Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts

Thursday, October 27, 2011

A Crystal Skull For My Birthday

Sounds a little like the title of an old Gold Medal paperback, doesn't it?

So next Monday is my birthday. The fact that I was born on Halloween explains a lot, doesn’t it? So, I saw my Mom, and she gave me part of my birthday present:

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That’s the 1.75 liter size of Crystal Head Vodka, and yes, it is a life size crystal skull. This is an incredibly cool present, although the thought of my mother, a teetotalling Southern Baptist, shopping for booze at the commissary gives me the giggles. Obviously, she went out of town to do it.
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Sunday, August 14, 2011

666

I just realized I’ve made 665 posts on this blog prior to this one. 666 isn’t a particular large number of posts (I was well over 2000 when I got tired of the previous blog), but it seems like it should be a significant number for a (mostly) horror blog. It is after all, the number of the devil, after all, but what sort of devilish thing could I come up with to mark the occasion. A girl I dated in college did tell me I was the devil, once, but that doesn’t seem like a terribly interesting story, and in my defense her sister was hot and a bit of a slut. I just don’t know

Crap, I just realized I wasted the landmark 666th post talking about how I don’t know what to say. Oh well, come the 1984th one I’ll have something insightful to say about politics.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Another Mea Culpa


Due to assorted personal issues, posting here has been sporadic lately. Okay, by sporadic I mean non-existent. Hopefully, I will be getting back to a more or less regular schedule soon. One of the interesting things I noticed in coming back to check the blog’s stats is my number of “followers” grew much faster during the period when I wasn’t posting than when I was. This begs the question of whether people like it better when I don’t have anything to say. Anyway, I hope to catch up on a pretty extensive backlog over the coming days.
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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I Did Not Go To Oz


So, the blog hasn’t been updated in a while, but this time I’ve got a good excuse: Last Wednesday’s tornadoes passed through my area, and power was out for five days. (It is still out for most of the city.) One of the twisters passed less than a mile from our house, and en masse, they pretty well destroyed the power authority’s grid for this part of the state. I would like to point out while many people’s experience with the tornado outbreak was very tragic (nearly 300 people killed, so far), mine was not. A chair in the backyard I hated anyway was destroyed, and the canopy of a glider swing I wanted my wife to get rid of was shredded, but other than that, our only loss was some food that spoiled, and having to live in the nineteenth century for a few days*. A mild inconvenience, at best. I missed the internet less than I would have thought. As I mentioned on Twitter, while I was without power, I missed television, then when it was restored, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to watch. I guess Sharktopus 2 didn’t come out while I was cut off.

Anyone who sent me a message during the blackout, I promise I'll get back to you. To anyone who was looking for a review of their book, I'll catch up as soon as possible.

* With a Kindle and a cell phone, of course, just like the Western pioneers in the 1870s
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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Stupid, Stupid

I’ve had to come to grips with being an addict. A week ago, I stopped taking a drug I’ve used recreationally for a long time. This was followed by days of alternate lethargy and twitchy energy, pounding headaches, an inability to concentrate, sleeplessness and a deep craving for the drug. My productivity plunged to historically low levels, and I was irritable even by my questionable standards. I was slow to acknowledge cause and effect, because I couldn’t believe I was hooked.
Yes, a week ago, for no apparent reason, I stopped drinking coffee. Apparently, a decades-long habit that has turned my blood jet black has a powerful hold on me. Good to know, I suppose.
This morning, I had four large cups of coffee within an hour of getting up. I feel so much better.
Happiness through chemicals.
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Saturday, January 29, 2011

A Personal Announcement


Those of you who are regular visitors to this site (both of you!) may be aware of the short interviews I’ve been doing for Cemetery Dance, a series called We Interrupt This Author. I’ve had a lot of fun doing those, and it’s been great working with the authors involved and with Norman Prentiss, who supervised me with those. I have had the greatest admiration for CD, and respect for the position it holds within the genre.

The magazine version of Cemetery Dance is undergoing a slight reorganization. Norman will be the new Associate Editor for Fiction, and he offered me the position of Associate Editor, Non-Fiction. Naturally, I accepted. Cemetery Dance magazine is, in my opinion, the premier periodical in the horror fiction genre. It has been around for 23 years, an amazing longevity given the state of magazine publishing, and practically every author who has made a splash in horror or dark suspense has made an appearance in its pages. I am greatly honored by this opportunity, and hope I can live up to the high standards of the magazine. I thank Norman and the rest of the CD staff for this. The first issue I’m working on should appear in early summer.

This has been in the works for a little while, and I’m happy to be able to make it public. As far as I know right now, the interview series will continue, although they will be shifting to a new location.
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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

SNOWMAGGEDON!

Here is my back yard:





I realize everyone up north is thinking "A little snow, what's the big deal?" But I assure you, Southerners do not handle snow well. We've been shut down for two days, and roads may not reopen until Friday. This is our third largest snow on record, and I haven't worn a tie or dress shoes all week. Rarely pants, come to think of it.

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Sunday, July 18, 2010

I Write Like William Gibson

There's a website called I Write Like which will analyze a writing sample and tell you which famous author your writing most resembles. Obviously, I had to try it, and lo and behold:


I write like
William Gibson

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!


This might just be the worst day of William Gibson's life.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Havoc Reigns!

Setting aside the usual vague purpose of this blog, I'd like to congratulate our home town team, the Huntsville Havoc, for winning the SPHL championship Saturday night. Good work, guys.




To anyone interested in seeing a picture of me, here it is. I'm in the upper left hand corner, under the Hardee's sign. You may need a magnifying glass, but I'm wearing an Avangard Omsk sweater.

Friday, February 19, 2010

I Got Tagged

A meme, a meme. Kent Gowran tagged me for this, so I will try to live up to it. Here are the rules, cut-and pasted from his blog:

• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth – or – switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie. (See below.)
• Nominate some more “Creative Writers” who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies of their own. (Check the end of this post.)
• Post links to the blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know that you have nominated them.

Since it doesn’t specify, I’m not going to tell which ones are true, or how many, just that it is a mixture. You decide when I’m lyin’.

1. When I was eight years old, I was in the back seat, my dad driving, while on a trip to Georgia. A young man on a motorcycle passed us at high speed going up a hill. He was unable to clear our car before the 18-wheeler came over the hill, and I witnessed him more or less disintegrating when he hit the truck head-on. We had to stay and watch the cleanup, down literally with shovels, because some of the “remains” were splattered on our car. I didn’t think it affected me much, but I’ve never been comfortable riding a motorcycle.

2. When I was 16, I was picked on by the school bully. As luck would have it, I was holding a mallet at the time. The blow to the forehead knocked him out cold, and sent me before a judge on the charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

3. My grandfather, who died long before my birth, has two graves. One in Fort Hancock, Texas dated 1911, one in Alabama dated 1951. Obviously he’s in the second one, but I’ve never been able to figure out who’s in the first one, or whether his brother is in the Texas grave beside him, as the marker says.

4. I had a distant cousin, much older than I, who died in Alcatraz before I was born.

5. In college, a friend with connections hatched a scheme for us to get rich by bringing in bales of marijuana from Mexico. We were supposed to get rich, but were left broke after I dumped the bales overboard after sighting the lights of a coast guard cruiser. The lights turned out to be a buoy.

6. As a high school junior, I had to go before Bubba Scott, the director of the state athletic association. I was pitching against our arch rivals and just didn’t have it, I was getting pounded. For some reason, the coach wouldn’t take me out even though I couldn’t get anything to break, and they were teeing off on me. So I hit three consecutive batters in the head, sparking a small riot. Bubba asked me if I meant to hurt the boys. “Bubba,” I said. “I meant to kill them, but my arm was tired.” I was suspended for six months.

7. As a college freshman, I helped construct a makeshift cannon out of the hard cardboard roll from a roll of carpet, using black powder and crushed toilet paper rolls for projectiles. We used the device to bombard a girls’ dorm one winter night from a surprising distance, enjoyed the way the flaming TP arced across the night sky. We underestimated the force at which the rolls were propelled, and a couple of them smashed through windows in the girls, dorm. I had left five minutes before campus security rounded up everyone, and everyone there was expelled.

This was fun. In turn, I’ll lay the burden on John Horner Jacobs, Jim McLeod, Rabid Fox, Doc Horror, Craig Clarke, and Wulf. Have fun, lads.
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Monday, October 19, 2009

Another Ill-Conceived Move

I have been tricked by friends into establishing a page on Facebook. If the prospect of watching me wrestle with technology I don't understand appeals to you, send me a "friend" request*. If I knew how any of this works, I would have already sent one to you, and I do care for you very much.



*If you only want someone to play "Mafia Wars" you can disregard this. It took me a week to figure out how to post something on my "wall", I don't need anything else to fail at.
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Monday, April 13, 2009

No More Haunt For Me

A few people have e-mailed me to ask what happened to my page at The Haunt. Speculation has been that I committed some unspeakably vile act that caused me to get banned for life from all decent venues. Thanks guys, for having such an accurate opinion of me, but it isn’t true in this case.

I think the concept of Twitter is cool, and if you are a horror-loving Facebook/MySpace type, it is probably something you’ll enjoy. Unfortunately, I’m pretty anti-social by nature, so after I got the page set up the way I wanted it, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I talked to the same people I talk to everywhere else, and couldn’t get into the message boards. So, I nuked the page.

This is not meant in any way to be a criticism of The Haunt, it is just my personal preference. And to John, who implied that it was odd that I shun Facebook and MySpace, but set up an account at The Haunt, the universe is now back in alignment.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I'm Not All Mean

I recently received an e-mail from someone who worked on one of the low budget movies I posted on unfavorably. I understand her being upset at some nimrod with a keyboard ripping her work, but I did want to comment on one thing she said. She asked why I bothered doing this, since I hate everything. I don’t think that’s true, but I have reviewed a lot of movies I didn’t like.

I want to assure you that when it comes to movies, I am the Great Optimist. Every time I pop a disc in the DVD player, I have the hope that it will be a good one. Even something as obviously a clunker like The Howling 3: The Marsupials, which I bought as part of a bulk lot and which has sat on my shelf so long I think the house was built around it, I look forward to in the sunny hope that it will entertaining. I mean, come on. Who else do you know who has said nice things about Uwe Boll?

Monday, November 24, 2008

I've Joined The Dark Side

I have finally given in and started a Twitter account to express my individuality like everyone else. If you would like to know what I’m doing, you may follow me through the sidebar. Here’s a hint: Ten messages a day saying “I’m sitting in a meeting, bored”. How can you resist? Or, at least, that’s what you’ll get whenever I figure out how to use this damn thing. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to visit the 200 sites where I posted “anyone who uses Twitter is a douche” and erase it.