David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 169

“Not Quite so Stories” Release Reading Friday March 25th 7pm at The BookBar

Denver area people! I’ll be doing a reading at the BookBar Friday March 25 at 7pm to celebrate the release of Not Quite so Stories. Come on out!

Here’s a link to the Facebook event page. Let us know you’re coming!

I Hate The Cold Contact Dopey Sales Queries Authors Get

I hate the cold contact sales queries authors get. Emails, calls, whatever way they manage to get your contact information, there are so many dumb sales setups out there that needlessly pester authors. There are many good services for authors out there, and I don’t object to cold contacts on principle, though they are annoying. I object in particular to the number of ones so bad that they’re wasting their time and mine.

For example, I got bugged again this morning by someone who had previously contacted me about QR codes (Mukesh Gupta at Scanova). They had previously requested a bunch of my time so they could tell me all about QR codes and how I could use them as an author to expand my readership. The information they provided, both about QR codes and what people could do with them, was horrifyingly basic. It did not inspire any kind of need to talk to them.

Seriously, how many people do they think don’t know what QR codes are? How many people do they think don’t know you can link one to book trailers, purchase pages, or all kinds of other book promotional materials? It isn’t a lack of knowledge but likely budget for getting the QR codes distributed to where someone might scan them that is the issue. As such, their email wasted my time and their demand for a bunch of my time to talk about this was downright ridiculous.

Small press authors have a limited budget for promotion. Anything they can do for me, I can already do on my own. If I’m not doing it, it’s because it doesn’t fit the budget. Adding their cost on top of that goes in the negative direction, making it fit into the budget even less. On top of it, they want my time, the thing I need most of in order to do the promotional activities that do fit into the budget.

So they sent a follow up email because they hadn’t heard back from me, still wanting my time but providing no good reason why I should give it. There were even misspellings in the email. Oh, that really inspires a need to talk to them. Not only can they give me horrifyingly basic information that they think I somehow already don’t know, they aren’t professional on top of it and do slapdash jobs. Yeah, I really want to talk to them.

But, I actually did respond. I sent them this link:

https://www.google.com/patents/US8534540?

dq=matrix+bar+code+ininventor:david+ininventor:atkinson&hl=en &sa=X&ved=0ahUKE

wjFut6d8YvLAhVLOiYKHd0SDR0Q6AEIPTAE

and said: “I think I already know enough about QR codes, thanks.”

Garbage dopey service offers are either going to get no response or a snarky one. They ought to spend their time developing either better services, better ways of presenting themselves, or something. This just did no one any good.

I’m Kind Of Hungry Right Now

I’m kind of hungry right now. That made me just look up “breakfast animated gif.” Actually got Donald Duck on this one.

Who wouldn’t like this? Animated pancakes? Animated breakfast? Is it breakfast since my blog posts in the evenings? Wouldn’t it be more like brinner?

We’ll ignore all those questions…primarily because this is all just an excuse to use that animated pancakes gif as a post for the day.

“Not Quite So Stories” And More Punishment

I posted recently how I was going to contemplate a few of the stories in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories since it was an influence on my soon to be released short story collection Not Quite so Stories (coming March 1). Last I looked at “How the Camel Got His Hump.” Today let’s look at “How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin.”

TO summarize, a Rhinoceros had unwrinkled skin, but no manners. He frightens a gentleman baking a cake into a tree and eats the cake. The man swears revenge. He waits for the Rhinoceros to tkae off his skin on a hot day and then sneaks cake crumbs inside. The Rhinoceros reclaims his skin, but is rewarded forever after with itching due to the crumbs, which causes him to wrinkle his skin by constant itching and rubbing.

Notice a theme here? The stories in Just So Stories seem big on punishment. Why did things happen? Well, somebody was bad and got punished. At least the Rhinoceros here at least did something more arguably wrong, theft. The poor camel in the previous story refused to work, but it was never explained why he should have (being more akin to slavery since man apparently did nothing for the camel and the camel never voluntarily agreed to work). Here at least, the Rhinoceros takes something that isn’t his and ends up with itchy, wrinkled skin…though we’ll have to ignore the argument that a rhinoceros is an animal and thus can’t be expected to respect personal property, instead responding in a completely natural hunger/eating behavior pattern where property rights simply don’t exist.

Still, doesn’t it seem that Kipling’s view of myth and the world in Just So Stories is something akin to:

“Why do bad things happen?”

“God is mad…probably because of something you did.”

How very biblical.

Regardless, two for two so far are punishment stories. Out of twelve stories, the theme is certainly difficult to ignore. I enjoyed these stories as a kid, but I’m not really liking Kipling’s apparent view of myth and the world as I look back. It strikes me as kind of authoritarian and cold.

Punk Rock Turtle

This morning Facebook reminded a writer friend of mine of when she shared a photo saying how she loved punk rock turtle. She decided to share the memory today, stating that she still loved punk rock turtle.

Of course, this made me think of one thing:

As such, I decided to comment with a bit of modified lyrics. We had so much fun with that, I decided to post the full modified lyrics here. Enjoy:

DEAD MILKMEN

“Punk Rock Turtle”

 

One Saturday I took a walk to Zipperhead

I met a turtle there

And she almost knocked me dead

Punk rock turtle please look at me

Punk rock turtle what do you see?

Let’s travel round the world

Just you and me punk rock turtle

 

I tapped her on the shoulder

And said do you have a beau?

She looked at me and smiled

And said she did not know

Punk rock turtle give me a chance

Punk rock turtle let’s go slamdance

We’ll dress like Minnie Pearl

Just you and me punk rock turtle

 

We went to the Phillie Pizza Company

And ordered some hot tea

The waitress said “Well no

We only have it iced”

So we jumped up on the table

And shouted “anarchy”

And someone played a Beach Boys song

On the jukebox

It was “California Dreamin'”

So we started screamin’

“On such a winter’s day”

 

She took me to her parents

For a Sunday meal

Her father took one look at me

And he began to squeal

Punk rock turtle it makes no sense

Punk rock turtle your dad is the Vice President

Rich as the Duke of Earl

Yeah you’re for me punk rock turtle

 

We went to a shopping mall

And laughed at all the shoppers

And security guards trailed us

To a record shop

We asked for Mojo Nixon

They said “He don’t work here”

We said “If you don’t got Mojo Nixon

Then your store could use some fixin'”

 

We got into a car

Away we started rollin’

I said “How much you pay for this?”

She said “Nothing man, it’s stolen”

Punk rock turtle you look so wild

Punk rock turtle let’s have a child

We’ll name her Minnie Pearl

Just you and me

Eating fudge banana swirl

Just you and me

We’ll travel round the world

Just you and me punk rock turtle

Am I The Only One Sad That Bacolicio.us Doesn’t Work Much Anymore?

Am I the only one sad that Bacolicio.us doesn’t work much anymore? It’s the site that adds bacon to a web page for you. You just give them a link and they give you a link to a modified page, the web page you provided with the image of a piece of bacon over the top.

I think Salvador Dali would have approved.

But, Bacolicio.us warns their site won’t work with some sites due to how they use iframes and/or how other sites are set up regarding origin policies. Unfortunately, this seems to be most sites these days. I found  Bacolicio.us years ago and at the time, only a few sites didn’t work. Now almost all the sites that would be funny don’t work. All you get is bacon over a blank page. That’s still fun, but it lost it’s novelty long ago.

I miss when this used to work. I miss taking someone’s unattended browser and changing it to a baconified version of the page they were viewing. It just isn’t fun that it hardly ever works anymore.

Did Goodreads Giveaways Always Require 7 Days Advance Notice?

Did Goodreads always require 7 days advance notice for giveaways? I’ve listed two giveaways before, and I don’t remember that. Oh, by the way, the Goodreads giveaway for Not Quite so Stories (coming March 1) will be up a litter later than I planned.

I’d always planned to do a giveaway on Goodreads. They’re fun, and they spread the word about a new book well. I thought I’d have it run a month, start it on February 15th and have it run until the Ides of March so I could be sure I’d have the copies I’d need to send out available. Then this weekend got away from me, what with work, Valentine’s Day, and Black Sabbath. I didn’t get to setting it up until this morning…when it told me I could set a start date any earlier than seven days from now.

Really? They say they may need up to two days to approve the giveaway. In the past, I’ve had my giveaways approved within 24 hours. So why five days? Why not let me start it as soon as they approve?

Maybe it was always this way and I don’t remember. Regardless, maybe there’s a good reason. Still, it seems odd to me.

There Goes My Vacation Plans

Well, thanks a lot, Q-Tips. There goes my vacation plans. And I heard that the ear canal was lovely this time of year. The State Department really should have issued a travel warning before I booked rather than let me find out this way.

George Washington Animated GIF!

Since President’s Day just passed, why don’t we look at an animated gif of George Washington?

Okay, it’s really an animated gif of a dollar. Still, isn’t that the most popular depiction of him? It’s not as if we have photos to choose from. It was certainly my favorite of what I found. As such, that’s what you all are getting. As Washington once said: “Deal with it.”

Work Harder On The Trivia Questions Than That

I just saw what might perhaps be the laziest written trivia question on an electronic display in my office building. It read something like:

Which did Google announce it is developing?

A. A teleportation device

B. A portable cloning device

C. A stand-alone virtual reality headset

Really? Couldn’t spend the effort to at least come up with possible answers that are at least possible? We don’t have the slightest clue how to accomplish teleportation. We don’t even know if it is possible at all. Current understandings of physics would certainly suggest not. This would have been so groundbreaking that you wouldn’t have possibly not heard of it. The cloning device is better, but not by much. It can be done, but a portable cloning device would still be so far beyond what we are currently capable of. A stand-alone VR headset is another thing entirely. It can easily be done, just not necessarily very well. That’s the big thing for them to work on, doing it well. As such, this isn’t even really a question. ‘C’ was so clearly the answer that people didn’t even have to think about it.

Couldn’t they at least have come up with alternate answers that were of the same level of possibility as a stand-alone virtual reality headset? Couldn’t they have made this question not immediately answer itself? It just seems really lazy.