Friday, May 31, 2013

Box Office Blitz Turns 21!

Much like in high school, last week the big muscular jocks took the Star Trek nerds and gave them an atomic wedgie with "Fast & Furious 6" making over $120M compared to the paltry $70M Star Trek made its opening weekend.  That saddens me as those Fast and Furious movies seem to appeal to the lowest common denominator, all apologies to Offutt.  But now Vin Diesel, the Rock, and company have to face off against Will Smith.  Who will triumph and who will fall?  That's what we're here to figure out!

Anyway you should know the rules by now.  If not, just look up the first week's post.  Though the prizes have been updated for 2nd and 3rd place.


Here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)

  • 42
  • After Earth* (They must have bumped it up because on the Iron Man 3 trailer it said June 7)
  • Epic
  • Fast & Furious 6
  • Iron Man 3
  • Jurassic Park 3D
  • Mud 
  • Not Today*
  • Now You See Me*
  • Oblivion
  • Olympus Has Fallen
  • Oz the Great & Powerful
  • Peeples
  • Star Trek Into Darkness
  • The Big Wedding
  • The Great Gatsby 
  • The Hangover 3
  • The Iceman 
  • What Maisie Knew*
I was going to put "After Earth" first because you never want to count Will Smith out (as I wrote a whole blog entry about in 2011) but then I found out M. Night Shamaylan was involved, so my picks this week will be:
  1. Fast & Furious 6 $50M
  2. After Earth $40M 
  3. Hangover 3 $30M 
This week's bonus question worth 400 points is this:
Will the magic-themed "Now You See It" top the paltry $10.3M brought in by "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" its opening weekend in March?

Answer YES, NO, or THEY WILL TIE (unlikely) in the comments along with your picks.

Results will post on Sunday.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Thursday Review: Iron Man 3

I'm too lazy to download an Iron Man 3 pic
This contains "spoilers" and I'm not doing a plot summary because I think all the usual commenters have seen it already.

I know, I'm way behind on my "summer" movie watching.  What with the hassle of moving to a new apartment this month, I haven't had a lot of time devoted to watching movies.  But Memorial Day I had a little free time at last and finally went.

Anyway, to say the 3rd installment of the Iron Man series is better than the second wouldn't be saying much.  The second wasn't a terrible movie, but it wasn't that good either.  Other than Scarlett Johannson running around in a tight-fitting black jumpsuit, I'd be hard-pressed to remember anything from that movie.  There were some drones flying around, Stark and Rhodes put their beams together to blow up Mickey Rourke and there you go, cue the Avengers cookie scene!

The 3rd one nobly tries to add in character conflict as Stark battles PTSD from what happened in "The Avengers", but I still didn't end up loving it.  It seemed too formulaic to me.  I had mostly figured out the plot twist involving the Mandarin long in advance.  I thought he was some kind of hologram, but in actuality it was far lower tech than that.  When Pepper "dies" I knew she wasn't dead because she'd been injected with that Extremis stuff.  So really I sat around for most of the movie waiting for relatively obvious things to happen.

This same thing happened when I watched "Hellboy 2" whenever that came out.  I had pretty much figured out the whole movie in the prologue, so I just sat there waiting for the idiot heroes to figure things out.  That makes it largely unsatisfying.

Of course I didn't watch this in 3D and really I can't see how it would be much improved by watching it in that format.  I guess when all the Iron Man suits are flying around that might be cool, but since most of the movie focuses on Stark out of the suit, it doesn't really seem like it would make much difference.

Something that's cropped up since "The Avengers" is when the shit hits the fan, I wonder why Nick Fury doesn't show up with that floating aircraft carrier of his.  Why doesn't Stark call on his buddy the Hulk or Captain America to help him out?  Actually those Extremis guys seem like better enemies for Captain America since he was part of a super-soldier program and so were they.

And if it was so easy for Tony to get the shrapnel out of his heart, why didn't he do that in the last movie when that magnet in his chest was killing him?  Actually, I thought the thing in his chest powered the Iron Man suits, so why can't he use it to power up the Mark 42 when it gets trashed?

When I pick at a movie like this, it means I didn't really like it that much.  By contrast a movie like "The Dark Knight" or "The Dark Knight Rises" I'll ignore any potential nitpicks and defend to the death those other people point out.

Overall I'd give it 3/4 stars, though I think my own personal feeling was more like 2.5/4 stars.

Tomorrow Box Office Blitz continues!

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

May Recap

So what was popular in May?  The most views this month has been Sandra Ulrich Almazan's guest post about Shakespeare.  Second was Box Office Blitz 18, wherein I added more fabulous prizes to the mix.  And third was my rant about annoying corporations.  Incidentally Comcast could not have screwed up my move anymore than they did.  They cut off my phone on the wrong date, transferred service to the wrong address, and lost the appointment for when they were supposed to install an outlet in the bedroom.  That's like a perfect storm of incompetence.

Notable this month is that the entire Scarlet Knight series was 99 cents.  If you haven't bought them yet, you still have a couple of days.  And if you're procrastinating, they will triple to quintuple in price once June comes around, so pull the trigger now and keep them on your ereader or in the Cloud until you're ready to read them.  If you never read them you're out $7.92.  Somehow I doubt that will break you financially.  That's barely 2 gallons of gas in these parts.

Here's a rundown of stuff I've watched since the last recap.  I've noticed people only seem to talk about the first one, so I'll put my favorite one first.

Shuffle:  This is one of those really low-budget indie movies you sometimes find on Netflix.  It's kind of like "Slaughterhouse-V" meets "The Time Traveler's Wife" with some "Memento" and "Groundhog Day" mixed in.  Basically this guy named Lovell wakes up every day at a different point in his life.  He might be 92 or 29 or 9 or whatever.  He can't remember who he is or anything, so he has to piece things together with clues he learns everyday.  Eventually he realizes his childhood friend and later wife is dead and tries to figure out why.  I really enjoyed it all up until the end.  It's one of those that ends too happily, to the point I started to wonder if it was a Mormon commercial on the importance of family or something.  Anyway it's only like 80 minutes long, so it's a good quick movie if you like your romance with a little sci-fi or your sci-fi with a little romance.

Alter Egos:  This is another really low-budget indie movie on Netflix.  It involves a couple of superheroes who are in the Hamptons at some little motel out of season, supposedly to transfer a prisoner.  Fridge, so named because he has ice powers, is having an identity crisis to the point he thinks his girlfriend is cheating on him with his secret identity Brendan.  Things get more confusing for him when he meets the hot chick running the motel.  At the same time there's a plot concerning the mysterious prisoner and that the superheroes have lost their government funding since they've captured all the supervillains.  It's a fun movie, even if the superhero costumes look worse than pretty much any cosplay you'd see at ComiCon.   And speaking of superheroes...

Alphas:  I think I had ample notice this existed since they probably advertised it 15,000 times during a Twilight Zone marathon on Syfy.  Anyway, it's a fun show about essentially a bargain basement X-Men-type team.  Their headquarters is an ordinary office building, they wear their regular clothes, and they ride around in a minivan.  But they essentially do the same thing as the X-Men in using their powers like enhanced senses/strength, mind control, etc. to stop evildoers, in particular another group of "alphas" known as Red Flag.  The Professor X-type guy is played by David Straitharn, who you might remember from the third Bourne movie, "Goodnight & Good Luck," and "A League of Their Own" among others; I'm a little bummed he's down to doing a show on Syfy now.  It's a good show and I'm sure the next time I watch a Twilight Zone marathon on Syfy they'll be advertising Season 2...which I'll still probably forget to watch until it's on Netflix.

Fringe:  I watched a few episodes of this and it's OK.  The problem is I usually watch Netflix during meals and there seems to be a lot of gross stuff going on in every episode, so it's not great for my digestion.

Portlandia:  I hadn't realized this was a sketch show.  It's kind of funny, but after a few episodes it all gets to be the same.  Suffice it to say there are a lot of hippies in Portland (Oregon).  Supposedly.  I have never been there to confirm that.

Children's Hospital:  Recently Adult Swim began to add its shows on Netflix, which was great because I could finally watch "Robot Chicken" on Netflix.  Except so far it's only the first season of each show.  (Though in this case it's more like two seasons as the first "season" was compiled from web shorts.)  Anyway, I'd watched a few episodes of Children's Hospital late at night when I couldn't sleep and didn't remember Robot Chicken doesn't air on Thursdays.  Like Portlandia it's kind of funny, but it can be sort of spotty.  Ironically Rob Corddry created the show and yet he's the one I like the least of the characters.  Maybe because clowns are creepy.  Or maybe it's that his character is supposed to be the one who isn't funny because he's always trying to be funny to use the "healing power of laughter."  Anyway, since each episode is only 10-11 minutes I watched them over breakfast in the morning instead of hearing the top stories and weather for three more times on the local news.

Lay the Favorite:  This was like a slightly less dumb "Showgirls" only with gambling instead of stripping.  Bruce Willis cashes another paycheck as a veteran gambler whom a naive girl gets a crush on when she starts to work for his bookie operation.  Vince Vaughn is more annoying than usual as a rival bookie.  Catherine Zeta-Jones was completely unrecognizable as Bruce Willis' jealous wife.  That guy from "Fringe" and "Dawson's Creek" shows up as a rival for the naive girl's affections.  I guess it was based on a true story, though like "Pain and Gain" it probably didn't stick too close to the material.  I was never sure if the girl was supposed to be some kind of "Rain Man" type idiot savant or just an idiot.

Pawn:  Another of those B+ movies I got free from Amazon to review featuring Michael Chiklis, Ray Liotta, and Forest Whitaker, who dies in the first 20 minutes.  You can read my review here.  I'm still not sure why Michael Chiklis is playing a British guy robbing a Russian diner in Hartford, CT.  At first when he started to talk in the accent I was wondering if maybe that was part of a clever scheme to conceal his identity, like maybe so the people in the diner would tell the cops it was a fat bald British guy and if anyone pulled him over he could talk American and be cleared.  Such was not the case.  So, I'm confuzzed.  Since Chiklis produced the movie, maybe he just thought it sounded cool and decided to do it.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Two Cent Tuesdays: When Secondary Characters Attack!

Here's an old blog entry from 2010 that describes a problem I had with  Betrayal Begets Blood, Tales of the Scarlet Knight, Volume 5, which was supposed to release this month but now has been out for months!

When I started out, I expected it’d be kind of short, maybe 250-300 pages.  It ended at over 400 pages or 131,000 words, which made it the second longest thing I ever wrote.  (NOTE:  I think the final draft is about 110,000 words.)  This isn’t because of my story arc;  the problem is that I’ve developed an overabundance of secondary characters.

In an entry I talked about how to downsize characters.  That works pretty well for the first book in the series.  The problem as you get to 4, 5, 8 books in a series is that you can’t do that very easily.  For obvious reasons you can’t combine characters who already exist–although I’ve done enough weird shit in this series that I might try it–so all you can do is kill them off.  Which I’ve already done.  Since the series started I’ve killed our hero Emma Earl’s boss, her aunt, her mentor, her best friend’s fiancee, and her weird friend Marie.  Still I find that my stories are increasingly becoming ensemble pieces instead of just focusing on Emma, her sidekick best friend, and whoever the villain would be.

This is because as the series goes on, the secondary characters who started life essentially as props, became actual characters with lives of their own.  It wasn’t something I consciously willed to happen, more like something that happened organically as things rolled along.

The best example in the series is that I introduced two old ladies whom Emma meets when she’s shopping for a formal dress.  It turns out the old ladies are witches who’ve lived for the last 500 years or so and help protect the magic armor Emma finds to become the superhero the Scarlet Knight.  One witch is named Agnes Chiostro and the other Sylvia Joubert–though they’re actually sisters with Agnes being the older one.

Now when things started, Agnes didn’t even have a first name and Sylvia didn’t have a last name.  Agnes was intended to be Emma’s adviser on magic stuff and Sylvia sort of her Q/Lucius Fox who would help her out with weapons or other gadgets.  They had really basic personalities–Agnes being the nice grandmotherly one and Sylvia being more of a gruff loner.  I gave them only a little bit of backstory in that Agnes was once married and Sylvia deals weapons as a sideline business.  That was it.

They weren’t featured too heavily in the second story, but then things started to snowball in the third one.  At the end Sylvia loses her left hand in a battle with an evil goddess, but otherwise didn’t change a lot.  At the end I had one of my brainstorms where I decided for whatever reason that Agnes has a sort of mid-mid-mid-life crisis when she’s nearly killed in the same battle and decides to make herself look young and hot.  That in turn set things in motion for the fourth story, where she meets a boy–and then a girl.  (It’d take too long to explain that sequence of events.)  This in turn makes Sylvia jealous and she decides to make herself young and hot and finds her own boyfriend.

Now in the fifth book things are really spinning out of control as I promoted Sylvia to a reluctant villain.  The reason the thing is going so damned long is that I’ve spent dozens of pages flashing back to the late 18th and early/mid 19th Centuries to tell the story of Agnes meeting her husband, who in turn has a covert affair with Sylvia, who in turn secretly gives birth to Agnes’ husband’s child, which she gives up for adoption, and who eventually is the great-to-however-many-times-grandmother of the book’s primary villain.  So not only are we greatly expanding Sylvia’s story, but in turn it expands Agnes’ as well.

The gist of all this is that in the first story the characters were assigned a fairly small role.  Now as the series grinds on, their roles have become expanded, and with that the characters themselves expand, developing more in-depth personalities and backstories.  That means in turn they take pages away from focusing on our hero.

Is that a bad thing?  Not entirely.  I mean by the fifth book we already know Emma Earl’s history.  (Which is sort of a combination of Batman/Spider-Man’s history.)  There’s really not anything new we can add to her backstory or her personality at this point.  That’s all been pretty much set in concrete by the fifth story.  So in a way it’s good–at least in my mind–that some of the other characters can pick up a little of the slack and make things seem more interesting and fresh, so it doesn’t entirely seem like I’m just using the same template story over and over again.

On the flip side, as I mentioned, it can take away some of our hero’s importance.  The last thing I want is to spread the story so thin among all these characters that our hero Emma becomes a secondary character herself.  The challenge then is to keep her at the forefront while allowing the others a little more face time.

Of course the easy thing to do would be not to expand the roles of secondary characters in the first place.  But then, as I mentioned, things can get stale.  One of the things that bugged me about the City Watch books of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is that other than the main character Sam Vimes, none of the other characters really seemed to develop much.  A couple got promoted, but we didn’t really learn anything more about them.  In particular the werewolf character bugged me because every story she was in she’d bitch about being a werewolf, which seemed like her entire role in every story besides beating people up.  After a while I wanted a little personal growth.  Either that or let her fade away, but don’t give me the same spiel over and over again about how being a werewolf sucks–I heard you the first time!

The other real problem in my case is that some of the stuff I come up with in the fifth story conflicts with stuff in the first four stories.  That’s not a huge problem because none will ever be published.  Still, at some point I’d need to retroactively fix things.  But maybe by the eighth story things will largely be set in concrete.  Of course by then we’ll have introduced some more secondary characters.  Argh!

Anyway, if you don’t believe me about any of this, just think of “The Simpsons,” which is my favorite show.  When it started in 1989 you pretty much just had Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.  Then along came a second wave of characters like Moe, Barney, Mr. Burns, Milhouse,  Smithers, Grandpa, Skinner, Chief Wiggum, Flanders, and others.  By the 21st season you have characters who started out as one-line jokes (Cletus the slack-jawed yokel, Disco Stu, ol’ Gil, crazy cat-throwing lady) who have now become recurring players.  Very few characters have been retired (Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz after Phil Hartman died, Maude Flanders and Bleeding Gums Murphy when they were killed off) but things haven’t gotten too out of control because each show generally focuses on one or more of the core Simpson family characters.  That probably explains part of why it’s been on for 21 years.

So in conclusion, it’s good to expand on secondary characters a little, but don’t let them take over.  All things in moderation.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Motocross Me Cover Reveal and Comic Captions 5/27/13

MOTOCROSS ME
Release date: June 26th, 2013
Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Blurb:
When Hana Fisher moves to the small town of Mixon, Texas to live with her dad, she dreads having to work at the boring pile of dirt he fondly calls a motocross track. But when she gets there, she finds the rinky-dink dirt bike track from her childhood has grown into the most respected racing track in the state.

Now popular by association, Hana endures the pain and sweat of working in the summer heat in order to fit in with a sport she’s growing to love. She gets a real family, a best friend and not just one, but two of the fastest racers trying to win her heart.

When Hana abuses her status as the track owner’s daughter to help the gorgeous Ryan Russo cheat in the biggest race of the year, she risks more than just losing her job. Every good thing in her life is at stake now- her friends, her dad’s trust, and Ash Carter- the kind-hearted racer who may not be as alluring as Ryan, but is proof that nice guys don’t always finish last.

Author Bio:
Cheyanne is a native Texan with a fear of cold weather and a coffee addiction that probably needs an intervention. She loves books, sarcasm, Xbox and paid holidays. She lives near the beach with her daughter, one spoiled rotten puppy and a cat who is most likely plotting to take over the world.



And now it's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Action Comics #893


I'll go first
Death:  You were expecting a bony old guy with a scythe?
Now it's your turn!

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Box Office Blitz Week 20 Results!

OK, so they did post box office results today.  Which is good since I already have a post scheduled on Monday--two posts really since it's a cover reveal plus a Comic Captions. 

Anyway, here are the results:
  1. Fast & Furious 6 $122M
  2. Hangover 3 $51M
  3. Fake Star Trek 2 $48M
My crappy picks were:
  1. Fast & Furious 6 $70M
  2. Epic $50M
  3. Hangover 3 $40M
So I get 100 for F&F and 50 for Hangover.

Offutt picked:
1) Fast Six at $85 million.
2) Hangover Part III will make $50 million.
3) Epic will make $40 million.

That's 100 for each of the first two for 200 total.

Shit got real for Rusty this week:
Hangover 3 - $70 mil
F&F 6 - $60 mil
Star Trek $44 mil

That's a trifecta for him.

Pagel picked:
1. F&F6: $55 mil
2. Hangover 3: $40 mil
3. Epic: $39 mil.

Which is 200 for him.

Chubby Chatterbox picked:
Hangover III $80 mil.
Star Trek $70 mil.
Iron Man III $50 mil.

That's 50 for Hangover and 50 for Trek for 100 total.

And the winner this week is Andrew Leon who picked:
 1. F&F 6 -- $100m
2. Hangover 3 -- $80m
3. Star Trek -- $40m

That's a trifecta for him plus the 500 point bonus since he was closer than Rusty.  And since current leader Tony Laplume didn't play this week, Andrew makes up some ground towards first place, though he's still a ways off.



Box Office Blitz


Scoreboard







20 Total
1 Tony Laplume 0 7700
2 Andrew Leon 800 6950
3 PT Dilloway 150 6000
4 Rusty Carl 300 4850
5 Michael Offutt 200 4300
6 Maurice Mitchell 0 3700
7 Briane Pagel 200 3500
8 Stephen Hayes 100 2000
9 Cindy Borgne 0 1300
10 David P King 0 200
11 Donna Hole 0 200


1750 40700

Friday, May 24, 2013

Box Office Blitz Week 20!

Things are really going to heat up this week.  Last week's picks were pretty obvious, but this week with three new movies added to the mix, it's going to be far more difficult.  You have to wonder whether Iron Man 3 or Fake Star Trek 2 or Gatsby will be able to hold on in the top 3 given this onslaught of new movies. 

You should know the rules by now.  If not, just look up the first week's post.  Though the prizes have been updated for 2nd and 3rd place.

Here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)


  • 42
  • Disconnect 
  • Epic*
  • Evil Dead
  • Fast & Furious 6*
  • Iron Man 3
  • Jurassic Park 3D
  • Mud
  • Oblivion
  • Olympus Has Fallen
  • Oz the Great & Powerful
  • Pain and Gain 
  • Peeples
  • Star Trek Into Darkness
  • The Big Wedding
  • The Great Gatsby 
  • The Hangover 3*
  • The Iceman
My picks this week will be:
  1. Fast & Furious 6 $70M
  2. Epic $50M
  3. Hangover 3 $40M
 Not very creative choices really.  I haven't heard much of "Epic" but it's a kid's movie and those almost always do well, especially against R-rated movies. *CoughPrometheusCough*

Taking a week off from the bonus question.  And no surveys either.  I've been too danged busy moving for all that. I forget if they wait until Monday to include Memorial Day.  I think it might be.  In which case the results would post Monday.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Thursday Review: Watchmen

This is my review of Watchmen the graphic novel.  I actually like the movie even more.  But it's pretty awesome in any form.

Watchmen

Written by Allen Moore

Illustrated by Dave Gibbons

(5/5 stars)

I've never been interested in reading comic books, which is ironic because I watched comic book heroes on TV and in movies, but I never could get myself to read any of the source material. Because I'm so out of the loop on comics, I didn't know what a turning point the "Watchmen" series was for the comic book industry until I heard about it on the History Channel. Now with the movie coming out in March, I thought I'd finally give the source material a try. I was not disappointed.

It's important to note straight off that these are not your father's comic book heroes. What "Watchmen" did when it came out in the mid-80s was to make comic book characters REAL--or as real as can be expected. The "costumed adventurers" depicted in the series are not in it for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. They have varying reasons like psychotic obsessions, family pressure, fame-seeking, or just plain old curiosity. Most of these "heroes" might help you if you were being mugged or trapped in a burning building, but don't expect them to help old ladies cross the road or give a lesson on civics to a 3rd grade class.

The story begins in 1985, a very different 1985 from what you might remember. For one thing, Richard Nixon is still president and American won the war in Vietnam thanks to the costumed adventurers, most notably Dr. Manhattan, a god-like being who is blue and pretty much do whatever he wants to matter--including making it disappear. (Another difference is that thanks to Doc Manhattan electric cars were invented in 1960, thus global warming is not so much of a problem, nor are rising oil prices.) Only Dr. Manhattan and an aging mercenary known as The Comedian (like a sadistic Captain America) are still allowed to fight evil by working for Uncle Sam. The rest are all forced into hiding. Most find other jobs while some, like the obsessive Rorshach, continue to operate at risk of prosecution. (The premise of superheroes being outlawed was later used in the Disney movie "The Incredibles.")

One night, though, The Comedian is found dead in his apartment. As Rorshach investigates the case, he begins to see a conspiracy at work and not only because he's paranoid. Someone is out to eliminate or marginalize all the costumed adventurers. But who and why remains a mystery as the world teeters on the brink of Armageddon with a Soviet incursion into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Can the "heroes" find out what's going on and put a stop to it? With the USA and USSR turn the earth into a radioactive cinder? Tune in to find out.

I have to say, for a comic book (originally published as a series of 12 and now packaged together into a novel) this was fascinating. It's not just one slugfest after another between heroes and villains. The narrative not only goes into the mystery and conspiracy, but it delves into the backgrounds of the characters and includes interesting sidebars, notably a comic within the comic about an evil pirate ship of damned souls that makes the Black Pearl seem like a Carnival fun ship. The comic within the comic fits into one of the overreaching themes of the book, which is: do the ends justify the means? And as is frequently scrawled on walls in the book: who watches the watchmen?

Unraveling the various complexities and symbolic elements of this would take a long time, and I doubt I could nail them all own. Suffice it to say if you think comics are kid's stuff then you are dead wrong in this case. This is a comic for adults with adult situations like rape, impotency, and other stuff you certainly won't see on Saturday morning cartoons. "Watchmen" was one of the first books to really focus solely on the adults and revolutionized the industry. Its influence is still felt today in movies like "The Dark Knight" that strive for a more realistic approach to those costumed adventurers.

That is all.

(BTW, as I have no experience with graphic novels there's nothing I can say about the artwork. I thought it was good, but what do I know?)

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Chances Are: Three Chances

Since this is a five-Wednesday month, the recap will be next week.  Makes more sense that way.  So enjoy a short story now.

When I was editing my story "Second Chance" I saved the stuff I deleted into a separate file so I could preserve it, sort of like deleted scenes on a DVD.  I cut the story from about 140,000 words to 107,000 words, so plenty of stuff got cut.  One of the last scenes to cut was also one of the last I wrote!  I came up with this scene the same night I finished the first draft.  It's a coma fantasy where three versions of Steve/Stacey meet in a bar and what happens to them.  Eventually though I decided the story was too long so at almost 3300 words this had to go.

I'm not sure how much sense it will make, but here you go:





I open my eyes to find myself in a strange place.  It’s really dark and it smells really gross.  There’s a counter and behind that are all these shelves with glass bottles on them.  The labels are for weird drinks like Smirnoff and Jack Daniels that I’ve never heard of.  No Coke or Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.
On the other side of the counter are some stools.  There’s an old man sitting on one.  He looks kind of like Grandpa Jake, except he’s fatter and his skin is gray and he’s smoking a cigarette.  Grandpa used to smoke too, but Grandma made him stop.  I can see why; cigarettes smell yucky.
Even though I’m across the room I start to cough.  The old man turns to look at me.  His face is all wrinkly, like it’s melting.  His eyes are a pretty blue, though.  He frowns at me.  Then he says, “What are you doing here?”
“I dunno,” I say.  “Where am I?”
“Somewhere you shouldn’t be,” he says.  “Not until you’re older.”
I remember what happened before I fell asleep.  “Is this Heaven?”
The old man laughs.  It’s a scary laugh.  I start to shiver as he says, “This is about as far as you can get from Heaven.”
I back up, running into a door.  I turn around to grab the knob.  I try to turn it, but the stupid door won’t open.  It’s locked or I’m just too little to get it open.  I rattle the knob, hoping that will shake it open, but nothing happens.  I’m trapped!
I start to cry then.  I want out of this dark, smelly place.  I want to go home to Grandma and Grandpa.  I want to climb into my bed with my cute stuffed monkey, Maddy sleeping below me with her thumb in her mouth like a baby.  I want things to be the way they used to be.
Someone puts an arm around my shoulder and I scream.  A lady’s voice says, “It’s all right, sweetie.  We aren’t going to hurt you.”
I look up and see a woman kneeling beside me.  She’s really pretty, with eyes just as blue as the mean old man, only they’re nicer.  Her hair is dark red and curly.  Her lips are dark red too.  She smiles at me and runs a hand through my hair.  “Hello, Stacey.”
“How do you know my name?” I ask.  Then I remember seeing her before, in the mirror at Dr. Macintosh’s office.  “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend.  My name’s Stacey too.”
“It is?”
“Uh huh.”  The nice lady named Stacey stands up.  “Are you thirsty?”
“Yes.”
She leads me over to a stool at the end, far away from the mean old man.  He’s watching us, still smoking his gross cigarette.  The lady says, “Could you put that out?  You’re going to make her sick.”
“I don’t take orders from you.  Either of you.  I was here first.”
“Please?  She’s just a little girl.”
“It’s not like she has to worry about lung cancer.  Not anymore,” the old man says, but he puts out the cigarette.  “Happy now, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” I say.
The lady goes behind the counter.  She takes a mug down from a shelf.  She sticks it under a tap, filling it up with something brown and foamy.  After the mug is filled, she puts it down in front of me.  I stare at it, remembering what they said at school about not taking treats from strangers.  “Don’t worry, it’s just root beer,” she says.
“Teacher says we aren’t supposed to take treats from strangers,” I say.
The old man snorts.  “She has you there, toots.”
The lady’s face turns red.  Her lower lip trembles.  She’s going to start crying soon.  I pick up the mug, taking a sip.  It tastes like root beer.  “Tank you,” I say with Maddy’s lisp.
“You’re welcome,” she says.  She walks around the counter, but she doesn’t come sit by me.  She goes over into a corner, sitting in a booth by herself.  It’s so dark in the corner I can hardly see her.
“You have to be careful with that one,” the old man says.  “She’s really sensitive.”
“You’re mean,” I tell the old man.
He laughs back at me.  “I sure am, princess.”  He shakes his head.  “How old are you, kid?”
“Ten.”
“I used to have a daughter your age.  A pretty little girl who looked up to me, thought my shit didn’t stink.  You know what happened to her?”  I shake my head and shiver.  The old man probably killed his daughter.  “Her mom took her away from me.  Wouldn’t let me see my own little girl.  I was her father, damn it!”
I jump when the old man slams his fist on the counter.  I run across the bar, over to the booth where the lady is sitting.  I climb onto the seat, into her lap.  She puts an arm around me, making me feel safe.  “It’s all right,” she whispers.
The old man goes behind the counter.  He takes a bottle from off a shelf.  He doesn’t bother with a glass; he drinks right out of the bottle.  Grandma told me and Maddy it’s naughty to drink out of a bottle like that.
“Don’t mind him,” the nice lady says. 
“I wanna go home,” I say.
“I know, but we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain.  Do you know what Purgatory is?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s this place between Heaven and…the other place.  It’s where God sends you to wait until he decides you’re good enough to get into Heaven.”
“But I am good!  I’m not naughty like Keshia.  She’s mean.”
“That’s not up to us,” the nice lady says.
The old man comes around the counter.  He goes over to the door.  He tries the knob too, but it doesn’t work for him either.  “Maybe we’ll be able to get out of here soon, now that the gang’s all here.”
“What does he mean?” I ask.
“That’s hard to explain too,” the nice lady says.  She thinks about it for a little bit.  “You know that my name is Stacey too, right?”
“Duh.  You only told me a couple minutes ago.”
She smiles at me.  “Right.  There’s a very special reason for that.  You see, you used to be me.”
“Did not.”
“It’s true.  Do you remember that shot the nasty doctor gave you?  The one that made you and Maddy littler?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he gave me one of those shots and I turned into a cute little girl.  You.”
I crawl out of the lady’s lap.  She’s just as crazy as that Grace lady who came to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  “That’s not true,” I say. 
“It is true.  And before that, I used to be that mean old man.”
“Nuh uh,” I say, looking from the lady to the old man by the door.  “You’re a girl and he’s a boy.”
“You’re not going to convince her,” the old man says.  “She’s just a kid.”  The old man shakes his head and then he drinks from his bottle.  “Can you believe I ended up like that?  Some little chink brat?”
“What’s a chink?” I ask.
“It’s nothing,” the lady says.  She climbs out of the booth and looks at the old man.  “Can’t you try to be nice?  She’s a child.”
“Oh I’m sorry, am I offending her majesty, Princess Stacey?  You can think what you want about me, but I never slept with my best friend’s girl.”
The lady starts to cry now.  She sinks back down on the booth.  I turn to the old man.  “You meanie!  You made her cry.”
“She’s always crying.  That’s about all she does.”
“At least she’s nice.  You’re just a big poopyhead!”
He laughs at me again.  I hate that sound.  I hate it so much I run at him so I can make him shut up.  But he stops me.  He reaches down to pick me up right from the floor.  I kick and punch at him, but he lifts me right up onto the counter.  He sets me down there.  I can still smell his gross cigarette here.
He tousles my hair.  “You’ve got spunk, kid.”  He leaves me sitting on the counter while he gets my mug of root beer.  He hands the glass to me.  “Here you go.”
I take a sip of the root beer only because I am thirsty.  “Thank you,” I say as Mommy taught me.
“I’m sorry to be so grouchy, kid,” he says.  He sits down on his stool.  He takes out another cigarette.  Then he sees me and throws it away.  “Suppose I should probably quit.”
Maybe he’s not such a meanie after all.  He tousles my hair again.  “My little girl was a lot like you.  So sweet, but if you pissed her off, look out.”
The lady comes over to join us.  She pours herself a mug of something, but it’s lighter than my root beer.  The old man clucks his tongue.  “You’re too young to drink that, young lady.”
“It’s just a beer,” the lady says.  “And who’s going to card me?”
“You’re all right,” the old man says.  “Sometimes.  When you aren’t moping around.”
The lady sits down on my other side so I’m between them.  “I don’t mope,” she says.
“Oh sure, that’s why you were sitting in that shrink’s office, bawling about not knowing who you are or what you want to do with your life and all that sh…stuff.”  The old man takes another drink from his bottle.  “Being a cop was too good for you, eh?  You’d rather work in that crappy little store all your life?”
“Not all my life.”
“Well it turned out to be, didn’t it?”
The old man shakes his head and then nods at me.  “This one didn’t even get to have a job.  Poor kid.”
“Poor kid,” the lady agrees.
I stare down at my mug of root beer, but I don’t feel like drinking anything right now.  “Are we really dead?”
“Like a doornail,” the old man says.
“Am I ever going to get to see Maddy again?  Or Mommy and Daddy?  And Grandma and Grandpa?”
“I don’t know, sweetie,” the lady says.  “Maybe someday.”
“I don’t wanna wait that long!  I wanna see them now!”
I start to jump off the counter, but the lady stops me.  She takes me by the shoulders.  “Stacey, stop it.  There’s nowhere to go.  We’re stuck here.”
“This is bull…droppings,” the old man says.  “Why are we stuck here?  I was a good cop.  I didn’t take bribes.  I didn’t put innocent people in jail.  And you might be a whiny little hippie who screwed her best friend’s girl, but it’s not like you were out murdering people.  At least not people who didn’t deserve it.  And her, she’s a little kid.  What the hell could she do that was so bad she gets stuck here with us?  Explain that to me, college girl.”
The lady shrugs.  “Maybe it’s a test or something.”
“A test of what?  To see who kills the other first?”
“I don’t know,” the lady says. 
No one says anything for a while.  I drink the rest of my root beer.  The old man takes a nap on his stool.  The nice lady goes back to her corner.  She sits against the wall, staring into space.  It makes me wish I had my phone.  Then I could talk to Jamie or at least play Angry Birds.  “This is boring,” I say.  “Isn’t there a TV or something?”
“We should be so lucky,” the old man says.  I guess he’s not really sleeping.
“Isn’t there anything to do?”
The old man motions to a green table.  “We could play pool, but she’s lousy at it and you’re too little to reach the table.”
“What’s that over there?” I ask, pointing to the other corner, across from where the lady is sitting.  There’s a little wooden stage with some kind of metal box on it.
“That’s a karaoke machine,” the lady says.  “It plays music so you can sing.”
“I like to sing,” I say.  “I’m going to be a singer when I grow up.”  My face gets warm when I remember I’m not going to grow up, not if I’m dead.
The old man pats me on the back.  “I’m sure you would have been a great singer,” he says.  “A regular Janis Joplin.”
“Who?”
“She was a famous singer when I was your age,” the old man says.  “It doesn’t matter.”
I hop from the counter onto a stool and then down to the floor.  I run over to the stage.  There’s a microphone attached to the box.  I try flipping some switches, but nothing happens.  “How does it work?”
“You got me,” the old man says.  “Hey toots, why don’t you show the kid?  You know how to use the thing.”
“All right,” the nice lady says.  She comes over to the stage.  She squats down next to me and starts to fiddle with the box.  Some lights come on.  “There you go, sweetheart.”
“Are you a singer too?” I ask.
The nice lady’s cheeks turn red.  She looks down at the floor.  I hope she’s not going to cry again.  “I’m not very good.  Not like you.”
“That’s bull…droppings,” the old man says.  “You could be just as good as the kid if you wanted.  If you weren’t so fu…freaking scared.”
“You get scared too?” I ask.  “But you’re a grown up.”
The old man snorts at that.  “That’s debatable.”
“Shut up!” the lady snaps.  She looks back at me, touching my hair.  “Yes, even grown ups get scared.  That old man over there gets scared too, but he just covers it up by being nasty.”
“You want me to come over there and put my foot up your ass right in front of the kid?”
The lady turns back to him.  “Stacey and I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been so scared to pick up a phone and call your own daughter.  Or even mail her a birthday card.  That’s all Maddy ever wanted from you, to show that you gave a damn, but you couldn’t even do that.”
The old man jumps off his stool.  He slams his bottle on the counter.  He keeps the top of it in his hand, the pointy edges sticking out.  He starts walking towards the stage.  “You’re going to tell me how to raise my daughter?  You’re the one who fucked Grace.  You’re the one who broke them up.”
“I got them back together.”
“Yeah, for how long?  We both know you were just biding your time, waiting for Maddy to break up with her so you could move in.”
“I was not!” the lady says and sniffles. 
“Oh go on and cry.  That’s all you’re good for.” 
The lady starts to shake, her face getting really red now.  “At least Maddy likes me.  She hates you.  You’re just the father who abandoned her.”
“That tears it, princess.”  The old man is almost to the stage now.  He has the pointy end of the bottle up like a knife.
“Go ahead and do it,” the lady says.  “I don’t care anymore.”
She gets down on her knees.  She lifts her head up.  She’s going to let the mean old man hurt her.  “Stop it!” I shout.  “Stop fighting!”
“Sorry kid,” the old man says.  “This has been a long time in coming.”
I’m too little to do anything else, so I close my eyes, hold up the microphone, and sing.  I start to sing the Cole Porter songs Darren and I did for our presentation.  I wish he were up here with me, playing the piano.  I wish he were here instead of this mean old man.
I feel a hand around my shoulder.  A wet cheek rubs against mine.  I hear a girl’s voice singing with me.  I open my eyes and see the nice lady leaning next to me, singing into the microphone.  She’s wrong; she is a good singer.  Her voice is really pretty.  She stumbles over some of the words.  Eventually she stops.  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.  “I don’t really know the words.”
I stop singing too.  “We can sing another song.  What ones do you know?”
“I’m not sure.”
“How about some Creedence?” the old man says.  He’s pulled up a chair.  He’s sitting on it backwards.  The broken bottle is on a table behind him.
“Stacey doesn’t know those old songs,” the lady says.  She tousles my hair.  “I bet you know Disney songs, though, don’t you?”
“Some.”
“Do you know Beauty and the Beast?”
“That’s my favorite!”
“Mine too,” the lady says.  She starts to play with the machine.  Music starts to play.  It’s the title song from the movie.  The words show up on a screen, but we don’t need them.  The lady pats my back.  “You do the girl parts and I’ll do the boy parts.”
“OK.”
We start to sing.  She doesn’t sound like a boy, but it doesn’t really matter.  It’s fun.  It makes me wish I could have got to sing with Mommy.  Maybe I can if I ever get to Heaven.
The lady gives me a hug after we finish.  “That was very good,” she says.
“Can we do another one?”
“Sure,” she says.  She plays with the machine again.  “Do you like The Lion King?”
“Yes.”
The lady points to the screen.  “How about this one?”
I giggle at what she’s picked out.  “OK.”
The music comes on and we start to sing “Hakuna Matata.”  Since I’m littler I’m the cute little meerkat and the nice lady is the big old warthog.  As we sing, the old man starts to shake his head.  “You guys are nuts.”
The lady motions him to come forward.  “Why don’t you come up here?  Show us kids how it’s done.”
“Yeah,” I say.  The nice lady and I start to giggle.  “I think he should be the warthog.”
“He’s got the face for it,” she says.
“OK, whippersnappers, you asked for it,” he says.  He gets off his chair.  I freeze for a moment, waiting for him to grab his bottle.  He doesn’t.  He gets on the stage, taking the microphone from us.  He does a chorus by himself.  His voice is so gravelly and out of tune that the lady and I start to laugh.
I wait for the old man to get mad at us, but he doesn’t.  He starts to laugh too.  We pass the microphone around, taking turns.  Even after the music stops, we keep the song going for a while, until we’re laughing too hard.
The old man picks me up, giving me a hug.  “Thanks, kid,” he says.  “I forgot what that was like.”
“I guess I did too,” the lady says.  She hugs us both.
We’re still hugging as the front door opens.  A white light pours through it.  “The door!” I shout.
“Looks like it’s time to go,” the old man says.
“Looks like it,” the lady says.
The old man carries me towards the door.  As we get near to it, the lady takes his hand.  They stop at the edge of the door.  We look outside, but it’s just white light.  “Is that Heaven?” I ask.
“There’s only one way to find out,” the old man says.
        We step into the light together...

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Two Cent Tuesdays: Speed Reading for Dummies

This year I've read a lot of books, which is easier to do when you aren't WRITING books.  At the start of the year I set my goal on Goodreads to 50 books, but I've had to increase that now because I've read a lot of books, to this date 84.  (OK, a couple are graphic novels or short stories.  So what?)  Want to know my secret?  It's not some speed-reading class I took on the Internet.

No, it's the Text-to-Speech function on the Kindle.  I knew that feature was on the Kindle, but I hadn't used it until early this year.  I was going home and traffic was really slow.  So I thought, "Man, I wish I could read on my Kindle."  And then I remembered the text-to-speech thing.  And then I remembered I had a cord already hooked into the car stereo so I could plug in my MP3 player.  It works on the Kindle too!  Just plug it into the headphone jack and the text-to-speech comes out through the car speakers.  At first I really had to crank the speakers to hear it but lately that hasn't been necessary.  I don't know why that is.

Over the next week or so I read the entire Tek series by Bill Shatner that way. Then before you knew it, my 50 book To Be Read list had dwindled to 10!  And those 10 were mostly really long ones I didn't want to read all that much like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the complete Jane Austen.  (Incidentally if you want cheap books other than mine those old collections of Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Frank Baum, etc. are quite a deal.  Others like Moby-Dick you can get for FREE--not that it's worth it.)

Anyway, I know the drawbacks to this.  The text-to-speech voices are really annoying.  But it's like drinking diet soda, tea, or alcohol, where the first couple of times I was like, "Yuck, this is terrible!  I can't drink this shit!"  But after a while I got a tolerance for it.  So it is that after a while you get used to the stupid thing saying "Yay" for "Yeah" or "Lung-ed" instead of "Lunged" (a guh sound instead of a juh sound on the G) or how it always says "Shut up!" as an exclamation even when it's not.

That pretty much doubled or tripled my reading output right there because on my 45-60 minute commute (or one day going home took 3 freaking hours, during which I "read" 45% of Tek Vengeance by Bill Shatner) I can listen to the book.  Also at lunch when I walk around I can plug in some headphones and listen to a book as I walk.  That's not as convenient as an MP3 player, but it's better than nothing.

And then at home I can listen to a book while I do other stuff, like play old PS2 video games or paint action figures or whatever other stupid shit I feel like doing.  It's really gotten to the point where I hardly want to read with my own eyes anymore.  The machine is taking over!!!  And it really pissed me off to find out a couple of my Kindle books had that feature disabled.  WTF?  Look dumbasses, I bought the fucking book and I bought the fucking Kindle so I should be able to do that if I want.  Asshole publishers.  If they think that will prompt me to spend big bucks on their audiobook version, think again.  Mostly it just makes me return the book to Amazon and move on to something else.  I did realize Amazon lists on the product page whether that feature is enabled; I just have to remember to check it before I buy the book.

This feature did also come in handy when I was editing books.  There were a couple of times where I might have overlooked where I was missing a word or had the wrong word with my eyes but hearing it aloud I thought, "What the hell?" and then saw my mistake.

The disadvantage over regular audiobooks is that the narration sucks.  The advantage is not having to juggle a bunch of CDs in the car or at home.  I'm not sure how big MP3 books are or whether I could put them on my crappy MP3 players.  Those are probably more expensive anyway than buying a regular version of the book.

So there you go, if you want to do more reading and you have a Kindle (I don't know if it's on Nooks or Kobos or what have you) there's how you can increase your reading output.  I've recently had to buy more books just to meet the demand.  So if you're one of those people who whines you don't have time to read your TBR pile (looking at Andrew Leon), this is a good way to do it.

Then you can buy and read all of MY books.  And remember, the Scarlet Knight ones are all 99 cents apiece this month, so that's a cheap way to fill up your ereader to employ this strategy.  Just a thought.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Comic Captions 5/20/13

It's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Batman #675


I'll go first
Jezebel Jett:  Wow, what other shadow puppets can you do?

Now it's your turn!

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Box Office Blitz Week 19 Results

Not that surprising of a result this week.  I'm going to hurry with this since the Internet has been cutting in and out all day.

The numbers were:
  1. Fake Star Trek 2 $70M
  2. Iron Man 3 $35M
  3. Gatsby $20M
And everyone except Briane Pagel got a trifecta.  Which is too bad for Briane because if he had guessed Gatsby at #3 he would have won.  Instead, the winner this week is Michael Offutt, despite the confusing way he phrased his pick.

As for the bonus question, Fake Star Trek 2 made about half of what Iron Man 3 did its opening weekend, so the answer was decidedly LESS.  The winner of 200 points is Stephen Hayes.

And to answer Cindy's question, picks have to be in by Saturday morning at the latest.  Otherwise you could read the report on Friday's take which would make it too easy to win.  Here's the updated scores:



Box Office Blitz


Scoreboard







19 Total
1 Tony Laplume 300 7700
2 Andrew Leon 300 6150
3 PT Dilloway 300 5850
4 Rusty Carl 0 4550
6 Michael Offutt 800 4100
5 Maurice Mitchell 300 3700
7 Briane Pagel 200 3300
8 Stephen Hayes 500 1900
9 Cindy Borgne 0 1300
10 David P King 0 200
11 Donna Hole 0 200


2700 38950

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Before and After

I've been playing around more with the Sims 3.  I spent some time downloading hairs and clothes and such to make them better than the standard game options.  The best new thing about the program is being able to recolor clothes and accessories as well as hair and eyes.  I was playing around at trying to create some characters I made in the Sims 2 in the Sims 3.
This is Stacey Chance as you should know by now.  As you can see, she's got the same hairstyle, but the Sims 3 color is a tad different.  The hoodie sweatshirt with the green accent and black T-shirt is actually much closer to what Stacey wears in the book than the Sims 2 variant.

You should recognize this one as Dr. Emma Earl, aka the Scarlet Knight.  She's a little bit different, but for the most part I think she looks pretty similar.  As you can see, she's not a supermodel.

This is young Emma.  I thought I had zits installed in the game but I can't find them, so lucky for her.  I think the Sims 3 one for this turned out pretty good.

Besides being able to recolor stuff, the next best thing about the Sims 3 is being able to make fat characters.  Before as you can see they didn't turn out looking all that great because you had to manually puff out cheeks and download clothes specially designed to make her fatter.  So Emma's friend Becky Beech looks better in the Sims 3. 
This is Dr. Dan Dreyfus, Emma and Becky's beau.  He looks a lot studlier in the Sims 3.  Besides making characters fatter, you can also make them more muscular.  So while Dan is a nerdy scientist, as you can see he also keeps in shape.  (Being able to make hulking dudes with six-pack abs is a good reason for Michael Offutt to go buy this game.)

This is Kari.  I think the face is better on the Sims 3 one though I like the shininess of the hair in the Sims 2 one.  And I don't know why there aren't necklaces in the Sims 3 except with some outfits.  Her neck just looks bare.
 
And this is Val.  The hair is a little bit different, but it was nice I could recolor the headband in the program instead of having to do it in PaintShop Pro.  The freckles aren't as visible and the glasses are too shiny in the Sims 3.  I wish I could find the same outfit for the Sims 3, but I can't.  Dang it.  If only I could do that myself.

I did find an annoying flaw in the game.  In the Sims 2 pretty much any hair would work on any age Sim from Toddler to Elderly.  For some reason in the Sims 3 hairs are divided between Toddler/Child and Teen-Elderly.  I spent hours then importing child hairs into the game only to find for whatever reason it won't include them!  It was really annoying because I wanted to make Emma's daughter and I had like a dozen crappy choices.  Grrrrr.

The good thing is next year the Sims 4 comes out.  Just think of all the fun I can have with that!

Friday, May 17, 2013

Box Office Blitz 19

This week we really get into "summer" movie season now that we have two blockbusters on the slate.  That will make things more interesting.  Or not.

In case you've forgotten how to play, the point of the game is to choose the top 3 movies of the box office this weekend.  For each one you get right you get 50 points.  You get another 50 points for each one you get in the right place.  A 500 point bonus goes to the winner.  The ultimate winner gets $25 while the 2nd place finisher gets $15 and the 3rd place finisher gets $10.  And every participant who doesn't place in the top 3 gets a free ebook.

Now then, on with the show.

Here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)

  • 42
  • Disconnect 
  • Evil Dead
  • Iron Man 3
  • Jurassic Park 3D
  • Mud
  • Oblivion
  • Olympus Has Fallen
  • Oz the Great & Powerful
  • Pain and Gain 
  • Peeples
  • Scary Movie 5
  • Silver Linings Playbook
  • Star Trek Into Darkness*
  • The Big Wedding
  • The Company You Keep
  • The Croods
  • The Great Gatsby
  • The Iceman*
  • The Place Behind the Pines 
My picks this week will be:
  1. Fake Star Trek 2 $150M
  2. Iron Man 3 $50M
  3. Gatsby $15M
You make your picks in the comments.  And don't forget the bonus question!

This week's question will be worth 200 points.  Here's a simple one:
Will Fake Star Trek 2 make MORE, LESS, or THE SAME than Iron Man 3's opening of $175M?

(And yes I'm aware I'm in the small minority who didn't like the first "Star Trek."  From what Neil Vogler says I won't like this second installment any better.  Really makes me leery about seeing what JJ Abrams is going to do to Star Wars.  Honestly I don't think this guy is the type of creative genius who can replace both Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas.  Editorial over.)

The results will be posted sometime on Sunday afternoon, whenever I need a break from packing stuff to move.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Thursday Rant: You Can't Fight City Hall, Inc.

Kicking it old school!
(I was planning to review Iron Man 3 in this slot...then I was lazy last weekend and didn't go watch it.  So now you get to read another epic Grumpy Bulldog rant.  I think that's a fair trade-off.)

Sunday I was lamenting how someone (or someones I suppose) bought and refunded my entire Chances Are series in sequence over a few days.  Against my better judgment I decided to email Amazon about the problem.  Because a snowball's chance in Hell is still a chance, right?  Or just sometimes it helps to reaffirm my cynicism.

As expected they just sent back a generic email about their refund policy.  When I pressed the issue, they pretty much just said "Meh."  Rest assured they have monitoring in place...but it's so Top Secret they can't tell you what it is.  Gee, I feel sooooo much better now!  I've been screwed out of book sales but you're monitoring the situation.  Whew, I can rest easy tonight.

This issue reminded me of last year when a set of GI JOE DVDs I'd ordered got sent to the wrong address.  The seller claimed the post office had spontaneously forwarded my mail to a previous address, despite that I'd had no problem with mail delivery in 2 years.  Who did EBay side with?  The seller, of course.

The really irksome part in both cases is these companies expect me to accept an explanation that is completely illogical.  The post office just up and decided to send my mail to a previous address.  It's just coincidence that someone bought and refunded three books IN SEQUENCE over the span of about a week.

More maddening than that is their attitude is so cavalier about it.  They brush you off, essentially saying, "What are you gonna do about it?  We have billions of dollars and hundreds of lawyers, so what can you do to us?"  And the answer is...probably not much.  Maybe if I were hot like Erin Brockavich I could organize a class-action lawsuit against Amazon or EBay.  Since I'm not, that's not likely to happen.  I could just stop doing business with Amazon and EBay.  I could go buy a Nook and start reading books on that.  That reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons where Moe rips off a drink Homer created--"the Flaming Homer"--and in a fit of rage Homer shouts, "You've just lost a customer!"  Except Moe can't hear him because he's surrounded by too many customers.  The gist being that losing one customer doesn't matter because there are plenty to fill the void.  And that's how Amazon and EBay are; even the thousands of dollars I spend on Amazon a year are a drop in the bucket for them.

This happens on smaller scales too.  Like when I tried to complain about a noisy neighbor.  What did the apartment complex do?  Nothing much.  Maybe sent a letter.  Then sent me a letter basically saying I should call the cops.  So basically they just went "Meh."  Because I already signed the lease, so they didn't really give a shit.  Plus it's not like they were going to evict the other assholes so long as they paid their rent; why lose a paying customer?

Another annoying way we get screwed over by companies:  software "upgrades."  Argh!  I could probably count on one hand the number of software upgrades I've actually liked.  As an example, last year our company switched from Office 2003 to Office 2007.  I HATE Office 2007.  They took all the buttons and options I'd known where to find since the mid-90s and scattered them to the eight winds.  So for weeks I had no idea where to find anything.  Eventually I found most stuff, but still I don't consider it an improvement.  Office 2013 isn't much better, though at least using Office 2007 prepared me for that.  I complained last Saturday about how the new PowerPoint won't import images from my backup hard drive without making them microscopic so to get around it I had to load all the stuff from that drive (what was on my old computer, including the graphics used on this blog) and load it to Facebook so I could get them to import.

And while we're talking about Facebook....I HATE Facebook when it comes to "upgrades."  Most of the time they aren't much of an improvement and the cavalier fashion they introduce them is so annoying.  If I didn't find out ahead of time from Mashable or other users, most of these "upgrades" would take me by surprise because they don't tell you when they're doing them.  One day you'll log in and your timeline or news feed or privacy settings will just be radically different.  All because some 26-year-old kid in a hoodie thought it'd be neat to do this or that.  Well I'm a 35-year-old guy in a shirt-and-tie and I don't want you fucking around with things without telling me.

Though I think the problem there is I want to think of my Facebook as MY Facebook.  Whereas Zuckerberg and company would say it's really THEIR Facebook and I'm just borrowing the space.  Thus they can do whatever the fuck they want to it whenever the fuck they want to and what are you gonna do, go use Google Plus?  Your friends and family ain't on Google Plus, sucka, so we own your ass!   (Actually one fun upgrade to introduce would be to make your Facebook talk like a pimp; you can already make it talk like a pirate.  Arrrr matey!)

Let's not even get started on the big banks and oil companies.  The end result is that I feel completely impotent.  It's not even like David v. Goliath; it's more like my year-old niece against Godzilla.  There's nothing I can do except maybe go live like a hermit in the woods and forage for all my food...except big companies or the employees of big companies own all the woods that the government doesn't own--and they own the government too!  The only time they can be stopped is if millions of people get together, like when millions of Netflix users bitched about that stupid "Qwikster" thing they put an end to that in a hurry.  But unless you can rally hundreds of thousands or millions of people to your cause, you're screwed because they don't care about you or your complaints; not so long as they're rolling in dough.

Maybe things were better in the old days when you could actually know the guy who owned the grocery store, the hardware store, etc.  They were probably more willing to work with you back then because they didn't have billions of dollars and they probably knew who you were; you weren't just an email address to some dude named Ganesh in New Delhi.  So if you got into an argument about something you could keep hounding the dude about it for months or years afterwards.  Maybe the Chubby Chatterbox can confirm the accuracy of this.

To take this to a darker place, this I think is part of the reason for so many violent rampages.  People feel too impotent and dehumanized by the world around them.  So to try to take the power back they get a gun and go shoot a bunch of people.  Which is definitely not the way to handle it.  I suppose all we can do is like that old saying goes, "accentuate the positive" and just look for silver linings wherever we can find them.  So maybe I got screwed out of 3 books, but I have sold a few others.  And I did eventually get my GI JOE DVDs (from Amazon...irony!).  And most software "upgrades" we can grudgingly come to accept.  So that's something, right?

Speaking of big corporations ripping people off, tomorrow's another Box Office Blitz!  Which mindless entertainment will we spend money on to distract ourselves from the dehumanizing reality of the world?

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