You Taught Me That People Will Do Anything for a Potato.

Greetings again, friends and navels, Dave back, with another daily dose of wind... better crack a a window; I ate a lot of string cheese today...

Lots of bits and pieces to hit today, as is my custom. As usual, I'll begin with the most important bit: I suffered another devastating loss at Facebook Scrabble today, this time to Havah the Great. In fact, I'm on the verge of losing to Cathy again as well. I suppose I was due for a severe humbling, but I ask you... how much can one man take? I mean, I'm not made of stone! (I have the midsection to prove it, nyuk nyuk). I am made of flesh and bone (and pudge) like every other man! Should I be forced to endure such levels of pain and disgrace? Is this to be endured? It shall not be! Your alliance would be a disgrace! Your name would never even be mentioned by any of us...

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, yes, the Movie Quote Contest! It has begun again for September. Let me go over the rules again, in case some of the newer readers would like to participate. I'll try and artfully wedge in movie quotes throughout my blog post each day. If you can identify a quote, paste it into a comment, and tell me the movie it comes from, you get 5 points. That's 5 points for each quote. IMPORTANT: I still have the 3 quote per day limit on the newest post... once a new post has been made, then all of yesterday's unclaimed quotes are up for grabs, free-for-all, whoever grabs them first. I hope that's clear enough. 3 quote limit on the latest post... and a free-for-all on any quotes left over from the previous post. Any questions, feel free to ask and I shall elaborate. Hmm? I should make the contest rules simpler? Thank you, but maybe you should let me handle the big decisions!

This month's prize: a $20 Amazon gift card, w00t. You can't listen to this and not dance! Go for it! Remember, Google is your friend.

Oh, another thing: I'm also occasionally including Bible Quotes in the contest this month again. So if you see something that might be a verse (NIV), and can tell me where it's found, same thing, 5 points.

OK, where was I?

More casting news on the HBO production of A Song of Ice and Fire. 7 more major roles have been filled, but I've never heard of any of the actors before. Not that they are all newbies - some have established careers on stage and in film. Head over to GRRM's Not A Blog and scroll down to find out the details. Still a ways to go with the casting, but they seem to be on schedule to begin filming the pilot in October... not sure how much longer it will be before the pilot airs. Not that I'll see it anyway... unless I find someone I know that has HBO and I can watch it over there...

Today is the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War 2. I saw an awesome collection of WW2 propaganda posters online today, linked from a snippet on Boing Boing. The gallery is over at LIFE magazine's website - HERE's the link. Anyway, I have to admit, of all the posters they had on display, I think I liked the Russian ones the best. Here are a couple of my faves (click to enlarge)...

We would not seek a battle as we are, yet as we are, we say we will not shun it.

Well, for starters, you could give me your left arm...

You're standing on ground where I've buried hundred. This is my land!

Doesn't look like General MacArthur to me...

Obviously, that last one wasn't Russian, but the art is killer, methinks.

Might as well hit the rest of Todayve in History while I'm at it...

Todayve In History: September 2
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- Spetember 2, 1666: The Great Fire of London breaks out, and will burn for 3 days, destroying 10,000 buildings. (This town's gonna burn!)

- September 2, 1789: The US Department of the Treasury is founded. (I wonder where all the treasure went...)

- September 2, 1901: USVP Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous line, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." (Doesn't he have a noble brow? If I were a boy, I'd want to look just like that.)

- September 2, 1969: The first ATM machine in the US is installed in NYC. (Look at me! I'm the King of New York!)

Among those celebrating birthdays on September 2nd are: Tony Alva (1957), Keanu Reeves (1964), Lennox Lewis (1965), and Salma Hayek (1966).

In honor of Salma Hayek's birthday, I would play a clip from Desperado, if I could find one without profanity. Sorry, no dice. If you wanna see a clip, you gotta go track it down on YouTube yourself!

I made some updates to Wagnervana today. I uploaded and formatted my devotional under the Writings section - I set it up like a blog, each day's entry like a blog post, so it would be easier to navigate and also allow for comments. It's called Convinced, and it was published a few years back - 2001 or so, I believe. Anyway, that's up there now. And I put up one of my plays as well, just to try and find a decent way of putting them up there. I'd hate to get all of them up and then finally figure out the best way to display them, and have to redo everything. I put up a play called Shift, that we performed back in the day. It's a fun script - one of my faves, I think. Though, like a true writer, I pretty much love them all... a "true writer", lol... yeah, someday, maybe... we bare our souls and tell the most appalling of secrets...

Guess I should segue into this month's Shelf Portrait...


A quick snapshot of one of my shelves, with some of my books on it, mostly fantasy... mostly. I know it's sort of shelf indulgent of me to post a pic like that, but I can't help myshelf! If I can't just be myshelf, who can I be? If you click the pic, it will zoom nice and big and you can check out the titles up there. Here's the breakdown of the stats on those 20 books...

• I've read 12 of them, only one of them (With the Old Breed) more than once.
• I started to read 3 of them (Jones, Kearney & Keyes), but abandoned them.
• I have yet to read 5 of them... coincidentally, the same five I just recently received.

This is kind of fun! I think I'll catalog all of my books and do a breakdown of the numbers, and chart it out. Sure! I'll do it sometime when I have nothing else to do [insert massive eye-roll here]. It reminds me of a website I recently discovered called Information Is Beautiful, run by a chap named David McCandless, an author and stats-head from London. His self-proclaimed goal: "I'm interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through the BS and reveal hidden connections, patterns, stories underneath." In other words, a grand excuse to design really cool charts and graphs. He's charted out such interesting topics as: A Timeline of Global Media Scare Stories, Twitter Stats, Caffeine vs Calories, How Many Nukes it would Really Take to Destroy the Earth, and my fave, a Movie Monster Comparison Chart.


And many others. Check out the site if you're intrigued by numbers and are ever bored.

I guess I'll pull the plug, eh. Thanks for reading through to the bitter end. What say you? Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief? Until tomorrow, remember, be careful Preston... you're treading on my dreams.