I announced that her book would be the gateway drug I could use to convince Lisa to finally read something in the Fantasy genre. Oh yeah!

Tarrell and I also got to meet the amazingly talented Nora Jemisin (pictured on the far right, above), author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and current guest blogger on John Scalzi's juggernaut online blog, Whatever. In fact, both Mary and Nora are guest blogging on the site for the next month or so while Scalzi takes a much needed hiatus. You should check it out sometime.

In addition to Ms. Kowal, Laura Anne Gilman was also on hand to read a passage from the first novel in her ongoing and very popular urban fantasy series, "Cosa Nostradamus":

You have to excuse the extreme grain off the camera on my new iPhone 4. It's a great camera, don't get me wrong, but the lights at KGB were turned down very, very low for dramatic atmosphere. It's a wonder I got any pics at all.

All in all we had a fantastic time tonight -- just look at how crowded it got! There's nothing better than listening to exciting new writers read from their latest works amongst a crowd of both SF professionals and fans alike, all of us crammed into a small converted East Village loft in the dead of Summer. Nothing better at all!

Thanks to my crit group friend, Carole, for buying me that drink. And a very special thanks goes out to the hosts of the reading series, Ellen Datlow and Matt Kressel, as well as to the bartenders at KGB for continuously plying me with non-stop rounds of the tasty Russian imported dark lager, Baltika:

Cheers to you all!

Somewhere In Fly Land, There's A Wanted Poster Out For My Arrest

If flies have their own little nation, then I've just been brought up on war crimes for mass genocide by the fly tribunal!

My, my, my . . . and after just mentioning in this thread about how I abhor killing even insects.

See, I don't know how this happened. But for some reason, around this exact same time of year, I get a huge fly infestation in my kitchen. I have no idea where they come from, since my windows have screens on them. But they all seem to hang out on my blinds in order to catch the day's sun, and don't really bother anyone . . . unless you happen to move the blinds. Which I did.

Now, these flies are weird. They're not normal flies. These flies have green backs, and they are not very coordinated. They don't fly much, and when disturbed immediately return back to their original resting spots just mere seconds later. This, of course, makes them extremely easy to kill. Last year was the first time they showed up in my kitchen. I thought somehow that these were baby flies, and that a pregnant fly must have gotten caught inside my kitchen and this infestation was the result. I even found a dead moth caught in my blinds that seemed to prove this point. And since I didn't want to kill these flies, and also since they were so easy to herd, I merely opened the windows wide and shooed them out into the great outdoors beyond -- to mix and mingle with other flies and be merry. Sure, it was a pain in the ass because some would inevitably fly back in while I was pushing others out. But, by the end of the afternoon, they were all gone and I could rest easy. I never did have a fly problem again.

Until now.

500 Blog Entries . . . My How Time Flies!

On August 24 last year I wrote this blog entry commemorating the 1st anniversary of The Bimillennial Man, which coincidentally also happened to be my 300th entry at the time.

Well today, not even 1 year after that, I've somehow managed to reach the 500 milestone. Boy, I never would have thought it would take me less than a year to write up 200 entries. What on Earth did I find to talk about THAT many times?

But I just wanted to say: thanks for being there with me every step of the way. I mean it.

That is all for now.

My Latest Story Is Now Up And Readable!

Well, actually, this is one of my older stories. But after shopping it around for almost a year now, someone's finally bought and published my sci-fi short "Minutemen."  That somebody being Afterburn SF magazine, the same folks who were kind enough to publish one of my first fiction sales ever, "Enemy of My Enemy," back in early 2009.

"Minutemen" came about after me daydreaming, as I often do, about consciousness and orders of magnitude thereof. As a kid, one day I came to the determined resolution that even tiny creatures like ants and roaches had a conscious, and that therefore I should not kill them. Even to this day it is hard for me not to empathize with living creatures of any kind -- be they insect, animal, or even human. And while I do occasionally exercise a bit of pest control around the house, I still feel bad when I do. Spiders, however, I *never* kill. I like spiders. They're calm, patient, and strike only when they must. They prefer to live in dark corners and to be forgotten about, which is fine by me.

In any event, ever since I was a child I would wonder what the tiny bugs are thinking. Do they feel pain? Do they see us bigger folk as gods? Do they sit around the cockroach version of a campfire and tell stories about us? And, in turn, is there some great, omnipotent being out there in the universe that regards us the same way as we do ants? Are we just one big collective annoyance to God, scurrying across His cosmic linoleum kitchen floor? Or are we, instead, instruments of His own agenda? Tools, in fact, that are bereft of His all-encompassing empathy?

Perhaps all of the above. If so, I can't think of any greater irony in the universe, can you?

And so, I bring you the latest incarnation of all this interesting daydreaming. I hope you read the story and like it, even if it's a little weird for your tastes. "Minutemen" is the tale of Earth's first line of defense against a mysterious interplanetary enemy invasion.

And the title, if you can figure it out, is a triple pun . . .

CLICK HERE to read the story.

And please, please, PLEASE leave me a comment letting me know what you think. I live for feedback, if you must know.

Uh Oh . . . Now They Done Did It!

I shouldn't have seen this, I really shouldn't. Because now I'm hooked!

Now mind you, I knew all about Apple's iBooks app--the eReader program for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch to rival Kindle--long before now, but I never could believe in the promise of reading books on such a small device as my iPhone 4. That is until today!

After reading on John Scalzi's blog that his latest novella, "The God Engines" was out for purchase on the app, I finally relented and downloaded it for free (the app, not the book). And, wow, what a great program this is! It comes with Winnie the Pooh already pre-loaded, and even that alone was enough to convince me that, despite the small screen, the resolution on the new iPhone 4 makes the words really pop out at you.

So, I've been reading "The God Engines" and I have to say, I think this may just be the answer to my prayers. See, I'm a man who loves to read, but absolutely HATES carrying books around everywhere I go. Especially when I commute on the crowded NYC subways every day. But having this palm-sized handy device--which I carry with me all the time anyway--able to take over the task of being my portable library is like a godsend on the 4 train during rush hour. The iPhone 4 is so easy to hold up, and the words so easy to read, that now I'm afraid I might have to stop buying hardcopy books. Not completely, mind you, because I still love collecting my favorite titles. But this may just cut my physical book purchasing down by 60% in the future. Yes, by that much!

In fact, the only thing stopping me from adopting this new book-buying philosophy right this minute is the still lacking selection being offered by Apple. But, of course, this will change in time. They keep expanding every week it seems. Pretty soon, they're going to eclipse the Kindle. Mark my words!

Trending This Week . . .

I don't usually do this, preferring to leave such things to my Facebook account . . . but this one time I will ignore better judgment and bring to you on this here blog the latest funny vid of the week that's been making the rounds. A month ago it was that ridiculous "Double Rainbow" vid. Remember that craze? Click on the link if you need a refresher.

Well, now the craze is the "Woman wakes up to find an intruder in her bed" vid. This was taken from a real live news story on WAFF48 out of Alabama, in which a would-be rapist climbed through a second-story window and tried to attack a young woman asleep in her bed. This normally wouldn't be funny news, but OH MAN you have *got* to see the woman's brother when he's interviewed at the 1:00 minute mark. I swear, it's friggin HILARIOUS!



Now, as these crazy Interwebs trends go, somebody already went ahead and remixed the interview into a catchy auto-tune beat. It, too, is equally hilarious:



I implore you all to check out both vids. Yes, you'll feel dumber in the process by doing so, but sometimes you just have to sacrifice a few thousand brain cells to the gods of Internet hijinks. Oh, but don't blame me if--like a horrible car wreck you can't take your eyes off of--you find yourself returning to that second vid over and over again.

It's okay, I won't think any less of you if you do. It'll be our little secret.

Promise.