Book Review

I have been doing some book reviews of what I read over at my other page, but due to the format of that page the book reviews get lost. So I figured on doing them here and linking to them over there. Here it goes:


The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard
Dead In The West by Joe R Lansdale
Book of the Dead and Book of the Dead 2 by Various Authors

I started The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane because I enjoy Howard and loves the new Wandering Star version of his Conan tales. They did the same with this character, Howards original text as published in the 1930's with some notes and variations on the stories from his person letters and diaries. This is akin to finding Shakespeare composition notebook of his plays with cross-outs, revisions and notes. Alas Solomon Kane does not hold up as well as Conan. While the writing style is there, the character was not a full fleshed as Conan and did not have the 'soul' I felt reading the original collection. There was a high point and that was the poetry. Howard wrote several Solomon Kane poems and when reading one can see oneself around a campfire telling this story to young campers complete with accent, long dark shadows, cracking flames and the timely screech of a night owl to put the kids in that up all night with a flashlight mood.

Since I felt Kane was a little slow I decided to take a break from it and throw in some other short stories, the first was Dead In The West. Get this book!!! Wandering priest (ala Kane) in the Old West stumbles upon a town in the midst of an old Indian Curse, zombies, righteousness and Gunfight at the OK Coral. Lansdale is fantastic in this novella and makes me want more, more, more. My library has several Lansdales and I am on my way with reading list in hand.

While on the zombie trail I found 2 old books I had about the living dead. Book of the Dead and Book of the Dead 2: Still Dead. The first was a collection of short stories in the world based on George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. What a great collection: Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, Robert McCammon, Ramsey Campell and other horror writers of the 80's. There are some real gems in here and with my strange relationship with zombies I was thrilled, scared shitless and up most nights.....the 2nd book did not hold up, although a young Dan Simmons contributed (great story I might add), it just felt like wow we made some bucks on that one, let's do it again. Sorry No Soup for you.

Dead In The West: Must Read
Book of the Dead: Leave the light on!!!!
Tales of Solomon Kane: Serious Howard Fans Only
Book of the Dead 2: Bathroom Reader, sorry

Return To Sender

Is it just me or has the world gone crazy??!?!?!?

We just bought the boy a new bedroom set, he's been using the set my parents had from my younger brothers since the 1980's, so it was time he had his own. After much searching we found one that a) he likes b) we like c) fits in his room and d) does not break the bank. So we buy it and begin the much needed 'room clearing' and prepare for delivery. Now here is where it gets crazy. We get the call on Friday that the furniture will be delivered Monday:

Them: "Monday between noon and three."

Me: "Oh, we were told it would be in the morning.."

Them: "Who told you that?"

Me: "The salesman."

Them: "Well he can't do that, the computer tells us when it is scheduled"

Me: "We work in the afternoon, that is why we wanted AM delivery."

Them: "You could reschedule but we can't guarantee a time."

Me: "No just leave it for Monday and if we are here we are here"

Them: "Are you saying no one will be there, we can't have that."

Me: "No, I am saying I want the furniture I paid for and if we are not here on Monday then it is on the truck for Tuesday and so on until you come when we are here."

Them: "That is ridiculous sir"

Me: "So is the fact that you seem to believe that working people can just take off from work to sit in their homes for a 3 hour window at any time."

I'll let you know what happens.

Silent Night......

Strangest thing, yesterday arrive at work and it is deathly silent. Everyone is in their own little corner reading a book, magazine, internet or just enjoying the silence of one's company. The day goes on and it remains the same, no flashing lights or buttons, no mad men (women) running to get something on air, shows go nice and tidy from start to finish, no traffic on the way home, practice lets out and the kids file to the cars, no line at Culver's and we get our food home while still warm and when Rescue Me is over it's up to bed and out like a light. Hello?!?!? Anyone Out There?!?!?!? I must be in the Twilight Zone.............

They buried a hero yesterday. The funeral for officer Jake Laird started at 11am yesterday and we followed the entire proceedings from entry into the church, down the entire procession that carried Officer Laird threw the city he protected, to the horse drawn cassion that carried him to his final resting place. It was a somber service filled with dignity and tradition. The horse drawn cassion, the 21-Gun Salute, the presentation of the flag to the widow and daughter, and the releasing of doves.

The procession included an estimated 900 police cars and took several hours to travel less than 20 miles. The city was shut down when the lead motorcycles entered Monument Circle in the heart of Indianapolis while the hearse bearing his body was still at the church, 12 miles away! Hundreds lined the 20 mile route to honor this man and everyone from the Governor, the Mayor of Indianapolis, to the Chief of Police, his brother and his partner all spoke of a man who gave his life to the protection of others and paid the ultimate price.

While a grim reminder of the dangers of today's society, it is a beacon of hope and a shining example for a country that creates these men and women who bravely put their lives on the line every day so the we all may be free.

God Bless and Thank You.

School Daze

School started Wednesday for the boy and he is loving it. Finally, after a school year of driving to and from school every day the bus picks him up and drops him off in front of the house. He can sit on the bus with his friends and return to his own home after school. Mom and Dad can say good-bye from the comfort of my doorway and already his buddies are ringing the bell early so they can 'hang' before the bus comes.

Stressful week for me at work. First real stress filled days in a LONG time. Not to bore you with technical details so the short and quick is: My switcher needs to be RESTARTED at least once a year (maybe twice), this one hasn't been done since they bought it 8 years ago. RESTARTS erase everything and we have about 60 different effects we use a day that took us over 2 weeks to build. Before RESTART you save everything to the disk. And there is the rub, the disk drive was not working. So we went through a month of testing drives, changing panels and finally a motherboard and nothing worked. So we crossed the fingers and hoped the RESTART would jump start the drive (we knew we had bad RAM and the manufacturer said reboot it and it will work). Well we pull the power and restart the whole shebang and it is TOTALLY DEAD. Nothing stops the heart when the Chief Engineer just looks at the board and says "Oh we are fucked" 2 hours before Air Time.

Needless to say the next hour or so are a blur until I asked if the drive was getting power. Well the engineer looked at me shrugged and got some monitors and star trek looking shit, hooked them up and said "Mmmmmm?". Then proceeded to change a fuse and all was well!!!!! So 4 weeks of the board not working correctly, 4 major On Air screw-ups due to the board, 2 new floppy drives, one new mother board and all that was broken was a fuse..............

All is now well but my nerves were totally shot..............

Public Service Announcement

By the by faithful readers, as always please leave a comment, check out the Guest Map over to your left and visit My Page of Stuff to check out my reading and movie lists.

Berry Interestink.........

While surfing the internet lately I found the site of one of the Talk Radio guys that are on while driving home. I found a link to this group, The Paul Revere Society, and what they stand for. So I took a read and found a few interesting things: (Them in BOLD my comments in italics )

The Paul Revere Society 8-Point Program
MEN AND WOMEN PROTECTING AMERICA
1. Support Traditional Marriage (OK, I agree. I have no problem with homosexuality but I think it is more than that, how about men marrying the mothers of their children and women having children IN wedlock. It should be about people raising a family.)

2. Close the Borders now. (Not so much close as Secure. Make sure those coming in are here for no ill purpose)

3. Deport all illegal immigrants now. (Agree! Come, stay, work, live, raise a family and follow our laws, just do so legally and work to become a citizen. I have much more on this, but at a later time)

4. Eliminate bilingual education in all states. (Agree, our house, our rules, our language)

5. Require health tests for all recent foreign born immigrants. (Not sure what this is for, so no comment)

6. Make tax cuts permanent. (Can I get an AMEN!!)

7. End Affirmative Action (And an Alleleua!!!)

8. Tort Reform - Stop Class Action Lawyers. (Agree. The next time I have to pay $8 for a burger meal I remember to thank the Hot Coffee Lawsuit woman)

So, what does this mean, am I a racists? a separatist? or just a plain old American who would like to have his country back. Who would like to be able to take a flight without the 3 hour search and delay. Who would like the people who live in America to be Americans. To be able to call an operator, speak to my mechanic or order lunch and have that person understand me and me to understand them. Call me confused.

Swimming Pools, Movie Stars

I am well on my way to my first million thanks to the fine people at e-bay. Before/During/After the big move we have been thinning the herd as they say. Anything we have not opened, used, seen or known we have had over the past 10 years we got rid of. Clothes, books, games, toys, knick-knacks, cards, movies, odd shit you accumulate over 12 years of marriage and 34 years of life. We went through and donated to GoodWill, held 3 Garage Sales, put aside and repacked or displayed sentimental/cool stuff and tossed a lot of shit. However some of the good/cool stuff we did not want yet held more value than .25 at a garage sale we held until today. Now we have some pretty good stuff to place on e-bay. Last week we had our first auction, 30 packs of comic cards, cost to us FREE, final price at auction $51.00. Not too bad for a newbie. Several thousand more auctions like that and we will be laughing to the bank with a cool million.

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The Olympics have started and we are trying to enjoy as a family. I am a little biased as I worked for NBC through several Olympics and hate with a passion Costas and those over dramatic biographies. We spend 5 minutes on some package telling us he said he wanted an Olympic Metal when he was 6, and told his mother on her death bed he would win, and lost 3 toes in an accident and fought back to compete here in the home of the modern day Olympics and then watch for 53 seconds as he loses, oh well, next.....

Me I dig the odd stuff: table tennis, equestrian, in winter curling, stuff like that found on Bravo or MSNBC this year. There are only so many chicks doing flips or laps of the pool I can watch. But no matter what your favorite sport or event the main thing is to watch and cheer and root for our country and enjoy the spirit of competition. Oh and beat the Russians (sorry 80's mentality)!!!!

eh?

Feeling very old this week. Just run down, had a million things to do and no energy to do it. Still under the weather, still getting tons of work thrown my way and still working 6 days a week (Brickyard 400 this weekend).

Enough bitchin'. OK

The politics are going hot and heavy. And the way it's looking now I am a Bush supporter. One of the main reasons is I feel Kerry is a liar, a traitor that turned on his "Brothers In Arms" the moment he got back to the states after Vietnam, a Senator with 20 years experience and not one word of that service during his DNC speech, a candidate with no campaign other that "I am Not Bush". Several things I have heard from him that have made me feel this way. Kerry commenting on the historic footage of Bush being told a plane had hit the Twin Towers, "If I was president I would have done something other that sit there for 7 minutes when I heard we were under attack." Big cheers from audience. Well Mr. Kerry if you recall (and I do as I sat in front of the TV in Master Control and watched just about every second of that horrific day) President Bush was told a plane had hit the Twin towers, at that time we were not under attack, no one had any info, NBC was reporting that it was a small engine plane (probably a Cessna according to Matt Lauer). Then, thank you Time magazine, you recalled your reaction to that day. "We heard that a plane had struck the WTC when I was at a senatorial committee meeting, we just all sat around the table in stunned disbelief. The next thing we heard was that a 2nd plane had hit and we were evacuating the Capitol Building." Um, Mister Kerry almost 40 minutes elapsed between the 1st tower being hit and the 2nd tower being hit, so while you rail against the president for sitting there for 7 minutes, you sat and did nothing for 40 minutes.

Secondly I was listening to radio coverage of the DNC and heard an interview with the former Governor of New Hampshire who was a Kerry supporter. When asked if she was Pro-Kerry or just Anti-Bush she said both. Then asked what qualifications in the Senate Kerry had to help him be president she told some sap story about Kerry setting up some little league for kids with special needs cause they couldn't play in the regular little league. When asked about his Senatorial record and were he had stood on various issues over the years the Kerry campaign had no comments. And the former gov wasn't the only one. Not one Kerry campaigner or DNC delegate could point out anything Kerry had did since Vietnam to qualify him as president other than a) he's a veteran b)he would have done things differently in Iraq (no specifics again).

So when it comes time to vote I will vote for a man who knew he would take some hits politically but still did the right thing and kicked some ass in the Middle East. I will not vote for a man who will not discuss the past 20 years of his political career.