Make it stop...

Sweet bleeding Yeshua on a fucking crutch. I just spent over half an hour on the phone with Symantec's customer support for a problem that was a two minute fix. Y'know why? The person that was supposed to be helping me didn't fucking speak English!

For the sake of clarity, I live in the U.S. and was born here so English is my native tongue. When I call a U.S. number to get support for a U.S. product while I am in fact inside the U.S. it is perfectly reasonable to expect the person assigned to help me to be fluent in the same language as me. It's beyond reasonable. It shouldn't ever come up that this is not the case. But no. No. I spent 30 or 40 minutes saying the same shit over and over and over AND OVER again and trying like hell to understand the clicks and whistles that were being shot at me in return. Apparently when I dialed the number I was transferred to the fucking Oort Cloud where operators are indeed standing by.

What. The. Hell.

When it was all over I realized that if we had spoken the same language I would have been in and out of that phone call in under 5 minutes and that's counting the time I waited for the next available Oort Cloudian. It was not to be. Now I have a headache and I can feel my blood pressure reaching critical mass. I'd rather tear off my own leg and use it to kick myself in the balls for an hour than go through that horseshit again.

According to the recording that I heard while I was waiting I might get an email asking me for feedback about my experience. I dare you to send me one. I fucking dare you. I'd call them and ask to speak to someone about it but what the hell good would that do when all the numbers send you to customer service reps that are orbiting Azathoth in the swirling center of chaos.

I fear my head may actually explode this time...

Prepare for glory

I had the opportunity last night to see an advanced screening for 300. Now I normally hate adaptations with a hot and fiery passion as most of them take a giant shit on the source material and find new and interesting ways to suck besides. I went in hoping for the best but expecting the worst. My hope was fulfilled.

This movie is amazing. Flat out, full tilt, I want it to bend me over and ride me hard amazing. I don't have a bad word to say about it. Not one. For me this is an event.

Obviously you shouldn't try to use it as a history lesson. Using movies for that at all is idiotic to say the least. This is the battle of Thermopylae funneled through Herodotus by way of a fever dream. If you are a fan of Frank Miller, go see it. If you are a fan of movies, go see it. Hell, if you are a fan of anything remotely entertaining, go see it and if you hate everything then go see it anyway because you will finally have something to not hate.

If you watch this movie and don't wish that you could have died there with those men then you are not alive.

I am still geek, hear me roar even louder

The first of two annual Horrorfind conventions was held this weekend and man was it awesome. For the uninitiated, Horrorfind is a horror convention (an aside for any passersby that just read that and started to tilt their head back to better look down their noses at all things horror and the people that enjoy it, fuck you, go very far away and fuck yourself there) that features authors, actors, directors, art shows, an enormous dealer room, movie screenings and a bunch of other cool stuff. Normally they just have one in August but this year they're having two. Listen to my complete lack of complaint. Anyway, here's how I spent the last two days.

Day 1

I was primarily concerned with spending a lot of money in the dealer room, meeting some writers and trying to catch a screening or two until it was time for the panel discussion that night, so into the dealer room I went.

Cool stuff here, cool stuff there, holy shit a Troma Booth! stupid crap there, cool stuff, why is this table selling so much Brian Lumley stuff when he's a worthless hack thief who will burn in hell when he dies which will hopefully be soon? I gave this booth the evil eye and moved on.

I ended up at the joint booth of Borderlands Press and Cemetery Dance Publications. Two great tastes that make my pants get tight together. Borderlands is a highly respected small press and is run by Thomas Monteleone who is also a damn fine writer and a great guy besides. I've talked to him before and he's the kind of guy you want to be friends with. Wait a minute, says I, is that...that's F. Paul Wilson sitting in the booth with him. (There were four writers that I was dying to see there, Monteleone, Wilson, Jack Ketchum and Ramsey Campbell. Campbell had to cancel at the very last minute because of some passport trouble and I was heartbroken) F. Paul Wilson created Repairman Jack which makes him better than you and everyone you know combined. Internally I screamed like a little girl.

I scanned the tables, talked to the frabjabulous writers about this and that for a good long time and spent a small fortune on a ton of books. I love the small presses. I was well pleased. Well pleased indeed. It found a way to get better.

I wandered over to the celebrities room and zeroed in on Jack Ketchum. I'd never met him before and didn't know what to expect. Talk about a guy you want to be friends with. I want to hang out with him everyday. We talked about books (his and others), movies (his and others), TV shows (we have very similar taste), book covers, other writers and at one point we spotted Adrienne Barbeau across the room and determined that she is still hot and has probably made a deal with the forces of darkness to stay that way for so long. I talked to him for twenty minutes or more, bought some of his stuff that is very very hard to find, made one final fanboy gush in his direction and left to make my way around the rest of the room. I saw numerous people that made my geek gland pulse. After this it was time to head upstairs.

The screening room ran Friday the 13th I, II and VII. Fun and a good time was had by all and sundry. It was time for the panel discussion! Yay!

I went into the panel room and found a weird kind of thing in progress. Some very small time writers and some fans were in there doing their thing and having a blast. Everyone was helping themselves to the big bottle of Captain Morgan on the table. This wrapped up and the room was set up for the panel discussion (The Pros and Cons of Writing Awards). A HUGE bottle of Wild Turkey materialized from somewhere and was liberally distributed to everyone that held out a cup. The panel members arrived and sat down (the three authors I mentioned before, all multiple award winners, a newish mid-level writer that had been nominated for two awards and one brand new writer who found herself currently up for best first novel from the HWA) and they too dove into the Wild Turkey. They made a rule that everyone that came in the door after that moment had to take a shot as punishment for their lateness. Everyone did a shot to celebrate this ruling.

The panel was lively to say the very least. As a fan I found the discussion fascinating but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say that it was very informative and, long story short, most of them consider the awards themselves somewhat toxic at best because of the way all the organizations act behind the scenes but acknowledge that it will drive sales among casual readers. There were no casual readers in that room and most of us don't put a whole lot of significance on them either.

Best off topic exchange:

F. Paul Wilson: Am I the only one here that didn't fuck Anna Nicole Smith?

Jack Ketchum: I didn't, she was never my type. She is now...

Best not really on topic thing but it contained the word "panel" so it counts:

An audience member, having had WAY too much of the free booze, falls right out of her chair and crashes into the wall.

Jack Ketchum: Now it's a fucking panel! YEAH!

After an hour and change the panel ended and everyone either went to the bar or found their way home.

Day 2

Not as eventful as day 1 but still amazing from a fan's perspective. I ended up back at the Borderlands/CD booth and bought a couple more things and talked to Thomas Monteleone about a few more things, most notably a "boot camp" he runs every year for aspiring writers. Then it was back upstairs to the screening room until it was time for the readings to start.

Today's early feature was Pet Sematary.

After this it was back to the panel room for each author's hour of readings. Thomas Monteleone read a wonderfully weird tale called The Wager. F. Paul Wilson read a throwback to the old pulps which he nailed perfectly. Jack Ketchum read a short which was much more subtle than the stuff he's famous for and it was very good. After this he did an examination of opening from four of his own works, reading and then talking about the different ways someone can open a tale. Grabbing a reading straight off the bat is extremely important to him (he uses this method to test books he's never heard of) and he is able to do it in a wide variety of ways. I was in fan heaven.

After this there was nothing to do but ride the wave of bliss out of there and hope that the August edition will be just as fantastic as this one was.

Five Things

So I decided that from time to time I'll pop in here and make a list of five things. Top fives, bottom fives, random fives, five this and five that. Without further ado I give you:

Five things I did while at work today.

1. I had a coworker sneak up on me and run a long piece of wire through one of my earrings. I decided to leave it there and when people asked me what it was I told them I had been captured, tagged and released so that I could be tracked and monitored in my natural habitat. If they didn't walk away after that I may or may not have then asked if they wanted to mate with me so that it could be studied by the scientific community. Strangely enough no one wanted to mate with me which is weird because I'm obviously very good looking. I mean I'm just wretchedly attractive. It's almost sickening really.

2. I had lunch. There was chicken involved. I can't really go into it because of unresolved legal issues.

3. I wondered if women "shake off" after they're finished pumping gas or if it's just a guy thing that we have to learn to go with that whole peeing standing up thing and then gets transferred over to the gas pump. I'll have to remember to ask someone because I really really want to know.

4. Walked up to a small group of people who were engaged in a conversation, listened silently for a few minutes and when there was a quiet place in the convo said, "I hear a lot of talking and none of it is about my cock. Not a single word. Let's work on that for tomorrow." Then I walked away.

5. Cruised around Amazon.com for something like two and a half hours. I, uh, don't really take a lot of pride in my job anymore plus I have everything so ridiculously organized that some days I have exactly shit all to do for the overwhelming majority of the day.

There you have it, the very first edition of Five Things. One day you'll tell your grandkids that you were there when it all started. Of course you'll be talking about something else but still...

I am geek, hear me roar

So yesterday I finally found a decent comic shop. Not only was the selection top notch but it pleased my OCD in delicious ways by being organized to within an inch of its life PLUS the owner was playing Hank Williams on the store's radio. Browsing for comics (that's right, comics. I will not say "graphic novels" the way some people do because they are ashamed to read comics.) while listening to Your Cheating Heart is a truly sublime experience. Now then, on to the loot and the thanks. I picked up:

The Walking Dead collections 3, 4 and 5. Thanks to Taco for introducing me to this and buying the first two collections for me. It's damn good even if it did steal ideas right out of my mind somehow. I suspect the polar bears.

The Authority collections 1 and 2. Thanks to Noq for suggesting this awesome title. Not many people try for a new take on the superhero genre (at least not many try and succeed) but this is a touchdown all the way.

The Dreaming collection 1. Picked it up because the majority of the writing is done by Caitlin R. Kiernan who is one of my favorite novelists. Thanks to Peter Straub and Neil Gaiman for blurbing her first novel and making me buy it years ago.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. When the DT novels ended I thought I had seen the last of the adventures of the gunslinger. Thankfully that was not the case. Hile Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, protector of the White, line of Eld. Hile Gunslinger.

I also ordered/preordered:

The Eternals collection by Neil Gaiman which is his take on Jack Kirby's iconic work (though is there any work by Kirby that isn't iconic?). Normally I hate this kind of thing but Gaiman isn't the type to take something like this on lightly and I know he has a mountain of respect for Kirby and his work so my hopes are very high indeed.

Mage: The Hero Defined. Matt Wagner created two of the very best comic characters of all time, Grendel and Mage. Not many people can claim to have created one thing as important and influential as these and he did it twice. Anyway, this is the second big collection of Mage and I've been trying to get it in hardback and finally have. Now here's hoping that the third and final act will come sooner than the second did.

Tag collection. This is a story by Keith Giffen about a game of tag involving zombies. Giffen. Zombie tag. Are you kidding me? How can a person not buy this?

So yeah, I'm not back into collecting monthly titles and such with great vigor but once again I finally have a place where I can keep my ear to the ground about the occasional things that I have to have. Yay me.

It's an honor just to be nominated.

Or so they tell me. So I get my newest issue of Entertainment Weekly and it's their annual Academy Awards Issue. They go into each of the major awards and the nominees and give you all manner of info about them and so on and so on. I read some of it and skipped some of it based on the person or movie that was being talked about but what I didn't do was give half a squirt of piss about the Oscars at all. I don't really feel the Academy Awards can claim to have any sort of relevance anymore, if they ever could have made that claim. Allow me to explain. I promise to limit myself to just my absolute biggest gripes.

1. Rocky wins Best Picture.

I never did understand why everyone seems to love this movie. The depiction of boxing is so wildly unrealistic it borders on being a bad joke and anyone that thinks Stallone is anything other than a terrible actor should never be allowed to watch another movie. But even if you leave everything that is bad about the movie aside, here is a short list of films also released that year that the Academy thought were not as good as Rocky:

Taxi Driver - Clearly the movie that should have won. It's one of the greatest films of all time.

All The President's Men

Network

The Omen

Marathon Man

Hell, even such comedies or "genre flicks" as Murder By Death, Logan's Run, Assault on Precinct 13, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Silver Streak or The Bad News Bears are movies I would watch over Rocky any day.

2. Hitchcock and Scorsese never won for Best Director

How do you have an award specifically to reward great film direction and then never give it to either of the, arguably, best directors ever? The very idea is such complete nonsense that it makes my brain twist. I know that Scorsese can still win but the fact remains that he didn't win, multiple times, when he should have. The fact that Hitchcock never won (the lifetime achievement Oscar does NOT count) is a stain on the Academy that they can never wash off.

3. Around The World In 80 Days wins Best Picture

I figure this thing won because everybody and their mother was in it and everyone that was in it voted for it. It's not a good movie. It is, in fact, a bad movie and shouldn't even have been nominated. A short list of films from 1956 that the Academy thought were not as good as this pile of ick:

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Baby Doll

Giant

The Searchers

The King and I

The Ten Commandments

4. Titanic wins Best Picture

Really? Titanic? What the hell are you people smoking? Ignore for a moment that yes, Kate Winslet is very very good in it and did deserve her nomination for acting (she has been nominated for and won many acting awards so yeah, she's pretty good) and focus on the film itself. It isn't that good. It's average, at best. This got nominated and then won based solely on the fact that it shattered box office records (though it only did that if you don't adjust for inflation. If you adjust for inflation it comes in at #6 behind Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E. T. and The Ten Commandments) and that is a completely idiotic reason to give it the award. Movies from that year that are, apparently, worse than this not very good at all film:

As Good As It Gets - This should have won, hands down.

Good Will Hunting

L. A. Confidential

Amistad

Gattaca

Affliction

Waiting For Guffman

Boogie Nights

And if I stop to think about it probably 10 or 12 more from that year that I'd rather watch instead.

There are plenty more examples of the gross ignorance of the oh so important Academy but these are, for me, the worst. Come Oscar night I say skip the awards and celebrate good cinema by watching some. That's what I'll be doing.

Still dreaming...

Today is the day set aside to honor Martin Luther King Jr. I still remember when it was announced that Mr. King would be thus honored. I heard a lot of really ignorant things said then and every year I hear them again. Some people think that we have moved away from that kind of thing or have made huge steps in doing so. These people, I am afraid, are deluding themselves. I hear as much hate speech now as I ever did, all you have to do is listen. It hasn't gone away, it's just gotten less bold.

I hear it in the workplace, on the street, in stores, anywhere that people talk. Open your ears and you'll hear it too and it's important that you do hear it because ignoring it or thinking that it doesn't exist is an extremely dangerous thing. Just today I heard, in several places from people that thought they were free from intruding ears, people say things like how wrong it was that "the blacks have a holiday" and how having a day for MLK Jr. "makes the niggers cocky" and "It's not like he fucking did anything important" and how this was just one step in "the niggers taking over." From there it was a short trip for several of these groups going to their other obvious favorite targets of hatred including:

Hispanics, "They're everywhere like fucking roaches" despite the fact that whites remain the majority in this country.

Gays, "We should be allowed to fucking kill them" and "I don't want my kids to see that shit, it's wrong" though apparently subjecting these same kids to rampant bigotry everyday is fine.

Muslims, "They're all a bunch of terrorists" and "We should bomb the entire middle east back to the stone age."

And so on. You get the point I'm sure.

This is the 21st century and this kind of thing is still going strong. I don't know whether to be furious or to curl into a ball and weep. How does this kind of thing still exist? How does a level of pure willful ignorance so enormous manage to keep going? These people are insanely hate filled for the most idiotic reasons and for some reason they are exceedingly proud of their own race/whatever. Here's the thing kids, if you're proud of your race, what you're really proud of is the fact that your parents were smart enough to figure out how to fuck. Congratulations, your mother and father are as smart as dung beetles. Woohoo.

How does a person hate another person because the skin they are wrapped in is a different color or because they have sex with people that the other person isn't attracted to or because they come from a place outside the imaginary line that someone drew around the landmass they live on? When I ask the bigots for clarification they get flustered and either backpedal away from their own bigotry or get defensive and spout even more stupid things that make zero sense.

When a man has this dream in his heart:

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

How can that man and his dream be so hated? How can there still be so much bigotry? How is it that it still exists at all? How can one look at another and hate them for reasons that don't even begin to make sense? I have a dream too. My dream is that one day not too very far in the future, our children or our children's children will look back on this time and be ashamed. Ashamed that their parents or their grandparents had so much ignorance in them. Ashamed that we were unwilling and unable to find joy in our differences and instead found hate.

My dream ends in the same place that Mr. King's does:

"And when this happens, When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"