David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 246

Word Of The Day Ticks Me Off

I admit it, I like learning new words. I have a fairly good vocabulary (though I don’t always use it) and I like building further upon it. That’s why I like that the displays in the elevators at my work occasionally display a ‘word of the day.’ After all, it’s a chance to learn new obscure words. However, sometimes this ticks me off.

The part that ticks me off is when the ‘word of the day’ is occasionally something that isn’t really obscure.  For example, today the word was ‘palaver.’ I can understand that maybe people don’t know the exact definition of palaver, but to not be familiar with the word at all? Hasn’t everyone seen Pirates of the Caribbean?

(Note, there have been far worse ones than this, words that it boggled my mind to think that people didn’t know. This is just the only non-obscure ‘word of the day’ I’ve seen that I can think of today.)

I’m sorry, maybe some people don’t know the word. Still, I just don’t think it’s obscure enough for a ‘word of the day.’ I have to think that the average office worker is familiar with it. It’s petty, I know, but I demand a little more from my ‘word of the day.’

First Impressions Funniest: Library High School Diplomas

People always talk about how important first impressions are. Sometimes they are funnier than anything you could possibly learn later. For example, I saw the headline “Los Angeles Library to Offer High School Diplomas.” Immediately I thought they were lending them.

Of course, things weren’t so funny once I read the article. As it turns out, there’s just a library hoping to develop into new areas of coordinating learning by helping people earn accredited high school diplomas. I like my way better.

Just imagine it. Say you don’t have a high school diploma but are applying for a job that requires one. Out of luck? No! Just go and borrow one from the library. However, you have to return it after 30 days. If the job is going to check more than just once at hiring, you may want to renew.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Instead, they’re just offering accredited education in addition to lending books, CDs, DVDs, and whatever else libraries have gotten into these days. How disappointing. I was looking forward to someday being able to borrow a PhD.

Help Out Gregory Sherl

I don’t know if any of you have heard about this, but give a thought to helping out Gregory Sherl. Greg struggles with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and needs around $10,000 that his insurance won’t cover.

I hope you’re familiar with Greg already, but he’s the author of Monogamy Songs, The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail, Heavy Petting, Last Night was Worth Talking About, I Have Touched You, and the forthcoming Glow and The Future for Curious People (written in participation with Julianna Baggott).

Sherl’s OCD is not a minor nuisance. Check out the fundraiser page for more details, but the anxiety disorder is severe and debilitating. The intensive program Sherl has been accepted to is highly thought of and gets great results, but it is expensive. We all know that mental health coverage is not great in this country, and writers and/or teachers don’t tend to have a whole lot of money to begin with.

So, give a thought to helping out if you can spare anything. I’d sure appreciate it.

Be Skeptical Of News That Fits What You Want To Hear Too Much: Jenny McCarthy

Well, Jenny McCarthy is upset about that recent Radaronline article (I can only link the google archive because Radaronline has taken the article down) that claimed she’d reversed her position on whether or not her son had autism. All I can really say is that it is a good idea to be extra skeptical when something so nicely confirms what you want to hear.

I saw tons of people spreading this. I can understand why. Lots of people are upset about McCarthy’s position against vaccination. They saw the Radaronline bit (or one of the blogs or other article sites that essentially replayed the message) which claimed to be putting out an exclusive new report that McCarthy admitted that her son didn’t have autism after all. Victory for everyone that doesn’t believe there is any evidence vaccines cause autism and that the anti-vaccine movement relies on pseudoscience, right?

Well, except for the fact that it wasn’t true.

How couldn’t it be true? It cited a Time Magazine article.

I can’t claim to be any less gullible than most, but I happened to be a little skeptical in this case. After all, why hadn’t I heard more about this? I looked for other articles, but all I found looped back to the same place. That seemed fishy.

Then I noticed that the cited article was from 2010. This was by no means new. I really should have heard about it before then, and was pretty sure McCarthy had still held the anti-vaccine position recently. Then I noticed that the linked Time Magazine article was only a snippet, the full article only being accessible to subscribers. Then I found an article describing how it all wasn’t true, the interview actually only pointing out how others had cast doubts on whether McCarthy’s son had autism and significant doubts as to whether there was any link between vaccination and autism.

We have to keep this kind of thing in mind when we see an article that tells us too much of what we want to hear. Emotion can lead us not to question, making us vulnerable to the same kind of analysis that people are so upset at McCarthy over.

It’s easy to be skeptical of news that goes against what we want to hear, but we have to be just as careful when it tells us something that supports our positions. Our positions are weaker if we do not.

(Note: this is just saying that the Radaronline article wasn’t true, not that McCarthy’s positions on vaccination have any support and/or do not absolutely horrify me.)

I Actually Managed To Not Go To Voodoo Doughnuts Last Night

I’ve been having a bit of a problem since Voodoo Doughnuts opened recently in Denver. I’ve gotten doughnuts from there at least six times since they opened and their actual hard opening isn’t until the 15th. Clearly, I’m developing a bit of a problem.

Last night even we thought about going to Voodoo Doughnuts. We didn’t need any doughnuts…but we were thinking about it. We were tempted.

However, we didn’t go. We were actually good and didn’t go and get any doughnuts. We held off, had willpower. You might ask how we did this, how we managed to not go and get Voodoo Doughnuts. Actually, it was quite easy.

They were closed.

Yup. We looked on the Voodoo Doughnuts Mile High Facebook page and saw that they were closed for Tuesday (they won’t be open 24 hours until after the hard opening and they get fully staffed and such). As such, we didn’t go even though we wanted to.

I realize that going to Voodoo Doughnuts hadn’t really been an option, but I’m still crediting myself for the fact that we wanted to go and didn’t. Any victory is a victory.

Books I Reviewed In 2013

Since I posted a list of the books I read in 2013, I thought it’d also be a good idea to post a list of the books I reviewed. Note, this does not include any normal little Goodreads/Amazon reviews or any reviews I did for Eleven and a Half Years of Books. There’s 22 of them. That seems pretty good for a year.

My review of Nick Antosca’s The Hangman’s Ritual, published December 8, 2013, on Sundog Lit‘s blog.

My review of Hill William by Scott McClanahan, published December 4, 2013, at The Lit Pub.

My review of Spencer Dew’s Here is How it Happens, published in the Volume 34, Number 6 (September/October 2013) print issue of American Book Review (accessible online here).

My review of The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised-Men by Gabriel Blackwell, published November 13, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

My review of The Laughter of Strangers by Michael Seidlinger, published October 28, 2013, at The Coffin Factory.

My review of The Aversive Clause by B.C. Edwards, published October 22, 2013, on [PANK]’s blog.

My review of Thunderbird by Jon Konrath, published October 7, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Red Moon by Benjamin Percy, published July 29, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Parnucklian for Chocolate by B.H. James, published June 26, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Rontel by Sam Pink, published June 3, 2013, on Sundog Lit.

My review of Escaping Heaven by Cliff Hicks, published June 1, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Jen Michalski’s Could You Be With Her Now, published May 15, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Timothy Stobierski’s Chronicles of a Bee Whisperer, published April 26, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Ben Tanzer’s You Can Make Him Like You, published March 26, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

My review of Michael Stutz’s Circuits of the Wind, published March 18, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

My review of Tim Horvath’s Understories, published March 13, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

My review of jimmy lagowski saves the world by Pat Pujolas, published February 28, 2013, on Pank’s blog.

My review of John L. Sheppard’s Alpha Mike Foxtrot, published February 22, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

My review of Michael J Seidlinger’s My Pet Serial Killer, published February 18, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, published February 3, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

My review of Milan Kundera’s The Farewell Party (or, The Farewell Waltz), published January 7, 2013, on The Lit Pub.

My review of Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, published January 3, 2013, on InDigest‘s blog.

The Story Behind “There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….”

I mentioned before that I’d tell you sometime about the story behind my flash fiction piece “There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” that appeared recently in Paragraph Line. I usually keep my promises, so here we go.

I originally wrote this piece as a poem around seven years ago. A friend of mine had tried to make his own homemade strawberry wine and things turned out disastrously. For one thing, he hadn’t learned enough about wine making yet to know that he was supposed to add something to stop the fermentation at some point. It was horrible, something that had to have been at least a hundred proof and tasted like almond extract. Of course, he freely gave bottles away.

I tried some one night, which was probably a horrible idea (I’m sure the stuff was poisonous) and got the idea that I was going to write a poem. Mind you, I don’t write poetry. I’ve dabbled a little in the past, but I just don’t really write poetry. I read more of it than the average person, but I haven’t worked at it the same way that I have prose. A poem version of ”There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” was the result.

This sat for a long time. I tweaked it once in a while, but I couldn’t get it in anywhere. The response was almost always the same: We love this! However, we couldn’t possibly publish it.

Frankly, I don’t think it worked as well as a poem. I’m just not a poet. However, ”There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” was also just too weird for most people. That’s where Paragraph Line came into the picture. I have yet to see something too weird for them.

I heard Paragraph Line was relaunching right about the time I was working the poem version of ”There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” into a flash fiction piece. It seemed to work a lot better in that form, so I submitted. They took it right away.

Anyway, go and take a look at ”There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” if you haven’t already. Justify whatever damage my friend’s homemade wine did to me. I don’t even drink anymore, but if I did I probably wouldn’t drink that. It got me a great story, but there have to be better ways. Ways that taste better.

The Quad Is Even Sadder Than I Thought

I knew that the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas had rebranded itself as the Quad. That disappointed me. Though the Imperial Palace had gone downhill quite a bit and did need some renovation, I wasn’t thrilled with losing it entirely. However, the wife and I were in Las Vegas just before New Year and the change proved even more disappointing than I expected.

It’s all gone.

Well, I didn’t go into the hotel itself, as we were staying at the Bellagio. However, the wife and I went into the Quad to look around. Nothing is left of the old Imperial Palace. They gutted it, totally redoing everything. I didn’t even recognize the place. There didn’t seem to be anything distinctive about it.

I know nothing stays the same in Las Vegas forever, and the Imperial Palace had gotten pretty dingy, but I was just sad to see this. The Imperial Palace was a one of a kind place that I was fond of. I just wasn’t quite ready to see that there was nothing left of it.

Pardon me if I’m not more eloquent or insightful about this. I have a cold. I blame it on a weakened immune system related to significant Imperial Palace related disappointment.

2014 Scares The Crap Out Of Me

2014 is scaring the crap out of me right now. Frankly, 2013 was a hell of a year for my writing. I’m a little worried about having to try to make 2014 measure up.

I mean, I had 15 short stories accepted in 2013 (well, technically 16 but one that was supposed to run in a pinup mag got bumped to make room for more girlie pictures). I had my first book publish (Bones Buries in the Dirt) and managed to get a second book accepted (The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes, forthcoming from EAB Publishing in spring 2014). I even managed to get a poem about bourbon published in Small Batch from Two of Cups Press and published 22 book reviews.

This beats the last two years, though my first book was accepted (Bones Buries in the Dirt) in 2012 and I had 9 stories accepted that year. In 2011 I had 7 stories accepted. You can see the progression upward, putting lots of pressure on 2014.

I don’t know if I can take it. I don’t even know how much I have left available to submit.

Oh well, just take a look at the stories that were accepted in 2013 and have published (2 will publish later in 2014), or maybe Bones Buries in the Dirt, and I’ll sit here and worry by myself:

“There’s a rabbit living under my kitchen sink….” published January 3, 2014 in Paragraph Line.

“Regarding my Term Paper about the Dani tribe of Papua, New Guinea” published December 20, 2013 in Cease, Cows.

“Trying to Explain” published November 22, 2013 over at This Zine Will Change Your Life.

“The Things We’re Made Of” published November 18, 2013 as part of Sundog Lit‘s special “A Fight Between Friends: Texts Inspired By Michael Seidlinger’s The Laughter of Strangers” series.

“The Side Grind” in EAB Publishing‘s Midnight Circus issue #2: Classic Lit on the Side (available as a free pdf for a limited time  as well as Kindle and in print).

“Kidnapping with Margaret Thatcher” published in Rooster Republic Press‘s flagship bizarro anthology Tall Tales with Short Cocks vol. 4 (Kindle edition can be found here, print edition here).

“Home Improvement” published in issue #4 of C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag.

“Monkey! Monkey! Monkey! Monkey! Monkey!” published in Vol. 8, no. 2 of Wilderness House Literary Review.

“Happy Trails” published June 10, 2013 in Martian Lit.

“They’re All Out To Get Me” published in the April issue of The Fat City Review.

“Changes for the Château” published in Issue 4 (May 2013) of Swamp Biscuits and Tea.

“The Des Moines Kabuki Dinner Theatre” published June 4, 2013 in Bartleby Snopes (story of the month winner for 2013). Subsequently included in issue 10 of the magazine (available here in print or here as a pdf).

“Cents of Wonder Rhymes With Orange” published March 2013 in issue no. 7 of Thrice Fiction (pdf copy of issue available here).

Shelfies

I’ve seen a lot of ‘shelfies’ posts recently, or pics people take of their bookshelves. That sounded like an interesting idea.

Here are the bookshelves in my bedroom:

The ones in my spare room:

The one in my closet:

And the ones in my living room:

Note, this does not include my wife’s bookshelves. It also does not include the books I have in a tote or two in the basement, the few I have stashed at work, or the ones I got since taking these pictures (there have been a few).