David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 251

Andy Kaufman Really Is Dead But Tony Clifton Turns Out To Be Alive

I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors that Andy Kaufman wasn’t dead after all. I didn’t believe them really, but I’ve never been entirely willing to rule it out. It’s the sort of thing he would have pulled, but he was also mortal. I was more surprised to learn that not only is he dead, but that it’s actually Tony Clifton who is still alive.

This was highly surprising to me because I’d always thought that Tony Clifton was just a character that Andy Kaufman created. Imagine how astounded I was to learn that Andy Kaufman was dead and that Tony Clifton had been alive all along.

To support this, I rely on the utterly unsubstantiated testimony of a young man (whom I have not produced and am not able to identify at this time due to security reasons) who purportedly claims to be the illegitimate pool boy of a guy who plays poker with Clifton. Surely this is strong enough evidence to start an Internet rumor.

Anyway, there you have it. Kaufman really is dead. Tony Clifton has been real and alive this whole time. Have fun.

Nanowrimo Week 3 Update

Yeah, you’re bored of hearing about Nanowrimo. I know. Still, I provided updates for week 1 and 2. As such I’m kind of obligated to update for week 3.  (Tentative title is Apocalypse All the Time.  Remember, the goal with Nanowrimo is 50,000 words by the end of November):

Day 15: 2,689

Day 16: 3,254

Day 17: 2,486

Day 18: 2,094

Day 19: 2,772

Day 20: 3,201

Day 21: 2,443

Running total for week 3: 54,458

That’s right, I’ve already hit the number for Nanowrimo. At this point, I’m just finishing off the draft of the novel. I might update again when done, I might not. Frankly, I’m only planning a couple more chapters and that might not really be worth a wrap up. We’ll see.

10 Things You Don’t Know About Me (Because They Aren’t True)

I’ve been seeing a lot of # “Things You don’t Know About Me” posts going around Facebook. Quite a lot. One thing you haven’t seen is me join in. If I get the idea right, if you click “like” on somebody’s post, they’ll give you a number to do.

I ain’t doing that.

I don’t tend to go in for any of the chain Facebook post games, but I’m definitely not going in for this one. If you give me a number, I’ll probably ignore it.

However, in the spirit of conciliation, I thought I’d give everyone a list of ten things about me that no one knows because they aren’t remotely true. That should keep everybody happy, right?

Anyway, here we go:

1. I once told John DeLorean, “I don’t know, man, you should probably find a legal way to keep this thing going. It sounds like a trap.”

2. I have a wide variety of super powers, but I keep them hidden because I can’t think of a good superhero name that hasn’t already been taken.

3. I’m actually Andy Kaufman, hiding out as part of an elaborate joke where I faked my death in 1984.

4. I served as president of Paraguay between 1982 and 1987 and then again between 2001 and 2012. The people of Paraguay are unaware of this also.

5. I can fluently speak a secret language known only to squirrels (though it should be understood that the squirrels don’t actually speak the language).

6. I actually designed the Eiffel Tower and let Gustave Eiffel take the credit for tax reasons.

7. I can eat 147 soft-boiled eels at a single sitting.

8. The Pope listens to rap music I make in my  sub basement especially for him.

9. I can’t count to ten.

There we go. Game played. I’ve now put forth all the effort on this that I intend to.

Do I Stay Or Do I Go?

My wife and I are going to Vegas at the end of December with some friends. One thing my wife MUST hit while we are there is the Michael Jackson ONE show by Cirque du Soleil. This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma.

You see, I’d like to see the show. It’d be cool. I’m not a huge Jackson fan, but I do know a lot of his music. I even like some of it, and much of the rest has managed to worm its way into my head. After all, it wasn’t like you could avoid it if you were a child in the 80s.

However, this show is hot right now. It’s not cheap. They put a lot of money into the show and apparently need to get some back out of it. The cheapest seats my wife is willing to do would be $155 or so before taxes, fees, and whatever else gets added in. But, another possibility came up.

We discussed the possibility of me sitting back at the hotel room and reading while my wife goes to the show alone and gets one of the most expensive seats possible. Around $199 before taxes, fees, and whatever. I wouldn’t get to see the show, but my wife would get a better seat and I’d save $100.

You can see the dilemma.

Should I see a show that would be cool but I’m not extremely excited about, or should I save $100 and get in some reading or writing time? Honestly, I’m pulled in both directions. I’d like to keep my wife company and support the things she’s interested in, but she’s let me know that my presence isn’t required if she can get one of the best seats in the house.

So, what to do…what to do. Should I stay (at the hotel room during the show), or should I go (to the show)?

Gold Selling Commercials Continue To Tick Me Off

I got ticked last night when I saw another of the ‘cash for gold’ commercials. These things always bug me, because I wonder who out there has a ton of gold but no ready cash. However, something new bugged me last night. It was the same thing all of them always say, but it never bugged me before now.

The price of gold is at an all time high! There has never been a better time to sell your unneeded gold for cash!

Well, duh, I thought. Gold has been on a pretty steady climb (ignoring minor day-to-day fluctuations) against the dollar since for the last 13 years or so. There has never been a better time? Well, yeah…but that doesn’t mean that the value of gold won’t continue to rise, making tomorrow even better. These were all meaningless statements.

However, I then found out that I was wrong, and they were lying. Turns out, the price of gold is actually significantly lower this year than last year, at least according to this site (at least as of the time I checked this. 2012: $1657.50 per ounce. 2013? $1290.40 per ounce. Price of gold at an all time high? Not compared to last year. Never been a better time to sell your unneeded gold for cash? Nope, should have done it last year.

Normally, the above would just be meaningless statements. However, a little research shows them in an even worse light than that.

Get Ready For A Fight

It’s time to get ready for a fight. Sundog Lit is doing something special. Starting November 18, a.k.a. already live now, they’re running a series of texts inspired by Michael Seidlinger’s The Laughter of Strangers. It’s called: A Fight Between Friends: Texts Inspired By Michael Seidlinger’s The Laughter of Strangers.

You’ll want to check it out. I’ve even got a flash fiction piece running with this, “The Things We’re Made of.” There’s a lot of other cool writers too. Try Nick Antosca, Ken Baumann, Dena Rash Guzman, David Tomaloff, Matt Nelson, Juliet Escoria, Corey Zeller, Jamie Iredell, Joshua Mohr, Kat Dixon, Hannah Lee, JA Tyler, and Cassandra Troyan.

Heck, it’s already started. What are you doing here instead of being over at Sundog Lit, or at the fight in specific?

Let’s all go to our corners and come out fighting.

Construction Homage To The Simpsons

Someone is building a new house next door to mine and there is a spiral staircase at the back. If you look carefully, you’ll see that it doesn’t go all the way up. At first, I thought this was because they just hadn’t finished it yet and it is supposed to eventually supposed to go all the way to the room. However, I then realized that this was actually an homage to The Simpsons:

You remember “Marge versus the Monorail,” right? Remember the bit at the end? Marge: “And that was the only folly the people of Springfield ever took on… Except for the Popsicle stick skyscraper, and that 50 ft magnifying glass, and the escalator to nowhere.”

Clearly, this is an homage to that highly popular episode. This is the spiral staircase to nowhere. Not quite as impressive, but I’m sure they couldn’t get permits for a home outside escalator.

There Apparently Were Decepticons In My Microwave

I was recently disconcerted to find out that I had Decepticons in my microwave. As you all remember, the Decepticons were the evil robots from the Transformers. You can imagine how concerned I was.

Out microwave recently stopped working. Well, it still appeared to work. The carousel rotated and the light lit up. The controls worked and so did the timer. There was even that little wind while it was going. However, nothing got hot. Unfortunately, this is the main point of a microwave.

My wife went looking online to see what the problem might be. She mentioned that it sounded like something that was called the megatron or something like that must have gone out. She wasn’t sure about the exact word. She couldn’t remember for sure.

Now, neither I nor my wife know much about microwaves other than they use microwaves and how to use them. We know not to put metal inside, but we don’t know what their parts are called. I felt sure it couldn’t be a megatron. I thought for certain it had to be magnetron or some other ‘M’ tron kind of word. Again, I know nothing about microwaves.

One thing we decided was that a new one would easily be cheaper than paying someone to try to fix our current one. Believe me, we would need a repair person. Since a new one like our old one started at about $200, a home visit from a repair person would already likely exceed that, much less considering the cost of parts, and then we’d still have an old microwave.

So, we went to buy a new one. While there, we told the salesperson what our old one had done. She said: “Oh, it sounds like your megatron went out.” Huh. Turns out my wife had remembered correctly. Turns out that Megatron (leader of the Decepticons) had been inside my microwave:

No wonder my microwave stopped working. Megatron was inside.

Of course, then I looked this up online myself. Turns out, the clerk was just as mistaken as my wife had been, though my wife knew she didn’t remember the word correctly. Megatron had never been inside my microwave. The problem was likely the magnetron after all.

Nanowrimo Week 2 Update

Okay, I know you are all probably sick of all the Nanowrimo posts, presuming you didn’t hate the idea of Nanowrimo to begin with (some do). Still, I shared my progress update for week 1, so here is the progress for week 2 (Tentative title is Apocalypse All the Time.  Remember, the goal with Nanowrimo is 50,000 words by the end of November):

Day 8: 2,036

Day 9: 2,818

Day 10: 2,230

Day 11: 2,612

Day 12: 2,382

Day 13: 1,983

Day 14: 2,979

Running total for week 2: 35,519

I’m only planning around 23 or 24 chapters, and I’ve been hitting one per day, so hopefully I’ll stop bothering you all with this soon.

Announcing My Second Book: “The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes” Forthcoming From EAB Publishing In Spring 2014

I would like to announce that my second book, The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes, will be forthcoming in spring 2014 from EAB Publishing. You can go here to see EAB’s release on this.

Just so you have it here, though, here is a brief description of the novel:

Don’t you hate it when you may (or may not) be trapped endlessly in a Village Inn with your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, coincidentally your ex-best friend? That’s the kind of day Cassandra is having. In a homogenized world that is left mostly empty so everyone can feel comfortable, The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes explores the fictions we tell ourselves, and the fictions we tell ourselves about the fictions we tell ourselves.

I’m just getting things up and running, but I’m thrilled about this and just wanted to start sharing information. I’ve started a Facebook page where I’ll be posting about this regularly, including information as it becomes available, more release information, and such. To stay up to date, or to make me feel more self-confident, go ahead and wander over and ‘Like’ the page.

I’m also setting up a dedicated page on my website, but I’m waiting on the address.  It should eventually be http://gardenofgoodandevilpancakes.com, but for the moment its http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/gardenofgoodandevilpancakes.html. It’s not real fleshed out yet either, but I promise it’ll flesh out soon enough.

Anyway, I was just so excited that I couldn’t wait to share the news. I’ll start getting info up on those pages as soon as I can. In the mean time, WOOT!