I just ran across this and I had to share it. The Army National Guard has joined forces with iTunes and they are offering three free mp3 downloads if you sign up with the Guard. I hope with all my heart someone intended that page to be a joke of some sort.

Hell, iTunes only charges ninety-nine cents a song. You can steal that much out of the share-a-penny cups at the local 7-11.

With all the Hurricane stuff lately I haven’t felt much like posting anything silly. Now that things are semi-normal I need to clean out my bookmarks. Enjoy:

Nerdy Stuff:
10 Tech Items Inspired By Science-Fiction

20 Tech Things They Don’t Want You To Know About. If nothing else it tells you how to kill Windows Messenger, the messaging service nine out of ten demons prefer.

Fifty most cited books from the twentieth century.

Forty most important books: 1927-Present.

The one hundred most loved books according to the BBC.

I’m pretty sure that when Google achieves sentience the human race can kiss it’s ass goodbye. Now Google can see where our weapons are located. You know, it’s scary when a graduate student in San Antonio can fire up the old ‘puter and take a look at the military bases of other countries. I’m not a big believer in censorship, but really, I shouldn’t be able to look that stuff up.

Time magazine interviews Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon. When the interviewer asks Neil if he will ever write a non-genre story Neil replies: “My mind tends to work in this way. Every now and then I’ll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn’t have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things. You can imagine. It’s the power of concretizing a metaphor. Taking something and making it real and making it happen and seeing where it goes. It’s a special kind of magic.”
I love the phrase “concretizing a metaphor.” That’s why Neil makes the big bucks.

Lacking in good science-fiction to read? You’re in luck. Go here for some links to quality sci-fi.

A/V Clips:
Every wonder why Bush speaks the way he does? Well, as this video shows his speech coach instructs him to speak like that. And you thought it was because he’s mildly retarded. Silly you.

Don’t mess with grannies that pack heat.

I love it when I’m able to catch really awkward moments on television. Unfortunately, I missed Steve-O’s drunken appearance on Too Late With Adam Carolla, but I found it here. Watch as Steve-O tries to tackle Adam and then as he destroys a table. I actually feel sorry for Carolla.

In case you missed the Emmy’s, and judging by their ratings I’m assuming you did, you might want to click here and watch Jon Stewart’s hilarious bit.

Ever wanted to learn to speak with a Brooklyn accent? How about an Australian accent? Go here for a page dedicated to the different dialects spoken in English. Each dialect has mp3’s you can listen to in your quest to sound like Paul Hogan.

Miscellaneous Linking:
Not sure of the accuracy of this one, but I have to admit it scares the hell out of me.

For some reason there are a lot of guys out there that are proud of the fact they don’t know how to cook. They view cooking as some kind of emasculating enterprise. And even the ones that do cook wouldn’t be caught dead baking. Personally, I think it’s because baking is so damn hard these guys don’t want to learn. In case you do want to learn I’d start by watching Good Eats on Food Network. Here’s an interview with Alton Brown, the star of that show. Don’t worry guys, he talks about beer, so it’s a manly interview.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page and take a look at the picture of the girl. Then, run your mouse over her and see what she looks like after some improvements in Photoshop.

You mean to tell me journalists have become lazy and are relying on bloggers to do the investigative work for them? I never would have guessed with the quality newscasts nowadays.

“Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’” This article appeared in the Times of London so don’t blame me.

I just took the Politics Test and this is what it said about me:

You are a Social Liberal (70% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (18% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Where I come from callin’ somebody a socialist is fightin’ words!

I was going to write a post about Christopher Hitchens (I just read his most recent article on Slate), but something else occurred to me so Hitch will have to wait.

This blog represents one type of writing I do on a regular basis, but I also write papers for school, and I’ve been working on a book for…oh, what year is it? I also write short stories, I’ve written a movie script and I’m working on a comic with an artist, and once, just once, I wrote a poem in blank verse using iambic pentameter. All writing contains similarities, but there are differences, and every genre of writing has within it rules and stylistic conventions which every writer should adhere…and occasionally subvert. But it suddenly occurred to me that there must be an underlying connection or a transcendent global tool that connects all forms of writing and presents the writer with the opportunity to not only transmit information, but to connect with the reader on an emotional level. The only tool I’m aware of which a writer has the ability to wield regardless of the genre is metaphor. A good writer uses metaphors like a painter uses a brush (yes, I’m aware that’s a simile); creating a form but doing so beautifully and artistically, and unless a writer possesses the ability to use metaphor effectively, the text will struggle to elicit an emotional reponse. It will lie there on the page or screen and never have an opportunity to move the reader in a meaningful way.

For some reason, I’ve never been fully aware of the power of metaphor. The term has never been more than just a name used to identify a particular part of speech or writing, but for some reason it suddenly came alive and now I feel as if I’m a keeper a precious secret.

Maybe now I’ll finish that damn book.

Leigh asked me tonight why I gave Neil Gaiman the URL to this blog on a piece of paper from a Zyprexa notepad. I told her the notepad was on my desk and it was the first thing I grabbed before we left the apartment. A few moments went by before it occurred to me to ask her what Zyprexa is. “It’s a medication used to treat mood disorders. You know, things like schizophrenia and bipolar mania,” she tells me. “I thought you knew.”

Great. One of my favorite authors thinks I’m a psychotic.

Well, at least it wasn’t a notepad for something like impotence.

Tonight Leigh and I drove up to Bookpeople in Austin and watched Neil Gaiman read from his new book Anansi Boys. We also stayed and got several books autographed.

Listening to Neil read from his book was quite an experience. After having heard Neil read I’m quite sure that when I read the book for myself that it won’t be my voice I hear in my head, it will be Neil’s. And that’s perfectly fine with me. His speaking voice animates the characters much better than the voice in my head. After all the reading I’ve been doing for my M.A. exam the voice in my head has pretty much quit trying to impress me. In fact, it’s gotten quite lackluster, and I may have to find myself another one.

During the Q & A portion of the event, an audience member asked Neil about his upcoming movie Mirror Mask, and Neil said that when he started writing it he did so with the intention of writing a family movie. He stopped for a moment, and then said that he thought Americans had different ideas about what a family movie was when compared to the British. In Neil’s opinion Americans tend to think of a family movie as “one where you can leave a three year old watching for several hours and by the end of it they won’t have had any ideas.” I thought it was a pretty good description of the mindless crap parents tend to use in lieu of a babysitter. Fortunately, Mirror Mask looks to be nothing of the sort. Watch the trailer if you don’t believe me.

Any time we go to events like this, ones in which writers speak about writing, I always feel guilty about not trying harder with my own work. Sometimes I think the academic route I’ve decided to take may in fact be a dodge of some sort. I’m able to remain close to, and comment on literature, but I’m never actually put in the position of the one being critiqued.

There’s never really any chance of people disliking what I’ve written as long as it stays on the hard drive. Unfortunately, there is also very little chance of me ever getting published either.

Anyway, here’s a picture of Leigh and I getting our books signed (click to enlarge). See that piece of paper in Neil’s hand? That’s the URL for this blog. God, what a whore I am.And for those interested, Neil’s a prodigious blogger. Head over there sometime and check out his blog.

Waiting for Gaiman.

We had two family members unable to evacuate Orange and we heard from them this morning. No injuries, but they told us of significant structural damage to some of our family members homes. There were so many trees uprooted that even getting out of their yard proved to be a feat of athleticism.

I hope that people in Galveston and Houston don’t begrudge the fact that they evacuated. Yes, in hindsight they would have been okay had they stayed, but we didn’t know that at the time. Leaving was the smartest thing they could have done.

I sincerely hope we find zero casualties because of this hurricane. Loss of property is devastating, but loss of life would be so much worse.

Although Rita-related texts have dominated my interest, I did manage to find one video that I’ve had to watch over and over.

As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I’m not a big fan of Bill O’Reilly. I believe I said once that if he yelled at me on his show I would try to spit in his mouth. I think I also said I would try to hit him in the eye with a pencil if I could. Bill O’Reilly is to journalism what Jim Bakker was to Christianity.

You can imagine my surprise when I watched this video where Phil Donahue not only holds his own against O’Reilly, but he almost gets the better of him. Yeah, Phil Donahue. The talk show host. I couldn’t believe it either.

I’ve been sitting here in front of the computer for close to an hour trying to figure out what I want to post about. I’m fighting the urge to go over to the television and turn to the weather channel. I don’t know if you’ve been watching them, but crack dealers must have taught them their broadcast conventions. They tend to say things like, “Rita has grown in strength and her path has changed again…we’ll tell you where she’ll hit when we come back from commercial break.” Then I sit inches from the television for five minutes through commercials for erectile dysfunction, only to find out that Rita’s still on the same path she was the last time they reported on her. Even (especially?) during times of crisis the heartless bastards still rely on sensationalism to keep viewers tuned in.

There are several websites I have been using to get information from:

The Houston Chronicle’s Official Rita Blog
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Center
Houston TransStar Freeway Cameras
Continuously Updating Hurricane Satellite Images (this one’s impressive)
Webcams on Galveston Island
Desh Kapoor-A blog from a fellow stuck in Houston
Blogs of War Rita Resources

As far as I know we still have some family stuck in Orange. Truly terrifying.

Everyone out there stay safe.