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You Know What Really Grinds My Gears Pt.2

And now, it’s time for anothe edition of… you guessed it! Once again, our host Peter Griphin will not be joining us tonight. He’s in North Korea for his aunt’s funeral – indefinitely. Sitting in for him is the always illustrious Hiram Webb.

You know what really grinds my gears? The skier-snowboarder wars. Like really? Are you serious? You’re really going to make fun of your cousin whom you otherwise love dearly, simply because he straps one birch to his feet instead of two? I mean the practicalities are obvious, and I agree that there needs to be some further research into the matter, but is all the drama on the ski hill really worth it? And there’s another point. They haven’t started calling them snowboarding hills yet. Mister, that kid you’re picking on for the sole reason that he’s different… yeah, you’re on his turf.

But sking is sorta like going to a rich person’s home and actually using both the forks they set out for you. Okay, either your motor skills are nill, or you’re just waaayyyy too happy because you don’t have to wash the dishes. Anyway, whatever the reason, I think we can all agree that skiers are living in excess. Mind you, on the other hand, snowboarding is a little like riding a unicycle or walking up staris when the elevator was empty, or making the bed when you won’t be back in the bedroom until night when you’ll mess it up again. Like seriously man, you’re trying so hard, and nobody’s even watching you! There are so many easier ways to get down a hill. Doing something hard is kool. Doing something hard when there’s an easire way is not.

So clearly, as evidenced by my original statement, I think it’s clear that skiers and snowboarders can never be friends, and that they must stage an epic battle on the snowy slopes until one of them overcomes the other and a definite victor is decided. Then the loosers should have their mode of transportation removed and burned in a victory bond fire. I feel this will be the only way to bring peace and enrich our society.

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You Know What Really Grinds my Gears pt.1

And now it’s time for another episode of ‘you know what really grinds my gears’ with Peter Griphin. Sitting in for Peter, during his time in the hospital, is the well educated Hiram Webb.
You know what really grinds my gears? Critics. Now this is a bit of irony for me, since this segment probably falls under the criteria of criticism. But specifically I’m referring to the type of critics that end up on the cover of movies to rave about how good they are. First of all, nobody knows what the heck “insert popular American city + insert variation of verb indicating news or university” is, if in fact it even exists. Probably it doesn’t. And “five thumbs up, stunning, timeless masterpiece” isn’t criticism. Actually, it’s closer to propaganda. “this sucked” or “script is juvenile” would be criticism. Just once I’d like to see a movie with a two star rating on the cover.
Imagine a world where movies displayed the tomatometer or an IMDB rating on the front cover. No wait, they’d never go for that. In fact, I think this entire rant is paramount to beatin a dead horse. I guess if there’s one thing I hope to accomplish it’s that the next time you pick up your favorite movie you notice the flagrant words of the ‘critics’ and have a good laugh.

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Act One – Scene Three: fan pages, pdf embeds, and a lot of hulabaloo about nothing

I’ve just added what might actually, at last, be called content. Under the persuasive, yet indirect, instruction from my sister at jessilicious.com I’ve allowed the site to spill over into facebook land, and with the addition comes chapter one of “The Fall of NaRasch”. That was at the beginning of the day, but this is now the end and among my day’s accomplishments are a second and third chapter of NaRasch included in arlenbresh.ca and available to everyone with a free membership. Note to self, set up jetpack plugin, as that’s probably going to be important in the near future? Maybe I’ll do that now.
And while we’re on the subject, why ‘The Fall of NaRasch’ anyway? Well because I think a book title should probably say a little more about what the book’s about then ‘Garawain-the gateway document’. That could be just about anything from a royal edict to a shipping record. And who really wants to read a book called Garawain anyway? We all love strange long fantasy names… but this time around I’m leaning more towards the ones that can be spelled and pronounced – which brings us to the second point.
What the heck is NaRasch? Because if any of us actually lived in a city called Fwackniersh we’d all rebell, even if we were already king. So, let’s clean up the names, fix a few run-on sentences, and generally fill in the grey areas with a little black and white where needed. Racubons is no more. Karbaan is a generic name for the ruler (like Pharoah) and as such a nameless father suffices. Slackrem becomes Slacer, Cracknos – Cranok, and so on and so forth, and where before i didn’t care about what word 2010 told me about my akward grammar, now I’m paying attention, and what do you know, the crazy software has a point! Adding to that an extra four years of growing up and another battery of editorial attacks, and we’re shaping up for something different enough to deserve a new title.
And on that note enter the Arlen Bresh Publishing Company. Online is the first step. An e-version of the book will be available upon completion for somewhere from six to ten dollars (I think) and some time after that my plan is to start printing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, outsourcing the material for twelve dollars a copy to author plus eight hundred up front was fun and all, but this is 2011 and dang near anything is possible thanks to the wonder of affordable laser printers! In the mean time I’ll be writing more short works and looking for unpublished bits form other authors to add to the collection, so find the facebook page, become a fan, and drop in now and then, because there’s much more to come!

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Act One: Scene Two–with the man in the leopard print suite

I’ve done it. At last I’ve done it. After two long days of toiling over crummy plugins and turning my head inside out with CSS and PHP my latest project has at last come to an end – and by end i mean beginning of course. This is the fourth instalment of WordPress that I’ve set up. You’d think it’d be easier by now, but as some crackpot once said, with great power comes… yeah you know that one. The more I know how to change the more I’m obligated to change. So with puffy eyes I sit here among a field of empty pop glasses, coffee mugs, and coke bottles, and declare arlenbresh.ca to be complete-ish. By that I mean it finally looks good – it just hasn’t gotten anything on it; which brings me along to the next item on my agenda – actually writing something. Happy father’s day.

As always the Fall of NaRasch is coming along nicely, but by now I’m pretty sure that even the few who still remember precisely what that is are tired of hearing about it. So I’ll not fall back to that topic, though I should mention that my next upload should be a sample chapter of my revision work – perhaps to incentivize FB likes or some such shenanigans. No, what a wordpress site needs are updates; blog posts. An overtired author’s ramblings about nothing and everything all at once, hoping desperately that some of the clicking sounds coming from his keyboard will eventually correspond to a cognitive thought.

Hey, here’s a fun fact: did you know that if you’ve got windows7 and IE9 you can “break off” tabs from your browser and drop them in the start menu? It works great, especially with mainstream sites that are equipped with proper favicons like facebook, twitter, and jango. Oh, and FYI, it works for arlenbresh.ca as well. Check it out. I went and built myself a clean little blue icon that up n looks dang pretty nested against the bottom of your screen. Heck YES! Okay, maybe I’m a little too excited about that…

Oh, and hey, for all your proud iPhone owners out there, heck anybody with access to iBooks, if you’re interested in a good read, check out ‘The N00b Warriors’ (yes, those are the number zeros). It’s a bit of an unusual read, but I think it’s the first thing my fiance and I have been able to agree on (besides strawberries) so for that I’ll deem it noteworthy. Also, it’s free in iBooks, and who doesn’t like free stuff? There are other ways to get it, but I’m not positive at the moment. I’ll look into it maybe and feature it here.

Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for tonight. This over exhausted writer is calling it quits for the weekend.

-Hiram

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The Opening Act

WordPress migration: As it turns out, while a great deal of people have tried very hard to make it possible, it still isn’t that practical. Anyway, ABpub version one wasn’t worth loosing sleep over. In other words, this is a fresh start on a fresh site, and if you’ve stumbled across this and count yourself among the WordPress savy then have a boot over to arlenbresh.ca and tell me what I’m doing wrong.

As usual I’m taking a very roundabout way of saying that I’ve got a new site on a new server, with a shiny new domain, and this particular post is to announce that I’ve added the first bit of content: arlenbresh.ca/highschool. Hey, that was fun. This isn’t new content. I’ve had it on my site in the past, and it’s about four years old now. HOWEVER, it’s dressed in a shiny new PDF cover complete with company styling. There – that’s called a publishing company that actually publishes something. More to follow.