These are current events, anniversaries, local happenings, etc.

A Flutter in the Window

I have spent the last 42 days splitting my time between my second-storey apartment and a hidden complex of glass-walled rooms we call the lab. I could go into great detail about the lab, how all the walls on the inner rooms are made of glass from waist-high to the ceiling, and how if you are standing in D Room and look back toward the elevator it sort of feels like you're in a carnival fun house. Someone could easily just stand still in the hallway between the elevator and the D Room, and you probably wouldn't see them because of all the weird, eerie reflections and glares. I could go on at length about the creepy machinery here in the D Room, the circulator and the penning trap, or the centrifuge… Or how about the awkward and cumbersome helmet that hangs in the corner on a shiny steel post,…

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Meet the Author

If you read this site and you’re here right now, this message is for you. I write some books sometimes. I write real good, to. And people are starting to take notice. No seriously though. My buddy Spencer is the director of the public library where I live. And he thinks I write good to. So the library is going to host a Meet the Author night at the library, and I’m the author you get to meet! I know, I know, most of you have already met me. But it would still be fun for you to show up and pretend we haven’t met. You could walk up and shake my hand and act all star-struck and whatnot, and I could introduce myself, and people who don’t know you will think I have a ton of followers who have never met me. Followers who read authors who write real good.

Exciting times though, these are. Spencer will be ordering a large stack of each of my three novels to give away at the signing. Apparently the night will start with my lecturing for a bit about the perils of living in 3D, followed by some advice on being a writer in this here Metropolis and not in LA or New York. You don’t have to live there to write, you see. Following that will be a question answering session. I will be asking the audience a series of questions and seeing how good their answers are, in other words. At least this is my perception of the definition. And then I’ll sign some books. And that will pretty much be it. Well, aside from the after party at the Broken Anchor Pirate’s Pub.

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Six Pints for Doug

Okay, let’s just get this on the record. It’s funny, I can no longer find anything about it on the Internet anywhere. Does this mean that we are the only ones left participating in the tradition? I can’t imagine that. Let me know if you can find anything about it. Maybe there are local groups who could join forces or something. I don’t know. Anyway, I just want to put this on the record for anyone who is interested in getting into this tradition.

Do you like music? Do you like beer? Do you like friends? Do you like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Do you like websites? Well if you answered no to any of those questions, you’re probably not reading this website, because you wouldn’t like it. If you have not read the book I mentioned, you should go ahead and put that on your To Be Read list. Seriously. If you like my site, you would probably enjoy it. You would probably enjoy it anyway. But then, once you’ve read it, you’ll have a better appreciation of who Douglas Adams was.

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First Day After The End Of The World

We had a party last night. The invite said “Apocalypse Party. What better way to go out than hanging with friends, with a drink in your hand!” I guess we ended up with about twenty people over there. I served from my two kegs full of homebrew, and people brought various six-packs and variety packs of beer. Which I guess is cool, because now I have probably twenty unique types and brands of beer in my BeerFridge. Twenty that I’ve never tried. Pretty cool, I say. But what about the real question here?

Why didn’t the world end?

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Happy Birthday, The Bug!

Today is my youngest daughter's birthday. It is also, however, comma, the ten-year anniversary of the death of Douglas Adams. So which do I write about? Well, duh! How much can you say about a two-year-old's birthday? Seriously? Who cares? I mean, I can't think of-- hang on... I'm being told by... What's that? I am? No? Oh. Okay. Never mind. Apparently we're uh... Let's... Well, let's just back it up a bit. So as I was saying, of course I'm going to talk about The Bug's birthday! I mean, how exciting! She's two years old! And!... And!... Two! Can you believe that? Okay! That's it! On a serious note, it is pretty crazy how quickly time flies. Remember when I wrote this column on the day she was born? Yeah dudes. Two years ago. Now she's running around, talking little baby talk, saying things all cute, climbing up stuff,…

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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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SpaceBrew in Hibernation Mode

Good morning, SpaceBrewers! Just a quick note to let you all know that we’re coming into the winter season here at the Brew. It sort of lines up with the winter season the weather patterns follow. But what that means is that we spend less time in front of the computers and more time in front of a fireplace, or wrapped in the stinky, rotting carcass of a Tauntaun.

In the end, and in the interest of sparing you all from minutae and random hogwashical white noise, we will be cutting back our writing to once a week apiece. I’ll be writing on Mondays, Haycomet will write on Wednesdays, and we’ll continue to write our award-winning collaborative column, Bacon Talk, on Fridays. So just basically cutting out Tuesdays and Thursdays gives us, well, something like two days we can relax.

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Here’s To Tradition

Well we did our annual remembrance of Doug Adams on Tuesday night, with a few minor changes. Now the tradition is to setup six pint glasses and fill them all, then you drink them all. Not much to the drinking part. You can slug them if you want, or you can savor them. Either way is fine, because in the book, Ford Prefect slammed his and Arthur Dent sort of just sipped on it. Hell, he didn’t even finish his three before his house got knocked down.

Well we’ve got some new blood in our crew now. Stout and I have been practicing this ritual since the year after Douglas passed away. Well now we have Two-Step and Siege in the group. Two-Step sort of has to be there since she’s my wife and all, and I really sort of don’t like doing anything without her these days. The whole “existing” part of existence gets pretty shitty when she’s not around. And Siege, my newest partner in crime, has decided to become a member of the Brotherhood. Well, that is after we invited him to. Not just anyone can decide to get in, you see. Anyway, yeah, so there you have it. Our two newest members of the group.

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No More Goodbyes

I promise – no more farewell letters. I do think it’s important to let you all know when I plan to take a hiatus. But if you look back through the history of this site, you’ll find several ‘goodbye, this is it, no more columns’ type columns. It’s getting to be like the little boy who cried. A very relevant imageAm I rite? I have never lost the passion for writing. I just sort of go through seasons. It’s actually quite annoying, because that’s the way I am with all of my hobbies. Camping is conveniently appropriate, because I don’t like to do much camping in the winter. But I find myself going through periods lasting months where I don’t even pick up my guitar.

I do plan on writing some more here. Maybe even frequently. We shall see. I am presently contacting several people I think would fit in well here among the pages of the Brew. I think you’ll be hearing some more from Captain McRight and maybe even Stout. But I’m also lining up some new writers from whom you’ve not yet heard. We’ll see what happens. I’m not counting my wolves yet. We will have some good fresh content up here though, you can take that to the eggs.

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Introducing SpaceBrew Radio

Well, it finally happened. I finally branched out into the final facet of media into which I had not yet tapped: radio broadcasting. I’ve been on television, I’ve made records, I’ve written books, and I’ve been writing my life on this here site for some ten years now. But I’ve never had my own radio show. Well, now I do.

I don’t expect it to be anything big. I’d like to think we’ll get ten or fifteen listeners a week, but we’re really just here to have fun. So here’s the format: talk/rock. Nothing fancy. See, I don’t have an ASCAP or BMI broadcast license to play other people’s music. At least not yet. I don’t know if I’ll go there. I don’t need to get licensed so I can play music you can hear everywhere else. But I wouldn’t mind being able to play a song or two if we’re talking about it or something. Anyway, I may or may not grow into that.

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