David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 99
February 3, 2018
I Could Watch This All Day
I don’t watch much TV, but I could watch this all day.
Now I’m hungry.
February 2, 2018
I Don’t Think I’m Ever Going To Get To Meet Jon Konrath In Person
I don’t think I’m ever going to get to meet Jon Konrath in person. I’ve followed his writing for years, ever since first coming across Paragraph Line. At one point we realized that we had lived in the same apartment building in Denver, but he’d moved out to California about six months before I came to town. It’s been quite a few years now, but it really seems like I’m never going to get to meet him in person.
I even fly out to his area once in a while. However, it’s usually for work and I fly out and back again in the same day, no time to go find him. I’m even going out there in the next week, but I’ll be flying into San Jose around 9-10pm and then hanging around Cupertino until going to fly back about noon the next day. That’s just not enough time to go look for him in Oakland.
It’s always that way when I go out there, so I’m kind of doubting I’ll ever get to go meet him in person.
Oh well, you all should go buy some of this books to make up for it.
February 1, 2018
Tide Pods Make Me Think Of Japanese Myth
The whole Tide pod thing is making me think of a Japanese myth I read one time. It was over twenty years ago and all I remember is a rumor about a land over the horizon populated by immortals who had grown so decadent that they ate poison recreationally even though they could not die. People here aren’t immortal by any means, but still.
Hoping we don’t lose laundry pods over this. I don’t use Tide ones specifically anymore because I had more issues with them getting stuck in odd spots in the machine and getting the plastic stuck to clothes than the All ones I use now (which seem to have less plastic), but I still prefer the ease of laundry/dishwasher pods.
January 31, 2018
Did Facebook Start Having Polls As A Main Post Option Recently?
Did Facebook add polls recently? Like as one of the standard options in a basic post? I don’t recall having seen many before, then suddenly the night of 1/30 I saw a bunch in a sequence. The last one I saw was a “who is sick of these polls already” one. That’s when I did my own.
It was: Did you return all that stuff you stole? Yes/No
No one so far has debated the logic of my poll, though many have voted ‘No’ (two so far voted ‘Yes’) and one jokingly suggested I might not fully comprehend the definition of ‘steal.’
I think that’s about all the fun I can have with Facebook polls.
January 30, 2018
Details Are Important
Details are important. Getting the big things right can sometimes be a wasted effort if you don’t pay attention to the little details.
I just got a phishing message that appeared to be from my ISP saying my password had been reset. They had the graphics really well done. It looked perfect in fact. However, I really doubted that my ISP was sending me a “Massege.”
Kind of killed all their work right of. It was the first thing I saw.
Then I saw that the message was to “undisclosed recipients” and a number of the words had periods in between where they wouldn’t have normally. I just saw issue after issue, but at that point it was because I was looking.
After “Massege,” they didn’t even have a chance, no matter how good their graphical work. Nice way to spoil it, guys.
January 29, 2018
Book Plug Post Revisited!
Book plug post revisited!
Apocalypse All the Time is post-post-apocalypticism. The apocalypse happens on a weekly (if not daily) basis and Marshall is sick of it. Life is constantly in peril, constantly disrupted, but nothing significant every really happens as a result. It’s always handled. Marshall wants out; he wants it all to end. In short, the book explores what about the end times holds such fascination for humanity and what impact such a fascination has on the way we live our lives.
Life is absurd, ultimately beyond our comprehension, in [some awesome accomplishment] David Atkinson’s latest short story collection Not Quite So Stories. Themes of adolescence, marriage, work, and death intersect in stories that will leave the reader at times amused, sorrowful, pensive, hopeful, and marveling at the bizarre things that make people tick.
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. See the trailer on EAB Publishing’s YouTube page.
Bones Buried in the Dirt features a young boy named Peter. Ranging from ages four to twelve, Peter’s stories focus on the sort of moments in childhood that get buried in the mind but never fully get absorbed, the moments that constantly come to the surface later in life and shape identity. The result is a sonar picture of the individual Peter will become.
Don’t forget to leave reviews on Goodreads and Amazon!
January 28, 2018
You Know What I Need Today? A Dancing Egg.
You know what I need today? A dancing egg.
That probably means I need to see a doctor. I probably have some kind of vitamin deficiency, or an emotional problem. Something.
January 27, 2018
Why Is My Brain Imagining Screaming While Watching This?
Why is my brain imagining screaming while I’m watching this? I can hear it clearly though, screaming. Terrible screaming.
“It burns! It burns!”
January 26, 2018
Peanut Butter Hot Dogs?
I just heard that some people apparently eat peanut butter hot dogs. At first I thought a hard ‘no,’ but then I started to wonder.
I kind of wonder what that would taste like.
January 25, 2018
We Still Have Apocalypse Predictions That Haven’t Failed Yet!
Worried we’ve missed all the apocalypse predictions. Y2K past? Mayans? All that? Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty more. Here’s just a few upcoming ones I found on Wikipedia:
Date (CE)
Claimant(s)
Description
Ref.
2020
Jeane Dixon
This American psychic claimed that Armageddon would take place in 2020, and Jesus will return to defeat the unholy trinity of the Antichrist, Satan, and the False prophet between 2020 and 2037. She had also previously predicted the world would end on February 4, 1962.
[166]
2021
F. Kenton Beshore
This American pastor bases his prediction on the prior suggestion that Jesus would return in 1988, i.e., within one biblical generation (40 years) of the founding of Israel in 1948. Beshore argues that the prediction was correct, but that the definition of a biblical generation was incorrect and was actually 70–80 years, placing the Second Coming of Jesus between 2018 and 2028 and the Rapture by 2021 at the latest.
[167]
2026
Messiah Foundation International
Members predict that the world will end in 2026, when an asteroid would collide with Earth in accordance with Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi‘s predictions in The Religion of God. The chances are only 1 out of 300,000.
[168]
2060
Isaac Newton
In an unpublished manuscript, Newton gave a date of 2060 which was falsely reported as a date for the end of days.[169] He was against date setting. Rather, he gave it as a date before which it could not happen. He later revised this date to 2016.[170][171]
[172]
2129
Said Nursî
According to abjad interpretation of a hadith, this Sunni Muslim theologian who wrote the Risale-i Nur Collection, which expects the end in 2129.
[173]
2239
Talmud, Orthodox Judaism
According to an opinion about the Talmud in mainstream Orthodox Judaism, the Messiah will come within 6000 years of the creation of Adam, and the world may be destroyed 1000 years later. This would put the beginning of the period of desolation in 2239 CE and the end of the period of desolation in 3239 CE.
[174]
2280
Rashad Khalifa
According to this Egyptian-American biochemist’s research on the Quran, the world will end during that year.
[175]
Better go pick up a copy of Apocalypse All the Time and get prepared.
Apocalypse All the Time is post-post-apocalypticism. The apocalypse happens on a weekly (if not daily) basis and Marshall is sick of it. Life is constantly in peril, constantly disrupted, but nothing significant every really happens as a result. It’s always handled. Marshall wants out; he wants it all to end. In short, the book explores what about the end times holds such fascination for humanity and what impact such a fascination has on the way we live our lives.
