Before that, I had a dream about an airport highjacking. I think I'm going to keep that one to myself, as it'll be good fodder for my book. Speak of which, have you signed up yet?

Last night, I had a dream about Toshi. She was going off to work. She was employed to eat souls all day. I don't remember much of the detail, but she didn't enjoy it because every time she ate a soul, she took a little of its personality.
This morning as she left, I advised her to "watch what you eat! be careful what you eat!" I think she took it personally, but I'm pretty sure she had no idea about the dream.
Huh.

I have a piece of business etiquette to keep (the generic you, the one that isn't you, personally, but the you-who-is-not-me) you from getting punched in the face:
If you have bad breath, and you have bad teeth, never never get up and whisper RIGHT UP IN MY FACE.
OK. Back to yer lives. It's one of those stories. We can all imagine how it goes, and that it involves a person with bad business etiquette.

I'll post this the way I know to be true, and you can infer the way I suspect to be true: A cup of dark roast coffee followed by a large, fresh orange juice produces the same taste in the mouth as a slightly stale, well-packed Camel Filter cigarette. Make of it what you will.

Speaking of which, Andre the Giant Still Has a Posse!

The midnight movie at Alamo WayTh'FuckNorth next weekend (the 7th&8th) is Princess Bride. I'm gonna have to think hard about that one. I'm one of the millions of Americans who missed it first time through the theaters. Plus, there's a bonus...

I've got to publish this before somebody else does, so I own it.

The Gibbs Diet; a simple way to lose up to 30 pounds a week for life!
This is a simple one-step diet. For the first six weeks, and then for the rest of your life, you eat only red meat. It metastacises all the higmoglobulineen in the intestines, which causes the body to shed fat. Believe it or not, you should eat the fattiest, worst cut of meat you can stand, as that's where the densest nutrients are. Yeah.
And, beware of Lamb, which masquerades as red meat, but is actually not. It doesn't count, and you shouldn't eat it. The answer to your weight loss is beef. Pure, grade A (or B) American (Or whatever) Beef. Suppliment this with 2 to 6 gallons of water per day. Never drink less than 2 gallons of water per day. Never EVER drink more than 6.

The New Gibbs Diet, Revised Edition; Lose no weight for six months, and then lose all of it!
This diet is meant to be separate from the previous Gibbs Diet. Do Not Combine These Two! For the first six months, eat nothing but Processed, Refined White Sugar, Straight Out of the Bag. If you become bored with this, you can heat some in a skillet, as a treat, and eat is warm. DO NOT CARAMELIZE THE SUGAR! During this diet, you should exercise as little as possible, and I recommend you not travel, as many people in other places will try to make you eat the local, exotic sugars rather than plain, refined white sugar, straight out of the bag. DO NOT eat brown sugar of any kind, and do not take in any molasses. Remember: you only have to keep this up for six months, which is a tiny slice of time when you consider the eternity you get to spend being thin.
Drink no water. This creates what I call the Kool-Aid Man Effect within the body, as fat collects along the torso and creates an appearance not unlike a pitcher with a face on it. Do not drink water during the time you are eating your (say it with me now) Processed, Refined White Sugar, Straight Out of the Bag.
After six months, you will die, either from malnutrition or from a massive coronary. Then, after death, you will be able to harness the natural "fat digestion" elements of the air to simply melt away the fat. Within as little as 6 to 8 weeks, you will be thinner than you have ever wanted to be. That's a promise.
So remember, that secret is Refined White Sugar, Straight Out of the Bag (tm).

Hell yeah, baby. Now I even got a slogan, and a previous diet, which shows that I am learning as I produce crazy, stupid fad diets.

I was just re-reading my old archives. I'd just like to point out:

PreSeptember11th2002:
"Well of course I wasn't paying attention," said Bill.
He was staning on my foot, and looking around at the bad paintings around the room. According to the program, this was the single largest collection of the worst paintings available in America today. Of course they had to obligatory Pollock, just to appease the critics, but the rest of it was real proper garbage. The walls were crammed with paintings; my first impression was that a child could have done them, but upon closer inspection they were clearly the work of adults. Attempted symbolism was rampant and the sheer number of "baby-as-bowl of fruit" still lifes was agonizing. As I walked through, I could hear the everyman putting on airs, trying to be the artiste. And you've never seen so many bad paintings of the Madonna with Sean Penn. Somebody thought the Mother of God and Madonna Ciccone's first husband would be a funny pairing. Then everyone else thought it too. That was in the '80s. Today, it's just hack. I won't even go into the internet art. Yes, being able to self-publish is nice because it takes out the editor and allows the artist more free range, but there's a little thing called taste that goes right out the window with it. A thousand blinking lights told me there was more to go.
I didn't heed the sign that said "Bad Art Exhibition." I thought it was a joke. Learn from my mistake. Don't let it happen to you.

PostSeptember11th2002:
When I was a kid of perhaps four, I saw an ad for Kraft Singles (Kraft is German for strong, or strength. For a German to be Kraftig is for that German to be Strong) (And to sell cigarettes to children) in which a kid was sitting on a porch in front of his happy home, eating a Kraft Single, which is a piece of cheese that comes wrapped in plastic and in a big squished-together lump, for those of you who don't know. I didn't know that at the time. I watched that kid pick up that pack of Kraft Singles, and look at it funny, and then a piece of cheese rose up from the pack. He took it and bit into it, looking as pleased with himself as anybody ever has any right to look. Then his dad came over to him and said something to the effect of "Hey, Sport! Can I have a piece of Kraft Singles Cheese, the Only Cheese Made with More Milk than All the Rest Put Together?"
The kid looks at him funny, and then holds up the pack, and a piece of cheese comes rising magically up out of the rest of the cheese. The man bites into the corner, and looks just as pleased with himself as anybody ever has any right to look. The two of them sat there on the porch, eating cheese.
I had no idea what the actuality of a Kraft Singles was, but I knew one thing, in the very fore-front of my mind: I needed it. I desperately needed a cheese that would magically levitate from the block, spreading joy and happiness. I think that in the commercial, it even made a "vooieet" noise as it rose. It was something I could not live without.
I bothered both my parents for days on end, needing that cheese. I offered to go grocery shopping every time Mom went. Eventually, I wore her down in that "OK, but you'll be disappointed and I'll have to deal with cheese you don't like" way. We bought the cheese and brought it home.
I ripped thumb-holes in four pieces before AngelBob and Dad could convince me that the cheese levitation trick didn't work. I got a good solid mouthful of inedible orange gunk before I could be convinced that the cheese was wrapped in plastic, a fact carelessly glossed over in the commercial.
And Mom was right. I didn't like the cheese.
I still don't. It tastes like the biter ashes of defeat and the must of lost childhood innocence to me.
I still believe I have lead a charmed life.



That's for those of you who think that I wasn't affected by the date. Just so's you know. Also, I self-edited my anti-American, anti-religious diatribe that I had scheduled to post on that day. Man, I'm bitter today. I need to go home.

Rejoice in me, for I am risen. By which I mean there should be a party because I managed to wake up.

There's a place with a thing that sings a song that says "You're All My Dearest Darlings."
There's a song in my mind swatting flies that sing "I'll never be your friend"
There's a reason that the people with black eyes in their heads don't say "I love you"
There's a hope for tomorrow with a plastic landfill sign that screams "there's always room for more."

It's hard to keep pretending to care.
It's like Seth says.
I hate me 'cause even though I cannot see I know I'm always here pretending to care.
Well, Fuck You.

Stetsons don't come in my size. I'll have to find another kinda hat.
I'd say Fuck, but it'd be redundant.

I wonder where a feller'd go to buy a Stetson in this town...
And where he would, by extension, bring his friend to also buy a Stetson so that they could send chills down their respective ladies' spines...

The food here is good, and I have reservations for Friday. After that, we're gonna go watch Lost Boys/MisterSinus at Alamo downtown. The perfect Friday? Maybe, maybe not, but close enough for me.

This dissection and comparison of webloggerly stuff is interesting. 10 points of difference between traditional journalism and weblogging.

Every time I go to Ebay, I feel like the (usually blonde, sometimes Aggie, but you can pretty much understand that what I mean is that the joke is pointed at a group of people who are supposed to be stereotypically stupid, not that I am saying that these groups are necessarily stupid, just that that's how the jokes work) person in the joke, feeding dollars into the vending machine and dancing.
Asked what I'm doing: Duh! Winning!

Tomorrow's Saturday. Actually, now Today's Saturday.
And I gotta work.
I'd say Fuck, but that'd be redundant.

Additional climbing tonight. I feel closer to a coronary just looking at Cheeseburger fries.
Just kidding. In my youth, them was called, and I know this is gonna shock ya', "Steak Fingers." They sound nasty the way Hightower describes them, but they're still just steak fingers.
With cheese.

Ummm... Cheese. Burger. Fries. I'm just sayin' is all...
In the Hightower's column which pointed me at them, he quotes I-don't-know-who at the Beef Association saying, "We want beef in dessert if we can get it in there."

Updated: I found a CNN thing that says the person who said that is named Betty Hogan.

Whatever else it is, Tom's Diner is a bad song to get stuck in yer head.

My novel is getting neater as I get more of an outline. It's about truth. Actually, it's about lies, which are about truth.

Notice I didn't make the whole movie review dump on Monday. Stupid work all intruding and stuff. But on the other hand, I GOT TO MEET TERRY PRATCHETT yesterday. WOO HOO!

We also saw two bad horror movies this week.
Miner's Massacre, with nobody you've ever heard of, and
R.S.V.P., with Jason Mewes and Glenn Quinn.

The first, which I find out is actually called "Curse of the Forty-Niner," although that's not anywhere on the movie or the box, is a bad slasher flik. It's got senseless killing, an unbeatable villain, and bad acting all around. There are cheap relationships defined by stereotypes and characters ruled purely by their lusts. It's a bad horror movie.
I fibbed when I said it's got nobody you've ever heard of in it. It's got Karen Black, a character actress with more than 100 movies under her belt, and John Phillip Law, who is named John Law, which I find funnier than is really appropriate. Richard Lynch makes a great cameo as an old man who dies, which is always nice to see in a crappy movie. All in all, given what it is, it's as good as it can be. If you walk in expecting anything but a bad movie, you'll be disappointed. If you walk in expecting a strong story that drives actors with a strong character, you're missing the point. If you are looking for a bad horror movie with a creature from hell that's secretly a guy with a mask on, this is yer movie.
There's a type of movie bad guy that I never understood: He was so bad in life that he gets to stick around after he dies and do bad things. The assumption seems to be that one can sell ones soul for evil powers, which is fine if one knows where the souls-for-powers store is. I checked the yellow pages, and I can't find one.
These characters never need motivation or back story, really, 'cause they're just bad. If you're just an evil so-and-so, you don't need to have a reason, it seems. You just get to come back with a bad makeup job. Yay!

RSVP, also called Sticks & Stones (It's just a day for alternate titles), was a pretty good suspense-y, horror-y Rope remake kind of thing. We got it, to be honest, because it had Glenn Quinn (TV's Doyle, from the series Angel) (I've always wanted to say that. TV's somebody. It's such a funny convention) and Jason Mewes (whom many of us know better as Jay of Jay & Silent Bob).
It's got a pretty set upon which most of the action happens, and a series of deaths, alternately believable and not. The people who are killed via asphyxiation die slowly and with jerking motions. The two people who are shot with a rivet gun don't manage to yell, nor do the two killed with a cane. Eh.
The end of this movie sucked, but it sucked in a particular way. It ended absurdly, and it kind of had to. The whole thing was absurd. One of the characters is murdered because he is locked in a box (with air holes, mind) for several hours. Whereas that would be really particularly unpleasant, I like to think that a person could survive. I'm just sayin'.
From the beginning, you know that a)a particular character has murdered another, and b)there will be more deaths. This is as good as said in the opening shots, and very precisely said in the establishing shots a little later. Then it's stated again a couple of times, and then we see the murderer clumsily keep the guests from finding out about the first death. As the audience, you know exactly what's happening, and you can just sit back and watch the characters, simple as they may be, philosophize about death and dying, life and dying, and smoking, drinking and dying.
The movie was pretty unexceptional, a middle-of-the road movie with a script that tells a story and a series of murders that had to happen from the first moments of the film.

Miner Forty-Niner's Curse of the Massacre: 920 milinovas. This kind of movie rates down here, even though it's supposed to be bad. I rate them between 800 and 950mn on principle.
RSVP of Sticks & Stones: 750 milinovas. It's nice to see Doyle in a movie, as he only had a short career, but it would've been nicer to see him in a better movie.

Secondhand Lions, with Haley Joel Osment, Robert Duvall and Michael Caine
I saw this weeks ago at a special sneak-preview screening thing, and enjoyed the heck out of it. I was ready to write a review, but also felt like I wanted to a)GO BUY IT RIGHT NOW (which you can't, of course), and b)watch it again a little more critically. I've done the latter, and I'm still thinkin' hard about the former.
This is a fine piece of film. It's got good performances from all of the actors, and it's got a story that's believable where it matters and absolutely absurd where it matters more. There's a sense of adventure akin to classics like the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and a wide-eyed awe in the face of blatant reality that I compare favorably to Don Juan De Marco (the Depp/Brando movie. It's a hoot). I love that there are 4 stories that explain the Uncles' backstory, I love that there are lies surrounding everything the Mom does, and I love that there's a difference.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Secondhand lions is the story of two crazy uncles (great uncles, if one is being correct) who are left with a nephew to take care of for the summer. Or, it's the story of a boy who is ditched by his mother with his two crazy uncles. It's a movie about abandonment and love, and it's a story about getting old and getting useless and the two not being the same. It's a movie that could have been a "tear-jerker," but catches itself and makes a good story happen instead. There's a love that grows between characters, two of them gruff but human, one a weenie, that is believable because it takes time and it grows throughout the movie. The three begin as adversaries (two on one, no less), and are thrust into a situation in which they have a common enemy. The boy proves himself capable of being more than a simple weenie, and the adults prove that they have a backstory. By the end, you believe that they'd want the boy with them, and that they boy would want to stay.
This is a tear-jerker that forgets about maudlin sadness, and plays instead to those of us who enjoy a story. It's funny where it needs to be funny, and sad where it needs to be sad, and not a moment more.
For example: there's a moment in the movie in which the emotion is almost too much. The boy, Walter, played by Osment, has been told a bold lie by his mother, and his eyes are welling up with tears. It's a moment that a lesser movie would have milked with sappy music and three minutes of bleak, brown views of Texas fields. This movie, though, throws another twist and parades Duvall and Caine in overalls and silly accents. You can't cry, because it's life, and Walter doesn't get time to cry either.
This was fun, and it's got good performances and a good story. Osment has a funny way of emoting, but once you get past that, it's easy to believe him. His acting often looks fake, but he is also always standing next to Duvall and Caine.

*End of movie spoiler*
I had one editing problem, and these next two paragraphs contain the end of the movie, so be aware. After the end of the movie, and the unnecessary deus ex machina that proves that the uncles weren't particularly crazy, nor liars, there's a recap. It gets all sappy, and says, more or less, "Hey, remember four minutes ago? That was so great. Yeah." The movie should have ended with the catch phrase "Yes. They Really Lived," which is trite, but at least it's not a recap of 4 minutes ago. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest.
Oh, right: the ending. The movie was good. It's easy to overlook the ending. The movie ends, and everything is fine. Then, the end of the big adventure intrudes. Real, big adventures have to end badly because they imply that everything must be wonderful or die horrible, and either way, that's a sucky ending. After the end of the real story there's a deux ex machina (Hey, remember four sentences ago? That was so great. Yeah) (See how obnoxious?) that brings the otherwise pretty neat little story to the level of high-flung adventure, which doesn't work.
*End of Movie Spoiler Above. Just so you know.*

It clocks in at 325 Milinovas. Not bad, but not classic.

Oh, Hey! Monday's a great day for a movie review dump! I've got several I can review, many of them pretty good.

So, I don't know about you, but I've always heard the term bowdlerize with a negative connotation. Faithworks Press, publisher of scary nasty books, gives us these two titles, which it proudly calls "Shakespeare: rated G," and crows to the world have been bowdlerized. Hell, they're edited by the Thomas Fucking Bowdler.
In these books, for example, Ophelia's drowning is edited to be an accident.
So, then I went to the Faithworks page. I'm amused and a little sickened by the description of the book here. On the one hand, it's a true statement. On the other, ick.
It's part of my job to know what's coming out next year. It's part of my personality to be a little ill when it's icky.

Since I was browsing their site, Hey! Remember this game? Hee hee.
I'm recalling spending hours, feeding quarters into grubby plywood boxes, waiting for a helicopter to strap a gun onto my nondescript sports-type car. Hee hee.

I got a promo copy of a DVD from a local company. I'm looking forward to seeing it, and to showing my friends, provided it's even half as cool as it seems it must be.

I'm ready to write, but in a bigger way, I'm ready to sleep. Huh.

In its way, it's better than the OED. I just got it (ignore the 10-20 release date, it's sorta available now), and it's sitting in my car, calling me to get the hell off work. Hee hee.

On the one hand, I don't want to be one of the 86 quintillion Americans who doesn't have health insurance, but on the other hand, it doesn't cover everything it's supposed to cover, and it's expensive. Hmm...

I've asked it before, and it's only gotten worse, so I'm asking it again.
Is it wrong or just ironic to beat a co-worker about the head while yelling "CHILL the fuck OUT!"
I'm just askin'.

I'm going to pretend that I thought of this, even though I was just a collaborator.
On Missing Books:
Person A (a bookseller): Why Can't I find 300 Copies of Book In Question?
Person B (a manager of inventory): They're here, they're just in Overstock.
A: What?
B: It's where we put books that we order too many of, but aren't ready to return yet.
A: Well, can I get a copy. It's for a customer, and he's already pissed. I don't want to tell him we have the book but can't get it for him, even though it's in the store.
B: Well, we could have done, but we can't any more.
A: Why?
B: When we put it into overstock, it was with an additional thousand copies of Last Week's Book In Question, and six hundred of The Event Book We Didn't Sell Enough Of Yet...
A: And?
B: They collapsed.
A: Well, if the pile fell over, can't we just dig out a copy of Book In Question?
B: No, not on a structural level. On a quantum-material-black hole level. They've formed a quantum singularity. The overstock is sucking in books of which we don't have an overstock. The whole collection of books collapsed into a single book the size of The Little Prince. We have a Book Hole floating around the overstock shelves.
A: So, some mad crazy Shrinkage?
B: Ba-dum-bum.
A: So, I should tell the customer to fuck off?
B: I'm afraid so.

Inspired by actual events. Only it was a bad record system and an offsite event. Long story.

Since I'm dropping links:
Bubbleboards is very cool, and getting better all the time.
I can't link to these folks enough.
Try Blogger. There. Now I've recommended Blogger to several billion people. All of you, in fact. Hee hee.

The one on the bottom right is just wonderful. I know that The Onion gets plenty of praise, but I'll say it for you who've been living under rocks: Check 'em out.

At risk of stating the obvious, Mortality is something of a cruel bitch.

I'm taking this directly from Publishers' Weekly. I hate to just cut & paste like this to my page, but I can't find the story anywhere on the web (at the time of posting). So, this is from Publishers' Weekly's daily newsletter.


Borders' Suggested Retail Price Policy: Priceless


Borders Group wants publishers to stop putting prices on books and
plans to begin working, in cooperation with publishers, toward that
goal next year.

"Bookselling is one of the few retail environments where the price is
fixed by the supplier of the goods and not by the seller," says
spokesperson Anne Roman. "This is not the most advantageous
environment for any of the key parties." Borders maintains that if
prices weren't set by publishers, the retailer would be free to price
books strategically to give consumers more incentive to buy certain
titles--such as offering books by new authors at a lower price.


The debate over printing prices on books flared up earlier this month
when Borders U.K. managing director Philip Downer used his keynote
speech at the Borders management conference in Bournemouth to blast
the practice. "Publishers do not know what their books are worth,"
Downer said. In the U.K., the issue is expected to be a top priority
for a new committee made up of representatives from the Publishers
Association and the Booksellers Association.


In the U.S., it's too soon to say exactly how Borders will go about
pursuing the change, Roman says, adding, "We will move toward working
together on the pricing issue with more of a focus next year, always
in the spirit of partnership with our vendors."--Karen Holt