Happiness is a Forest of Nose Hair...

Greetings, Earthlings! Nice planet you have here. Mind if I stay for a while? I promise I'll turn the lights off when I leave...

Tonight's Top Story: I bought and read Red Country by the Great Joe Abercrombie. I'm not going to do a full-on review for two main reasons. 1) Because there are tons of apt reviews out there already, and more everyday, so why reinvent the wheel, eh? and 2) Because I'd feel bad putting a less-than-stellar review of an Abercrombie book out there again (like I did for Best Served Cold).

Of course, a third possible reason to avoid doing a review is that I often have a hard time steering clear of spoilers! Yeah, I know... poor, foolish, undisciplined me.

Bottom line, my long-awaited reunion with Logen "The Bloody Nine" Ninefingers did not quite go as I'd hoped. The book had its strengths, certainly, but there were odd story choices made, too many flat characters, a little too much skim-worthy description, and a couple key characters who just didn't seem to be right somehow... it's hard to explain. The last two pages were VERY well done, and did a lot to recapture a lot of the lost love to that point... well, maybe not lost love per se, but rather love that never really began to accumulate from the outset. Basically, the read was rather grueling and tedious.

Don't get me wrong, to me, Joe is still The Man, capital M, but I'm thinking maybe this one needed some more time in the cooker, and maybe some fresh eyes reading drafts along the way. Or maybe not, what the heck do I know. It's not like I've ever finished a book-length manuscript. So I'm likely full of saddle soap.

Anyway, I'm certainly glad I read it, and I'll certainly read it again at some point down the road, but it certainly ain't The Heroes, that's for sure.

I'm sure novel writing at this level is like making hot dogs in any case... all we readers get are the results... no real idea about all that had to go into it.

By the way, here's how hotdogs are made...



umm.... wow.... not sure what to say after watching that...

So I added Red Country to my 2012 Read List over there in the side column, and then decided (on whim, really) to rearrange the list based on my favorite reads. So the books I enjoyed the most (and recommend the highest) are at the top, and rank down the list accordingly. The only exception to that is Save the Cat, which is kind of in its own category (being non-fiction, about screenwriting) and so I didn't know how to rank it. I put it at the bottom, but that doesn't mean it was the worst book. It's actually a very good book, taken for what it is.

So my annual sinus infection/head cold thingy has made its traditional November appearance, making my nights pretty miserable for the last few. Ah, well, that which doesn't kill us makes our noses run, right? I think that's how it goes. In my case, when a man with a nose my size gets congested and tries to sleep, well, let's just say my snoring registers on the Richter Scale as a swarm of small earthquakes. Woke up the other morning to find Wifey gone and sleeping downstairs. I've decided to sleep downstairs until this clears up. Let her have the bed.

My apologies for that comic. I've been wrestling with whether it's in too poor taste to post, even for this blog (low standards and all). But after much internal debate, self-inflicted charlie horses and lemon juice in my eyes, I've decided that my penchant for Junior-High Level Humor has overruled my desire to avoid offending the, shall we say, "normal and mentally balanced" among my (no doubt rapidly dwindling) reader pool.

To make up for it, wash your eyes out with this...

So the slab leak repair was a success, but a dry-waller needs to come and repair the walls, etc. caused by the leak repair Plus, the pipe leak in my office is a problem, due to a hard-to-reach region of the house innards where the problem is. So that's not resolved. Plus, the new oven installation was a complete failure, for reasons far too boring to elaborate on. Gotta wait another week to get the new oven. So far, the home repairs are almost 1 for 4. Not too good...

So an online friend of mine (Glenn H.) is a writer and voice actor, and puts on lots of radio-type programs, with characters and humor, etc. He's started a new series called "5 Minute Classics" and had an audition call. So I figured what the heck, and I recorded the sample lines of dialog for a couple of the characters and sent them off to him. The deadline for auditions is 11/26, so I'll have to wait until that time to see if I got any of the parts. The first episode is for Pride and Prejudice. Sounds fun. I recorded for Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley and the Narrator. We'll see. I'll let you all know if I get any of the parts, and either way, I'll link to the final show when it's available.

In fact, if you think you'd like to audition, here's the link with the info.

And now.... the Cup Cake Cannon...



Not much to say after a clip like that. Except that reminds me... you never call me Cupcake anymore...

OK, I'm out. Got some Piranha work to finish tonight. Gotta hit the road. I only hope that Santa comic doesn't backfire on me...

Adios for now...

Dave the Gump