Chances Are: Three Chances

Since this is a five-Wednesday month, the recap will be next week.  Makes more sense that way.  So enjoy a short story now.

When I was editing my story "Second Chance" I saved the stuff I deleted into a separate file so I could preserve it, sort of like deleted scenes on a DVD.  I cut the story from about 140,000 words to 107,000 words, so plenty of stuff got cut.  One of the last scenes to cut was also one of the last I wrote!  I came up with this scene the same night I finished the first draft.  It's a coma fantasy where three versions of Steve/Stacey meet in a bar and what happens to them.  Eventually though I decided the story was too long so at almost 3300 words this had to go.

I'm not sure how much sense it will make, but here you go:

I open my eyes to find myself in a strange place.  It’s really dark and it smells really gross.  There’s a counter and behind that are all these shelves with glass bottles on them.  The labels are for weird drinks like Smirnoff and Jack Daniels that I’ve never heard of.  No Coke or Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.

On the other side of the counter are some stools.  There’s an old man sitting on one.  He looks kind of like Grandpa Jake, except he’s fatter and his skin is gray and he’s smoking a cigarette.  Grandpa used to smoke too, but Grandma made him stop.  I can see why; cigarettes smell yucky.

Even though I’m across the room I start to cough.  The old man turns to look at me.  His face is all wrinkly, like it’s melting.  His eyes are a pretty blue, though.  He frowns at me.  Then he says, “What are you doing here?”

“I dunno,” I say.  “Where am I?”

“Somewhere you shouldn’t be,” he says.  “Not until you’re older.”

I remember what happened before I fell asleep.  “Is this Heaven?”

The old man laughs.  It’s a scary laugh.  I start to shiver as he says, “This is about as far as you can get from Heaven.”

I back up, running into a door.  I turn around to grab the knob.  I try to turn it, but the stupid door won’t open.  It’s locked or I’m just too little to get it open.  I rattle the knob, hoping that will shake it open, but nothing happens.  I’m trapped!

I start to cry then.  I want out of this dark, smelly place.  I want to go home to Grandma and Grandpa.  I want to climb into my bed with my cute stuffed monkey, Maddy sleeping below me with her thumb in her mouth like a baby.  I want things to be the way they used to be.

Someone puts an arm around my shoulder and I scream.  A lady’s voice says, “It’s all right, sweetie.  We aren’t going to hurt you.”

I look up and see a woman kneeling beside me.  She’s really pretty, with eyes just as blue as the mean old man, only they’re nicer.  Her hair is dark red and curly.  Her lips are dark red too.  She smiles at me and runs a hand through my hair.  “Hello, Stacey.”

“How do you know my name?” I ask.  Then I remember seeing her before, in the mirror at Dr. Macintosh’s office.  “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend.  My name’s Stacey too.”

“It is?”

“Uh huh.”  The nice lady named Stacey stands up.  “Are you thirsty?”

“Yes.”

She leads me over to a stool at the end, far away from the mean old man.  He’s watching us, still smoking his gross cigarette.  The lady says, “Could you put that out?  You’re going to make her sick.”

“I don’t take orders from you.  Either of you.  I was here first.”

“Please?  She’s just a little girl.”

“It’s not like she has to worry about lung cancer.  Not anymore,” the old man says, but he puts out the cigarette.  “Happy now, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” I say.

The lady goes behind the counter.  She takes a mug down from a shelf.  She sticks it under a tap, filling it up with something brown and foamy.  After the mug is filled, she puts it down in front of me.  I stare at it, remembering what they said at school about not taking treats from strangers.  “Don’t worry, it’s just root beer,” she says.

“Teacher says we aren’t supposed to take treats from strangers,” I say.

The old man snorts.  “She has you there, toots.”

The lady’s face turns red.  Her lower lip trembles.  She’s going to start crying soon.  I pick up the mug, taking a sip.  It tastes like root beer.  “Tank you,” I say with Maddy’s lisp.

“You’re welcome,” she says.  She walks around the counter, but she doesn’t come sit by me.  She goes over into a corner, sitting in a booth by herself.  It’s so dark in the corner I can hardly see her.

“You have to be careful with that one,” the old man says.  “She’s really sensitive.”

“You’re mean,” I tell the old man.

He laughs back at me.  “I sure am, princess.”  He shakes his head.  “How old are you, kid?”

“Ten.”

“I used to have a daughter your age.  A pretty little girl who looked up to me, thought my shit didn’t stink.  You know what happened to her?”  I shake my head and shiver.  The old man probably killed his daughter.  “Her mom took her away from me.  Wouldn’t let me see my own little girl.  I was her father, damn it!”

I jump when the old man slams his fist on the counter.  I run across the bar, over to the booth where the lady is sitting.  I climb onto the seat, into her lap.  She puts an arm around me, making me feel safe.  “It’s all right,” she whispers.

The old man goes behind the counter.  He takes a bottle from off a shelf.  He doesn’t bother with a glass; he drinks right out of the bottle.  Grandma told me and Maddy it’s naughty to drink out of a bottle like that.

“Don’t mind him,” the nice lady says. 

“I wanna go home,” I say.

“I know, but we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain.  Do you know what Purgatory is?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s this place between Heaven and…the other place.  It’s where God sends you to wait until he decides you’re good enough to get into Heaven.”

“But I am good!  I’m not naughty like Keshia.  She’s mean.”

“That’s not up to us,” the nice lady says.

The old man comes around the counter.  He goes over to the door.  He tries the knob too, but it doesn’t work for him either.  “Maybe we’ll be able to get out of here soon, now that the gang’s all here.”

“What does he mean?” I ask.

“That’s hard to explain too,” the nice lady says.  She thinks about it for a little bit.  “You know that my name is Stacey too, right?”

“Duh.  You only told me a couple minutes ago.”

She smiles at me.  “Right.  There’s a very special reason for that.  You see, you used to be me.”

“Did not.”

“It’s true.  Do you remember that shot the nasty doctor gave you?  The one that made you and Maddy littler?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he gave me one of those shots and I turned into a cute little girl.  You.”

I crawl out of the lady’s lap.  She’s just as crazy as that Grace lady who came to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  “That’s not true,” I say. 

“It is true.  And before that, I used to be that mean old man.”

“Nuh uh,” I say, looking from the lady to the old man by the door.  “You’re a girl and he’s a boy.”

“You’re not going to convince her,” the old man says.  “She’s just a kid.”  The old man shakes his head and then he drinks from his bottle.  “Can you believe I ended up like that?  Some little chink brat?”

“What’s a chink?” I ask.

“It’s nothing,” the lady says.  She climbs out of the booth and looks at the old man.  “Can’t you try to be nice?  She’s a child.”

“Oh I’m sorry, am I offending her majesty, Princess Stacey?  You can think what you want about me, but I never slept with my best friend’s girl.”

The lady starts to cry now.  She sinks back down on the booth.  I turn to the old man.  “You meanie!  You made her cry.”

“She’s always crying.  That’s about all she does.”

“At least she’s nice.  You’re just a big poopyhead!”

He laughs at me again.  I hate that sound.  I hate it so much I run at him so I can make him shut up.  But he stops me.  He reaches down to pick me up right from the floor.  I kick and punch at him, but he lifts me right up onto the counter.  He sets me down there.  I can still smell his gross cigarette here.

He tousles my hair.  “You’ve got spunk, kid.”  He leaves me sitting on the counter while he gets my mug of root beer.  He hands the glass to me.  “Here you go.”

I take a sip of the root beer only because I am thirsty.  “Thank you,” I say as Mommy taught me.

“I’m sorry to be so grouchy, kid,” he says.  He sits down on his stool.  He takes out another cigarette.  Then he sees me and throws it away.  “Suppose I should probably quit.”

Maybe he’s not such a meanie after all.  He tousles my hair again.  “My little girl was a lot like you.  So sweet, but if you pissed her off, look out.”

The lady comes over to join us.  She pours herself a mug of something, but it’s lighter than my root beer.  The old man clucks his tongue.  “You’re too young to drink that, young lady.”

“It’s just a beer,” the lady says.  “And who’s going to card me?”

“You’re all right,” the old man says.  “Sometimes.  When you aren’t moping around.”

The lady sits down on my other side so I’m between them.  “I don’t mope,” she says.

“Oh sure, that’s why you were sitting in that shrink’s office, bawling about not knowing who you are or what you want to do with your life and all that sh…stuff.”  The old man takes another drink from his bottle.  “Being a cop was too good for you, eh?  You’d rather work in that crappy little store all your life?”

“Not all my life.”

“Well it turned out to be, didn’t it?”

The old man shakes his head and then nods at me.  “This one didn’t even get to have a job.  Poor kid.”

“Poor kid,” the lady agrees.

I stare down at my mug of root beer, but I don’t feel like drinking anything right now.  “Are we really dead?”

“Like a doornail,” the old man says.

“Am I ever going to get to see Maddy again?  Or Mommy and Daddy?  And Grandma and Grandpa?”

“I don’t know, sweetie,” the lady says.  “Maybe someday.”

“I don’t wanna wait that long!  I wanna see them now!”

I start to jump off the counter, but the lady stops me.  She takes me by the shoulders.  “Stacey, stop it.  There’s nowhere to go.  We’re stuck here.”

“This is bull…droppings,” the old man says.  “Why are we stuck here?  I was a good cop.  I didn’t take bribes.  I didn’t put innocent people in jail.  And you might be a whiny little hippie who screwed her best friend’s girl, but it’s not like you were out murdering people.  At least not people who didn’t deserve it.  And her, she’s a little kid.  What the hell could she do that was so bad she gets stuck here with us?  Explain that to me, college girl.”

The lady shrugs.  “Maybe it’s a test or something.”

“A test of what?  To see who kills the other first?”

“I don’t know,” the lady says. 

No one says anything for a while.  I drink the rest of my root beer.  The old man takes a nap on his stool.  The nice lady goes back to her corner.  She sits against the wall, staring into space.  It makes me wish I had my phone.  Then I could talk to Jamie or at least play Angry Birds.  “This is boring,” I say.  “Isn’t there a TV or something?”

“We should be so lucky,” the old man says.  I guess he’s not really sleeping.

“Isn’t there anything to do?”

The old man motions to a green table.  “We could play pool, but she’s lousy at it and you’re too little to reach the table.”

“What’s that over there?” I ask, pointing to the other corner, across from where the lady is sitting.  There’s a little wooden stage with some kind of metal box on it.

“That’s a karaoke machine,” the lady says.  “It plays music so you can sing.”

“I like to sing,” I say.  “I’m going to be a singer when I grow up.”  My face gets warm when I remember I’m not going to grow up, not if I’m dead.

The old man pats me on the back.  “I’m sure you would have been a great singer,” he says.  “A regular Janis Joplin.”

“Who?”

“She was a famous singer when I was your age,” the old man says.  “It doesn’t matter.”

I hop from the counter onto a stool and then down to the floor.  I run over to the stage.  There’s a microphone attached to the box.  I try flipping some switches, but nothing happens.  “How does it work?”

“You got me,” the old man says.  “Hey toots, why don’t you show the kid?  You know how to use the thing.”

“All right,” the nice lady says.  She comes over to the stage.  She squats down next to me and starts to fiddle with the box.  Some lights come on.  “There you go, sweetheart.”

“Are you a singer too?” I ask.

The nice lady’s cheeks turn red.  She looks down at the floor.  I hope she’s not going to cry again.  “I’m not very good.  Not like you.”

“That’s bull…droppings,” the old man says.  “You could be just as good as the kid if you wanted.  If you weren’t so fu…freaking scared.”

“You get scared too?” I ask.  “But you’re a grown up.”

The old man snorts at that.  “That’s debatable.”

“Shut up!” the lady snaps.  She looks back at me, touching my hair.  “Yes, even grown ups get scared.  That old man over there gets scared too, but he just covers it up by being nasty.”

“You want me to come over there and put my foot up your ass right in front of the kid?”

The lady turns back to him.  “Stacey and I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been so scared to pick up a phone and call your own daughter.  Or even mail her a birthday card.  That’s all Maddy ever wanted from you, to show that you gave a damn, but you couldn’t even do that.”

The old man jumps off his stool.  He slams his bottle on the counter.  He keeps the top of it in his hand, the pointy edges sticking out.  He starts walking towards the stage.  “You’re going to tell me how to raise my daughter?  You’re the one who fucked Grace.  You’re the one who broke them up.”

“I got them back together.”

“Yeah, for how long?  We both know you were just biding your time, waiting for Maddy to break up with her so you could move in.”

“I was not!” the lady says and sniffles. 

“Oh go on and cry.  That’s all you’re good for.” 

The lady starts to shake, her face getting really red now.  “At least Maddy likes me.  She hates you.  You’re just the father who abandoned her.”

“That tears it, princess.”  The old man is almost to the stage now.  He has the pointy end of the bottle up like a knife.

“Go ahead and do it,” the lady says.  “I don’t care anymore.”

She gets down on her knees.  She lifts her head up.  She’s going to let the mean old man hurt her.  “Stop it!” I shout.  “Stop fighting!”

“Sorry kid,” the old man says.  “This has been a long time in coming.”

I’m too little to do anything else, so I close my eyes, hold up the microphone, and sing.  I start to sing the Cole Porter songs Darren and I did for our presentation.  I wish he were up here with me, playing the piano.  I wish he were here instead of this mean old man.

I feel a hand around my shoulder.  A wet cheek rubs against mine.  I hear a girl’s voice singing with me.  I open my eyes and see the nice lady leaning next to me, singing into the microphone.  She’s wrong; she is a good singer.  Her voice is really pretty.  She stumbles over some of the words.  Eventually she stops.  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.  “I don’t really know the words.”

I stop singing too.  “We can sing another song.  What ones do you know?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How about some Creedence?” the old man says.  He’s pulled up a chair.  He’s sitting on it backwards.  The broken bottle is on a table behind him.

“Stacey doesn’t know those old songs,” the lady says.  She tousles my hair.  “I bet you know Disney songs, though, don’t you?”

“Some.”

“Do you know Beauty and the Beast?”

“That’s my favorite!”

“Mine too,” the lady says.  She starts to play with the machine.  Music starts to play.  It’s the title song from the movie.  The words show up on a screen, but we don’t need them.  The lady pats my back.  “You do the girl parts and I’ll do the boy parts.”

“OK.”

We start to sing.  She doesn’t sound like a boy, but it doesn’t really matter.  It’s fun.  It makes me wish I could have got to sing with Mommy.  Maybe I can if I ever get to Heaven.

The lady gives me a hug after we finish.  “That was very good,” she says.

“Can we do another one?”

“Sure,” she says.  She plays with the machine again.  “Do you like The Lion King?”

“Yes.”

The lady points to the screen.  “How about this one?”

I giggle at what she’s picked out.  “OK.”

The music comes on and we start to sing “Hakuna Matata.”  Since I’m littler I’m the cute little meerkat and the nice lady is the big old warthog.  As we sing, the old man starts to shake his head.  “You guys are nuts.”

The lady motions him to come forward.  “Why don’t you come up here?  Show us kids how it’s done.”

“Yeah,” I say.  The nice lady and I start to giggle.  “I think he should be the warthog.”

“He’s got the face for it,” she says.

“OK, whippersnappers, you asked for it,” he says.  He gets off his chair.  I freeze for a moment, waiting for him to grab his bottle.  He doesn’t.  He gets on the stage, taking the microphone from us.  He does a chorus by himself.  His voice is so gravelly and out of tune that the lady and I start to laugh.

I wait for the old man to get mad at us, but he doesn’t.  He starts to laugh too.  We pass the microphone around, taking turns.  Even after the music stops, we keep the song going for a while, until we’re laughing too hard.

The old man picks me up, giving me a hug.  “Thanks, kid,” he says.  “I forgot what that was like.”

“I guess I did too,” the lady says.  She hugs us both.

We’re still hugging as the front door opens.  A white light pours through it.  “The door!” I shout.

“Looks like it’s time to go,” the old man says.

“Looks like it,” the lady says.

The old man carries me towards the door.  As we get near to it, the lady takes his hand.  They stop at the edge of the door.  We look outside, but it’s just white light.  “Is that Heaven?” I ask.

“There’s only one way to find out,” the old man says.

        We step into the light together...

Two Cent Tuesdays: Speed Reading for Dummies

This year I've read a lot of books, which is easier to do when you aren't WRITING books.  At the start of the year I set my goal on Goodreads to 50 books, but I've had to increase that now because I've read a lot of books, to this date 84.  (OK, a couple are graphic novels or short stories.  So what?)  Want to know my secret?  It's not some speed-reading class I took on the Internet.

No, it's the Text-to-Speech function on the Kindle.  I knew that feature was on the Kindle, but I hadn't used it until early this year.  I was going home and traffic was really slow.  So I thought, "Man, I wish I could read on my Kindle."  And then I remembered the text-to-speech thing.  And then I remembered I had a cord already hooked into the car stereo so I could plug in my MP3 player.  It works on the Kindle too!  Just plug it into the headphone jack and the text-to-speech comes out through the car speakers.  At first I really had to crank the speakers to hear it but lately that hasn't been necessary.  I don't know why that is.

Over the next week or so I read the entire Tek series by Bill Shatner that way. Then before you knew it, my 50 book To Be Read list had dwindled to 10!  And those 10 were mostly really long ones I didn't want to read all that much like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the complete Jane Austen.  (Incidentally if you want cheap books other than mine those old collections of Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Frank Baum, etc. are quite a deal.  Others like Moby-Dick you can get for FREE--not that it's worth it.)

Anyway, I know the drawbacks to this.  The text-to-speech voices are really annoying.  But it's like drinking diet soda, tea, or alcohol, where the first couple of times I was like, "Yuck, this is terrible!  I can't drink this shit!"  But after a while I got a tolerance for it.  So it is that after a while you get used to the stupid thing saying "Yay" for "Yeah" or "Lung-ed" instead of "Lunged" (a guh sound instead of a juh sound on the G) or how it always says "Shut up!" as an exclamation even when it's not.

That pretty much doubled or tripled my reading output right there because on my 45-60 minute commute (or one day going home took 3 freaking hours, during which I "read" 45% of Tek Vengeance by Bill Shatner) I can listen to the book.  Also at lunch when I walk around I can plug in some headphones and listen to a book as I walk.  That's not as convenient as an MP3 player, but it's better than nothing.

And then at home I can listen to a book while I do other stuff, like play old PS2 video games or paint action figures or whatever other stupid shit I feel like doing.  It's really gotten to the point where I hardly want to read with my own eyes anymore.  The machine is taking over!!!  And it really pissed me off to find out a couple of my Kindle books had that feature disabled.  WTF?  Look dumbasses, I bought the fucking book and I bought the fucking Kindle so I should be able to do that if I want.  Asshole publishers.  If they think that will prompt me to spend big bucks on their audiobook version, think again.  Mostly it just makes me return the book to Amazon and move on to something else.  I did realize Amazon lists on the product page whether that feature is enabled; I just have to remember to check it before I buy the book.

This feature did also come in handy when I was editing books.  There were a couple of times where I might have overlooked where I was missing a word or had the wrong word with my eyes but hearing it aloud I thought, "What the hell?" and then saw my mistake.

The disadvantage over regular audiobooks is that the narration sucks.  The advantage is not having to juggle a bunch of CDs in the car or at home.  I'm not sure how big MP3 books are or whether I could put them on my crappy MP3 players.  Those are probably more expensive anyway than buying a regular version of the book.

So there you go, if you want to do more reading and you have a Kindle (I don't know if it's on Nooks or Kobos or what have you) there's how you can increase your reading output.  I've recently had to buy more books just to meet the demand.  So if you're one of those people who whines you don't have time to read your TBR pile (looking at Andrew Leon), this is a good way to do it.

Then you can buy and read all of MY books.  And remember, the Scarlet Knight ones are all 99 cents apiece this month, so that's a cheap way to fill up your ereader to employ this strategy.  Just a thought.

Comic Captions 5/20/13

It's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Batman #675

I'll go first

Jezebel Jett:  Wow, what other shadow puppets can you do?

Now it's your turn!

Box Office Blitz Week 19 Results

Not that surprising of a result this week.  I'm going to hurry with this since the Internet has been cutting in and out all day.

The numbers were:

1. Fake Star Trek 2 $70M
2. Iron Man 3 $35M
3. Gatsby $20M

And everyone except Briane Pagel got a trifecta.  Which is too bad for Briane because if he had guessed Gatsby at #3 he would have won.  Instead, the winner this week is Michael Offutt, despite the confusing way he phrased his pick.

As for the bonus question, Fake Star Trek 2 made about half of what Iron Man 3 did its opening weekend, so the answer was decidedly LESS.  The winner of 200 points is Stephen Hayes.

And to answer Cindy's question, picks have to be in by Saturday morning at the latest.  Otherwise you could read the report on Friday's take which would make it too easy to win.  Here's the updated scores:

	Box Office Blitz
	Scoreboard
		19	Total
1	Tony Laplume	300	7700
2	Andrew Leon	300	6150
3	PT Dilloway	300	5850
4	Rusty Carl	0	4550
6	Michael Offutt	800	4100
5	Maurice Mitchell	300	3700
7	Briane Pagel	200	3300
8	Stephen Hayes	500	1900
9	Cindy Borgne	0	1300
10	David P King	0	200
11	Donna Hole	0	200
		2700	38950

Before and After

I've been playing around more with the Sims 3.  I spent some time downloading hairs and clothes and such to make them better than the standard game options.  The best new thing about the program is being able to recolor clothes and accessories as well as hair and eyes.  I was playing around at trying to create some characters I made in the Sims 2 in the Sims 3.

This is Stacey Chance as you should know by now.  As you can see, she's got the same hairstyle, but the Sims 3 color is a tad different.  The hoodie sweatshirt with the green accent and black T-shirt is actually much closer to what Stacey wears in the book than the Sims 2 variant.

You should recognize this one as Dr. Emma Earl, aka the Scarlet Knight.  She's a little bit different, but for the most part I think she looks pretty similar.  As you can see, she's not a supermodel.

This is young Emma.  I thought I had zits installed in the game but I can't find them, so lucky for her.  I think the Sims 3 one for this turned out pretty good.

Besides being able to recolor stuff, the next best thing about the Sims 3 is being able to make fat characters.  Before as you can see they didn't turn out looking all that great because you had to manually puff out cheeks and download clothes specially designed to make her fatter.  So Emma's friend Becky Beech looks better in the Sims 3. 

This is Dr. Dan Dreyfus, Emma and Becky's beau.  He looks a lot studlier in the Sims 3.  Besides making characters fatter, you can also make them more muscular.  So while Dan is a nerdy scientist, as you can see he also keeps in shape.  (Being able to make hulking dudes with six-pack abs is a good reason for Michael Offutt to go buy this game.)

This is Kari.  I think the face is better on the Sims 3 one though I like the shininess of the hair in the Sims 2 one.  And I don't know why there aren't necklaces in the Sims 3 except with some outfits.  Her neck just looks bare.
 

And this is Val.  The hair is a little bit different, but it was nice I could recolor the headband in the program instead of having to do it in PaintShop Pro.  The freckles aren't as visible and the glasses are too shiny in the Sims 3.  I wish I could find the same outfit for the Sims 3, but I can't.  Dang it.  If only I could do that myself.

I did find an annoying flaw in the game.  In the Sims 2 pretty much any hair would work on any age Sim from Toddler to Elderly.  For some reason in the Sims 3 hairs are divided between Toddler/Child and Teen-Elderly.  I spent hours then importing child hairs into the game only to find for whatever reason it won't include them!  It was really annoying because I wanted to make Emma's daughter and I had like a dozen crappy choices.  Grrrrr.

The good thing is next year the Sims 4 comes out.  Just think of all the fun I can have with that!

Box Office Blitz 19

This week we really get into "summer" movie season now that we have two blockbusters on the slate.  That will make things more interesting.  Or not.

In case you've forgotten how to play, the point of the game is to choose the top 3 movies of the box office this weekend.  For each one you get right you get 50 points.  You get another 50 points for each one you get in the right place.  A 500 point bonus goes to the winner.  The ultimate winner gets $25 while the 2nd place finisher gets $15 and the 3rd place finisher gets $10.  And every participant who doesn't place in the top 3 gets a free ebook.

Now then, on with the show.

Here's the list of movies from my local megaplex (* denotes a new release)

• 42
• Disconnect 
• Evil Dead
• Iron Man 3
• Jurassic Park 3D
• Mud
• Oblivion
• Olympus Has Fallen
• Oz the Great & Powerful
• Pain and Gain 
• Peeples
• Scary Movie 5
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Star Trek Into Darkness*
• The Big Wedding
• The Company You Keep
• The Croods
• The Great Gatsby
• The Iceman*
• The Place Behind the Pines 

My picks this week will be:

1. Fake Star Trek 2 $150M
2. Iron Man 3 $50M
3. Gatsby $15M

You make your picks in the comments.  And don't forget the bonus question!

This week's question will be worth 200 points.  Here's a simple one:
Will Fake Star Trek 2 make MORE, LESS, or THE SAME than Iron Man 3's opening of $175M?

(And yes I'm aware I'm in the small minority who didn't like the first "Star Trek."  From what Neil Vogler says I won't like this second installment any better.  Really makes me leery about seeing what JJ Abrams is going to do to Star Wars.  Honestly I don't think this guy is the type of creative genius who can replace both Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas.  Editorial over.)

The results will be posted sometime on Sunday afternoon, whenever I need a break from packing stuff to move.

Thursday Rant: You Can't Fight City Hall, Inc.

Kicking it old school!

(I was planning to review Iron Man 3 in this slot...then I was lazy last weekend and didn't go watch it.  So now you get to read another epic Grumpy Bulldog rant.  I think that's a fair trade-off.)

Sunday I was lamenting how someone (or someones I suppose) bought and refunded my entire Chances Are series in sequence over a few days.  Against my better judgment I decided to email Amazon about the problem.  Because a snowball's chance in Hell is still a chance, right?  Or just sometimes it helps to reaffirm my cynicism.

As expected they just sent back a generic email about their refund policy.  When I pressed the issue, they pretty much just said "Meh."  Rest assured they have monitoring in place...but it's so Top Secret they can't tell you what it is.  Gee, I feel sooooo much better now!  I've been screwed out of book sales but you're monitoring the situation.  Whew, I can rest easy tonight.

This issue reminded me of last year when a set of GI JOE DVDs I'd ordered got sent to the wrong address.  The seller claimed the post office had spontaneously forwarded my mail to a previous address, despite that I'd had no problem with mail delivery in 2 years.  Who did EBay side with?  The seller, of course.

The really irksome part in both cases is these companies expect me to accept an explanation that is completely illogical.  The post office just up and decided to send my mail to a previous address.  It's just coincidence that someone bought and refunded three books IN SEQUENCE over the span of about a week.

More maddening than that is their attitude is so cavalier about it.  They brush you off, essentially saying, "What are you gonna do about it?  We have billions of dollars and hundreds of lawyers, so what can you do to us?"  And the answer is...probably not much.  Maybe if I were hot like Erin Brockavich I could organize a class-action lawsuit against Amazon or EBay.  Since I'm not, that's not likely to happen.  I could just stop doing business with Amazon and EBay.  I could go buy a Nook and start reading books on that.  That reminds me of a scene from the Simpsons where Moe rips off a drink Homer created--"the Flaming Homer"--and in a fit of rage Homer shouts, "You've just lost a customer!"  Except Moe can't hear him because he's surrounded by too many customers.  The gist being that losing one customer doesn't matter because there are plenty to fill the void.  And that's how Amazon and EBay are; even the thousands of dollars I spend on Amazon a year are a drop in the bucket for them.

This happens on smaller scales too.  Like when I tried to complain about a noisy neighbor.  What did the apartment complex do?  Nothing much.  Maybe sent a letter.  Then sent me a letter basically saying I should call the cops.  So basically they just went "Meh."  Because I already signed the lease, so they didn't really give a shit.  Plus it's not like they were going to evict the other assholes so long as they paid their rent; why lose a paying customer?

Another annoying way we get screwed over by companies:  software "upgrades."  Argh!  I could probably count on one hand the number of software upgrades I've actually liked.  As an example, last year our company switched from Office 2003 to Office 2007.  I HATE Office 2007.  They took all the buttons and options I'd known where to find since the mid-90s and scattered them to the eight winds.  So for weeks I had no idea where to find anything.  Eventually I found most stuff, but still I don't consider it an improvement.  Office 2013 isn't much better, though at least using Office 2007 prepared me for that.  I complained last Saturday about how the new PowerPoint won't import images from my backup hard drive without making them microscopic so to get around it I had to load all the stuff from that drive (what was on my old computer, including the graphics used on this blog) and load it to Facebook so I could get them to import.

And while we're talking about Facebook....I HATE Facebook when it comes to "upgrades."  Most of the time they aren't much of an improvement and the cavalier fashion they introduce them is so annoying.  If I didn't find out ahead of time from Mashable or other users, most of these "upgrades" would take me by surprise because they don't tell you when they're doing them.  One day you'll log in and your timeline or news feed or privacy settings will just be radically different.  All because some 26-year-old kid in a hoodie thought it'd be neat to do this or that.  Well I'm a 35-year-old guy in a shirt-and-tie and I don't want you fucking around with things without telling me.

Though I think the problem there is I want to think of my Facebook as MY Facebook.  Whereas Zuckerberg and company would say it's really THEIR Facebook and I'm just borrowing the space.  Thus they can do whatever the fuck they want to it whenever the fuck they want to and what are you gonna do, go use Google Plus?  Your friends and family ain't on Google Plus, sucka, so we own your ass!   (Actually one fun upgrade to introduce would be to make your Facebook talk like a pimp; you can already make it talk like a pirate.  Arrrr matey!)

Let's not even get started on the big banks and oil companies.  The end result is that I feel completely impotent.  It's not even like David v. Goliath; it's more like my year-old niece against Godzilla.  There's nothing I can do except maybe go live like a hermit in the woods and forage for all my food...except big companies or the employees of big companies own all the woods that the government doesn't own--and they own the government too!  The only time they can be stopped is if millions of people get together, like when millions of Netflix users bitched about that stupid "Qwikster" thing they put an end to that in a hurry.  But unless you can rally hundreds of thousands or millions of people to your cause, you're screwed because they don't care about you or your complaints; not so long as they're rolling in dough.

Maybe things were better in the old days when you could actually know the guy who owned the grocery store, the hardware store, etc.  They were probably more willing to work with you back then because they didn't have billions of dollars and they probably knew who you were; you weren't just an email address to some dude named Ganesh in New Delhi.  So if you got into an argument about something you could keep hounding the dude about it for months or years afterwards.  Maybe the Chubby Chatterbox can confirm the accuracy of this.

To take this to a darker place, this I think is part of the reason for so many violent rampages.  People feel too impotent and dehumanized by the world around them.  So to try to take the power back they get a gun and go shoot a bunch of people.  Which is definitely not the way to handle it.  I suppose all we can do is like that old saying goes, "accentuate the positive" and just look for silver linings wherever we can find them.  So maybe I got screwed out of 3 books, but I have sold a few others.  And I did eventually get my GI JOE DVDs (from Amazon...irony!).  And most software "upgrades" we can grudgingly come to accept.  So that's something, right?

Speaking of big corporations ripping people off, tomorrow's another Box Office Blitz!  Which mindless entertainment will we spend money on to distract ourselves from the dehumanizing reality of the world?

Everyday Heroes 5/13

Mali has been a hotbed of violence in recent months as Al-Qaeda has taken up resident in the North African state.  As they did in Afghanistan previously, they've been destroying things they find "offensive" including books.  But some Everyday Heroes in Timbuktu have fought back to preserve some of these valuable books from being destroyed.  It's like "Schindler's List" only with books!

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — For eight days after the Islamists set fire to one of the world's most precious collections of ancient manuscripts, the alarm inside the building blared. It was an eerie, repetitive beeping, a cry from the innards of the injured library that echoed around the world.

The al-Qaida-linked extremists who ransacked the institute wanted to deal a final blow to Mali, whose northern half they had held for 10 months before retreating in the face of a French-led military advance. They also wanted to deal a blow to the world, especially France, whose capital houses the headquarters of UNESCO, the organization which recognized and elevated Timbuktu's monuments to its list of World Heritage sites.

So as they left, they torched the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, aiming to destroy a heritage of 30,000 manuscripts that date back to the 13th century.

"These manuscripts are our identity," said Abdoulaye Cisse, the library's acting director. "It's through these manuscripts that we have been able to reconstruct our own history, the history of Africa . People think that our history is only oral, not written. What proves that we had a written history are these documents."

The first people who spotted the column of black smoke on Jan. 23 were the residents whose homes surround the library, and they ran to tell the center's employees. The bookbinders, manuscript restorers and security guards who work for the institute broke down and cried.

Just about the only person who didn't was Cisse, the acting director, who for months had harbored a secret. Starting last year, he and a handful of associates had conspired to save the documents so crucial to this 1,000-year-old town.

In April, when the rebels preaching a radical version of Islam first rolled into this city swirling with sand, the institute was in the process of moving its collection into a new, state-of-the-art building. The fighters commandeered the new center, turning it into a dormitory for one of their units of foreign fighters, Cisse said. They didn't realize only about 2,000 manuscripts had been moved there, the bulk of the collection remaining at the old library, he said.

The Islamists came in, as they did in Afghanistan, with their own, severe interpretation of Islam, intent on rooting out what they saw as the veneration of idols instead of the pure worship of Allah. During their 10-month-rule, they eviscerated much of the identity of this storied city, starting with the mausoleums of their saints, which were reduced to rubble.

The turbaned fighters made women hide their faces and blotted out their images on billboards. They closed hair salons, banned makeup and forbade the music for which Mali is known.

Their final act before leaving was to go through the exhibition room in the institute, as well as the whitewashed laboratory used to restore the age-old parchments. They grabbed the books they found and burned them.

However, they didn't bother searching the old building, where an elderly man named Abba Alhadi has spent 40 of his 72 years on earth taking care of rare manuscripts. The illiterate old man, who walks with a cane and looks like a character from the Bible, was the perfect foil for the Islamists. They wrongly assumed that the city's European-educated elite would be the ones trying to save the manuscripts, he said.

So last August, Alhadi began stuffing the thousands of books into empty rice and millet sacks.

At night, he loaded the millet sacks onto the type of trolley used to cart boxes of vegetables to the market. He pushed them across town and piled them into a lorry and onto the backs of motorcycles, which drove them to the banks of the Niger River.

From there, they floated down to the central Malian town of Mopti in a pinasse, a narrow, canoe-like boat. Then cars drove them from Mopti, the first government-controlled town, to Mali's capital, Bamako, over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from here.

"I have spent my life protecting these manuscripts. This has been my life's work. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer protect them here," said Alhadi. "It hurt me deeply to see them go, but I took strength knowing that they were being sent to a safe place."

It took two weeks in all to spirit out the bulk of the collection, around 28,000 texts housed in the old building covering the subjects of theology, astronomy, geography and more.

There was nothing they could do, however, for the 2,000 documents that had already been transferred to the new library, to its exhibition and restoration rooms, and to a basement vault. Cisse took solace knowing that most of the texts in the new library had been digitized.

Even so, when his staff came to tell him about the fire, he felt a constriction in his chest.

The new library is housed inside a modern building, whose sheer walls are made to resemble the mud-walled homes of Timbuktu. Cisse braved his fear to slip through the back gate on the morning of Jan. 24.

The alarm was still screaming. The empty manuscript boxes were strewn on the ground outside in the brick courtyard. All that was left of the books was a soft, feathery ash.

Cisse then entered the library. The glass cases in the exhibit room were empty. So was the manuscript restoration lab, its white tables blanketed in dust. The manuscripts left out were gone.

But the librarian knew the bulk of the books was in a storage room in the basement. With the alarm still screaming, he walked down the flight of pitch-black stairs.

The room had been locked shut. And he was too afraid to open it, because the mayor of Timbuktu had warned residents that the retreating rebels had mined the town and booby-trapped strategic buildings.

So he waited.

On Jan. 28, a column of more than 600 French troops rolled into the city.

The same day, they came to inspect the institute. They spraypainted in pink the word "OK" in front of each room they cleared, working their way to the basement. They pummeled the locked door. When the door slapped open, Cisse felt as if his chest was about to explode.

They beamed a flashlight into the darkness. In the pools of light, he made out the little bundles of parchments sitting on the rafters. They were where they had left them nearly a year ago, in a room the Islamists had never discovered.

The director-general of UNESCO toured the damaged library this weekend, alongside French President Francois Hollande, who made a triumphant visit to Timbuktu. She described the manuscripts as a global treasure. "They are part of our world heritage," said Irina Bokova. "They are important for all of Africa, as well as for all of the world."

Cisse estimates that what was lost in the end is less than 5 percent of the Ahmed Baba collection. Which texts were burned is not yet known.

He stresses that all the manuscripts, which date back over 700 years, are irreplaceable. They are hand-written in a variety of scripts, and include ornate illustrations embedded within the text.

The collection is itself only a portion of the estimated 101,820 manuscripts stored in private libraries here, the product of the confluence of caravan routes which passed through Timbuktu and fostered an extensive trading network, including in books. Among the most valuable are the Tarikh al-Sudan and the Tarikh al-Fattash, chronicles which describe life in Timbuktu during the Songhai empire in the 16th century.

"We lost a lot of our riches. But we were also able to save a great deal of our riches, and for that I am overcome with joy," Cisse said. "These manuscripts represent who we are.... I saved these books in the name of Timbuktu first, because I am from Timbuktu. . Then I did it for my country. And also for all of humanity. Because knowledge is for all of humanity."

Maybe this story will never get made into a Spielbergo picture, but it is an important story to remember.

PS if you're wondering about the comments, I read Jessica Stank's article on Google+ comments and decided to give it a go.  But then I read the fine print and it says you need a Google+ account or profile to comment and I'm pretty sure many of my regular commenters do not have that.  So everything old is new again!

Two-Cent Tuesday: Second Chance

Last month I talked about the Chances Are series, which begins with Chance of A Lifetime. Incidentally, you can download that book for FREE in any format on Smashwords right now--no coupon code needed!  (The idea being if you like it you'll actually pay money for the other two, though I tend to believe people will download the first one and not read it for a year or two and then probably not buy the other two.  Prove me wrong!)  Now here's book 2:  Second Chance!

Whereas Chance of a Lifetime was perhaps more action-oriented, especially at the beginning and end, Second Chance is more drama-oriented.  It takes place a year after the first one.  Stacey is still a young woman and finding it difficult to make a real life for herself.  This is emphasized when she goes on a date with a guy and just about everything goes wrong.  She speaks with Dr. Palmer, the doctor who's trying to find a way to make Stacey back into Steve, who recommends Stacey go see a therapist she knows named Dr. Robert MacIntosh.

Later Stacey goes out with her friends Madison--also Steve's estranged daughter--and Grace, whom Stacey had a brief affair with.  They go to a karaoke bar and there Stacey discovers that her female body has a real talent for singing.  She even gets a gig at the bar for a few days later.

But during the gig Stacey starts to develop stage fright and flees in the middle of it.  Madison eventually tracks her down.  But then Stacey and Madison are both abducted!  They're drugged and taken to an old warehouse.

There Stacey finds out the one who kidnapped her is named Dr. Ling.  A year ago Ling's father died while trying to buy the formula for the drug that was used on Stacey.  His son has been trying to make his own version of it and so has captured Stacey to analyze the drug still in her system.  Maddy is just a nice bonus for him.

Eventually Ling gets his version ready to test, first on Maddy and then on Stacey.  The end result is that they both become little Chinese kids--Maddy becomes 5 and Stacey becomes 10.  Ling plans to take Stacey and Maddy back to China so he can show them off and then eventually dissect them for science.  But a kindly nurse helps Stacey and Maddy escape.

Stacey and Maddy find Jake Madigan--Steve's old partner, in whose house Stacey had been living.  Jake convinces his wife to take the little kids in and then they begin to look for a way to change Stacey and Maddy back to normal.

Since this promises to take a long time, Stacey and Maddy try to live like normal kids.  With some help from Dr. MacIntosh they get enrolled at a snooty boarding school, where Stacey makes a new friend and develops a crush on a boy in her class.

The gist is that Stacey gets to have a childhood of her own.  This helps her to sort out some of the issues she'd been dealing with as an adult.  Plus it brings her closer than ever to Madison.

But all good things must come to an end...

You can buy it here in all ebook formats from Amazon, B&N, or Smashwords--it's up to you!

Here are a couple of Fun Facts.  When I was thinking up the story I knew I wanted Stacey to discover some gift from her sex change.  It seemed pretty obvious that going from a man to a woman couldn't make you a better painter or sculptor or writer (I assume).  But music seemed like a viable option, especially singing since Stacey would have a different voice than Steve, not only because Steve is a guy but also because Steve smoked like a chimney for 35 years so his voice would be like a bucket of gravel falling down a flight of stairs.  As far as what Stacey sings, she ends up singing a lot of old Cole Porter songs.  Why?  Why not?  Really, I have no idea.  I hadn't hardly listened to any of them ahead of time; it was just one of those things I picked almost randomly and then created a bunch of stuff to make it fit.  Stacey's singing career takes center stage (punny!) in the third book.  Both this one and the third book feature a verse from an original song, which was just enough to make me realize I shouldn't try to write songs.  Josh Joplin I am not.

Comic Captions 5/13/13

It's time for another Comic Captions, where your job is to recaption a comic book panel.  The goal of course is to make it as humorous as possible.

This week's comes from Man of Steel #5

I'll go first

Clark:  Who the hell are you?

Jor El:  I'm the fridge security system

 
Now it's your turn!