Christmas Eve Book Promo - or - Books That Should Really be Written

The book:
Life Beyond the Internet

-The tragic true story of a man, Dan de Manson, who left the safety of virtual reality to abscond into nature.

Concerning de Manson:
 
"Why did he leave? Facebook can offer us everything we will ever need... except nutrition, oxygen, and hydration." ~Bob Dutch

"Nature? He wanted 'Nature'? He could have Googled 'Nature'" ~Samantha Fae Argyle

"YouTube has double rainbows... All the way across the sky! Does nature have double rainbows all the way across the sky? I think not." ~Alan Pinkerton

A single tear-shedding emoticon for those lost. :'(

~Rafe

P.S.
I'd buy that book... if it existed. :\

P.P.S.
Merry Christmas! :D

"A Modest Tribute" aka The Poem I Wrote, Lost, Subsequently Found and Ultimately Forgot the Meaning Of

So I cleaned my room this morning... EARLY.

I haven't even gone to sleep yet, and it's 3:18 AM.

I finished cleaning my room maybe an hour ago. :\

Anywho... the point is this:

Whilst throwing away trash I stumbled on a piece of paper with a poem I wrote who-knows-how-long ago.

My room was dirty. :\

Anywhosits, I've decided to share the poem I wrote, lost, and subsequently found with you. (I'm leaving all the grammar, punctuation and capitalization exactly how I found them. Some of it's kind of weird... so... sic!)

Here 'tis:

A modest tribute in a thousand words

could utter we

To the flowing of the faerie's sigh

Wishing we could see

What heaven hath brought with Michael's name

A conqueror of Smiles

A lover's game

From Something past to something more

With someone laughing

And Someone's war

Shall be to see what they can make

Of this and that

of give and take.

Yeah... I don't get it either. :\

If it ever meant anything--a claim I cannot swear to--I have forgotten it entirely.

So, really, this is the question: What does it mean to YOU?

Comment and tell me. ^_^

(Yes, I know this one is a quickie... but I had naught else to brighten your day with at this very early moment.)

So, Ciao!

And, as per my usual request, go do some evil!

~Rafe

Life Updates - Who is With Whom and Who's Having Whose Baby - P.S. Mr. Weirdman

Note the proper uses of "Who," "Whom," "Who's," and "Whose." -_- (This will be really embarrassing if I used one of them wrong...)

So, this post is just an update on some of the peeps I mention a lot in my blog. Just so you know what's going on in their lives... and so I can mock them. :D

To begin with, my most ardent follower, Satchel.

Satchel, as you know, is married to Sheriff Woody, and they have three sons, Jose, Jimp, and Lex. As you also know (if you read my posts) Satchel and Woody are expecting another baby.

A "Baby Boulder" is like a "Baby Bump" ... only... BIGGER ... but iz a cute kind of "BIGGER"

The new baby will be the fourth minion from Satchel Minions, Inc. Will technically be my fifth minion though. Mr. Wilson (not previously blogged about) was my first true minion, but I haven't heard from him for a while.

Jamaal (the diminutive one... remember?) is about ready to marry Chief (who is, incidentally, Mr. Wilson's uncle).

I'm fairly certain he'll actually wear a tux on the day of.

Queenie cut her hair, dyed it, and is forcing me to watch My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic.

She's actually rather intimidating when she wants to be...

Honestly, I would never have even considered watching Ponies if it weren't for the unending blah-blahing that Queenie is capable of.

I'm proud to say I've lived through a few episodes. o.O No one can ever accuse me of not being open anyway...

So that's where they stand right now.


Have you ever met a Mr. Weirdman???
(Smooth segue, eh?)

It's that one guy with an obnoxious mustache (or a mullet) and ball cap who rambles on and on about everything and nothing whilst making strange faces and leaving you no recourse but to nod and say "uhuh."
Mr. Weirdman either the life of the party or the bane of the...other party... :\

He's the guy that brings a gun to a tornado.

True fact.

It was a stormy afternoon not too many months ago when we were on our porch watching the weather (as Kansans are wont to do) and our neighbor came over. He was wearing shorts, no shoes, a T-shirt, a ball cap and... a holster? He held a beer in one hand, and a revolver in the other.

He was the mullet kind of Weirdman

"Here," He handed Evic his beer, "Hold this while I load."

The End! :D

(Don't you hate it when writers bring the story to the first interesting instance and then... stop?)

Mr. Weirdmans are everywhere.

Watch out for them.

Now... go do some evil. -_-

Ciao!

~Rafe

The Promised "Fashion" Blog

I'm a geek. Geeks, traditionally, suffer from an extreme lack of fashion sense. So what am I supposed to say about fashion?


Whatever I want to. Just because I'm a card-carrying Geek (President and co-founder of GAEK--"Geeks And Enthusiastic Kindred") doesn't mean I'm always wrong... just "unconventional." I like to think of myself as "eccentric" ... it sure beats the hell out of "nut-butter crazy."


So what's new in fashion? Well, to really know what's "new" we have to know what's old.

We've gone from wearing animals to wearing cotton and synthetic fabrics... not sure how. (I'm not a fashion historian.)

How did we DO that?

 Then, apparently, some of us (one of us) decided to devolve, and went back to wearing animals...


But this time... their Flesh!

Okay, in all honesty, can we really call Lady Gaga "one of us"? I mean--don't get me wrong--I love her music and her eccentricities, but she's kind of... a freak? Is that appropriate? o.O


I  don't know... but somehow when she went back to animals she forgot that we ONLY WEAR THE SKIN!


It reminds me of that Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson in which a caveman is advertising his new invention to his carcass-clad brethren by telling them (something like) "with this new knife you only have to wear the SKIN of that animal!"


I couldn't find the comic... otherwise I'd post it... or at least quote it correctly. But you get the idea, don't you?


Well too bad! >:O
We're moving on. -_-


Let me introduce you to my alter ego: Ralphe le Fashion le Man! ^{*("Ralphe" is pronounced just like "Rafe" but spelled much more fashion-ishly.)}


~Both in Doodle and in Photo~

You can tell by my purple shirt, red bow tie, suspenders, slacks and white socks with black sneakers (the last two of which you can't see in this picture) that I AM the greatest fashion expert on this side of the Nile... or the Rockies... whichever.

As the Doctor says, "bow ties are cool."


(You know you're right when you get your fashion lines from a sci-fi show.)


Where was I?

Oh, yeah... I was going to disregard not being a fashion historian and tell you about the history of fashion.


Well... in the beginning we were all red-faced and nudists.

Soon, however, the social burden of always standing behind an appropriately placed plant became too much, and someone invented portable plants.

Then (finally!) someone had the great idea of slaughtering animals to clothe ourselves.


PETA was still a long way off...

And that's where we're skipping ahead a few thousand years to get past all the freaky weird fashions of Revolutionary France and stuff et cetera.


On the SDA Facebook page I asked my followers to give me pictures of "outrageous fashion." As usual, only Satchel responded.

:\

The rest of you have failed me. You deserve to be disciplined!


"I should discipline you! Five times a day! With bricks! Uh-huh... in a pillowcase." -_-

^You get bonus points if you know what I'm quasi-quoting there. ;)


Anyway... let's take a look at some of Satchel's photographs.


...okay let's just look at ONE of Satchel's photographs:

"I'm the law around these parts..."

This picture is Satchel and her husband, Sheriff Woody. This IS how they dress everyday!


...I wish...


Wouldn't it be fun if more people forsook modern fashion, and took a trip to the waybackwhen when we all wore DIFFERENT fashions?

Don't worry... I don't mean anything crazy like the 80's or anything! Just like... 1864...


Okay, so that's just my fantasy.


Whatever.


Let's ask ourselves a question now: What makes fashion good? What makes fashion bad? What makes fashion fashionable and what makes the unfashionable unfashioned? Are there unfashionistas out there to let us know? (Do we just call them "geeks"?) Are you an unfashionista? Or a fascist? A fattist? (someone who is prejudiced and discriminates based on body fat ratios...)




Fattism at work... :(

 All right... I'm just going to admit it. I really don't have anything to say about fashion.


:\

You should still hang on my every word though... because that's FUN!


...or so I hear...


Whatever. You can all blame Indiana for this travesty of a post... she made me do it about fashion. :('

Oh well...


Ciao for now.


And Happy Birthday to Doctor Who--quite possibly the greatest fashion icon of... somewhere... somewhen... who knows... (DW was first aired on November 23rd, 1963... it is 48 years old today.)

 Just go do some evil.


~Rafe

Onward! And Blablah Bla Blah--Fixed the Link*

We quit home about 3:00 in the afternoon, and arrived in Aurora, CO. about 11:00-ish. Of course we entered a new time zone and gained an hour, so the trip was actually about eight hours long.
Anywho... so I'm in Aurora.

Is this a "yay" situation?

Sort of... ish.

I am going to spend the next two weeks in the boring confines of a hospital room, but (on the bright side) I should come out the other end feeling less like a dead man in a sand pile.

Interesting note: I discovered today that the same company that supplies toilet-paper holders to icky-ish gas stations also supplies rubber gloves to nice health clinics. o.O Does this inspire confidence in you?

It does me. -_-

Who better to trust with health than TP people?

Besides the NAZIs, of course.



Sanitary NAZIs

 Luckily the glove-wearing people I have to deal with aren't NAZIs. No one likes NAZI doctors... I am part Jewish, ya know.

I have promised Indiana, or The Ingenue at Oddbits and Grimcracks that I would do a post about Fashion sometime in the next two weeks. So look forward to that.

Also, if you haven't already, go watch my movie Urban Prophecies here.

So, I guess that's all for now.

Go do some evil, and ciao!

~Rafe

Thanksgiving and birthdays on the 24 of November, 1982

Yeah, the title pretty much says it all.

So, I posted on my facebook asking for blog ideas from my readers. :D

Only one responded. :(

It was Satchel, nonetheless.

Satchel Posting

What she posted was  "thanksgiving and birthdays on the 24 of nov. 1982" [sic].

After a day or two NO ONE ELSE wanted me to blog about anything. :( Obviously my other fans hate me. However, I'm willing to do this blog dedicated to the ideas of Satchel, because I'm lobbying her to name her next child Pavel... even if it's a girl. :D

So, first, we will delve into Thanksgiving.
It's a day for giving thanks.

Nuff said?

Now for birthdays on November 24, 1982... >:)

A little bit of math (2011-1982=29) shows us that any person or persons with this birthday is about to become AO. Which, as everyone knows, is "Almost Old."

You see... ages work like this:
0-1 Baby
2-4 Toddler
5-12 Kid
13-19 Teenager (aka mentally imbalanced individual)
20 Limbo
21-25 Young Adult
26-29 Adult
30-45 Old
46-65 "Middle aged"
66-79 Young at Heart
80-89 Old (again)
90-99 Very Old
100+ Ancient Relic of the Dinosaurs...

Anyone born on November 24th of 1982 is approaching their last year of "Adult," and is almost Old! Shortly (very shortly) we'll have to drum said person out of the ranks of the youthful. :\ Unless he or she is a celebrity. Somehow they can stay young for decades...

Go figure.

Now, if we do some assuming, we should assume that Satchel wanted us to blog about birthdays on November 24th of 1982 because HER birthday is on November 24th of 1982.

I can see the tabloids now:

SATCHEL TURNS ALMOST OLD! REGRETS NOT NAMING CHILD "PAVEL"!

Obviously we have to prevent this from happening.


We have a few options:
1) Make Satchel into a celebrity (this can buy her a few more years).
2) Kill her before her birthday (sadly, not a legal option).
3) Get her to sign a contract legally naming her child (be it male or female) Pavel.
4) All of the above.


Personally, I'm a fan of #1... sadly, the most celebratory thing she's done is give me minions. :\ Not many people gonna buy her CD for that.


Her brothers, dad, and husband are big and scary, so killing her is basically off the table.


Number 4 is just stupid.


That leaves us only one option.


Satchel, if you're reading this, NAME YOUR CHILD PAVEL!
Or Melville... I like Melville too...


Anywho... peace out, ciao and go do some evil. -_-

Oops... LEGO

This was supposed to go with the last post... I'm  a failure for forgetting it. :( You may now hate me (for a minute or two anyway...)

Inspirational Posters... and a Fish...

Meh... the title pretty much says it all.
I made all of these. Enjoy.

Gracias.

Shadenfreude

scha·den·freu·de
\ˈshä-d^ən-ˌfrȯi-də\

"Schadenfreude" is the joy attained from the misfortunes of others. It's like a mild form of sadism with less sexual connotations.

Like how I'm going to be all giddy about your disappointment on realizing that this is an exteremly short post that's not really about anything... and the only picture is completely unrelated. :\

Just a Quickie with a Cop--In which you must forgive any typos because the spell check thing isn't working

The other day I had an encounter with a She Cop.


She was scary.


Scary She Cop

Well... SHE wasn't scary, per se, but what she DID was scary, per se. I like to say "per se."


Allow me to elaborate.


I was driving (in a car) on my way to drop off some movies that I had rented and were late. Anywhosits, as I was driving (in a car) I was messing with the radio. Because I was messing with the radio I didn't notice the light in front of me turn yellow.


Oh No!


As it was, I probably wouldn't have stopped anyway, because I was too close to the intersection to stop, but I passed through a yellow light.


And that's when I saw a cop car coming from the other direction.

The She Cop was inside. (I coul see her...)


Suddenly she pulled into the turning lane, and, just after I passed her, she made a U-turn (possibly illegally) and got into traffic RIGHT BEHIND ME!


I shit you not.


So, to recap, I ran a yellow light, she cop made an illegal U-turn to pull into traffic right behind me, and I am not shitting you.

I was nervous.

But she didn't turn on her lights.


So I kept going.


She stayed right behind me.


But she didn't turn on her lights.

So I kept going.

Finally I turned left, and she went straight, and, alas, we never saw each other again.

But she scared me.

My theory is that since I could see her, she could probably see me too. When she was driving towards me she must have spotted me, and been awe-struck by my excessive cuteness.

That's right. She wanted a piece of this.

Obviously what happened was this: the She Cop had never seen anything so beautiful as me in her whole life, and she turned and followed me PURELY for the joy of gazing at me with utter adulation for a few brief moments more.

It was probably the highlight of her life... and the closest I'll get to a girlfriend.

I will cherish it like nobody's business.

So that, my friends, was my quickie with a cop... a She Cop.

Magic Vans, Combustible Craniums, and Cinematic Awesomeness!!!

I love technology.


It makes people forget how to do things by hand. :)


My parents recently bought a magic van. You can open and close the side doors by pressing a button on the keys. It's MAGIC! Sort of.


I only bring this up because my mother, aka "Mom Lady," had a senior moment with the magic van.

Mom Lady with Magic Van... and neighbor's house.

 Mom Lady is a hippie. Minus the mind-altering drugs and free love, of course. She's one of those "sane" hippies... sort of.

The other day she got home from the store, and after we brought the groceries in, she tried to close the magic door by using the magic button.

It didn't do anything.

She tried again.

No result.

"It's not working." She said, "What are we going to do?"

"I'll get it." I ran over to the magic van, and (amazingly) pulled the door shut.

I turned back around, and Mom Lady was laughing.

"I did it the old fashioned way." I said.

She looked at me, "I didn't even think about that."

*SENIOR HIPPIE MOMENT!*

Silliness!

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "what about combustible craniums and cinematic awesomeness?" Well, hold your freaking horses!

And, uh, can I ride one of your horses?

Anywho, I want to be a filmmaker.


My dream...

And so does Evic...

...and hers.

So we were both excited when we discovered a film school was opening up in a city close to us.

"Yipee!" ...or whatever.

They were going to call it "Brain Flame" or some other name that evokes graphic images of combustible craniums... I still might want to go there, so I don't want to mock them by their actual name. :P

We promptly found their website, and I e-mailed them.

No reply.

Months later...

...still no reply.

Evic e-mailed them.

No reply.

Months later...

...still no reply.

Since both Mom Lady and Dad Man are supportive of our dreams...

...when they found themselves in said city, only blocks away from said film school, Mom Lady said, "Let's stop by there, and see if they'll talk to us.

They stopped by.

They talked to them.

When Mom Lady and Dad Man returned home they told us all about it. It was AMAZING!!!

Evic and I resolved to go visit them ourselves.

So, a short time later, Evic and I drove up to visit Brain Flame.

Next door to the film school was another "university" with a strange name. I told Evic it was probably a brothel-girl training school. She disagreed. Something about it being illegal, and that my mind was in the gutter.

Whatever.

We made it to Brain Flame.

Upon arrival... we found the doors locked. :(

It seemed that there was a conspiracy to keep Evic and I away from Brain Flame forever.

We discussed the annoyingness of not being able to contact them on the way home.

When I returned home and told Mom Lady about it she said "Oh, we didn't talk to anyone inside the Brain Flame building. You have to go into the brothel school and ask to see the Brain Flame people, and they'll come talk to you."

"So it is a brothel school?"

Okay, at this point I'm making up the brothel school stuff... maybe my mind IS in the gutter???

Anywho... here's a bonus pic for you.

I call it "Heil Hepburn!"

The Legend of the Spider of Death (AKA "Can you find the iguana?")

Are you a sufferer of arachnophobia?

I am.

It sucks more than a vacuum cleaner.

And that’s a lot.

One night I was in my room, sitting in bed, and enjoying writing a story about someone or something or whatever. Pen in hand, tea by my side, paper in front of me… *ah* …the only thing that could have made it better is if the tea was soda and the pen was candy… and the paper a movie starring Eddie Izzard, Ed Helms and Will Smith. Let’s throw Keisha Castle-Hughes and Karen Gillan in there for balance.

(Of course I would still wanting to be writing said movie, and would need at least a $100,000,001.82 budget. I’m not picky.)

This film would be entitled: “Snow White Powder and the Seven Dealers” it would win all kinds of awards (including “Coolest Writer”) and make me famous.

Me getting famous:

While I was trying to get famous, I innocently glanced at the floor.

*Was that movement?*

I glanced again (this time not so innocently)…

*GASP!* IT WAS MOVEMENT!

It was a spider…

…of death.

But it wasn’t just ANY spider of death. This was, I shit you not, the biggest, baddest, baby-eatin’est son of an eight-legged, creepy, crawly, she-devil I have EVER seen in my entire life.

Then it began running towards me.

Now, let me take a moment to say that I know I suffer from arachnophobia. I know that what I actually saw was probably something like this:

But that knowledge doesn’t help me.

It doesn’t help me one bit.

What I SAW, What I remember seeing, what has been seared with a hot-iron into my memory FOREVER looked like this:

I was terrified.

I was Petrified.

Mortified.

Stupefied.

By a spider.

That was charging me.

I jumped up.

And I screamed.

Like a girl.

And it ran under my bed.

At the sound of my heart exploding, Behemoth, my brother—who was asleep in his bed across the room, woke up… ish.

He (kind of) opened his eyes and (sort of) looked to see why I was screaming like a banshee.

Of course, by this point, I was merely hyperventilating.

So he did this:

And then he went back to sleep.

I was (for all intents and purposes) alone in my room with a giant, man-eating demon sent straight from the bowels of HELL to torment me for my SINS!

There was a spider in there too.

Okay, I kid…

…the spider WAS the demon.

Somehow (I don’t remember exactly how) I escaped the bedroom with my life.

I was determined(ish) to defeat this atrocity of creation, and reclaim my right as the ONLY ONE who could hide under my bed.

But I needed to find something to aid me in my quest.

I went looking for a flashlight.

I couldn’t find the bloody flashlight.

Damn.

I stumbled on an electric lantern.

After I got up again, I took it into my room and tried to peer under the bed. This is difficult to do when you refuse to get closer than ten feet from the bed in question. (I wasn’t going to stick my face down there for it to feast on!) Luckily my bed is raised a bit high off the ground, and none of my blankets were hanging down. So I could see decently well as I looked for the beast below.

I didn’t find it.

The next day my mother brought a flashlight in from the truck.

FML

I still couldn’t find it.

Actually, I never found it.

To this day a demon-possessed spider dwells in my room… and I sleep on the couch.

Did you find the iguana?

In Which a Friendship Begins with Me being Slapped Across the Face

On Tuesday I went to my Alma Mater to attend my first school event as an alumnus. -_- I am very proud of myself for knowing those words.

I was invited back to participate in the county famous "Writer's Corner," where writer's read each other their work, and otherwise blab on about stuff and other stuff and poetry and short stories and not-so-short short stories and songs etc. Basically, get fifty cool people in a room, and let them share their mutual love of words.

Yes.

We're geeks.

Get over it.

I didn't share any excerpts from my blog. That would have been interesting. o.O Thoughts are turning, wheels are flying!

Anyway. You don't really care about that, do you? You just want to see me get slapped.

You're mean like that.

FINE!

I'll begin by introducing Hugglez.

This is Hugglez:

She REALLY IS that bubbly. -_-

Hugglez isn't the one who slapped me.

I think she feels bad when she uses a fly swatter.

Trust me, I make her mad on purpose, and the worst she's done is glare at me.

Anyway... after the county famous Writer's Corner, I decided to hang out with some of the students who AREN'T alumni. These included Hugglez, Indiana (who I knew from when I was still studying there) and Buttons (who I had never met before ever in my entire life even on the moon).

This is Indiana:

Indiana's the unassuming type.

Now, some may say "Hey! Why didn't Indiana get as colorful and crazy a picture as Hugglez did?" Well, the short answer is because I haven't known her as long, and don't know as many personality quirks about her to spice up the painting with. The long answer is that I was tired when I painted this one in the middle of the night, and was just glad my art somewhat resembled a human.

Whatever.

Here's Buttons:

This is the caption... imagine it says something witty.

So, as I said, we were hanging out after the county famous (you do get the joke, don't you? it's a play on "world famous") Writer's Corner.

Hugglez was upset because jerks had been jerky to her.

Buttons and I attempted to comfort her... because we're nice that way.

And, of course, comforting her involved pretend-fighting with her... because we're mean that way.

In the course of the pretend-fight Buttons made to hit her. But, of course, Hugglez just laughed and said "You wouldn't actually hit me and make it hurt."

And  Buttons said "Yeah, I'd feel bad."

"Why?" Hugglez asked.

I thinks... she may have said something else, but whatever. I replied:

"Because there are a couple gentlemen left in the world."

Gentlemen NEVER hit women. (Unless said woman is coming at you with a chainsaw... then it's perfectly acceptable... but Hugglez was chainsaw deprived... so we couldn't hit her.)

Then, to illustrate the point that being gentlemen, who never strike women, isn't necessarily the same thing as being pansies, who never strike anyone, Buttons hit me.

Hard.

In the face.

It looked like this.

Slightly exaggerated.

Okay, okay, okay... fine.

He didn't laugh maniacally, and I didn't fall over and painfully writhe in a pool of my own blood.

Actually it was more of a *slap*tap* no death.

But Hugglez did freak out. She couldn't figure out why he hit me.

What can I say? It's a guy thing.

Buttons and I shook hands, and have been friends ever since... Tuesday.

It's a guy thing.

The End