Antici'pation

Canada Post delivered my very own Royal Mail packet Wednesday morning! Air mailed from the U.K. and halfway ‘round the world in Vancouver inside two weeks. Inside my very own packet, stickered with its Customs Declaration signed by T Hirst of Hirst Publishing: Tricia Heighway’s Paddytum.


About a very special teddy bear, and the man who needs him.
I'm saying no more: don't want to ruin it for myself.

Tricia is Tasha Noble, one of the nicest people I’ve met in the writers’ workshop-playground that is Protagonize. Paddytum began on Protagonize: I remember fondly the wonderful installments Tasha treated us to. That feels so very long ago now. Paddytum found a publisher, you see.

And now I have my very own copy.

How to Pre-Pay at the Gas Pump

Are you a devil-may-care bicycle commuter, also registered owner and grocery-gettin' weekend operator of a motor vehicle, and therefore are only naturally unused to the...convenience of pre-paying at the pump for gasoline?

Have your repeated unsuccessful attempts ever crashed the unhelpful pump-computer, lined-up waiting cars, and their staring and unhelpful operators, compelled a garbled barking over a P.A. system and eventual visit by an actual service-station person?

Has actual service-station person likewise crashed the pump-computer, because service-station person isn't any clearer on deciphering those instructions?

Fear not, bicycle-commuter-slash-weekend-driver. Perhaps it'll be next weekend, perhaps in six months: your next visit to the gasoline pump will be uneventful, possibly pleasant, or even fun, when you unswervingly follow these simple steps.

Step 1/ Pre-Pay, just as they say, at the pump. Present your credit card. Swipe your card the correct way through the reader. If you have a newer-fangled chip card: tap your card on the chip-card pad.

Step 2/ Wait. The small display should display "A moment, please", something similar and promising: indicating the computer has read your card and is readying things for your actual purchase of that gasoline.

If small-display doesn't appear at all encouraging: first, re-try your card.

If small-display still does not cooperate: start your feet stepping; proceed to the station office; deal with an actual person more than likely only too happy to assist you.

Step 3/ When things do function properly at the pump. Small-display prompts you to take the nozzle in hand, and select the fuel-grade.

Step 4/ Follow the prompts: when the pump is active, pump your gasoline.

Step 5/ Done pumping: replace the nozzle in its cradle.

Step 6/ Pump-computer prints your transaction receipt: take your receipt.

There. Done. Happy Motoring!

Love Admail?

Doesn't everybody simply love ad'mail? Oh, I do. I might only write, or scribble some nothing, if there wasn't this admail I just must de-personalize, and now, y'know? But I do love handicrafts: love scissoring out my personal info: name, address, account number. Also relish grinding the multi-page shredder, shaking the glass in the windows and drawing a kilowatt-hour or two, when there are pages enough and I can use it.

Looks like it would make snug bedding for...I dunno...a gerbil, say, that nest of shredding, eh?

I was becoming concerned [my cable tv provider, or phone service giant - can't decide which to insert here] didn't love me any longer. No crisp envelope in the mail in some time, y'see: no ad'mail. But another two weeks rolled by, and another biodegradable ink and paper nudge that I try [brandname] broadband services showed up, reliable as a friendly unknown-caller phone-call during dinner.

All so biodegradable. The 100% recycled paper responsibly sourced, et cetera. It's so green Mother Nature might approve, and start growing pamphlets instead of forests.

They've used both sides: I can't even scribble notes on the b-side.

Google Images Search: Revert to Basic Version

Ohhh, Goody!
There is an option for saying "No Thanks" to Google Images' new and standard, and slow, search return. An option for reverting to Google Images' simple and quick-loading way it used to display image search results.
Page-bottom.
Nicely central button: Switch to basic version.

Oh'yess, now here's the Google Images search I won't grow old waiting for. Don't have to landfill this machine now and move anywhere 21st Century'ish just so I can see some bloated, image-cluttered scroll-fest the same day I go searching for it. I can turn time back, revert to how things were, in the good ol' days.

I'd gone image-searching for Iron Age houses, hillforts, and such. Research for writing tonight, sometime.

Now I have to find that certain special pre-writing mood again.

Yup...Lookin' at You

Figured if I can't find the time to blog, so I keep telling myself, I should at least stumble over moments enough for adding fave movies to my profile. Added Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Also, Fail-Safe. Nevil Shute's On the Beach.

I've always liked movies. Character and story. How it's all worked out at the end; for better, or worse.

Y'see, watching a movie feels like I'm just idling, only filling my head with entertaining sights and sounds. Actually, I'm taking mental notes. Protagonist. Antagonist. Begin. Mid-point crisis. Ohh'maan, however will character-A fix this and close the door on wicked, nasty, opposing B, and end this?

Yup, watchin' a movie's my kinda work.

"I'm takin' m'four-minute break...It's in m'contract"

Am taking a break on Victoria Day Monday. Reacquainting me'self with the bloggin', in this four minutes while the tea in the ol' smirkin' mug spins on the glass tray inside the microwave.

The best kind of break, this. Am home, not at work, because today's a holiday, exactly. And it's me taking a break in my own day full of some of the doings I haven't been able to get to because of that thing named Work.

It really is a four-letter word: Work. It's been using me up and keeping me from writing, from Protag, from clumsy bloggin', from my better nature and sweet dreams, from family, friends, wine, women, and song. Y'know, I might say "Thanks, I've had enough. Keep your w**k." Can't say when. Some day. I might.

Won't have to, of course, if that golden someday ever comes that w**kers of the world have long dreamed of. The Future so bright...and flying cars...there's a scary vision.

Of course, there's also the thought that connects with the scary vision. Someone's got to maintain those flying cars; or maintain the robots that'll keep them flying. So I suppose there will always be someone, some when, staring up and feeling his existence reduced to a four-letter word. Depressing.

Meanwhile, I'll just have my tea now. Return to outlining, and notes. And whatever might come. And not think about tomorrow morning.

Explorin' the Dark Side

So I've killed my first villager. Bandits earlier attacked a coach on the Rookridge road between Bowerstone and Oakfield. The villager, this sneering opportunist, was looting the dead. Drew my longsword and I whacked him dead. I let him live on my first play-through of Fable 2: I'm playing it darker, this time.

Last time, I rid Albion's adventure-filled lands of monsters and baddies, and the game world changed for the better. I shouldn't go into spoiling specifics: it's enough to say that for every moral act done there was its dark opposite I might have done instead. And the world would have turned out differently at the end.

Let's say I'm exploring the dark side. Will not be simply bad for badness' sake: where's the fun in exploring possibilities at that mindless extreme, eh? I'm striving to be ruthless, this time through. Looking out for Number One, for Me. I want gold: don't care how I get it or how the scales tip.

Looking out for Me and Dog, okay, to be more precise. And My Wife. Wives! — yes, in the plural, because that'd be being wicked, as in bad, as in good for ruthless me. And kiddies — MINE, after all. So, to be as precise as I can be this moment, I'll be looking out for me and mine. Role-playing the best I can my second play-through of Fable 2's idea of an RPG.

Only wondering how I might attain a respectable degree of despicableness without having to kill any more villagers.