Posted January 5th, 2010 by admin
It’s cold, I’m cold. I am wearing both pairs of woolen socks. I need me some Bob Cratchit gloves. The thermostat is right in front of my desk, but i have vowed NOT to touch it until I turn it off in spring. I owe the gas company my soul now, I shudder (or is that shiver) to think of what they will take from me after that.
Damn few customers this time of year…good time of year to revamp websites…I did the Animal Rescue site over Christmas and Sicpress.com over New Years. I suppose one of the reasons people do inventory about now is that no one’s buying anything and hence you have no money to lay in stock, and the inventory counts are teetering on single digits.
I had intended to take the office and the workshop apart and swap rooms, but when i think of it I want to lie down until the thought goes away. Instead I took the time to do a thorough cleaning of my hard drives, they are both nearly full since I have been too lazy to replace them with larger ones. Deleting duplicate and unused files didn’t actually free up that much space since I do that several times a year anyway.
Until the weather changes in the living room, I will just have to be content with curling as much of my body as possible around a cup of Constant Comment.
Posted December 17th, 2009 by admin
Well I got my bag o’nuts in the post and my new bartending certification in my wallet . . . . and celebrated my 47th birthday with friends wandering around a redneck mecca called Outdoor World. Trust me if you get the chance GO there, it’s a more ridiculous afternoon than mocking people at Walmart. I swear, there are more animal corpses in that one store than live ones in my entire town.
Posted December 9th, 2009 by admin
Press release from IDW PUBLISHING:
Famous Monsters of Filmland, the classic sci-fi/horror/fantasy-specific film magazine that captured the imaginations of so many for more than three decades, today announced its return to print. FM has partnered with IDW Publishing, responsible for hit comic book titles such as 30 Days of Night, Angel, Transformers, and Locke & Key, to bring this new incarnation of the magazine to life. The new Famous Monsters magazine will begin its run on a quarterly basis starting in summer 2010, and will be available in major book retailers, comic stores, and online at famousmonsters.com.
Originally launched in 1958, Famous Monsters of Filmland was one of the first magazines to take readers behind-the-scenes of some of the most popular movies of present and past. Pulling the curtain back on the filmmaking process, the magazine became a lightning rod for legions of young fans, sparking the minds and hearts of future storytellers such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King, and John Landis. Under the guidance of beloved editor-in-chief Forrest J Ackerman, credited with nurturing and even inspiring the careers of early contemporaries such as Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, and L. Ron Hubbard, the magazine brought monsters to life and made household names out of writers, directors, creature designers, FX artists, and monster makeup technicians.
Editorial duties for the magazine will be handled by Michael Heisler, a veteran of the comic book industry for over 20 years, with experience logged at Marvel Comics, WildStorm Productions and IDW itself. “FM was far and away my favorite magazine when I was a kid, and there has been nothing quite like it since,” said Heisler. “Our goal is to update that magic for a modern audience, with coverage of current horror in all its forms, while continuing to pay tribute to the classic films that started it all. Personally, I’m thrilled to be taking this step down the road that Forry Ackerman and ‘Chilly Billy’ Cardille put me on so many years ago.”
Posted November 6th, 2009 by admin
I spent thursday churning out a large order for a special customer…well technically it took all week and as profitable as it was – it’s all spent every penny on frivolous things like insurance and utilities. But after I had washed my hands of the entire thing and before I wrote the 1st check, I celebrated with a trip to McIntyre and Moore in Cambridge. Granted the shop has changed locations more times than Nathan Detroit’s crap game, and has even changed hands…for me there is ALWAYS something to buy.
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I wasn’t looking for anything to resell just books for myself and I kinda had to stop after an hour or so, because the longer I looked, the taller my pile became. (M&M likes that, they give discounts on the height of your book stack…no shit.)
I came away with much to read:
A Great Idea at the Time by local boy Beam is the history of the Great Books series; The WPA Guides: Mapping America…the history of the WPA Guidebook series; Writers, Plumbers and Anarchists: the WPA writer’s project in Mass; Swindler, Spy, Rebel: the Confidence woman in 19th century America; a contemporary travel book about a guy who rode from Turkey to Wales on horseback; and a UK travel book that follows the BBC shipping forecast route…I kid you not; and a copy of Barbara Ehrenreich’s 1973 monograph on Witches, Midwives and Nurses. [the copy of McCaffrey's Hound came in the mail from Old Bag Lady books] . So all in all it was a good day for the pile on my sideboard.
Posted October 23rd, 2009 by admin
I wish I had staged that shot..but nope…..the cat sauntered out of one yard across the road in front of me and into another yard. When the universe does that to you all you can do is sit there and watch your life unfold.
I’ve been watching a lot of other people’s lives lately…the spaghetti and bean feasts, the fleas and forums etc . .
i shot images of a town hall forum the other night and if you eliminate the pols and the journos i didn’t know anyone else in the room.
Life looks different through the camera lens . . . i am still uncomfortable shooting humans..with a camera…i spent 20 years shooting things that don’t ask you why. …i watched the ‘real’ news photographer fly about the room like a hungry hummingbird – perhaps one day i will be less self conscious.
Posted October 22nd, 2009 by admin
isn’t that the most beautiful thing you ever saw? to me it looks like puppies and kittens dipped in chocolate…
Technically she is called a percontation point – a ‘rhetorical question mark’. . . an irony mark also called a snark or zing. Created by Henry Denham in the 1580s, it pops up in literature every century or so, but never really caught on.
I can’t be the only person who thinks that is a terrible fate for such an incredibly useful invention. I’m gonna make it my mission in life to use this sticky puppy as much and as often as I can.
Let’s take back the snark people, we need her, we live in an age where irony is pretty much a contact sport. I may even get it tattooed somewhere. What do you think؟
Posted October 16th, 2009 by admin
worth reading • From Consumerist.com
“Walmart is also now selling over 200 current best-sellers at at least half off the list price.” WTF? aren’t books pretty much dirt cheap now? why bother printing prices on them at all, lets just sell them by the pound cause:
1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.
(Source: Jerold Jenkins,
www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)So who is BUYING all these crap books anyway? ya gotta admit most best sellers are pretty much crap… interchangable authors and titles but basically the same content from year to year….thrillers, bio, feel me up good books etc…. I can see they have a purpose just like iceberg lettuce and beige paint but seriously you read em you forget about em almost immediately.
I am torn between paying full price for these books being a crime against man and the fact that there are so many copies printed that they are nearly worthless being a crime against nature. and if you say “save the trees read em on Kindle”, so help me I will throttle you. Come to think of it, when’s the last time we got the recycling guys to pick up a box of best sellers? never. that’s when. the only time you see em after they leave Walmart and BJs is when they show up at yard sales for a buck a piece.
I say print fewer of the damn things and charge more money…suddenly you will see the quality and value of books improve.
Posted October 8th, 2009 by admin
In the last four days I have written four incredibly witty, and helpful blog posts, each funnier than the last, you shoulda read them, they rocked. ….alas they all ocurred inside my head while I was driving from one place to another, ticking off the list of things I was NOT getting accomplished. All those lovely words evaporated well before I had a chance to type them.
My remaining time with the Census folk can be measured in hours now – not that it wasn’t fun..well payday was fun…i know i know a lot of self pity for someone WITH a job when so many folks have none. I was just getting stressed trying to keep all those damn balls in the air..i like to know exactly where my balls are at all times. Besides i felt awful, long hours, bad food, I haven’t had time to ride my bike for over a month and all that high fructose Red Bull was making me squirrely – correction squirreliER…it was like having a real job. <>
Hopefully I can get back to my life…my remaining cusomers will be very happy, I STILL have not been able to dig myself out of the backorder hole I slide into when my mother passed away. Good thing I have run out of ancestors or I would never get anything accomplished. Oddly, while glad handing folks around town in the name of MethuenComon, I seemed to have backed into a night life. This week, with my camera beside me, I have been to a ham and bean supper and the Rod and Gun Club, Ballroom dancing at the Senior Center, a 45’s (that’s a card game children) night and a Jazz Club…who knew we had a jazz club? A little Stranger in a Strange land meets middle America., not to mock but to observe…well there’s a little mocking.. but I get my fill of that at Walmart on Saturdays..I think of it like white trash anthropology.
I have to do the write up on the Jazz club now…i was probably the only local present, save the club owners…and being marginally mediarific, I was treated with celebrity status…I had a good gig going, if Iwanted to cage drinks all night. Here’s hoping I get back to regularly scheduled programming…you wouldn’t want to buy any tickets to an animal rescue benefit would you? thought so.
