David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 190

I Finally Have “The Artist In Question” by Michael J Seidlinger!

I finally have a copy of The Artist in Question by Michael J. Seidlinger! You have no idea, I’ve been looking for this book for almost two years (see here). There were only about 50 of these made. Even Michael doesn’t have one. But I do!

Seriously, I can’t believe I found this. I looked everywhere. I tried every purchase site I could think of. I searched all the hard to find, out of print, everything sites that normally find this sort of thing. I even started messaging people who had reviewed hoping they might still have a copy.

Finally, finally I have it.

Have You Noticed I Start Posting Animated Gifs When I Run Low On Time For Real Posts?

Have you noticed that when I run out of time for a real post I tend to start looking for animated gifs of something funny to include and then structure a post around that? I do that. It may or may not be completely evident, but it probably is.

That being said, here’s an animated gif of speeded up butter melting:

Amazon PrimePantry Is Driving Me Away From Amazon

My wife has our car out of town right now and I needed a few household things so I decided to look at Amazon to see about getting those things delivered. I encountered something I hadn’t seen before, something called PrimePantry. That was really annoying.

PrimePantry is apparently deals exclusively for Amazon Prime members. I understand what the goal is here, exclusive deals to promote Prime membership. They don’t want to just show them to Prime members because they want non-Prime members to sign up.

However, they nearly drove me away from the site entirely.

After all, there was no way that I could figure out to screen out the PrimePantry results. There were so many PrimePantry results that I couldn’t see stuff I could actually buy. It looked like there wasn’t anything I could.

I wasn’t going to sign up for Prime.

I understand wanting to drive Prime membership, but shouldn’t they stop short of making the site impossible or at least highly difficult to use for non-Prime members? They want to be a one stop shop for more than just books (and I buy from independents unless I can only get something from Amazon in general anyway), should they make it so I can’t find anything to buy?

I tell you, I started looking at other sites. Pushing prime is one thing, but making it so I can’t find anything to buy is another.

They might want to rethink that. At least present the PrimePantry deals and then let me screen those out so I can find something to buy in case I’m still not sold on Prime.

A Soothing Image

Life gets stressful from time to time. A soothing image can help this, calm us all down. As such, let’s look at this animated gif of an egg exploding in a microwave:

Stupid Bus

I got to go to the Fbomb National Flash Fiction Festival event recently in Denver at the Mercury Cafe. It was very cool, got to hear great writers like Robert Vaughan, Karen Stefano, Meg Tuite, and Paul Beckman read. Even picked up some books I got to have signed, though I ran out of cash before I got all I wanted (remedied that at least in part by ordering Paul Beckman’s Peek on my phone on the way home). The stupid bus messed it up a little for me, though.

I had to leave my house at 6 in order to be to the event by 7:30. Then I had to leave at 9:15 or so, halfway through at the intermission, in order to walk all the way to the bus stop and make the last bus I could take to get to bed on time for work the next morning. I cut it pretty close, but I missed half the event.

Missed all those other readers I wanted to hear, and missed the chance to read myself.

Stupid bus.

I’ll definitely have to go back, though I think I’ll be out of town next time their going to do it. I’ll have to keep my eye out for more after that. I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing.

Can We Get To The Point People Start Dropping Out Of The Presidential Race Soon?

I just heard that yet another person has announced their candidacy for president. Can we please get to the point soon where people start dropping out? When is that? I’m really looking forward to it.

I mean, any political views aside…there are just too many candidates. We’ve long since passed the point where I could keep track of them all. I think at least 150 have thrown their hats into the ring since then. It seems like that number is growing steadily. It seems like it will never stop.

I know this is a pattern in every race. People announce their candidacy in the early parts and sooner or later some end up having no hope of winning and dropping out. I don’t remember what stage of the game that is, but dear God I hope it’s soon.

It’s a long way until November 2016.

I’m A Pill!

I’m a pill! Well, a LitPill at least.

LitPills creates pill-shaped versions of authors that you can purchase as stickers. They’ve got all kinds of authors. Edgar Allan Poe, Margaret Atwood, Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman, and tons more. They’ve started doing Indie authors and Chris Smith over at LitPills invited me to be the first. You can check out my interview with them right now over here, or go straight to my pill over here.

Stick ’em to laptops! Stick ’em to journals! Stick ’em to windows! Stick ’em to someone else’s car! Wait, forget that last one. I probably shouldn’t be advocating that.

Regardless, isn’t this cool? Who doesn’t love pills?

“Not Quite so Stories” Forthcoming!

I signed a contract with Literary Wanderlust for my short story collection Not Quite so Stories! I already posted about this on Facebook and though I wanted to update everyone here, I didn’t want to overload this on Facebook (my blog autoposts to Facebook, most of the time) so I decided to wait a couple days before posting. The book is now forthcoming!

I’ll be sure to let you all know details as soon as I’ve got them nailed down.

This one was a long time coming. I’ve been working on these stories for a few years now. It all goes back to the day when I was walking around a bookstore and noticed a cover turned outward that depicted a melancholy guy in a bunny suit with a shotgun surrounded by deceased birds (The Nimrod Flipout). That got me curious, and introduced me to Etgar Keret. Followed shortly by encountering Museum of the Weird by Amelia Gray, my course was set. I got really into these sort of highly realistic stories that take a sudden left turn into absurdity.

I wanted to write stories like that.

And, I started doing that. I envisoned a whole collection of those, going against the idea of myth explaining the world and instead going with the idea that the world is by nature absurd and inexplicable and all we can do is figure out how to go on in the face of that. I even had a tentative title, Not Quite so Stories, playing on the Kipling book Just so Stories and forming a kind of answer to it.

Anyway, after all these years, it’s finally complete and going to be published. I can’t wait for you all to be able to read it.

Damn Cats

My wife and I bought some new furniture when we moved into our house. Two of our cats seem to like scratching on one of the chairs. Little hairs are starting to appear. We’ve tried spraying a stop scratching spray, taking them over to the scratching post instead, and yelling. My wife is out of town for a bit right now and wanted me to preserve the situation until she can try additional things when she gets back, maybe stop scratching tape or putting a new cat tree right by the chair.

So I threw a blanket on the chair.

This is, of course, the two biggest cats. Both pretty muscular, one weighs 16 pounds (I know, but the vet said he could only really stand to lose a pound or two. Trust me, he’s pretty solid when you try to pick him up). As such, they can do a number on that chair.

So the blanket is a good solution right? They can’t get to the chair and thus can’t scratch it. Problem temporarily solved, right? Situation preserved until my wife returns?

The cats threw up on the blanket.

Not even on the top, the front. It looked like one of the cats sat down in front of the chair, faced it, and threw up forward.

Damn cats.

Bill Murray Is Awesome

Bill Murray is awesome.

I know this isn’t news, but just look at this article. Bill Murray accidentally stopped a robbery. A guy had just robbed an ATM. He ran out, saw Bill Murray, and stopped to talk to him. Dude STOPPED TO TALK TO BILL MURRAY DURING A ROBBERY!

Understandable, right? I mean, when are you going to have another chance to talk to Bill Murray.

Anyway, the authorities grabbed the guy at that point. And, of course, the story isn’t true anyway. It’s just fiction. Still, fun to believe, right?

Bill Murray is still awesome.