If you missed my prancing, see here: http://theonethousand.blogspot.com/2010/07/prancing-through-bookstore.html
A couple of days ago, a guy at the store asked for something and as we walked back to get it he said, "Man, you must have been an athlete. You move like a gazelle!" Certainly the first time I've ever heard those words. And I'm quite confident that he wasn't hitting on me. If this keeps up, people will demand to see video of me walking around.
The magnificent Harlan Ellison says that he is dying: http://www.isthmus.com/isthmus/article.php?article=30610 Which makes me a sad gazelle. You can listen to my open letter to Harlan Ellison on this subject here at the very beginning of the latest episode of StarShipSofa's Aural Delights: http://www.starshipsofa.com/20100929/aural-delights-no-156-robert-reed/
If you want to read my latest published work, head over to Twitter where Grant Stone's embryonic fanzine, b0t, is tweeting my Twitter serial, CITY1. One part is being released each day in October. Look: http://twitter.com/b0tzine If you're not familiar with Twitter, you'll have to read those posts (marked with the hashtag #CITY1) from the bottom up.
Showing posts with label job. Show all posts
Showing posts with label job. Show all posts
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Thursday, March 19, 2009
You Tweeted Me, You Tweeted Me
Hey! I just sold The Creepy Little Mailbox Man to Everyday Weirdness! Yay! It should be up on March 22nd for your eyeing pleasure.
If you're wondering about the title of this post, first off, you have to sing it to the tune of Anne Murray's You Needed Me. Secondly, it's there because people were tweeting lots of things I wanted to share.
@paolobacigalupi linked to this excellent article: The Gospel of Consumption.
For the past couple of months I've been asking people and just plain wondering, in light of what we see in the economy, is it impossible to run a healthy economy in which people can also save their money? I had my suspicions about how it could work and this article confirms them. Our economy today is based on businesses which want to make as much money as possible and consumers who feel the need to buy way more than they need. Dump as much money as you want into the system and it will all flow to the top given our current behaviors. Of course, when we dump all the money into the top in the first place, the people don't even get their products, they're by-passed completely. So, please, if you want to save, do so. Empowering the current economic model to screw you isn't your responsibility.
@expatpaul tweeted a link to this, and when you think about it, it fits in the last item. The media convinces us that what the government and corporations want is good for us:
Nobody tweeted this, but I think I might:
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. - Stendhal
@jfmarchini tied it all together in a brilliant summation by Bill Watterson (It's a Calvin and Hobbes comic so click on it already): https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiV-UaiqGZYeP1MA-4BtAqxBMCGeo4GBBG5WGX76bGITYyfL7rBQpNZjI7Kp_vfyeU_Vj0UQiFnaKLPEZ89MoyP66a-Z2WRgaVbiVGq7BjR9UuzRqoCyVtJPTe3GLOumrePS4d/s1600-h/CalvinHobbs.BM
And on a fun, non-economic note:
@steveattwitter turned me on to this yesterday. Found it on youtube through HuffPo so I could embed it today and it seems to be popping up all over the web. Steve is a trend setter:
Lastly, I worked an early shift today and my co-manager turned on the 8os Muzak before we opened the store. I heard this song which I hadn't heard in over twenty-five years and had forgotten it even existed. It's a wonderful little thing to rediscover something like that:
I've got sheep, I've got Split Enz. Grant's going to think this is all about him. I just realized I mentioned Calvin and Hobbes and Stendhal in the same post. I'm the living embodiment of Generation X.
If you're wondering about the title of this post, first off, you have to sing it to the tune of Anne Murray's You Needed Me. Secondly, it's there because people were tweeting lots of things I wanted to share.
@paolobacigalupi linked to this excellent article: The Gospel of Consumption.
For the past couple of months I've been asking people and just plain wondering, in light of what we see in the economy, is it impossible to run a healthy economy in which people can also save their money? I had my suspicions about how it could work and this article confirms them. Our economy today is based on businesses which want to make as much money as possible and consumers who feel the need to buy way more than they need. Dump as much money as you want into the system and it will all flow to the top given our current behaviors. Of course, when we dump all the money into the top in the first place, the people don't even get their products, they're by-passed completely. So, please, if you want to save, do so. Empowering the current economic model to screw you isn't your responsibility.
@expatpaul tweeted a link to this, and when you think about it, it fits in the last item. The media convinces us that what the government and corporations want is good for us:
Nobody tweeted this, but I think I might:
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. - Stendhal
@jfmarchini tied it all together in a brilliant summation by Bill Watterson (It's a Calvin and Hobbes comic so click on it already): https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiV-UaiqGZYeP1MA-4BtAqxBMCGeo4GBBG5WGX76bGITYyfL7rBQpNZjI7Kp_vfyeU_Vj0UQiFnaKLPEZ89MoyP66a-Z2WRgaVbiVGq7BjR9UuzRqoCyVtJPTe3GLOumrePS4d/s1600-h/CalvinHobbs.BM
And on a fun, non-economic note:
@steveattwitter turned me on to this yesterday. Found it on youtube through HuffPo so I could embed it today and it seems to be popping up all over the web. Steve is a trend setter:
Lastly, I worked an early shift today and my co-manager turned on the 8os Muzak before we opened the store. I heard this song which I hadn't heard in over twenty-five years and had forgotten it even existed. It's a wonderful little thing to rediscover something like that:
I've got sheep, I've got Split Enz. Grant's going to think this is all about him. I just realized I mentioned Calvin and Hobbes and Stendhal in the same post. I'm the living embodiment of Generation X.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Sons And Daughters
Just a quick check in here. I want to get to bed earlyish. Up at 5 and then to work. Did a rewrite that I'm happy with today. We'll see how that goes. Here's Sons and Daughters by the Decemberists. I love the song. I love many of their songs, actually. The action in this particular vid is rather . . . static. But just hit play and go and do other things online while you listen to it.
Nighty!
Nighty!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Bubba Ho-Tep
The job really gets in the way of real life. Stupid money!
I've got to get on the stick and start reading, reading, reading for the next Fiction Crawler. There's one in the hopper already, I mean the one after that. I've got writing to do, clothes and dishes to wash, a bathroom to clean . . . Let me just stop saying things so I don't depress myself.
Not much here. Dog turned ten today. The family had a mini-party for her. Not the sort of thing we usually do, but ten is pretty good for a dog. I don't think I ever had a dog that lived that long, or that I've owned that long.
Saw Bubba Ho-Tep today. The movie rocks! It is just fucked-up crazy. I didn't know it was rated R when I rented it. I brought it over to the former wife's house and said, "Hey everyone, we have to check out this film!" The first three lines of dialogue were so foul my teenagers actually left the room, and we're not exactly born-agains. The former wife loves Bruce Campbell and the two of us loved the film. It's based on a Joe R. Lansdale story. Check it out.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
The Greek Legacy
See, I can make fun of customers here because none of them will read this blog. Today while I was helping a customer, a second customer approached my fellow employee, Paula, and asked, "Do you have Suh-FAH-klis?" (I'm writing it the way she said it, emphasis on the middle syllable.) I was thinking it was some nutty New Age philosophy or twist on an eastern religion. I don't know what tipped Paula off, maybe the lady showed her what she wanted on a slip of paper as she said it, but Paula asked, "Sophocles?" and the lady said, "Yeah, that's it."
This reminded me of a phone call from about a month ago. A guy asked me if we had The Writings of Aristotle, Volume 1. While I was looking it up on the computer, he asked a someone who was with him, "Hey, who wrote that?"
Which in turn reminded me of a joke my dear friend, Aslan (No, he was not a lion), used to spout whenever the Greeks came up. He used to talk about the famous Greek philosopher, Testacles (You want to say it like he did, for that special Greeky flavor - TEST-uh-cleez). I like to think of old Testacles as the father of urology.
This reminded me of a phone call from about a month ago. A guy asked me if we had The Writings of Aristotle, Volume 1. While I was looking it up on the computer, he asked a someone who was with him, "Hey, who wrote that?"
Which in turn reminded me of a joke my dear friend, Aslan (No, he was not a lion), used to spout whenever the Greeks came up. He used to talk about the famous Greek philosopher, Testacles (You want to say it like he did, for that special Greeky flavor - TEST-uh-cleez). I like to think of old Testacles as the father of urology.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
My Little Hunter
The boy and I spent Thanksgiving at the wife's house. She stuffed us magnificently as usual. I got in a little golf on the Wii and dragged my score down. I'm out of practice, but at least I'm still pro.
We watched the new Futurama movie, Bender's Game. I'm sure there'll be a lot of haters out there like for the last one, but I loved it. It had a Dungeons & Dragons theme as the ads made clear, but they didn't spend as much time in the fantasy setting as I thought they would. Lots of Lord of the Rings jokes, D&D jokes and an inordinate amount of dwarf-eating. The family mostly slept through it as I laughed.
After my nap, I got up to see that my wife and her dog were gone. My dog, Cutie (I didn't name her), was whining to go out so I took her out and she struggled to run as she always does. She's a hunter and I assumed that she was on the scent of my wife, daughter and their pug, Pepper. I figured we'd catch up fast so I jogged behind her (as best I could). They weren't to be found right away, but I knew the dog was on the case.
She's the kind of dog that can take care of herself if left to her own devices. Years ago, when we would let her run loose, I'd find pieces of rabbit in the front yard. She ate well. She's almost ten, but she's got a clean bill of health from the vet and she's young at heart. I trusted her. We searched.
My wife sometimes takes rather long walks, so I wasn't put off by the lengthening journey. I kept thinking that we were about to find them around the next corner and my wife would say, "How did you find us here?" and I'd point proudly to my dog and say, "She tracked you here!" My wife would say, "No way." And I would say, "Yeah way." And then my wife would be so impressed that she'd call her sister on the other side of the state and her mother in Brooklyn and tell them about my incredible dog and they would be equally impressed.
We probably got past the mile and a half mark when I realized that Cutie had brought us around in a small loop and into a new direction I didn't think my wife would take. I checked the next street sign, walked a little farther and looked down at the dog.
"Bitch, you don't know where the fuck you're going, do you?" I said. She sniffed and tried to keep on. "No, I'm taking over now," I said and we made our way back. It was dark, it was cold (yes, it was only Florida cold, but if you live here for twenty years, it's the same as regular cold), and all I was thinking was, They're all just going to laugh at us now. My wife, my daughter, her sister, her mother, maybe even the pug. Cutie had seemed so confident!
Finally we got back. My wife said she had just walked around the corner, sans daughter, maybe two blocks away and come back, surprised we were gone.
My little hunter.
Now I walk and walk and walk, it's been part of my job for years. I can walk for miles and it doesn't bother me. But on this excursion, I moved pretty quickly, using my muscles in a running way more than a walking way, so three miles or so have messed me up. For some reason my left ankle told me to go screw. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't want to bend upwards any more, either. So I've been walking around like some sort moronic monster movie creature for the last four hours, having to lift my leg up more than normal to move my foot forward. My wife and daughter got good laughs. Not Futurama type laughs, but good just the same. Here's hoping I'll be closer to normal in the morning.
We watched the new Futurama movie, Bender's Game. I'm sure there'll be a lot of haters out there like for the last one, but I loved it. It had a Dungeons & Dragons theme as the ads made clear, but they didn't spend as much time in the fantasy setting as I thought they would. Lots of Lord of the Rings jokes, D&D jokes and an inordinate amount of dwarf-eating. The family mostly slept through it as I laughed.
After my nap, I got up to see that my wife and her dog were gone. My dog, Cutie (I didn't name her), was whining to go out so I took her out and she struggled to run as she always does. She's a hunter and I assumed that she was on the scent of my wife, daughter and their pug, Pepper. I figured we'd catch up fast so I jogged behind her (as best I could). They weren't to be found right away, but I knew the dog was on the case.
She's the kind of dog that can take care of herself if left to her own devices. Years ago, when we would let her run loose, I'd find pieces of rabbit in the front yard. She ate well. She's almost ten, but she's got a clean bill of health from the vet and she's young at heart. I trusted her. We searched.
My wife sometimes takes rather long walks, so I wasn't put off by the lengthening journey. I kept thinking that we were about to find them around the next corner and my wife would say, "How did you find us here?" and I'd point proudly to my dog and say, "She tracked you here!" My wife would say, "No way." And I would say, "Yeah way." And then my wife would be so impressed that she'd call her sister on the other side of the state and her mother in Brooklyn and tell them about my incredible dog and they would be equally impressed.
We probably got past the mile and a half mark when I realized that Cutie had brought us around in a small loop and into a new direction I didn't think my wife would take. I checked the next street sign, walked a little farther and looked down at the dog.
"Bitch, you don't know where the fuck you're going, do you?" I said. She sniffed and tried to keep on. "No, I'm taking over now," I said and we made our way back. It was dark, it was cold (yes, it was only Florida cold, but if you live here for twenty years, it's the same as regular cold), and all I was thinking was, They're all just going to laugh at us now. My wife, my daughter, her sister, her mother, maybe even the pug. Cutie had seemed so confident!
Finally we got back. My wife said she had just walked around the corner, sans daughter, maybe two blocks away and come back, surprised we were gone.
My little hunter.
Now I walk and walk and walk, it's been part of my job for years. I can walk for miles and it doesn't bother me. But on this excursion, I moved pretty quickly, using my muscles in a running way more than a walking way, so three miles or so have messed me up. For some reason my left ankle told me to go screw. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't want to bend upwards any more, either. So I've been walking around like some sort moronic monster movie creature for the last four hours, having to lift my leg up more than normal to move my foot forward. My wife and daughter got good laughs. Not Futurama type laughs, but good just the same. Here's hoping I'll be closer to normal in the morning.
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