Richard Dansky's Blog, page 51

Kitteh needz teh helps!

Some of you may remember that back in the Pleistocene, Melinda and I fostered a pair of kittens named Jibber and Jabber. They were cute, they were adorable, they inspired many frenzied clickthroughs on kittenfight.com, and we were sad when they left.

Unfortunately, due to extenuating circumstances Jabber's owner needs to find him a new place to live. If you live in the RTP area and are interested in adding a handsome, affectionate kitty to your home, please let me know and I'll put you in touc...

Entertainment Some Weekly

Just got an email from EW offering me the chance to be part of an exclusive subscriber program whereby I get to see hot movies before the rest of the country, films including Shrek the Third (2007) and Dreamgirls (2006). Which, of course, leads me to wonder exactly which week's worth of entertainment they're talking about. On the other hand, if I get an email offering me tickets to an advance screening of, say, Blazing Saddles, I'm there. I don't know how, but I'm there.

It's ALIVE!

More accurately, it's live - the page for Firefly Rain over at Simon and Schuster.

Mmm, I loves me that cover....

Snowpocalypse Estimate Revised Upward...

...after the 45 minute drive into work. (Normal drive time: 12 minutes).

Number of idiots going full throttle on ice who passed me on the way in: 8
Number of idiots going full throttle on ice who passed me on the way in who were driving sports cars: 6
Number of yeti spotted roaming the frozen Carolina countryside: Sadly, 0.

Dispatches From the Great Carolina Blizzard of '10

Day two...snow is still here...checked the french Toast supplies and got a nasty shock. We're down to half a carton of milk. No eggs; Melinda only likes egg whites. And the bread, oh God, the bread - half of it had gone moldy. I bought that loaf Friday. Friday! It's as if some evil force is here, mocking us. I can hear its evil voice on the winter wind, though, to be fair, it sounds a lot like the neighborhood kids having a snowball fight when it does that....We shall hang on as long as we ca...

Clearing up a video game myth

You do not in fact get better at video games if you  play them at ridiculous hours of the morning. You simply have fewer of your friends online to laugh at how thoroughly inept you are.

That is all.

Snow In Carolina

Which generally means a Triangle-wide "WAAAAAAUUUGGGGH!" I stopped in at the local Food Lion with the vague notion of picking up a couple of non-staple-type things - we had milk, Melinda had her egg whites and I sensibly picked up a loaf of bread at a bakery, thus hitting all three points on the French Toast Alert - and to get a sense of how the weather-induced panic was looking on the ground.

Yes, people were stocking up on the French Toast Necessities. Yes, they were loading up on batteries....

No Storytellers Unplugged Today

Sorry, folks. Lots of login issues trying to get that posted.

Dear People Who Write MonsterQuest

I have two requests.

One, can you see if you can go one episode without making repeated references to "deadly predators". All predators are, by definition, deadly to something. If they weren't, they'd be very hungry predators, starving predators, or possibly extinct predators.

Two, is there any possibility of any actual monsters this season. Hillbilly bigfoot, yay. Sharks? Snakes? Not so much. Snakes you've already done an episode on? Definitely not so much. Snakes that, while big, are so not m...

Incoming DBTs!

One of my favorite bands is the Drive-By Truckers.
I wrote a significant portion of Firefly Rain (available in trade paperback in April from Pocket Books, thankyouverymuch) to their music.
I have also managed to utterly fail to see them in concert roughly the last nineteen times they have been through the Triangle area.
They will be back on February 12 & 13. I will be going to see them at least once.
Currently, I'm planning on definitely hitting the Friday night show. If you're in the RTP area a...