So this sucked

At about 8:30pm on Tuesday 3/8/2022, I was viciously attacked by this coat hanger. I don’t care if this coat hanger has an alibi or tries to shift the blame elsewhere, I will always know that this little fucker did it maliciously and with forethought. This coat hanger should be in prison. Thinking back, I should have known something was wrong. When I first opened the door to the hotel room, I heard that sound that you hear in those Friday the 13th movies when Jason is in cold, slow pursuit and could pounce at any moment. Sort of a tch, tch, tch, ack, ack, ack sound, but very quiet and with a lot of reverb. Yeah, I should have known shit was going to get real. But, I slept one night in the room before going to a store to work with one of my employees a bit and Continue reading So this sucked

Dunn’s River Falls, Jamaica

I have to admit that I was absolutely ecstatic when my wife suggested this as a trip when we went to Jamaica. Mostly because I had read the fine print that she obviously ignored. This excursion is a bus ride to the middle of nowhere, followed by trekking up a waterfall (hiking up said waterfall. About 900 feet, but straight up, and in water). I was on board from word go. The wife, on the other hand, became less excited with every passing second. Our marriage was at it’s strongest when this photo was taken: That photo, incidentally, was taken just before she realized that we were about to march up a waterfall. The first stretch of the climb is pictured here: If you’re searching for the word, I will throw it in here: terrifying. There is something about the natural beauty of waterfalls that allows you to forget that Continue reading Dunn’s River Falls, Jamaica

Refinishing a guitar – a work in progress

A few weeks back, I had the brilliant idea to try to use one of those websites to print out a ‘guitar skin’ to try to finish a guitar with some of the imagery from one of my book covers (no link to the site because the resulting image sucked so incredibly hard). Let me say here that I had absolutely zero percent confidence that it would work, and that confidence was not misplaced. Do not try any of these services for a photo-realistic image. The image I used was one I created specifically for the project. That image was the full-sized version of this image (I am using a screen-friendly 2500×2000 version of it here, but the image sent to the manufacturer was a much less reasonable 10000×7800 @ 300dpi -which should have been suitable to print an image roughly 50×40 inches with reasonable detail): It turns out that Continue reading Refinishing a guitar – a work in progress

Meeting Peter Fletcher

In my time working at Love’s, I have met all kinds of musical acts. Since it is a truck stop, and since there are a number of venues nearby where such acts play, and since we are the only truck stop on the east side of town, lots of tour buses stop in. I have met the guys from the fairly current acts Authority Zero, the guys (and girls) from Paramore, the guys from Korn, the guys from Lamb of God, and the drunken little twerp Sammy Adams. I have also met some of my childhood favorite bands like Ratt and Bret Michaels. And while I’m not a fan of country music, there have also been a bunch of current country acts in the store that everyone else went all gaga for. I don’t even remember their names to list them here. I’ve so far been able to maintain my Continue reading Meeting Peter Fletcher

Dish Network resorts to extortion — Just to be petty

As near as I can tell from my sloppy record keeping, I started using Dish Network in early 2003. The service was significantly cheaper than my local cable company at the time, and since I owned the house the dish itself wouldn’t be an issue. Over the next 11 years, my bill ranged between 70 and 110 dollars a month, depending on which services I currently had set up. For the sake of my argument here, I’m going to round that all to 85 a month over the course of 11 years. That’s about $11,220 I paid to Dish Network over the years. My payments were on time, and I never had an interruption in service. I was really their ideal customer. Then I moved. Dish Network doesn’t provide any sort of internet service in my area (they do offer a partnership through Hughes net, but it is ridiculously expensive), Continue reading Dish Network resorts to extortion — Just to be petty

Proof that I’m getting old

I just hit 50 40, and it’s starting to show in my choice of music. While I still like the heavy, pounding stuff most of the time, I can appreciate a good voice like I never thought possible. I’ve always enjoyed symphonic metal, and got turned onto Nightwish a couple of years ago. I found myself thinking that the women’s voices in the song were so good that they were getting lost in the music. I’ve continued discovering new symphonic metal acts, almost invariably thinking the same thing. It isn’t as if the songs are bad because the music overpowers the voice; it’s more that I just wondered how good the voice would sound without all the drums hammering in the background. So over the last few days I sought out and purchased some music from some former Nightwish singers, and it is amazing. Anette Olzon’s solo album is a Continue reading Proof that I’m getting old

The Stand

I finished reading Stephen King’sThe Stand a few months ago. I’ve been holding off on writing anything about it because I wanted to give myself a bit of time to hopefully gain some objectivity about it. I knew nothing at all about the book going in -having not even read the back cover of it before starting- and it was definitely worth the read. Unfortunately, it was also made into a tv mini-series in 1994. I made the mistake of watching the mini-series less than 24 hours after finishing the book. Don’t ever do that. That was part of the reason that I wanted to give myself some time to develop some objectivity about the story. While the book was really very good, the mini-series was utter crap. It was very clearly slopped together quickly to make a couple bucks, and I can hardly believe that King signed off on Continue reading The Stand

There’s a hole in the wall…

The only real downside to living in a mud house that was built in 1894 is the occasional huge fucking chunk of the house falling off bit. Now I don’t know just how familiar you are with adobe, but it really is just dirt and water, so when a little chunk of it falls off, there is nothing keeping the rest of it from following along because, well, dirt tends to fall with nothing to hold it up. On either side of the text you can see what it looks like when a huge fucking chunk of your mud house falls off (downward angle to give an idea of depth, it goes back about three inches on an 18 inch thick wall). In this case the huge fucking chunk had fallen off one time before and someone had attempted to patch it with some sort of bonding agent and drywall Continue reading There’s a hole in the wall…

Applying sideways logic to pedophilia!

I remember having seen the movie Brainscan on video back in the 1990s. I remembered liking the movie quite a bit back then, and thought that the story was clever enough that I should force my wife allow my wife to enjoy it with me. Surprisingly, the special effects on this held up fairly well for being 15 years old; there isn’t anything so fake that it takes you out of the movie (possibly one scene where we see a foot being cut off, but eh, I haven’t ever amputated a foot, so who knows). The story was still good enough to make the movie watchable, although the huge surprise twist ending aspect was completely lost to me since I had already seen the movie, but also to my wife -since it was foreshadowed pretty much from the opening credits. That is the risk you take when you try to Continue reading Applying sideways logic to pedophilia!

Health Care in the news

As you likely know, I generally try to steer clear of posting anything of a political nature on my site. I do make such posts on occasion, this being one of them, but generally I stay away from them just because so many other people are so much more knowledgeable on the subject than I am. Also, I doubt anyone has ever said, “I need some leftish, candid political views, I’m going to go to the site where that guy posted naked pictures with a guitar.” The subject of health care, though, is one that I feel strongly enough about to throw my opinion out there. First things first, universal health care is a very good thing -if executed properly. Whether or not it will ever be able to be executed properly in the U.S. remains to be seen, but we are moving in the right direction. A properly executed Continue reading Health Care in the news