Jun/090
So My Birthday Is Coming Up
So my birthday’s coming up and instead of giving my children a list of what I’d love “Oh that’s all right you don’t need to bother…” I decided to check the list of people who had the same birthday as me June 29.
Only to discover that every “famous person” born on June 29 is someone I haven’t heard of…
June 29 people I know (heard of): Nelson Eddy 1901, Slim Pickens 1919, Ray Harryhausen 1920, Soon-Tek Oh 1943, Gary Busey 1944, Richard Lewis 1947, Amanda Donahoe 1962, and Sharon Lawrence 1962.
Celebrity names I didn’t recognize: Nascar star Jeff Burton, actress Melora Hardin, cyclist George Hincapie, actor Sam Ball, Wil Kemp, singer Nicole Scherzinger, Katherine Jenkins, Christopher Egan, and Addison Timlin.
Historical figures: Pretty much nobody you’d recognize…
Oh, kids, I’d pretty much like to see you and be taken out to dinner. Or bookstore gift cards.
May/090
Fantasy/Horror Novel Contracted
Our orphaned fantasy novel Phlogiston has been contracted by Aspen Mountain Press approximately a year after the old publisher went “belly up” so to speak.
In an alternate history Wales, around 700 CE, a despicable act of murder appears to break the fragile treaty between humans and dragons. The story details the search for the killer of a Welsh noblewoman found burned and mutilated on the Merchant road between her home city and a port city she’d been visiting.
Phlogiston (Flo-GEE-ston): A hypothetical colorless, odorless, weightless substance believed to be the combustible part of all flammable substances and to be given off as flame during burning. Alternate: The glands of a flame-throwing dragon which secrete fire.
Blurb: In the age of Beowulf, after twenty years of an uneasy treaty between dragons and mankind, a noblewoman is found burned and mutilated in an apparent dragon attack. Have the dragons broken their own treaty? Can apprentice scholar, Gwyneth, and the mysterious Prince Galduric, a merchant savant hiding a dark secret, uncover the mystery in time to stop a war?
Sighing with relief…
Jan/090
“Turn My Life Around…”
So I’ve recently listened to “Tommy Does The Laundry,” Manolete’s lament to modern society about a young man kicked out of his apartment for not paying the rent–not an uncommon problem in today’s economy.
Miguel Ojeda does an exceptional job of sounding like Pink Floyd’s David Gilmore from such ballads as “Mother” or “Comfortably Numb” when he sings the verses to this song. You get the uncanny feeling that he may have actually taken refuge in a laundromat in bad times.
Dec/080
How well do you know your Christmas Carols?
I received these from author Michele Armstrong who stated that she ate lunch with her oldest on Friday and they played Holiday Trivia. Michele said she knew WAY too much. Every question she was poking her daughter and saying, “I know! I know! I know!” LOL!
Anyway, I got 19 of these out of 20 and then the answer to the one I missed was so obvious, I groaned.
How many can you get?
- Quadruped with crimson proboscis___ _________ ___
- 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. without noise_______ _________ ___
- Miniscule hamlet in the far east ____________ ______
- Ancient benevolent despot ____________ _________ _
- Adorn the vestibule ____________ _________ ______
- Exuberance directed to the planet ____________ ____
- Listen, aerial spirits harmonizin ____________ _____
- Monarchial trio ____________ _________ _________ _
- Yonder in the haystack ____________ _________ ____
- Assemble, everyone who believes ____________ _____
- Hallowed post meridian ____________ _________ ____
- Fantasies of a colorless December 25th ____________ _
- Tin tintinnabulums ____________ _________ _______
- A dozen 24-hour yule periods ____________ ________
- Befell during the transparent bewitching hour ______
- Homo sapien of crystallized vapor ____________ ____
- I merely desire a pair of incisors ____________ ______
- I spied my maternal parent osculating a fat man in red__
- Perambulating through a December solstice fantasy ____
- Aloft on the acme of the abode ____________ _________
Results:
15 – 20 Correct – You don’t need any Yuletide spirit!
10 – 14 Correct – You could use something in your stocking!
5 – 9 Correct – Are you sure you have the right holiday?
1 – 4 Correct – Surely you jest!
You’ll probably get them all, but if you need help contact me.