General

I wanted a muffin, I got a cookie

There’s a new bakery that sells absolutely decadent double chocolate muffins a few blocks from where I work. I actually have to walk past another bakery to get there. Then there is another bakery across from the double chocolate muffin one. The neighborhood around here is pretty much bakeries and sushi places. But today I went to get a muffin at the new bakery and they had none. I settled for a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie. It was good but not as good. Maybe it’s a sign to stick to my New Year’s resolution and eat carrot sticks or something.

Also, it turns out the version of Rasputin I bought was the truncated single, not the full song from the, uh, classic album Nightflight to Venus. The entire verse about chopping off his head was missing. So I had to spend another 99 cents to get the full version. Perhaps I’ll look for some iTunes complaint site to express my outage over this. Hopefully it will have a simple form with multiple choices to check off, because I like my complaining to be easy and convenient!

I should have my next short story added to the site soon and a shocking announcement about my next novel, too. :O!

I’d buy that for a dollar (or 99 cents)

When I listen to music I still mainly do it the old-fashioned way, buying CDs and listening to them on my stereo. I rip all the tracks and copy them over into iTunes so I can also listen to them on my PC and iPod. When it comes to buying songs over iTunes, I never buy full albums because I’d rather get the CD and rip the tracks at my preferred bitrate (which is higher than what Apple offers on their DRM-protected songs). So mostly I’ll buy a few individual songs here and there. And I’ve noticed a trend.

I use iTunes to buy kitsch.

I could never bring myself to buy a full Boney M album (although I did when I was 14 but hey, I was 14). I can, however, bring myself to buy their cornball classic “Rasputin” for 99 cents.  Also see: “Venus” by Bananarama (is it possible to buy this song, be male and not gay?), Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose” or even The Mama and Pappas’ “California Dreamin'” which may not be kitsch unless you also watch film footage of them in concert from 1967.

So I’d like to thank Apple for providing me the opportunity to indulge my horrible taste in music and nostalgia for mere pennies! I’m still not buying one of your iMacs, though. Sorry!

A Pod With a View and a lazy blog guy

I started a full-time job back in July, hence the lack of updates here. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

As I write this the song “Seasons in the Sun” has just started playing on iTunes. This is truly one of the worst songs of all time and yet I am strangely fascinated by it. I plug my nose and sing along. Fun fact: for three years I worked with Craig Jacks, the brother of Terry Jacks (the songmeister responsible for this classic). Craig was the head lifeguard at Locarno Beach where I slung fries and hot dogs of dubious nutritional value from 1996 to 98. He and the other ‘guards would groove out 70s-style late into the warm summer nights. He never really talked about Terry as I recall. Ah, how I look back fondly on my days at Locarno. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. But the stars we could reach were just starfish on the beach…

I’ve included the latest addition to the short story collection, A Pod With a View. This one is from an actual school assignment and I’ve provided the instructor’s comments as a special bonus.

Last week I picked up a cheapie Canon scanner (this one, to be exact) and will begin scanning in older stories and other creative endeavors from years past. The quality of my work varies as wildly as my mood after an all-night Tequila bender, so consider yourself warned.

Seasons in the Sun courtesy of Planet Pop 70s (this was the first link Google coughed up).

Keeping it fsimple

I’ve looked over a number of themes for WP and have settled on fsimple for now because it’s simple and I’m all about being simple.

I’ve adjusted the type, color scheme and formatting a bit and will continue to plink away at the general site design. Then I shall dazzle with content.

Updated to 2.02!

Who needs content when you can just update the backend that no one ever sees?

I swear I am going to reorganize the fiction pages and finally create a new theme for this place. Really. You’ll see.

Eventually.

Updated!

I’ve finally updated to WordPress 1.5.2. Very exciting news if you are WordPress’s mom or something.

I’ve decided to chuck the previous theme I had created, so the default one will do until I come up with something new and shiny. Enjoy!

And the answer is…

c) A little of a) and a little of b). I dunno how people find so much crap to say.

In the meantime, members of QB may have noticed that our forums are down. While we work at lovingly restoring them to their former glory, feel free to share your comments in this blog thinger.

The Internet is not made out of paper

I recently bought an LCD monitor (BenQ FP937) after so many people raved about them on Quarter to Three. After a period of adjustment I can understand the raving. The clarity of the image is well beyond what my trusty old Viewsonic P95f+ was capable of, even when it was new out of the box. The screen is also a lot brighter than my CRT and this reminded me again of how much I dislike websites that have black text on white backgrounds. It’s understandable that people want to create sites that look like printed paper because everyone is cozy and comfortable with books and magazines. However, books and magazines do not throw a ton of light into your face while you peruse them. The Internet, as it currently exists, does.

Down with white, up with greenish-blue, I say.

Meanwhile, Samuel K has blogged his own site (UPDATE, January 3, 2022–yes, nearly 17 years later. Sam’s site no longer works and has probably been offline for the past decade. He’s on Facebook now. Also, I learned how to turn the brightness down on LCD monitors.) and posted a picture of his cat. I am thus obligated to do the same and go one better by posting a slightly larger picture of my cat. I give you Pooter (edit: okay, that was too big even for me):

hello_kitty

Bloggity blog blog

I was the last one to get bell bottom jeans in grade 5 and now I’m the last person on the Internet to have a blog. Hooray for me! As you may have guessed, I am using WordPress for my blogging needs. An apparent feature of WordPress is relentless self-promotion as witnessed by the three separate links for the software on this very page. I’ll be culling a few soon and adding some other links that might prove interesting or not.