Week 37: Why IT is both good and bad.

Long before I became a writer, I was a reader.  When I was young I loved books.  I’ve read all kinds of books, too.  I’ve read Fantasy series that I loved, a bit of romance, some sci-fi, and even a bit of horror.  One of my favorite series was The Lord of the Rings.  Only the nerds read that stuff when I was in high school, and so I was a nerd.  I loved the books anyway.  Flash forward from the 1980’s and The Lord of the Rings was made into three movies.  Suddenly a lot of other people decided they liked The Lord of the Rings.  A lot of people just like the movies though, and have never read the books.

Back in 1986 I was stationed at a small place called San Vito De Normani Air Station.  It was a really small base and one of the few highlights there for me was a tiny book store that they had.  I was in there all the time looking at things.  One day a hardback copy of a book called IT showed up in the store.  I don’t even remember how much it cost, but after looking it over, I bought it.  This was no small book, either.  It was absolutely huge!  But then I loved books and liked to read and the book would give me something to do.

I’ll be honest, parts of the book frightened me.  I can’t remember which specific parts because we’re talking about a book I bought and read about 31 years ago, but I do remember being frightened by a few parts.  I loved the story.  The character of Pennywise was more than just some killer clown.  He infested the town of Derry.  It’s a bit hard to describe the book. 

Now we move forward and IT has been made into a movie just like The Lord of the Rings.  If you’re thinking of seeing this film, I’ll warn you now, this is only “part one”.  Obviously there will be another part eventually.  And with a book as large as IT is, you would have to expect several parts, I guess.  Otherwise the film might end up being about eight hours long.  And I’m sure eight hours of movie would still leave out a lot of things!  But then movies based on books are always like that, aren’t they?  The books are almost always much better than the films.

Before I get into the movie, I had decided the read the book again now.  I’ve pretty much lost my hardcopy, but managed to buy myself a replacement paperback.  IT is huge, a whopping 1157 pages long.  It may take me a while to get through it, but I think it will be well worth my time to read again.  I was going to read the book again and then see the movie, but after reading just the start of the book, I decided what the hell, let’s go see the movie.  After all, I’ve already read the book years ago, so the story shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

I’m not sure the movie follows the book too closely.  For one thing, the kids in the book are growing up in 1957, in the movie it’s something like 1988.  I guess someone wanted a modern twist to the movie.  As a movie, IT was actually very good!  And I’ll tell you now, if you’re afraid of clowns, or jump scares, don’t go see this.  There were a few parts that scared the hell out of me and I don’t scare easily!  Sadly though, jump scares can only work for so long.  Toward the end of the movie they just weren’t frightening me as much as they were at the beginning.  If you want to see a really good horror film for this Halloween season, this would be a fantastic choice!  Take a date who scares easily and you’ll have a ball!  *chuckle*

Does IT work as a book adaptation?  Not real well for me.  There’s just too much to the book version of IT to put into a movie, I think.  There were so many more murders and disappearances and things that happened.  There was also a movie adaptation made of this book back in 1990.  That one sucked.  It was horrible and had horrible acting.  I like the actor Tim Curry, but he wasn’t a good Pennywise.  The new Pennywise is much more terrifying played by Bill Skarsgard.  So see the movie and read the book. 

So why is IT both good and bad?  Because the book and the 2017 film version are fantastic, but the 1990 film version was pretty bad.  Until next week, keep asking why and run away from clowns who want to give you balloons and have you “float”.

Week 36: Why did he fish?

This was a sad week for me and it would have been easy to just skip the blog and not write anything.  I don’t think my father would have liked that, though.  My father passed away this week on September 5^th.  His memory does live on.  This week’s blog honors some of that memory.

My father loved to fish.  He was also named Robert, but went by the name Bob.  And boy did Bob love to fish!  I don’t know what it was about fishing that made him love it so much, but it seemed like it was his favorite thing to do.  Well, that and horse racing.  A perfect weekend for him would have been a trip to a casino on a Friday afternoon to place some bets for the Saturday horse races, and then packing up a motorhome or trailer (I believe they are called caravans in the UK) and driving back to Idaho for a bit of fishing.

Now a fishing trip with Bob wasn’t just the usual drive to your destination and fish type of trip.  Bob wanted to fish everywhere.  So you would start down the road on the way to Idaho from Nevada and after you got out of town and into a few remote areas, he would pull off to the side of the highway.  Maybe at some rest area, or something like that.

He would tell everyone to go to the bathroom if you needed it, or to maybe just stretch your legs.  We would use the facilities and then head back to the motorhome.  Bob would be nowhere to be found.  After waiting a few minutes, we would walk around to find him.  He would usually be out behind the rest stop at some small hole with water in it, trying to catch fish.

You could try and tell him it wasn’t a stream and there were no fish there, but he wouldn’t believe you.  He just wanted to try his luck.  And so we would give him a few minutes.  Soon, we would be back in the motorhome and on our way.  About ten miles down the highway, he would pull over again wanting to “check on something”.  He would be out of the motorhome and off to some tiny stream that he saw again trying to fish.

And this would be your drive on the way to Idaho, stopping every ten miles or so because he saw a bit of water.  There might be fish in there so we would have to stop.  You can’t blame a guy for doing what he loved, though.

Getting to Idaho, his plans would include fishing, fishing, and more fishing.  He loved to go to places with small creeks running here and there and catch rainbow trout.  To this day, I hate the smell and taste of trout.  That fish will always bring back fond memories of my father now.  He would fish until it was dark out.  And out where he fished, there were no street lights, or any lights for that matter, so you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.  But he would always still want to “try one more spot” before we left.

Soon I’ll be traveling to Idaho for family trip to celebrate my father’s memory.  And as we drive along, I think I’m going to ask to stop every single time I see a bit o water.  I’ll want to fish.  Actually, I hate fishing and will probably just stare fondly at whatever little pond I find, but I’ll still want to stop.  My dad will need to fish.

Until next week, keep fishing.  And also ask why occasionally. 

Week 35: Why I'll be laboring for Labor Day

It’s Labor Day weekend this week.  I’m not sure if this is some kind of international holiday, or if it’s uniquely American, but it supposedly signals the end of summer.  And thank God for that because I’m so sick and tired of the heat!  It’s still probably going to be over 100 degrees F for the rest of September (That’s 37.7 Celsius for you people who use that measurement), but at least winter is finally on the way.

So how will I be celebrating Labor Day weekend this week?  I’ll be laboring at work.  No fabulous barbeque with the American flag waving overhead, no trips to the park for fireworks, no hotdogs and sunsets for me.  I’ll be dispatching security in a casino!  Hooray!  Though not my first choice to celebrate the holiday, it does mean that I’m still employed full time and I’m at least grateful for that.

Labor Day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, and New Year’s Eve are the three holidays I’m usually required to add a sixth day to my work week.  Why is that do you suppose?  Because of the amount of stupid people who feel they have to come to Las Vegas during these holidays. 

I think for the most part I’ll probably be answering phones, or maybe relieving a dispatcher for an hour while they go to lunch.  I’ll take calls from people saying they’re angry for being thrown out of one of the dance clubs just because they tried to steal another person’s cell phone.  Or maybe someone will want the paramedics because they drank too much, or they ate a marijuana brownie and now don’t feel so good.  These are the type of phone calls that will make up my weekend.

Me: Security, how can I help you?

Male voice: Some girl just stole my money from my room!

Me: Did you invite this woman up to your room, sir?

Male voice:  Yes, but she’s not a hooker!

Not a hooker, maybe just a thief?  Sometimes we’ll even catch these thieving women.  But then when you ask the guy, “Would you like to press charges?” they tell you no.  Maybe their wife won’t be happy they brought a “woman” back to their room?  Maybe their boss won’t be happy?  Doesn’t matter to me, I don’t have much sympathy for these idiots.

Me: Security, how can I help you?

Screaming voice:  AAAAAAgh!  Gag, bloog, choo say, noooooo! *click*

Me:  Hello?

Ah, one of these calls!  Fantastic!  To me that means a possible fight inside one of the hotel rooms.  Or actually sometimes these calls come from a restaurant, or store, too!  We send officers over to see what’s going on.  Someone might have looked at someone’s girlfriend!  Or maybe a guy was pushed and didn’t like it!  I worry about it when an officer actually gets there and tells me what’s going on.

Me:  Security, how can I help you?

Female voice: This is the little shop near registration.  Can you send a guard because I think a guy might steal something.

Me: You have someone who is stealing items?

Female voice: Well, he hasn’t stolen anything yet, but I think he might.

Me: How do you know he’s going to steal something?

Female voice: Because he looks like it.

These calls are always fun.  Some guy “looks like” he’s going to steal something.  What does that look like?  I need to rush a bunch of officers over there because this suspicious guy might walk off with some $7.99 suntan lotion!  Oh no!  As a call taker I’ll pass this on to the dispatcher even though I think it’s stupid.  And if there’s an available officer, someone might even be sent to the shop.  Then the clerk usually wants the officer to follow the guy around and stare at him while he shops.  That would be a no, especially on a busy holiday weekend.

I’m sure you can imagine a whole carnival of other things I’ll be asked to deal with.  I think before work I’ll go and play a bit of Madden 18 football.  I did send the bad copy back to Amazon and they mailed me a replacement that does actually finally work.  Best to get myself in a pleasant frame of mind before work.

As one act of rebellion I bought myself a bag of peanuts in the shell to take to work tonight.  I’ll probably have peanut shells all over the place as they can sometimes be messy.  I thought that would at least help me celebrate a bit of Labor Day weekend.  And of course I’ll be happy to share with other dispatchers!  We can all make a mess!

So why am I laboring on Labor Day?  Because that’s just how it is.  Until I get two days off again, keep asking why.

Oh, and by the way, if you thought these short casino thoughts were funny, feel free to take a look at an older book of mine called Vegas Ramblings.  It’s a collection of blogs from quite a while back when I worked in a different casino.  A very amusing, unread book!

Vegas Ramblings on Amazon.com

Week 34: Why EA Sports sucks

I’m disappointed this week.  Every year around this time a video game called Madden Football comes out.  And every year, like so many other millions of people, I buy it.  I wanted to have the game the day it came out and Amazon.com will usually make sure you get it the day it comes out if you pre-order a video game.  So I did pre-order it.

No one seemed to be sure of the release date, though.  Was it Tuesday, Friday, Saturday?  I was watching other people play the game on YouTube, but hadn’t received my copy yet.  But maybe those were just special copies for people on YouTube?  I didn’t know.  Apparently nobody knew.  And so I waited.  I was told I would receive my game on a Tuesday.  Then I was told I would get it on Saturday.  They the game didn’t show up and I was sent a message from Amazon that said they had attempted to deliver the game, but couldn’t.  Why couldn’t they deliver it?  What the hell?

I immediately emailed Amazon and they made sure the game was delivered that day.  Amazon always takes care of complaints, I think they’re a stellar company and have no complaints with them! 

So I finally had the game!  A lot of times people consider the Madden games just a “roster update”, but the football fans still buy them anyway.  I was looking forward to seeing how different the game was from last year’s game.  I “loaded” up the game, but couldn’t really play.  I used quotes there because the game never really seemed to load.  I couldn’t change the settings, or play anything accept a “play now” thing with the Falcons and the Patriots in the Super bowl.  Nothing else would work.  Every other game option said “installing”.  I began looking around and people said you just have to wait a bit for the other features to install.  I waited about five hours.  Nothing.  The game isn’t playable.

And so I went back and looked at some of the reviews on Amazon for Madden 18.  A lot of people weren’t happy.  Some of them were having the same problem I was having!  Others had paid for a download of the game instead of getting a hard disk like I did.  Their downloads didn’t work!  People were angry!

60% of reviews for the Playstation 4 version of the game are 1 star.  That’s pretty bad.  Now I’ve seen some companies that watch their reviews on Amazon and if a customer wasn’t satisfied, they were ready to send another product, or try and rectify the situation.  So far EA Sports hasn’t done anything.  No replies on Amazon, no offers to fix anything, nothing.  I’m very unhappy today!

We’ll see if things get fixed in the future with a patch or something.  Or maybe I’ll just have a worthless game?  Who knows?  Until next week, I’m sitting here asking myself why I paid money for this piece of crap!  Keep asking why!

Week 33: Why VHS?

Decades ago I had some of my long lost relatives take some home movies documenting family, things they did, and places they may have gone.  They did this on a very, very old type of camera.  I’m not even sure what the camera looked like, or where it is now.  They would have to mail the film off to have it developed and they would get back 8 millimeter film. 

I don’t even think they had sound for these home movies.  If I remember correctly, it was just video and nothing else.  I found a bunch of these movies as a teenager and also found the video projector that would show the 8 MM film.  I set it all up in my basement room and was watching the videos, fascinated by what I was seeing.  And then it all came to a crashing halt.

My mother walked into my room and saw what I was doing.  She went into hysterics yelling and screaming at me that I was ruining the home movies!  She took everything away and mailed it off somewhere so I couldn’t watch them anymore. 

Decades later I now find a bag of these home movies sitting on my living room floor.  I don’t know what to do with them.  Even if I could manage to watch them now, I would have absolutely no idea who any of the people in the movies were.  They would all be just strangers to me. 

I’m sure I could take these somewhere and have them put onto a DVD or something, but again I wouldn’t know who any of the people were, and it would be like watching strangers to me.  Moving on, I grew up in era when the VCR was invented.  It was a luxury item and everyone wanted one!  Eventually my family did get one and I absolutely loved it!  I could now record things on television and watch them whenever I wanted!  Eventually we ended up with cameras that could record onto VHS tapes!  This was wonderful and we could now have home movies with sound!  And we could watch them on our VCRs! 

That era seems like just yesterday to me.  We never seemed to have enough blank VCR tapes for what we wanted to record.  And we did plenty of recording, too!  Again, I have quite a few VCR tapes in my living room.  We no longer live in that era anymore, though.  I no longer have a VCR, or a camera that records onto VCR tapes.  So for a while I was looking at these things like I was looking at the 8MM reels, no knowing what to do with them.

The VHS tape I’m holding there isn’t labeled.  I have no idea what’s on it.  The only way to find out is to put the tape in a VCR and see.  I don’t have a VCR.  Thinking about it though, last Christmas I had spent about $120 on a gift for my brother.  It was a small thing that converts VHS tapes into digital media!  He tried using it once and the VCR he was using at the tape.  He was angry and hadn’t used it since.  I could go over and see if there was another VCR and maybe see what was on the tape!

So I did find a VCR that worked and did figure out how to convert the VHS tapes into digital files.  I can now play or edit them on a computer!  This was fantastic!  I had only taken 3 VCR tapes with me to check (who knew how well the conversion thing would work?), but after looking at what was on the VCR tapes, it wasn’t really anything that interested me.

And so another family member asked if I could maybe convert some VCR tapes for her.  No problem.  It became fun to plug in a tape and then start the conversion process ending with the video being moved to a computer and also one of my jump drives so I could take the videos home, too!  We converted some old VHS tapes that were purchased at Walt Disney World and Disneyland from way back when the VCR was king!  The earliest video I converted was from 1989 and was taken just after I had gotten out of the military.  My Dad and I drove around and did a video tour of Bullhead City, Arizona and Laughlin, Nevada.  In the video the cars now look so old!  You can see signs for a Steak and Lobster dinner for $6.99 and one for a steak and egg breakfast for $0.79!  That brought back such memories!

We converted a Walt Disney World trip planning video from 1993, a video about the Disney Hollywood Studios park from 1995, and a Disneyland vacation video from I’m not even sure when!  The Disneyland video still shows the Sky ride, so I’m sure it’s pretty old!  *chuckle*

I stayed up much later than I wanted to converting video and I plan to do more next week.  This is like a trip into the past for me, now being able to watch these old videos on my computer.  So why VHS?  Because the videos we made hold so many memories!  I may not know the people on the 8MM stuff, but I do remember the VHS folks!  Until next week, find an old VHS tape and show it some love!  And keep asking why!

Week 32: Why I went to Walmart

Usually on my days off I’ll make a trip to a grocery store called Winco.  Winco is a very nice place and usually has the groceries I need for the week.  I’m happy to go there and they usually have pretty good prices.  This week, I was relaxing, and tired, and figured I would instead go to Walmart and see what I could find.  Walmart usually has more expensive groceries, but they also occasionally get some odd things and I was in the mood for odd things.

For those of you reading this who don’t know what Walmart is, here’s a web site to show you a few photos from Walmarts around the US:

People of Walmart

Yes, it’s a bit low class, but there’s a fairly nice one a bit up the road from me.  I figured I could stop there and look around and then maybe go to Winco for the real groceries.  After getting to Walmart though, I felt a bit lazy and figured maybe I could just spend the few extra dollars and get all my groceries there for one stop.

First off, Walmart is full of screaming children.  This seems to be at all hours of the night too, because the place is open 24 hours a day.  I’ve been in there at 3am hearing kids screaming at the top of their lungs.  I don’t know what it is with people bringing screaming children out to shop!  There are usually one or two screaming kids at Winco, but not to the extent of Walmart!

Anyway, I begin looking around and stop at the egg section.  Eggs are a bit expensive here.  The brown eggs are REALLY expensive!  What the hell is so special about a brown chicken egg anyway?  I’ve never understood that?  Do they come from chocolate chickens or something?

I do need some eggs, but I don’t need eggs bad enough to pay for the brown ones.  Into the cart (or trolley, or basket, or whatever you want to call it) they go.  Next I end up in the frozen food section.  I come across this:

Deep Fried Chocolate Twinkies…that are also frozen.  Who the hell is buying this stuff?  Yes, that’s something somewhat new and original, but damn!  I won’t be paying for those.  As a matter of fact, I’m not certain I’d accept one if you tried to give it to me for free!  I don’t find regular Twinkies to be especially good, let alone chocolate, fried, and frozen ones!

There has to be better frozen stuff to try!  I go a bit further and find something else.  I was so stunned by the stuff I was looking at, I apparently forgot to take a photo!  It was Doritos Loaded Jalapeno & Cheese.  Not chips, but some kind of Doritos thing loaded with liquid cheese.  This I need to try.  It's a bit expensive, but what the hell!  There were actually a few flavors, but the Jalapeño and cheese looked good to me.  Into the cart they went!

Now as I’m walking around, I come across some new M&Ms.  I absolutely LOVE M&Ms!  These are new flavors, though.  The first one is called Pecan Pie.  I don’t think I’ve ever tried pecan pie before, so I’m not sure if I would like an M&M flavor that tastes like that.  I once bought some Vanilla Cupcake M&Ms and they tasted exactly like vanilla cupcakes, so I have to assume the pecan pie M&Ms taste exactly like pecan pie.  I’ll have to take a pass.  There’s also a White candy corn flavor, but if I wanted to eat candy corn, I would buy candy corn.  I can’t figure out why you would want M&Ms that taste like that.

Next I happened upon the chip aisle.  Now Lays is always trying out new chip flavors.  Some look good, and some look awful to me.  The good ones I’ll sometimes pay for and give them a shot.  Why not, it’s only a couple of dollars, right?  And so here we go, Fried Green Tomato wavy chips?  Or Bacon wrapped jalapeno popper chips.  Well, I’ve already got the Doritos molten cheese things in my cart, might as well try to Bacon wrapped chips.  Now to be clear, the chips aren’t actually wrapped in bacon, that’s just the flavor (supposedly).  It really would be neat to have bacon wrapped Lays chips, though!

Enough of Walmart!  Finally after getting a few other things I head for the check out counter.  They have one girl working and she’s obviously the slowest person they could hire.  I could have went to the self check-out registers, but they never have enough room to put all my stuff before I pay!  So I wait and wait and think about how my milk and ice cream are getting warm.  (Yes, I also bought some double chocolate Klondike bars.  YUMMY!)

On the drive home, I can hear this weird squeaking.  I start wondering if there’s a problem with my car.  Finally I realize it’s the damned egg carton that’s made of Styrofoam squeaking!  The eggs at Winco come in a cardboard kind of package.  I’m never buying eggs from Walmart again now!  That noise was driving me crazy for the whole drive home!  GAH!

So why did I go to Walmart this week?  I don’t know.  Actually, I do know.  It was to buy some more black socks.  I should have then went to Winco.  I’ll stay away from Walmart for a while now.  Until I make the mistake and go back anyway, keep asking why.

Week 31: Why is it time to publish?

Why is it time to publish?  Well, because I’m a writer, that’s why.  What would be the use of writing, but not putting your writing out for other people to read?  Now of course I’m certain to get a few reviews saying the writing is bad, and unrealistic, and things would never happen that way, but you have to put your stuff out there.  You have to suffer the jealous, negative people sometimes.  And maybe they’ll be good reviews, too!  I thought the story was pretty good.

So obviously I spent the weekend getting something ready to be published.  I’ll be publishing it as an “Indie”, or independent author.  That means I’ll publish it all by myself without the help of some publisher.  And doing that is much easier than you might think!

There is a web site called createspace.com.  They will publish and distribute your book for free.  That’s right, I said for free!  They have a cover creator feature to help you make your own covers.  You can even upload your own photos for the cover.  It’s quite a simple program, but I think it actually works damned well!  Here's the link to the web site:

createspace.com

Before going to createspace I wanted to copyright my work.  Now if you do a search for copyright you’ll come across all these companies that want to help you file for a copyright.  That’s bullshit!  Don’t use them!  You don’t need to pay $119 or more to file for a copyright!  Go right to the government web site itself.  The real link is right here:

U.S. Copyright

It’s a bit complicated to navigate through, but once you get everything uploaded, it will only cost you a $35 filing fee.  It’s not necessary to pay some shady company over $100 to do it for you!

Now if you’re from the United Kingdom, or somewhere in Europe you may be asking what the hell a copyright is.  It’s just an American thing that protects our work.  You don’t have to get one of these to publish a book, but it always makes me feel more comfortable when I get one.

Moving on, I went to the createspace web site.  Now maybe it is hard to go through these motions for your book after all because designing a cover yourself can be quite challenging!  What will the front of the cover look like?  What will the blurb on the back say?  Do you want an author photo on the back?  An author bio?  You have to make all these decisions!  They offer professional help for a fee, but where’s the fun in that?  Sometimes it’s more fun to design things all by yourself.  After several tries, my final cover looks like this:

I’ve got my blurb on the back (Which is of course very difficult to write!  How do you describe your story in a couple short paragraphs?  And the photo on the front is one I took myself so I’m not using someone else’s work. 

It’s been quite a weekend for me.  It took me around 18 months to write, edit, and work this story out.  That’s a year and a half!  So now I get to send my work out into the world and see how it does.  Hopefully it will do well!

So why is it time to publish?  Because my story is finished and that’s what you do when you’re a writer.  Until next week, keep asking why, and publish your own stuff!  Don’t be afraid to do this!  Get your stuff out there!