Archive for August, 2006

5 items.

Supermassive Crap Hole

August 22nd, 2006 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

I woke up behind the 8 today and I just hate when that happens. No, that’s weak language. I fucking loathe that, and I want to restore my last saved game and start the day over again.

Not depressed, not angry, not bored…something else. Can’t place it, don’t even really want to try. I’d been doing a pretty good job of at least waking up and being aware in the morning, getting Kenzie off to work, having my coffee, working out, watching Daily Show/Colbert Report/Sportscenter/whatever, and then doing some writing. Today, not so much. Coffee and Kenzie yes, but the rest…ugh. Didn’t want to exercise, didn’t want to even watch TV. Writing? Cracker, please. I ended up just trying to investigate agents and getting thoroughly discouraged in the process.

I feel like the only way to assure representation, publication, fame & fortune is to grab a shotgun and go rampaging through the streets blowing up mailboxes, frightening children and stealing candy. Then, when the Man comes for me and shackles me and takes me away, I can yell at the assembled news crews “I’m an author seeking representation! It’s a thrilling first novel about love, destiny, and someone’s place in the universe! The main charact…ow, ow, watch my head! Officer, the cuffs are hurting me, and I like to talk with my hands!”

But at least I’m writing in here more right? Like I told Chris, there’s no such thing as bad writing, except bad writing. I write here now more because I’m actually awake in the mornings and I have time to do stuff, but really, who reads? Kenzie, Chris, my parents, Jennifer, people looking for MySpace layouts (look, there’s another one!). It’s kind of like probing the universe, sending out messages in a bottle and hoping the get back…something. The Big Gun or the Good Package, who knows.

Fast internet helps with my whole “CSI: Literary Agency Internet Investigations” squad, but then again, it’s the goddam internet and it’s filled with whackos and cheats. No agents, not publishers, not artists…something else. What warp factor 7 internet has gotten me is movie trailers and music downloads that might not actually suck. I spent this morning assembling a superteam of OkGo (because Kenzie was on their webpage last night), the Ramones (because they’ve been talking about them on Entourage), that Supermassive Black Hole song (which Kenzie has asured me that we like) and Johnny Cash (because he’s Johnny FUCKING Cash). The Vibe, Steel and Gypsy of this team have been a horrible remix of the horrible Gwen Stefani Bananas song (which I had to remember to spell “bananas”), a big rap song to the music of the Transformers theme and a version of Barbie Girl about GI Joes. Look for this Detroit League to fight the Royal Flush gang next never.

Not obscure, not geeky, not the JLA…something else.

So I should to work, although I just remembered that I taped Deadwood last night, after having a plot point spoiled for me by my Google reader (someone dies!). I know I won’t be back before Allie gets here, and let’s not have the 9-year old calling everyone a cocksucker, ‘kay? See, that’s the kind of day I’m having, mood I’m in, dirty jeans I’m wearing.

Something else.

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If by “candy” you mean “ancient forbidden evil” then, yes, I did tell you not to put that in your mouth

August 21st, 2006 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

So we’re all cable-internetted up and land-phoneline down. We’ll see how it goes now that we don’t have a home phone and everyone seems to ask for you home phone for everything nowadays. But hey, I’d rather have the cell phone and high speed, because man, it’s kick ass.

Funny think about the whole process: The guy came and installed the modem Sunday morning and everything went off without a hitch, which is amazing because how often does that happen? I get on there and zip zam bow we’re cooking with gas, but I’ve got to go to work, so I pick up my cell phone off the desk to put it on my belt and slip slidin’ away, it falls out of my grasp.

Right into my coffee.

I pick it up lickety kickety splitity and wipe it off frantically and call Kenzie’s phone and thank god it works. For about two hours before it starts beeping creeping weeping and turns off and won’t turn back on. I mean, c’mon, what kind of luck is that? I get a cell phone, we decided to get high speed interwebs because if we get rid of the land line and dial up it’ll be cheaper, and fifteen minutes after we get the high speed the cell phone we started with breaks! I mean, that’s just evil!

Anticlimactically, Kenzie got the phone to work when I got home. So yes, cell phones up, land lines down, move your hands from side to side like you just don’t care. Now it’s an orgy of internet downloading and watching like two people who haven’t had anything but dial-up for at least a year. I’ve already downloaded several awful songs that Kenzie will hate (and some she loves), watched movie trailers and even the pilot for the animated Amazing Screw-On Head cartoon that Hellboy creator Mike Mignola got with SciFi. I think it’s being aired at various late night times, but hopefully it’ll get picked up for a series soon. If you have the high-speed, I suggest checking it out here, as it is hilarious and stars the voices of Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon and Patton Oswalt. I also visited the site for the animated Hellboy show, which is coming to Cartoon Network…at some point. Great site, no information on the airdates, which is a little stupid.

What isn’t stupid is Snakes on a Plane. It is, unarguably, the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, now and for forever. Kenzie, Tony and I went to go see it and we all enjoyed it (perhaps my fellow audience members enjoyed it less due to my intense carrying on and shouting, but this was a shouty obnoxious loudy movie. When Sam Jackson starts “That’s it! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes…” it’s the audiences duty to finish “…on this motherfucking plane!” Loudly.). Never before have snake attacks been more enjoyable hysterical improbable.

And yes, did I download the song they did for Snakes on a Plane? I sure did, and I encourage you to not only see the movie but stay during the credits for the incredibly awful enjoyable laughable song and music video, featuring the band Cobra Starship. Yes, the band that sings the SoaP song is called Cobra Starship. They have no illusions.

Any other suggestions for fun net destinations downloads timewasters are more than welcome.

Of course, with my 30th birthday coming up, I updated my Amazon wishlist, but like Cobra Starship (I love that name!), I have no illusions.

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Chews storks in the marbage respazzle

August 19th, 2006 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

It’s been kind of a rough week, but hopefully it’ll all level out soon. Nothing real major, but we did find out that Kenzie’s cat Mimi has cancer, which is giving her tumory lumps on her stomach. She’s not in any pain or anything, but one of them did begin to bleed the other night, which prompted an emergency call to the vet and a visit in the morning. She’s got a couple of months to a couple of years, so that’s a little bit grim. We’re hoping she’ll be with us for a long, long time, Kenzie especially, but I know I’ll miss the little girl like crazy because she’s my furry stepdaughter, and she loves me. So it’s been rough.

Work is hard, but not in a really awful way, just a “hey, we need to reorganize all the back issue comics” way. Unfortunately, we had about 30 rogue long boxes in our upstairs that were filled with all manner of random crap, from Marvel and DCs at all eras to Disney comics to porno to war comics to assorted horrid 90s Malibu crap. The first week was just sorting them, now we’re putting them away. You’d think this would be a fun task for someone that loves comics, but noooooooo. If I see one more 2099 comic, or a Midnight Sons comic again I may just go on a kill crazy rampage. Not to mention that things are just so out of order with the stuff that’s already “sorted.” It’s work that needs to be done, and we’re going to do it goddamit. We’re also hopefully going to be getting our new webpage for the store up and running sometime too, and we’re going to be blogging on it, which means one more thing I have to work on maintaining. Although given the state of some of the stuff going on in comics nowadays, there will be no shortage of material. Angry, angry material.

Speaking of which, what the fuck is up with that whole “London Bridge” song that trashy skank from the Black Eyed Peas sings? I mean, it’s obviously porno, but what the fuck does it mean when some chick is like “my London, London bridge wanna go down?” I mean, that’s not even real! Does everything have to be dirty? What’s next? “Oh yeah, my Slinky, my Slinky, it goes down stairs alone or in pairs, my Slinky, yeah!” “Connect Four, baby, yeah, up, down, across or diagonal, oh yeah!” It’s not good. Even worse, I was looking through the Previews catalog we get our comics and comics related stuff from, and with the new Bettie Page movie coming out there’s tons of BP stuff flying around. They had one thing, a shoulder bag with a picture of her topless (but with stars over her nipples) and the description said something like “Perfect for on the go travel, or for school! Grades K through 6.” Are you fucking insane!?!?! Be assured, Allie is never going to school, probably any grade, with any kind of Bettie Page star nipple stuff around! I mean, seriously! Little girls don’t need to be whores!

I just had staggeringly strong Deja Vu. Trippy.

Kenzie and I are getting cable internet tomorrow, which will be *sweeeeeeeet!* We’re getting rid of our home phone and the money we pay for dial-up and we’ll actually be saving money. Crazy, I know. So adjust your contact info for me. Home phone out, cell phone in. Word!

I’ll leave you with this, which I made at the link on the bottom of the picture. The only bad thing about the early to bed early to rise plan is that I haven’t mastered a plan for watching the Daily Show or Colbert. For some reason I’ve been engrossed with “The Practice” reruns on FX, as thye’re playing the final season when Allan Shore shows up. I guess I’m just ready for Boston Legal to start.

Enjoy, and don’t get put On Notice.

You're On Notice!

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“I’m wearing a jet pack, why are you shooting me?”

August 14th, 2006 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

That’s what I was asking the cops in San Andreas earlier today. Apparently that violates some kind of statute or ordinance I’m not aware. As if getting around in this country isn’t hard enough now, they shoot at you for wearing a jet pack.

I don’t pay much attention to the news, so I was surprised when my boss told me that the whole “terrorists were trying to blow up planes with liquids” thing was a big deal. I read so many news headlines I saw that story and was like “Oh, good, they caught some terrorists.” I didn’t translate that into new speak, which I guess is “OH MY GOD, THEY CAUGHT TERRORISTS! EVERYONE LAY FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND WITH THIER HANDS LACED BEHIND THIER HEAD AND PREPARE TO BE SEARCHED! THROW OUT ALL LIQUIDS FOR FOREVER!!!” I don’t fly often, but what the shit, y’know? As many people said on Fark forums, we’re just creating better targets *in* the airports as opposed to the planes. Long lines of people waiting to go through security = perfect place for bombs to be going off. I mean, just think about the damage to the infrastructure if, say, a dozen major airports were attacked with bombs? Chaos.

It’s amazing the people who just refuse to see the “we’re creating more terrorists” argument. If someone’s home or livelihood is destroyed because we’re retaliating for some terrorist attack they didn’t have anything to do with, don’t you think they’re going to go “Hey, fuck america” instead of just rolling over and taking it? It also fills my heart with joy to see the “oh, and they say islam is a religion of peace? Bullshit! Look at the terrorists!” people. Yes, because no one has ever done anything awful in the name of Christianity. We’ve all got our angry little cousins that ruin it for everyone else.

I watched the unrated “Hostel” this morning and, holy shit, what the fuck is up with that movie? It made The Hills Have Eyes Look like a Boy Scout Jamboree film. I really liked Cabin Fever, mainly because it was funny in addition to being mind-numbingly gross. It, like Hostel, had that great horror movie trope of having the protagonists be dicks, so that you weren’t all that sorry when bad shit happened to them. With Hostel that wasn’t as prevalent, but in the beginning, when the American tourists are in Amsterdam, smoking pot and banging hookers all over the place surrounded by other American tourists, I found it amusing that at one point someone goes “Dude, are there any Dutch people in Amsterdam?” Yes, we as Americans are all frat boys and psychotically rude to “foreigners,” especially when we’re in their country. This doesn’t necessarily mean we should be drugged, kidnapped and sold to some factory where businessmen pay money to kill you with a chainsaw. In Cabin Fever, about ten minutes in I was going “oh wow, I can’t wait to see these douchebags get killed.” In Hostel, not so much. It was more like “Jesus, is this a snuff film?”

What a delightful balancing act we have. Yes, Americans are spoiled, lazy, ignorant and selfish. However, this doesn’t mean we should be blown up in mid-air, because we’re not all like that. Maybe if we traded all our celebrities, or just Paris Hilton, to the terrorists and promised to have better role models we’d be able to reach some kind of accord. Or lure them out just in time to kill them with a chainsaw.

Grrrrrrr, I’m political! Grrrrrrrrr!

In less ridiculously awful news, I’ve been messing around with the site after trying to figure out Kenzie’s little toy on her myspace that shows people her last few LJ entries. Last week that led me on an Odyssey of magnificent technological proportions, which ended with me getting a Feedburner account for the site to make it easier for people to read this on RSS feeds and setting up a Google reader RSS reader account to collect all the blogs and news that I read into one spot so I can spend less time running around everywhere and trying to remember everyone I want to keep up with. Now it’s all in one spot. In fact, there’s even a little thing on the sidebar there, under “Subscribe” where you can add you email address and get notified when this is updated. My god, the technological genies are working overtime.

To recap:
- Air travel is now bullshit
- Terrorists will always find new ways to kill us, and are dicks
- Americans should lighten the fuck up, dummy
- Hostel is a snuff film, don’t watch it while eating breakfast
- I spent way too much time on the internet to spend less time on the internet, and now I have nowhere left to go on the internet.
- Don’t let the cops catch you with a jet pack in San Andreas.

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Nobody puts Buck Rogers in the corner

August 1st, 2006 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

Kenzie and I have switched to a new schedule as she started her new job last Thursday, that of a Social Services Assistant at a nursing home in Springfield. This mean more money, a shorter commute and a regular Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5. All great things, but it means we need to get up much earlier, like 7 instead of 10, 11 or even 2 like we have so many days before. So now we’re going to bed at 11 and getting up at 7, and actually doing pretty good at it. I definitely feel more relaxed, and I’ve been able to get a lot more done on my days off.

Of course today I watched “The Hills Have Eyes” on pay per view and have Buck Rogers reruns on SciFi going on in the background as I write this (the Price is Right is a rerun…a rerun! Even sadder, *I can tell that the Price is Right is a rerun*). Yesterday I did manage to actually finish a story I’d been working on, and get some San Andreas played before Allie showed up.

Sidebar: They just made a joke on Buck Rogers about Jaws. He get’s a “nature documentary of some kind, but with an anatomical title…Mandibles…Mouth…something like that.” “Jaws?” “Yes, that’s it.” “Just when you thought it was safe in the 25th Century!” *laugh* Oh Twiki, you rapscallion, you…Man, I used to watch the bejeezus out of this show. Even funnier, one of the guys that was just on it and had like three lines was Dennis Haysbert, who played David Palmer on “24.” Now they’re playing an episode called “Space Rockers,” which looks like in might guest star Jerry Orbach. A bunch of guys covered in tinfoil and glowsticks playing 70s technorock are Andromeda, “the most popular music group with the young people.” “Sounds like the Beatles.” “The Who?” “No, not The Who, the Beatles.” *zing!*

I spent some time yesterday also looking for outlets to possibly sell and publish said story, but I’m confirming what I had suspected a while ago: there’s almost no good outlet for short genre horror fiction. I’m putting aside the fact that I’m on the fence as to if the story is any good or not anyway. Everything’s got to be “original” and “out of the ordinary” and “well-written.” What the shit is that about?

Yes, it was Jerry Orbach, and he’s using music to control the young people and have them commit crimes. And the lead singers name is “Rambo.” Yeah, cause original and well-written has always won the day in the past.

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