David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 234

Don’t Forget The Live Online Reading For “The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes” At Lit Demon Thursday Night!

Don’t forget, this Thursday (Thursday May 15th at 8:00 PM CST, 7:00 PM Mountain, 9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00 PM Pacific) Lit Demon will be hosting me doing a live reading for The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes.

Check out the page at Lit Demon for details (which has the webex link to join to be part of the live reading when the time comes). As a reminder, this will be hosted via webex and we will be limited to 23 live participants so don’t forget to join the Facebook event page if you’re going to attend for sure. Again, no worries. Lit Demon is going to capture the event and put out an archive video on Youtube later that everyone will be able to watch.

Wish me luck!

So Much For The May 2014 Denver Snowpocalypse

Before this weekend, people were talking about the Denver May snowpocalypse. 5-10 inches between Sunday and Monday. I wasn’t worried. Things could happen, but still. It wasn’t likely there’d be too many problems.

This was what it looked like yesterday morning:

and this is what it looked like this afternoon:

That’s right. It was above freezing most of the time, and close to it the short amount of time overnight it dipped below. If we got even five inches of accumulation, it was only on the grass and the rooftops. By now, it’s all gone.

This is the way May snows almost always are in Denver. We can get a dump late in the year, but it just doesn’t stick much. Things can happen, but they often don’t. Not much cause to worry.

Of course, this was much different up in the mountain towns like Vail and Evergreen. Then again, it always is. A few miles make a world of difference when that kind of a climb is involved.

A Diet I Can Actually Detect

I know a lot of people don’t drink diet soda out of concerns about the dangers of artificial sweeteners. I still drink diet soda anyway. For the most part, I’ve never really been able to tell much of a difference. Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Zero. Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero. I just never really notice which is which, absent weight gain from the calories in the corn syrup if I don’t end up drinking the diet versions. Heck, I don’t even notice that much difference between Coke and Pepsi. I’m sure it’s there, but I don’t notice it.

However, I finally did try a diet soda for which I could tell the difference. Diet Mountain Dew.

I’ve never really wanted to try it before, but it was sitting in front of me the other day so I had one. It was fine as a drink, but it just didn’t taste anything like Mountain Dew. I don’t mean that it didn’t taste sweet, or even as sweet to me, just that it didn’t seem to have much of a Mountain Dew flavor. That seemed weird.

After all, sweetness aside, shouldn’t the flavor come from sodium citrate or something? Some sort of citrus chemical? Mountain Dew is sweet and all, and I know that’s the corn syrup, but the citrus flavor of Mountain Dew doesn’t come from the sugar…does it?

I don’t know what it was, but Diet Mountain Dew didn’t taste much like Mountain Dew to me. Maybe I was just off that day, and it was a fine enough thing to drink, but it just didn’t seem like Mountain Dew at all. I didn’t really understand.

Check out the video of me reading the first chapter of “The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes” at the 2014 Nebraska Book Festival.

Check out the video of me reading the first chapter of The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes at the 2014 Nebraska Book Festival:

And here’s the link to the book on Amazon in case you get any ideas while watching the video.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should: New Hampshire “COPSLIE” Plate

Just because you can do something in no way means that you should do something. Case in point- the New Hampshire Supreme Court just told a guy (David Montenegro) he could have a personalized license plate that reads: COPSLIE. This strikes me as a bad idea.

Now, I understand that this guy is apparently upset and wants to protest what he sees as police corruption. I understand that. I don’t know his story enough to know why he feels that way, but I can understand there are probably circumstances justifying his desire to protest. I don’t personally believe that all police lie, but police are human beings and surely some have.

However, say goodbye to ever getting warnings on speeding violations ever again. Talk about something guaranteed to turn any traffic stop into at least a slightly more hostile situation.

Is it really necessary to poke the bear like that? There are some situations where police legitimately have discretion. This makes it much more likely that such discretion will go against you, even potentially legitimately.

This just seems unnecessarily provoking to me. I wouldn’t do it. I guess David Montenegro is mad enough that he’s willing to take that risk.

Am I A Fair Weather Fan?

I noticed a friend of mine recently talking about being a fair weather fan in relation to the Colorado Rockies. I started wondering if I was one as well, but I’m not entirely certain.

Mind you, I don’t think I’m a serious fan. I enjoy a nice day at the ball park, and I like it when the Rockies win. However, I also liked it when I used to go to Omaha Royals games back when there were those and I rooted for them then against the at the time Oklahoma Zephyrs (they always played the Oklahoma Zephyrs whenever I went over the course of thirty years for whatever reason). Same thing goes for the time that I went to see the KC Royals play and the time I went to see the Seattle Mariners play.

I started thinking about what it was I liked about going to the ball park. I thought about sitting outside on a nice day and having something to watch. I thought about ball park snacks and something like that. To be honest, baseball didn’t really enter into it that much. It’s cool and all, but almost anything could be going on down on the field as long as the other components were there and it wouldn’t make much difference to me.

Is that being a fair weather fan? Do I even count as that much? Perhaps fair weather attendee is more accurate?

I don’t know. I have more fun at baseball games than football or hockey, but only so much. I’m just not much of a sports guy. Still, I do like ball park hot dogs and stuff like that outside on a nice day.

Somebody Screwed Up With That Commercial

I don’t watch much TV. I do occasionally catch something my wife is watching while reading, though. That’s how I noticed a bit of a screw up with a commercial for I Found the Gown.

My wife was watching this the other day. It’s a show about people shopping at a bridal store that sells sample models at a discount. Amidst other smaller segments, the main bit of the episode rotated around a girl who WANTED a particular dress, but even on discount it was about a grand more than her mother’s budget.

Would she get it? Would they discount the dress enough? What would happen?

Clearly, they were trying to build suspense. They’d have a little more, playing back and forth over whether or not she’d get the dress, and either then go to commercial or switch to one of the smaller segments. The whole episode was like this. Clearly, this girl was the suspense focus of the entire episode.

However, during each commercial break they showed a commercial for the show itself. As part of the commercial, the girl was in that very dress in question screaming: “I found the gown!” For the uninformed, this is what they say when they agree to buy. Thus, every single commercial break during the attempt to build suspense over whether or not she’d get her dream dress advertised the outcome. She was getting the dress, no suspense involved.

Somebody screwed up with when they decided to show that commercial.

This isn’t the first time I’d seen this sort of thing happen. My wife briefly got into A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila early in its run. Every episode hinged on a bit near the end where one contestant was eliminated from the running, the rest continuing to have a chance to date Tila Tequila.

Well, one episode I happened to look up from my book at had all the contestants standing in front of Tila. She was about to choose. Then, commercial break. During the break, there was a commercial for the next week’s show. I could see what contestants were in the next weeks show, and which one wasn’t. Suddenly, there wasn’t any suspense anymore.

Seriously, somebody has to watch out for this crap. These shows seem like garbage to me to begin with. If they’re going to so carelessly ruin what little suspense they manage to generate, why bother?

“Bones Buried in the Dirt” Named A Finalist in the FIRST NOVEL (Under 80,000 words) category of the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards

I just got word that Bones Buried in the Dirt  was named a finalist in the First Novel (Under 80,000 words) category of the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards! How cool is that?

Bones Buried in the Dirt

Police Release New Evidence In Kurt Cobain’s Death That Changes Nothing!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Police release previously unseen evidence related to Kurt Cobain’s death that doesn’t change absolutely anything! Yet again, the previously provided explanation is still most likely correct!

Far from casting any aspersions on the probability that Cobain committed suicide, this previously unseen evidence apparently mocks Kurt Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love. How this is exactly supposed to be ‘evidence’ is unclear.

Police aren’t clear when the note was written, what context was related to the note, or whether or not it was even sincere. It even contradicts statements Cobain made in his suicide note about Courtney. In short, it provides nothing new other than Cobain may or may not have been upset at Love at some point. Ooh, that’s news.

Seriously…can we stop hearing about this if there isn’t anything actually new? Short of this helping album sales by staying in newsfeeds, all it could possibly do is hurt his friends and family. There just isn’t anything here that seems worth talking about to me.

Of course, I’m talking about it. However, I’m mocking the fact that this is news. That’s totally different.

For Only $50 On Amazon You Too Can Have A Little Fun

Want to have a little fun? Have $50 or so you’re willing to spend on it? Why not try the Anatomical Chart Co. Bag of Bones on Amazon?

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Why would I want a sack of fake (I assume) human bones? I’d be thinking the same thing. However, it isn’t buying the bones themselves that is the fun…it’s what you can do with them.

Why not bury some in the park with just a little sticking out? Or perhaps a dumpster? Sure, the local authorities will figure it out soon enough…but they will be checking. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Note: I don’t actually advise doing this. I’m not sure, but there could even possibly be some kind of law against this somewhere. I don’t really know, but I wouldn’t chance it.