Audioblogger...
Blogger now has a free service that allows you to blog using your phone, any phone really. Now you get to hear just how geeky I sound!

Not sure how much it'll get used by me, but it's interesting. It automagically converts your call to an mp3 file and posts it. You have to come back later and add a title and any text.  ¶
2:44 PM 1 pithy comments

  Poetry...
I have some links over there on the left (you might have noticed) and I have to admit that I haven't dug very deep into some of them. One of them, a link to author/poet Ilona Hegedus, I put up mainly because we both posted on The Horror Writers Network and we exchanged links. She commented on one of my posts and I realized I hadn't been to her blog much at all. I did some digging and read this poem called Trial. It's quite good (imo). Give her a click, won't you?  ¶
9:31 AM 3 pithy comments

  Old School...
Bored? Want to read some of my pre-blog wramblings? Go here.  ¶
9:21 AM 2 pithy comments

  Trip round up...
Catch my previous travelogues here and here.

Sunday and the last day of the con arrived. I had crashed on the roll away bed watching Little Nicky which I mercifully remember little of. I woke somewhat refreshed and after getting packed and ready we descended upon the food court to stuff our faces.

The line at tea McDonald's was HUUUUUGE, so we ducked into a cheese steak place that appeared to have breakfast offerings. That turned out pretty well as the McD's lost all of the orders they had taken in one of their register lines. (I bet their terminals have a Windows OS back there somewhere.) I got three pancakes the size of hubcaps and some good sausage for three bucks. Sufficiently recharged we decided to hit the con floor one more time.

I think I mentioned the skyway between the two hotels in a previous post. Well my friends this thing STANK after having who knows how many of the great unwashed (and apparently untrained in the art of throwing away their food related garbage) spent the weekend sleeping there. We hurried through and checked out the dealer tables. There were lots of sales, especially on food. I only purchased two things and both of those the night before. One was Bawls, the best energy drink evah, and the other was Men's Pocky, an awesome pretzel stick dipped in dark chocolate.

Our experience complete, we headed back to get our cars and got on the road. The drive consisted of much napping on my part. We did stop at World Market where I picked up a cute little four pack of Dave's Hot Sauces. At a gas station I also tried the new Habanero Doritos. They were most excellent.

Jay and I dropped off his buddy and we grabbed a bite of dinner at Braum's, quote an interesting little burger/ice cream/grocery chain. We finished up the road trip listening to Weird Al and laughing our butts off. Pat's house came in view and I was so ready to be stationary. We relaxed for a bit, had some excellent pizza, wings, and beer and then Jay called it a night. He had kitties to tend to.

Meanwhile Pat and I watched Collateral which restored my faith in Tom Cruise and gave Jamie Foxx a few more points in my book. I have GOT to see Ray. After that I finally had to give in to sleep. We tried watching The Aristocrats but I just couldn't do it.

Monday morning Pat and I played his X-box while waiting for Jay to come over. This after Pat made waffles from scratch and a damn fine cuppa joe. (Ladies, someone move to Okie and snatch these guys up. They're gems, the both of 'em.) Lunch at a cool Irish pub, a quick trawl through a new age book store, a brief chat with Pat's mum and we were at tea airport all too soon. We dragged our goodbyes out a bit, none of us really wanting it to end. It had been a great time, no doubt.

The flight home was loooong and I read The Conqueror Worms to pass the time. A buddy picked me up and took me to my car and after what seemed like a whirlwind tour I was back at home, safe and largely sound.  ¶
6:53 AM 4 pithy comments

  Wrandom Wramblings??/
Weird...

A friend pointed it out to me. Now I need to find out who was first and if it was me, sue them.  ¶
8:21 AM 3 pithy comments

  Realistic Superheroes???
Possible good show?

Heroes on NBC.

Looks like the producers of Crossing Jordan are attached.  ¶
8:43 PM 3 pithy comments

  New Feature...
You will notice something that looks like a chat client over there on the sidebar. Well guess what? It is. If you see Capt. over there than holla back! If you want to add it to your blog go to gabbly.com It's amazingly simple.  ¶
7:21 AM 0 pithy comments

  Holy Transforming Spiders on a Planhe...
Here's a nice pic of Bumblebee from the new Transformers movie:




And if you value your life you WILL go here to see the Spiderman 3 trailer. And if you value your soul you will check out the Snakes on a Plane trailer.  ¶
7:09 AM 2 pithy comments

  Power...
Power in the Blood is up at Scott's Brain for your perusal. I chopped it up into four parts for less scrolling. Enjoy!  ¶
10:39 AM 3 pithy comments

  Slackness...
I haven't been slacking, honest. I've been honestly writing non-blog stuff. Back on the fiction treadmill. The piece so far has gotten one positive commentor and one negative commentor. To those who've read it, I'm not afraid. Tell me it sucks, tell me it's good, whatever. If you see this and haven't read it and would like to, drop me a line.  ¶
4:02 PM 4 pithy comments

  Christ: Not a CEO or Superhero...
Would that I could write like this. Nice work by Frank Turk of Team Pyro.  ¶
2:49 PM 0 pithy comments

  Test...
This is a title tag works.  ¶
1:22 PM 1 pithy comments

  Sidenotes...
I'm testing something called Sidenotes.

It sounds pretty cool.

Here is some ordinary paragraph text. Within this text, I can highlight
a particular passage and add a side note to it
like so.

  ¶
11:16 AM 7 pithy comments

  Magic Time!!!
I love close up magic and I know something about these two tricks. Not so much how he did them as generally how they are done. In any case this is VERY cool.

  ¶
10:35 AM 0 pithy comments

  Adventures in Anime-land...
Day Three!!! (Catch the first two days here.)

Saturday began much, much too early but as a father of three it's difficult for me to sleep in. I did manage to stay in bed til 8:30 when I finally gave up and fixed coffee. I think I mentioned that the Westin was swank. As further proof they had a little coffee maker that had pre-measured packets of Starbucks coffee for the brewin'. I'm not "Seattle's Finest"'s biggest cheerleader but it was a darn sight better than the crap you usually get so I didn't complain.

Showered, coffeed up, and dressed I made contact with Dave and Ben who I was to spend the day with. I had managed to get my fill of cosplayers the day before so I was eager to see these guys and hang out. I caught the DART out to Plano (I wish we had trains like that here) and we went to lunch first at Scotty P's. The burgers were phenomenal, let me tell you, but the cardiac fries were awesome! They were really good steak cut fries with about a pound of cheese on. I could have gotten jalapenos, sour cream, and bacon, but I'm watching my waistline. We chased lunch with a comic book store run and then headed to Ben's house.

The man has a serious home theater situation; an LCD projector with a kickin' sound system and some comfortable chairs. Beers in hand we watched Robot Chicken (HAH!), an episode of the Chappelle show (meh), and Spaced (HAH! times ten). Let me say, as an aside, that I will now actively seek out anything Simon Pegg is in. I loved him in Shaun of the Dead and he was brilliant in this. And not just him. Well, just click the link to read more.

After meeting Ben's family and making a quick run to Costco (which allowed Ben and I some most excellent conversational time) Dave and I said goodbye to El Chupacabra and went to pick up Dave's much better half and meet our dinner companions at the Hoffbrau Steak House. Good food, great beer, and excellent company led to an evening of much making of merry. I won't bore you with the details (too late for that maybe?) but we topped the whole shebang off watching some decent improv comedy at the con after which I collapsed into the rollaway bed in my room.  ¶
7:21 AM 2 pithy comments

  Ask A Ninja...
Okay this is pretty funny.

Ninja Excuses...



More here.  ¶
2:55 PM 0 pithy comments

  A-kon...
Part the First!
After a relaxing, but not exactly restful, trip to see my parents on the beautiful coast of North Carolina my wife dropped me off at the airport for my flight to Tulsa via Dallas. As I think I said prior, the reason for flying to Tulsa instead of straight to Dallas (where A-kon is) had more than a little to do with money. As an added bonus though I got to see my friend Pat (whose blog I would link to but he password protects the mug) who was unable to attend the con itself.

The flights were uneventful in spite of a rather fantastic thunderstorm in NC. I did get to meet a charming older lady who I shared a row (and no more) with. We chatted and actually had dinner together at McD's in DFW. The flight to Tulsa had me sharing a row with two young ladies and we all happened to be reading Dean Koontz novels (not the same one, that would be freaky). I landed in Tulsa at about 9:15 local time and Pat and Jay were waiting for me. We exchanged manly hugs and retrieved my less than manly suitcase. Jay was sporting a shaved pate and a forked blue beard with a bright red soul patch. He does something every year along those lines. A man that big with that sort of facial growth could easily be intimidating and I'm sure he was to anyone that didn't know him.

A short trip later and we were ensconced in the warmth of Pat's pad. The man is a consummate host, I'll say that for sure. He had some brats and an awesome chili sauce ready for us to chow on. That plus beer (some of my home brew and some of his store bought) got us in a movie mood. The lateness of the hour and the fact that we had to get up at 4:30 am (a bomb that got dropped during dinner) didn't stop us from catching a good portion of Bad Boys 2 on Pat's 62" Screen of Hotness. I fell into a sound but all too short sleep on the futon in spite of the decibels pumping out from the subwoofer five feet away.

Part the Second aka Day Two!!!

Friday dawned, but we were up before it. It was dark and already humid as we climbed into the XXXterra of Doom to pick up some of Jay's friends and their dog. We gave them a ride to somewhere in Oklahoma and then joined the wagon train south. Smitty joined us and we played chase car to the other vehicle. A breakfast of foodstuffs from Carl's Jr. under our belts and we were finally on our way.

Playing DJ using my laptop with an FM transceiver thingy and doing the alphabet game (The object of the game is to cite all of the letters of the alphabet ,in order, from a to z using road signs and license plates. The first person to z wins.) kept us all awake. The miles rolled by and we reached our target around 12:30 (after an unintentional tour of downtown Dallas).

Our party was staying in the Westin Hotel, which is attached to the Adam's Mark were A-kon is held. Our room was swank times ten. Gear stashed, we ate lunch and then headed down to the con proper. It was a sea of geekdom. Lines snaked all around and we took our places to pick up our con badges. "Security" made sure that we all stayed in formation (and let me tell you, having a last name with an R meant a looooong wait). We got the "opportunity" to watch some sort of summoning/mating ritual/line dance that the hard core fans were doing to anime music. Not even the hardest core in our group new what the heck they were doing.

Finally wearing our geek badges with pride, we were able to take in the rest of the con. I spent most of the next hour or so in the dealer room. It had all kinds of anime, manga, food, t-shirts, cheap indian swords, and a Guitar Hero game that never ended. It was also an excellent place to check out costumes. I hope to have some pictures from David (one of our group) but for now let me just say that some folks apparent;y work on their cosplay stuff all year. Then of course you have the ones that look like they spent as much time on theirs as I did on my science fair projects in high school (except the costumes used a little more posterboard and Elmer's glue).

The biggest disappointment I had was a lack of any actual anime being shown. At least nothing I was interested in seeing. They did have rooms dedicated to J-Pop, hentai (you look it up, just not at work) and video games (only saw one interesting game that involved a DJ turntable). But the main reason I went was to hang with some friends and gawk at those geekier for something than I.

Let me take a moment to say that I was convicted about that. I started looking down on these folks and that's just wrong. I hate it when people look down on me for having a hobby they don't understand so where do I get off doing the same? Granted that didn't stop me from pitying/being creeped out by the guy who was cosplaying as a girl with dice on her head, but it couldn't be helped. Maybe I was just jealous of his legs, but I'm not telling.

Dinner at Atomic Sushi, a last pass through the con for the day, and drinks at the hotel bar (the highlight of which was the Espresso Martini) closed out the day.  ¶
10:41 AM 4 pithy comments

  Have Some Cheeeeese Rat...
The jokers at the Fake Life have let us in on the newest Pixar/Disney flick:



Here's the trailer and it does look pretty cute. I get the feeling that they didn't much care for Cars over at TFL. I haven't seen it myself, but this trailer does seem more original than "Doc Hollywood with wheels". You take a look and tell me what you think, or better yet check out TFL and tell them.  ¶
12:24 PM 0 pithy comments

  Return of the King...
I'm back baby! I had a great time with the gang. I ate too much, drank to much, and got too little sleep, but it was fun. I managed to stay out of trouble and I bathed regularly so I had two up on some of the con attendees. More details to come.  ¶
9:56 AM 3 pithy comments

  Vacation All I ever Wanted...
Vacation, had to get away!

Expect little in this department until a week from today at the earliest. I shall be vacationing with the fam until Thursady with only dialup if that. Then I fly to Dallas to partake in anime, sushi, and beer. There I might be able to find a decent hi-speed connection and share some news. Until then feel free to peruse my archives and whatnot!  ¶
3:10 PM 4 pithy comments