Month: May 2016

Getting back into writing fiction has been a little hard, yes.

I thought that doing the 100 word pieces once a week would help, and I think that they may have actually done so – but scaling up hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world. That piece that I was working on last week, for instance: hit about 1,100 words and then I realized that I needed to think about the framework some more if I wanted it to be a coherent 5,000 piece. Which is kind of funny, because I’ve routinely cranked out a couple of thousand words a day for almost a decade. Just not all on the same theme, and with a different purpose in mind.

But I endeavor to persevere, as the man put it.  This looks like something that I can maybe place a story in:

(Via @emccoy_writer)

…and if I’m smart about it I won’t feel like I’m trying to rush and hit a deadline (the other problem I was having last week). Well, that’s why they call these things ‘adjustment periods’…

I started a magical adventure with the Maryland MVA today.

And that’s old-school magical, which means all that stuff that occultists got into before the Victorians showed up and romanticized the whole thing into oblivion*.  Seriously, man: it’s downright amazing how those guys in the 19th Century utterly defanged the supernatural. It’s almost as if that was the intent… Continue reading I started a magical adventure with the Maryland MVA today.

There’s going to be an Assassin’s Creed movie?

There’s going to be an Assassin’s Creed movie. I somehow missed this.  Trailer supposed to drop today or tomorrow officially: but since I’m about to publish this and take the kids to school, people will then leak the trailer to the Internet within the next five minutes.

Like they do.

(Via @TheSenator)

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously, did I miss this entirely? Or did I see it, and have just forgotten because I need more coffee? It’s a puzzler.

So, my kids’ computer just upgraded ITSELF to Windows 10.

And no, I did not tell it to. It apparently decided to do this on its own. At least, my kid says that he didn’t tell the computer to upgrade itself, and in any disputed narrative involving Microsoft and my nine-year-old I’m going to believe my nine-year-old. Heck: any nine-year-old, really.

The funny part is, I don’t even mind the upgrade, per se: I’ve had no problems with Windows 10. But it’s a little annoying to have my schedule potentially blown up like this. If I want to upgrade the operating system of any of my computers, I’ll let you know, thanks.

So X-Men: Apocalypse is kind of meh?

It’s out in England now, and apparently it’s not getting all that great a reception. A little disappointing, if true; I liked First Class, and when I finally got around to Days of Future Past I found it pretty good, too. Especially since it was a time travel picture, and those are hard.

Wonder how long before they reintegrate with the MCU? – Because, let’s face it: that’s where the action is, right now. Although that’s not the one that I want to see. I want to see a Fantastic Four movie that doesn’t suck.  And don’t tell me that it can’t be done. Marvel has been racking up quite the record of making watchable movies that everybody said couldn’t be made watchable…

The vital life lesson I learned today while making a Sausage-Apple Meat Pie.

So I made a sausage meat pie with apple and cheese sauce (which is to say, I made white sauce and then I melted cheese in it). It came out great. It was sausage, apple, cheese, all baked up, tasted fine. Nothing unexpected, in other words. The only problem was, there was some cheese sauce left over and some apple bits and a cast-iron pot full of sausage grease. So I said, Well… there’s some cabbage in the fridge from last week. It’s on the verge of getting elderly: better throw in the pot and let it cook up while the pie bakes. So I threw in the cabbage and apple, cooked it at medium until the stuff started to soften up a bit, threw in the cheese sauce and let it cook at low until the meat pie was done.

The meat pie, my wife and I each had a slice. The cabbage, we scraped the pot clean to get at it all. Moral of the story? …Cook cabbage in pork grease. Which is probably a very obvious vital life lesson, but it never hurts to make sure that everybody else is on the same page, as it were.

Tweet of the Day, The USA Has Always Excelled At Killing Monsters edition.

Really, it’s our specialty. It’s why we’re here. And I flatter myself by saying that we’ve gotten rather good at it, over the years.