David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 215

Recommendations For Mark Allen Berryhill

I mentioned recently about the debacle that ensued when bizzaro fiction writer Mark Allen Berryhill attempted to take a greyhound bus to BizarroCon 2014. I may have suggested some more interesting ways that the universe could delay Mark beyond weather and accidents should he ever take a bus again.

This was not particularly sensitive to Mark.

As such, I thought we should do something nice for Mark.  As such, here are some recommendations for him that might sooth him from his recent stress:

- The Wayward Bus, John Steinbeck

- The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories, Etgar Keret (a bus is involved in the titular story)

- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe (all about Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters travelling across the country in a colorfully painted school bus named “Furthur”)

-  The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis (a Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven)

- Speed (not a book, but this movie of a bus that will explode if its speed drops to less than 50 miles per hour is too good here to pass up)

 

Well, nobody ever said I didn’t have a mean streak in my humor.

Ways That the Universe Could Mess With Mark Allen Berryhill

BizarroCon 2014 wrapped up this last Sunday. Though I didn’t attend the convention, I was following along with a bizarre set of related circumstances that formed an odd parallel to the convention.

You see, bizarro fiction writer Mark Allen Berryhill provided live updates of what turned out to be a bizarre attempt to get to the convention on a greyhound bus. Originally scheduled to arrive sometime in the early afternoon on the 13th, I believe due to various disasters (route delays due to buses being unable to travel through storms, buses he had to wait to catch being delayed due to storms, the bus he was on getting hit by another vehicle, and/or other similar such) he arrived in on the morning of the 15th. The convention ended on the 16th.

However, that isn’t what I want to talk about here. Mark has already talked about the debacle. What I want to talk about is how unimaginative the universe proved to be. Storm route delays? Buses for the next part of the route arriving late due to storms? Accidents caused by storms? It’s all the same thing. BORING!

Clearly, the universe needs a little help coming up with other things to delay Mark with should he ever take a greyhound again. Here are some ideas:

- Mark is exposed to radiation causing him to morph into a green, incredibly strong and anger-filled monster every time he gets angry, resulting in Mark having to roam the country and not reach his scheduled destination until he learns to control the terrible rage that dwells within him.

- A dimensional portal opens due to the occurrence of the “greatest earthquake ever known,” causing Mark’s bus to be swept down a thousand foot waterfall (and backwards through time) into a dinosaur filled past.

- An experiment of Mark’s goes awry and he has to take the place of other people, putting right what once went wrong, until he finally makes the leap that takes him to his actual destination.

- Two words: the Doctor.

- The infinite improbability drive of a passing spacecraft turns Mark’s bus into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias.

There you go universe. Plenty of ideas to work with. Let’s keep Mark’s life interesting. Don’t be so lazy next time.

I Can’t Be The Only One Who’s Twelve Here

Okay, I can’t be the only one with the mind of a twelve year old here…I keep laughing about this.

Storms on Uranus? Storms on Uranus that are considered extreme for gassy giants? Gassy giants? Uranus? There’s something going on under the surface of Uranus?

Yeah, I keep giggling. I totally have that juvenile a sense of humor. Sorry.

I Got These So Why Don’t You?

I got these:

so why don’t you?

 

You can, right here:

The ABCs of Dinkology: Life (Volume 1)

The ABCs of Dinkology: Time In-Between (Volume 2)

 

My Most Common Spam Comment

I get this spam comment so often, I thought I’d use it as an actual post. Offending links removed, of course:

Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO?First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear in the URL.You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….wait there’s even more Now what if i told you there was a simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO, and automatically for you? That’s right AUTOMATICALLY, just watch this 4minute video for more information at.

Dear poster robot: I’m still not biting.

Another Reason The Recent Photos Of Kim Kardashian Should Not Break The Internet

People have been talking about some recent photos Kim Kardashian decided to release to ‘break the internet.’ I don’t want to be crass and discuss those images, but I did want to discuss a reason that people may not have thought of why they shouldn’t care.

Frankly, I’d really rather not talk about Kim Kardashian at all, much less pictures of her. If you want pictures like that, go right ahead. I won’t link to them here, though. You can find them easily enough on your own.

However, as to people caring at all about these images, I refer the reader to this quote from Kim Kardashian’s Wikipedia page:

“Kardashian first came to prominence after a 2003 sex tape with her then-boyfriend Ray J”

So…why does anyone care about these images? How can anything in these images be new? What’s shocking?

It’s My Birthday When I’m Writing This And I Don’t Have To Write A Post On My Birthday If I Don’t Want To

It’s my birthday when I’m writing this (not when this is going to post) and I don’t have to write a post on my birthday if I don’t want to.

Guess what? I don’t want to.

You Should Pick This Up If You Like “Too Many Cooks”

Hey, are you one of the many who has gotten into “Too Many Cooks” written and directed by Casper Kelly? If not, take a look:

However, more likely than not you already know about this bizarrely cool video parodying 80s sitcom intros. In that case, you should check out the bizarro anthology from Rooster Republic Press that has stories from both Casper Kelly and myself inside, Tall Tales with Short Cocks Vol. 4 (and here’s the link to the kindle edition if you prefer that).

I rarely have any kind of connection to anyone who everyone is talking about, so I’m definitely digging this. I’m definitely digging the video, but I’m digging the fact that I have any kind of connection to it (however tenuous) as well (also, it apparently is set in my current city).

Luckily My Assumptions Turned Out To Be Correct

I am lucky today. I made some assumptions recently and they turned out to be correct. We all know what can happen if we assume, but I got lucky this time.

I mentioned recently that I was forced to take my wife to the very first international Hello Kitty convention in L.A. celebrating the 40th anniversary of the creation of Hello Kitty. As one might reasonably expect, this con was a mob scene. Part of the con was a special Sanrio store where they were selling Hello Kitty merchandise that would only be officially sold at the convention.

The line just to get into that exclusive Sanrio store was, on average, four hours long.

I did not want to wait in that line.

I helped convince my wife that the specific items she wanted from that store would be available later on eBay. We knew they would go for more on eBay, but we didn’t think they’d go for too much more…at least not enough to justify standing in line for 4-5 hours. My wife agreed, which was good since they closed the line about the time she was considering queueing up.

This worked out for me, right? Well, only if my assumption turned out to be correct. If I turned out to be wrong I would have a very unhappy wife on my hands.

However, it’s only about a week or so later and I’ve managed to win auctions for both items she was considering buying in that store. I got both for around $5-10 more than they originally sold, and that’s even without considering California sales tax. Given what I perceive as the value of my time, I’m feeling pretty good.

I’m even more thrilled that my wife won’t be considering killing me. At least not for that.

It’s a good day.

Accessible Restrooms?

I was in L.A. recently and stopped into a store to use the bathroom. They had the bathroom in a weird place. You had to go into an employee area in the back and up a set of stairs. On the way there, I noticed a sign indicating where a handicap accessible restroom (the only one) was. I saw some humor in the sign, so I took a picture.

This concerned the staff. One of the employees saw me and asked what I was taking pictures of. I’m not sure exactly what they thought I might be doing. Regardless, I told her that though I’m sure the sign wasn’t as it appeared, it seemed funny that they were indicating that the handicapped accessible restroom was upstairs. It just sent a funny unintentional message.

She explained to me that there was an elevator a few feet away which I had not seen. I explained that the sign didn’t mention the elevator.

I then shared this image on Facebook and people mentioned another unintentionally funny aspect of this. The sign says “up stairs,” not “upstairs.” As in the sign wasn’t referencing a place but in fact directing you to go up the stairs to get there. Even funnier, as well as grammatically incorrect.

I’m sure the store wouldn’t like all of this.

I’m still picturing them actually forcing people to go “up stairs” to get to the “accessible” restroom. As I already mentioned on Facebook, if that imaginary scenario (which wasn’t real) was the “accessible” restroom…what would the non-accessible one be? One you have to crawl across hot lava to get to?