One Full Year of Strict Carnivore, Let's Look at the Before and Afters!

It's been a whole year that I've been doing this carnivore diet along with alternate day fasting, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results. In today's video, I sit down and talk about it and go over how it's gone and what has changed, as well as showing off some of the pictures and videos that prove how well it's gone.

Anklecast 67: Something Out There Available On Patreon

The new episode of the Anklecast is now up on Patreon!

Jean-Paul has spent his life rehabilitating and tending to the few plants left on the surface of the Earth. The planet is mostly dead after the nuclear holocaust that his ancestors released on us all. Then one day while on the surface, Jean-Paul saw movement out of the corner of his eye. It wasn't the wind, there was something out there...

Afterward, Rish and Big talk about several things, from old ideas Big had in his youth to their experiences in film school.

He's My Boyfriend

One of my coworkers has this sign on her desk.

Is it just me, or does having this list pretty much mean that you should be on it? Maybe learn to let go and forgive so that Karma doesn't have to come for you...or get yourself some lotus flowers to keep him off your back.

BBBE Carnivore | Weight Keeps Rising, and I'm Nervous As Can Be | Week 52 Roundup

I've given up fasting, and I'm eating every day. There's a plan behind that. I'm trying to fully feed my body, top off its nutrients so that my hormones regulate and my body can fix up any leftover issues that remain. Once it's 100% good, then the weight should drop off the rest of the way...that's the theory anyway. I've heard it said a bunch of times, but putting it into practice is nerve-racking, however. How long will my weight keep rising before things even out and I start going back down? I don't want to have to spend another year to lose it all off again. Yikes!

Holiday Decoration

Today is Memorial Day, so it seems appropriate to talk about another Holiday decoration that I got a hold of...although it was yesterday, not today. I was getting cat litter at Walmart, and while there, I checked the toys. I saw this thing:

Altered Beast was an arcade game from the late eighties, and that's what this figure is from. I never played Altered Beast, but I love Werewolf figures, and they'll look great on my shelf at Halloween. That's a completely different holiday, but the decoration is for a holiday.

It's pretty cool. I'm impressed by how poseable it is.

It has way more points of articulation than I expected. It's to the level of most six inch figures, despite being a cheap little goofy video game action figure.

I like it a lot, and am considering possibly picking up one or two more. Maybe if I paint them a little bit, they'll all look unique and separate. It would be cool to have a whole pack of werewolves. I guess we'll see. I haven't been buying many toys recently, so I haven't wasted money on them in a while. Maybe wasting money on these could be the way I go for a while. Who knows?

Somebody Somewhere Along The Line Was Careless

I was at Sam's Club the other day to get some eggs. They have pasture-raised eggs for a great price there, so I exclusively buy them from Sam's Club. That's about the only thing we ever buy there, but I eat so many eggs that it makes the entire price of the membership worth it...except on days like yesterday.

They were all out of pasture-raised eggs yesterday. That is the second week in a row they haven't had them. Each time they run out, it takes them several weeks to get more in, and I'm always worried that they may just never come back. I'm afraid they'll stop carrying them, and the whole reason we bought the membership will be moot.

Although I'm super picky, and almost never eat anything but the pasture-raised ones, I looked at the other egg options they had there, just in case. I came to their boxes of five dozen super cheap eggs. These are the ones where they keep the chickens in a pen, never let them out, and feed them the worst possible feed, so they're almost nutrition-free. I generally don't even bother to look at these eggs, but they were more interesting than usual this day. Check out this pallet of egg boxes.

Normally, a box that looks like this would be no big deal, but those are eggs. There are sixty eggs inside each one of those boxes, and they're the cheap eggs, so the shells are as weak as they can possibly be. What's the over under on how many eggs are actually intact in those boxes?

The whole pallet was like that.

Yikes. What's worse, is that they're in such a bulk package that you can't open them an check at all, either. You just have to buy them and roll the dice. Somebody actually pried one of them open.

You can guess what they found by the fact that it's the one box with egg yolk on the outside of it. The inside is probably several inches deep with dried up raw eggs.

I suspect that those boxes of eggs are going to sit unloved until they have to throw them all out because they're past their sell by date...unless Sam's Club realizes what they've put out for their customers to choose from and takes them away early. But, from my past experience, Sam's Club don't give a shit what their customer's experience is like. That place is a friggin' disaster every time I go there. If it weren't for the pasture-raised eggs, I'd wash my hands of the place and never go back.

Year Two At The Mailbox

Last year, I planted a bunch of flowers in the planter box beside my mailbox. I updated updated y'all again and again over the next several weeks to show the progress of the flowers' growth. This year, I was slacking, and didn't get my seeds planted as early enough, but I did finally get them planted.

My wife, however, didn't slack. She planted her zinnias a while ago, and already has a bunch of mature flowers.

She's also getting flowers with her irises.

And flowers from these...things. I don't know what these flowers are. They're some kind of perennial, though, so she didn't have to plant them. I think the irises might be too...but I don't really have a green thumb so I don't know that kind of stuff.

I did plant my flowers though. I did a lazy job of it, and they aren't really filling the planter box like they did last year, but they'll probably look better when they get a lot bigger.

I gotta get less lazy about watering them, though. I have an alarm set on my phone to remind me, but I keep ignoring it because I'm busy with something else. I say to myself I'll get to it later, but I always forget too. If I want flowers, I'm going to have to stop slacking. Hopefully, I'll have a nice beautiful bunch of zinnias coming soon. I'll keep you posted.

What Do You Call A Cent In Euros?

I got an email the other day that said my payment from Amazon was pending, about to through. However, it doesn't tell you anywhere in the email how much that payment might be. It's generally quite meager, because who would buy a BD Anklevich joint? But I find it interesting, somewhat, to know. So, I went to my account on Amazon to look.

The payment was indeed meager, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. Instead, I saw another payment that was also pending. You see, I will be receiving 0.05 EUR from Amazon.de soon as well.

I was surprised. How does something like this happen? I mean, it's five cents. Kindle Unlimited allows people to read as much as they want, and pays authors by the page read count that the KU readers consume, but what is gonna earn me five cents? Is that one page? Or is it more? I have several stories that are only about 1,000 words long, and probably aren't worth paying more than five cents for, maybe this person read one of those?

Then there's the other thing...this is Amazon.de. That's Deutschland. Germany. Who the heck is reading BD Anklevich in English in Germany? A soldier on base? No, a soldier on base would have enough depressing shit to deal with without reading another downer by BD Anklevich, right? I don't know. It's interesting though.

That's one thing that is really neat about the internet. I can sell to people anywhere. There's no limit on my reach except my own, self-imposed limits that come with constantly writing depressing stories and keeping my audience super small. For example, back in December, I got five cents from Amazon.com.au. Five Australian cents. That's cool, right?

Would have been even cooler if the exchange rate didn't bring the payment down to only three cents, but hey, I've earned three cents in Australia. I better watch out, their IRS will be after me for their portion of that, soon, I suppose.

I once got 36 pence in Great Britain as well.

That was even cooler, because the exchange rate on that made it 45 cents in America, so I was rolling in it.

The one that surprised me the most was down the list where in April of last year I got 1.39 Indian Rupees from Amazon.in.

I definitely never expected that. When you do the exchange rate on that, it comes out to two cents. Which makes it even more baffling. What the heck? Is that half of one page? I mean, what was it that they read that was worth two cents? My guess is that they clicked on something incorrect by accident. Maybe they were looking for something about cricket, and they accidentally clicked on my story "Fireflies" and went, "Wait a minute, this is a totally different insect, and it's got nothing to do with sticky wickets!"

All the same, I can say that I have made money in all of those countries now. That's something that not everybody can claim...though, with the internet, a lot more people can claim it than before.

The Elephant In The Room

It's been a hot minute since the last time I announced the publication of one of my short stories...although this one probably doesn't apply. This thing isn't a short story or even a novelette. This is a novella! Just a smidge short of qualifying for the Hugo awards novel category...not that it would ever be seen by any Hugo voter, but you know what I mean, it's almost long enough.

Anyway, announcing the publication of "The Elephant in the Room."

This story had its genesis in a dream that I had in which there was something large in the room, but nobody but me could see it. After waking up from the dream, I thought it could make a really neat story, and I even had the title for it immediately. It was perfect...now I just had to write it. 

Well, a few months later, when I was desperate for something to start on after finishing up my Christmas novel, Caught Up in Christmas, I remembered this idea, and plunged ahead. What resulted is a story that I am pretty proud of. I really like this story, which probably means that no one else will, but so goes my life. I think it's good, and I think you should pick up a copy of it. As that guy that Rish always talks about from his writer's conference would say, "You need this book in your life."

You can now get it on its own on your kindle or you can get my newest collection, Three Vampire Weekend, which has this story as it's featured finale. Either way, I hope you enjoy it.

An Exciting Find

When we moved out to Texas, my son was a five-year-old. But that was seven years ago now. He's twelve, and much less likely to get into heavy mischief. Once I decided that such a time had arrived a few years back, I realized I could finally set my microphone up on my desk in my study and leave it.

For years, I would box up the entire set up every week and put it away, and then, when Rish came back the next week, I would remove it from the boxes and put it all together again. Sometimes, we'd screw up the set up, and the microphone would accidentally be facing backward, and we had to re-record stuff that wound up unusable. I think Rish got pretty irritated with the whole annoying necessity of it, and wished that we could just leave it set up from week to week, but I didn't dare. In those days, I had three mischievous kids that might mess the equipment up. They grew up, but then we had one more latecomer who stretched the time out further.

It was around 2020 or so that I realized I could safely set up my microphone and leave it up, but at this point, I ran into a snag. I couldn't find my stands. I had boom arm stands for the mics, but at some point, I'd put them away somewhere, and I could no longer remember where. Instead, I had to make my permanent set up using the desk stand. That didn't work well, because I realized that the spinning hard drives on my desk were leaving a humming sound in my recordings.

So, I was back at square one again, basically. Each time I recorded, I had to drag a bar stool into the study and set the desk stand on top of it, so that the mic wasn't on the desk with the hard drives. I wished I could just remember where I'd put those damn stands. If I had them, I could put the mic there, set them up next to the desk so that they didn't touch, and be totally fine, but no, I'd put them somewhere for safe keeping and, of course, forgotten where that somewhere was.

Things continued on like that for years, until this past week. My daughter was coming back from college, and my wife cleaned out her room to prepare it for her return (we'd been using it as a sort of storage room while she was gone). I came home from work, and there were my two mic stands sitting in the middle of the study. Turns out, the place that I'd put them for safe keeping was my daughter's closet. I don't remember ever having done that, but there you go.

So, at last, I have the stands, and I was able to get my mic set up in it's final boss state.

Today, I sat down and recorded a story using it like this for the first time. It was so glorious...of course, I haven't listened through the recording. I bet it's screwed up somehow, and it won't be quite as perfect as it seems, like maybe the stand was touching the desk and the hum is there throughout. I don't know. But I've learned to expect the worst. Not Nihilism or anything, just experience.

BBBE Carnivore | I Changed Things Up, But I'm Kinda Freaking Out Here | Week 51 Roundup

I determined that I had been overfasting, and it was causing me problems, so I changed the way I did things. I was determined, this week, to eat enough. They say that you eat enough, and your body will eventually get what it needs, and your metabolism will right itself, and then you will naturally shed weight until you reach your homeostasis...but how long do I keep gaining weight before that happens? Every day the scale goes up, and it fills me with dread. I don't want to have to lose all that weight again. Can I manage to keep the faith until I reach the light at the end of the tunnel?

Talkin' Books Again

Since Ross continues to suck, and there's nothing fun happening in the toy collecting realms, I figured it's time for another edition of my series on the books in my collection. So, here are some books that are some of the oldest ones in my collection.

James Khan's novelization of Return of the Jedi was one of the very first full-size adult books that I ever read. Of course, when I read it, it was a paperback with a cover that looked like this:

And when I say I read it, that might be an understatement. I went over that thing with a fine tooth comb. On occasion, they would mention a name of a character that I wasn't familiar with, and I would jot that character's name down and say to myself, "They need to make an action figure of that guy." (Hey, there we go, I managed to work toy collecting in somehow!)

So, when I started building my collection of books, it was only natural that I should add the Star Wars novelizations to the mix. They were in the process of releasing the prequels at that time, and just a few years earlier, in 1995, they had released the Star Wars trilogy in a box set of VHS tapes...one of the last times, I think, that you could get it before they made those abominable special editions.

With the VHS tapes, they also released a set of hardcover books with the same art on the covers. That's were these came from. They're no great works of fiction as far as the writing goes, just novelizations, which are synonymous with a writer slummig it, but I don't care. I didn't get them at that time, because I wasn't quite at a point that I could start into a book collection yet, but a few years later, I started picking them up from used book stores, or eBay, or half.com (remember that place?).

I want to say that Rish Outfield got me one of the books as well, but it's been so long that I can't remember which one or any of the circumstances surrounding that (I think it was probably Empire, but I'm not certain). I guess maybe he could comment on that when he sees this post.

The Star Wars trilogy, oddly enough, is what made me want to be a writer. Funny, considering that they are movies, not books, but I think I may have read the novelization to Return of the Jedi before I ever saw the movie (because I was a poor kid, I never saw the movie until it came out on home video for losers like me to rent). It inspired a generation of kids to want to be filmmakers, and I even tried going that route, but what I truly love, and what I wanted in the end was to be a writer. The guy who makes the stories like Star Wars. So, it's only natural, that they make a part of my collection on my shelves.

Just Here To Complain

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed recently. I have too many goals this month, I think...or to ambitious of goals. I'm supposed to get half of what remains in my audiobook recorded and edited, as well as write 1,333 words a day, and publish the eBook, paperback, and hardcover of Three Vampire Weekend. 

That's a lot, but then there's still the other things that I'm doing as well. Unstated goals you could call them. I have to keep going on my new healthy lifestyle that's helped me lose 85 lbs. this past year, and get the videos shot and edited for that process. I have to keep writing blog posts (I've written a blog post for every day since September 1st of last year). I also have to get my podcast episode for this month put together and published.

Put all that together, and it seems like a lot, but there's more. I've been doing a lot of reading in my spare time as well, and by reading, I mean listening to audiobooks, which is my favorite way to read, and I've been trying to read as many books as possible. I've been posting about what I read here on the blog a bit, and I mentioned that the most recent Stormlight Archives book was in my holds queue. Well, it finally came up.

I got the book, and started listening to it, and noticed that the runtime of the novel was 57 hours. 57 hours! The average book that I listen to is around 12 hours long. This one was about five times as much.

I don't know what it was about that, but it really depressed me. It made me feel uninterested rather than excited. It should have been great news. I mean, if I had bought the book, it sure would be cool, because I'd have paid the price of one book but gotten about five books worth of story. 

Of course, I didn't buy it, but was checking it out from the library on their app called Libby. That might have been part of the problem. The library lets you check out a book for two weeks. For me, that's generally plenty of time to listen through an entire book. I almost always turn in my books early, because I finish long before my time runs out. Not with The Stormlight Archive, though. It's nigh on impossible to finish one of those books in your two weeks of allotted time. You'd have to treat it like a full-time job, basically, and that's how I felt.

I listened to the book, but only half-heartedly. I knew I wasn't going to make it to the end. I was going to have to put it on hold a second time to be able to finish the thing. That's what I had to do with the third book in the series, Oathbringer, too. When I thought about listening to my book, it made me feel tired. It didn't sound like fun, it sounded like work. Not only work, but work that I was bound not to finish in time. Many days, I just listened to music on my drive to work instead, because I didn't feel like listening to the book.

Yesterday, I crossed over the 50% mark on the book, but my due date was today. I decided to call it. I'd done enough. I made it halfway, which was all I was ever going to do anyway. I made a note of what chapter I was in, and the timestamp of where to find that chapter, and turned the audiobook in a day early.

It kind of feels like taking a load off. Now I can listen to a book that I may actually finish in time, so it won't feel like spinning my wheels. I'm listening to a new book already, and I think I liked the Brandon Sanderson one better, but I still feel better about listening to this new one, because I can actually finish it.

I don't even understand why he would write such a tome. Why would someone do that? Nobody would be upset if he gave them a book that was only three hundred pages. That's pretty standard. If he did, he could have four books for every one that he's selling now. Assuming that your fans would buy all four, then you'd have four times the money from all the sales too. It's just mind boggling.

So, it doesn't make sense for the writer, or for me, the listener either. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think I'll be writing any thousand page fantasy novels anytime soon.

Report Card

I use Grammarly to spot things like typos and errors in my writing sometimes. When I do my editing passes and so forth, I find having Grammarly to add to my own attention to be a plus. It can be a poin sometimes, when it wants me to correct things that I know are not incorrect, but mostly it's a positive addition to my process.

Every now and then, I get a little email report thing from Grammarly that tells me how I'm doing in comparison to the rest of its users, and I have to say that I like to see it. Here's my most recent one:

Unfortunately, it doesn't tell me how engaging my stories I wrote were in comparison to other Grammarly users, or how appealing to readers they are, but it's nice to get a little pat on the back that says, "You're doing pretty good, grammar-wise." If it were a grade, I'd have an A, and let me tell you, those weren't that easy to come by when I was in school. I wasn't what you'd call gifted or talented. It's nice to know that I can hang with the A students now.

A New Release

One of my goals for this month was to get my next story collection, "Three Vampire Weekend" published in all of its written formats. Well, I am one third of the way there, because I put the eBook out this week!

You've heard of Three Dog Night and Vampire Weekend, well now it's time for Three Vampire Weekend. In this collection, there are three different vampire related stories: Servants of the Master, Door Approach, and Breaking and Entering. So, get yourself a copy and enjoy it this weekend!

It also has a few of my most recent stories in it, like "Karma Is My Boyfriend," which I did on the Anklecast just a few months ago, and the as yet otherwise unpublished novella, "The Elephant in the Room" that I wrote in January. So, if you're looking for new stuff, you can find it here. 

The list of stories in the book are: Karma Is My Boyfriend, One Million Miles, Servants of the Master, Onward to the Breach, That Damned Cat, Breaking and Entering, Bumps in the Night, The Frayed Ends of Sanity, Door Approach, and The Elephant in the Room.

If that sounds interesting, head over to Amazon and pick up a copy. Enjoy!

First Half Of May In The Books

Okay, it's the 16th, so I'm here to report on the first half of May. It's been a bit of a tough month, to tell you the truth. I haven't had any slip ups or missed any days, but each day has been a little tough to get my goal of 1,333 words per day. 

I have a bit of a malaise. I don't feel like writing right now. I do it anyway, which is probably pretty great. I guess I'm keeping with Heinlien's five rules, particularly rule number 2: You must finish what you write. I haven't quit on anything, but I'm not as excited to keep going as I have been with other things. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was writing into the dark. I hadn't planned out my novel at all. I was just trying to feel my way through it, and that is a little daunting. Because of that, I'm going to have to go back and fix some stuff too, stuff that doesn't jibe with what I came up with later. I hate that kind of thing.

Anyway, here's how my month has gone so far:

It actually looks pretty good, doesn't it? Those are really good word count totals, and the cumulative monthly total is really great. 21,151 is good enough to flirt with turning this month into my all-time record word count month. I could easily make that. You can particularly tell when you look at my average word count:

For most of the month, my average has been the highest it's ever been. Only within the last few days has it dipped down to where it is merely challenging March for the best ever instead of being obviously the best ever. A few days of above average totals, and I'd be back up there again. Weird to think that such a thing is possible at a time when I don't even particularly want to write that badly, and I'm mostly doing it because of obligation to keep my goals.

Here's the rest of the year:

Yeah, that's hard to see six months worth of word counts, but you can click on it, and it will enlarge it for you if you really want to know how it's gone. Add that chart together to the one for May, and here is my year-to-date totals:

That's right, this half of the month put me over the 250,000 mark. That's pretty awesome. I'm getting so close. If I get another 20,000 words for the second half of this month, that would leave me with only 30,000 to get to 300,000. I haven't had a total that low since I started doing 1,000 words a day back in December, which basically means that June is the month when I will eclipse my yearlong goal. Six weeks from now, I'll have nailed it. That's pretty sweet. I remember in 2019-2020, the last time I achieved a goal like this, it took me all the way to the end of August to make it to the end. So, I'm doing a lot better this time.

Of course, how much I write isn't my only goal for the month. In fact, I listed them out in the last post. Goals for May:

1. 1,333 words per day, 41,323 in total for the month
2. Finish 64% of Battalion of Ideas audiobook
3. Publish eBook, paperback, and hardcover of "Three Vampire Weekend"

The first goal is coming well. How is the second one? Well, I'm doing okay. I've gotten four of the eight stories that I had to record and edit done, although they were the four shortest stories. The next four are much longer, and I fear that I won't make it on that. I'm going to try my best, but I'm a little dispirited about the whole thing. Not only do I have all of that audio to record and edit, but I still haven't started on this month's Anklecast, which has priority. I'm going to make it a little easier this time, but it will take time away from working on the Audiobook, so it will be even harder to achieve. I'm coming along, and making some progress though.

The third goal, publish the eBook, paperback, and hardcover of "Three Vampire Weekend" is coming along as well. I published the eBook yesterday, and it is now available if you'd like it. 

That took a lot of work, because it contains the novella, "The Elephant in the Room" which I wrote just a few months ago. It still needed all of the editing done to it, but I struggled my way through it, and hopefully, y'all will enjoy it. I'm getting the physical copies together. That will take several days as well. The cover design may take me a bit too. We'll have to see if I can manage to get them all published in time, but at the very least, I've got it partially published, and we're only at the halfway mark of the month.

I'll do a whole post about the publishing of the collection tomorrow, so you can hear a little more about it then. I suppose I ought to publish "The Elephant in the Room" in a standalone version as well. I guess there's another goal for the month to throw on top of the pile.

I may have overextended myself with the goals this time around. I tried to be ambitious without going too extreme, but I feel a little overwhelmed. The worst part about that is that it makes me want to avoid doing the stuff that would lead to achieving the goals. Very anti-productive. I'm pushing through, however, and maybe I'll even manage to achieve it all. Who knows? We'll keep trying, and I'll let you know how it went on the 1st of June.

Saxon Five

While I waited for my holds to suddenly all come in all at once, I found the next book in the Bernard Cornwell Saxon Stories series. The good thing about these books is that the later entries in the series tend to have no wait. I can just click Borrow instead of clicking Place Hold and waiting for weeks. So, they're my backup reads. I finish something, then while waiting for the holds to appear, I grab a Saxon Story and start listening.

That's what I did with this one, book five, The Burning Land.

Of course, I got a few hours in, and then all my holds starting becoming available on me, so I had to put the pedal to the medal and finish it before it was too late to check them out. I probably listened to the whole book, all eleven hours, in about three days. I've discovered that I can listen in a web browser as well, so I played it while editing on the news at work too, only pausing when I had to listen to sound from a bite or a package.

This book was right there with the rest of them. It's a great series and Cornwell is a great writer. He's really good with telling a tale of war and suffering filled with palace intrigue and great heroes and villains. This one wasn't the best in the series but it wasn't anywhere close to the worst either. There's still eight more books to go, and I'm looking forward to each new edition as I go. They are fun. 

That's my verdict, and I'll be moving on to the next one soon. Well, not that soon. The Rhythm of War is the book that came through on the holds this time, and that one is 57 hours long, so it's like listening to the first five of these Saxon Tales books. I guess it'll be a while before I'm in need of a book that will let me just click the Borrow button instead of the Place Hold button again.

ADF & BBBE Carnivore | Can't Reach One-derland. I Think I've Been Doing This Wrong | Week 50 Roundup

I'm so close, so very close, to One-derland. All it should take is one alternate day fast and wham! And if that doesn't work, then I should just extend it to 72 hours and wham! I've been a chicken, and tried to avoid that, but I should go for it right? Or maybe that's not the right way to go about it at all...

Making An Actual Difference?

My wife has a friend at work who has been having health problems and decided to try the carnivore diet. She kept asking me how it felt to have helped this woman come to carnivore, and whether I was proud to have shown her the way. Of course, it was a ridiculous thing to ask. I didn't even know the person. I think I might have met her once at one of my wife's work parties, but I could have walked past her five times a day for a year and never been able to point her out of the crowd. If anyone could be said to have made a difference with her it was my wife, who was telling her the stuff that she'd heard from me. Which is extra funny, because my wife doesn't subscribe to the carnivore diet and actively stands in the way of me trying to make our family healthier with it.

I've been doing my YouTube videos for years too, but I've never really felt like I was helping much with those either. For one, I was mostly documenting my failures and my inability to overcome that carbohydrate addiction that I suffered from. It wasn't until last May that I finally got my mojo and was able to put it behind me...I think this time for good.

I've been doing those YouTube videos through this whole process, but I never really felt like I was likely making a difference. Most of the people who watched me were already converted, already practicing to the best of their abilities. If they needed any knowledge or understanding, they would go to the big voices in the community like Dr. Berry or Kelly Hogan or Dr. Boz. The best that I could be was another guy that was similar to them, so maybe they didn't feel so alone?

But then I got this comment on my YouTube video from this week:

Oh my gosh, it was amazing! It’s the first time anybody has ever said that my videos have helped them or made a difference, and it feels so good to hear! That’s all I ever wanted with these things. Most everybody, even those closest to me, from my wife to my kids to my brothers and sisters all ignore me and look at me like I’m crazy to not eat vegetables and cake and donuts and soda, but there’s somebody out there that I helped, one person at least. I think that’s pretty neat. Too bad they live in California, so I’ll probably never even meet them, but it’s still neat.

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

I should never have made the goal to get my audiobook finished this month...well, half finished, I'll never finish the whole thing in one month...because as soon as I did, it's like all the bells of hell started ringing and the demons were loosed to prevent my ambition.

On Monday, I got up with big plans to narrate and record as many as four stories that morning, but the second I sat down, a horrible grinding mechanical rang out in my neighborhood. I looked and saw that my neighbor across the street had a crew of workmen redoing their hardwood floors. I don't know what the noise was exactly...it sounded like a reciprocating saw cutting through two by fours, maybe combined with a sander at the same time...the racket was dreadful, and it never quit.

I sat and waited, watching out the window for them to quit, but they kept at it, and the noise never completely went away. Sometimes it was quieter, but then it was punctuated by very loud sections in between. At last, however, one of the worker drove off in one of their trucks, then returned with bags of food. The noise stopped, and they all assembled around their table saw to eat.

I dropped everything, and ran to the study to record a story as quickly as I could. I was planning on doing the shortest stories first, and working my way steadily toward the longest ones, so I could probably finish a whole story or maybe even two in the time that they ate. I managed to spit out "The Tomorrow Bowl" before they finished, but seconds into doing "My Daughter's Balloon," they began sawing again.

I put everything away and gave up for the day, but after a while, I noticed that they weren't sawing constantly like they had been before. The grinding reciprocating saw sander noise had stopped. It looked like they were laying the floors now, and they only emerged now and then to cut a piece of the wood into the shape in needed to be to fit the space.

I decided to give it another shot. I could pause whenever they started the saw up, then continue when they were done. They only used the saw for a minute or two each time, so it could work. Well, I did manage to get "My Daughter's Balloon" recorded, but it may have been the most frustrating experience in all of my narrating career. Over and over again I had to quit in the middle of a sentence and stop to wait for the noise to pass. Then, of course there were the constant diesel trucks that everyone in my neighborhood seems to own passing by outside as well. Those things are so loud that I have to stop and wait for them to pass as well.

The worst was that our stinking cats kept doing stuff to exacerbate that. As if I didn't have enough noise to deal with, both cats decided they had to be in the room with me. One of them even pushed the door open by leaning on it, causing a loud, annoying creaking sound. Eventually, however, I managed to finish the recording. It took just over thirty minutes to record a story that's final run time was thirteen minutes, but I made it.

The next day, I decided that I would get started earlier, and hopefully beat those flooring guys to the punch...if they were coming back, that is. Turns out they didn't, and I was cruising my way the "The Wrong Ingredients" when a new noise echoed through the neighborhood

"No! I'm only five paragraphs from the end," I despaired. But there was nothing I could do. The noise was loud and constant. I turned off the recording and went out to see just what the hell I was dealing with this time. This is what I saw:

Crazy. As if the grinding reciprocating sanding saw wasn't loud enough, now we've got a full-on wood chipper grinding log sized branches to pulp just up the street. What the heck do I have to do to get a little peace and quiet? I'm never going to make it if I have to fight this hard every day just to record some narration.

Pray for me people. If nothing else, just pray for my sanity, because I'm on the verge of losing it in this venture.

Surfing With The Alien

I'm a rocker at heart. I love rock and roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby. It's what I love listening to the most. I listen to all sorts of music, but rock and roll is what owns my heart. I always come back to it in the end, and most of the music I prefer comes from that particular genre. From modern rock to classic rock and everything in between, I love it.

The stuff I like the very most, probably, is from the late eighties and early nineties, when I came of age. That particular brand of rock is definitely my favorite. It speaks to me the most of all. I love the soaring guitars and the insane virtuoso solos they play. Some of my favorites are people like Eddie Van Halen, Kirk Hammett, Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai. So, imagine my excitement when two out of the four guys on that list were coming in concert together.

My daughter and I went out to the 713 Music Hall here in Houston to see the Satch/Vai Tour this weekend.

It was incredible. I don't know if I could say which of the two guys I like best. Joe Satriani has so many amazing songs that I love. I could probably whistle them note for note...except when I get to the most intense parts of the solos when the notes come way too fast and furious for whistling to replicate. He's had dozens of songs that I love. Then again, Steve Vai's Passion and Warfare is likely my most listened to album of all time. I could play that album on repeat for the rest of my life and never be allowed another thing, and still die happy.

Of the two, I think I preferred Joe's performance. I think he just picked better songs from his repertoire to play. They were the most familiar and made me the happiest to hear. Steve picked songs from a wider diversity of his albums, which is fine, but, as I said earlier, Passion and Warfare is my favorite, and I wanted to hear more songs from that. We only got one, and that made me a little sad.

I love going to shows at 713 Music Hall, because it's a pretty small venue. You can get pretty close and have a great view. For this show, they put out chairs. I guess us rockers are getting pretty long in the tooth and can't stand for an entire show like we used to or something. I did see several people attending the show that had to walk with the use of a cane, so it seems to make sense. If there had been no chairs and the crowd could have compressed a little, though, I could have been twice as close, which would have been even cooler.

Sadly, the first ten minutes of the show I had to stand and move to the far side of the aisle to be able to see anything, because all the people who had arrived late or had spent their first minutes in the venue getting booze came wandering in and then stood in the aisle in front of me unable to see where their seats were in the dark. That was frustrating. We'd chosen the aisle seats because we thought we'd have less people to block our view, but that turned out to be the exact opposite of true.

This time around, I chose to not bother in recording even one song with my phone. I learned in the past that there was no need for me to record any songs. Everybody else in the crowd was doing it too, and they would post their videos to YouTube for me. I could let them do that work, and just experience the concert with my own eyes instead. Usually the people posting videos had better seats with better views and better sound than my videos anyway. For example, here's a video from the show's finale when both Vai and Satriani were out playing together. It's in 4k-60p, so it's not crap, and it's from much closer than I was sitting. So, I'll probably just download their videos and save them as my memories of the show.

These songs at the end were pretty amazing, but also pretty excessive. It was fun and funny at the same time to see these guitar masters go so insanely crazy with their solos. Each of the last three songs lasted about ten minutes a piece, because they would basically stop the song and let the two virtuosos perform dueling solos for minutes on end.

We had a great time, and really enjoyed ourselves. This was the third time I've seen Joe Satriani, but he first time I've managed to see Steve Vai. So, there's another tick off of my bucket list. My daughter is becoming a seasoned pro at concerts as well. A few years ago, she was lamenting the fact that she'd never seen any concerts, and was so jealous when I would tell her stories of the things I'd seen live. Now, she doesn't feel that way at all. We've gone to various concerts together since the pandemic passed and people were allowed to assemble again, and I think she's feeling like she hasn't missed out on a thing...well, except when I tell her that I saw Ben Folds play with the Utah Symphony at the Deer Valley Amphitheater with Rish Outfield, then she whines a little. That's one she wishes she could have gone to. She says she listens to that Ben Folds album a lot. Of course, she was only six then, so I think she wouldn't have appreciated it as much as she might now.

Dancing With The Alien

I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks recently. I got the Libby app on my phone and put a bunch of things on hold. They tell you how long you will likely have to wait to receive your book, and I used that to base my decision of how many holds to place, but then I learned that that guess of when the book will be delivered is totally wrong. What they should say is that all the books will be delivered to you on the same day, because that has now happened to me about three different times, even the books that it said would take months before they got to me.

Anyhow, something about this system has got me trying desperately to listen to the books as fast as I can. If I don't hurry, the next ten holds will come in, and I'll have to delay all of them again. It's a feast or famine thing. They all come at once, but then none come for two weeks, and then I have nothing to listen to in the interim. So, when they come, I want to be ready for them.

Anyhow, it's caused me to voraciously binge listen to these audiobooks, finding any possible spare moment that I can listen, and adding that to my routine. So, I've made it through a lot of books. Recently, the side novel from the Stormlight Archive series came up in my holds. That is Brandon Sanderson's series of massive tomes that I have been listening to as best as I can. The side novel is called Edgedancer.

Rish found a copy of it at a thrift store a few years ago, and sent it to me with the other various toys coming in a package for me. 

It's an interesting beast, because it's hardcover, but it's tiny. It's the size of a mass market paperback, but it's done as a hardcover.

I think it's because it was just supposed to be a little supplemental short story that Brandon Sanderson was doing to keep his fans happy when he found that he had some extra time during covid. Of course, since he's Brandon Sanderson...

It turned out to be waaaaaay longer than a short story. When he was done, he had himself another novel...a really short novel, but a novel nonetheless. So, he put it out that way.

Now, it's a novel that's short enough that even I could have wrote it. The Stormlight Archive series is know for audiobooks that run over fifty hours in length, but this one was only six hours and twenty-four minutes. So, I made sure to push it to the front of my holds, because I knew I could get through it quickly and clear up another spot in my holds queue.

It wasn't a bad book, but it certainly didn't light any fires in me. It contained none of the characters that we've grown to love in the series. What Sanderson does is tell the main stories of his books, and then intersperse those with vignettes of random characters that we've never heard of before and will never hear of again doing things that are semi-related in far flung corners of his world. This book is just another one of those vignettes that grew too big for its britches.

The main character doesn't appeal to me very much. At the end of the book in an author's note, Sanderson says that she is one of his favorite characters, and upon hearing that I just shrugged. To each his own, I guess. I found her to be annoying, and her character arc did not include becoming less annoying by the end.

The story was fine, but felt inconsequential. I've always hated those vignettes in the Stormlight Archive series, because there's no context for them, and they don't come back, so they feel like a waste of time. There is a little bit of a throughline to them here and there, but for the most part, I've forgotten what they were about before the throughline comes up, so I don't remember to connect the dots. Having a giant-sized vignette didn't make me extra happy or anything.

The biggest problem about the book is that I can't remember all the stuff that we learned about the world/magic/history and so forth since the last book...and I sure as hell don't want to go back and reread them to remember. The fuckers are longer than a standard work week. It might be best to just hold off on all of these books until the entire series is done, then spend a year or two bingeing my way through them, because then I would be able to keep the details in my memory long enough for them to matter when they come back up again later.

The book was fine, but no big deal, in other words. Sanderson is a fine writer, and the story was good, but it didn't move me like the main story has. I have the most recent main contribution to the series called Rhythm of War in my hold queue, and I'll probably be listening to it soon as well. I wonder if it will be a pleasant experience, or as frustrating as this one because I can no longer remember all the details. 

I expect it will be worse than this one, because it's also 57 hours long. Last time, I had to check the book out on two separate occasions to be able to finish listening. Maybe, since I've been bingeing so hardcore recently, that won't be the case this time, but I suspect it will. I'll have to listen as long and hard as I can, then put the book on hold and wait a few months to reach the front of the line to hear the rest.

A Massive Cover Up

Rish had me back on his show to talk some more about making cover art for the stories we've been publishing recently. This time we talk about the all new challenges and joys that come from employing AI image generators in the cover production process.

We talk about a dozen or so covers. To actually enjoy the podcast, make sure to have the blog post that Rish made with the images that we are referring to, otherwise the podcast will suck...er, I mean, it will suck even more.

You can find the show on the Rish Outcast feed, which you should definitely be subscribed to. You can also right-click HERE to download the show. Or, you can just press the play button below to listen right here and now.

ADF & BBBE Carnivore | Gotta Be In One-derland By Now, Right? | Week 49 Roundup

Okay, I didn't make it to One-derland last week, but it should be such a simple thing. I'm right on the edge, and I only have to weigh in under 200 one time, so surely I made it this week, right? Right?

Anklecast 66 - Euthanasia

The latest episode of The Anklecast is now up and available for all to hear on the feed. Check it out if you're so inclined. If you hate waiting, you can get it even earlier if you're a Patreon member. You can join for as little as $1. I don't want to be too forward, but it's probably something you should consider.

Trent and Brent were two children with rhyming names but vastly different life paths to travel. Brent was brilliant, a boy genius, destined to do something amazing, Trent was average and prone to mischief that would eventually lead him down a dark path of suffering and regret. Their paths would cross again, however, and when they did, Brent would be the one who didn't get it and Trent would be the one with the plan...

Afterward, Rish and I talk about whether certain things should be allowed in stories for entertainment or not. We also talk about our adventures in publishing, and let you know what's available now. Enjoy this if you can, and mind the trigger warning.

As always, thanks to Kevin McCleod at incompetech.com for the music. And special thanks to Rish Outfield, Jonathan Wilson. Tena Kolokowski, and Wendy Wilson for contributing their voices to the mix!

The episode can be found on The Anklecast feed right now, or to download the episode, right click HERE. Then again, you could just hit the play button on the embedded player below, and get it now with no further effort. It's all up to you.

The Toys Are Back In Town

I haven't done a toy post in a while. Mostly because nothing has been on clearance or at Ross that I wanted. There was a brief golden age where I found something I wanted pretty much every time I went to the store, but those days are gone, and I've grown loathe to even go to the store, because it's just a waste of my time.

The other day, however, I was at Walmart for other things, and I found that they had created a whole new aisle filled with clearance toys. They had several things that I would like on clearance, but mostly, they were barely marked down. A figure that was usually $12 was now selling for the rock bottom price of $9. One figure that I'm pretty sure retailed at $22.95 was now selling for the bargain basement price of $22.00.

They did have one thing I was willing to pay for, however. I did buy this one:

I'm pretty sure they wanted $14.99 for these at regular retail price, so it was half off. It's not bad, but it's not really a legit Star Wars vehicle.

Kenner made these things up back in 1979 or so. 

They had basically used up everything that was actually in the film, but the demand for the toys was so high, that they wanted to keep the money train chugging, so they invented some stuff of their own.

It always sat in that strange realm of Star Wars toys that weren't actually from Star Wars, until recently, the Mandalorian included it in an episode, and canonized it. The Mandalorian had a thing for doing that. They did the same thing for Constable Zuvio earlier in the season. He was a figure from The Force Awakens whose scene was cut from the movie, but he was an early release, so the toy came out before the movie did.

Tons of people bought the figure without even knowing who it was, then later regretted it when it was, in fact, no one. Those figures became massive peg warmers, and inspired my favorite Toy Galaxy video of all time.

I've gotten a little off track here. We're talking the Imperial Troop Transport that I got. It's a tiny scale, the figures are one inch tall, so things can only be so detailed. The figures in particular tend to be low on detail.

They're supposed to look like Stormtroopers, but they look more like klansmen wearing sunglasses or something.

I suspect that they might look better if I got a magnifying glass and painted in some detail, maybe did a black wash on them as well. I'll probably do that someday. They'll look better in pictures if I do that...although they're so small that I can't get a decent focus on any of the pictures I'm taking.

It only comes with two figures, but there are six slotson the sides to fill. I have no idea how you're supposed to deal with that. I guess buy more transports and use the figures from them? One of the figures comes with a gun in his hand and the other doesn't, so I assume he's supposed to be the driver I guess.

The top opens on the front to give you access to the driver's seat, and in the back to give you access to the troop compartment.

And the little side doors open for the troops to run out. 

Seems like the back ought to open as well, but it doesn't want to, so I guess not.

All in all, it's fine. I like having some 1/72 scale stormtroopers, and the ship will look good in the 1/72 Ankletown Station someday. If they stick around and get marked down even further, I may even buy a few more of them, but not unless they're cheaper. They're not worth having multiples if they're not super cheap.