My Science Fiction Fantasy

You know, there are a lot of things in life that get under my skin. So I won’t start this paragraph by telling you there’s nothing that pisses me off more than this one thing. But it does bother me a frightening lot. I mean, most people would think I was being petty and oafish if I complained about it publicly. So I’ll just do it here privately on this here little forum, you see?

So moving along, there are, as I said, many things that bother me. And this is just one of them. I absolutely cannot stand that everywhere you go, Science Fiction and Fantasy are grouped together. Petty? Inane? Shrug. Maybe so. But it really bothers me. Because some people like one or the other, and not both. I, for one, love some science fiction. I like some space opera, which it seems most of the sci-fi genre has moved to, but I really like pretty much anything fictional that involves sciency stuff.

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SpaceBrew Review: Insidious

I finally watched this film last night. I’ve been wanting to see it for a long time, and my daughter wants to see it too. So I needed to watch it so that I could screen it and see if it was going to be okay for her to watch it. Under supervision, of course. But yeah, I’ve been wanting to see this for some time. I love getting the cobbles scared out of me. And this was touted as being one of the most terrifying movies ever made. Well, it’s kind of hard to get my red-haired wife to agree to sit down in the dark with me and watch a scary movie – much less the scariest movie ever filmed. And oh, it has to be dark.

So I finally got the chance last night! I was so excited. I turned off the lights and got my couch all centered and up close, turned off the dryer and all of the walk lights in the house. Made sure it was nice and quiet. I wanted absolutely no breaks or attention thieves. I was going to get the ever loving holy horse dung scared out of me. Oh man, I have to tell you about this too. I had to force myself to stick with it. My red-haired wife had fallen asleep next to me with a blanket over her face. And I’m here to tell you friends, I literally had to force myself to finish watching it. Because it was so absolutely, horrifically, incredibly… stupid.

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SpaceBrew Review: Slaughterhouse-Five

I have begun my endeavor to read a series of classic books, so that I can fully appreciate and understand the cultural growth and development the industry and art has undergone. I want to be weller read, to put it bluntly. So I bought the classic masterpiece entitled Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Let me first tell you the accolades that adorn this book’s jacket: it was ranked number 18 on the all-time most influential and best literary works of the last century. One of the best and most important books ever written. So clearly we’re not dealing with a lightweight here. And I also happened to luck into this one, as it just happens to be about time travel. I felt like reading this book would be like killing one bird with two stones! I was excited to curl up by my virtual fire with my new eBook Reader and delve into this imaginary world of time travel and literary prowess.

I should just go ahead and end the review there, because everything great I have to say about the book is just parroting what others have already said. But just like one can say the phrase “nice things about the IRS” no one can actually say nice things about the IRS. Yeah I said those great things about this book. But I was merely quoting. I don’t feel that way myself. And it’s a damn shame. I was so excited to participate in something so grand that so many millions of people have read! But here’s my little secret that I shall now share with you, dear reader: I think most people voted this book five stars because they’ve seen the ratings it already has. And they didn’t get it either. So as not to sound like a moron, or not seem intellectual, or – perhaps even more plausible – not to sound like they don’t ‘get it’, they jumped on the bandwagon. Clearly, ten hundred million people can’t be wrong! You didn’t think the book was a masterpiece? Well, aha! You just don’t get it.

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  • Reading time:8 mins read

Congratulations, America! You win!

Way to go, the United States of America. On Independence Day – the day in which you celebrate your nation’s birth – the most important day in this country’s history – you host a hot-dog-eating contest. Let’s all celebrate our nation’s freedom and make ourselves look even more gluttonous and stupid and self-serving and arrogant by stuffing our obese faces with tubes of processed pig intestines and giraffe anus. I can think of no greater glory!

This hot-dog-eating contest has become a staple in American entertainment. These skinny little dudes eat fifty-plus hot dogs in a matter of minutes. They dunk them in bowls of water so they’ll go down more quickly and easily. Do you know how bad hot dog buns (or any bread, for that matter) taste when they’re soaked with water? Yeah, me neither. You know why? Because it’s gross!

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I Hate Websites That Suck

It seems that in this age, everyone is required to have some sort of web presence. Even if it’s just to tell everyone what your name is, that you have a cat and you like listening to the Jonas Brothers. Everyone has a Facebook page. I don’t even know what happened to MySpace, but it has very clearly been supplanted to the far less flashy Facebook. Everyone has a Twitter, from which they let all of their followers know exactly what they’re doing all day long, every single day. The ridiculousness of all this is getting ridiculous. And there’s your opening paragraph.

First of all, no one cares about you and your stupid cat. No one cares that you like Justin Bieber and James Blunt. You don’t need to take up space on a web server hard drive somewhere just to tell people about your pathetic existence. Nor does anyone care that you’re STANDING IN LINE AT PIGGLY WIGGLY AND IT’S TAKING FOREVER OMG LOL WTF!!!!1 Do something useful with your life. Take down your stupid alliteratively titled website (e.g. Hannah’s Heaven, Carol’s Closet, Mykynzy’s Mansion) and post instead, something useful.

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25 Years Later: Chernobyl

Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the tragic disaster that ruined Chernobyl and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I’ve read the story many times over the years, fascinated by the insane breakdown of events that put them in that predicament, and it gets more interesting every time I read it. But it also depresses me greatly.

The greatest weakness in the system was humanity. We caused the catastrophe. Humans are a stupid, self-serving, arrogant bunch. And that arrogance changed Chernobyl and the surrounding towns – basically making them unlivable for the next thousand years. That’s when it will be safe to move back. But there will still be radiation for up to seventy thousand more years.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Trifecta of Idiocy

Have you ever had one of those days where you just can’t do anything right? Well I haven’t. Everything I ever do is right. Ahem. Okay, well sometimes maybe I make a mistake or two. But… Okay, well sometimes I have those days too. And it seems especially bad when it happens to me because usually when I start messing up, people start getting hurt. I’m not sure why, but it just seems to work out that way most of the time.

For instance, the other day at my nephew’s birthday party, we all went to Blortbortham’s Seafood & Sausage House over on Cooper Street. I was carrying my two-year-old princess on my shoulders, walking around the restaurant so we could see what people were eating. I would stop by a table and bend over to examine their plates and ask them if it was any good. “How’s the squid bladder with octopus semen sauce?” I would ask, for instance. Some of the patrons seemed put off by the fact that I was asking them what they were eating, but come on – you’re in a public eatery! You should expect to have some human interactions with strangers.

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A Sour Taste in my Mouth

I was going to write this column yesterday, but got really busy and didn’t end up having time. And now, it seems that delay might have been serendipitous, at least in that I might use fewer curse words in my text. You see, my faith in humanity has once again plummeted. Which is odd on the whole, when you consider the fact that it was already so low as to be considered subterranean. In fact it hit the base rock and got out an auger long, long ago. But you know, that’s the great thing about humanity: it never fails to amaze me with how shitty it can get!

But like I said, I’m glad I ended up waiting, because something terribly awesome happened last night that restored a little tiny bit of that faith. That faith in humanity is strengthened when you realize there are businesses out there made up of human beings who care about people. Or at least they care about money and are so good at making it that they can afford to give away free stuff. Like laptops. Yes, I am, in fact, writing this on my new Google Chrome CR-48 laptop. Thank you for asking. It just arrived on my doorstep last night. I had even forgotten I signed up to be in the pilot program. Yes. Google sent me a free laptop. And it’s probably the most awesome notebook I’ve ever seen. Slicker than whale snot on an ice rink.

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Open-Source My Life

Here in the last several months, I have begun to embrace the open-source. I have gone off the corporate teet, one might say. I no longer support the big boys just because they come standard and they’re the most well known and popular. Just because they’re the most well known does not always necessarily mean they are the best. And since I have stopped supporting the big guys, my life has gotten markedly better. Allow me to explain.

You see, there are some products out there whose brands have become synonymous with the product they’re selling. Kind of like how everyone says, “Hey, I have some chunky green snot with some hard furry flakes in it, can you pass me a Kleenex?” Facial tissue would be the proper term for it, without applying the brand name. Another popular one is “Hey guys, let’s set up some plastic cups on the Ping-Pong table so we can see them chicks’ boobs!” Table tennis is the brand-detached term for the game.

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Space Vs. The Heater Bot

I’ve just ended my weeks-long battle with my heater bot. And while it might not be an interesting story to some, I feel like I should write about it in case anyone else ever runs into the same problem and needs some ideas for a fix.

You see, I’m of the opinion that if I can pay someone to come out and fix something in my home, I can darn sure fix it myself. Or I can at least try. I am not afraid to enlist the experience of my buddies and neighbors if they know something I don’t. But so far I’ve found I’ve been able to repair everything myself, and the only detriment to doing it myself is that it takes a little longer. Since I’m not an expert in any of these things that typically go wrong, I just have to use common sense and work backwards on the issue, troubleshooting and just figuring out what it could possibly be. Which, if you don’t know the system, takes a little longer. But it’s a lot cheaper than calling someone out and paying a trip fee and their marked-up parts cost and whatnot.

So you remember when my cooler bot went out during the summer. Well, my cooler bot and heater bot are part of the same physical unit. And in repairing the cooler bot part of it, I disabled part of the heater portion. So here’s what I did, how I eventually came to repair it, and why it took so damn long.

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