        |
Join me, Sharon Ashwood, Lori Devoti and Michele Hauf for a chat tonight! We’ll be talking about our stories in Crave the Night over at Literal Addiction. If you’ve never chatted there before, it appears as if you’ll need to setup an account.
We’ll be there from 8pm to 10pm Eastern Time/5pm to 7pm Pacific Time.
see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
There’s a show on History Channel that I really enjoy watching. It’s called Decoded and features author Brad Meltzer. He mostly does some commenting through the show, but the main figures doing the investigating are an attorney, an engineer, and a journalist/historian. Every week they investigate some new historical rumor. Some of them are pretty out there, too, which is why I consider this show a guilty pleasure.
Some of the topics the show has covered that I found especially interesting were the Culper spy ring from the Revolutionary War. I’d never heard of them before, but apparently they had quite an impact on our victory in the war. Well, at least according to the show. I didn’t do any research on my own.
They also looked at Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) really committed suicide or if his death was a murder. Again, after watching the show, it sure would be nice if the US Government would grant the Lewis family’s request to exhume the body and let a forensic anthropologist do some work. It sure sounded like he was murdered and the evidence for suicide was flimsy at best, fabricated at worst.
The show has also covered other topics like whether or not there’s still gold in Fort Knox, what happened to the corner stone of the White House, DB Cooper (the hijacker who parachuted from the 727 over the Pacific Northwest), and investigated if John Wilkes Booth really was shot after he assassinated Lincoln, or if it was another man who was killed instead.
I’ll admit to being skeptical about a lot of what they choose to cover in the show and some of the theories are out there. I still find it entertaining and even if some of it is ridiculous, it’s entertaining.
I couldn’t come up with a topic to blog about and so I thought, hey, I’ll do a random website generator and blog about whatever turns up. The first site I ended up on sold sex toys. I decided to try again. The second attempt was a bit more conducive to blogging.
Site two was Dubtown Urban Exploring. The site is in German, and while I did take that language in high school and college, I’ve lost a lot of my skills, so I had to rely on Google translator. Not the most accurate thing ever, but enough so that I could understand what I was looking at. This site has some hugely interesting photos of abandoned buildings. One of them is a sanatorium that was built in 1899 and its in great disrepair. It’s also hugely fascinating to me.
A lot of my stories take place in derelict buildings and warehouses. The images are wonderful for getting the imagination firing. I’ve also spent the past couple of days thinking about a story that I’d planned to work on months ago, but got sidetracked by other things. This site will definitely be perfect for inspiration on that front, too.
The other thing that struck me is that it would be pretty cool to take a camera and go out exploring like this person did. It just shows that anything can be art. I’ve bookmarked the site to return to in the future.
Of all the plays and musicals I’ve seen, Into the Woods remains one of my all-time favorites. It’s a threading together of a few different fairy tales—Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood primarily although a few others get mixed in.
Since everyone knows the fairy tales, I won’t go into too much detail about the play. All the different fairy tale people run into each other in the woods. The cow Jack needs to sell? He trades it to the baker for magic beans. The baker’s wife ends up with Cinderella’s slipper. And Rapunzel’s prince and Cinderella’s prince try to out-do each other with how difficult it is to woo their woman.
While the first half is all lighthearted and humorous, the second act is considerably darker. This gets into what happens after happily ever after. I have mixed emotions about the last half of the play. On the one hand, I can appreciate skewering the fairy tales, but on the other hand, I like happy endings. I did love the first act, though, without reserve.
The music and lyrics are outstanding. I love Agony, both versions of it with the two princes trying to top each other on how tough they have it. I also love the The Last Midnight when the witch talks about finding someone to blame being more important to the humans than dealing with the giantess. And I Know Things Now sung by Red Riding Hood who isn’t quite as naive as she was before meeting the wolf. "Isn’t it nice to know a lot…and a little bit not."
Into the Woods was recorded with the Broadway cast and is available on DVD, which means if you’re interested, you can rent it/buy it and not need to wait for the play to be staged in your city. I like the DVD version, but there’s always energy to watching a live performance that isn’t captured on disk.
Highly recommended
No one tell my mom about this blog post! It’s a secret, okay?
I bought my mom a Kindle 4 as a combination birthday/Christmas present. Yes, I know I’m early, but she’s so hard to buy for and this way I have time to download all kinds of books for her. I’ve already gotten all of my books on there for her and it’s charged, wifi setup, etc.
I wanted to pass along my thoughts about the latest Kindle. First of all, this is not the touch version. I’d happily have bought her one of those if I thought she’d take advantage of it, but she’s very techno-phobic and the simpler the device the better. Because this isn’t the touch screen model, it means the keyboard that pulls up on the screen can only be used by using the 4-way button on the bottom. Kind of a pain, but it was usable and my mom will never type on the K4, so no worries.
The first and most noticeable thing was how much lighter and smaller the K4 is compared to my K2. That’s an awesome improvement and one that’s good for my mom. She won’t have to work as hard to hold the device. I rested the K4 atop my K2 and there was probably an inch on the top and an inch on the left showing of my Kindle. That’s how much smaller the K4 is, but with no keyboard, it can shrink.
The back of the device has a little texture to it to improve grip and prevent it from sliding when it’s put down on a table or counter. I plan to buy my mom a case as part of her gift because it will be extra protection if she falls asleep while reading.
The page forward and previous page buttons are on the sides of the device more than on the top of it. There is also one of each on both sides so it’s easier to go backward no matter which hand you like to use to hold your device. On the K2, the previous page button is only on the left side, the home button only on the right. The K4 has the home button on the front. There are a few other button differences, like the on/off switch is on the bottom and not that top, but this isn’t a big deal.
Aside from the smaller, lighter K4 and the lack of keyboard, the reading experience was identical to the K2. This is good because I’ve loaned my K2 to my mom and she liked that. I need her to feel comfortable with the Kindle or she won’t use it.
Next up, downloading a lot of books to my mom’s Christmas K4. I need enough to keep her busy reading for a long while.
Not blogging today is my way of offering moment of silence to honor the victims of 9/11 and the other victims of terrorism around the world.
I’m guest blogging today at JoJo’s Book Corner for her blogoversary! See the model who looks like Dak, the demon hero from Enemy Embrace (Oct 2011 in Crave the Night). I also talk about one of my favorite books from the mid 90s and am giving away a copy of Through a Crimson Veil. Please join me!
Earlier this week, my blog was hacked and used as part of a phishing scheme (they imitated the website of some bank I’d never heard of). I thought I’d stopped the problem (while breaking the blog), but the phishers were back today. Unable to locate the files they’d infected to gain access, I was forced to take the nuclear option. That means I deleted the entire blog and reinstalled it cleanly. I then imported my blog posts from Blogger.
What this means for you:
I don’t think there should be any other direct impact. Some of the features I’d used plug-ins to provide in the blog are gone. I can’t remember all the names, but I’ll try to add them back as I think of them.
I hope this radical solution solved the problem, but if the blog disappears again, you’ll know why.
Patti O'Shea's passions are writing, airplanes and traveling. Fortunately, she's been able to enjoy all three. Find out more about Patti.
Subscribe in a reader
You are currently browsing the archives for the Misc category.
