Bryce Moore's Blog, page 38

Tomas Update: Week 9 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! Another week here in Žilina and we are still at it. This week has been pretty crazy since transfers were still happening. We had like 5 different elders come through as a result. Here are some of the highlights:

Monday we had elder Millett with us again which was pretty fun, good to see him as always. Then Tuesday we swapped him for elder Sedgwick as he waited for his new missionary to come in, who we got to meet and see on his first day here basically. They took off Wednesday morning, and then Friday we had an exchange with the Trenčín elders. Tons of people but it was fun.

The exchange with Trenčín was actually really good, and we ended up finding (sort of) a guy outside of Tesco. Before we left to go out that evening, we felt kinda like we needed to be in front of a building somewhere. He was literally like the only person that actually wanted to listen but he did take a Kniha Mormonova and we got his number so hopefully he goes somewhere. Cool guy, he had a sweet jacket on. Anyways sometimes you out in the work and you end up only having 1 person listen in 2 hours but it’s worth it.

Besides that, I also got my film developed this week. I have the pictures in both the regular album and this one: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QSYdWR569pLcFjubA Unfortunately there’s a hole in the shutter but the camera is 40 years old so like I get it. Apparently this is common and the fix is just some fabric paint so I’ll be back at it in no time. In the meantime, the effect is kinda cool so like I guess I’m happy with it, and most of my shots came out decent. Excited to see what I can do with a fixed camera though.

It’s also finally snowing more here! The days are staying consistently below 0 so we are actually getting some on the ground. The námestie (main square) is really pretty with all the snow.

I’m also doing some voice overs for a series we’re making on baptisms here, so once those are out I’ll throw you all a link so you can hear me if you want.

Ok, besides that I can’t think of a ton else to say this week. It’s been crazy but also good and I’m excited to keep working here. Obligatory photos album link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

Love you all, 

Starší Cundick

Physical is Cool Again

I was talking to Tomas this morning, and he was telling me all about the “new” camera he got in Slovavkia. It’s actually an old Russian one from communism, completely manual (no batteries, etc.), and he’s a big fan. (Well, he will be once he gets the camera fixed. He just had his first roll of film developed, and it looks like there’s a hole somewhere inside it that’s letting light in on the pictures. All of his shots have this huge christmas tree-shaped splotch of white in the middle of them. He’s pretty sure he can fix it.)

But what he was really excited about was having actual honest to goodness pictures that he could hold and feel. Or at least, that’s how I’d understood it at first. As we talked more, I realized he took the film in to get developed, and they gave him back the negatives and then digital scans of the negative, so he still doesn’t actually have pictures he can hold in his hand. But he does have something that feels much more real to him.

Of course, when I was on my mission, all I had was a physical camera that took physical pictures, and since then, the trend has always been toward more technology, not less. When digital cameras arrived, it was so exciting that they didn’t need film. That I could take as many pictures as I wanted without having to worry about getting one wrong. I could see the results right away. Phone cameras have only made that more extreme, with people taking multiple shots of just about everything, simply because it’s so easy to delete the ones you don’t want. (Or don’t delete them at all, since digital storage is so cheap.)

Likewise, Daniela got an instant camera for Christmas. (Like a polaroid.) She was also thrilled with the idea of having tangible things instead of just purely digital. That’s right in line with other trends: LPs in music, fancy leather bound books, etc. More and more, it seems like people are acknowledging that yes, they could have something digital, but what they’d really like is something tangible, at least of the things they’re big fans of.

Brandon Sanderson has made a lot of money with this principle, issuing deluxe leather editions of his books 10 years after they’re published. And fans gobble them up. I’m surprised more authors aren’t doing it. Scratch that. I just googled it, and they are. I just hadn’t paid any attention to it. If people really love something, they want to show that love in a way that lasts.

In a way, this is nothing new. How many people would buy t-shirts at concerts or musicals or events, to prove they were there? To have something physical they could wear and show to others as a way of declaring what sort of a person they are. What music they like. Sure, you can like a page on Facebook, but who actually looks at those?

It’s interesting that for years, the assumption seemed to be people would keep moving toward digital, until all physical things were gone. Now, in a time when AI can begin to approximate many of the same things that humans could make, it makes sense that there will be a continued focus on the artists behind the art. On going to concerts. On interacting with them online. Taking actual pictures. Buying prints.

I do wonder if the disposable nature of many things will continue to decrease. Will we get to a point where most paperbacks just aren’t published, because people either want the deluxe leather versions of the books they love, or just the digital version so they can read it? Actually, I doubt it, simply because not everyone can afford deluxe leather versions. People will want a way to show what they’ve read. To connect with it in a way digital ones and zeroes can’t.

Food for thought . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Facebook and Me

I’ll be honest: I’m getting very close to just giving up on Facebook. Cory Doctorow had a great essay the other day about how websites go from being useful to abusive to dead (a process he termed “enshittification,” which is pretty accurate, if crude). It’s worth reading the whole thing, but in a nutshell, he describes how first websites focus on providing as useful of a service for as cheap as possible. The site needs to set itself apart from everything else out there, and so it focuses on attracting users.

Once it has those users, it monetizes them in order to attract investors, because sites ultimately want to make money. Once it has enough investors, market share, and advertisers, then it shifts to getting as much money out of them that it can. Raises advertising rates and sales fees. This continues to the point that everything falls apart, because there comes a time when people aren’t willing to keep doing business with them.

That’s where Facebook is with me right now. I’ve held on for much longer than many of my friends, mainly because I used FB as a vehicle for posting my blog, and because I enjoyed seeing updates from my remaining FB friends. It’s also still useful as a place to organize groups and events. But even that is becoming less and less helpful.

Facebook just doing what it used to do. I have no real control over what I see in my feed, and it’s getting dominated more and more by ads and promoted posts. Likewise, FB is showing my posts to my friends less and less. I don’t get updates about events or group postings unless people are paying for those to appear in my feed. It doesn’t help that so many people left because they were sick of what FB was doing to their relationships, and how toxic much of it was becoming.

The only thing keeping me around right now is that I’m not sure where else I’d go. It’s a real shame, because the thought behind the original Facebook was a good one, and honestly, it’s one I would consider paying for out of pocket, so that I could stop being the product and instead just be the customer. Then again, I don’t know how many other people would be willing to pay $5/month to get just the updates from their friends that they want. A social network only works if there are enough people on it to make it social.

Really, I’m not looking to meet friends online. I’ve got friends in life. I want to keep in contact with them, and FB was a good tool to do that. It’s becoming increasingly clear that it won’t always be.

Ironically, I’d love to have other people’s input on this, but most of the people who read this read it on FB, so it turns into an echo chamber. How can I find out what other people do to keep in touch with folks if I can’t get their attention to ask? But it’s still worth a stab.

Why are you still using Facebook? What else are you using instead of it? Is it a place that does more than videos and/or pictures? I’m a big fan of the written word . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas Update: Week 8 in Žilina

Ahojte! This email is titled that way because transfers happened – but I am still here in Žilina with Elder Noftle so business as usual. I’m actually super happy about that because we have built some really good relationships with the people here and I am excited to continue to bring them closer to Christ and be even better friends with them. Transfers went kinda crazy today, lots of travelling difficulties so we will work through those over the next few days.

Anyways, here’s  the big stuff from this week. Tuesday we met up with the elders from Trenčín and Prešov, and hit the streets of a town called Martin. We went out for three hours in hour long blocks with different companionships every hour. We only ended up having decent conversations with like 3 people – no one wanted to hear from us (possibly because of the large Jehovah’s Witness presence there). Me and Elder Aronsohn tried to ask people questions on the street in exchange for Horalky (a like wafer kinda deal – they were on sale at Billa so we bought 10) and everyone looked at us like crazy Americans – “why would I answer that for a Horalky? I’ll do it for free” was what we got a lot. Probably won’t be trying that again. But it was fun. Also I got trapped by a Jehovah’s Witness without realizing it until they asked me what the name of God was. Apparently a pretty classic missionary experience. We had some super good Vietnamese food though and also we did end up finding one person. 

We also got taken to a piano concert by a friend of ours – she was friends with the mother of a 16 year old piano prodigy and he had a concert here, so she got us tickets and we went! I heard a full orchestra live and also the pianist was INSANE. It was super cool and I’m so thankful I got to go, the venue was also really nice and we even got to meet the pianist and grab a picture. 

We ended up having church in Banska Sunday as our building is under construction right now. That was a good experience as church usually is, but my favorite part was wearing my new tie that I made. While in Martin we picked up some kroj for ties and I made a purple tie with black/red/white floral ribbon (trying to match my violin). It was super cool, I’ll throw some pictures in the photos. I’m making another that’s silver with green/white/red kroj. Super happy with how they turned out. 

Also today I took my film to be developed – vyvolávanie – so hopefully those turned out okay, we will see next week I guess. 

Okay besides all that it’s just been a good week out here. We did finally find a guy officially, the one from the train station came back for a second lesson! So now I can finally say I found someone. Only took 8 weeks. 

Anyways, excited to stay here in žilina and keep it up. It snowed a bit more but I hear you guys are getting dumped on back home in Maine. Kinda miss it but at least I don’t gotta be going on the streets with a ton of snow so that’s something. As always, photos album:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

Love you all,

Starší Cundick

Movie Review: Matilda

Denisa and I went to see Matilda back when it was on Broadway, and we both really enjoyed it. The music is different than a typical musical: a bit more dissonant and free form than a classic Music Man or Phantom of the Opera. But I liked the creative rhymes and the way those rhymes fit into the verse, and I actually listened to the cast recording all the way through several times since. So when I saw Netflix was coming out with a movie adaptation of the musical, I was very excited.

Not excited enough to watch it the moment it came out, apparently, but the family all checked it out last night, and I was really blown away. Now mind you, my opinion is likely heavily influenced by the fact that I was already very familiar with the music and a big fan of it to begin with, but even if I try to set that aside, it was impressive on many different fronts.

First off, the girl they got to play Matilda did a fantastic job. Great singing voice. Great acting. The entire cast is superb, with Emma Thompson almost unrecognizable as Headmistress Trunchbull. (She also sang her own numbers, and did well enough that I had to double check it was her singing. Turns out she’s got a theater background.) The execution of the musical numbers is impressive as well. The choreography they devised for the children at the school was very fun and well danced. (Is that how you say it? I don’t exactly write about choreography very much.)

The set design, the costumes, the whole vibe of the movie: all of it gels together in a way that was loads of fun. Watching just how vile Trunchbull was to the children was highly entertaining (which I suppose says something about me, but (in my defense) it’s clearly done for laughs.)

All in all, the entire family loved it. Daniela gave it an 8, MC said it was absolutely fantastic, and I gave it a 10, believe it or not. I will likely watch it again soon. So if any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, I would definitely check it out. Great fun.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Ramping Up the Writing

I’ve written already about how much my writing slipped in the fall last year. It was for a variety of reasons, but I tried to give myself the leeway to have that slow time and not beat myself up about it too much. For the most part, I was successful.

However, it also means that I’m not as far into my current novel as I would like to be. That’s not really going to fly for me right now, so I’m pretty set on getting caught up with this book. If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s having a deadline constantly looming over me that I feel like I’m not going to make. Not that I have a hard deadline on this just yet, but I’m treating it as if I did, for reasons that will become clear later. (Besides, it’s totally in my normal MO to make up deadlines only I care about.)

What this means is that I’m shooting for 2,000 words a day (4,000 words if I’m revising). That’s . . . a lot of words, especially with all the other things I’ve got going on. (And especially when two months ago, I felt like I couldn’t get any words done at all each day.) I’ve only done it for this week so far, but it’s actually gone better than I expected it to. For the longest time, I’ve had my goal at 1,000 words a day. I had always noticed that the second 500 words went faster than the first 500, but I also thought by 1,000 words, I was pretty much out of things to say.

Judging from these first few days, that 1,000 word wall was largely only in my mind. Actually, it feels like writing (for me) is most difficult at the beginning each day, but by the time I get through those first 500 words, the hard part’s done. I’ve got momentum going, and I can plow through the next 1,500 without too much trouble. It’s taking me around an hour and a half, give or take.

If you’re not a writer, that probably sounds like a lot, and honestly, it is. 2,000 words is what many full-time writers shoot for. Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, and others all cite that as their goal, give or take, and those are some (very) prolific authors. I’m not saying my writing is up to King or Sanderson levels (they have way more books under their belt than I do, which makes a real difference), but I do feel like I’m getting better at the craft as a whole. This would/will be very good news if/when I can get more book contracts. So far, I’ve been shooting for a book a year. Two books a year would be fantastic . . .

In any case, I’m trying not to get too far ahead of myself just yet. There are plenty of people who started a marathon and thought, “This running thing really is much easier than I figured,” only to end up gasping three miles later. We’ll see how this goes for now. All I really need to do is keep it up for a few weeks, and I won’t just have recovered the lost words I didn’t get in the fall, but I’ll be ahead of the game.

Wish me luck.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

(One) Problem with Artificial Intelligence and Writing

Back in October, I wrote a post about how artificial intelligence has started to be used for art. Paintings. Writing. And at the time, I really only thought of it from that stance. Would AI ever be used to write books? Could it ever write a good book? I was doubtful about that, though I recognized it might be an issue in the future.

However, I failed to think about it from the angle of writing web pages on a massive scale. And that’s actually a real problem.

People make money off websites by ad sales. The more views a site gets, the more money the site makes. The more pages a site has, the more views that site will garnish, plain and simple. And so if you want to make money, you’re incentivized to have as many pages as possible. But what if you can automate the process? Set up an AI to write pages about anything and then post them online? Suddenly, you can churn through thousands of pages a day, and (theoretically) you can start making all the money.

If one person does this, that’s quite annoying. Someone just spewing poorly written articles into the ether. But if many people do this? That becomes seriously problematic. Remember when telemarketers were just a general annoyance? Think of how many spam calls you started to get as soon as those telemarketers could be replaced with robots? Think of how much spam you get in your inbox, since people can program computers to just send the same message out to countless people?

The internet is already glutted with information, much of it of questionable quality. That’s the result of lots of people writing lots of pages over the years. Now, if one person can tell a machine to write 1,000 articles a day, that’s 365,000 pages a year.

Our current search infrastructure isn’t set up to handle that kind of flood. Already, as I’ve searched for articles about simple things (how to do something in illustrator, for example), and I’ve been taken to pages that made me wonder if they’d been generated by AI. It’s already hard enough to find good information. It will be much more difficult with so much chaff out there.

What’s the solution? I’m not sure, but my gut says we’ll start seeing a swing away from using search engines as much, with people instead going to a few trusted sites they use for different topics. This is also problematic, since it will put more power into the hands of a few companies, who can then go on to abuse that power as they see fit, since the path for smaller companies or writers to challenge those behemoths will be more and more uphill.

Anyway. Food for thought. Have you already come across an article you think was done by AI? Do you think you will? I haven’t really talked to many people about this idea, and I’m interested to see if other people have different takes.

Thanks for reading!

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Tomas Update: Week 8 in Žilina

Ahojte všetci! Another week here in Žilina. We actually did a fair amount of stuff this week so that was cool. I’ll try and remember it all.

The biggest day was definitely Friday, where we were like 8 lessons or so short of our goal for the week (a “lesson” is counted as a principle and an invitation, so technically you can teach in the street) so the rest of our district, or part of Slovakia that we meet with every week (just Trenčín) came over early and we hit the streets for two hours before district council. That as pretty fun, and we actually got like 6 out of the 8 we needed. Then we also had one of the Prauge missionaries (called AP, or assistant to the president), elder Tauai, who has been touring Slovakia this week just to see how it is out here. He was there with us for the rest of the day, which got pretty crazy. After district council, we went to a members nre apartment and helped her move like four car loads of books to her new apartment. She’s actually one of the translators for church material in Slovak, and to say thanks we all got a literal first edition copy of the Book of Mormon in Slovak, from the first shipment that got here in 2013. That was pretty cool and I will definitely take good care of mine. Then after that, all 5 of us went back to our apartment and ate the super spicy ramen we got, which was definitely an experience. I don’t want to do it again but the video we got of the whole thing was probably pretty funny, I haven’t seen it yet. Then after that we went out on the streets with elder Tauai, just the three of us, and had a really good experience. It was also very multilingual, as Tauai only speaks Czech, we spoke Slovak, and all three of us spoke English too. You end up using English sometimes on the street, people like to use theirs I’d they’re younger. But before we went out, we tried a new method of planning, where we picked a spot, prayed, and told God where we were gonna be. It actually worked super super well and I’m glad we did. Literally the first person we stopped talked to us for 20min, took a Book of Mormon, and will hopefully call us back. We also met the owner of a nail salon chain here, so when this area goes back to being a sisters’ area they will probably be pretty hyped about that.

The next day was also pretty full – we had to head down to Bratislava, which is around 2h away by train. We got called in to play music for a baptism (that makes 2 in a row for us – no way) and Tauai was going that way anyways so we went with him. Blava is such a pretty city and the weather was wonderful that day too, but we ended up also having a really good conversation with the family sitting across from us on the train. We talked about a wide variety of things and it was nice to speak Slovak with people who were very willing to help us improve and such. Then the baptism was great of course, a Ukrainian man was getting baptized and he was just so happy, like actually glowing. We stayed a while and spoke to all the members and possible members, then headed back to žilina. Probably should have brought train food, we got very hungry.

Sunday went by comparatively uneventfully, and we only had 2 people at church. It happens. The rest of the day we studied, worked on social media work (posts, stories, texting people) and also “cleaned yellows” which is when we go through our big ol list of people that were at one point being taught or had expressed interest, but then lost contact. That involves a lot of just cold calling people and asking if they still want to hear from us. Our area in particular has a lot of these yellows (103) so it’ll take a bit to clean the list especially because if they don’t pick up we give them a few chances over a few days. Funny what I’m doing with my life now – chilling in Slovakia with a Canadian guy, calling random Slovaks. I kinda love it though, even though it’s weird and life is crazy here it’s also so fun and fulfilling.

That brings us to today, and we are on our way to Ružomberok, the second largest city by area. No idea specifically what we will do there – there’s a castle, and it’s just a cute city. On the train right now, and there were a ton of Slovak teenagers until Sučany where they are all probably going to school. It rained/snowed last night and the view is pretty great, it hasn’t snowed in forever. I guess I’ll update this email after we do stuff today. Okay I’m back, it was a pretty solid day. We got there, met up with the missionaries from Banská Bystrica, bought some traditional ribbon for ties (Kroj) and went on a little hike, we found like a cow skull or something, got chased by a big ol dog, and it snowed too. I finally finished my roll of film, so hopefully I’ll get that developed soon. Then we got Italian food, walked around a bit, and now we are on our way home. The station we just sat at had like a river and all these swans were just chilling, it was super pretty. Now we just head home, grab food for the week and get some other stuff done. 

As always, here’s the pictures link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qYoYaKPmkqFZHoVM7

If anyone has questions about specific stuff, feel free to email me at tomas.cundick@missionary.org and I’ll either answer them or if it’s interesting throw it in the next email too. I don’t actually know what is interesting to you guys since I like live here. Anyways, as always have a good week, kill it on the slopes, and do good things. 

Love you all, 

Starší Cundick

The Eleven Types of Snow

There’s a (wrong) saying out there that the Inuit have a hundred words for snow. They don’t (and for a full explanation, see here), but having lived in Maine for 15 years now, and cleaned up after plenty of snow storms, I can testify that there really are many, many different types of snow. Scientifically, it comes down to what temperature it is when the snow comes down, but when you’re trying to shovel or blow it out of your driveway, you don’t care about any of that. You just care about how long it takes.

So I thought I’d take a minute to codify the different types of snow I have dealt with. (Hey. It’s Friday. You got anything better you’re doing?) Ready?

Dusting: Sometimes you just don’t get enough snow to do anything with it at all. It’s not really snow, but people farther south seem to think it is. If making a snowman ends up with your lawn bare and your snowman covered in grass and leaves, then you had something closer to a dusting than a real snow storm. For me, anything an inch or less is pretty much this. Chances are, I won’t even bother snow blowing my driveway, though I’ll likely make sure my steps are shoveled.Powder: This is probably snow in its purest form. No taint from rain at all. All it’s good for is looking pretty and being fun to ski or snowmobile through. It’s light. It’s fluffy. It doesn’t pack down into anything, so good luck having snowball fights or making a snowman. You could make a killer snow angel, however. The best news is that it’s really easy to shovel.Snowman Snow: This is my personal ideal form of snow. It’s not soggy by any stretch, but it’s got enough moisture in it that you can pack it down with very little effort, and it keeps its shape. Great for snowmen and snowball fights and snow forts and anything else you might want to do out in the white stuff. This is the journeyman form of snow.Concrete Snow: When the white stuff gets a little carried away, it turns into an almost solid mass of dense material. It weighs a ton. It’s hard to walk through. It’s a killer to shovel. The one plus is it can make snowmen, but it’s really hard to get it done.Sleet: Pretty much worthless. It’s not hail, but it’s generally frozen rain drops that hit the ground as tiny pellets. You can’t do anything with it. It’s probably going to melt soon after it’s fallen. It doesn’t look pretty. The only thing that can be said for it is that it’s better than freezing rain.Freezing Rain: Yuck. That’s pretty much all this is. It may look gorgeous after it’s done (all the trees coated in crystal), but it weighs down tree limbs, causes power outages, makes for deadly driving, and just is nasty in general. You can’t do anything fun in it, and it will cause way more trouble than anything else. And besides: it’s not snow. It’s rain pretending to be snow.Hail: This is not snow. It might look white and cover the ground, but that’s the only relation it has to the real thing. It’s also dangerous. Bad.Slush: This is what I took off my driveway today. We got four inches of snow in the night, and then it rained on top of that. It’s like someone dumped a huge half-melted icee in your driveway, and then you have to clean it up. You get drenched, it looks muddy and yucky, and it’s no fun at all.Old Snow: When snow first comes down form the sky, it can be very pretty. White. Pure. Fun. But after it’s been on the ground for a while, the snow changes. It gets hard. Bitter. Gray. It mixes with dirt and salt and who knows what. It’s slow to melt, so it hangs on like grim death. This is usually what you end up with at the end of each season.Bad Snow: This can really be any type of snow, but it’s what happens when it snows and you don’t want it to be doing that. Typically, I love snow. I want it to snow. But every now and then, I have to drive somewhere, or I have to get something done, and snow is a real pain. True, for some people all snow is bad snow, but if you live in a place where it snows regularly, my advice would be to try to get into the mindset that’s most likely to minimize the bad snow in your life. For me, that meant getting a snow blower and snow tires for my car. The more you struggle to clean up the snow or drive through it, the more bad snow there will be in your life. Bad snow = bad.Yellow Snow: Undoubtedly the Worst Kind of Snow. I don’t think I need to add any more to that.

So those are the types of snow I can think of, but I’m betting I’m missing some. Any suggestions for things to be added to the list?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

2022 Media Review

2022 is come and gone now, and I wanted to take some time as I usually do to go over the best (and worst) of what I read and watched. All told, I made my goal of 52 books for the year. I watched 27 television shows in their entirety, and I watched 103 movies. I gave books an average rating of 7.74 and movies and television an average of 7.59, indicating I generally stop reading things I don’t like more than I stop watching stuff I don’t like. Those averages are honestly a bit on the high side, though at the same time, I generally only watch and read things that look like they’ll appeal to me, so maybe that makes a bit more sense.

With that stated, here are the highlights:

Books

I gave 6 books a perfect 10/10:

Eye of the World: I know The Wheel of Time isn’t for everyone, but it is very much for me. I’ve reread this book more times than I can remember, and I still love it. I still remember seeing it for the first time on the library shelf, and how hooked I was as I started reading it. I waited for this series to be finished for years and years. So happy it ended well.The Gathering Storm: Brandon’s first Wheel of Time book was such a breath of fresh air. He managed to do what seemed impossible: seamlessly edge his way into a long standing series successfully. And for a series that had seemed for a long time to be wandering somewhat, he gave a real sense that this was going to have an end, and it was going to be a good one.Memory of Light: The final book of Wheel of Time. Absolutely fantastic. Big pay offs left and right for fans of the series, and a conclusion that felt right. The Princess Bride: Another reread, this time with Daniela. The book is fantastic. Right up my alley.A Prayer for Owen Meany: My second time through this one as well, meaning up until October, I hadn’t had a single new 10/10. Still, this is a lovely book. So well written, with such vivid characters. My friend Sue pointed me toward it back in college, and it still is wonderful.Lonesome Dove: The last book I read last year was a real doozy. Talk about a tour de force. I don’t care if you don’t like westerns, if you like literature, I have a hard time thinking you wouldn’t like this book. Great plot. Great characters. Great prose. Well worth your time.

I only gave one book a 9.5/10. Lord of Chaos, another Wheel of Time book. Go figure.

I gave 6 books a 9/10

Fires of Heaven: Wheel of Time strikes again. It was a fun way to start the year off, let’s just say.Harriet the Spy: Finally got around to reading this one, and it was such a pleasant surprise. I knew nothing about it going in. I just assumed it would be about a young girl who’s a spy. I was wrong. Fifteen Lives of Henry August: This was a great surprise. A fantastic premise, and well-executed. The Godfather: It’s clear why it had such an influence on movies. Not a complicated read, but very visceral.Gwendy’s Button Box: Really more of a novella, but I still counted it. I’m always a sucker for Stephen King.Slade House: A very fun, creepy book. This was a fast read for me. I read it in a day.

What were the worst books I read? I usually hold back from naming them, but I’ll actually go public with one this time. Crossroads of Twilight got a 4/10 from me, despite being a Wheel of Time book. It seemed like an experiment to me: could Robert Jordan write a whole book that only tracks a few days in the lives of his characters? Yes, he could. No, it wasn’t interesting. It felt like a one-off TV episode. Blarg. Other than that, I gave two books a 5/10. One was the third book of a series that started off great, by an author I really enjoy, but it just couldn’t sustain itself. The other was a classic science fiction novel that I had a very hard time connecting with.

TV Seasons

Only two shows got a perfect score from me this year. Both fantastic.

The U.S. and the Holocaust: There are few TV shows that I would recommend to watch just to become a better person. This is one.The English: Fantastic. Beautiful and brutal to watch. So well acted. I loved the whole thing.

I gave no seasons a 9.5/10.

I gave 7 seasons a 9/10:

Gilded Age 1: Historical drama in time period that’s often overlooked, and just so happened to be in a time period close to one I’ve researched for writing. Very well done. American Downton Abbey, though more adult.Peacemaker 1: Over the top ridiculous. I watched it while I had COVID, and it made COVID that much more bearable. Definitely not for everyone, but I thought it was very funny. The opening sequence each episode was perfect.Severance 1: Great premise, lots of great mysteries, and a fair number of them explained in the first season instead of being kicked off for later seasons. I’m looking forward to the next season.Stranger Things 4: Did just what I wanted it to. I love this show.House of the Dragon 1: Does a great job extending the Game of Thrones universe while dialing way down on the fantasy elements.The Devil’s Hour 1: Intricately plotted, with a premise that only makes more sense the more you find out about it. Very worthwhile.Wednesday 1: I just blogged about this.

Movies

Five movies got a perfect score. Only one of them was a first time watch.

Return of the King: Still a fantastic movie. The end.Groundhog Day: Yes, this will appear on my list every year. Kind of appropriate, and self-explanatory.Shawshank Redemption: Again, I don’t feel like this needs an explanation.Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes: I watched it twice within a week. The second time wasn’t as amazing as the first, but I was still wowed by how they pulled off an entire plot around the ability to see two minutes into the future.Back to the Future: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is a perfect movie. Perfect cast. Perfect plot. Perfect soundtrack. Chef’s kiss.

I gave 2 movies a 9.5/10:

Encanto: Delightful, and the soundtrack only got better with time. West Side Story: Spielberg’s new version was amazing. Different than the original, but in a very good way. It felt less like a musical, and more like a movie, if that makes sense.

I gave 17 movies a 9/10:

The Two Towers: No explanation needed.The Party: This Peter Sellers movie is hilarious, but I have a hard time recommending it to people, because he does brownface the whole time, playing the role of an Indian for comedic effect. I would argue that he uses it to show a person who feels completely out of place, but it could have been done without the ethnicity change, and that’s disappointing.Free Guy: This had no right being as good as it was. It felt like it should have been a throw away video game movie, but it ended up being smart and tons of fun.Turning Red: A fun movie that got more people upset than I would expect, showing people will get upset about lots of things that are surprising these days. (I’m probably included in that statement, though this movie did not upset me.)Moneyball: Fun look at baseball, statistics, and human nature.The Breakfast Club: Not perfect, but still a great slice of life of high school, and still relevant today, even if there are pieces of it that haven’t aged well.Joe vs. the Volcano: My personal favorite Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan pairing.RRR: Jaw dropping action scenes. Musical numbers. Crazy plot. This one was a real experience.Fitzwilly: Dick Van Dyke as a thieving butler trying to make enough money to fund his boss’s charitable work? How can you not watch this?A Beautiful Mind: Yup. Still great.The Wedding Singer: It’s not highbrow cinema, but it’s still fun.The Map of Tiny Perfect Things: Time loop romantic-comedy? How can it go wrong with me?Everything Everywhere All at Once: I think this one suffered from being too hyped up before I watched it. I still really enjoyed it, but I wasn’t left amazed. But definitely should be watched.Shop Around the Corner: Classic.Dunkirk: I liked it more the second time than I did the first, when the timey-wimey didn’t completely make sense to me.The Hudsucker Proxy: I love the Coen Bros. This is an oft-forgotten gem.Glass Onion: People keep comparing it to Knives Out, saying it’s worse. I really enjoyed it, and I liked it even more once I realized that the entire answer to the mystery really had been on screen the whole time. No sneaky cuts to not show things. If you’d been paying attention all along, there was no mystery at all.

How about the worst things I watched?

On Stranger Tides got a 5/10. It was a Pirate’s movie too far.Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows also got a 5/10. A Sherlock movie too far.Wayne’s World got a 5/10. Not nearly as good as I rememberedChristmas Story Christmas was another 5/10. Should have been better. Wasn’t.The King’s Man got a 4/10. Unnecessary and stupid prequel to an action series, though it had a few good sequences.Mortal Kombat (the new one) was another 4/10. Just plain stupid, even if it had some good effects.Obi Wan Kenobi 1 got a 4/10. It was the chosen one. It was said that it would destroy the doubters, not encourage them. Bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness. Lies. All lies.Alone 8 was a 4/10. I’ve never seen the struggle to survive seem so boring.The Eagle got a 3/10. Historical action movie about Roman soldiers. Avoid.The live action Pinocchio got a 3/10. Waste of time.Under the Banner of Heaven got a 1/10. Awful awful awful, and worse because they kept trying to insist it was an accurate portrayal of what happened.

All told, it was a good year. I like looking back and seeing the highlights like this. Anything stand out to you (good or bad) from what you read or watched last year?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.