Patrick Dent's Blog, page 11

When You Find Yourself in a Hole, Stop Digging!

My nephew and I recently flew to Los Angeles to spend the weekend with the hilarious comedian and podcaster, Adam Carolla. It was a once in a lifetime experience. He is exactly the same in person as he is when broadcasting, a human punch line factory.

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When we were checking into the hotel, the desk clerk looked at my nephew and said, “You’re one King, right?”

Silver tongued devil that I am, I blurted out, “No, we’re two Queens!”

Quickly realizing my poor choice of words, I made a ham-fisted attempt to reel it back in by exclaiming, “What I mean is, we WANT two Queens!”

Review of The Book of Alma

THE BOOK OF ALMA by Marianne Reese

Marianne consistently writes books that are enjoyable for all ages. This is the second book of hers I have read, and I loved both. This reminds me of the Hardy Boys books I loved so much when I was young. But, don’t think it’s written exclusively for children. I’m 52, and loved every minute of it!

Never Get a Mohawk the Day Before Basic Training

#bookworm #thrillers #amreading #boostmybook #espionage #books

I was a lad of 17, celebrating my last night of freedom before reporting for Basic Training. Having the brain of a teenager, I figured I should show up for the toughest physical and mental challenge of my life with a severe hangover and as little sleep as possible.

My buddies and I imbibed heavily into the wee hours before we were lubricated enough to achieve inspiration. I challenged my best friend to a contest. If he could chug an entire ice tea glass full of Jack Daniels, he could give me a Mohawk. In retrospect, I admit there was no clear path to victory for either participant in that bet.

His stomach bucked a few times, but he muscled his way through the entire glass. So, with greatly impaired fine motor skills, he administered a pretty decent Mr. T style Mohawk. Shortly thereafter, the world faded to black.

In the morning, as I gazed blearily into the mirror, it occurred to me that Uncle Sam might not appreciate my sense of humor. I had my friend buzz it off before he drove me to Fort Jackson.

Beleaguered and blurry-eyed, we embarked on our journey. We made it through the main entrance to Fort Jackson without incident. Once inside the perimeter, however, the tactical situation shifted. Within minutes we were pulled over by MPs.

We were snatched from the 1971 Dodge Challenger (the same car from Vanishing Point), arrested and separated. It was only after several hours of interrogation that the Army concluded our stories were too strange and consistent to be untrue.

You see, since my head was shaved clean, they assumed I had already begun processing and was attempting to go AWOL.

Perhaps no one besides me has ever or will ever need this advice. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to pass my hard-earned wisdom to future generations. Never get a Mohawk the day before Basic Training!

How to Turn an Ebook into an Audio Book for Free

There is a setting on your phone that will enable it for the visually impaired. If you activate this feature right before you start up your Kindle, your phone will read the book to you. Simply deactivate it when you are done, as the feature applies to the entire functionality of your phone.

 

You Don’t Need an MBA to Understand Business

I grew up in a small, rural, Southern town. The local mechanic was a gentleman with the rather confusing name of Lorraine. I’d like to say Lorraine was a grammar school dropout, but fear I would be padding his resume. He lacked all the benefits of the educational system. His father had taught him to fix cars, then to run a garage.

I must have been about ten, riding in the back seat of a car, free to move about without the pesky seat belt laws our alien overlords have imposed on us in the modern age. My father was driving. Some other man rode shotgun.

We pulled into Lorraine’s garage so my dad could seek counsel. I followed my dad into the garage bay, because OSHA wasn’t a thing back then. My dad asked Lorraine to check the car “from bumper to bumper” to determine its overall condition.

When the stranger walked off to smoke a cigarette, Lorraine gestured for my dad to join him in front of the car, pointing under the hood in a clever subterfuge. He whispered, “Mister, is you buying or is you selling?”

Great Children’s Book

This is a great children’s book I came across. It is delightfully told from the dog’s perspective. My son loves it!

How I (May Have) Bankrupted CVS

#thrillers #fiction#BookBoost#novel

My conscience has been gnawing at me. I think I may have inadvertently destroyed the CVS corporation. Yesterday, I popped into CVS to buy dental floss. Without bothering to read any signs, I stumbled across a display of floss. I vaguely noticed that there were no other dental products in the section. But, floss is floss, so I scooped the entire display into the crook of my arm. I paid with my debit card, disregarding the total amount and stuffing the unexamined receipt in my bag.

Upon my arrival home, I opened the bag and noticed the receipt. I had just purchased nearly $100 worth of dental floss! How could this be? I’m ashamed to say I had to retrieve my reading glasses to solve this mystery.

What I had purchased was a specialty item. It was a floss designed to not leave those pesky indentations in one’s fingers. Now, who among us has not been plagued with this problem? You want to conduct proper dental hygiene, but cringe at the thought of having your fingers briefly and painlessly reshaped at the last joint.

I had spent my hard-earned dollars (a small portion of which come from royalties) to buy a product designed for a niche of a submarket of a pigeonhole addressing a non-existent need. At that point, it was both my civic duty and personal fiduciary responsibility to return said floss. Being an aspiring author, I felt no need to expend calories. I kept the floss.

Here is what I reckon must have happened next. A marketing manager who had approved an R&D project to rid this nation of the blight of floss-induced finger indentations was leaning forward in his Osaki zero gravity chair, when, suddenly he saw a blip on his 32-inch HP curved monitor.

At first, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His mother had always told him an MBA would make him a slave to the system, that he should have joined the family crop insurance business. Finally, he had proven his mother wrong! The very first store he chose to test market had sold out all units on the first day!

He restrained himself from sprinting to his business unit manager’s office. When he laid the spreadsheet on his boss’s desk, the result was immediate. The boss snatched up the phone.

“Shut down all the floss lines! That’s right, I said all of them. Convert all floss lines over to the new, finger indentation free product. I want three shifts running seven days a week! Unlimited budget for overtime. I’ve discovered the goose that laid the golden egg!”

Of course, the business unit manager, initially claiming credit, would later lay all the blame on the marketing manager.

So, I think I may have caused an innocent man to lose his job, bankrupted a factory, and possibly financially decimated CVS. God only knows how many lives I have destroyed. I owe a sincere apology to all the sick people I may have sent back to the dark ages.

 

How I (may have) bankrupted CVS

My conscience has been gnawing at me. I think I may have inadvertently destroyed the CVS corporation. Yesterday, I popped into CVS to buy dental floss. Without bothering to read any signs, I stumbled across a display of floss. I vaguely noticed that there were no other dental products in the section. But, floss is floss, so I scooped the entire display into the crook of my arm. I paid with my debit card, disregarding the total amount and stuffing the unexamined receipt in my bag.

Upon my arrival home, I opened the bag and noticed the receipt. I had just purchased nearly $100 worth of dental floss! How could this be? I’m ashamed to say I had to retrieve my reading glasses to solve this mystery.

What I had purchased was a specialty item. It was a floss designed to not leave those pesky indentations in one’s fingers. Now, who among us has not been plagued with this problem? You want to conduct proper dental hygiene, but cringe at the thought of having your fingers briefly and painlessly reshaped at the last joint.

I had spent my hard-earned dollars (a small portion of which come from royalties) to buy a product designed for a niche of a submarket of a pigeonhole addressing a non-existent need. At that point, it was both my civic duty and personal fiduciary responsibility to return said floss. Being an aspiring author, I felt no need to expend calories. I kept the floss.

Here is what I reckon must have happened next. A marketing manager who had approved an R&D project to rid this nation of the blight of floss-induced finger indentations was leaning forward in his Osaki zero gravity chair, when, suddenly he saw a blip on his 32-inch HP curved monitor.

At first, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His mother had always told him an MBA would make him a slave to the system, that he should have joined the family crop insurance business. Finally, he had proven his mother wrong! The very first store he chose to test market had sold out all units on the first day!

He restrained himself from sprinting to his business unit manager’s office. When he laid the spreadsheet on his boss’s desk, the result was immediate. The boss snatched up the phone.

“Shut down all the floss lines! That’s right, I said all of them. Convert all floss lines over to the new, finger indentation free product. I want three shifts running seven days a week! Unlimited budget for overtime. I’ve discovered the goose that laid the golden egg!”

Of course, the business unit manager, initially claiming credit, would later lay all the blame on the marketing manager.

So, I think I may have caused an innocent man to lose his job, bankrupted a factory, and possibly financially decimated CVS. God only knows how many lives I have destroyed. I owe a sincere apology to all the sick people I may have sent back to the dark ages.

My conscience has been gnawing at me. I think I may have inadvertently destroyed the CVS corporation. Yesterday, I popped into CVS to buy dental floss. Without bothering to read any signs, I stumbled across a display of floss. I vaguely noticed that there were no other dental products in the section. But, floss is floss, so I scooped the entire display into the crook of my arm. I paid with my debit card, disregarding the total amount and stuffing the unexamined receipt in my bag.

Upon my arrival home, I opened the bag and noticed the receipt. I had just purchased nearly $100 worth of dental floss! How could this be? I’m ashamed to say I had to retrieve my reading glasses to solve this mystery.

What I had purchased was a specialty item. It was a floss designed to not leave those pesky indentations in one’s fingers. Now, who among us has not been plagued with this problem? You want to conduct proper dental hygiene, but cringe at the thought of having your fingers briefly and painlessly reshaped at the last joint.

I had spent my hard-earned dollars (a small portion of which come from royalties) to buy a product designed for a niche of a submarket of a pigeonhole addressing a non-existent need. At that point, it was both my civic duty and personal fiduciary responsibility to return said floss. Being an aspiring author, I felt no need to expend calories. I kept the floss.

Here is what I reckon must have happened next. A marketing manager who had approved an R&D project to rid this nation of the blight of floss-induced finger indentations was leaning forward in his Osaki zero gravity chair, when, suddenly he saw a blip on his 32-inch HP curved monitor.

At first, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His mother had always told him an MBA would make him a slave to the system, that he should have joined the family crop insurance business. Finally, he had proven his mother wrong! The very first store he chose to test market had sold out all units on the first day!

He restrained himself from sprinting to his business unit manager’s office. When he laid the spreadsheet on his boss’s desk, the result was immediate. The boss snatched up the phone.

“Shut down all the floss lines! That’s right, I said all of them. Convert all floss lines over to the new, finger indentation free product. I want three shifts running seven days a week! Unlimited budget for overtime. I’ve discovered the goose that laid the golden egg!”

Of course, the business unit manager, initially claiming credit, would later lay all the blame on the marketing manager.

So, I think I may have caused an innocent man to lose his job, bankrupted a factory, and possibly financially decimated CVS. God only knows how many lives I have destroyed. I owe a sincere apology to all the sick people I may have sent back to the dark ages.

Execution of Justice Free Giveaway

Click here to receive your FREE ebook of Execution of Justice.

My only request is that you review the book at the THIS LINK.

Can Covert Ops recruit John Drake hunt down the most dangerous man in the world and prevent a war? Or, will he become the monster he hunts?



Does Drake have what it takes to complete his mission and save the world?



A congressman’s daughter and 37 other women are being held by a human trafficker running a global operation based in Morocco. Meanwhile, the world stands on the brink of war as a CIA plot to incite a conflict between the Muslim oil countries and Israel unfolds. Three Covert Operatives have already been brutally murdered.

Enter John Drake, a man driven by personal demons, who is determined to bring his own brand of justice to this ruthless gang.

Tracking the most powerful enemy he has ever faced, haunted by trauma from his past, Drake must ultimately confront the most terrifying identity of all – his own.

An impossible mission becomes even tougher when Drake’s assignment propels him to the fulcrum of a new World War.

If you like a fast-paced adventure plot with advanced military tactics, deeply developed characters, and intense psychological drama, get your copy today!

Execution of Justice Free Giveaway

Click here to receive your FREE ebook of Execution of Justice.

My only request is that you review the book at the THIS LINK.

Can Covert Ops recruit John Drake hunt down the most dangerous man in the world and prevent a war? Or, will he become the monster he hunts?



Does Drake have what it takes to complete his mission and save the world?



A congressman’s daughter and 37 other women are being held by a human trafficker running a global operation based in Morocco. Meanwhile, the world stands on the brink of war as a CIA plot to incite a conflict between the Muslim oil countries and Israel unfolds. Three Covert Operatives have already been brutally murdered.

Enter John Drake, a man driven by personal demons, who is determined to bring his own brand of justice to this ruthless gang.

Tracking the most powerful enemy he has ever faced, haunted by trauma from his past, Drake must ultimately confront the most terrifying identity of all – his own.

An impossible mission becomes even tougher when Drake’s assignment propels him to the fulcrum of a new World War.

If you like a fast-paced adventure plot with advanced military tactics, deeply developed characters, and intense psychological drama, get your copy today!