Random Thoughts: Walking Dead "Nebraska" Edition.

First of all, yay! I hate midseason breaks, and I’m glad that’s over with. SPOILERS for “Nebraska” episode follow, for those who have not watched it yet.

• I hope Lori is dead in that ditch. Because a) Lori is an idiot. And b) Lori is an idiot. And c) Lori is, in addition to being an idiot, whiny. I’m telling you, whiny is not going far in a zombie apocalypse.  First she tells Rick not to go looking for the closest thing they have to an actual doctor. At least a doctor is useful, unlike Lori. Then she goes whining to Daryl about how he’s being selfish by not doing her idiotic bidding, after he just about killed himself trying to find Sophia, and after she sent poor Glenn off with her super-secret shopping list. Self-aware much, Lori? Then she takes off without telling anyone, absconding with one of the vehicles that was in better shape, and tries to read a map by HOLDING IT IN FRONT OF HER FACE WHILE DRIVING. This somewhat impaired her ability to see the ZOMBIE XING sign on her way to Karmasgoingtokickyourassville.    How about this? How about we exchange Lori for introducing the entire rest of the cast from Prison Break? That would be awesome.

• I heart Daryl. He’s at least off making new arrows (especially given how stupid Andrea had him wasting arrows willy-nilly earlier because she’s a passive/aggressive nutcase). He cracked me up with his “Listen here, Olive Oyl…” which might have been the second best line of the show.

• Kid #1 suggesta “Otis Used To Play The Guitar” as an awesome band name.

• Liked how the bar is right next to an honest-to-god horse and buggy shop. Stop in for a sasparilly and some rock candy with the kids! Have your picture taken with an old-timey prospector zombie!

• I can finally look at Andrew Lincoln and not hear him speaking with a British accent. (Unlike most Americans, I first watched him on three series of the BBC show Afterlife.)

• Love how Dale drove Shane absolutely crazy by not saying a single word. I just hope when Shane finally proves to everyone what a cowardly insane douchebag he is in some overly dramatic way, he manages only to take out Andrea and Lori and not anyone who’s actually tolerable.   

• I cannot believe that no one turned to Shane after the Zombie Barn Massacre and uttered the words “Happy now?” Because I so would have. And then I would have done a Snoopy dance.

• While Rick and Herschel’s endless philosophizing was getting on my last nerve, the story arc in the bar from when Michael Raymond-James and Fat Tony walked into until the inevitable dénouement was atiny little masterpiece. For the first time, I believed Rick was a cop. It was amazing to watch the way he and Raymond-James size each other up. And anybody with an ounce of ability to read a scene could see the exact moment when Rick decided who wasn’t walking out of there. Then it was just a matter of picking the moment. One of the best scenes of the season.

• Bonus thought from Talking Dead – Dave Navarro is about as bright as Lori. He not only managed to totally misread every single character, but when asked about his thoughts on Dale said, “Oh, wait, is he the guy with the RV?” Yeah, right, Navarro, you’re on top of things. And you’re a huge fan, even though you can’t bother to learn the character names. Too busy sanding your amazingly smooth face or braiding up the side of your leather pants?

I am still counting down until the moment when Shane/Lori/Andrea are eaten by zombies. Or killed by their own stupidity. The two are not mutually exclusive. Die, Shane/Lori/Andrea, Die!

While I Was Away

Got a new book out:

 

For a limited time it's yours for the price of a candy bar, so click here now. 

Later on I plan to expound at some length about how it came to be finally published.

I'm also working on a spiffy new author site that will eventually be really cool, but is currently only lukewarm because days are currently 14 hours too short to do what I need to do.  You can see the grinning skull of it here.

Everybody's back in school: Kid #3 got a new job (thank dog it's near the college and not in the wilds of outer Mongolia like the last one). Kid #4 is going for both Honor's Choir and student council and will be singing the Gregory House creepy cabaret version of "Get Happy" for his drama audition. (YES, MY KIDS ARE WEIRD.) Kid #5 has been selected for gifted and talented -- although his current talent as evidenced at home seems to be flinging himself on the floor and wailing hysterically when asked to clean his room. Pete has gotten so fat that he no longer fits in the camera viewfinder. (When he sits around the desk, he really sits around the desk.)

Suits is an awesome show and I love it sooo much. Breaking In has been miraculously uncanceled by Fox, thus breaking the Slater curse. I've become addicted to Sons of Anarchy, but I have to watch it in the middle of the night because it's too violent for all the delicate little flowers around here. It's a constant battle between me, the laws of time and physics, and the DVR.

I'm currently working on three novels and four short stories concurrently to see if that quiets the voices in my head. Details as they emerge.

And that, as they say, is that.

So much Stuff, So Little Time

In the grips of the dog days -- it's godawful hot, there are eleventy-billion kid-centric activities, the house is currently trashed, still editing, still working (not that I'm not grateful for the boundless work I've had lately), and things just seem to spun completely from my control. I owe emails, I owe blog posts, I may have forgotten how to use the Twitter, and I can't get into my closet anymore. In short - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Anyway...

In the Department of You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone: In response to Netflix changing it's pricing structure, we've dropped the DVD option and are going for just streaming. We did this because we had the DVD of The Hangover out for roughly six months and never found time to watch it. (Our DVR is too full because we are mesmerised by all the shiny TV shows.) But it doesn't go into affect till mid-September, so now it's a race to see how many movies we can watch before the DVDs dry up. I'm betting on 21. I'm sure there's a recognizable pathology to this whole episode.

Brief New TV Update: Outcasts on BBC America is awful. The characters have the memory capacity of goldfish. I can see why the earth blew up, because apparently it was filled with IDIOTS. Quite enjoying Suits on USA, Falling Skies on TNT, and Alphas on SyFy. 

Most Boring Zombie Teaser Ever - Season Two of The Walking Dead is set for October, but the trailer is, um, lackluster.



More later - after I've dug out from under the laundry.....

Random Thoughts - No, I'm Not Dead Edition

Hard as it may be to believe, I'm still rewriting/editing/proofing/formatting. The good news: Director's Cut is DONE. (Except for the cover and the blurby-stuff. The cover is designed, but not made. And the blurby stuff will entail a six-pack and some free time.) I'm doing more surgery on Darker By Degree, having realized that there's a meandering chapter (Chapter 17, I'm looking at you) that is not pulling its weight and needs to be taken outside and slapped around a bit. Running Red is sitting in the corner looking dejected and wondering why I can't stick to a simple timetable. Funny thing is, having a third of the people in my house off in the wilds of Virginia fending off mutant spiders and hillbilly cannibals has not really given me any more usable time. I'm forming a study to committee to get to the bottom of that. (As an aside, the S/O informs me that in Meridian, Mississippi, there is a Long John Silvers/A&W root beer joint. This means you can get to-go clam strips and an A&W root beer float in the SAME LOCATION. This makes me excited for reasons I can't articulate. He found it humorous because in one of our pointless conversations before the great adventure I remarked that if I were going to open a fast-food franchise, it would be a Long John Silver's/A&W combo, not realizing that one actually existed.)

On the hockey front, congratulation to the Bruins for crushing Vancouver last night. I hate the Canucks. (If you know anything about Avalanche fans, you'll understand why.) The Canucks have become a whiny cheap-shot team, much like Detroit. The proof of this is the sore-loser Vancouver riots.  You run a cheap-shot team, you get cheap-shot fans. Suck it, Vancouver. Karma is a harsh mistress.  On the upside for me, today hockey season starts all over, which means that the Avalanche are officially undefeated this season. YAY! (I am working out my issues from last season, when Peter Forsberg BROKE MY HEART. Of course, I don't blame Forsberg, I still blame Pierre Lacroix. Because there is nothing that Pierre Lacroix can do to convince me he's not a pin-headed idiot.) And now that Foote has retired, who will be captain? Sources say Liles, Statsney, Hejduk or Duchene, but I want Christ Stewart.

Now that I've bored you all with hockey talk, an awesomely weird, disorienting, occasionally inexplicably terrifying link. It is called simply Internet K-Hole: Pictures. And that's what is is: pictures. Just random pictures and ephemera, like a truck carrying old photo albums turned over on the Information Superhighway. There's no context, no providence, no rhyme-or-reason (although sometimes there are runs of themes, like pregnant women or goths holding cats, and rolls of film that obviously came from the same camera at the same time, like an awkward tweener showing off all her NKOTB memorablia.) Mostly it's snapshots -- the kind with the white borders, the kind you'd take on vacation or a school trip, drunken parties, college dorms -- but there's other stuff too, old pulp paperback covers, concert ticket stubs, screenshots that you'd take of your favorite celebrities off the TV in the days before we had a computer stronger than a Tandy. WARNING - it it not safe for work or anyone too young to drive an automobile legally. There's a fair amount of nudity and creepy still porn randomly scattered in between pictures of Gramma's b-day cake and random mug shots from the '50s. (And more distrubing than the porn is the '80s hair. Oh, the '80s hair.)

But that's part of what makes it compelling: the sheer, gritty, randomness of it, like an allsorts bag assembled by a being from another planet. I found it obsessively fascinating. Trying to deconstruct it is fruitless.

Random Thoughts - Sinusitis Edition

It has taken three go-rounds with the Neti Pot to almost make me feel like the hollow places in my skull are not filled with chunks of raw liver and wet macaroni. Almost. The S/O won't use the Neti Pot because he claims it makes him feel like he's being waterboarded. He attributes that to a deviated septum. I attribute it to him being a BABY.

Having a head cold and driving around for 2 hours in 92-degree weather in a car with a black interior and no air conditioning is like driving around with a wet sleeping bag tied around your head.

You know who irks me? People who leave their shopping carts in the middle of parking spaces. Really, walk your lazy ass over to the cart corral. Who else irks me? People who mangle idioms. Hard road to hoe? Really? You ever see anybody hoeing a road? How does that even make sense? It's a hard ROW to hoe.  

Read an interesting blog post somewhere on the interwebs asking if you would read a blog that contained curse words. Several people said, "No, because using curse words are a sign of someone with a limited vocabulary who has difficulty expressing themselves." Really? I take umbrage at that.  Now, I belong to the George Carlin school of language: there are no "bad" words, only words used inappropriately or in inappropriate situations . For instance, I would not go up to Queen Elizabeth II and say, "Fucking awesome hat, Mum!" In my other blog, I go for a more professional tone, so I would censor what I say in deference to the audience I'm writing for. But words are words: they have impact and nuance and specific inferences. it's called "discernment." Use it. Capriciously dismissing words or the people who use them to effect speaks poorly of you, not them. Personally, I am much more offended by someone saying, "Boy, that's a hard road to hoe," than someone saying, "That's the stupidest fucking thing I've heard you say today."

Why does Hotmail randomly sign me out, even if I was just using my inbox? Gmail never does that. I could understand if there's no activity for like 12 hours, but I can write an email, read another email, and then go to read the next email, and find that Hotmail has signed me out and wants me to sign back in for my own safety. Why? In case aliens abducted me and replaced me with an indiscernible double between emails? Don't they think the aliens would have used their brain beams to fish the password out of my head? Stop it, Hotmail.

Lesson learned this week? Apropos of my continued work on getting the novels ready for publication over the next six weeks, I learned a valuable lesson about not being able to please everybody all the time. As an over-achiever kid, I really did try to prove my value by being the absolute best at everything, by making sure that everybody liked me. At a certain point, that became the proverbial millstone and I found boys and beer and mentally said, "Screw you, authority!" There were times when I was not a very nice person. In the years between then and now, some bad things happened, some way worse than things that happen to other people, most a lot less worse than things that happen to other people.

During that period I learned to be a nicer person, to work harder, to be kind when there was nothing in it for me, to try and temper my pessimism. But I also reverted back to that insecure overachiever. Why, if I just tried harder, if I was just better, if I pretended to be something I wasn't, people would like me. I did things not because they were right or kind or true, but because I was trying to please people who would never be pleased. I subverted myself because I feared if I didn't, people might think poorly of me. I let other people have control over my happiness. Over my worth.

At some point, I found the switch there in that dark room and turned on the light. I still struggle. Boy, do I struggle. But we all struggle. So that's my message for the week. Flip a switch somewhere. Open your mouth when you've kept it shut. Be brave. Stand up for someone or something you believe in, even if it's just yourself. There will be critics, now and always. Take what you can from those of good intent and ignore those of ill will.  You're not going to make everybody happy. Write that down on a piece of paper and mail it to someone who cares.

Now it's back to work. Bestsellers don't write themselves, you know.