Archive for category Blog
Weekend Debate: Hot Dogs vs. Hamburgers
Posted by Jason in Blog, Food, Holidays, Weekend Debate on May 24, 2013
Here it is, Memorial Day Weekend. It’s officially the Kick-Off Weekend for Summer (which, come to think of it, I’m surprised the NFL hasn’t tried to get in on, really). All across the United States of ‘Merica, good hard-working folk will be icing down summery brews, doing a little light yard work, opening up swimming pools, and lighting their grills for some BBQ-ing that in most cases isn’t really barbecuing at all.
More importantly, there will be parades and honors, cemetery visits, respectful moments of silence, and prayers to thank the fallen and lost.
And then it’ll be time for a little cookin’ out, because if there’s one thing the good ole U. S of A. knows how to do, it’s cookin’ out.
Well, that and obsess over stupid, pointless celebrity train-wrecks, but that’s neither here nor there. Read the rest of this entry »
School. Is. Out!
Wow, by the way I put that exclamation point there, you’d think I was excited about it or something. As if it meant I was getting some kind of summer vacation.
Yes, well, I’m not. Summer break for me means little more than I’ll find myself wondering why there are children still underfoot past the usual bedtimes. Because, see, they’re allowed to stay up a wee bit later in the summer, so long as they’re behaving.
As much as I like to complain, though, summer is even harder for the Puddinette, who now gets to entertain four children seven days a week. Children, by the way, who will almost certainly spend the entirety of their summer vacation theoretically “bored.” Oh sure, they’ll have some fun for a while. But, you know, that’s gonna last about an hour and a half. The “bored” section of our programming will set in quickly after that. In fact, I’m guessing it hit roughly 10:30 this morning.
But, you know, I think I wrote all I needed to say about the end of the school year and the start of summer in this post, roughly a year ago. You should go read that. Why? Because it includes fancy, awful images drawn by yours truly, such as the one below. Enjoy!
Welcome to summer break, I hope we all survive it!
Pud’n
I call BS on the G-I-F
Posted by Jason in Blog, Opinions, Rant, Technology on May 22, 2013
I’m taking a very very brief moment out of today’s work-family-oh-did-I-mention-it’s-the-last-day-of-school-writing-like-a-panicking-fiend schedule today to address something very very near and dear to my heart.
Just in case you weren’t aware, the internet is as full of animated images as your aunt Glenda’s house is full of cats, mothballs, and canned produce that looks like snot. Some of you might even know the name of the format for those animations. For those that don’t, they’re called “gif” files, which is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. And if that’s not the kind of sterile, technical thing a geek would name something, I don’t know what is.
How a book gets written
Okay, so this isn’t, like, step-by-step instructions detailing how I go about concocting all the words that eventually make up draft zero of a new novel. I mean, if you really want to read about that, I’ll be happy to give you a big bulleted list that’ll mostly be alternating points of weeping into the bottom of a coffee cup and basting myself in shame. But I suppose that might be interesting.
But, um, that’ll be a long post. So sorry, no time now. After the draft is finished, I swear.
A quick warning and a tale of two books
I’m not messing around when I said “a quick warning,” because I’ve reached that point again. I’ve got the last few chapters of OTHER THING in my sights, meaning I expect to finish it this week. Huzzah for finishing drafts of books, right? Right.
Except.
I’ve given myself a pretty firm deadline to type the “The End” on draft zero, and it’s one I don’t want to miss. As you can see, though, as of the time of this posting, I’ve still got almost a third of the book to yet scribble down. Now, I know that seems bad, but trust me, the end parts come out quickly. It’s the middles where a writer will tend to drag his feet like a kid headed for the dentist’s chair.
Anyway the point is that posts will be light this week. I know, I know, “they’ve been light”, you say. You have a perfectly valid point. I’m sorry. But trust me, it’ll all be worthwhile. I swear.
And by “worthwhile”, I make no specific promises of any kind. Sort of like your typical game show host.
Weekend Debate: Movies in theaters vs. Blu-Rays at home
Posted by Jason in Blog, Movies, Weekend Debate on May 17, 2013
Since I went to all the trouble of detailing the summer movies of 2013 that I intend to see, two of them have hit the theaters already. And somehow I’ve yet to set foot in the MegaUberCineplex or purchase a single kernel of exorbitantly overpriced, heart-clogging movie popcorn. Obviously, this makes me have a little sad. I mean, back in The Day, I’d happily wait in line at midnight, no matter what day of the week it was nor what time I had to be somewhere, you know, important, in the morning, to see a premiere.
As I’ve said before, though, I don’t have that kind of time anymore. Something about raising four-fifths of a basketball team while working full-time and trying to squeeze in an hour or so of writing regularly and, oh yeah!, not neglecting the poor Puddinette. So nowadays, if I really really want to see a movie, I generally go to see it at the Creeper’s Showing, which is always the 10 PM-ish viewing on Sunday night.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Trust me, go see a movie about then. You’ll pick up on what I mean. I swear I’ve had entire showings to myself before. Which is, admittedly, nice, but then again, I always end up wondering if there’s something creeping up behind me.
Or maybe that’s just me?
Evidence of my continued existence
I swear I’m not dead. I just had to do some traveling this week. I spent two more wonderful days in lovely Wallingford, Connecticut. But I’m happy to say that by the time this post is publish, I’ll be at 29,000 feet or something, winging my way home after a brief stopover in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then again, can you really say you’ve been in and/or to a place if you’ve only spent a few hours in their airport?
Now that I really consider it, I think maybe not. I mean, I didn’t even have any pulled pork or sweet tea while I was here. Oh sure, I thought about hiking all over the terminal in search of some, but I hardly think the citizens of Charlotte would want me to judge their prowess at barbecuing pork butt by airport terminal kiosk purveyor.
A movie in 100 words or less: Here Comes the Boom
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this or not (and quite frankly, I’m too lazy at the moment to open a web browser and type in a couple of search terms to find out, which seems like I’ve leveled into a whole new echelon of slothfulness, if you ask me), but I’ve been doing an absolutely miserable job of curating my Netflix queue lately. I mean, I believe I have some of the most recent releases somewhere in the basic vicinity of the top of the list for the disc-by-mail service. Then again, I once believed I could run so fast no one would see me. So, my personal faiths might not be the best thing to hang your hat on.
The worst thing is, I’m also not remembering to remove movies I don’t need to get anymore. Case in point, a few weeks ago, I watched The Hobbit via pay-per-view – because, I’m impatient like that sometimes – and then, just three short days later, received that very film by mail because I’d forgotten it was currently King of the Queue.
And nobody’s got time to watch three hours of the same first third of a book twice, knowutImean?
Weekend Debate, Mother’s Day Edition
Posted by Jason in Blog, Family, Weekend Debate on May 10, 2013
I wrote a Debate post last year for Mother’s Day, back when the “Weekend Debate” was still the “Saturday Debate”. What you should takeaway from that is that last May, I was fool hearty enough to think believe could squeeze a discussion topic post out every Saturday afternoon. Clearly, this was before I realized my weekends often make the President’s daily agenda look simple. And he’s got an entire staff to keep him on track.
In fact, I think I’m going to start referring to the Puddintopia writing area as the East Wing. Because, why not?
Summer Movies for 2013 in, well, more than 100 words
I didn’t really intend to start a whole thing when I wrote last year’s summer movie preview post. But the time went by and summer became fall, Halloween gave way to holiday fun, which then became cockle-shrinking, frigid, horrible winter. All horrible, overdone things end eventually, though – at least, that’s what I tell myself every time I see they’ve made another Hangover movie – and so winter became spring, and now, we teeter once again on the edge of summer.
Which means that it’s time for More. Summer. Movies! Huzzah!
As I looked over the list of movies coming out this summer, one thing became abundantly clear right away: there was no way in pink, puffy, Marshmallow-Land I could possibly give you 100 words about each of the motion pictures I’ve got checked on my “to see” card this year. If I did, this post would scroll longer than a Beyonce contract rider*, and most of you would die of old age or extreme disorientation before you got to the end. Plus, bed sores.
Well, I guess not everyone reads my blog on a tablet in bed. Can you get “office chair sores”? “Toilet sores”?
Ahem. Right. Off topic. Rambling, even.
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