I hate to make two crochety old man rants in a row, but half an hour of my life was taken away yesterday by an incompetent “customer service representative” who sounded all of a disaffected female teenager. Listen up all you big companies: we can tell when you’re not being sincere. All this, “I definitely understand your problem.” “I can totally sympathize with your problem.” “I understand your frustration.” We know you don’t give a rip about us. We’re just another customer to you. We know that because WE have jobs too and WE deal with faceless customer units all the time too. Customer aren’t people, they’re customers. They have…
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Gun vs. Sword Started
I started working on Gun vs. Sword (temporary title, until I think of something better) this week. It’s a novel that I’ve been doing pre-writing for while Merm-8 is incubating and editing Z Company. I never intended it to be a main novel, and I plan to stop this and restart Merm-8 after it’s gotten its critiques back. It’s a trunk novel, but the idea’s been in my head for years, since I read “The Darkness and the Light”, and I’ve been gradually touching it every time I get ideas. Now I’m done with the pre-writing, so writing the text is obviously the next step. Of course, that’s not as easy as…
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AuthorQuest Bashes Snooki
Here, watch this. Anderson Cooper Bashes Snooki Anderson Cooper’s a smart, witty guy. I should be watching more of him. But to the subject at hand. When I saw this, really, I was trying to be more outraged. Toni Morrison is at the same level as some white trash clubber with a ghost-written book? (Editor’s note: I haven’t read Toni Morrison or Snooki) She earned $32,000 for speaking fees? Someone who’s done no work, suffered no art, gained no skills? But really, I just don’t care that much. For one thing, this is just par for the course. Beautiful train wrecks are a staple of the human diet. Before our…
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Final Fantasy – I Once Loved You
Final Fantasy – I loved you, but I don’t anymore, and more people are agreeing with me. I think I know why you’re starting to fail. Your reach is exceeding your grasp. I think you caught lightning in a bottle once, and now you don’t know how to get it back. You keep flailing about, adding more stuff, more stuff, more stuff, more stuff, more stuff hoping one of them sticks. More stuff than one man can possibly play through. Here’s the thing: Just because the disc is 25 gigs, doesn’t mean you have to fill all that. I remember watching a Star Trek documentary, with Malcolm McDowell commenting on…
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Bioshock 2 and Windows Live Can Suck My Big Fat One
Dear Windows Live and Bioshock 2, Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you and your broken-ass, DRM-filled, update-begging, time-sucking software. I bought Bioshock 2 a few weeks ago on Steam, and was looking forward to playing it on my night off from the kids. The first time I tried it, I hadn’t installed it. Then I found out I had to download 9 gigs worth of data which takes 3 hours, so the first night…
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Code =/= A Story
Computer code is not a story. When it comes to written text in the King’s English (or other spoken language) there are certain rules about plagiarizing. These are set in place to make sure that creative works are not claimed by someone else or using them for some reason that was not given permission. But computer code is not a creative work. They are not the same thing. Sure, there are issues regarding copyright and piracy, but that’s really only for software packages. Generally, you pay for those, and by claiming them as your own or pirating them, you are depriving someone of funds they would have otherwise received for…
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I Can’t Talk About Rape, So This Entry Contains Nothing About It
UPDATE: Please read this too. Jim C. Hines, who keeps getting more and more fascinating, has posted another entry about rape. He used to be a rape crisis counselor, so he knows a little better the reality of rape, rather than this collegiate newspaper. I can’t talk about it because one out of four women have been raped. If you haven’t been raped yourself, then that number is lower. If you have been raped, then that number is higher. So let’s say it all averages out to 1/4. That means either my mom, my sister, or my wife has been raped. If it’s my wife, I must have done it,…
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I Want My Fucking Gluten!
Okay, listen up. Here’s a reality check for you. We’ve been eating stuff that’s filled with gluten, fat, preservatives, additives, carbs, trans fats, non-trans fats, sterols and cholesterols–both good and bad (you’ve got the up side, I’ve got the down side–there’s two sides to every cholesterol), full-cal, lo-cal, no-cal, so-cal. I don’t suck down vitamins, I don’t give a shit about anti-oxidants (what’s the opposite of those? Pro-oxidants?), and I piss on organic food to make it taste right. I don’t wash my fruit (you think a quick rinse is going to get rid of the months of pesticides?). Light sour cream is a shadow of the real thing, but…
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The Final Word on The Shine Journal
I sent my last blog entry to said editor of The Shine Journal. As you could read, it wasn’t an apology, it wasn’t a redaction. It was a re-evaluation. I don’t know what I was expecting for a response, if I was expecting one at all, but I would have liked it to be a bit more magnanimous than it was. Her tone was extremely defensive and proud. Maybe it’s all the Lamebook I’ve been reading, but it feels like adolescent behavior–can’t leave an issue alone, attacks all forms of disparagement, always has to have the last word, uses too many exclamation points The first thing she said was that…
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Aftermath With The Shine Journal
I may have made a mistake. A big one. Maybe. This refers to the last post I made where I compared “The Shine Journal” and “Sorcerous Signals”. First, I want to say why I said what I said. To me, the name of the name game is to get published. To get published you have to get noticed. You get noticed by getting into the big magazines. To get into the big magazines, you get into the small ones first. At least that’s my battle plan. The purpose of this blog is to track my progress and leave an account of what I did or how I did it. However,…
