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For those of you on Goodreads be sure to mark February 18 on your calendars.
Why would you want to do such a thing? So you can participate in a Q and A with me of course! All day on February 18 I will be answering questions from you the readers on the Short Story Connect group. making the deal even sweeter, if you are a member of the group before the invitation is sent out you will get coupon codes for free downloads from Smaswords. What are you waiting for? See ya in cyperspace. :) Imagine a world where events that actually mean something and affect our daily lives gets as much ink as the air pressure in a ball used in a game does.
Type in “football air pressure” in your favorite search engine and you will get more than 6,000,000 hits. Many of them are more than happy to tell you what the exact official pressure is. Type in “deflate gate” and you will get over 600,000. Don’t worry if you are lazy, auto fill will take care of it for you after the first few letters. It has its own hashtag fer crist sake. Try to find the percentage of voters in the last election… Let’s just say that yes, many many web sites will pop up but actual information is not so available. An even better example of this weapon of mass distraction is here in my home state of Arizona. Everybody seems to be shocked that the newly elected governor, who ran on a platform of no taxes, took the budget ax to all the classrooms in the state within days of taking office. It amazes me that people were surprised by this action. But even more amazing is that these cuts in education dollars in a state that has already been told repeatedly by federal courts to pay millions owed to schools only got about two days of ink in the Arizona media. Two days of stories about an issue that directly affects every man, woman, and child in the state. And that was only one or two stories each day. Now we have deflate gate. Almost a week later and the internet is still ablaze about a ball used in a game that ultimately affects no one. And people wonder why things are broken. TURN OFF YOUR PHONES AND PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT MATTERS DAMNIT!!! I woke up the other morning in San Diego! Seriously, what is this stuff? Sure, we do get cold from time to time here in the desert southwest but this? And it stuck around most of the morning!
Oye! It's all right now though. I can see the sun. The holidays are (mostly) over and I hope you have survived. I had a few random thoughts that have strung together somewhat in a common theme. Holidays are stressful for many different reasons. Like many others I had a few moments of frustration that had me doing the silent scream thing. I then came in to work this morning and read some stuff that made my holidays look like sugar and spice. It reinforced that whole be happy with what you have thing for me. One good thing that was a nice little pre-Christmas gift to me from the universe was the news that a new short story I submitted to a contest a few months ago came in second and got published in an anthology titled Seasonal, Sweet, and Suspenseful: A collection of Holiday, Romance and Mystery Short Stories. It's available on Amazon for $2.99. Be sure to check it out and leave a review! I should have Visitor up as a stand alone short in the next few weeks. Along those same lines, a few of my photos were selected for publication in the Tiny Tale edition of The Book Nymph's December edition. Be sure to check it out, The Book Nymph always has interesting new authors for you to discover. Another nice thing from my holiday break has been time for one of my favorite activities - heading out into the desert with my camera in tow. On this particular trip I spent some quality time with some power poles. Some of these shots can be purchased on my pixels.com page.
Lastly, is the subject of new years resolutions. Many years ago I resolved to no longer make new years resolutions and so far have a perfect track record. I have no plans to sully such a winning streak. :) Enjoy the rest of your holidays, and thanks for your support! Dave One of the things that has me turning off the radio lately has been a rather stupid trend I have noticed in the advertising on one of the stations I listen to. Mostly I listen to what is now called "classic rock". I have taken to calling the local classic rock station the station for old perverted cheap farts that can't get it up any more.
Seriously. Every other add is either some used car guy screaming about low cost cars or doctors telling me that Viagra (trade mark, copyright and whatever else I need to keep from getting sued) is not the only answer to a floppy ding-a-ling. In between the adds the DJ's keep telling me to go on line and look at the "Babe of the Month". It's rather easy to see the demographic this station is after. This manliness has been expanding over the last few months and many of the adds are now started to focus on whether or not I am a man. I guess it's good that the advertisers are trying to help me out with this question because I was starting to wonder. Well, not so much as wonder, as never really thought about it. Perhaps my manliness outweighs the need to question my manliness. Na. That can't be it. I must have someone else tell me. Unfortunately I am failing on these tests. I don't get my hair cut at the right place, don't drink the right beer, and being happily married I'm not checking out the babe of the month. Whatever will I do?! But as the song says - "He can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me!" One of my many weekend activities is flying model airplanes. Sometimes I even travel out of town and last weekend was one of those times. The Arizona Jet Rally has been going for 26 years now and I have missed about 5 of them; yes I've been doing this a long time!
These events are an excuse to hang out with friends from around the United States and beyond and spend the weekend goofing off. For the most part, we are an extended family and each meetup is a reunion only instead of a pick-nick with Grandma's prize winning potato salad we fly model airplanes and talk about the hobby of flying model airplanes. This year my dad and I (the man who got me hooked on this stuff in the first place when I was about eight) stuffed ten flying machines of various sizes and performance levels into the Durango and made the trek to Apache Junction and all ten made the trip home. We even managed to stuff an eleventh in on a deal that was too good to pass up. Overall it made for an enjoyable weekend and if you ever get a chance to go to a model airplane event you should! I saw this little gem posted on Facebook the other day and it took just about all my self control to not post a rant on my friend's page. (I try to not get too political on my friends on FB. I like my friends and want to keep them friends.) All those thoughts will not go away so you get to read them here. First, let's start a given. I am not anti-Christmas. Christmas is meant to be a special time and I truly wish people would get the idea of brotherhood of man that should be what Christmas is about. Having said that, I am sick to death of the commercialization of a supposedly sacred holiday. We haven't even had Halloween yet and already the stores are getting packed full of Christmas crap. All across this nation the money changers are starting their mad rush of capitalizing on the saviors birth, shifting the focus from all that love your neighbor stuff to compete with your neighbor buy buying blow up crap for your yard. And don't get me started on the Black Friday firestorm. Begin the celebration of the coming of Christ with an orgy of buying idols! Yep, great way to honor the King of Kings. So, being as this celebration has already started, at least at the stores, I do have a problem with Merry Christmas. It has become an entire season and is no longer a day, or even a month. This alone justifies Happy Holidays. But wait, there's more! If you buy now, you will see that Christmas is not the only holiday being celebrated around this time. Perhaps if Christians were not so hell bent on convincing the world that theirs is the only religion in the world by forcing everybody to say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Hanukkah" or "Happy Kwanza" or "Have a good Bodhi Day" there would be less of that War on Christians stuff that you complain so much about. It's self-centered. Stop it. Maybe if you loved your neighbor and stopped obsessing over how they greet the holiday of their choice they would stop telling you to shut up. Just a thought. So, in closing, Happy Holidays, have a prosperous Japanese New Year, enjoy Diwali, happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas, happy Boxing Day, enjoy Las Posadas, happy Hogmanay, happy Kwanza, good Festivus, and get the hell off my lawn ya damn kids! Aware is done, published, and ready to be enjoyed! Aware is a short sci-fi dealing with artificial intelligence, overcoming prejudice, and survival. Get it from Amazon for only .99 Or order it from Smashwords FREE by using coupon code EN62K until November 7. Enjoy the story and please be sure to leave a review. Thank you for your support. Dave Hopefully the errorists have been defeated and Aware is almost ready for release, only the cover needs to be locked down which should happen this weekend! It's a very good story if I do say so myself and I hope everyone that picks it up enjoys it.
In celebration of this I have a little tease for you. In this section Navigation Specialist Jenkins is attempting to single handedly get her spaceship running again but is involved in a fight that many of us are all to familiar with: arguing with a computer. Enjoy! The bots. Jenkins thought. Where the hell are the bots? She pulled up the view of the original hull breach and could just make out the shape of a smashed repair bot that had been forced to become one with the hull. There were two of them working before the impact. Where was the other one? “Must be long gone by now.” She said to herself. She looked for the bot that had been sent to repair the scope and found it attempting to return to the standby station. She sent a command to begin repairs on the ship. The bot did not reply. She stared at the bot interface console and its blinking red light for almost ten minutes before she thought of using the voice command protocol. “Hope the com system is still working.” She keyed the mic with a sigh. “Repair Bot one, what is your status?” “Functional.” Jenkins flinched. She hated that stupid mechanical voice. “Repair on meteor scope system is complete. Attempting to return to standby station and await next repair order.” “I need you to repair a hull breach.” A few seconds passed before the grating voice replied, “Please clarify repair request.” Right. Gotta’ talk in terms of computers she thought. “Repair breach on deck A, sector one.” “Unable to comply.” Jenkins saw red and counted to twenty. Had she been dealing with a human this conversation would not be needed. They would already be working on what needed fixing. “Why are you unable to comply?” she asked through clenched teeth. “Protocol after completing repair is to return to standby station and await next repair order.” “I just gave you your next repair order.” Jenkins growled. “Protocol after completing repair is to return to standby station and await next repair order.” “God damn machine.” She muttered to herself as she decided to try a different approach. “How long until you return to the standby station?” “Unable to determine.” “Why?” “Controls to the door of the meteor scope maintenance room appear to be non-functional.” “Then fucking fix the damn controls you POS machine!” “Sorry,” the bot calmly replied, “Unable to understand command. Please re-state in standard English.” “Repair.The.Door.Controls.” “Unable to comply.” “Mother of God!” “Protocol after completing repair is to return to standby station and await next repair order.” |
Step inside the mind of me.Hi. Welcome to my little electron of the internet, where you will find random comments about whatever pops into my mind! Previous mumblings
December 2021
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