Bryce Moore's Blog, page 79
November 2, 2020
5 Nice Things
I read a blog post today over on Kottke about the “Five Nice Things” activity, which is pretty obvious to understand. You take some time to think through what’s going on in your life and you come up with 5 things that you appreciate at the moment. They can be big things. Small things. Stupid things. Doesn’t really matter. The point is to just think about the positive for a bit.
And let’s face it: we could all use a bit more positive, right? I know I could. I keep finding myself blaming 2020 for all the bad things in life at the moment, and I know when I do that, I’m not doing myself any favors. We can easily look at the bad things and decide 2020 is a year of only bad things. It’s confirmation bias at work. So instead of thinking about the election and COVID and quarantines and impending economical disasters, I’m going to take a bit of time on today’s blog to list 5 nice things, and I invite you to play along wherever you see this post. Maybe even make a post of your own, if you feel so inclined, to keep the 5 nice things game moving forward.
Here’s my list for the moment:
Sales of THE MEMORY THIEF have been really strong in China, of all places. I earned out my advance there and got a significant (to me) chunk of change for royalties late last week, out of the blue. It’s a book that’s continued to bring in money for me, years after it was published, and that’s definitely cause for celebration.I just signed my two book contract with Sourcebooks. The first one (THE PERFECT PLACE TO DIE) is already well into the publication process, and is slated to come out next summer. It’s heading to the copy editor, and we’re working on cover jacket descriptions, cover designs, and the like. (The cover is super creepy, and I can’t wait to share it with you, even though I have to wait, which is hard.) My editor also gave me the green light for my outline for the second book, which will be an indirect sequel of sorts to the first. It will come out the following summer, if all goes according to plan. Signing contracts is probably the most concrete point you can celebrate as an author. The book you wrote has officially made you money. Yay!BYU’s football team, after a run-in with COVID earlier in the season, righted the ship and is doing really well. It’s been fun to still have that to watch, even if the games are typically on very late at night. Who knows if cases will stay low enough to allow all of college football to keep playing, but for now, BYU is undefeated and ranked in the top 10, and that’s something to celebrate.Halloween turned out much better than I feared it would. We bought the kids a veritable cornucopia of candy that we kept surprising them with throughout the day. We watched Halloween movies, made spudnuts, and delivered them to friends in a sort of reverse trick-or-treating approach that let us be socially distant, yet still a bit connected. It went over very well, and might be something we repeat for other holidays.I’m still under 185 pounds, despite all the different stressors in my life. I’m proud of my ability to keep my weight under control so far, even if I might wish it were even a bit lower. Halloween has been difficult (Did I mention we bought the kids a cornucopia of candy?), but I’m still hanging in there, trying to keep myself healthy through diet and exercise.
So there are my five nice things for now. I’d love to hear what yours are today.
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 30, 2020
Why I Changed My Mind and Voted Absentee
I wrote a while ago of my plans to vote in person this election. I was worried about election day numbers for Trump vs. Biden, and I thought that the more in-person votes Biden could rack up, the better. And I was planning on sticking to that decision . . . until today, when I voted by absentee ballot (dropping it in the ballot box at my town office).
Why the change in heart?
Simply put, COVID cases have been rising in Maine. My university had three cases a week and a half ago, and they just tested another 1200 people at the beginning of the week. (I was one of those. It was a spit test, so no nasal swab to my brain, but whoa nelly did that test need a lot of spit. You think you’ve got plenty of saliva, until you’re required to spit it all out into a tube and realize that the supply of saliva is far from endless.)
Tomas was supposed to go to the orthodontist’s last Monday to get his braces off, but because of the outbreak here at UMF, they didn’t let us go. (Abundance of caution, and some more details I won’t get into at the moment.) Once I got off the phone with the orthodontist, I had come to the stark realization that there are clear consequences to not just testing positive for COVID, but for having been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID.
With all these tests happening at my university, I decided there was a significant chance that someone I know and interact with regularly might test positive, even if I didn’t. (In case you were wondering, I got my tests back today, three days after I took the test. I am COVID negative.) What would I do about voting if suddenly I had to quarantine? I might care about Biden’s vote tally on the actual day of the election, but I care even more that I get to vote this year. I didn’t want anything to come between me and casting that ballot.
So Denisa voted early in person, and she picked up an absentee ballot for me, and the rest is history.
For the record, it felt very satisfying to fill in all those circles. Especially since I got to use the ranked choice voting mechanic (in spite of all the Republican efforts to stop it). I know some have said that sort of voting grid is confusing, but I found it straightforward, with the directions clearly printed next to it. If you can read, you can use it.
For the record, I voted for every single non-Republican I could. I refused to vote for any Republican candidate this election. I’ve had it with current Republicans at both the state and national level, period. Their approach to politics is not one I agree with by now. I’m not saying the Democrats are miles better, but they are at least closer to what I’d like to see happen. (What I’d really favor would be a fully realized ranked choice vote. No more two party system, please!)
In any case, I’ve now voted this year. All that’s left to do is wait . . .
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 29, 2020
Pumpkins with Puppies
Pumpkin carving has always been a big thing at our house. The kids love to do it, and it’s been a fun tradition. Even in the middle of all the crazy going on, we’ve been trying to stick to what traditions we can. Trick or Treating is sadly out this year, as are Halloween parties for the most part. But pumpkins? We could do pumpkins. (We did Halloween sugar cookies over the weekend, which are also always popular.)
Some years we’ve all worked on really elaborate pumpkins. I know there have been times when the kids spent a whole ton of time picking out their designs and figuring out how they were going to do them. This year . . . was not like those years. For as much time as you’d think we all have, staying home as much as we do, the actual amount of time we have seems to be much, much less. I know that I feel fairly overwhelmed at the moment, probably because of all the time I ended up feeling existential dread. (Maybe if I booked myself some time to do that each day, I could stay on top of everything else?)
In any case, the plan was to just do something simple. Classic jack-o-lanterns, right? Done in an hour of family togetherness. That seemed very straightforward on paper, but we hadn’t taken into account the newest member of our family.
The moment we cut into the first pumpkin and Ferris caught a sniff of the seeds and guts inside, he went into what can only be described as pumpkin mania. He simply had to eat that pumpkin. It became his whole reason for existence. At first we just tried to hold him back with a leash, but he was barking, lunging, desperate for just a taste. We took him into a different room and closed the door. We took him outside. We took him upstairs.
He. Was. Crazy.
Typically, his memory for something is about five seconds, so those seeds must’ve smelled really strong, because it didn’t matter where we took him, he still wanted to go back there. Now. Finally I googled the question to see if we could just him go wild. Sadly, Dr. Google said pumpkin innards don’t do wonders for puppies, so that was a no go.
Family togetherness isn’t quite the same when you’ve got to tag team a raging puppy, but we still made do. In the end, the pumpkins got carved, and we let Ferris lick the floor to clean up after the mess. He found that a fair compromise. Still, I’m hoping that next year he’ll have learned a bit more self control. If he hasn’t, I think we’re going to have to carve the pumpkins in another county or something.
Anyone else have any pumpkin-obsessed pooches?
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 28, 2020
Accepting Loss
Next week is not going to be a fun week for America. It’s sad to say that going into election day, but I don’t see any way around it. No matter who wins next week, 40% of the country is going to be very happy, and 40% of the country is going to be very sad (give or take a few percent). Emotions are so tied up in this election at the moment, and all of that compounds as you add all the other stressors going on in our lives. The economy. Unemployment. Protests. COVID.
I’m worried, and I know I’m not alone in my worrying.
I’m not just worried about how the people who lose are going to take their loss. We’ve seen mass riots over losses and wins in America over things as (let’s face it) inconsequential as professional sports. We’re already living in a reality where citizens have been showing up armed to protest for and against issues. I’m very concerned there will be actual street fights over the results of this election, as sore winners taunt sore losers, and everything spirals into yuck.
While the polls may be indicating a Biden win at the moment, I’m already steeling myself for what might happen if he loses. If that’s the way the cookie crumbles, then it is what it is. I (obviously) have deeply held beliefs about who he is and what he stands for, but if the majority of the nation on election day feels differently (or at least, as far as the electoral college is concerned), then that’s the reality I’m living in, and I have to push forward. It doesn’t mean all the people who agree with me disappear, but it does mean the fight needs to continue.
The thing is, the reverse is also true. Even if Biden wins, that doesn’t make all the Trump supporters magically disappear either. The election might make it easier to deal with some of the issues that have arisen over the last four years, but there will still be plenty of work that needs to be done, and that work will require as many Americans working together as possible.
In other words, whichever way we vote on election day, we’re still Americans, and we still have to face the immediate problems together. I know some Trump supporters believe COVID is overblown, and that all the trouble around it will disappear as soon as the election is over. I disagree, but it would be lovely if you were right. Even if you are, we’ll still have the fallout of the last six months to handle, and we have the best shot of handling that by uniting to face it.
Of course, it’s also very possible that nothing is solved at all by next Wednesday. That we move from this sort of limbo into a new one, where state results and votes are contested, and there’s fighting around “who won” right up through the end of the year. I tend to think that would be even worse, though I also think we need to make sure all votes are counted before we make any definitive statements. (In an ideal world, enough of the votes are in in enough of the states that have already counted for us to already know what’s going to happen, but this is 2020. What are the odds of that actually happening?)
I don’t have any big huge observations to make. I’m worried about next week. Worried about the winners and the losers, regardless of who ends up being in which category. And I’m hoping that if we can all see ourselves as both for a little bit, then we’ll have the compassion needed to get through November and December and however many more months we need to.
Wish us 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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 27, 2020
Movie Review: Scoob!
I almost never watch bad movies. I don’t mean that as a brag or anything. I just mean that I monitor ahead of time the kind of movies I’m going to consume, and then I steer away from anything that looks like it’s just going to waste my time. I almost never make an exception to this.
Except . . .
Saturday night, I wanted to watch something with MC, and I was looking for something that might be a tinge Halloween-y, and there was Scoob! waiting in the HBOMax lineup. I liked Scooby Doo. A new version of it in movie form? What could be so bad about that?
I hit “play” without really thinking about it any more than that.
Let this be a lesson to you all. Friends don’t let friends watch bad movies. In fact, “Scoob” should be a verb that sums up this sentiment. If you let someone watch a movie you know is bad, you’re basically scoobing them, and they’re justified in being upset after the fact.
This movie was horrendous on so many different levels, I struggle to know where to begin. You’d think making a Scooby Doo movie would be pretty straightforward. You’ve got the characters, the plot is usually pretty much the same. All that’s missing is the zany hijinks, and maybe some cool musical numbers here and there to make kick it up a notch.
Scoob! decided to forego all of that. Instead, they tried to make this be the launching point of an entire Hanna Barbera Universe. So you’ve got Captain Caveman, Dynomutt, Blue Falcon, Dick Dastardly, and Muttley. On the one hand, that sounds like kind of a cool concept. I mean, I always liked the laff-a-lympics, seeing all those characters interact. But the execution of it is just . . . bad. Captain Caveman’s there and gone in a few minutes. They tried to make all these characters work at the same time, and they used a bizarre plot (Dick Dastardly’s trying to get into a secret vault of treasure guarded by Cerberus, who naturally is one of Scooby’s ancestors?) It all ends up being a big old mash of everything. I like pizza and ice cream and rootbeer and broccoli, but I’m not crazy enough to put them all in a blender and hit purée and then expect the result to taste good.
And they do strange things to the characters themselves. A small thing would be the fact that they made Velma Latinx. By itself, that wouldn’t be a big deal. Except they didn’t really go all the way with it. They tinged her skin color just enough to make you wonder, and then they had her use a single Spanish word at one point in the film. Fish or cut bait, people. The way they did it, it felt like she was channeling Dora the Explorer now and then, and not in a good way.
But much, much worse is what they did to Scooby. They turned him into a completely talking character with a slight speech impediment. Listen, people. Scooby-doo talks in short phrases at best. He’s not the sort of dog that’s going to have a conversation with you. He’s just not that bright, okay? Every time Scooby started pontificating about something, another piece of my childhood died.
But wait! There’s more! Because it wasn’t enough to do all of that, they also decided to throw in brief prequel sequence all about how Shaggy met Scooby and the rest of the gang. And none of that worked, either.
Which sums up the whole movie. None of it worked. None of it was funny. The plot was lame. The voice acting was bad. The animation was creepy. (They have a running Simon Cowell joke, and his transition into 3D animation is the stuff of nightmares.) The songs were non-existent. This movie was terrible on pretty much every level of the terrible spectrum.
The only saving feature I can think of is that MC liked the film. That was the only thing keeping me from stopping the movie. Don’t fall into the same trap I did. Don’t Scoob yourself, people. Stay as far away from this movie as you can. 1/10. Awful.
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 26, 2020
New Author Photo and Bio
About a year ago, I dropped by a Barnes & Noble to see if they had any of my books to sign. I was in luck, but I hit a snag. Always before, they’d just let me sign the books, and I went on my merry way. This time, they looked at the author pic at the back of the book, looked at me, looked at the pic again . . . and then asked to see some identification. I’m usually not the best at picking up subtle hints, but I did manage to understand that perhaps my picture, taken about nine years ago now, no longer quite matches up with what I look like today. (Not that I’ve aged that much, but in the intervening years I’ve started wearing glasses again, I’ve lost around 30 pounds, and (fine) I’ve gotten a fair bit of grey in my beard.)
So when we were getting family pictures taken a couple of weeks ago and our photographer (the fantastic Jamie Lynn) asked if there were any other shots we wanted, I asked if she’d be willing to do a new head shot for me, and she was happy to. So here’s the new, updated picture of yours truly that will be in A PERFECT PLACE TO DIE when it comes out next year.
[image error]
At the same time, my editor emailed last week to see if I had a bio for the book. The one I’ve been using has also been getting a bit long in the tooth, so I decided it was time for an update on that as well. Here’s the new one:
Bryce Moore is the author of The Memory Thief and Vodník. When he’s not authoring, he’s a librarian in Western Maine and a past president of the Maine Library Association. And when he’s not up to his nose in library work, he’s watching movies, playing board games, and paying ridiculous amounts of money feeding his Magic the Gathering addiction. Check out his daily blog for writing tips, movie reviews, and general rantings over at brycemoore.com
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 23, 2020
Book Review: Wintersteel
Wintersteel by Will Wight
Generally speaking, I almost never buy books the day they’re released. I also have very rarely actually enjoyed a self-published book. I tend to think I have only a certain number of books I have time to read, and so I’m fine having the wheels of publishing sort through the manuscripts out there so that I don’t have to.
So the fact that I bought Will Wight’s Wintersteel the very night it released, cleared my schedule to read it, and finished it two days later, says all you really need to know about the book. Wight has done a fantastic job marketing himself, often giving away all his current books for free because he seems to be just that confident that people will turn around and buy his later books at full price. It’s an approach that works for illegal substances, and it definitely works for the Cradle series, one of my favorite fantasy series to come out in quite some time
I believe I’ve reviewed at least some of these before, but the conceit is very straightforward. Think of a video game RPG. Final Fantasy, say. It’s all about leveling up your character, getting it able to do even more powerful things so that it can then go and fight more powerful monsters. You keep doing that until you beat the game, which basically means there are no more powerful monsters to find anywhere.
That’s the Cradle series. Each individual book is like an installment of a larger RPG, and his characters level up, gaining new powers and abilities so they can always face the next step. At some point, there’s going to have to be a big bad guy with no more bad guys after, but that point is not Wintersteel.
So why is a book that’s so straightforward so much fun to read? I mean, going into it, you know it’s not the final book, and so you’re almost certain what’s going to happen. The characters will level up, face adversity, and emerge more powerful than they were going into it. If playing an RPG doesn’t sound like a fun time to you, reading one probably won’t be any better. But to a guy who grew up pouring hours into Final Fantasy, reading up on all the strategies and figuring out how best to win?
This book is pure catnip.
Wight writes great action sequences. He manages to make all his characters have unique ways of fighting, so the action doesn’t just blend together. There’s always some new weapon or spell they’re working on, and you get a good enough grasp of how they all work that you can appreciate it when a character does something innovative to pull off a come from behind win. Are the characters the deepest ever? Nope. Are there sweeping themes that will leave you breathless? Definitely not. This is a popcorn book, plain and simple. You read it for the pyrotechnics and the fun.
It very much makes me want to write something like this.
In any case, if you’re looking for a way to escape the blah of the everything right now, and you like yourself a good RPG and a fantasy novel, then boy howdy is this series perfect for you. The only thing that I can critique it on is that it’s not finished yet, and so now I have to wait until the next book comes out. (There are two more planned for the series. One to come out in March, and one next September.) But I wouldn’t let that stop you from enjoying the 8 that are already out now. 9/10
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 22, 2020
When Can You Call a Stranger?
Part of my responsibilities in church at the moment is making unsolicited phone calls to set up appointments for church leaders. They’ll need to meet with someone, and so I’ll need to track that person down and set a time and date. Most of the time, I try to do this through email, because it’s the most efficient way in my opinion. (And I have an easy record of what was decided, in case there’s the need to keep track of that.)
But sometimes emails go unnoticed, and I have to reluctantly turn to ye olde telephone to get the job done. I dislike this for a number of reasons. First of all, I just don’t like talking to strangers on the phone. I can chatter away with friends for hours on end, but calling people I don’t know? Not a fan. It stresses me out, and yes I realize that’s a silly thing to stress out about, but there you have it.
Beyond the simple stress of making an actual phone call is the fact that most people have caller ID these days, and I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are a lot of these things called “spam calls” that happen. This means most people just don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize. Which means my number. So calling someone means I have to leave a message, and then they have to call me back, which is from a number my phone won’t recognize. (And also means that these days I just always answer my phone, because it’s easier to just hang up on a spambot than it is to have to track down the actual person who was leaving me a message.)
Anyway. This long lead up is just to set the stage for my question. In the modern era, when do you think it’s fine to make a phone call? Meaning, what hours of the day? I ask because I know for a fact that different people have different opinions on this. (On my mission, I once got yelled at for knocking on someone’s door. “Don’t you know what time it is?” they yelled at me. I checked my watch. “Four thirty in the afternoon?” I answered. “Exactly!” they said. “It’s way too late to just drop by!” Maybe they just didn’t want a missionary knocking on their door. If that was the case, I couldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t want me knocking on my door either.)
My general approach is on a weekday, I’ll wait until 9am to call someone, and I’ll still call someone until 9pm. (On weekends, I wait until 10am.) Still, I have woken people up calling at 9 in the morning or 8:30 at night, so I wonder if my hours are too broad.
That’s where you all come in.
When do you think it’s okay to call someone? Weekend vs. weekday? (And remember, “not calling at all” isn’t an option in this case. Those appointments ain’t gonna make themselves, folks.)
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 21, 2020
Buying a Better Mousetrap
We’re almost to late October, and you know what that means: peak mouse trapping season is upon us. Now that I’ve lived in an old farmhouse for over a decade, this is far from my first rodeo. If there’s a mouse-controlling device out there, I’ve bought it and tried it out. And seeing as how some of you might be newer to the mousing scene, I thought it might be helpful to some of you for me to give a quick run down of the various mouse traps out there, and which one gets the official Bryce Seal of Approval.
Ye Olde Classic–You know the one I’m talking about. Wooden trap. Metal coil. Something Bugs Bunny might try to trick Elmer Fudd with. These traps are fine and all. They’re certainly cheap, and when they work, they work. (Sometimes a little too well. I’ve had mice that pretty much got cut in half by one of these. Speaking from experience, that’s not a situation you want. Cleaning up two halves of a mouse is not a fun prospect.) Messiness aside, I don’t like this style for three other reasons. First is reusability. Once you’ve caught a mouse, you have to get fairly handsy with that corpse to get the mouse out and reset the trap. Second, actually setting the trap is a trick and a half. There’s a fair chance you’re going to snap it on yourself once or twice before you actually get it done right. Third, there tends to be a lot of false alarms with this style. Mice seem to be able to navigate the trap well enough without actually getting caught.
Glue Traps–This style fails on many different levels. First of all, it just seems cruel to me. I don’t like mice, but I don’t quite like them to the level of “glue them to the floor and let them starve to death or die of thirst.” Also, sometimes the critter doesn’t fully get on the trap, and instead it takes the glue trap on a trip around the house. This is less than ideal. Finally, the glue just picks up all sorts of nastiness over time. Yuck. Pass.
Poison–Again, it’s pretty cruel, but there are times when poison’s the only thing I’ve figured out that’ll work. (Less so now that I have a dog. Poison’s pretty much out for me at this point . . . ) But even if you don’t have a pooch to look out for, poison just generally means the mouse dies in the floor or the wall, and then you’ve got to smell if for a long time afterward. Not fun. Pass.
Noise Deterrents–These are plug in things that supposedly make it so mice don’t want to go anywhere near where they can hear the noise. They can work . . . fine. But they only work for where the noise can get, and I haven’t had a huge success rate. They’re fine as a first defense, but I wouldn’t rely on them for all my mouse warfare needs.
Dryer sheets–I swear. People seem to think dryer sheets work for everything. Like mice will smell them and then go running for the hills. I have had no success with dryer sheets for anything other than keeping clothes fluffy in the dryer.
Electronic Traps–The concept seems sound at first blush. Mice go in and get zapped by a battery powered zapper. And these do indeed kill mice. But they also get really gunky over time. The batteries need to be changed. Getting rid of the mice can be a pain, as well. They brag about how they’re enclosed, so you don’t have to see the dead mouse, but . . . that kind of goes with the territory of mouse trapping. Sooner or later, you have to see the beady eyes. These are expensive, and I don’t see the point. Pass.
Have-a-Heart Traps–These take the “trap” part too literally. I want to kill the mouse, not take it on a trip in my car. What is this? A mouse game show? The rodent has infested my house, and instead of making an example of it, I end up giving it a free meal and a trip to an exotic location, where it can proceed to do what mice do best: make more mice. No thanks. If mice didn’t want to die, they shouldn’t have come into my house.
Guillotine Style Traps–They don’t actually cut the critter’s head off, but they come close. They also don’t work for beans. I have yet to catch a mouse with one of these, probably because mice see them and are scared to death.
Board Games–Is that what this is to you? A joke? We’re here to kill mice, son. Not build complex Rube Golberg machines.
Amazon’s Recommended Style–These work okay, over all. I’ve successfully used them to kill multiple mice with the same trap over time, but they don’t have the staying power to last season after season. Once you’ve caught and killed five mice with one trap, the trap mechanism seems to wear out, and you have to get a new trap. They’re fine, and they do the job without being too messy. They’re also easy to reset. They’re easily my second favorite trap, but they’re not my pick for number one.
My Number One–Now we’re talking. These traps win on so many different levels. First off, they’re very reusable. I’ve got one trap that’s caught four mice over six days right now. (It’s a bad year for mice, it seems? At least in my house at the moment.) Better yet, you can just stick a raisin in the bait spot, and the mice almost never successfully get the raisin, so you never have to put new bait in. You can set it and unset it with just one hand, leaving your other clean hand free to open doors and maneuver in and out of the house. You can reset it with your foot, so if it goes off and misses the mouse, you don’t have to worry about getting your hands dirty again. They’re just very, very good traps. And they’re cheap.
So there you have it. My recommendation for the best mouse killing machine, speaking from years of practice. If you have more questions, I’m happy to answer them. Good luck in your mouse hunting endeavors, and may the odds be ever in your favor.
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
October 20, 2020
Stop Eating Poop
Ferris is a great dog. He’s definitely making things more interesting around the household in more ways than one. One way I wish were a little less interesting was the way he keeps making us take trips to the vet. We’ve had three vet visits (of the non-scheduled variety) in the two months he’s been with us, and he’s been on two rounds of drugs to solve various issues he’s had. Issues that really, when you get down to it, stem from one basic habit of his:
He likes to eat poop.
I know this isn’t unique to Ferris. That in fact, most dogs think poop is the bee’s knees and would eat it much more often if they could. That still doesn’t make me less frustrated when we have to shell out another hundred on pills that could have been avoided if he’d just lay off the brown stuff. It seems so clear to me. Why can’t he just follow that one obvious rule?
Of course, then I was eating some of Denisa’s apple cobbler she made last night, and a bit of it fell on the floor. Without thinking twice about it, I picked it up and ate it. After I was already chewing, it occurred to me that my floor is far from a sanitary surface. That Ferris literally walks through poop all the time, and that he walks all over that kitchen. That there’s no telling what germs I’d just popped into my mouth.
As soon as I’d made that connection, many other connections snapped together in my mind. Things I do and say (and eat) that I really shouldn’t, even though I know better.
Why is it so hard for us to stop doing the things that hurt ourselves, even when we know those things are hurtful? Over my staycation, I took a break from my diet. Because of that, I felt sick to my stomach most of the staycation. Yes, I got to eat a whole bunch of delicious food, but I ate too much of that delicious food. Denisa told me not to do it. I did it anyway.
I’m getting better in some areas. I don’t stay up as late. I get regular amounts of sleep. I exercise. But there are still definitely areas where I keep eating poop, no matter how many times everyone reminds me that poop is bad for me and will lead to long term problems.
I know this is just a variation on a theme I’ve written about many many times before, but that’s probably because it’s a lesson I (clearly) need to keep learning to master. What is the poop you’re currently eating? The first step to stopping is acknowledging that it’s poop, and not really anything of value. Once you can recognize that, you’ll be much closer to giving that particular type of poop up . . .
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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 the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That 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.
