Okay, so you've heard me trumpeting the greatness of Jim Butcher for the past couple years in this space, and while I love his series The Dresden Files (also available as an alternate universe television show on DVD which aired on the Sci-Fi Channel), I'm even more impressed by his high fantasy series, The Codex Alera.  The story is that Butcher took a bet from one of his pals that he couldn't write a fantasy series which involved Roman soldiers and Pokemon-style monsters, and not only did he succeed, he created the best fantasy series since... um, well, ever.

Now, y'all know that I love a good book, but I also love a great deal as well.  The final book in the six novel series, First Lord's Fury, is going to be released on November 22nd.  If you pre-order this book on Amazon.com, the usual twenty-five dollar or so price has been slashed to an unheard-of low, low price of exactly NINE FUCKING DOLLARS.

I repeat: nine fucking dollars.  For a hardcover book that's probably going to be better than any other one you read this year.  If you pass on this deal, do not pass Go and collect your two hundred dollars.  Instead, receive a kick in the ass.

Now go get the first five novels, read those, pre-order the final one at a whopping discount, read the climax of the best damn fantasy series to ever come down the pike, and then, and only then, you may thank me.

Good stuff should always be shared.  Now go and do likewise.

If anybody ever decided to make me this, they would instantly be promoted to Head of The Internet.

Here's a hotlinked pic:



(drool)

Jesus, almost a month since updating?  Really?

Well, right now we're fostering three kittens that we're attempting to find homes for... I think this will come out as a positive push on the great wheel of karma for me, and I suspect that it's already beginning to pay positive dividends.  Why, you ask?  Two reasons:

1)  My three literary torpedoes are still in the water, running hot and true, and have yet to be turned away from their prospective targets.

2)  OMG MY NEW LAPTOP WILL ARRIVE ON MONDAY!11!1!!!!1!11

I've been using the same Dell Inspiron 6000 since about March 2004 and while I love it it to death and have done a lot of quality writing (he prayed devoutly) on its keys, time marches on and does with with a particularly heavy tread over electronics.  I occasionally get the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), the DVD-ROM drive does not always wish to eject discs and most distressingly, the sound is completely kaput.  Not even headphones will work, my devoted peeps.  In the last few months, I have gotten to experience a silent world via my Inspiron and... and quite honestly, it sucks.

Enter Nemesis.



It's an Alienware laptop, which means that not only is it dreadfully expensive, it will also play Doom 3 at speeds and graphic resolutions that previously I could only pray bitterly for.  I love Doom 3.  Loooooooove it, but unfortunately it requires more oomph than my wife's laptop can provide.  The new model will have this in spades (drool), plus Microsoft Office (sweet), a sturdy-as-fuck alumnium chassis (hell yes) and glowing red backlit keys (positively deadly).  Yes, it is aptly named.  Nemesis, goddess of divine retribution.  Oh, and with a Blu-ray DVD player.

It's my Christmas present, but I don't have to wait to open it up; it will be here in time for my vacation and therefore for National Novel Writing Month.  When it was ordered, the build date was scheduled around the end of the month, something which past experience has taught us is usually off by about two weeks at the least.

This time, the time lapse is in our favor.

What's good in your life lately?

Lady Jade and I have been married for six years as of today.  I love you, honey.  Thank you for the best years of my life.

On another note entirely, Mad Evil Chris and I have renewed our annual bet concerning our respective NFL teams, the St. Louis Rams for him, the Oakland Raiders for myself.  Whoever has their team finish with a better record (the "winner") will then get from their opponent (henceforth referred to as "the loser, loser, loser") the spoils of war, which in this case is a large box of TGI Friday's Buffalo Wings and a six-pack of whatever beer they desire.

I use quotation marks around the appellations of "winner" and "the loser, loser, loser" because of the tiebreaking formula used.  Both of us predicted what our team's final record is going to be; in the event of a tie by our franchises, the winner will be determined by who was closer to their team's final record.  We picked as follows:

CHRIS:  says the St. Louis Rams will finish with a 4-12 record.

JESSE:  says the Oakland Raiders will finish with a 5-11 record.

So actually, going with the amount of faith we seem to have in our teams, there doesn't seem to be any winners this year.

I've made my dental appointment for Friday, October 30th, at 8 in the morning.  This is the one where I will be having four, count 'em, FOUR wisdom teeth extracted.  I'm a little conflicted for the following reasons:

PRO:  Since I scheduled so far in advance, I was able to get the Friday that I start my vacation as my date with the oral surgeon.  This means that my plan of having it done while off work so I won't take it out on the public or be unable to drive is an unqualified success.  It also means that since I will having it done so early in the morning, I will have very little time to be terrified before going under the sleep gas.  Hopefully I wake up, be groggier, go to Folsom, and then be even groggier for the rest of the day.  By Tuesday, I should be pretty much myself again and possibly even able to eat solid food once again.

CON:  I am volunteering for very invasive oral surgery, which makes me feel like the biggest masochist of all time.

Sometimes being an adult blows.

The trailer for the new and updated version of the science fiction classic miniseries V premiered at Comic-Con.  It has already been scrutinized as having an anti-Obama message and is also being touted as a program that, much like Battlestar Galactica, is sure to become a favorite of neoconservatives everywhere.

(slow burn)

You know, I would for once like something to come out with a depth to it that is more than mud puddle-deep and not have its alleged hidden symbolism assigned to one political camp or the other.  That would just be fucking super.

First off, I was able to improve the riff I thought I had mastered last night.  Using three different types of picking speed and technique within the same framework really brought out what I was looking for.  At some point, I may do some videos... and then again, I may not.

I also bought another jersey.  Yes, I know... "Another one?  Jesus, Cairns, do you wear them around the house all the time or something?"  As a matter of fact, I pretty much do.  Sports jerseys are not only decently stylish, they're also very tough (for example, my black Oakland Raiders Tim Brown #81 still looks like it was purchased last week when it was actually bought in 2004) and are incredibly comfortable.  The thing is, I wear a uniform while at work and when I am off-duty, I want to get it off me as soon as possible and wear something that screams me.  Those of you who have jobs where there is a standardized dress code can most likely relate.

So this one is a red #23 Chicago Bulls... yes, that's right.  His Airness, the incomparable Michael Jeffrey Jordan.  It's the same model Jordan wore on the court when he was winning his six championships, and if you were to go to the Bulls web site and buy one from their store, you would be gouged to the tune of about a hundred and seventy bucks.  My price, including shipping and handling?  $35.99.  Thanks, Ebay!

Today I went through my mental tally of what I have paid for my various jerseys and realized that with the savings I got for just one of my acquisitions, I financed all the other purchases.  Here's the breakdown of the items, price paid by me, how much it would have cost had I bought it brand-new in the store or web site of the team in question and finally, how much I saved.  Unless otherwise noted, all items were recieved by me with the tags still attached, brand-spanking-new.

1)  NFL Oakland Raiders Rich Gannon starter jersey.  Retails for $209.99 from The Raider Image.  I paid $45.00, saving me $164.99, and it should also be noted that this one would have needed to have been custom-ordered as Gannon no longer plays in the NFL.

2)  MLB Majestic model Oakland Athletics Nick Swisher replica jersey.  Retails for $79.99 for the Oakland A's web site, but you would need to bump the price up fifty bucks to have it personalized, so final damage would have been $129.99.  My cost was $32.50, so I saved $97.49 with only a few keyboard strokes.

3)  MLB Dennis Eckersley Cooperstown Collection Oakland Athletics baseball jersey.  Big spenders would pony up $149.99 for this savory 1973 style replica, so I decided paying $38.00 made much more sense to me.  This gave me $111.99 extra to put aside for something else.

4)  NBA Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls starter jersey.  As mentioned above, I got out for $35.99, so my savings were $134.00.

What I should have paid:  $659.96

What I actually paid:  $151.49

Total savings:  $508.47

Elementary, dear Watson.  I'm never buying one of these beauties in the store again.

Thank you to everyone who sent in good thoughts in the prelude and aftermath of Caesar's passing.  I know he would be surprised to know he had inspired so many good thoughts from people he had never (and probably would never) have met, but that's one of the hidden benefits of the Internet these days.  For all the talk of the vast amounts of porn, horrid fanfic and weird randomness available on the Net these days, the most-overlooked aspect of it is how it can bring people together.

I worked on Living After Midnight this weekend; hopefully by this time next week, it'll be done.

Oh, I also did the label for the newest beer concoction brewed up by myself and Mad Evil Chris.  It's a strawberry blonde ale which uses real strawberries for the flavoring, and we sit down for the bottling on April 25.  This is also the same day as the NFL Draft, the Chicago Cubs vs. the St. Louis Cardinals and most deliciously, the New York Yankees (who had their asses most atrociously kicked on Saturday) vs. the Boston Red Sox.  Matt from my work will be assisting, as will my father and Lady Jade, so this promises to be a very fun afternoon.

The beer itself is one that none of us have heard of being done before.  Brew It Up, where we did the brewing, has a drink called Orange Blossom Blonde that is a blonde ale flavored with oranges, and I've run across several variants of wheat beer involving raspeberries, oranges, and most recently and deliciously blueberries, but not what we are doing here.  Thus, this name and label seems entirely appripriate:



Can't wait for the tasting.

I am retconning the last post.  It looks bad for my little guy.  Very, very bad.

Speaking of looking bad (and because I desperately need something to get my mind off this increasingly grim  scenario), we have this item.

If you don't wanna read, allow me to summarize: FOX, bastion of good taste and morals, is going to be having a reality show where real-life folks with real mortgages and everything are going to be given the task of deciding which of their lame co-workers gets the axe.  Given that it is a reality show, expect most of the contestants to be loathsome to some degree or another.  However, these are real people and we can expect that a lot of folks are going to go to bat on their behalf.

I've got a few thoughts on this, as you might expect.

1)  I'd much rather be fired and cry in private than on national television.

2)  The possibility of psychological fallout and lawsuits are not only enormous but delicious, and...

3)  We just got a few giant steps closer to having The Long Walk broadcast into your living room in high-definition.  If you don't get that reference, go to this page and be horrified/enlightened.

tampabay.metromix.com/events/photogallery/dunedin-beard-contest/1062987/content

The batch of awesome known as nanci_raygun  directed me to this photo cavalcade she did recently in Florida, home of the flesh-eating mosquito and more hurricanes than you can shake a stick at.  The first thought I had when viewing this slideshow of follicles gone batshit was, "Holy crap... somewhere out there in the world are women who have had sex with these guys while they looked this way!"

Looking at these pictures only intensifies my desire to manscape and keep my looks as long as possible.  Epic fail.

Yesterday my wife ordered herself a fancy new laptop from Dell.  This is great for several reasons:

1)  She has needed a laptop of her own for quite some time, given that she can take work home with her, so this is really a long-overdue purchase.

2)  This laptop I am typing this on, when profiles and other stuff are taken into account, is running out of space so by transferring all her stuff and programs off, I get a new lease on life.

3)  I will be allowed to play games like Doom 3 on it when she is not working, stuff that my writing station just doesn't have the horsepower to run, and...

4)  She has been using it the last three nights when she gets home to do accounting stuff and while I certainly understand that, it's fucking killing me not to be able to write and edit while she is doing so.

I've also been drinking wine coolers lately.  I like 'em.  I realize this causes me to lose yet more points off my Man Card, but I think I officially threw that thing in the American River a long time ago.  The list of things I do that are considered not to be manly or even girly is pretty long, so I'm giving up on preserving the macho side of my personality.  This is not to say I'm going to start wearing pink, but c'mon, how many guys do you know of who openly proclaim their love for bubble baths?

Right.

This week was an extraordinarily weird one in terms of work versus free time.  On Monday and Tuesday, I went and did my normal job at the bus company.  Wednesday and Thursday, I was off.  I had expected the Thursday part, but not Wednesday; however, one of my coworkers who had previously reserved the day before Thanksgiving decided to bow out of that commitment, so I got to have it instead.  On Froday I went back to work, and now that it is Saturday, I am off for two days again.

I've long felt that if my job ever decided to switch to a 4/10/40 schedule (ten hours a day, four days a week with three days off instead of the traditional 5/8/40 schedule most people use), I would want to put that extra day off in the middle of the week.  I like the idea of breaking up my work; two days on, one day off, two days on, two days off.  Rinse, lather, repeat for the next quarter-century, or until I hit it big with a book sale.  Let's face it, you can put up with almost anything for two days, so if you're only doing that as your maximum spread, it would do wonders for making you feel more balanced in your life.

My wife, on the other hand, was on for the first three days, then off for Thursday and Friday... but she also braved the hordes of insane people for the fabled Black Friday deals.  This meant she got up at 3 AM on Friday, was at a co-worker's house by 4 AM, and then standing in line soon after.  I asked her if she would be doing this again in the future, and she told me that there would need to be some pretty amazing deals for her to do so.  Basically, it's a qualified no.

Mad Evil Chris came from his place to participate in the festivities at Thanksgiving, and I have to say for the record that the guy is like a brother.  I never had any bio-siblings, but I have been lucky enough to be blessed with some truly great friends over the course of my life, and he definitely qualifies.  He also brought with him The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, which I initially fought the viewing of until I realized that I had confused this movie with the jaw-droppingly awful Rhinestone.  Or, as Chris said, "You thought I brought over the Detroit Lions highlight reel.  That explains your resistance."  For the record, Whorehouse is a pretty fun movie, unless you hate Burt Reynolds.  Thankfully, I do not.

Incidentally, those same stinky kitties of the NFL are currently sitting at 0-12 and staring down the barrel of 0-16... the perfect season.  Not undefeated, but utterly defeated.  The crawlingly awful part about this is that the easy part of their schedule is over.  Their best chance for a win (hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) staked them to a 17-0 lead two weeks ago, then dropped 38 points on them while surrendering only three.  They were slaughtered by the 11-1 Tennessee Titans in their traditional Thanksgiving home game by the score of 47-10, meaning that even if the Lions had somehow piled five touchdowns on top of what they had, they still would have lost.  It was, for the record, the biggest margin of defeat in Lions history, which when I tell you that I thought they'd had losses much more brutal than it... well, friends and neighbors, that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the stunning ineptitude of the Detroit Lions.  If I look at a 37-point loss and say, "Oh no, there has to be an ass-kicking in their past worse than that one," you are officially Hell's Team.  Next they host the Minnesota Vikings, travel to the Dome Of Doom where the Indianapolis Colts lay in wait, come home to face the buzzsaw of the New Orleans Saints offense, then go on the road to close the whole bloody mess out at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers, in weather probably just as cold as Siberia's.

Like I said, the perfect season.  Not undefeated.  Utterly defeated.

It was a good holiday.  Hope yours was as well.

I've been frightfully busy lately; that icon is not telling any lies.  Between home improvement, National Novel Writing Month, work, the wife, gym and catching what time I can to watch Law & Order on our overstuffed DVR, spare time has been in brutally short supply lately.  Hence only my second post in about a month.

I have today off from the bus company, which has enabled me thus far to drive the wife to work, get all our Christmas decorations (five giants tubs worth) out of storage, pick up the last-minute things needed for Thanksgiving at my dad's house and get myself a very appreciated shower, facial conditioning and cup of coffee.  Next on the list is going to Ace hardware to get a heavy duty tarp to make a shelter for Sammy the Smelly Dog, a nine volt battery and lead head for my guitar, and then a trip to Guitar Center to inquire about a turbocharging.

Day off?  Not fucking likely.

My mom is not going to be at Thanksgiving of Christmas this year because the hassle of travel is too much for her.  I feel like a heel saying this, but a large part of me is glad about this.  There's being spoiled and soft, and then there's being really out to lunch and my mom set up shop on that particular park bench a long time ago.  It's her loss.

I did want to drop by and say happy holidays to everyone, and everybody say hello to melissapatrice , a fellow NaNoer who does things the right way.  Hi there, Melissa, and welcome aboard.

Good thoughts, people.

I'm not dead.

I've had a lot of things that I've wanted write about lately, but the vast majority of them are negative.  Therefore, here are some of the positive things taking place in my life.

1)  SCHEDULING NIRVANA.  With the new run I have until the end of the year, it means that Lady Jade and I get to go to work together (thereby saving gas and the environment), have lunch together, go to the gym together and go home at the same time.  Being that I am one of the fruit bars that actually enjoy spending time with their spouse, this is a damned good thing.

2)  DECORATION CENTRAL.  We have gone above and beyond last year's Halloween decorations.  I'm going to have pictures of it soon, and it looks like we're once again going to have lots of people posing in front of our house for poctures.  My wife and I are Halloween dorks, and it's damned fun.  If you think that's lame, shove it.

3)  IT'S A GUITAR WORLD, PEOPLE.  I think I may have picked out the equipment I need for Christmas to truly bring my guitar rig to life.  Now that I have improved signifigantly and stuck with it for the last year, I feel okay about getting more equipment.

4)  HOME, SWEET HOME.  We're going to get to keep our house.  The California housing debacle is still roasting people alive, but after much harum-scarum, we're not going to be added to the body count.  The details are still to be hammered out, but what looked extremely grim a few months ago is finally seeing the light.

5)  I WILL NOT SUBMIT.  Not until the new year, anyway.  With all the economic fuss and bother, companies are really not looking for new talent right now, and this is actually a load off of my mind.

6)  NANOWRIMO AHOY.  I'm going to start calling some people out to join me this year.  You've been warned.

7)  COUNTDOWN TO MOVE-OUT.  I could fill several LJ's with how much I have hated having my brother-in-law and mother-inl-law living with us, but the light at the end of the tunnel can now be seen.  About six months or so to go, and my wife and I (finally) get our house back for just us.

Positivity?  Amazingly, we've got that.

I recently got my first smartphone, the Palm Centro.  We switched from SureWest to Verizon because V bought SW, and we were getting tired of losing our coverage any time we got more than ten miles out of Sacramento.  Screw you, SureWest, and thanks for the lies about your capabilities.

Verizon's network thus far has been really good.  And as a bonus, so far, I love this phone.  Love it love it love it.  My main reason for getting this was because it was fairly cheap (99 bucks with contract) and with the Bluetooth capability and Documents To Go, I can get a Bluetooth minikeyboard and do typing without having to haul my laptop all over the place while I am at work.  This rules.  Trust me, when you have a 23 minute break at the end of the line and you are paranoid about your computer breaking due to rough roads, that can be a major factor.

Does anybody else out there have a smartphone and if so, why did you get the model you have?

I was going to do an in-depth treatise about relationships, how to maintain them and how not to be a fucking idiot while in one, but then I realized I'd already done quite a few.  So since I'm feeling like doing some actual writing rather than blogging, here are three flavors of ice cream to enjoy.

This is the one where I talk about how love by itself is not enough to keep a relationship going.

This is the one where I talk about not embracing minimal standards, because that marks you as a lazy piece of crap.

This is the one where I talk about the concept of "good husband points" and cite specific examples of how easy it is to keep your relationship running smoothly.

Maybe I should start a class.  Sad as it is to say, I'm sure some of you ladies would probably enroll your S.O. in my course.

EDIT:  Also, happy birthday to my dad.  He rocks, and I'm damn lucky to have him as an influence in my life.  Here's to you, James.

I'm done with the night bus.  I pulled into the garage at just past eleven o'clock and said farewell for at least three weeks to the concept of coming home to find that the only person still awake in the house is one I don't really want to talk to.  I might even get back to working on Black Sunshine or dare I say it, Living After Midnight?  I dare, and I'm hoping the inspiration monkey strikes on that book soon.

We've also got a joint-jaunt for birthday celebrations for Lady Jade and my dad, which means delicious seafood for late lunch/early dinner followed by a screening of The Dark Knight.  I've only seen about two-thirds of this movie, because the night we went to see Hancock at the drive-in, the double feature movie we got was Wall-E (and I don't get that paring, either).  Or, we could swivel our heads fifteen degrees to the right and after some radio fiddling, watch The Dark Knight.  From what I saw, it looked pretty good.  Hancock, regretfully, was not.

Incidentally, I may catch some heat from this but I don't really care:  Heath Ledger was not the wonderful ball of amazing that everybody seems to want to crown him in for this movie.  Got that?  He did a good job; nothing special.  Unless something really spectacular happened in the last hour or so of the flick, what I saw was a pretty decent portrayal of an intelligent guy gone batshit.  Comparing his performance to Sir Anthony Hopkins in The Silence Of The Lambs and crowing about how he should get an Oscar is, quite frankly, insulting.  Don't get me wrong; I liked his portrayal better than Jack Nicholson's--because if you're going to give me cinematic cheese, you damn well better serve it with a generous scoop of Bruce Campbell--but I honestly don't understand what all the fuss and bother is about.

Oh, wait.  Yes, I do.  It's just that it's mean.  Since I've been storing it up for a while, I'm going to let it roll.

Dead people always get lionized.  If you're a musician, you're a ground-breaking songwriter.  Writers are woefully unappreciated.  Actors and actresses suddenly advance four of five categories in their apparent ability.  Let me make this clear: this guy was decent, but Johnny Depp he was not.  Got that?  Heath Ledger was a perfectly serviceable middle-of-the-road good-looking chunk of man-candy that girls sighed over and to be totally fair had some decent acting chops that he often didn't get to show.  Decent, people, not stunning.  Good guy, but no Edward Norton.  I really liked him in 10 Things I Hate About You; did a pretty swell job in Monster's Ball and other than that, I am really hard-pressed to find another movie worth mentioning besides that God-awful A Knight's Tale, some solid supporting work in The Patriot and...

...oh, right.  The ghey cowboy movie.  This is when you get into a lot of other stuff that quite frankly makes my teeth hurt.  How brave he was for doing that role.  How courageous everyone was for working on the movie.  How the rest of the world just didn't get a movie about two emo cowboys who dug each other and was boring as hell.  I have seen quite a bit of real world and cyberspace ink spilled sobbing about how the world lost an great talent, and people, as goddamn mean as this sounds (and trust me, I know how it's coming across), we did not lose a great talent.  Last time I checked, Joe Satriani is still alive and so is Kate Winslet, so I think we're going to be okay.

Believe it or not, I am in a good mood tonight.  Happy soon-to-be birthday to my sweetie; she's turning 30, and it's making her a little peckish.

EDIT:  Upon further review, this post comes off like I'm throwing Heath Ledger under the bus, running him over, then backing up and doing it again.  I'm not.  He was a decent actor, but I don't even pretend to understand all these gushing, cooing fangirls (and boys, to be fair) who came out of the woodwork and deified him for what was essentially doing a decent job.  When I read things like, "The world has lost a brightly shining star" and "It's the nature of angels to want to go back to heaven," it makes me puke in my soup.  Hope that clarified somewhat.

What have I been doing lately?  Not a lot.  Actually, that's not quite true... I've been doing plenty lately, just not much of it seems worth reporting on.  Since I haven't updated in a while, though, I'll give it a shot by sharing some abject humiliation

I tried out for Jeopardy! when the "Brain Bus" rolled into Jackson Rancheria Indian Casino and Hotel on a day when I was out from work due to my knee feeling like hell.  Since it was feeling moderately better in the afternoon, I went on up to try my luck because I have always said that I would gladly try out for the show (and go through it like shit through a goose, the unspoken subtext whispers), but I am unwilling to drive down to the cauldron of Hell commonly called Los Angeles for the opportunity.  However, give me the opportunity to stand outside in line, on asphalt in the sun for three hours, and I'm there.

Yes, it was not exactly the most well-designed plan on either part; the producers fucked up by having us stand outside in line in the sun, and I fucked up by bombing miserably.  Everybody got a ten-question test, which was allegedly the same one only on different-colored sheets of paper.  Uh-huh.  My nightmare had been that I would get horrible questions in categories I had no clue on, such as Accounting 101, Vice-Presidents Before 1840 and Beloved People From Denver (there aren't any, so don't bother Googling).  As it turned out, I was enormously correct on this prediction for the last time that day.  Mine included such gems as:

In 1962, Doctor A (don't remember the name) and Doctor B (ditto) shared the Novel Prize with a third doctor.  Who was this third doctor?

The half-mile square country that includes Monte Carlo is called what?

The Roman Emperor (don't remember the name because I honestly don't give a tin shit) was famous for building columns; his successor was famous for building walls.  What was his name?

This actor won an Emmy for roles he played on both The Practice and Boston Legal.  Who is this actor?

Finally, I thought I had one.  After all, there are only two actors I know of who have been on both shows, being William Shatner and James Spader, and Spader is light-years ahead of Shatner in terms of acting ability.  I gleefully put down Spader... and was once again incorrect.  I don't know what's more shameful; that I got it wrong, or that William Shatner actually has two Emmys.  At one point, I glanced up at the girl watching me taking my test, smiled and said: "I'm doing my best to at least spell my incorrect answers correctly."

So I drove for an hour, stood in line for another three hours and flunked the test in less than five minutes.  In virtually any flavor of scorecards, that counts as a colossal failure.  However, my saving grace is that I didn't chicken out.  I was very tempted to; at point I had to pep talk myself as I cruised along the winding road leading to the place where people usually just lose their life savings rather than their aura of invincibility, but I managed to stay the course and ride it out.  I didn't hit the EJECT button, and because of that, my wife says I am a winner.  One who flunked the test while everyone around him apparently passed, but at least I took that fastball to the dome and didn't jump out of the batter's box.

Oh, and I got my Cooperstown Collection Dennis Eckersley jersey from South Korea today.

Tonight, guitar and zombies.  Forward!

Here in Sacramento, there are two primary topics of conversation going around:

1)  High gas prices

2)  The hot as hell weather

Both of them bore me to tears and I've begun telling people out loud that with absolutely no trace of self-consciousness.  Big surprise.  #2 is the one that causes me to roll my eyes the most; when somebody begins talking about gee whizz, sure is hot out, I give them my best deadpan look and say (without a trace of perceptible sarcasm), "Odd that this time of year would bring high temperatures.  I mean, what is it, July?"

I mean, honestly, folks.  I realize that talking about the weather has been a staple of the conversationally challenged for centuries.  When all else fails (sports, politics, entertainment, law, economics, oh hell's bells, you get the fucking point) I guess you can always fall back on the condition of the biosphere.  However, acting like it's in any shape, manner or form a surprise or noteworthy that the temperature was 102 degrees in the Sacramento valley in the month of July makes you... well, it makes you appear a little thick, as the Brits would say.

I'm on literary vacation.  They call it a break.

I've been through that most dreaded diseases of the keyboard set before, the infamous Writer's Block.  This isn't it.  Not by a long shot.  Before when I took an extended break from typing, it was always because I couldn't think of anything to write.  I would sit for months, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for my muse to strike me with some inspiration with the same dumb look on my face that our dog does when begging to come inside (to which the answer is no, due to his aroma).  Breaking out of those prolonged slumps usually involved doing a "sacrifical project," something that I knew wasn't any real great shakes, but it had to be done just so I could get back into the swing of things again.

In 2001-2002, I kicked out the jams by plugging (grimly) away on Sacrifice, a science-fiction project that, not to put too fine a point on, I royally fucked up.  It would be nice to say that I got off-track and lost my way, but the truth was that it was the second-to-the-last novel I did without any sort of a master document to refer to, and when you're doing time travel and attempting to fix a universe that has gone horribly wrong and only five people are even aware of this fact, you need to anchor yourself firmly to the bedrock.  I didn't do that; hence by the time I was on Chapter Eleven, both my intrepid adventurers and Yours Truly were both staring around themselves in dismay and wondering if perhaps things wouldn't be better served with a truckload of napalm.

This is completely different.  It's not that I can't write; it's that right now, I don't want to.

They call it a break.