skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Publishing news . . . My veeery short story has been published as part of a Sam's Dot Publishing anthology, The Drabbler #12. I'm telling people that it's an intergalactic character study that centers around aliens interacting via social-networking sites. In this case, the supermassive interconnectivity medium is an amalgamation of MySpace and Facebook: FaceSpace.
Other tasty informational nuggets: 1.) My dear ole dad (and editor extraordinaire) also has a drabble featured between its pages. 2.) As for this snazzy cover art, it's the accompanying illustration for my story, Think Before You Jump. Seeing a figment of my imagination--Lena the Vampiress A.K.A LonelyMistress86--transformed into a picture was a pleasant surprise.
The collection is available via The Genre Mall and is sure to become a collector's item in the future. That is, once my still unfinished novel is adapted into a commercially and critically acclaimed film. Or something like that . . .
Our Retailer, Who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy Sales;
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
at the mall as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily coupons,
and forgive us our frugality,
as we forgive those hardcore shoppers who get there
before us; and lead us not into debt on Black Friday,
but deliver us our online purchases before the 15th
of December. Amen.
The first *and last* time I attempted a faux turkey, chaos ensued. Here is a short account...
I was in Gainesville at the time with my girlfriend. It was Thanksgiving. We'd been invited over to this pretentious vegan slag's house for a nice, animal friendly meal.
It's not as if I dislike vegetarians or vegans or any other person based on their dietary decisions alone. I'm not a racist. However, this had to be the most foul smelling and obnoxious hippie I'd ever met. I didn't like him and I think the feeling was mutual. Perhaps it had something to do with my daily showering habits.
He being a family friend of my better half, the pressure was on my girlfriend to accept the invitation despite my protests. "Just look at it as a new experience. Something to write about," she said to me, my willpower caving in by the second.
"Maybe you're right."
We arrived around five and the evening began to pass without incident. Even the hippie and I had started chatting it up. "Hey man, I almost forgot I hafta cook the turkey," he said as he stood up.
"It's tofurkey, jackass," I muttered.
As he rose up from his chair, a cloud of body odor and patchouli followed him, launching a full scale attack on the olfactories of anyone foolish enough to cross his path. I noticed my girlfriend giving me an approving eye from across the living room. The message was clear, "Be good now."
In less than ten minutes he returned from the kitchen. "Uh guys... I might need your help. There's a problem," he said.
A problem indeed, it was a BFP. It seems that some ovens have advanced enough to where they can clean themselves. This makes sense inasmuch as scrubbing an oven is a tedious chore, nay should we forget that oven cleaner is nasty stuff.
I'm staring at the tofu turkey inside of the oven. The door is locked. The temperature is now over 500 degrees.
We alternated between watching television and the soybean based turkey replicant slowly destructing in the kitchen. We placed bets on if it would explode and if it did, in how much time. After about an hour the oven began to cool down and the door automatically unlocked. It had exploded. I was out of five bucks. Shit.
"Hey, can we still use this miso gravy?" said one of the hippy's friends. He looked vaguely like this roadie I met once at a Widespread Panic concert. "Miso hungry! Me me so hungry! Me love you long time!" he began to chant.
It was decided that we would hunt down something, anything to eat. The vegan, his friends and my girlfriend ate sushi, using the miso gravy as a dip.
I ate a hamburger.
And thus begins The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Rodrigo De la Serna as Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Alberto Granado, respectively. I decided to re-watch this movie after seeing it a few years ago in the theater. Initially I went to see it because of the obvious likenesses to On the Road and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Yet again it didn't fail to make an impression on me after the second and subsequently third time watching it.
The movie opens with Ernesto, a medical student on the verge of graduating as he and biochemist friend Alberto plan a road trip taking the two around the continent of South America. The adventure is set up as an experiment: plans, equipment, methods, and goals are outlined beforehand as they pack up their belongings in Buenos Aires. Even though the plan for Ernesto and Alberto is to live like outlaws while 'the melancholy of what's left behind fades to the excitement that lies ahead', can they really prepare for the unexpected challenges of life on the road?
This is one of the major themes found in TMD, the metaphor of life as a road trip. You lose things. You get dirty. Curves, signs, forked roads, kindness/cruelty of strangers, they all figure into the quintessential experience of these travelers leaving the land of their birth and into the heart of their country. Of course themes of friendship, honesty, love, sex, death, and others are found in the movie, but they are all subtle--understated with purpose.
"All of Latin America is ahead, Buenos Aires behind..."
Along the way Ernesto or "Che" (or "Fuser" as his friend Alberto nicknamed him) meets people with different problems. Some are sick. Others are not welcome in their own country. It is after an encounter with a poor mining couple that we really begin to see the shift in Che's consciousness from a naive youth to the more idealistic man for which he will be known and ultimately judged.
This movie keeps Che's politics in the background. As mentioned before, there is an obvious change in his attitude, but the movie ultimately leaves it up to each person who watches it to decide exactly what kind of change this is.
Great acting. Great cinematography. Great music.
8.5/10
This weekend Bluewater Bay's rendition of Oktoberfest went down at Bitburger German Pub and in the adjoining supermarket parking lot.
Oktoberfest is the only kind of yearly gathering held here. It's basically BB's attempt at some kind of coherent festival though it pales in comparison to the Mullet Festival which I will no doubt be dragged, pulled, or pushed into a month from now. But more about that later...
As to be expected there was plenty of hearty German fare. It's a completely family-centered shin dig with bouncy slides, a rock climbing wall, and the like. There was no public nudity or bierleichen, which translates to "beer corpses", however I did observe one outlet for debauchery--Das Boot.
The Boot consists of a glass modeled after its namesake containing two liters of beer that upon ordering will cost you 75 bucks. That's for the deposit. If you can chug the whole thing without stopping it's free. Otherwise, it's twenty. You get the other $55 back after returning the glass unscratched, unscathed, unbroken. I'm under the impression that if you chug the whole thing and THEN vomit, it's still free though. Let me just go on the record to say I've never been party to the drinking of this mythical beast, but two weekends ago I did meet someone who had. Buh HUH HUH!!
Before leaving I walked by all the little tents and ran into a few old friends. Went to Schooner's with The Traveling Monkey and had a few Red Stripes. Drank. Shot the proverbial breeze. Made a new friend. Came home. Watched Finding Neverland. Highly recommend it. Two thumbs up.Went golfing that morning with Dad.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented a speech at Columbia University on Monday, September 24th in which he speculated on:
1.) The possibility of the Holocaust having not occurred.
2.) Iranian women being "the freest in the world."3.) Gay people not existing in Iran.
4.) Why scientists should consider the possibility that the moon is actually made not actually of blue cheese, but feta. (Okay, this claim I made up but compared to the other shit coming out of this guy's mouth this statement would've fit right in.)
His appearance at the school was a sort of primer for the speech he gave on Tuesday to the United Nations in which he declared the issue of Iran's nuclear research "closed".
Sure, everyone can agree that freedom of speech is a good thing. It's great! But when people think that they're being forced to extend this right to dictators with well documented pasts of committing crimes against humanity, their feelings can quickly change.The college president, Lee Bollinger prefaced Ahmadinejad by saying, "It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices." He also cited the quotable expression about how free speech is "an experiment, as all life is an experiment." and apologized in advance for any suffering that giving this speaker a public forum would cause.
He finished on this subject, "In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self-restraint against the very natural but often counterproductive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech."
Bollinger furthered the introduction by condemning the government of Iran for unjust imprisonment, public executions, and other violations of human rights.
I think free speech can transcend politics. I think that debate in all forms is usually a good thing and I really think Columbia's prez eloquently expressed this--His thoughts on freedom of speech were the best I've ever heard in my life.
The University of Florida hosted Senator John Kerry in a speaking forum Monday which went according to planned until a UF student took over the microphone and began to ramble on like... Well... He sounded off like a left-wing political pundit after ingesting a few hits of strong ecstasy.
His line of half-serious, half-loaded questioning was abruptly ended when he was seized by police.
The chaos that follows is disturbing. The student is wrestled to the floor and then tazered by police.
I know that this video will be politicized like hell over the following days as an argument platform for both liberals and conservatives. It will most likely be taken out of context and replayed in the light that fits the agenda of whoever it is that's showing it. Here is the next day's article by the Associated Press.
I've personally witnessed crazy conspiracy-theorists go apeshit at UF's speaking engagements in the past. They are usually wearing sweatpants; eyes as red as stoplights they slur out how they found this obscure internet site that can prove direct correlation between IBM and George Bush's cooperation with Nazi Germany.
These people are usually sad, tragic figures that get out their question with a mental eye roll from the speaker and a spattering of snickers from the audience.
I have seen people ushered off by the event staff, but never like this...
I guess my take on the whole fiasco is that while I admire the kid's tenacity, he was kind of a moron. Sure he made everyone feel a little uncomfortable, but sometimes that's what it takes to get an "honest" answer out of politicians. But it's like, "Hey kid! Dude, if you're going to get yourself arrested AND tazed, make sure it's for something other than looking like a huge crybaby."
