perfidy

This happened to one of my friends. You have to read it in her words, though, to really get the full gist of it.

Part the First
Part the Second
Part the Third

I know you're all as shocked as I am to learn that Evel Knievel has died.

See, I figure he actually died a long, long time ago. It's just taken him this long to stop moving.

Ian

That's the word count I stopped at for the night. And I got those down in 25 days of hardcore writing effort. That's a pretty good pace - one might even say blistering if one was a connoisseur of all things wordiness.

Anyway, I just wanted to toot my horn here and say that I rock.

You can read my so-called deranged scribblings here.

If I'm mostly absent over the next month, here's why. But don't worry, come December I'm sure to be back to my normal, prolifically irritating self.

I can only assume that because she's now a grandmother, she must need money to buy belly shirts and dance lessons for the little ones.

Britney's mom to write parenting book.

I'm going to be a guest on Turnbaby Talks this coming Sunday evening at 6 PM Mountain (8 PM Eastern). We'll talk about NaNoWriMo, The Milkman, my webcomic, and whatever else I've got going on (It, of course). Please tune in and call in so I don't have to hem and haw the entire time. If you can't listen live, the show will be archived for your future listening pleasure.

For those of you who missed it today, Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling outed main character and dead guy Albus Dumbledore, saying "she always thought Dumbledore was gay."

Excuse me, what?

I don't particularly care that he is (well, okay, was - he's kicked the bucket) gay. What bugs me is that she wasn't willing to bring it up in a series that deals with ALL KINDS of adult themes like, um, murder, torture, evil, the inability of governments to effectively control their populace, abuse, etc. My question to Ms. Rowling is this: Why would you bring this up now after you've already written the books and made your zillions of dollars? It does NOTHING to improve (or detract) from the series. Unless her first draft of book 7 was written significantly differently with a working title of, say, Harry Potter and the Unsheathed Wand of Albus Dumbledore, there is no reason she couldn't have actually touched upon (no pun intended - well, hardly any) Dumbledore's sexuality WITHIN the pages of the books. I wonder how many teens dealing with their own sexuality might have felt more comfortable reading about a main character who went through similar trials. I mean, she's J.K.-fucking-Rowling. She outsells the Bible! Any editor who dares to question her will probably have to get his or her resume in order quickly. She could have put this little nugget INTO her book instead of waiting until after everything's done to out the character.

Oh, but wait - the book-buying public wouldn't accept that! A gay character? In today's modern world? *gasp* The scandal!

Never mind the fact that anyone narrow-minded enough to be unable to deal with a homosexual literary character probably wouldn't be able to deal with all the "evil magic" in the series in the first place.

Shame on you, J.K. Rowling, for being a coward.

I didn't try to buy World Series tickets this morning when they went on sale at 10 AM MST. The Rockies, in their questionable wisdom, opted not to allow any sales via phone or box office and went exclusively with online sales. The rationale behind this is that it gives every fan an equal opportunity to buy their tickets.

"What about ticket brokers?" we asked.

"We're limiting sales to only 4 per person. That will stop people from buying up hundreds or thousands of tickets at a time and reselling them," they said.

"But what about people who can write programs to do this automatically?" we asked.

"Hey, look...bunnies!" they said.

And then, after the "box office" was open for approximately two and a half hours, the vendor's server suffered catastrophic failure after trying to swallow about 8.5 MILLION hits. That's 1500 hits a second, folks. Now, I know the Rockies are a super-popular team around the world, but I'm finding it a little rough suspending my disbelief that there were really that many people trying to snag one of the 22,000 tickets for sale. That's about twice the population of the entire state of Colorado. Even if there were a tenth that amount with everyone hitting the site ten times during the first two hours, that's still a ridiculously large sum of people trying to get to watch a team that (honestly) nobody really cares that much about outside of our nice square borders.

The more conspiracy-minded have advanced the theory that this is a Denial-of-Service attack by Red Sox fans. Or Arizona fans. Or Giant Evil Space Robots. In the meantime, the Rockies and the ticket vendor are still trying to figure out what to do.

[wik] It occurs to me that when dealing with a sporting event of this magnitude, going with the lowest bidder for ticket sales might not have been the smartest thing to do.

[alsø wik] Ticketmaster routinely deals with huge venues and events. And online sales are second-nature for them. Cleveland was going to use them if they beat the Sox.

[alsø alsø wik] I am not, nor have I ever been an employee of Ticketmaster.

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] The title of this post refers to the countdown page every potential buyer was redirected to, informing them that the page would automatically refresh when the timer reached zero and try to connect once again.

Nobody's posted about zombies in a few days, and I just happen to have something here.

I spent a day in Legoland, California this past week, and was frankly astounded at their Miniland - a place where they have used some 40 million bricks to make stunningly accurate recreations of real-world places. You could spend hours looking at their Las Vegas Strip, New York City, New Orleans, and more, and still not see everything.

However...

With the obvious pride in attention to detail, a few things jumped out at me (or crawled, or shambled, as the case may be). I shall let the pictures do the talking from here on out.

*tap tap* Is this thing on?

Greetings and salutations, Faithful Readers! Or breathings and salivations as the case may be (if you're an asthmatic zombie).

I am Minister EDog, and this is my first Perfidious Post about All Things Dark, Evil, and Twisted (those things in particular cause the riding up of certain kinds of underwear). To celebrate this momentous event, I feel it my duty to do what I've done for a couple years now via email to other ministers - that of pointing you towards some of the oddities I've discovered in this magical digital world we've created. And barring that, just show you some Pretty Weird Shit. Being as my nickname is EDog, I thought I'd fire off some cannons of canine-ical canon. And if you're still reading after that fusillade, then we'll get along just fine.

Unlike certain other Ministers here, I am a carnivore, and cheerfully indulge in All Things Meat, whether seared, broiled, boiled, fried, braised, baked, spoken to in anger, or given a dirty look. I'll admit that one of my favorite breakfast foods is the Gas Station Hot Dog, a taste I developed back in The Day when I managed a 7-Eleven. Now you don't have to go to a gas station any more to experience that wonderfully creative flavor of not-quite-grade-A-meat product. You can get it delivered right to your door!

Many are those of us who have canine companions. I myself have a lovely Australian Cattle Dog with a penchant for breaking out of the house through screens when frightened by approaching storms. Yes, I know. Dog logic. But here we cook and clean for our dogs - at least, some of us do - and take care of nearly their every need except one. Sure, you've probably neutered your male dog, because you've seen the Public Service Announcements. But if you haven't because, say, you intend to breed the animal, you have to deal with certain, ah, libidinous instincts. Someone has finally come up with a solution for the problem of the horndog.

And last but not least, if your dog is still of a mind to sow his wild oats, don't pray for crop failure. Instead, learn to help him practice safe sexual recreation with a time-tested method with approximately a 98% rate of effectiveness.

I know you're out there...I can hear you breathing.

There's a little lot near where I live now that usually has some sort of stand set up on it. In June it's fireworks. I've also seen sunglasses, cellular phone accessories, peaches, onions, and other things for sale there as well.

Over the weekend this stand caught my eye though. Hatch green chiles are common this time of year. But then I saw the adjacent tent and I just had to wonder...