Rivalry

The never ending rivalry. Which is nerdier? Either way, it's all nerdy. I tend to fall on the Star Wars side, though I've enjoyed myself several seasons of Star Trek. I have to say, that it hurts when Darth Vader is echoing my own words about what counts and what doesn't. Only I think the ewoks are great. So, I guess it's all about your point of reference.

Out The Window

I got a text from my wife with this picture:

It also contained this fuming subtitle:

Little is grounded right now. FYI.

I was curious, the picture is hard to understand, especially with little explanation like I received.

Is that out our window?

I asked.

Yep.

She responded.

He and his friends opened the window, pushed the screen out, and then threw things out until a passerby came and told me.

All I can say is that I'm glad that's all that happened. Little and his friends were throwing blankets, pillows, and toys out our bedroom window, and, as you can see in the picture, the driveway is directly below it with only a tiny strip of roof to break your fall if you go out the window.

Working in the news, I see several stories a year about some child who was playing near an open window when he accidentally fell out. Sometimes they die, sometimes they are badly injured, sometimes they miraculously walk away without a scratch, but that last possibility is really uncommon.

Because of that, there are rules in our house about which windows can be opened and which ones cannot, and our bedroom window is one of those that cannot, particularly because there is a couch right underneath it that makes it easy for the little guy to get up to the sill.

So, despite the embarrassment of having to have a complete stranger that was passing by tell us what our kid was up to, and the irritation of having to clean up such a mess, I still find this adventure to have been a big win for us. Not Little, nor any of his knucklehead friends wound up dead or disabled. It definitely could have been worse.

Rest In Peace, James Horner

Just found out that James Horner died in a plane crash today. He composed my favorite movie score of all time. To honor his amazing life and work, I'm going to post that score here. Listen to it, and remember him and his work.

He's also known for many other great scores, like Apollo 13, Avatar, Willow, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and...a movie called Chumscrubber as well I suppose, they can't all be amazing.

I'm Okay

Rish just sent me over a link to this shirt:

Oh man, I may need one of these.

Grand Tetons

My wife wanted to do something fun for our anniversary, and was particularly interested in finding something that I would love, so she looked up a national park we hadn't been to before, and got us an AirBNB right next to it to spend a weekend.

It was really cute, and my wife was in love from the moment we arrived. The shape, the size, the look, the decor...everything was exactly what she would have chose herself. We've had a lot of luck with AirBNB's so far. No hassle, and usually much cheaper than we could get a similar hotel.

For the first night, my wife had originally planned to head to Grand Teton National Park, and do a short hike somewhere, but after five and a half hours driving, the both of us were more interested in something simple and easy. So, instead we went into town, and looked at the shops. That's where I saw that "The Mountains Are Calling, And I Must Go" sign. For dinner,  I had a buffalo burger. Very frontiersy of me, eh?

The next morning, we went to the park.

My wife bought us both a seat on a float tour, which is a guided, non-whitewater rafting trip down the Snake river. It was a really relaxing and nice way to see the scenery, and the majesty of the scenery was breathtaking.

We also saw a great deal of wildlife while on the water as well. In this tree is a bald eagle. You have to look close, but it's there. I'd only seen bald eagles on TV before this, and we saw several. In trees, as well as swooping and diving over the river too.

We also saw a bunch of Canada geese with their babies still in tow.

And we happened upon this beautiful great blue heron.

Once we finished the float tour, it was time for a foot tour. The rangers advised us that the best hike available to us was the Jenny Lake trail, which, if you go the right way, leads you all the way to Hidden Falls.

It's interesting, considering the low water years we've been having where I live, and the out and out drought they're dealing with in California, to hear that up in Wyoming they had a particularly wet year, and rivers, creeks, and waterfalls are running full, loud, and proud.

 There was a ferry we could have taken back to the trailhead, and this sounded novel and interesting to me before we'd come, but we'd just spent the entire morning afloat, so we decided to hike it back instead. It gave us more time to look at the beautiful scenery, like this picture of Jenny Lake.

By the time we made it back, we were tired, and ready for to eat. So, we headed back into town for dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in the cabin.

The next morning was our last one there. We had a few hours before we needed to start heading back. On top of that, my wife was starting to feel ill. Instead of going on another hike, we decided to drive the scenic loop through the park. On our way to it, though, we made sure to stop at Mormon Row.

It wasn't all outhouses, but I did make sure to get a picture of that one. Where else is there an outhouse with such a beautiful view.

Mormon Row is an area in Grand Teton National Park that contains the remains of a settlement originally created by a group of Mormon pioneers. They've long since abandoned the place, but what remains of their farms continued to moulder and crumble for years. The park finally took steps to protect them, and the rustic look of the buildings combined with the amazing backdrop has made them a favorite for visitors. In fact, this barn is the T. A. Moulton barn. A website called Flixter has declared this barn to be the most photographed barn in America.

I took several pictures of it myself, and I can't remember what other barn I've ever taken a picture of, so I suppose it very possibly could be true. Oh, I did take a picture of the other barn just up the road.

That is a panorama picture I did with my phone. It's really big. You don't have to look at it all tiny like that. click on it, and I think you can see it much larger and more glorious.

On the way out of Mormon Row, I found this field of wildflowers. I don't know why but I love taking pictures of flowers. Whole fields of them is even better.

Add in the Grand Tetons as a backdrop, and you really can't go wrong.

We finally hit the scenic loop. We stopped at a couple of places, and took a few pictures, like this one of these elk we saw out grazing in a field.

And we eventually made it as far as Jackson Lake.

That was where we had to turn around though. my wife was feeling terrible, and just wanted to get underway so she could sleep, instead of stopping to get out and look at scenery every few minutes. It was a long drive back home anyway, so we got underway, and finished off our anniversary getaway.

Tetons Means What In French?

Really irritated. Got this book. I thought it was a French book. It was supposed to be full of pictures of Grand Tetons. The book was not what I thought though. It just has a bunch of pictures of mountains. So disappointed.

Do I Need This?

Found this sign at a souvenir shop in Jackson Hole. It's not quite my slogan, but it's pretty close. What do you think, should I get it?

 

TGMG 158: Community - A Bird's-eye View

New TGMG available for your enjoyment!

When the weather got warm, Rish and I went on a hike. With no agenda, I wanted to talk about "Community." This is pretty much live, only editing out the racial slurs.

Oh, sorry about the mix-up in episode order. This was supposed to drop first, but somebody made an executive decision.

You can find it on the podcast feed or just right-click HERE to download it. Or just click the play button below. They're all here. You're not alone. You're never alone. Not in here. Okay, break's over!

Dunesteef Episode 172: TWSC – Field Exercise by J.M. Perkins

Author J.M. Perkins is back again, and it’s a Triple Word Score Contest finalist. In a superhero training program, Ryan and Victor are having trouble finding their way. If they do things right, they might be allowed to participate in the upcoming field exercise. But of course we all know they’re not going to do things right.

Afterward, Rish and Big talk about Dr. Light, Elongated Man, and Paste-Pot Pete. Get ready.

Special thanks to Justin Charles for producing the episode and to Sonny See for providing the art.

Alright, if you want to check out this episode, go listen to it on the main Dunesteef podcast feed—(EDIT: We finally went down the drain, I guess. Now that the feed is gone, the only way to hear the show is over on the Dunesteef Podcast YouTube page, which I am embedding below).

Experimenting

Been messing around for the last few minutes, and I put together this quickie video as an experiment to see how it would work. These are 080-T's eyes, and how they will look as he speaks...this will not be his voice, however. It's what you call a scratch track in the biz...

Oh, yes, 080-T will return. If you strike him down now, he shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

The Cake Is A Lie

I can't be the only one out there who feels uncomfortable participating in the celebration for somebody's birthday or retirement at work when I have had little to no involvement with them the entire time I've worked here, can I?

I guess cake is cake, so I'm gonna eat it.

More?

I'm thinking about getting the Scarlet Witch figure they have in stores right now and adding it to this display on my bookshelf. What do you think?

Shorter Is Better?

Number one movie this weekend? The movie with the least interesting title I've ever heard. I always have a hard time with titles for my stories, but even I do better than this. It's like they didn't even try at all. And the utter crappiness of the title makes me want to see the movie less. That's right, Spy is the number one movie this weekend.

Once, when I was in film school, I gave a script to my screenwriting teacher to ask for his advice. He looked at the title page and read it out loud.

"The Hunter and the Hunted."

He looked at me. Then back down at the title page.

Then looked up and said, "I'd like it a lot better if it was just called 'The Hunted'."

I was admittedly a little put off by this suggestion. I had a lot of respect for this guy, and the suggestion was stupid. He hadn't even read it, and had no idea what it was about, but he already wanted to change the title. 

I guess the point was that a short title is better. Five words was too long. Needed to be only two. If he'd read the script, he would have seen that "Hunter" would have been the better half of that title to use, and it would have been even shorter! But anyways, this was all the way back in 1997 or 1998. I guess things have progressed since then.

Anklecast 27: Onward to the Breech

Just DO IT! MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!

In this month's episode, I answer a listener's question about the Dunesteef Novel Writing Challenge. I give a little bit of a teaser about what my novel will be about. Also, there's another story in the episode. Some people commented last week about how they liked the idea of having stories in the show, so I tried real hard and got one in there. It's the reason why the episode is so late, but you guys don't care, right?

So, hopefully you enjoy "Onward to the Breech".

Music was "Crossing The Divide." Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com.

Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Recommendations?

I think I'm going to get myself a subscription to a short story magazine. I want an actual physical, paper magazine though. I know Analog, Asimov's, and F&SF still do paper. What others are there? And, using the stories we've run on the Dunesteef as your guide, what would you recommend I subscribe to?

How-To Guide

Rish posted this over on my Facebook. I suppose I ought to read it over and learn a thing or two. I guess I'm making my readers angry with my sadistic tendencies.

May Flowers Arriving Late?

Thistle flowers are all about to pop.

I know you're not supposed to like thistles, but I think they're pretty. I guess I've been living in the western desert too long.

Ripples

Interesting clouds today.

I really like the pattern they're making. It makes me feel funny.

It Begins...

So, June has arrived. Rish and I have been talking about each of us writing a novel for most of the year. I think it was back in February that Rish went to a writing symposium where one of the speakers outlined a plan for writing a novel in 90 days. Unlike normal, where hearing a plan like this would make Rish hate himself all the more and start making plans for taking his own life, instead he became excited. He'd always been of a mind that he would never write a novel. He equated it to running a marathon, another thing that he was certain that he would never do, but this author made it sound...if not easy, at least feasible.

So, we decided to go for it. I set the time table, because I knew my life would be too hectic to manage to write that much until summer arrived. So, June 1st through August 31st we will be implementing this plan.

Rish called it DuPoWriMo once when we were talking about it on TGMG. That's a play on our podcasting event we did a few Februaries ago, when we released an episode of TGMG for every day of the month. We called that DuPoReMo, or Dunesteef Podcast Releasing Month. That was, of course, a play on the NaNoWriMo event, or National Novel Writing Month. Combine the two, and you have DuPoWriMo, but I think it probably works out better if we call it DuNoWriMo. None of them quite work, I suppose, if you analyze the words. After all, it's not a month. But it doesn't matter. If you ever hear me refer to DuPoWriMo or DuNoWriMo in the future, you know what I'm talking about.

So, today's the 3rd of June. I'm three days into my journey. How has it gone so far? I think it's going pretty well. On my drive to work this morning, I recorded myself as I planned the plot of the story out loud. I just spoke, and my phone recorded. I did that on Monday as well. I think I'm working my way through the story pretty well.

My book will be called THE GAUNTLET

I have my main characters, Sebastian Jones and Ramona Jones. I know the bad guy. I know the inciting event. I know some of the obstacles that they will face. I know the big turning point at the end of act two. I know the finale. A lot of stuff needs to be filled in between now and when I start putting pen to paper, but the bare bones are coming together, the skeleton is appearing, and even some of the meat is starting to appear on the bones.

It's pretty fun so far. I suppose it'll become more of a slog later, when I have to write 1,666 words a day just to keep pace. But I'm not going to think about that now.

Further Inspiration

Oh man, John Higham just posted this on my post about Apollos Hester's inspirational postgame interview. Schmoyoho made this sweet video, songifying the interview. It's really great, and makes a nice update. Maybe I should just steal the song and make it my new intro instead.

Inspirational Speaker

Marshal suggested another thing for me to add to my inspirational intro to The Anklecast. It's pretty great.

I'm going to have to work long and hard to be able to inspire people anywhere near as much as this guy.

DO IT!!!!!

Marshal Latham says I ought to add some of this to my Anklecast intro. What do you think?

I know, I know. I should just do it!