Lord, You Have Assigned Me My Portion and My Cup. (Psalm 16:5)

"I'll Follow the Sun" or "I'll Swallow the Fun", you decide...

Greetings one and all! Dave the Flatulent here, with another daily dose of hot air...

Went to my first "writer's group" meeting tonight... I suppose I should start there, since that's the big news of the day. The other three writer's are a cool bunch. We are working on 4 vastly different projects, which is interesting, to say the least.

Jesse is working on a zombie novel, which is (I exaggerate not) better  than most of what I read last year (with the exception of a few titles at/near the top of my list of '09 reads over there). It's a great, great read. RoseAnn is working on a book that is hard for me to classify... not sure I should try... it's sort of a humorous, fictional retrospective piece, written in the first person from a woman's perspective as she deals with her husband and a couple other close family members... not sure what to label that as... and Erick (the group leader) is writing a dark, somewhat occultish mystery novel... not exactly a genre I'd choose to read for entertainment, but it could prove interesting.

And then my fantasy novel... the sample I sent was well-received, and well-critiqued, lol. Hey, Vye and Abbie, they all liked your characters so far! I haven't told them yet that all the characters are based on real people... there wasn't much time to discuss the project itself, it was more a chance to send people material and then gather to hear their suggestions for improving said material...

One thing I learned (eventually!) was that it's not supposed to be a group discussion, per se... when one person is offering notes on the submitted chapters, the other two members are supposed to listen quietly until it's his/her turn to offer critique... I thought it was a round-table thing, and kept chiming in when others were discussing... it finally dawned on me that protocol is to wait until it's your turn, or until you are specifically asked something. Ah, well, it was my first night...

So it's a good group, and I look forward to getting help... though I'm still not finished with the first draft! These guys are working on polished/rewritten segments of their (presumably finished) scripts. I guess I'm going to have to split time between finishing the rough draft and polishing material to send off each week...

OK, enough of that...

I got my books from Amazon today, yay! The Superfoods book by David Wolfe, and my Complete Beatles Songbook. And my sister ordered this workout program called P90X that is supposed to be all the rage currently. She's going to let me make dupes of the discs and try it out - I just have to buy a set of those giant rubber bands and a chin-up bar... so my plans to revamp both my diet and my physique are nearing reality! I'll get all ripped and healthy, then you'll all love me again... I mean, I lost a lot of love by making you read so many paragraghs about my Writer's Group meeting tonight... I have to earn it back somehow...

Here's a cool video for you...

A few months back, I posted a video of a prank a guy played on his buddy (they're locked in an epic internet prank war), where he secretly arranged for his friend to be selected from the crowd at the halftime events of a professional basketball game, and given the chance to sink a blindfolded half-court shot for five-hundred grand or something... while the friend was off signing the release papers, the pranker got on the mike and told everyone about the prank, asking them to cheer wildly after his friend missed the shot, to convince him that he'd actually made it and won the dough. Then his pal would come out with the big fake check and reveal the prank. It was pretty funny, actually...

Anyway, in this video, a high school in Kansas decided to pull the same prank on their coach, blindfolding him, spinning him around, and having him try a shot... they were all going to cheer and prank him into thinking he made the shot... the only flaw in the plan was... the coach actually made the shot...



Wow, was all that build-up worth the video? Something tells me not. Hmm. I guess I'm stuck in Terminally Boring Mode tonight...

Well, maybe this will work. Over on Kristopher's Blog, he has a post called The Top 10 Things George Lucas Did To Ruin Star Wars, which is worth reading if that sort of thing interests you. Over in Logan's Blog, he has some good thoughts on The Bible and Bigotry. Definitely worth reading, I thought. And on Rebecca's Blog, she's planning on a series of posts sharing some juicy material she received at a Writer's Conference a few years back, that is languishing on her shelf... if you're a writer, check in now and then to see the info she shares; it should be a benefit.

Hmm... no Funny Pictures to share tonight...

Well, over on This Is Why You're Fat, some guy posted a pic of a BLT sandwich with a pound of bacon on it...

You can go over there to see many, many other gastronomical disasters, if that sort of thing interests you. Like watching a dietary trainwreck, I suppose...

OK, I'm done. I hope your week is progressing well. See ya when I see ya...

Dave