I've been craving pot pies for the past good while now and I don't know why. I've satisfied that craving via Col. Sander's, Marie Currie, Stover's and Jason's Deli, but the craving has subsided.

Several months ago, I won $15 in gift certificates to Schwan's in a drawing at work. I have never ordered from them before and reading over the literature did not make it clear if I could order over the internet without first setting up an account with the local rep.

Our Schwan's guy quit, so we got a new one. Two weeks ago, I decided I'd cash in on the gift certificates. I order a single box of turkey pot pies. My understanding was that the pies would arrive this week, so when I left two weeks ago I thought "I'll go on vacation and then the pies will come."

This was not to be the case.

The Schwan's man came around today and asked if I would like to order this week. I declined and asked him if my pies were on the truck this week. He said, "no, I left them here last time when you ordered."

"Well that's odd" I thought and went off to check the freezer.

We have on of those beer cooler type freezers with the lid on top, much like you'd see someone put beef or venison in to keep it for after the close of hunting season. I dug and dug but couldn't find my pies. Several of the bags had people's names on them, but there wasn't a bag that had a single box that was pot pies. Even whester helped me look, but to no avail.

Finally, I found a bag that belonged to someone else that had a box of pot pies. I went and asked her if she had order pot pies herself. "No." she said. "Go ahead and take them. They aren't mine."

When I went back and pulled the box out, my name was on the front.

The whole time I could have had my pot pies for lunch, working through to get more accomplished...like I planned to do next week.

Last night I didn't go to sleep until a little after 0300 for various reasons, mostly because I had a good night last night at my part-time job and am enjoying the promotion. Curiously, I woke up at 0700 this morning.

I had planned to get up and go to Walmart to get a few much-needed items before coming into work a few minutes early so I could get some installs done. As I made the turn onto the road where I would turn to come into the commercial zone, I was pulled over by a cop that was in the opposite lane at the opposite light.

This officer was a young guy and seemed like he was new. His presentation though professional was perfunctory and stilted. I was meek and said little, deflated that my day was ruined straight out of the shoot.

I turned down the Dark Knight score that I had been enjoying on the ride in.

The officer asked for my license and insurance, went back to his car and wrote me a ticket.

While he was in his car, I remembered the speech from driving class back in February: "Just ask. You never know. If you're contrite and courteous, you could save yourself a ticket."

I definitely needed saving. The student loans kicked in this month and money is about to be tighter then it ever has been with the minimum wage going up and while I was waiting for the officer to return, I panicked that this ticket would not only make my insurance skyrocket, but it might cost me my part-time job. The money has been good lately and I can't afford to lose it.

The officer came back, told me when my court date was and asked me to sign. Then I did something that I have never done: I timidly begged the officer to let this one slide.

At first he hesitated, saying that he had already filled out the citation and had I asked him before...

Dejected, I picked up the pen to sign.

"Please?" I pleaded. "I was just trying to get to work."

"When do you have to be there?"

"Eight-thirty." I fibbed, as I was trying to get a jump on the day and had planned to be in by 0830. "The turn off is the next road up."

"Okay. I can let it go this time. Have a good day."

I shook hands with the officer, collected my license and came into work still shaking nervously, but with a cheesier grin and a Joker-esque laugh.

I'm one lucky bastard.

I walked into the office today after my week long vacation. I jack-jawed for quite some time about The Dark Knight which is now as of the time of this writing #1 on IMDB's Top 250 list. Sadly, there is no report of World-Wide box office, but domestically the film brought in $158 million domestically. According to WEEN, The Dark Knight set records, but these numbers are a lot lower then what I thought they would be or what I thought the current record was.

After catching up with the Joneses as it were, I entered my office and was greeted with this:

which immediately reminded me of something that consumedbyOne had posted a while back.


As an added bonus, I officially became a Level 2 technician after fifteen months of hard work.

Suffice it to say, I feel loved.

This is a complimentary movie review of The Dark Knight for ehowton:

Yes, The Dark Knight is currently rated at #4 on IMDB's top 250 list as of the time of this writing with an average user rating of 9.7. The Dark Knight is a very serious movie, not a comedy. No, The Dark Knight does not star Steve Martin.

George Lucas did not produce, write or direct this film.

The writing is tight, though the dialog could use a bit of work in a few places.

Despite it's popularity, you will not like this movie. Please make a point not to see it.

Once upon a time, there was a blubbery walrus named Ruby ( ... )

I was going to make a post tonight entitled, "Gettin' Fucked", but through a breathtaking turn of events, something that ehowton said would never happen has happened: I've been banned from his site!

For those of you who would like to join in the impending orgy, please point your browsers to http://ehowton.livejournal.com/205988.html and leave a comment cheering the old boy on! Anonymous commenting is allowed at the time of this writing and no doubt would be encouraged.

Please join the orgy now before it's too late!

New Flash! Rubi was recently seen purchasing a new hybrid car in order to keep her ice shelf from melting. Just before the snap, one photographer was heard cajoling, "Rubi, show us your tusks!"

Ruby had heard about a princess walrus on another ice shelf halfway around the world named Rubi. Rubi's fame and beauty was well known the globe around. Ruby wanted to be beautiful and graceful like Rubi was rumored to be, despite Ruby's lack of natural beauty and clumsy nature. So Ruby had an idea: she'd write Rubi a letter!

Rubi wrote Ruby back with many words and told her many things to do. "First" Rubi wrote, "You must be vain and flaunt your beauty. Give up nothing, that's your duty! Righteous hatred you must claim for those who would seek your fame." Wrote Rubi, "A new song is a must, your tired old tune has begun rust." And with that, Rubi concluded her letter:

I am woman, hear me roar
I am woman, not a whore!

Ruby tried to be vain, but this gained her no points. Ruby sang the new song, but crooned no lovers. Meanwhile, Rubi sat in her palace thinking "My God, what a ditz!"

As for Banjo, it turned out that he wasn't a musician at all. In fact, he couldn't play any instrument. He was a scientist performing an experiment collecting data on walruses. He published his results and never returned to the ice shelf.

I will be making a public appearance on Friday, July 18 at midnight at the Opry Mills IMAX theater for the midnight showing of Dark Knight. While I do already have an entourage, you may still join our merry little group by first purchasing your tickets and then contacting me via the normal channels.

Also, I will be on vacation that week, so while I should still be online (as I have several writing projects that I plan on attacking that week) I may be out of pocket for blocks of time during the week as I attend to personal matters. However, you need to book me now for that week as I will be available for pretty much anything.

In other news, there is currently a little wager that Dark Knight's box office heist will make Luke Ass' Indiana Jones and the Skullfucking take look like child's play; I'm considering upping the ante and adding opening weekend to the wager. Either way, if you want to get in on the action, leave a comment below.

I recently had the opportunity to interview the notorious drummer and co-founder of the band DGN, Chris Bertoldi. Chris is a fun guy to work with and has a great sense of humor as you will see.

Tomas Gallucci: Hello Chris, it's good to see you again.
Chris Bertoldi: It's a pleasure to be here.


TG: Let's start at the beginning. Who is DGN?
CB: DGN is Matt Barnes, Andrew Melton, Joey Foucha, Chris Barnes and myself.


TG: Tell me a little bit about DGN. How did you first get started and when?
CB: DGN was started by Matt Barnes and myself in January of 2001. We played for years together covering songs, writing our own...not being very good at either really. (laughs) But it's all good memories to look back on.

So then in the summer of '06 we added guitarist Joey Foucha in order to develop a wider scope in our writing, and the following summer we added lead singer Andrew Melton.


TG: Then what happened?
CB: At the time of the additions we'd finally hit the point where we were serious and we knew it was time to make changes if we wanted to get to the level we wanted to be. Since then we've recorded our brand new EP, "The Getaway EP," and have started pushing out of the local scene and onto the road.


TG: Where is everyone from?
CB: We're all from Madison, AL, even though Matt and Joey weren't actually born here, we've pretty much lived here our entire lives.


TG: What does DGN stand for?
CB: The name. DGN. Everyone asks us that. The truth? Dirty Grandma Nipples.

There. It's out.


TG: Tell me about your first concert. What was it like?
CB:Oh boy. Our first concert? Ha! Good story.

Geno's party. We opened up for The Scorpads, and we were terrible. The first time Matt went up to the mic to sing, it shocked him. And that pretty much sums up how the rest of the night went. But during the first song the dudes from The Scorpads we're cool enough to dance around on the front row and pretend they thought we were good.


TG: How did you break into the recording scene?
CB: I don't think we really ever broke into the recording scene. More so we slipped and fell into it.


TG: Did you record any demos then?
CB: Yes. Our first two demos were awful. To this day, if we ever see you with one we will mug you and take it.


TG: From there?
CB: We dished out some money and got a real recording, and it was good. But we realized that if we want to get the sound that defines us, we're gonna have to do it ourselves. Because the truth behind recording is it's not how fancy the equipment is, it's the time put into it. And we knew what we wanted.


TG: What was it like to record your first album? What were some of the challenges?
CB: We recorded our first true album, Welcome to Stockeland, in 2005. I'm proud of what we did on that album. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was us.

We still play two songs from the album.

But finally in 2006 we got the chance to fly out to New York and record 3 of

the songs featured on The Getaway EP at WaterMusic in Hoboken, NJ with producers Matt Robnett and Nik Tyler. That was an experience i'll never forget. To this day i'd say it's probably the most fun 5 days of my life. It was there that we learned how to make a song. It finally came full circle how the production process worked and what makes a song 1 song instead of 5 or 6 different parts.


TG: Where is the band now?
CB: Currently we're all off studying from fall to spring, but we're taking the summers and every extra opportunity to hit the road.


TG:Let's talk about making a music video. Was A Thousand Storms your first music video?
CB: Yes. The music video was an amazing, tough, stressful adventure. Stephen and I planned that thing for so long, and then suddenly you have 2 days to make it happen. And there's always problems, some big some small. But you have to make it happen.


TG: And Stephen is?
CB: A Thousand Storms' director Stephen Brock of Pixel Canvas fame.


TG: How did you meet Stephen?
CB:Stephen and I met on eHarmony.com. It's been 3 years, and i've never been happier.


TG: Was the experience of making the video what you imagined it would be?
CB: The music video was an amazing, tough, stressful adventure. Stephen and I planned that thing for so long, and then suddenly you have two days to make it happen. And there's always problems, some big some small. But you have to make it happen.

Shooting the video was pretty much what i thought it would be like. Lights, camera, action! The whole bit.


But the story i imagined and the final product were a little different. Even though we got everything we planned on shooting, the story wasn't quite as obvious as i thought it in my head. I love what we did, and I think the video turned out great. You just gotta look a little deeper for the plot.


TG: What were some of the challenges in making this video?
CB: We were definitely short on money making the video, but I don't think that ever really presented a problem at all. Thankfully, Bob Jones High School let us use most of their set design stuff and that took care of most of the expenses.


TG: What kind of promotion have you done?
CB: So far Stephen's been the one who's done most of our media work for the past year. And i'm sure he'll be doing more soon. He's truly amazing.


TG: A Thousand Storms debuts on The Gateway EP. What is the release date?
CB: The Getaway EP is pressed and ready to be bought, but we're having an official release show June 20 at Insanity Skate Park. However, it should be up on every major internet vendor(iTunes, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Best Bbuy.com, etc) in early July.


TG: What's the tour schedule look like?
CB: We'll be touring this album throughout Alabama and Tennessee this summer and throughout the next year we hope to expand our reach.This year we got offered a spot at Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, IL.


TG: What is Cornerstone Festival?
CB: Cornerstone is a sort of modern day Woodstock. Five days camped out on a huge farm ground.


TG: How did you get the venue?
CB: We got the spot through Indie Community, who we hooked up with this summer. We messaged them on myspace and they loved us, and they got us a spot on one of the hottest concerts around.

TG: When is the show?
CB: We're playing July 2 on the Indie Community Stage. June 20. CD release show. Blowout. Be there.


TG: When does the A Thousand Storms video release?
CB: It's out now. Check it on our MySpace.


TG: You don't have a personal website?
CB: I doubt we'll have a website until we sign with a label that makes us get one, pays for it, and updates it. (chuckles) MySpace does everything we need to stream music, contact other people and most imporantly keep in contact with our fans.


TG: How can a venue book you?
CB: People can book us through MySpace, email, AIM, or through Indie Community.


TG: Do you have anyone you'd like to thank in our final moments here?
CB: We'd like to thank Joe Byrd and all the guys at Quickstar Productions. They've done so much for us and helped point us in the right direction so many times. Stephen Brock. He put together the whole video shoot along with other countless hours worth of media. Indie Community for helping us get some dates booked. And of course Jesus Christ for giving us the reason to do what we do.


TG: Thank you for your time.
DB: You bet.

ehowton and I had a sort of running joke between us. Over the past eighteen months, I've taking to writing few blog posts as I enjoy commenting more. However, being a typical writer, I would think about posting all the time, composing posts in my head. As I had very little output, ehowton would call to find out about my day, etc, and I'd start to tell him about some event in the recent past and say, "I blogged about it." And he'd say, "No you didn't." This occurred with such regularity as he finally told me to assume that I had not posted unless told otherwise.

Well, here's another example of something I could have swore that I posted, but alas, I did not.

Back in January, I helped out with DGN's A Thousand Storms music video shoot. It was a two day shoot, Friday and Saturday with Sunday planned as a pickup day. I couldn't make it out Friday because of work, but there was an 0700 call set for Saturday. I was still delivering Friday nights back then.

There were a few issues that came up. Jesse the cameraman had a new rig he was testing, but he didn't pack his Mac Pro to dump the footage, so I volunteered miniMax0r. The idea was that they'd come over Friday night after shooting, dump the footage and be ready to go Saturday.

This did not go according to plan. In fact, not a whole lot did. The crew was wore out from Friday's shoot and I didn't get the camera, so the footage never got dumped. I woke up late Saturday and flew down 565 only to get a ticket for going 89 in a 70, and that was after I saw the cop coming down the ramp and put on the brakes. Of course, production was running behind, so I don't think we even got started until after 0900. I then had to go back to Huntsville to pick up miniMax0r for a layout job and to dump the footage on set as well as pick up card for a prop. That's when we decide to pull the footage.

Pulling the footage meant making a pilgrimage to Wallyworld for an external drive as there was no where else to put the 180GB dump. Remembering how when I was in Texas for The Party to End all Parties we had to use the command line to transfer data that the GUI would not, I decided to employ a similar trick in this situation...which somehow I fat-fingred and ran twice simultaneously, so the first copy command would dump it's buffer and then the second one would come along, erase that segment and write it again, thus effectively doubling the transfer time. NOT GOOD.

Shooting finally commenced after a bunch of shooting the shit waiting on the machine to do its job, but during this time, a lot of friends of the band showed up, which made the additional photography more difficult to control and get. I think we had a 2100 deadline to be out of the location with it cleaned up; I don't think we got out of there until 0200.

So I should have told you this story in January, but you're getting it in June. One thing I will tell you about in a timely fashion is that I had the opportunity to interview DGN's notorious drummer Chris Bertoldi, who took the time to tell me about the band, their peculiar name and how E-Harmony changed his life; that interview is coming up next, so stay tuned.

As those I communicate with on a daily or semi-daily basis are either away or have ceased to communicate with me, I am taking a sabbatical from AIM and will return when such services are necessary. Thank you for your patience concerning this issue.

This has been a Public Service Announcement of the schpydurx communication network.

Recently on ehowton's blog, I issued the following ultimatum to melancthe:

melancthe,

You say I'm an idiot and compare me to some CD shop guy? Well, I'm ready to prove to the world that you're a bigger fool then I ever hope to be.

I was rummaging through my email today and I found some rather damning letters you sent me last year. You keep saying that if I'll post private conversations about snapper521, I'll post them about you. Too bad you gave me the idea.

I'd like to spare you this embarrassment.

If you go away and never comment in ehowton's journal ever again, I will not post those emails, re-friend ehowton and let the good times roll. There is a clock on this deal: I expect a signal of your intentions by 1700 your local time or 1000 CST.

If ehowton defriends me, bans me, deletes this comment or the email, I will immediately post those emails on my site publicly and never remove them. If the ass-kissing continues on this site, I will post the emails.

I don't care where you go. You can have fun on your site where I can't see it, you can go to photogoot's site, you can create new sites, but I don't EVER want to see you here again.

Should you wish to test my resolve in this matter, you will be facing a finality beyond your comprehension.

I issued this ultimatum out of jealously and rage against melancthe and ehowton. I was jealous of melancthe's continual doting on ehowton every time he gave her compliment; more correctly, I was upset that I sought her favor through what I perceived to be genuine compliments and was repudiated whereas ehowton used flowery, superficial words and was lauded.To that end, I sought to control both melancthe and ehowton both through defriending and ultimatums.

This was wrong for many reasons.

Firstly, this should have been dealt with in a more private forum. It was wrong of me to attempt to resolve this issue forcibly and maliciously in public. What melancthe and ehowton chooses to say or do in a public forum especially on ehowton's blog is NOT within my jurisdiction to moderate. The very idea that I took this matter into my own hands to resolve without privately discussing the issue with them first in an attempt to bring about a peaceful resolution shows my immaturity and petulance.

Secondly, I sought to control both melancthe and ehowton in such a manner that they were left with no choice but to bend to my will. This too was wrong because they are NOT subservient to me and I do not have the authority to govern or regulate their actions. That I had the audacity to assume such a dictatorial position speaks volumes to my lack of character and shows that I do not possess the tools necessary to communicate civilly.

Finally, I threatened someone I cared about deeply for political and personal gain. I cannot begin to exhaustively list the reasons that this is utter folly. To believe that it is necessary to so ferociously trample another person in a power play for attention is indicative of a relationship that is one-sided at best and is indicative of larger, bigger problems that need to be resolved privately.

I wished that I could plead temporary insanity as a cause for this utter violation of privacy and free will, but I cannot. I meticulously planned and executed a dog and pony show in an attempt to gain melancthe's attention; when this did not work I concocted a plan that would simultaneously tie ehowton's hands and force melantche to terminate a relationship that made me greatly envious and jealous. My comment was designed with malicious intent to inflict a the greatest suffering at maximum potency.

I have spoken to melancthe and she assures me that this sin against her is unforgivable; however, I know her to be a person of long-suffering and infinite graciousness, and am confident that she will, in her own good time, bestow mercy on this fool for his malefactions.

Therefore, I am taking the following actions:

EFFECTIVELY IMMEDIATELY, I hereby rescind my pernicious, abominable comment. Anyone acting under that treacherous edict should cease and desist at once. It shall remain in tact on ehowton's blog at the pleasure of ehowton as a memorial of my shame and a testament to my utter stupidity.

Second, I offer a public apology to melancthe:

Michaela,

I beseech pardon you for my treacherous behavior. To play on your fears as I did is incomprehensible and unforgivable offense. Your affection and attention is yours to give--not mine to take; if I am compelled to act in such a confiscatory manner, I am not worthy of your affections nor do I deserve to have them bestowed upon me. Your attention and affection is yours to give to whom you will and it is wrong of me to attempt to re-appropriate them.

To have trodden on your emotions as I have is unredeemable and I can only lay prostrate at your feet and implore your mercy and forgiveness.

to ehowton:

Eric, my patient friend,

I most humbly regret that I have tested our friendship with such a hot fire. It grieves me that catttitude has seen my actions as a vicious attack on a member of her family and has forbid me to speak to you ever again; I did not conceive the situation would so suddenly spin out of my control. I further wish to apologize for being so selfish as to sacrifice our relationship for my own selfishness desires to manipulate melancthe. I pray that you will forgive my egocentricity and that catttitude will accept my apology, grant me pardon and allow us to freely communicate again.

and to our Live Journal community at large:

To those of you who were witness to and fell pray to my folly, thus being deprived of the Excellent Prismantic Melancthe's presence on ehowton's blog, I beg of you while on bended knee to forgive my intrusion into your blogging affairs and urge you to encourage melancthe to return to her rightful place on ehowton's blog. I apologize for disrupting your week and vow this will NEVER happen again.

And offer to pay full restitution to both melancthe and ehowton as they see fit, and strive to repair their broken trust in me and our severed relationships.

I have a several people I wish to thank for their roles in this passion play:

First and foremost, this healing would not be possible if it were not for ehowton. He stood by my side and supported me through my follow to his own detriment. I can think of no greater testament to his character as a gentleman and am thankful that he pounded reason into my think skull as I continued to wallow in my folly.

I would like to thank drax0r for being a mirror and reflecting to me why I continue to fail in my relationships and, on a more general level, other people's perceive when the interact with me.

I would like to thank melancthe for her stoicism under such vicious and pernicious attacks. I do not believe there is a more gracious person alive today and her conduct in this manner proves that she is a much better person then I. I do not deserve to call her friend.

I will end this endeavor to start the healing process by reflecting on the words from Into the West:

Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don't say
We have come now to the end
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again

The days ahead will not be days of jubilation for me but of serving as a pack mule in an attempt to right the irreparable damage I have wrought here. However, I have faith in melancthe, ehowton, catttitude and our Live Journal community at large to come together in unity and healing. I am sorry for the disgrace I have brought upon all of your and most humbly beg that you see me for the petulant manchild I am and will accept me back into the fold.

A Memorable Memorial Day
Too many people forget just why we celebrate Memorial Day here in the States. Memorial Day is a day to remember and celebrate the best and the brightest among us who gave their lives and yielded their freedom so that we could have our lives and freedom. Sadly, most people this year just looked to this date as the official release of urchins from concentration camps public screwls and marks the beginning of summer.

I celebrated this Memorial Day by sitting on my ass and not doing a damned thing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I did go to the park and walk around for a couple of hours enjoying the ever-living shit out of my iPod Shuffle. I did a lot of brainstorming on many writing projects walking around. I now know what my next large purchase will be: a MacBook.

I long to have a laptop so that I can go write in remote locations and get away from my desk. Yes, it doesn't make a lot of sense right now as all I ever do is work, but those moments that you can get away you cherish, and by God you want a laptop.

And I refuse to settle for anything less then a MacBook. Why? Because in my experience, Leopard offers me a platform that is extremely stable, simple to navigate, speeds up my workflow, supports all of my apps and is nice and pretty to boot. One of these days I'm going to have to revisit my Using miniMax0r post--say at the one year mark--and address some of the complaints that I have. They are minor, but they are aggravations and interruptions to workflow. If enough voices speak out, perhaps some of these issues will get addressed.

Of making many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
So the university that I went to offers this program called academic bankruptcy. It's where they take all of your previous work at the institution and erase it from you record...kinda. The courses still show up, but not your grades and your GPA goes back to 0.0 You have to start from the beginning and can only do this once in your career, but it's a last chance for fuck-ups like me. I'll need to schedule and appointment and take the time off to make it, but I think that if I were to do this, I could then go to the community college just down the street (new shiny MacBook in hand) and take out the GERs (that's General Education Reguirments for those of you in Juanita). This would allow me to go someone a bit easier and more importantly, cheaper to get those filters out of the way. This would also provide me with an excuse to take some photog classes at said institution as the university doesn't offer any. (Fucking Communist, Nazi bastards!)

It's quite funny. Today I was reminiscing with whester about those early college classes. I took American Lit with a certain teacher because I had her for Freshman Comp. She and I had a blast in Freshman Comp as she said that she had never had a class as outrageous as that one, though to be fair, there was a second joker in the class to help pull the slack for me.

I'll never forget when I turned in my first paper: it was eight pages long! She very patiently took me aside, told me I had great ideas and an excellent conversational tone, but needed to learn to condense. In hindsight, the irony is that was before I wrote for either The Exponent or started blogging. (My first blog entry was January 29, 2005; I took Freshman Comp in the fall of 2002.)

But back to American Lit. That semester I was living in the dorm and was all burnt out. I would write both my code and papers an hour before they were do. I pulled my Lit teacher aside and told her "I'm not looking for pity or sympathy, but I thought you ought to know that 'm not really reading in here and I'm writing my essays an hour before they are do without reading the material." I got an "A" on all of my essays that semester as I recall.

Maybe I could get involved with the school paper after I got the GERs knocked out. There's a lot I could do better the second time around because a) I'd already known/seen the material and b) I know what to expect from college. I could finally relax and have fun. Who knows what networking opportunities lie in store.

I've told several of you that all of the sudden there'd be a lot of writing come out onf nowhere from me and I mean it. I've got several writing projects that I'm involved with; currently there are two active scripts Re'eh and another project that I'm working with an International (UK + US) team that I'm not ready to announce publicly. I have a few posts stored up that I will be releasing in the coming days, some of which I think that you my ever patient and faithful readership will enjoy. Though I can't talk about it now, there will be an exclusive sneak peak of a music video I had the pleasure to be a part of January coming to this blog the first part of June.

Thanks to Friends List filtering, I will be self-publishing a novella and a novel exclusively on Live Journal. The novella will be a narrative of my mission trip to Guatemala seven years ago; the novel is what some of you old timers would remember under the title A Time to Fight. If you want to be a part of either of these (and I'll announce this again before publishing either one which will be done serially) you must have a Live Journal account and will need to leave me a comment asking to be added to either/both. Let me re-iterate this for those of you in Juanita: if you want to read A Time to Fight in it's virgin run you need a Live Journal account. This will not be available via Xanga. At this time, I am not announcing a time frame for either publication. Leave a comment somewhere on schpydurx if you want to be part of this action.

I've always thought that there is a blogging season that runs from sometime mid-to late spring and continues to the holidays; it looks like my season is just around the corner.

As most of you know, recently I had a fight with snapper521. I thought that she had used my password to delete comments off of my blog. In my reactionary haste, I not only reposted her deleted comments, I also posted a private conversation that she and I had in an effort to re-affirm what she had already posted, but in more graphic detail.

I was immediately pointed out to me that one could delete frozen comments if they were the one that left them. I did not believe that this was the case as I had dealt with frozen comments before, so I let my post continue to stand. Upon further research I realized that i was wrong on both counts. Few of my readers were amused.

To this end I posted a retraction. However the retraction's genuineness was immediately called into question based in part of what some thought was a shirking of responsibility. I immediately brought the issue to a close hoping to be done with it. This too has proved to be utter folly.

Therefore, I did the unthinkable: I made sure that Google had cleared their cache of the offensive post and then I called snapper521 and apologized. We discussed the matter clearly stating both sides of the issue and have come to terms.

I do apologize to snapper521 for my misconduct and to my readership for dragging you into the middle of this fiasco and hope to finally lay this issue to rest here with this post.

Thanks for your continued support.